Transcript
This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is The James Altucher Show. Today on The James Altucher Show. What if you wanna challenge yourself and the thing you do is volunteer to go to Iraq or Afghanistan and walk in front of your fellow marines to see where the IED explosives are and hope that you don't die. You challenge yourself because you wanna learn about yourself. My guest today Akshay Manavati did this. I think this was crazy and I and he agrees with me. And after serving in Afghanistan he had PTSD, he had depression, he was really suffering. So now he's learned how to hone these challenges into more worthwhile challenges that really help him grow. Let's hear his story. Let's see what challenges he's working on. I really enjoyed talking to Akshay. It was one of those conversations that could change your life. So here's Akshay. I know you're planning on going to North Pole, and you mentioned how you you've done expeditions in polar areas. I I I guess the South Pole. And and I've I think I've had quite a few guests who have been to either the North Pole or the South Pole. Brian Keating did a science experiment on the South Pole. Oh, yeah. He was he was building a telescope. Oh, wow. Yeah. He was building a telescope in South Pole. Right? The the I guess in the South Pole, there's no pollution, and so you got clear view into space. Yeah. And so he was building a a a telescope to basically see the beginning of the universe, the big bang. Wow. And it and it it did not work. The big bang. If if it had worked, he certainly would have won the Nobel Prize, and he would have been pretty good. It's still, yeah, it still might, work in the future. But, actually That's awesome. I I I am a little bit afraid of you, I think. I think you're my fear of Anna today, because I have in some ways, you and I have very similar experiences even though, you know, the biographies might be different, but kind of the anxiety, you know, the the the the things that brought us to the brink of either depression or suicide or PTSD or extreme anxiety, whatever. Those things are similar. And then I, like you, feel that experiences well constructed experiences are almost a safe way of dealing with the real dangerous situations in life. And, I feel, though, you have put yourself actually in real dangerous situations to deal with other real dangerous situations. And I kind of disagree with that. If someone says to me, James, you should try skydiving. I'm gonna say, thank you, but no. Mhmm. Like, if there's even a 1 in 1,000 chance I'm going to not have my parachute open or I'm gonna be terrified along the way, I don't think I'm gonna do it. That doesn't seem like a fun way to do it. So I'll do thing I'll do other things. Like, I feel, for instance, certain games. Like, let's say poker is a good way to safely deal with money decisions without going bankrupt. I gotcha. Or reading a great book or writing a great book is a safe way to deal with stressful situations because you put yourself in the mind of the character who's dealing with a stressful situation. So I come up with other ways. And, look, life is a scary and miserable place as your buddy, the Dalai Lama, would say his holiness. You know, life is suffering. And by the way, how'd you get the Dalai Lama to write a blurb on your book, Viravana? It was, you know, it was a pure cold pitch. I didn't have any network or any connections to him. It was I was very blessed. Like, when I had written the book, you know, it was a very spiritual concept. So in my mind, I thought, who is the sort of head, the leader in the spiritual world to validate this concept? At this point, I had no brand, no platform, nothing, you know? So I thought the Dalai Lama and, initially immediately when that thought entered my head, it was like, ah, who am I? There's no way I could make this happen, you know? So I kind of shut it down. And I was actually very blessed. My first book endorsement was from Seth Godin. So when that happened, that was a kind of push to say, okay. You know what? Why not try? What's the worst that could happen? So I did a cold pitch to his website, the head office of his holiness, kinda got me nowhere. And then I did, like, ton of research, and I found a name and a point of contact in his holiness' office. So I sent him a video sharing my whole journey, what are the struggles I've been through, what we're trying to do with fear of honor, all the prophets who go to charity, and sort of the larger mission of how we wanna help people turn suffering into bliss. And, this gentleman received it. He connected me to, like, 3 other monks. Finally get to the right monk and he said, okay. I've got your, like, material. I'll we'll we'll, you know, we'll review it and get back to you. And over 5 months, I built a relationship with this monk. And the whole time, you know, I was constantly in my mind thinking, they hate me. They hate my book. Why would they endorse this? Constant doubt, like, constant these fears of, you know, that that my book wasn't worthy, that I'm not worthy. But I was able to transcend that and keep following up, keep building a relationship. And after about 5 months, this particular monk wrote me and said, considering everything you've been through and your genuine desire to serve, I'll press your case. And I was truly, truly honored. It was just such a huge blessing for me and, of course, a game changer for the book that he ended up writing me a forward. I've got this beautiful letter that I framed up in my house here in India, actually, and, he wrote a ford and it's with his seal and his signature, and it was just very humbling to get his validation of this concept and, obviously, like, personally and, you know, spiritually fulfilling, but also a game changer in helping spread the message of fear of Anand getting it out there. It was very cool. And, obviously, we're gonna we're gonna get to your stories in a second, but I find this to be a real enlightening lesson. Like, most people would stop where, oh, I sent a message to a website, and I didn't get a reply. Mhmm. End of story. And this is extremely valuable because this is the only way to get hard things, which is going beneath the surface. You research, like, what's an alternative way Mhmm. To get to him. Don't take a no from someone who can't say yes. So, obviously, the person running the website didn't have the power even to say yes. Yeah. You kinda had to find out what's another point of contact. Maybe you even hit multiple points of contact. I don't know. Like, you told me the straight story. Maybe there was other parts, and you were persistent. You didn't send an email. You made a video, and I've watched if it's similar to the videos I've watched of you, you are very good at video making, and that was a skill you've you've built up. That's a powerful way to convey a message and shows that you're putting in the extra effort. People will respond to effort with effort. So people will respect that you put in more effort than the average thing. And then you kept I'm sure it it's not you you act like it was your full time job to get his endorsement, but I'm sure it just took, like, a few moments a week. And then you kept following up and Yeah. And and and that that's sort of people don't realize that persistence doesn't mean doing it every minute. It means doing a minute every week. Exactly. It didn't take much. And and the key point too that I wanna highlight is, like, transcending the thoughts. Like, it's okay to have the doubt. It's okay to have the fear. I constantly had doubt, like, you know, you don't hear back in 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 4 weeks. Are they are they do they hate my book? Are they gonna is it not gonna happen? You know? But you don't you don't have to be defined by your thoughts and your emotions. You can transcend them and take action outside of them. And that was a big game changer to actually ended up making that possible. Right. Like, there's so much evidence both in science and philosophy. Your fears and doubts are really just about you and have nothing to do with the real reality of the situation. Mhmm. Like, I always, and my listeners know this, but I always tell my daughter whenever she wakes up at 3 in the morning anxious because she's kind of anxious just like I'm anxious person that, hey, 3 in the morning is probably you know, I always wake up at 3 in the morning with anxiety. This is a normal thing, and it never I'm never even worried the next day. It's just a 3 in the morning sort of thing. So I'll make an appoint I won't worry now. I'll make an appointment with myself with myself at 3 PM tomorrow to worry about these exact things. And then, of course, by 3 PM the next day, there's nothing to no meet no meeting required. That's it. But Yeah. You know, the other thing is, to and and and, again, your stories are amazing. I wanna get to but the other thing to unpack about this is that you kept saying you have no platform, you had no brand. But the reality is brand or platform, whatever, comes with doing the things that you were doing, of course. Absolutely. So so that's how you built it, and you'll continue to build it. Absolutely. Yeah. So, So, like, everyone says, oh, I can't do this. I have I don't have any followers on Twitter. Nobody started off with a 1000000 followers on Twitter. Everyone started off with 0 followers on Twitter. Yeah. Say something interesting and unique, and you'll get followers on whatever platform you want. It's that easy. Exactly. But the hard part is saying something unique, which you do. So I've been blessed to live a unique life that has led me to it. Yeah. Now you have such a fascinating story, but it starts with I mean, you you basically put yourself you know, the word fearvana, which is the title of your book, that implies this combination of fear and nirvana. So you put yourself in these deadly situations and hope to reach some and you do. You reach some transcendence Mhmm. Through the pain and and danger of these situations, which, again, you you have to convince me that this is a wonderful thing. Mhmm. But let's start off with we could start off in a lot of places. Let's start off somewhat in the middle, but in the early middle, which is you were in Iraq fighting for the United States in the marines, and your job was to walk in front of everybody and find where the IEDs are, which are explosive. What what does IED stand for? Improvised explosive device. An improvised explosive device, you could not pay me a $1,000,000 to do that job. Like, what is that something you have to do if you're told to do it, or did you volunteer for that? Like, you you could step on something and get blown up. Yeah. I mean, I didn't I it was I happened to be in that role that I got assigned to it, but I was also more than happy to do it because and I this is not a healthy way to have approached it. I was when I went to Iraq, I was ready to die. I was ready to that if had if it had to be me, I'd rather it be me than somebody else if somebody had to die. Because what happened was to give some context of where that mindset came from. And again, it was not a healthy, place to approach the war, and it was very naive because in the nature of wars, you can't control where bullets fly and explosion could have killed anybody. So I had that job assigned to me that I was to walk in front of the vehicles, but I was also grateful for it. Because what happened is before I went to Iraq, when I first joined the marines, I joined and I've met this this buddy of mine, Corporal Jacob Neil, and him and me became brothers. We were very tight. We trained together. We did everything together. We were volunteering to go to war together every chance we could. Twice, the marines told us we were going. Last minute, they canceled it. And Why would they cancel you going to war? Didn't they need people going to war? They did, but we were trying to augment with a different unit. And for the basically, there's a lot of paperwork to move 1 marine from 1 unit to another unit, and it doesn't always go smoothly. Marine Corps admin is not the smoothest operation in the world. So Well, what does it mean, though? Like, why why was your was the was the unit you're with going to Iraq? Like, why did you wanna move to a different unit? We wanted to volunteer to go to war. Both of us were the only 2 in a unit. We we were waiting to I mean, we joined Marine Corps infantry, and we wanted to go to war together at that point. We wanted to, yeah, we wanted to experience I mean, when I even joined the marines, it was and I don't mean to sound like a war junkie, but there's something deeply alluring experience about experiencing the human condition at its absolute edges, at its absolute extremes. Because, like, war, for example, is a is an experience where you see the absolute worst of humanity, you know, brutal atrocities, the horrors of war, people doing awful things to each other, But you also see the absolute best. People sacrificing their lives for each other, jumping on grenades for another human being. And revealing these extremes of the human condition, there was something deeply alluring about wanting to seek out that experience. And so him and me were volunteering to go together every chance we could. Then and to go with a different unit because our unit was not had not been activated. I love this. We're gonna have a good podcast because everything you're saying, I have questions that I wanna Please. Unpack. But, like, how come your unit wasn't activated yet? Like, weren't they eager to send as many people as possible to the war? Units go on rotation. So our unit had actually just returned from Iraq. So when I joined the unit, like, a month late the unit was actually in Iraq. Most of the unit was in Iraq already, and they came back, like, maybe a month after I joined the unit. So him and me were kind of the boots. Like, we were the newbies. There was about, I don't know, at the time, maybe 30 of us that were the brand newbies. The rest of the unit had actually just returned from Iraq. So they were these salty, you know, salty war vets. And him and me were like Did they did they treat you like s**t? Like, did they say, listen, buddy. Just relax. You don't wanna go to war that fast. They were I mean, they didn't treat me like s**t. Like, I the many of them were kind of my mentors and brothers to this day that were like, dude, stop volunteering. Because they had been there. They had knew this is nothing there's nothing sort of gore glorious about this, you know. Don't volunteer. Like, I remember we I remember standing in in line in in these, you know, information, and they were like, hey. Who wants to go? And me and Neil will be raising our hands. And the guys, like, my buddies were like, dude, stop raising your hand, you idiot. Like, do not you do not wanna go. But Alright. I didn't listen. The second question I have is the second question I have is, I agree you know, throughout history, people have often wanted to go to war to have that experience that you described. Like, you know, classic example, Ernest Hemingway got, like, 4 novels out of going to wars Mhmm. And won the Nobel Prize. But there's the other side of war that it's this is a serious business. Like, you might be volunteering to kill somebody else, kill another child. You were a child, and you might have been volunteering to kill someone, another child. What How do you Did you take that into account? So, you know, I had done enough research on the war, and I did we should not have gone in all this this sort of the in terms of the big picture politics of the war, you know, it was very clear. I think even about that point, I think, when I finally did end up going was 2,007, but when I first joined the unit, it was 2,004. So, you know, fairly early in the war, but I was I had really delved deep into the research and, you know, we knew it should have gone in a lot of lies. But having gone there, I believe we could have done good for the Iraqi people. And even after I did deploy there, we had Iraqis tell us that, you know, I feel sorry that Americans had to pay in blood for Iraqi freedom. So I'm not, like, necessarily I'm not defending the war by any stretch of the imagination and us going there, but on the ground Nor am I attacking it. Nor am I attacking it. And and by the way, thank you for your service. Appreciate you saying that. I wonder if you were a little nervous you were gonna have to kill somebody. I was, you know, again, I was admittedly naive about my perspective in going to war. I wanted I wasn't as worried about having to kill somebody as I was about having to face the not even my own death, but the reality of death of, like, people around me. And I knew, I mean, I knew that war was not gonna be a comfortable environment, whether it be meant me taking a life or watching people, watching my brothers die. But I felt like I had to experience that crucible to, in many ways, earn my place on this planet. And to this day, there's a part remaining where I haven't suffered enough to earn my place on this planet. And I So that that's interesting, and I'm I'm always gonna interrupt. I'm really sorry about that. All good. All good. I love I love the question. Because I deal with this question a lot of these questions myself. Like like, you always feel like there's some bar you have to hit to, as you put it, earn your place on this planet, but there might be other ways to put it, to be happy, to have well-being, to achieve something that's worthwhile while I don't in the short time we have here. But why did you feel you needed this to like, not because some people go to war because they believe in the war or Mhmm. They're they're whatever. There's many reasons someone goes to war. But I've never heard the phrase I needed to earn my way on this planet, so I wanted to go to war. So what what do you mean by that? So, you know, I was born to a good life. Great parents here in India. I mean, at the time, they weren't extremely wealthy, but we certainly weren't poor. You know? And any any struggle that they might have gone through in my dad rising up the corporate ranks, we moved around a lot, moved from India to Singapore to US. I moved to the US at the age of 13. And and so this is kind of why I had to why I felt this. So I'm kind of giving the backstory that I, like, could not have asked for a better life. Loving parents, no traumatic childhood or anything, put me in the best schools. But soon after moving to the to moving to Austin, Texas, moving to the US, I got very heavily into drugs and alcohol. I got into a group of friends and we I got heavily into it. I was the guy, like, going hard. I actually How old were you? I was about 15, 16 when I first started and very self destructive. Like, I had I still have cuts on my arm from cutting myself, from burning myself. Very self destructive. I mean, many I like, I lost 2 friends to this lifestyle. They OD'd and it could've it was very easily I was heading down that path. And watching And they OD'd how how did they OD? One was on heroin. The other one was a coke. So when you OD on heroin, is it because you take just so much that, your body kinda forgets to breathe because it's it's like a muscle relaxant type of thing? I'm not too not I am not qualified enough to talk about sort of the like, I don't know enough about the science of what happened, like, why sort of that happens. But I I know of people, like, beyond just him. You know, I've heard stories. But he was like him and me, this one guy who OD'd on heroin, him and me were the first two in our group to start going from marijuana and alcohol to harder drugs. And I was the one, like, I would've like, I was like, everything I do, I push the line to it. Like, drugs became my vehicle of expression to test the limits. So I was going as hard as I possibly could. Thankfully, more drugs did not come my way. But as when I got out, he had pushed further and further till he died. And so but I was heading down that path and did so many things that could have easily killed me. I'm sorry. No. Thank you. How did you get out? Watching the movie Black Hawk Down, and this is all leading to why I felt like I needed to earn my place. So watching the movie Black Hawk Down, have you seen the movie, James? Yeah. Yeah. A long time ago, though. So that movie, it's a war movie based on a true story. And there's a particular scene in the movie where 22 soldiers, they volunteer to go on the ground to set up a defensive perimeter to protect 1 of the 2nd Blackhawk that crashed because and knowing they knew that thousands of armed enemy personnel are headed there headed their way, like, into this chopper. They they could see it from the air. They volunteered to go down as 2 men to set up a defensive perimeter knowing that also they had no idea when reinforcements would arrive, and they ended up dying. Mike, Gary Gordon and Randy Sugar, they ended up dying. But the person they died protecting, Michael Durant, is still alive today because of their actions. And those 2 received the medal of honor posthumously for their valor. Watching that triggered something in me that what kind of human being would voluntarily do that for another? And, like, literally overnight, I mean, I after watching the movie, I read the book Black Hawk Down, started devouring book after book about military and life in combat. And that was the trigger that almost overnight got me out of drugs and made me question this very selfish, purposeless, worthless existence I was living at the time. And I wanted to serve in an institution where the good of the group matters more than the individual. In the in marines and the military, it doesn't matter how good you feel. What matters is the men and the mission. And there's something tremendously beautiful about living in a world where you serve something greater than yourself. And so that was the trigger that looking like when I joined the marines, I started to appreciate suffering and I realized that, look, I had been gifted a great life and why? Why? Like, I didn't do s**t to earn that life. You know, there's people born in war zones and refugee camps. They they spend their life in it as as as as being victims of sex trafficking. And there's so much darkness and hell in the world that what did I do to deserve this? And the Marines is when I started to, live for something greater and it had me seek out that, okay, I this is starting to bite by living for something greater. I'm earning my place on this planet. And war was that expression channel to the most extreme. You know, I you're making a lot of sense, and it's funny. Like, I've always been just philosophically against war, and I've even lost friends because of this stance. But every person I've ever met who has served in the military has been just a great person. Like, I've really just liked that person. And you're right. There's this kind of kind of, you know, yin and yang to to serving in the military. Did you why do the marines? Why not, like, seals where you potentially can get into even riskier situations? So Kinda like like that Black Hawk Down situation. So I actually wanted to go army rangers and then Delta Force, which is, like, the best of the best special forces. But at the time when I enlisted, I wasn't a US citizen, so I couldn't go into special operations because you have to be a US citizen to get secret clearance. And so I was told I couldn't go into special operations. So I chose to go the best branch, the toughest branch that was not special operations, which was marines. And then the the original game plan was when I get my citizenship, I will go into marine recon, which is marine force recon, which at the time was like the, like, marine version of navy seals. And, and then go go pursue that and eventually spend career in the marines. That was my original intention. Obviously, those plans changed after coming out of, coming out of Iraq. But that was originally why I went into the marines. I did I did wanna go special ops, and that was long term the plan, which obviously changed, but that was why. Okay. So so now you you I guess you switched units, and what happened? So when so, actually, so what happened was we didn't end up switching. So because twice this so as I'm mentioning, yeah, with my buddy with my buddy, Neil. Right? Like, we we were trying to go twice. It got canceled. But when we used to train together, we we did everything together, but I would maybe, like, beat him by one point on the rifle range or 2 seconds on a run. Right? These friendly competitions. And it was literally, like, just by an inch, you know? And so what happened was one summer, I came here to vacation in India. We had a summer off school, and so came to visit his family here. And that summer, he found a unit to go with. And because he was a good marine, he was promoted to corporal, and he was placed in a seat that was hit with an IED, and he was killed. Oh my god. So when I He was being placed in a seat. But Like, he was a vehicle he was a vehicle commander because he got he was a corporal. So as a result So so so a vehicle like a Jeep or a tank? I'm not I think it was a Humvee that that he was Okay. So Humvee, and the and the Humvee ran over an IED that blew up, and it was powerful enough to blow up the entire Humvee and kill the people in the car. I don't remember if everybody died in the vehicle, but I know he was, I know where he was I mean, he yeah. He died for sure. So these IDs are pretty again, I'm just trying to get understanding. Like, these IDs are pretty, impressive, like, in the sense that they're not just gonna kill, you know, a couple of plants and an animal. They're gonna destroy an entire car and maybe kill the passengers of that car. This is a pretty built car. Varying varying degrees. I mean, when when I was in Iraq, one of our vehicles in our company got hit with an ID, but in that case, nobody died. Everybody survived. So, yeah, varying degrees of intensity. Why don't they build a Humvee with, like, real anti explosive material at the bottom? They did. Later on, they started sending. So when I went to Iraq by 2,007, they did have up armored Humvees, so we had much heavier Humvees, much heavier armor than they were sending earlier because, you know, at the time, they didn't wanna spend money because they didn't think our lives were worth it. So, a lot of the civilians made an immense amount of mistakes in the war from going in in the first place to, like, I mean, a lot of lives, American lives and Iraqi lives were taken because of huge mistakes we made. And one of those was we could have sent up armored Humvees earlier into the war, but we didn't, and people died as a result. Ugh. I'm so sorry to hear that. Well, so so, so you go in. So yeah. So so what happened because of that, you know, like and this is, like yeah. It's all leading to where when I went, like, why I had that mindset when I went because when in my mind, you know, had I had I not taken that vacation to India, had I been there, had I stayed honor to the like, had I stayed in line with the commitment him and me made and and waited for that opportunity, I should have gone there with him. And in my mind, you know, because I beat him by a few seconds, not because I was better or anything as a person, but I'd pick him a few seconds. I should have gotten that promotion, so I should have been in his seat and he could have come back home to his family. Now, admittedly, I know that I could have still gone to war with him and he could have still died, but I felt horribly guilty that I that I was off having fun. I went on a vacation and I didn't go with him. And I still remember actually when I came back from India, you know, I I was I was he was training for Iraq, and I remember he would call me and he would kinda mess with me that I'm not there with him. I was dating this girl at a time, and he's like, oh, you're dating a girl. That's why you didn't volunteer with me. And I and I it wasn't true, but yeah. Exactly. I was soft, but it always pinched me. And I remember once he called me, and I still remember this moment, like, vividly. I was standing next to my girlfriend at the time, and I saw Neil on my phone. And I knew he was gonna give me s**t, so I decided not to answer the phone. And I never got to speak to him again. You know? So this kind of stuff stayed with you. And so when I went to Iraq, I, like, I was pretty much giving away all my stuff. I was like, if it has to be me, I'd rather it be me than somebody else. Like, I didn't wanna be in that position because I felt so guilty about what I did that I had to now, like and, again, not completely naive because you can't control what happens in war. But that was the that was why I went out there with that mentality. And so when that job was assigned to me, I mean, again, I didn't choose it, but I was like, s**t. Let's yeah. Bring it. I'd rather it be me than somebody else. Did they give you a choice? Like, hey, man. This is pretty dangerous. Are are you willing to do it? You deaf you definitely don't have a choice, with anything in the marines. If you're ordered to do it, you you have to do it. If yours if your sergeant says, hey. Hey, buddy. Just, go a 100 yards in front of us, and we wanna see if you blow up before we walk there. And if you said, dude, I don't think so. I'm not going. What would have happened to you? You would probably get an NJP, which is a nonjudicial punishment for refusing to follow orders because somebody had to do that job. Like, you know, that job so, basically, like, the way that job worked is let's say we any danger zone. Let's say a bridge, for example. We get to a bridge. Places where they could hide IEDs on the side or even a place where there's a lot of sand on the side and they could bury IEDs. Somebody would walk out to kind of scan the area before the so the vehicle convoy would stop. 2 marines would walk out as me and one other guy. I would take either the right or the left, and he would take the other side, and we sweep the area. And then when we clear the danger zone, we wave the convoy through. So somebody had to do that job. You know? And, No. That that's a great point. Somebody had to do it. So, again, I have a bunch of things to unpack, and we're not even getting to the the basics of your story yet, but we'll get there. Okay. You know, I understand you'd be willing to die. Like, I think that's that's a mindset of a lot of people who go to war. But were you willing to lose 2 legs and an arm? The idea of that was a lot harder to I mean, obviously, that reality had entered my mind, and I it was a lot harder to put, like, process that if that if that had happened and I would have to stay alive through that, it it was a hard it was a hard reality to face for sure. But, you know, I mean, in the end, of course, I would have done what needed to be done, but that was, that would that would have that was more of a struggle if that were to happen. Like, even the even the prospect of it was a much harder reality to face. Were you tell like, obviously, people that's happened to and they survived, people kind of ultimately return to their baseline of happiness. But at the time, realizing that was a possibility, did you at all say to yourself, look. If that happens, I'm just gonna kill myself. No. Not at all. I I didn't I mean, so even though I went out there with the sort of mentality that, you know, I'd rather it me that be that it'd be me that died than somebody else. I was never at, like, at the time of later on in my life, I was, but I was never at the time of suicidal or anything like that. Like, if that happened, I'm sure I would have found a way just as I did eventually coming out of the, you know, coming out of the war and going through my darkness after that. So I never I never had that thought enter my mind not once for a second. And the other question is is that I'm sure they wouldn't just randomly send out people to get blown up. You must have had a very thorough procedure for checking for IEDs. Is it possible to be thorough about it, or is it kinda random? You know, you you do the we didn't we we didn't have, like, great equipment or anything. The marines are funded by the navy, so we tend to get, like, hand me downs in terms of, funding and equipment. Oh, it was just for the rifle with the scope, really. And you're looking but we did a fantastic job. No. Not just I don't fantastic job. No. Not just I don't take credit for this. Our unit did a fantastic job of finding the IEDs before that could be used to blow us up. Like, only one time only one vehicle in an entire company in our entire 7 months of deploy deployment got hit with an IED. But how do you find an IED? Are they just, like, exposed to the error? Like, if I was making an IED Yeah. I would pack it under some dirt so people couldn't see it. Like, how would you even find an IED? You know, the they they because of, like, this was late much later in the war. So at this point, there was a great evolution in us being able to find it. Like, we had vehicles where we're much better than 2003 that actually had radio detectors. So they could sort of, they could they could block radio signals. So at the time, the IDs, they had to have wires. So it couldn't be someone with the, with the radio sort of, like, hitting, you know, hitting a button from miles away. So one thing you do is you look in the distance. Is there somebody kind of watching us? You know, you look for wires. Those are the kind of things you really keep an eye out for that. Are these are there anything that is there anything unusual? Like, because because some of these these areas, we would go down all the time, almost daily. You know? So is there anything that we didn't see the day before? You know? So you're looking for that. And the big thing is definitely, like, oh, there's somebody in the distance. Like, when when the vehicle that did get hit with an ID, I wasn't in that in that squad on that on that convoy. But what I heard was there was a door on the side of the road that had been there, and it they had buried the ID under that door. And so it got hidden in the v and I guess the v you know, I guess they didn't see that or they perhaps thought it was just like regular garbage that we sometimes see on this in the streets on the deserts, and they got hit. So you it's I mean, you're really but we did a we did a great job of finding a lot of stuff before. Like, I found, fuel canisters rigged with explosives. I found little hand grenades, you know, stuff like that. Because they they the insurgents had a whole sort of setup for how they do an ID. Like, one person would plant it, another person would pick it up and set it, like, actual like, plant the the supplies because they didn't like, they they would have multiple people do it, and the other person wouldn't know the other person because if we do happen to capture one person, he's not able to talk about the others. You know? So they they implemented rules like, systems that could counter our systems, and it's kind of this back and forth. Everybody's trying to figure out what the others doing, and then you keep improving, so on and so forth. But we were able to find a lot more before they could be used, thankfully. What was the, hardest to find ID that you found? What what was the, like, you where you said to yourself earlier, like, phew. Good thing I found that. That was unlike any that I've ever found before. You know, there was one incident. It wasn't so much and it didn't it didn't end up being an IED, but I remember this, like, freaking the s**t out of me. We were walking, and my buddy who was the other person searching, like, we we saw something kinda strange, and and we were, like, leading to kinda going to it. And he kicks it, and we we heard a and I remember being like, holy s**t. Like, jumping back. Like, I was like, dude, don't do that s**t again. What's the matter with you? You know? And I I don't think it was anything. I don't know what the hell it was. Like, I don't fully remember because I think at that moment, my mind was so fear consumed that the the amygdala hijack. You know? But, but I remember, like, the the things we did find was, like, we found a lot of, like, different, like, tubes, like, the mind tubes. We found fuel canisters that have been rigged. That was the one I found, like, when we were sometimes doing patrolling through the desert. Because what they would do is, like, one guy would come and rig this stuff, set it up in the desert. Another guy would come grab it and then plant it to to to to to be used. You know? And then another guy would, like, make it, like, a whole thing. But so we we ended up finding it a lot more before it was actually set up to blow us up. That was like and that was obviously the ideal scenario, which we like, as a unit, we did a pretty good job of. So thankfully, that What about if it was already set up? Like, did you find those? Because then it's, like, buried under the sand. How would you find it? Yeah. I mean, we you know, like like I said, the one unit did missed it on that particular day. We did I'm trying to think if we, like, I can't remember off the top of my head specifically finding in those scenarios. Like, I do think we did find, like, little hand grenades and stuff like that. But usually they're buried under rocks, buried under sand, you know, like and and it's it's a hard thing because, I mean, just the nature of this kind of war, you know, even counterinsurgency war is, like, you never know what's out there and who's out there to kill you. You're in you're in civilian population, so you're walking through streets sometimes, you know, and you don't know if the guy is is just a normal dude living his life, taking care of his family, or that particular person is the one who wants to kill kill you and your you and your buddies, you know. So and and same thing with those bombs. Like, we we thank it's it's like every we did the best we could to approach danger zones, but you never know. I mean, s**t, we could have missed them for sure. You know? And, and got in fact, actually, on that point, I've totally forgot about this. I did find out that our vehicle actually drove over an active IED. Our like, my staff sergeant told me that our vehicle drove over an active IED, and for some reason, it didn't explode. So I don't know I don't know what that means. I mean, when you think about that again, it's very humbling to think about. And also, again, it makes you question, like, why did that happen to me and not to my buddy and not to everybody else that got killed out there? You know, when you hear that, it's very it's very humbling to like, I don't know what that means in the grand scheme of things by any you know? But it it definitely makes you appreciate this gift of life. I mean, I've I've walked on the edge of life and death a few times in my life, that being one of them. And, it it humbles you, and it teaches you to really appreciate this this gift. What's the worst thing you saw in Iraq? Like, on your quest to, earn your place in this world, you wanted to put yourself into this type of intensity. What's the most intense moment or moments you've had there? You know, there were definitely, like, many like, I mean, when the 1st week we were in Iraq, the the insurgents had cut the head off a local Iraqi, threw it on the streets. And as a warning to the, to the locals that if you work with the Americans, this will happen to you. We had a local Iraqi guy get shot right outside our base. There was a rocket that hit, right the the the the the town right outside our base. I'm assuming they were trying to hit us, but they killed the 4 civilians. You know? So there's, like, all these kind of little things happening, but I think one of the most intense that I remember, which ended up being nothing, but it was really intense because it was the last month. So in the 1st few months, like, a bunch of marines are a little crazy. Like, when rounds go off, we're like, where are the rounds? We're not ducking. We're trying to find the fire. Right? Because at that point, we're kind of we're all Marine Corps infantry, so we're, in some sense, chasing, like, the the the the the Russia of war. And, like, I remember one incident. We were this was early in the war. We were told that by the locals, there were a bunch of insurgents in this cave. So we were running into the cave, and it was me and this other guy, like, next to me, and he was junior to me. So he had to listen to me. I was a corporal, so I was like, you have to go behind me. So I wanted to be the 1st person to go into the cave because, again, I'd rather it be me then. Because if you're the 1st entering any scenario, you're much more likely to get shot than the second guy. Right? So we went into the cave and ended up nobody being there, but we were, like, you know, charged and ready. But this particular incident, we were told that we were gonna go to the most dangerous part of the AO, just area of operations. And we were, like, weeks away from going home. And because I had done a re done a really good job studying Arabic and learning counterinsurgency warfare, studying the principles of counterinsurgency warfare, learning Arabic, my we were told in all this in all the all this wisdom, my officer was like, you're gonna go into the town with the local Iraqi army and go door to door. And urban warfare is extremely dangerous for multiple reasons. And I was told I was supposed to go into the town, not even with the marines, but with the local Iraqi army. And the marines were gonna set up in a defensive perimeter on the outskirts. And my sergeant tried to get me out of this role because I'm going I'm now going door, like, house clearing, not even with my marine buddies. Like, house clearing is in and of itself extremely dangerous. Because imagine you're walking into a door and the insurgents knows you're coming with the with the rifle point of the door. He's got the drop on you. Right? Like, he's far more likely. Now I'm told I'm going there with Iraqi army. Not that these not forget about the fact that it's not about, like, not trusting them. They were just not remotely as well trained as we were. And I'm going in there because, like, I've spoken enough. I'd learned enough Arabic. So we were I remember driving out there thinking, like, f**k. I'm gonna get killed 3 weeks before going home, you know? And there was nothing I could do. You're told to do it. So you go. We I was in the back of the 7 ton filled with the Iraqi army guys, and we drove out there and this massive storm hit. And so once again, it's like I mean, I thought I was gonna die weeks. My sergeant was trying to get me out of this role, but he he could only do so much because I was assigned to it. And, I What are the what are the odds that someone assigned to that role is going to die? Like, to me, house clearing in the most dangerous part of the AO, like, a or AO's area of operations with without house clearing again is dangerous enough itself. And now I'm going into the I'm going into the town with Iraqi army, not with marines. In my mind, I was like, this is absurd. Why? This is, I should not be doing this. This is absolutely insane. And, Why they need an American to do it? So you're kind of on the ground and front and center with them. You know? I see. Yeah. And I built their morale a little. I was and I had I had learned a lot of Arabic. Like, I got pretty close to, like, fluent. There was another incident in Iraq where we were in the back of the 7 ton, and all these Iraqis started swarming the 7 ton. So the rest of the Marines started getting kind of on edge because that's a situation that could easily gone bad in multiple ways. And so they started kind of getting the rifle at the ready. And I was like, hold on. Hold on. Let's, like, let's calm this down. Like, nobody nobody wanted to kill an innocent human being, of course. Right? Like, that's not nobody goes out there saying we wanna do that. So we do the best we can to minimize that for sure. And so I was like, I was like, hold on. Let's not get crazy here. Let's sort this out. And I managed to climb back to the 7 ton, get into the crowd. And I I knew enough Arabic to, like, you know, to deflate the situation, to address the and it managed to sort of address it and it all ended up being calm. But these are little situations that thankfully were calm, but could have easily and there's a bunch more stories that I could go on to, but that could have gotten a lot worse and thankfully didn't. So I had made a conscious effort throughout, like, training for Iraq to study Arabic because I knew that that would make a difference in the war, and it it did. So so there's an important lesson there too, which is, like, a lot of people, whether it's going to war and joining the army or just starting a corporate job, a lot of people think that it's 10% them and 90%, their boss telling them what to do and training them and so on. But, really, to succeed as whether it's a soldier or an employee or an athlete, you have to go above and beyond beyond call. What the coach, sergeant, boss, whatever tells you. You have to you have to be there an hour early. Absolutely. Stay there an hour late. You have to study Arabic. You have to read books. Like, you can't just depend on the corporal above you Yeah. To tell you what to do because he doesn't know what to do. Yeah. And you're gonna be better than them ultimately if you really put in that act just just a half hour a day extra compounds. So I just wanted to throw that lesson out there. But but this is really why I say this is all the beginning of your story is because this hasn't even gotten to the you got PTSD coming out of the war, and that's where your journey begins. Mhmm. Yeah. The so when I came back, I came back to my senior year in college. So coming back to a college environment with after serving in war was hard to say the least. Like and I'm not like back then, I didn't have the level of awareness I do now, so we all make the best decisions with our level of awareness. You can't blame a college student for not having your perspective. But back then, I didn't have the not, you know, didn't think about it that way. So I struggled with college students whining about the stupidest s**t, you know? And I just came from war. Forget about my adversity. The people in Iraq had suffered through years of oppression under this horrible regime. Like, I met a guy in Iraq who spent 8 years as a prisoner of war in Iran, like, because of the Iran Iraq war. I mean, I can't even imagine the hell that human being suffered. You know? So you come back to college. You're like, this was brutal. I mean, I was volunteer at this point, I'm volunteering to go back to Iraq. Like I said, I was trying to go send me to Iraq. Send me to Afghanistan. I just wanna go back to war. I had found a straight cut of coffee. So much. You hated coffee so much. You would've you would've preferred getting shot at than hearing some whiny student complain about their homework assignment. Like, what was something that, like, somebody whined about and you're thinking in your head, oh my god. What the hell does this person say? Great story about this was I had a professor because I was a history major. He, and I the class was a a history of revolutionary, like, gorilla it was a guerrilla warfare cla*s. And my professor, he had actually been a guerrilla war like, a guerrilla warrior in somewhere in South America. I can't remember where, but his name is doctor Castro. And he had been shot and he had been his his nose had been broken by somebody hitting him with the butt of a rifle. So this dude was hard. He was a hard, hard professor. And I remember one day in class, he we come he comes back after grading papers and he tells the whole class, he was like, this was pathetic. You guys didn't put in any effort. Like, he was just berating the cla*s. And I'm smiling. Like, I was like, I love this dude. And we come out of class and all the students are like, that was so inappropriate. He should not have talked to us. Like like, they were complaining about how rude he was quote unquote and how how, like, uncool it was. And I was just smiling. I was like, doc and doctor Castro may became friends because we were, like, immediately, like, dude, you're my man. You know? So that was just one example at the top of my head. By the way, so this is, like, if in 2010 or 2009, something like that? I got back from, like, 2008 when I got back. So so I went to college in in, like, 1986 through 1989, and I don't know if kids have changed. I obviously, kids have changed a little bit, but I can't even imagine kids leaving a classroom back then and saying, boy, the professor was so inappropriate for telling us we were awful. Like, that never woulda happened because because we just didn't talk back to authority. Like, we we had signed up for college or whatever. We nobody had talked back to an authority figure. Like like like, we had any power. Like, it it there's an assumption there Yeah. Of entitlement. Like, you're entitled not to be yelled at. Yeah. Yeah. And that assumption just doesn't work. So I I think Yeah. Things have changed among young people, and I I don't know. That's a different discussion. But but okay. So you're you're back, and and college is is what you just said. And and what's going on? So, you know, I'm I'm drinking in college, weekends. Never necessarily saw it as a real problem, but it clearly was. Like, I would often end up crying myself to sleep when I was drinking after a party or something because I struggled with being back. I I, like, I I didn't get shot in the war. I didn't lose any limbs. And so I really struggle with that when I immediately when I came back that I in my mind, again, I hadn't suffered enough. I didn't really experience war at the level that I wanted to experience war, you know. And so I felt like I hadn't suffered enough, so I kept volunteering to go back. But at this point, 2008, the wars were kind of ending. So after I finished undergrad, I because the wars were kind of ending, I and I had I had 1 year left in my contract at least. So I couldn't one of my plans was to go be like a mountain bum in the Himalayas so I could suffer in a different context and experience the edge of life and death. But I still had a year left in my contract, so I couldn't. So I decided to go to journalism school to get my master's in order to go back to war as a combat journalist. This way I get to go go back to war, but without the sort of following orders that you have to and the lack of freedom in the marines. So I went to do my master's in journalism with the intention that once I finish, I will become a combat journalist. And I get to go back to war and experience the rawness and intensity of that experience. But at the time, I then I met my wife at the time, and that plan changed because, you know, combat journalism not exactly conducive to a family life, to say the least. Yeah. So I met my wife at the time, and that plan changed. So then I came out, and I had no clue at this point what I wanted to do. At this point, I I decided to get out of the marines after my, you know, contract was over because, again, wars were ending. So to me, there was no point being in anymore. What what did you do for that 1 year of your contract? I was in the reserves. So I was doing, like, weekend training and, like, weeks during the summer while I was finishing up my masters. So so so so I have a question, which is you thinking that you hadn't achieved the suffering that you wanted to, that's a little screwed up. Right? Like, that's It is. I mean, I know It's not happy at all. Right. So so what do you think what do you think you were trying to do? You're trying to kill yourself, basically, but, like, what do you think was the the source of that? Was it the was it guilt? Was it guilt of living a nice childhood? Like, what what It was guilt deeper? It was guilt of seeing others who had, like I mean, my buddy who died, others who had lost limbs, others who got shot. You know? Like, I didn't do s**t in the war. I was no heat. Like, I didn't do s**t. Why did I why did I get to come out? Out IEDs, though. So In my mind, I didn't see people could live. In my mind, I didn't see that as anything. And and even and honestly, that very story, kind of funny story about that is that I've never used to talk about it because I never thought about it as something. Somebody else when when I was, like, doing media tours for the book, somebody else pointed it out to me because they asked me what I did in Iraq. So I was sharing the story. They were like, that's like, you were a human bomb detector. And he said that, and I was like, I never thought of it as something special. I literally did not. Like, in my mind, it was like that. I just did my job. And and I didn't I didn't do anything worthy to be, I mean, I was a no I just did what I had to do. And so in my mind, I just hadn't, like, like, there were people who did. I have a friend of mine who ran into a burning Humvee to save a fellow marine, and that marine died. You know? And I talk about it in the first chapter of fear of honor, and and it was like, I didn't I didn't experience s**t out there. So I hadn't I hadn't, like, really gone through enough darkness to in my mind, I'm not saying this is healthy. But in my mind, I hadn't gone enough into enough pain and into enough suffering, into enough darkness to feel like I have earned anything. And, I had to go deeper in order to earn it. And so at the time, I was doing the things that I now do, but in a very different level of consciousness. So, like, in 2012, I so when I came out of master's program, I had a corporate job for a year and a half. I f**king hated it. I mean, I knew that's the day I signed on to the job. I actually signed on to skate ski 1 month across Greenland. And so I knew exactly what you what day I would quit the job, but I had to, like, I was just gotten married. So it was kind of, like, you know, had to be sort of put food on the table kinda thing and be a responsible adult, not go off to wars and stuff like that. So I and it's What what was the corporate job? It was a a sales and marketing gig with a company called Volt. And I signed in New York in New York. Yeah. Volt Consulting Group. In New York. So I was actually living in Jersey. So I signed up to ski across Greenland, but the thing and why I brought that up is when I was skiing across Greenland, I was running away from my demons. Like, I wanted to go back to an environment because Greenland was brutal. You're 1 month dragging a 99 a £190 sled for 350 miles and minus 40 degrees, brutal storm, storms that actually have killed explorers on the very same ice cap. And I wanted to go back to an environment where you are facing life and death. And I was doing that because I was missing the intensity of that experience. I was running away from my demons. I was doing everything I could to avoid confronting them. And You know, Greenland, is the country with the highest rate of alcoholism of any Greenland's actually technically not a country, but let's say it is. Greenland's the has the highest rate of alcoholism of any country, I guess, because conditions are so intense, and it's basically a lonely country. There's very few people there. Lonely winter. And we saw we saw that in some of the towns that we visited after the crossing where people in the middle of the day would be walking with brown bags drinking. Yeah. It's pretty wild. That's like my house right now. But, okay. So so, you go skiing across Greenland just to, again, try to tap into that intensity. But why were you crying yourself to sleep in college? Like, what were you thinking about that would start the tears? When I would drink, it was it would bring up a lot. I mean, I don't remember too much because, obviously, it was drunk, but I remember one evening after coming back from a party, crying, calling my buddy, and just missing war, missing this, like, feeling guilt, feeling, unfulfilled with my experience out there, feeling like I needed to go back. And I couldn't like, normal world, I couldn't handle it. I struggled with life in the normal world. It was So so you were you were feeling unfulfilled from your time in Iraq, but but you were also extremely unfulfilled in college and at the corporate job. Yeah. Let me let me ask you this. This is, maybe even more personal question, which is, you know, you obviously met the woman you fell in love with and married your, you know, your wife. But at the time, you didn't really love yourself. So was it maybe this almost sounds like a cliche. Like, in order to love someone else, you have to love yourself. But did you have problems in the early parts of your marriage because you didn't truly find satisfaction for yourself, but here you are trying to be satisfied with someone else? Great question. You know? We didn't have too many, like, emotional problems. Like, there was a deep love there for sure. Just for the record, like, I'm no longer now married, multiple reasons. You know, but but when I did get married, like, we was a deep love. Like, we but in many ways, I was numb. I was numb to emotions. Like, I still remember when we were I was in with master's program and, we had I was dating this this woman at the time, and that TV show, the Pacific, had just come out on HBO. It's the TV show about, the about the marines in the Pacific in World War 2. And I knew it would destroy me every time watching it, but because it was the marines in World War 2 and my unit had served in Iwo Jima, I felt compelled to watch it. And every time I watch it, I would break down crying. And I was very numb, but only thing that would draw out the intensity of emotion was these these these kind of things. And so but we didn't like, she in many ways brought out, like, an intensity of love. So we had a deep passionate thing going there. Like, it was a beautiful thing. But but as we as I came back from Greenland, like, we definitely struggle. Like, one of the things that eventually had me go go to the VA hospital was, to be again very frank was I was struggling physically, and it wasn't like a physical issue. Like, I don't it wasn't a physical issue, like, struggling sexually, but it wasn't a physical issue. It was a psychological one. You know? So she was, like, like, pushing me, like, let's go get checked out. Let's go figure out what's going on. And, and that's what I like, post Greenland was when things started to get bad because at this point, you know, like, we've married a year and a half, had gone to Greenland. I mean, sorry. We had just gotten married, but I have corporate job and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, things were like, I started building a business after after Greenland, coming back, building a business ironically in life coaching, because I was by no means at a good place yet. But, you know, it was starting to grow. Things were getting better. And, in some ways, like, business is growing. But, like, what was happening was I would drink on a Saturday. Saturday would become Friday Saturday, then become Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And I was like so I was like, what happened was when I when the corporate job ended, when Greenland ended, now without any external structure to provide clarity and focus to my consciousness, As you know, as an entrepreneur, you could sit down on your couch watching movies all day. Like, you have to create structure for yourself. So without external structure imposed upon me, the demons kind of slowly started to rise. And so the drinking started to get worse and worse and worse, but I always did a really good job hiding it. Like, I would I was always a late night worker and stuff, so I would, like, like, I would hide liquor bottles of liquor in the claw in the under the closet, and my wife would go to bed and then get a can of hammered. You know? So we were, like, great. How many drinks would would you have? Like, I mean, I got to a point when I was at the depths. I was at a at first, it started with a half pint then a pint. But when I was in the depths, I'm talking like and this at this point, you know, like, my wife, let's say, I've been traveling to India. I wouldn't do this much when she was in town, but 750 milliliter bottles of vodka a day. I mean, a full bottle. And I would drink till I pass out, wake up, and drink again. I mean, it was dark. Like, I remember I remember moments throwing up on the toilet, and your body's just rejecting this poison. And then right after that's done, I would pick up a bottle and take more swigs. You know? And so things things were getting, like, I was clearly hitting a darker space going worse and worse and worse until one day. This was after, like, 5 days of binge drinking that I woke up, and I just thought this pattern of, like because what would happen is I'd go through this pattern, and then I'd sober up for, let's say, weeks or even months sometimes. You know? And then something would trigger me and I'd go right back into the pit. And eventually when this happened one morning, I thought this pattern would never end, and I was seconds away from picking up a knife and slitting my wrist. That was, like, rock bottom. And I still remember coming up to the coming walking back up that morning. It was, like, early morning sun had just risen. And looking at my wife and just feeling this shame and this guilt, like, just the biggest piece of s**t in the world. And and that was a trigger, like, hitting pure rock bottom was the trigger to start changing things. I mean, it wasn't it was by no means was there an moment, then everything was smooth after that. Like, it was a brutal climb out, you know, like, climb out of that abyss. I I drank again after that. You know? I I slipped again after that, but that was the I would say looking back at my life, that was the trigger that then led to fear of honor and everything I now do, hitting that, like, absolute rock. And I had lost friends to suicide after the war too. You know? Like, I had one friend when we came back from the war. So this always stayed with me too. This, again, this this guilt recurring theme of guilt. Like, he I remember, like, we we came back maybe a month in the war, and he said to me, corporal Natovatti, can you take me out rock climbing? You know, I was I was big in outdoor sports at this time. They were my they they they provided whatever measure of peace I found in that in that in that moment. You know? Now, again, I do them, but in a much healthier way. But he asked me, can you take me rock climbing? And I was like, yeah. Sure, man. Of course. Great kid. Beautiful kid smiling all the time. And, like, 2 weeks later, you know, I didn't get didn't get around to taking him, whatever, busy with life. And 2 weeks later, he shot himself in the head. And once again, it's like, I'm not Do you think maybe he asked you to do rock climbing with him because he wanted to talk to you about what he was going through? And that's what you always wonder. Right? Like, it's like, f**k. Like, I wish I had gone with him. I and I don't know what that would have saved his life. I can't obviously say that looking back. But it's like all this stuff was living with me that it's like, you know, I don't I didn't I I, again, I struggle with this world. And when I didn't have, like, green all these expeditions were expensive. So when I came back from Greenland, I spent, like, most of my savings from the corporate job that I couldn't afford to go back into the retreat into the into these extremes of life and death scenarios. So in a way, that was a beautiful thing. Like, the money that I was making from the business was just pay paying for my life, you know, with with my wife at the time. But What what was your business that you'd started? So it was life coaching. So I was getting trained as a life coach while I had the corporate job. I went through a life coach training program because, see, I didn't know what I wanted to do, but that appealed to me because I'd gotten kind of into personal development when I joined the marines through outdoor sports, like joining the marines. Because again, before joining the marines, I had a good life. Right? Joining the marines is when I started to find the beauty and suffering. Like I I loved the training. Not only did I love it, but I thrive. I graduated in infantry school as the honor graduate of my platoon. So coming out of the marines is when I got an outdoor sports. I started looking for every way I could to confront my fears from skydiving, rock climbing, cave diving, caving. I mean, you name the outdoor sport. I was pursuing it. And it's not that I was like, I was terrified of heights, terrified of tight spaces, terrified of everything. So I wanted to confront those fears. So So all of those things then going to Iraq had sort of built up, an an interest that got sparked. And now it's taken a different level, obviously, but at the time, it got sparked into, like, personal growth and mastery. You know, how like, continuing pursuing, how do I improve myself? And so that's what kinda led me to life coaching, but it's not I had no clue what I really wanted to do. It wasn't like this is who I wanna be. You know? I just was like, I guess I'll do this. So because I knew I didn't wanna have corporate job, and I knew I needed to make some money. So I was like, this kinda will work. So as and ironically, as I was, like, going deeper and deeper in the darkness, my business was doing well. But, eventually, I got to a point when the drinking went from, like, 2 days to 5 days that obviously my business started collapsing. You know? And and then I hit rock bottom, and then again, I grew. But that was what I was doing initially before getting to that absolute rock bottom when things started to change. Yeah. So, you know, and I I never believe like, you were just kind of implying, I never really believe that there's, like, one moment that, oh, all of a sudden Exactly. Everything's gonna go up from here even if it's a struggle. It's like a it is a process, and you never really know. It's not like you say, oh, I'm so glad this is happening right now. This is rock bottom. Because rock bottom could get a lot worse. Exactly. And, so so so how did you start to, like, almost formalize these ideas of pushing yourself to the edge as a kind of real self help thing instead of an escape thing, which sounds like what what you were doing before. Absolutely. I was doing it before as a pure escape. And so when I hit that, you know, like you said like I said, it wasn't a smooth like, it was in a smooth journey after that. It was a rocky, brutal climb out the abyss, but that's when I think started to change. Like, I started devouring book after book on on sort of neuroscience, psychology, spirituality to learn a little bit about what was going on. I needed to figure out how to heal myself because I was seeing a VA therapist and look great people, beautiful human beings. They really wanted to help and make a difference. But as I started to learn is that they were just operating from a very bad playbook and their methodologies were deeply flawed. So in that process, like, as an example, so I was diagnosed with PTSD. Right? They told me that that because I was I was very jumpy with loud noises. I struggled with crowds. I struggled with survivor's guilt. And all these things people said were symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder. But as I started to delve into the neuroscience of all these things, like I realized like, look, this is not a disorder. Like being jumping with loud noises is a very normal human response to war. Like my brain learned to say this thing could kill you for 7 months. Inevitably, your brain gets like amygdala. Your brain learns to say loud noise equals dead. So you better be alert for loud noises. It's not an it's not a disorder. It's a very normal human response as is survivor's guilt. Everybody told me like and again, they were doing it with love, but the therapist, people that cared about me don't feel guilty. It's not your fault. And rationally, I get it. You can go to war. Things can happen. But emotionally, it didn't change the fact that the guilt was there. And so when I started to learn all these things, I was like, look, it's not a disorder. Post traumatic stress is not post traumatic stress disorder. There are 2 very different things. Yes. I had post traumatic stress, but that doesn't mean I had post traumatic stress disorder. It does not mean it's indicative of the disorder. But by attaching the word disorder to it, it becomes our self identity. Then we start to think something's wrong with us and it fuels this downward spiral. So every time I go through a moment of crisis of pain, of suffering, of guilt, of feeling jumpy with loud noises of this of, like, disliking crowds, I struggle with coming to New York City. I would come to New York City for the for the coach training program and sometimes for work. And I would struggle because New York City is crowded. Right? And all these things where people were saying it's a disorder. And I was I started to learn, look, it's not a disorder. It's a normal human response. And by removing that I that that label of disorder, I remove my self identity from it. I was starting to acknowledge that, look, my brain is separate from me. These things are happening beyond my control. And guilt is not a problem. Guilt is an expression of love. Like the fact that I was guilty was a reflection of my love for my brother in arms, you know? So I started to learn all these things that look and ultimately recognizing that there are no bad or good emotions. We label so many emotions like fear, stress, anxiety, you know, we guilt, anger. We label them as quote unquote bad emotions. And so when we do that, we judge that emotion. We think of them as something wrong. And I was saying, look, guilt is not a bad emotion. It's just an emotion. And every emotion, there's no bad or good emotions. There are only emotions and it's up to us to decide what we do with them. So what I did for a long time, I recently have changed this, but what for a long time, I had a picture of Neil up on my wall. It was Neil and me from the rink or ball, and it said, this should have been you. Earn this life. That's an intense thing to look at every morning, but my guilt became my ally. So I started to turn my demons into an access point to my divinity. I started to recognize that post traumatic stress is not post traumatic stress disorder. And by removing that label, I was able to dissociate disassociate from my thoughts, from my feelings, and recognize I am not my thoughts. I am not my feelings. Like, if there's one thing, you know, to take away from everything is that we are not our thoughts. We are not our feelings. We are not our experiences. We are the thinker. So let me ask you about that with with the guilt. Like like, I you know, everybody I think, but I'm thinking about myself now. Everybody feels guilty over something. Yeah. What you're basically saying is kind of lean into that and make it work for you. Like, when I think about my guilt, I just feel bad about, let's say, something I did as a kid or something Mhmm. Some way I treated somebody. How do I lean into that to make it work for me? Sure. Yeah. It's a great question. So, you know, when there's a guilt, there's often, like, a should behind it. Right? Like, I should have done this instead of that. You know? So you feel some guilt around what you did. And, like, I would say to use it is to look at what that should is, and then how can let's say you screwed up something. So in my case, I should have died instead of him. I am now no longer dead. I I'm alive. Let me earn this life. Let me use this life in service of something greater than me. And my guilt became an ally. Now like anything, it can go too far. And I got to a point in my life, which we can talk about, you know, that I recognized it had gone too far. But because every emotion is again, not bad or good, but everything can be taken to a point of extremes, pleasure, pain, everything can be taken to a point of extremes and you balance it out by exploring a do the duality. Like there's another the urge with the duality. But before I go deep into dualities, to answer your question about the guilt is to look at what it is that you're guilty of, that you feel guilt around and then look at how can I how can I use that now to to address that problem? Like, again, in my case, I should have died. So now let me earn this life, you know? So whatever I I should have done, trying to think of an example, I should have taken care of this person. Okay. And I didn't. I can't change the past, but now I can take care of people in the future. Right? Or maybe this person felt I felt guilty. I didn't spend enough time with my mom and she passed away. I'm just throwing that example out. Now I I can't change that, but I can use that guilt to say, you know what? Now let me take care of the elderly. Let me let me volunteer. Let me serve people. Let me start a nonprofit. Right? Let me use this life in service as something greater. And that's and your guilt look. Like like today, I have moments where the guilt shows up. It doesn't live with me to the extent I no longer have that poster where it said this should have been you earned this life. I had changed it to honor his death, earned this life because I got to a point in my life where I recognized that I had taken the guilt too far. It worked until it didn't. Right? Like, everything, it works until it doesn't. Like, what got you here won't get you there. So you get to a point in life where you have to recognize I need to do something differently in order for the next stage of my evolution. What got you here won't get you there. I love that quote. The reality is you have to look around every moment essentially and say, what's gonna work for me right now? Because you're right. Maybe you can't live only with guilt powering your engine. You have to move on at some point. So now this is where you start diving into one intense experience after another. Like, you're you're what what happened? What did you do? So as I started researching all this stuff, you know, like the neuroscience of it, started kinda getting it and healing myself. I've recognized that and the and this is what led to fear of Anna and why I pursue the things I do is that the fundamental problem in the human condition, I believe this is the greatest problem in the human condition, is our negative relationship to suffering. We frame fear, stress, anxiety, pain, suffering, adversity, struggle. Anytime somebody hear these words, nobody thinks of these as positive words. We always think of them as something negative. And that is the fundamental problem because if you ultimately look at it, like, why are we here? What are we seeking out of life? We're seeking you can call it happiness, fulfillment, inner peace, whatever term you wanna use. Right? Semantics aside. That's what we're seeking. And if you learn to fall in love with suffering or my mantra is if you suffer well, inevitably, you experience more happiness. You experience more peace because you can you can smile not only in the easy moments, which are easy to do. When life is going great, it's easy to smile, but you can smile through the suffering. So what I started to learn when I was learning all this is that that's the greatest problem in the human condition. That's what we need to combat is the demonization of suffering. And that's hence hence the idea of fear of honor. That fear is an access point of bliss, not the antithesis of it. It's true bliss that we find. And so why I started seeking these edges is to go deeper into fear, to go deeper into suffering because you can only truly know the light when you have been in the dark. It's what it's contrast that creates beauty. Contrast that creates beauty in the human experience because you know this. The human animal adapts. If we see the same like, if we walk the same streets every day, and, like, the first time we walk through the street, it might be grand and novel. Novelty fades. It adapts. So it's the same thing with life. So why I seek out the edges? And it's not like suffering is fun. I'm not somebody who like, when when I'm in the depths of pain running a 24 hour run or running, you know, 50 miles around a cul de sac or skiing across an ice cap or climbing mountains, the suffering sucks. You're in absolute hell. But the beauty in that experience, the absolute the the profound value in that experiences is multiple fold. 1, it makes you appreciate everything else. Like, you can't truly know pleasure unless you know pain. Happiness can only exist because there is sadness. Right? Like, you need light you need darkness for there to be light. And so going into the edge of one extreme gives you value for the other. And the other reason that I tap into suffering at this extreme is because it teaches you so much about yourself. It shows you how to transcend. To me, suffering is a training ground for self transcendence. And if life if there's one thing that life is about, it's about self transcendence to me. Where you transcend the self, not just for others, but even for your own greater higher self. And suffering you teaches you how to transcend. When you go into those spaces, like, when you go into the depths of darkness, like, the greater like, my one of my things I love to say is the greater your demons, the greater the divinity required to rise above them. But you have to go into those spaces to know your demons. It's so interesting because, obviously, this overlaps with a lot of religious thought, you know, ranging from Christianity, only the meek will inherit the earth. And Buddhism, of course, the first noble truth of Buddhism is all life is suffering. And even are are you're from India. Are you Hindu? I mean, I wouldn't say I'm, Yeah. I mean, I was raised there, but I'm, my mom kind of is. Yeah. So, look, in the Bhagavad Gita, the the the central point of the Bhagavad Gita is Arjuna saying to his charioteer, Krishna, not realizing Krishna is a god that I can't do this. I can't go to war and kill my cousins. And Krishna turns into Vishnu and explains the nature of suffering and how it's our dharma. It's our right path. But it's it does overlap with you know, and stoicism talks about, you know, how, you know, basically, you you you harden. Or this is actually in every religion and culture, there's something there's always something about you harden the edge of the sword, basically Yeah. To create the sword. Yeah. And and it seems like through experience is how you come to this realization. Now everyone's suffering is different. Buddha didn't go to war, but, obviously, he was dealing with a lot of war issues around him and and, and and health is you know, everybody deals with something. And I think that's the main truth is that life is suffering. But you're saying you know, you're you're kind of overlapping with that by saying, okay. Look. Yes. Life is suffering. And here's how even you can maybe not wait for the suffering, but kind of, further your advancement by essentially, leaning into the suffering. Yeah. Seeking it out. Because look. If you don't seek out a worthy suffering, suffering is gonna find you anyway. You're gonna suffer in life. Like you said, everybody suffers. So you get to decide. The question you always ask is not which passion do you wanna follow, but which struggle are you willing to endure. Because you're gonna suffer one way or the other. Any crossroads in life, any crossroads. I could work this job I hate or start a business. I could go to college or not go to college. I could be in this relationship or be single. Every crossroads, one way or the other, whatever path you choose, there will be struggle. There will be suffering. So the question is asked is which struggle are you willing to endure? You might as well seek it, seek out a worthy struggle. It doesn't have to be running ultras or skiing across ice caps or climbing mountains. It could be building a business. It could be playing chess. It could be playing the guitar. It could be raising a child. Like, whatever the path is, anything worthwhile, you're going to struggle. So the so the whole essence of what I wanna do is seek out a worthy struggle, a struggle worthy of who you are and who you wanna be. Like, that's your path because when you find, live, and love that worthy struggle, it's in that journey that there is bliss. Like, you're going to suffer, but when you embrace it and when you not just embrace it, embracing it is kind of step 1. Step 2 is seeking it. Like, seeking it, your version of it. It doesn't have to be right now. Important what you said. Like like, a worthy struggle, I think, is an important phrase because, obviously, I could find suffering by going out right now and having sex with a bunch of crack w***es and taking all sorts of drugs, and then my wife finding out about it and getting a divorce and disappointing my kid. That would be suffering too, but, that's not a worthy suffering. Like Is there a virtue to that pain? Yeah. I mean, like, as an example, I used to cut myself when I was a kid. I was saying, you know, I'd burn myself, cut myself, do these horribly destructive things that were painful, but there was no virtue to that pain. You know? It wasn't there was no it was not a worthy suffering. So now I do things that go through horrible pain. I was just in climbing Denali, like, a few weeks ago, you know, in brutal storms on the mountain, came back to Phoenix and got heat exhaustion on a run out there, you know, so you suffer. But they're worthy sufferings. They're access points to enlightenment, you know, like like, I think a really profound example of this actually is I so I I I spent 7 days in the darkness retreat about a year and a half ago. 7 days in pitch darkness, silence, and isolation. 247, you can't see your hand in front of you, darkness. And when I came out of the darkness, this was one of the most profound example experiences of my life. You I remember opening, like, open my eyes. You see, it came out of the darkness, and I was in tears moved by the profundity of what the world looked like when I saw the world through those eyes. And I remember these 2 thoughts going through my mind. 1 was, I wish I could look at the world every day through these eyes. And 2, and perhaps the more more profound and powerful one was, in a very visceral way, I came to recognize that you cannot really see the light this way unless you have been in the dark. You know, like the way the world looked after 7 days in pitch darkness, it was awe inspiring. And I have to go through dark to appreciate the light, and that's, of course, figurative for life as well. Now this is a a a stupid question, but how did you eat during those 20 those 7 days? So so they have these places like the darkness retreat where 3 times a day, you in this particular one in Germany that I did, you could choose either water, smoothies, or food. I chose smoothies. So 3 times a day, they bring a smoothie, and they put it in the hallway outside your room. And the hallway is pitch dark too, and they ring a little bell. I mean, it was literally like Pavlov's dogs. The bell was, like, suddenly salivating salivating, and it's the only novelty novelty that you experience in that moment. Right? So the the they ring a bell, and then you kind of go out. You grab your smoothie. You drink it. Put it back in there. So 3 times a day, they would bring the smoothie to you. So so there was no talking. It's all dark. And would you were you meditating during the 7 days? Or You actually go you experience these sort of DMT induced, psychedelic hallucinations. So a lot of time, there's obviously nothing to do. Right? One of the draws to it have you heard of, like, the Vipassana silent retreats? Yeah. Yeah. I was about to ask you if this was a Vipassana. It was It sounds like a very important Exactly. So, originally, what what drew me to it is is I mentioned earlier, you know, that when I went through with my divorce, I broke my sobriety, and I struggle with that. And when I when I broke my sobriety, I like I like everything, I do it hard. So we're talking like downing bottles for days on end. And so I realized, look, something's missing deeper within. And everything I was doing, there was still a great fear of stillness. So I wanted to confront that fear. So I started doing some research on Vipassana's. I didn't know darkness retreat was a thing. But when I stumbled into the concept of a darkness retreat, and that was far more appealing to me because in a Vipassana, you're silent, but you're still seeing the world. In darkness, like and so when your when your eyes are open, when you see in the world, your mind has somewhere external to go. You can look and say that's a wall, that's a door. Your consciousness has somewhere external to go and have conversation with the self about, right? But these external forces. In darkness, you have nowhere external to go. And that's a deeply profound, intense, terrifying, but beautiful journey. So that's, so I'm doing a lot of time meditating, going within. I was actually journaling in the dark too. I was I was writing in my journal and stuff that came through was profound. But, you know, these DMT induced, hallucinations were incredible. Like, I remember 5 days into the darkness, I saw literally the brightest white light I've ever seen in my life. Blindingly bright. I was covering my eyes like this. I was touching my eyelids because I couldn't tell if they were open or closed. And I was like, I I thought I was kinda covering my eyes, but I'm in a pitch dark room. And that was one of many other examples. I had another day where I was lying on my bed and it my arm felt like it was locked out like this, like in a claw shape. And I was seeing these red and green lights that looked like the universe just moving through. And I could have been I mean, I had no sense of time. Right? So it could have been hours that I was in there and just, again, tearing up in this depth of intensity. And I remember every time the lights fade, I would go, please, God, help me go deeper. And they would come back. And then I would I it felt like my arms were locked and I was lying there. And it felt like I was moving left and right. Turns out, I didn't know this at the time, but my the lady who runs the dark street, I was explain like, telling her about my experiences. She told me what I experienced was the start of an astral projection, which was not intentional. And I don't I still don't know. Like, I don't know the truth of all that thing, but apparently, that's what she said I experienced. But I just know that the profundity of some of these meditations when you're sitting there, you're seeing these lights and you're finding I mean, even coming out of the darkness retreat, when I would reread my own journal, I was moved to tears being like, this is like my book fear of awe and I felt like I wrote. The darkness journal, it was like something coming through me and rereading it. I was like, woah. I mean, it was stuff that I got a lot from it about. And it you know, a lot of what I've been talking about, the darkness helped address this this confronting, this, this guilt of, of my life that, you know, I remember like right before going into the darkness, I did 167 mile run across Liberia to help build a school out there. 1st day of the run I was running through and this kid started running this to me. These 2 kids, Emmanuel and Blessing. And one kid wanted to go to med school. The other wanted to go to vocational school. And they lived in this tiny village in Liberia. Like the odds of that actually happening were damn near 0. And I remember running the rest of this run. It was about a marathon a day for a week. So I was, you know, I had a lot of time to run and think. And I was like, why do they they they were born with what was the difference between me and that kid? I was born to a good family in India and automatically by being born there, I am blessed with a 1000000 opportunities that that kid does not get. And why does that, like, happen? You know? And I constantly felt this aching guilt about being happy because I, why do I like right now, James, while you and me are having this conversation, there are people being killed. There are people who are slaves of sex trafficking. There are people in refugee camps. There's so much darkness and pain on earth. And I was always struggled that like, why do I get to be happy when this happens? And in the darkness, I processed a lot of that stuff and just really sort it to sort of surrender that look. I don't have all the answers to the question. I'm one small being in the grand cosmos. I don't know why I get to be born here. I don't know why that kid was born there. But by the more I like happiness now to me is service fuel. Like, if I'm joyful, it allows me to do the work better. And so it's on me to experience that. It's on me to use that because the more I delve deeper and deeper and deeper into guilt, and that's what eventually had me break my sobriety. It was I was I was driving myself to too much darkness. Like I said, the guilt worked until it didn't. That's why I changed that poster from saying this should have been you to earn this life, to honor his death, earn this life because I was going too far into the darkness, and I had to balance that with some light. You know? It's it's a I know I'm all over, but kind of looking at this at a I like this concept of honor this. Yeah. Honor these experiences. Honor honor honor the people. Like, this guy, Harold Kushner, who wrote this book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, he put it beautifully. He said, the dead depend on us for their redemption and their immortality. And I love that quote. It's about, like, we've I've lost, like, a lot of people on my journey, and I've come close to death. And now it's, like, honor their lives in in in how you live and who you choose to be every single day. So so when you start making making this switch, you're still kind of indulging not indulging, but you're still seeking out these extreme experiences. What was the difference in quality of the outcome? The level of consciousness which I with which was I was approaching it, I was no longer running away from my demons. I had faced my demons. I had confronted them, and it's not to say they ever disappear, but you learn to work with them. Now I was seeking it as a means of evolution. I was seeking it as a means of a greater enlightenment, a greater awakening. You know, what's that next great awakening? Because I have to in order to attain the next stage of growth, you have to do something that you've never done before. You have to go into places you've never gone before. Otherwise, you're only gonna get more of the same. So now I'm looking for that next awakening so I can bring that awakening to the world to share, like, you the going into these spaces gives me wisdom. Like, the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge comes from books. Wisdom's come from experience. Right? And that's my own way of putting it, not right or wrong about it, but wisdom comes from experience so that I needed to gain the wisdom in order to be able to be a greater service. So that's what was having me, like, look for these greater awakenings going into the deeper like, the the going from darkness retreats to climbing mountains, to running for 24 hours, to running across Liberia. And when you go into those places, again, you kept finding new things within, you know, the the because again, now I'm seeking instead of running. So that was the huge shift in consciousness. And also a big thing was when I started doing it from these new levels, I was now coming back and spending time reflecting on the journey. Because back but way when I first started doing outdoor sports, I was never coming back and reflecting. Now, like, one of my mantras is stretch and reflect. So you stretch and you come back and reflect. And the reflecting piece, I think, is equally as important as the as the stretching piece because you're gaining you're gaining the wisdom. You're processing. What have I gained from this? What did I learn from this? What were the mistakes? What was the what was the awakenings? How can I use those awakenings to honor this life that I have in service to something greater? So that was the big shift, you know. And I also, you know, I had learned to make my demons work for me. And I'll give you a very concrete example of what I mean by that. So when I was doing my run across Liberia, I was on day 4 of the run. We're doing a marathon a day, so inevitably you're suffering a little bit. And, day 4 of the run, I was about 17 miles in for that day, and my shin started killing me. Just started aching. Something hit. And if I stopped, I tried to massage it, put some cream on it. It wasn't going away. So now I started limping for about a mile, mile and a half, battling not just the physical pain, but psychological pain of knowing I still have a lot of miles left to go. And and then I, you know, after about a mile and a half of walking, I start jogging. And then within minutes, I start sprinting, like booking it. And the whole time I'm saying things to myself, like, remember Neil? It should have been you that died in the war instead of him. Look at the people around you. People are suffering all around you. Earn this life. If you quit now, you deserve a coward's death. Like saying these very dark things to myself. Right? But those 5 miles I ran that day were the fastest 5 miles I ran the entire trip. So by confronting my demons, by bringing them to the surface, I had learned to use them and work with them. And Carl Jung, this is like one of my favorite quotes. Carl Jung puts it beautifully when he says, one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. I love that quote also because so many people think, oh, yeah. Picture yourself surrounded in a beautiful white light, and you'll you're talking to god. It's, like, totally not how people learn anything. And it's not like I talked to myself that way the whole trip. There were other moments when I was in pure bliss. Right? So it's it's about making the darkness conscious because the light is easy it's easier. You know, it feels good. But we're so afraid to confront that darkness within ourselves, and we all got our demons. Everybody's got demons. Everybody's got divinity. I mean, this is, like, at a meta level, something I've been kinda hinting at. It's kind of fear of honor at a meta level. It's a concept that I call the paradox of singular duality. Eventually, it'll probably by my next book. And the idea of it is there's all these dualities in the human experience. Right? Life and death, darkness and light, ego and humility, contentment and discontentment, fear and Nirvana. And we often frame one side of the duality as bad. You know, fear is bad. The demons are bad. The darkness is bad. Ego is bad. Discontentment is bad. But the reality in life is, and why I call the paradox singular duality, is that these dualities can actually coexist as 1, and they are in fact 1. And it's only by recognizing the oneness that we can attain the next awakening. So the paradox is actually recognizing that the darkness and light can coexist, and I believe they must coexist. So discontentment and contentment can coexist. I can be content with who I am now, but discontent in knowing that I have a lot more further to go. Same thing with ego. Ego is not bad. Ego is whatever we make of it. You know, ego can be absolutely beautiful. So the idea is and that's what fear of honor is at a meta level is that we it's we it's about embracing all of life's dualities. And this is why I was talking about this is how I kind of addressed a lot of my suffering and my guilt is that I recognized that I was going too hard into suffering. So if you look at the duality of suffering and play on a spectrum, imagine like a scale. Right? I was going ham into suffering and recognizing that I'm bringing suffering into every area of my life. So what I did to address that problem, I went hard into play. I started being more playful, dancing to myself, doing silly things, being more playful. Now look. I'm always gonna be somebody if look. Who's gonna lean to the spectrum of the edge of suffering clearly with what I still do. But by going hard into the edge of play, I got new insights. I got new awakenings that I could not get if I stay in the space of suffering because I was only Like, what what what's an example of play and and the lessons you've got from me? So, like, as an example, it was your retreat once, then at the and the break between every retreat, they would do these kind of playful things like hula hoops and dancing and playing these silly water games. I would completely bail when that s**t would go down. Like, I'm gonna do burpees. I'm gonna suffer. Right? Like, forget about that playful nonsense until a friend of mine would come drag me when she recognized that we were talking about this. She would drag me, and so I started play. I started to bring whiteness. I started to recognize that, like, ease and comfort are not bad things, and that sounds really weird, but I had developed just like a lot of people have a, like, a dis discomfort with the word suffering. We feel have a negative association with it. I literally had developed a negative association to fun, to ease, to comfort. I remember once I was running and I saw this sign that said 5 k fun run. And literally, James, like, not even not even a conscious response, a subconscious visceral response of disgust at the idea that you could do a fun run. Running's only meant for suffering. So by going hard into play, I recognize that, look, this is absurd. Like, the fact that you have developed a a negative association with ease and comfort is clearly causing you problems. Ease is not bad. Comfort is not bad. Again, it needs to be balanced with discomfort, but you can embrace it. So practicing more ease, like, I can take rest. Rest. I can have fun runs. And that was the thing I would do. I remember, like, I would do runs listening to freaking, like, bats**t boys and kinda, like, dancing, smiling, and not every run had to be an exercise in suffering, you know. So I was able to bring play into my pursuits as well as also balance stress with recovery because it's all that duality, you know. Like, as an as an example is I was really good at training, like, suffering, but I was horrible at doing the recovery work because, again, that was the ease. That was comfort. So I would never do stretching. I would never do the recovery work. I would just wanna suffer, and that clearly was a problem. It caused me injuries, you know. So by embracing ease, by embracing comfort, I could look at life didn't always have to be this burden of suffering. I could find ease in my pursuits. I could balance it with recovery. What about, like so a lot of your suffering is related to physical activity, but what about psychological suffering? Like, let's say, you know, having money problems or having relationship problems, and that's that's a common form of suffering, and and people even kill themselves over it. Is that something you ever seek out? Like, okay. I'm gonna have money problems now. I'm gonna have, you know, I'm gonna buy something I can't afford and suffer through trying to afford it, or, I'm gonna get into a relationship that, you know, I don't know, probably might not be good for me. And, like, I don't know. What what's, like, a worthy struggle of psychological suffering? What what have you done? What what stretches have you done in that area? You know, I pushed myself mentally in terms of, like, looking for the next the week. It's, like, building my business is a mental challenge for me. You know, building a business is a huge mental mental challenge. Meditating for hours on end. It's going to a darkness retreat. Yeah. Amy, you know that. Yeah. That meditation is a meditation is is people don't realize this, and and and I'm sure you do. But as you've described, meditation is not meant to be pleasant. Yeah. It has actually meant to be suffering. Like, people think, oh, I'm gonna sit in the lotus position and and feel peaceful. They don't realize the lotus position It's a comfort. Cuts off the blood, yeah, to your lower legs. You will be in massive pain after about a half hour if you're sitting in lotus position. That's what it's meant for. Yeah. It's not a peaceful position. Uncomfortable. And you're sitting and you're sitting still with your thoughts. That can be hard. So, like, the darkness retreat was a great example of seeking out psychological and spiritual struggle. Right? Like, a different context. But why I love physical struggle is physical struggle is the only one that taps into mind, body, and spirit, all of them. Like, when I was in the darkness, so the first few days in darkness, I would I was doing, like, burpees and push ups and stuff. And then I I'd set a rule for myself that I was recognizing that I was using the physical suffering as a way to escape stillness. So I set a rule that I'm not gonna do it anymore. But why I love physical suffering generally is that when you're suffering, when you do a 24 hour run, you are going into spaces where your mind and and spirit are suffering deeply. And physical suffering taps into all areas that that nothing else can. Like, when I'm sitting in the darkness, I'm not suffering physically. When I'm building a business, I'm not suffering physically. I may be suffering mentally, perhaps not spiritually, perhaps spiritually. But physical taps into all 3 of those, especially endurance sports, which is why I love endurance sports. Because when you do a long run, like, within a 24 hour run or a climb of Denali, it it becomes like a microcosm of the entire human experience. You experience absolute pain, absolute pleasure, and everything in between. And so endurance sports are a way for me to tap into not just physical suffering, of course, that is there, but mind mental and spiritual as well. And and you find something every time. Like, there's there's deep profound lessons about who we are and what we're capable of when we go into those spaces. So so let me take 2 examples. Let's say you you have a house and all your possessions are in it and the house burns down. That's a form of suffering. Obviously, all your possessions and things that you're emotionally tied to disappear. But I could see leaning into that and saying, okay. It's a new start on life. I'm gonna take what lessons I can from this and learn from it and process it and and move on. And then there's a type of suffering where let's say you're you're you're starting a business. Let's say you have a partner, and, god forbid, your partner betrays you, steals all the money from the business. The business shuts down, and you've let's say you've poured 10 years of your life and all your money into this business, and now it's gone because of someone else that that you can quite correctly blame. And, I mean, you go there's some responsibility to you too because you let him you there's always some involvement as well. You let him do something or her. But how do you deal with the suffering like that where it's happened? It's something that you've poured your heart into, and then at and for circumstances, somewhat out of your control, not completely, you suffer. Yeah. You know, so As opposed to choosing to go to choose a retreat or go on a run. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So there's the suffering we choose and suffering we don't choose, and those are inevitably much harder. Like, I recognize every single day on Denali, I was like, I I get to be here. It's a luxury to choose your suffering. You know? Totally a first world luxury to be able to choose it. So when it comes to the suffering you don't choose, and these kind of things happen, you know, it's at first, it's it's it's important to allow yourself to feel what you feel. I think the big things that I see often happen is, like, don't worry. Don't stress. Just move on. Just jump. Like, don't feel sad. You know, we say don't feel what you feel, and it's really important to feel it. And then go into the darkness of it. Like, I'll give you a very concrete example of this. So I was working with a friend of mine, and she had gone through some pretty horrific trauma as a child. And we, you know, we talked and and just because I'm gonna I'm gonna offer a caveat before I go here because it's gonna sound kinda messed up. But she was ready to go to these spaces that I'm about to, like, point out because we had done a lot of work in awareness. And so we were talk talking more about this. And and I asked her, I I said to her one point, what if you deserve what she went through? And she literally goes, woah. Like, that's a messed up thing to say to somebody. What if you deserve this trauma that you went through? She didn't tell me specifically what she went through because I did it didn't matter the content of it. And I can only imagine one can only guess. Right? Like, she was a woman who went through a trauma as a a horrific s**t as a child. And so I said, what if you deserved it? And she goes, woah. And she had never like, everybody would tell her, you don't obviously, you don't deserve it. But see and I asked her, did a part of you feel like you deserve it? And she goes, yes. I said, did a part of you feel guilty for? She goes, yes. I said, good. Confront those parts. That night, she sent me a text word for word, f**k you, Akshay. Because it sent her into some very dark spaces within herself to feel like because I said, let's go there. If you did deserve it, what does that mean about you? What does that mean about humanity? What does that mean about God? Go to those spaces. Spend some time in those spaces. Get to the darkness of it, and then you'll find something on the other side. After coming out for the first time in entire life, she'd been married like 25 years. She shared what happened to with her husband, and her husband's now the only person who knows. I said, you don't have to share. I don't care about sharing with me because it didn't the content of it didn't matter. But she shared what happened because by coming by confronting the darkness of it, she was able to find lessons and go and come out into the light of it. So the point in all of this is when you have this suffering that you don't choose, allow yourself to go into those spaces, feel what you feel as a result of it, go into the darkness of it, and then you can look for what did I learn from it, what can I do with it, how can I use it as a means to evolve forward? I guess the whole thing is that, like, even in the in the business example I described to you, I caught myself saying, you know, here's a case where you could blame someone, but, obviously, some of it is your responsibility. But that's speaking to an adult. Maybe what happened to her happened when she was 2 years old, 3 years old, 4 years old. And then it's hard to say, like, how how does she ask herself if she deserved it when she's that age? No. I mean, she at this point, she was an an adult, but, like, she like, what what I was saying to her was, you know, when you're in that, like, whatever that means for you about, like like, what and then a great way simply, like, journaling, nothing fancy. Right? Journaling or meditating on it. Just journal. Allow you allow yourself to free flow on, like, what that means to if you if some part of you believes you deserve it, explore that part. Don't run out. Everybody will say, don't feel guilty. It's not your fault. Obviously, you don't deserve it. And morally, like, of course, like, it sounds like a merry messed up thing to say to somebody who went through horrific trauma. What if you deserved it? Right? But the thing is the only reason I asked her that because I knew that some part of her did feel it. So I just wanted her to explore that part because only like Carl Jung said, you know, you have to make that and Carl another favorite quote of mine from Carl Jung, he says, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. So so okay. And and I agree with that in a lot of context. I'm trying to understand in this context. Yeah. Let's say I was molested as a 4 year old. Mhmm. And, and now I wanna say to myself, because it's been because I've been taught my whole life that or my whole adult life since I started confronting this that I didn't deserve such a bad thing and, whatever. Mhmm. And now I'm trying to think, how do I say I I deserve this? How what what would my thought process be like this? Like, how would I say I deserved it and then learn from that? So just to be clear, like, if you don't feel like you deserve it, then you don't have to go there. I'm not saying be because I knew some part of her felt like she deserved, I wanted her to go there. If you don't feel it, don't don't go there. Like, that's not I'm not saying you have to feel like you deserved it. I just knew that some part of her did. And and turns out it did. Like, when I asked her, did some part of you feel like you deserve it? She said, yes. So all I'm saying is whatever the parts are like like like as an example, if something has happened to you, You know, often we'll say, okay, just forgive. And I'm not saying forgiveness is bad. Forgive them. But if you feel rage, feel that rage. Allow yourself to go into the expression of that rage. Let's say they give business example. So not even something as extreme. This business partner took all your business and you're feeling like this rage around it. Like, go in there. Go in there. Maybe you're feeling like, f**k this guy. I hate this guy. This was messed up. I like, just go into the rage. Go feel that rage fully. Then you can say, now you've made that unconscious conscious. Now it's not controlling you. It's not determining your fate. Instead, you've brought it to the surface and you can channel it. You can use it. You can say, okay. Cool. It's happened. I'm allowing myself to feel the rage. And now what am I gonna do with it? I learned from it. I can take responsibility from it. And this, that, the other thing, and you can process it to move forward. You know? But you can you can explore it. But the the the thing is, like, training in the emotions that you are avoiding. So for example, like I still to this day from time to time will watch war movies knowing they make me cry. I do that because I like the I like tapping into the raw intensity of that emotion, and I still wanna stay in that space just so that whatever guilt may be buried there, I'm gonna bring it to the surface from time to time, be with it until I cool. Okay. I got it. And and the intensity of it has power, you know? So whatever that emotion, again, it doesn't have to be deserving it. Like, the the the key thing is just allowing yourself to stay present in the dark. I'll give you again. I'll give you another example. I was doing an interview a little little while ago. I was blessed to do an interview with doctor Drew and somebody had called in and they were talking about, like, the PTSD they went through with the Boston bombing. And so doctor Drew was providing some answers. I was providing some answers. And then we talked a little bit. And I said, you know, like, the next time you feel some of these triggers of PTSD show up, I just want you to kinda be with it and notice it. And she said, but that's really hard. I said, I know it's really hard, but you can't avoid that. Like, she wanted to get to the other side of the PTSD without facing the and I understand, of course. Like, it's not like to blame her. Like, it's it sucks being in this in the in the s**ttiness of that feeling, of the anxiety, but you have to face that anxiety. You have to face that darkness to come out on the other side of it. Okay. So let's take the rage example, though. Like, I I I have people I think about where, let's say something happened or I felt betrayed or whatever, where I still feel, like, rage. And I don't like to feel it. And, you know, I mean, I literally think, like, the worst things about these people. Mhmm. And how do I how do I come back from that? Like, so I accept the fact that I'm enraged, but, it's not like all day every day, but might be, like, every a few moments every other day. I'm Mhmm. I flash to this. How do I grow from this? How do I learn from this? Yeah. You know, you can use and then this sounds like because a lot of people don't resonate because it sounds really dark. It sounds really messed up. But, like, look, like, the point is again that we all have the darkness. So you can use the rage. Like, let's say somebody wronged you, this business partner, and you're like, I f**king hate this guy. Right? Like, you were feeling this rage. You can now use it. I'm gonna show you. I'm gonna prove to you, like that you messed up by leading me. I've built this empire and you're going to wish, you're going to wish that, that, that you were still with me. You know, like screw you. Like sometimes, like, let's say I was reaching out to a podcast and they've said no to me. I'm like, dude, you're going to rue the day that you said no to me. You're going to be calling me one day. Right? And that s**t's dark. You don't you don't live in that. So you don't in your case, you're not gonna live in the rage, but you allow yourself to feel it without thinking it's wrong. The problem like, the key thing here is you don't judge it. You you feel because a lot of us judge that rage. We think it's, oh, I shouldn't feel that. Like, that's wrong. Right? Like, it's it's messed up to think that about this person. Like you said, you might think, I wish that person died. And you're like, oh, I shouldn't feel that. Like, that's wrong. It's messed up. No. Feel it. Like, we have the demons because if you don't allow yourself to feel it, it's gonna like, it's part of you. That's that's subconscious as Carl Jung said, right? The unconscious will direct your life. So feel it then say, okay. Cool. I'm gonna I'm gonna feel it. I'm gonna allow myself the thought to go there. But you know what? That's not who I'm choosing to be in the grand scheme of things. So I have dark thoughts. You have dark thoughts. We all have it. But I don't let darkness consume me. I live my life in service of trying to do something good, but that doesn't mean darkness is not there. Right? So the thing is you like like I was saying earlier, right? Like, this is the key. I think this is summarizes beautifully is that we are not our thoughts. We're not our feelings. We're not our experiences. We are the thinker of our thoughts, the feeler of our feelings, the experience of our experiences. So the key is you can have a thought but not become that thought. Right? You have the thought of darkness. I feel it. I don't judge it. I don't feel wrong for feeling it. I allow it to feel what it feels, but that's not who I am in the grand scheme of things. I use my darkness as an exit point of light. But I feel like sometimes this darkness could be addictive. Like, this rage Absolutely. Just just like alcohol can be Controlled controlled rage is beautiful. Yeah. Right. So so so how do again, do you How do you balance it? So I I see the beginnings of it where you say, like, I I'm gonna prove to you this, like and that's kind of starting to move in a positive direction. Yeah. But what's the next step after that? Like, how how do you move beyond the rage, essentially? And maybe you don't, but what's what more positive what's the next step positively? So if it is let's use an example of rage. Just like you train your bicep. If you want your bicep to get stronger, you train it. If it is rage, practice rage. Go into spaces of rage consciously instead of letting them unconsciously show up. So people with anger issues, like, they'll respond to a situation. Like, a situation will happen. They'll react with anger. So if if it is rage that is the challenging emotion, like for me, it was guilt. So I consciously trained in guilt. I would watch war movies, put myself in a state of guilt, be with it, journal about it, process it, then now I could now it now it's sidelined. So if it is rage, train in the emotion just like you train a muscle. Train that emotion by consciously putting yourself in experiences of rage and then you balance it coming back to the contrast of duality. If it is dark, you practice light. So if you notice that rage is consuming you, let's just say in your example, every day I'm feeling this brutal rage for this, person who betrayed my business. Right? Every day is showing up all the damn time. I would spend some time here's how I would address it, like, very practically. I would spend some time consciously putting myself in the rage. Alright. Let me now instead of letting it just show up because some x thing happened in the environment, let me, like, practice it. So let me spend like, I'm gonna not like, schedule out all this time on my weekend and go into rage. Gonna feel it. I'm gonna process. I'm gonna journal it. I'm gonna be with it, all that good stuff and bring out stuff that hadn't shown up before. And you only do that by being still. So meditate, journaling is you have to practice stillness because often we distract ourselves from our emotions, from our thoughts doing, you know, all the ways we distract ourselves. Right? So practice stillness, be with it, then now balance it with the duality of light. So if you note once you once you allow yourself to feel it, now that darkness is coming into the conscious, it's no longer controlling you. So you that in and of itself will be very therapeutic. It'll be very cathartic. You will find some lessons there. And then now you balance it with light. So every time it shows up, you anchor it to different thought of light. Like, okay, this happened. And now I'm here to serve. Like, in my case, in my like, my darkness of guilt, I'm here to use it to as an expression as to to earn this life, to be of service, to be of value, to use my life, to make a difference for others. Right? To balance it with light. And it's the same thing with light. If somebody's too far in the light, they are avoiding the darkness. Like, I have a friend who said never trust somebody who's all light because they're just bearing their darkness. So it's all the duality. Play on the edge of the duality. If like I was mentioning the example of suffering in play, I was too hard on suffering, so I went into play. So if you're too hard into rage, go on the other edge of that. If you're too hard in the darkness, go on the other edge of that. And you have to consciously do it. That's like you have to consciously will yourself onto that other edge. And in time, like, this is a standard how neuroscience works in our brain. Right? Like, neurons are fired at where the wire together, but you do that by first having to consciously engage it, and then it becomes more habitual. Does that make sense? Right. So, right, so you get into the rage, and then so what you're basically saying is that you wanna you wanna kinda link the neurons of darkness and light together. Let's just call metaphorically. Call it. Yeah. When you get into when you get into this point where these dark neurons are being activated, you want some sort of association so that the light starts to trigger as opposed to just more darkness. So while while you're in, let's say, a moment of rage or you're running or whatever, you wanna link it you know, find some way to link it to something positive. So okay. This person said x about me, that I would be a failure all my life. And so in the you know, I'm angry about that. I'm gonna prove it to you, but which is still kinda anger. But if you do sort of say, look. Here are the people I have actually helped, and I have Yeah. I don't need to have my life ruled by what this person said or did or whatever. Like, I could overcome this, and then it'll be a great thing. Then that's kind of bring you know, kind of linking the 2 together, but how, giving you a tool for the future when confronted with the next kind of darkness that these these light neurons start to trigger. Am I accurate? Very much so. And and just to be clear, though, step 1 is first allow yourself to feel the dark. Like, don't run away from it. So feel it fully. And then, like, what I was saying all those things earlier, and then, yeah, you tie it into the light. You use it. You you channel it. And then, you know, you can start showing just the standard, like, compassion, like, Buddhism, like meditate, you know, compassion meditation, showing forgiveness. All that stuff is beautiful as well. Right? But those things are those things are not band aids for the dark thoughts and they should not be. And if they are, they can be destructive is the point that I wanna really make clear. Like, feel it and then anchor it to the light. I think that's really important. Like like, I I just remember like, speaking of compassion meditation, I remember one time, this is in the nineties, I had a partner that I was really just sort of angry at, and I was trying not to be angry at him because we were partners. And this is, like, the mid nineties. And, so I would do a compassion meditation that I would, you know, sit still, and I would picture him showered with light and picture the best for him. But it wasn't necessarily true to me. I was really angry at this person. So sort of, like, you have to feel the anger and then acknowledge, look. I'm angry at this person, but Yeah. You know, it's probably a good thing, a good exercise for me selfishly to To do it. Wish him the best. Like, that's the that's the running 20 miles part is wishing someone I can't stand the best. And believe me. And really sincerely meaning. It is. It's it's extremely hard. And to that point, you know, like like that that's the that's the hard part. Like, I think if is that especially when in in our personal growth, we feel so wrong about feeling those thoughts of darkness. Is, like, let yourself it's okay. Like, we're all kind of messed up in that, you know. Embrace that. Like, allow like, don't judge the thought that shows up. Once you do that, that's like the stepping stone. So I call this the second dart syndrome. So this is a concept I address in fear of honor and to get another buddha. So the the Buddha said we're all stabbed by the 2 darts of suffering. The first dart is the one we don't control. So let's say, for example, I stub my toe against a door. The first dart is the pain in my toe. The second dart is when I start saying things like, God hates me. This door is stupid. Why does bad things happen to me? And we go down this rabbit hole of thoughts. So when it comes to emotion and thoughts, we don't control most of what happens in our brain anyway. Neuroscience has shown this. Like right now, James, if I'm sitting in this room with you, somebody comes in here with a gun. I'm not choosing to feel fear. My brain's gonna respond with fear. That's a response I didn't choose. So the first start is a response we don't choose. It's the it's the thought. It's the feeling. The second start is what we do with it. And if we judge it, we go deeper into the downward spiral of what I call second dart syndrome. So you always wanna be present to those second darts of, like, okay, cool. Like, and and even no matter how f**ked up thought this this thought is, I deserve this trauma. That's a f**ked up thought to feel. Right? No matter how dark that thought is, feel it, be with it, then you decide what you do with the second dart of it. But those first starts, let them go where they go. Our mind sends us places that's crazy sometimes. So when you were hitting bottom with the alcohol and you came back to your wife and you're feeling so ashamed, was the shame the second dart? And this is this is I love that you brought this up. So there's a fine line between distinguishing what the what the first and second dart is, and it's often not worth even wondering what the what the first dart is. The what what matters is when you become conscious of it, everything beyond that is the second dart. Right? So was the shame the first dart or the second dart? Perhaps it was the first. Like like, if shame in that point, shame is a very valid emotion to feel. Right? Like, I felt shameful. Now now I could beat myself up for shameful. I could hold on to that shame. And so I could say I'm feeling shameful, but I'm not gonna I'm not gonna, like, I'm not gonna respond. I'm not gonna let that shame dictate me. Right? Like, okay. I'm feeling it. Now what am I gonna do with it? So when it comes to the 1st and second darts, like, don't you don't need to go too deep into, like, what's the first, what's the second. Just recognize that everything that's showing up is because thought patterns flow. Like, there's a neuroscientist, doctor Rick Hanson. He wrote this great book called Buddha's Brain where he says, like, one dart Oh, yeah. I've read that. Fantastic book. So you're aware. He he Yeah. Where he talks about these 2nd arts and he said one the second arts often lead to further 2nd arts. So we have all we all have patterns, neurons that fire together that wire together. Right? So we have these patterns. And these patterns of thoughts will show up. So you'll have one thought that automatically leads to another thought. It's just a pat like a con like a like a road just goes from a to b to z. Like, that's how your thoughts construct goes. But as soon as you become aware of it, as soon as consciousness steps in, and this is why you have to train it. Like, the battle for how you talk to yourself is relentless. And you have to be relentless if you wanna change those patterns. If you wanna stop going from a to beta c a, b, c, d, like, just that pattern and go from a to z instead, then you have to be conscious, step in with awareness, and now say, okay. Wait. Wait. Hold up. These are all just the darts happening without my control. I don't control this chaotic mess that's happening in my brain, but what can I do now with it? Right? Like, I'm gonna stop judging it. I'm gonna decide. Okay. Cool. I'm feeling the fear. I'm feeling the anxiety. I'm feeling the guilt. I'm feeling this darkness, whatever it may be. Now I can reflect on it. I can use it. I can channel it and take it into purposeful action. And when you take some purposeful action, that's when you start rewiring the brain. You do that by changing the preprogram pattern. Right? Like in so in my book, I talk about this sort of the example of the analogies, like, imagine a sled going down the hill. The more it goes down a hill, the deeper that track gets in the snow, and then you now have a huge track in the snow. So in order to change it, you have to consciously lift the sled and change the track in the snow. So we have to consciously change the pattern in order to stop going down the same, like, spiral of second darts that we go down. Wow. So so so tell me, what's what's next in your path? What's what's new ways you're you're choosing this suffering? The next, other than, like, building so the fear of honor brand, I wanna like, the whole vision for the fear of honor brand, which is in many ways, a greater suffering than than than the other the the expeditions, which I'll get to here in a second. But building the fear of honor brand, we're like like kind of like the Virgin model is what I wanna follow. So, like, how brands have built a bunch of different arms under Virgin. We wanna create, like, fear of honor fitness, fear of honor festivals, fear of honor retreats, fear of honor foods, fear of honor. You know, a whole ecosystem under fear of honor, but staying in the umbrella of well-being. So that's 1. Dating. Again, now that I'm single, dating absolutely terrifies me, James. That's more scary than, skiing across skiing skiing in Antarctica or climbing mountains. So trying to being proactive about meeting somebody now that I'm single. And then expedition wise, I'm training for a 40 day expedition to the South Pole followed by immediately by a climb of Mount Vincent later this year, and then an expedition to the North Pole and some polar expeditions, and and, all of all within from November to March of this year. I'll be spending about 2 months in Antarctica. That's gonna be pretty daunting. Minus 40 degrees, brutal storms, skiing to the South Pole. How will you keep track of your business while you're 2 months in Antarctica? I'm working on it's not there yet. I'm working on basically building the systems around it. Because my long term vision is that I am not kind of, again, like how Richard Branson did, is that I don't wanna be running my businesses. I want people in the different arms, and I wanna be the face of the brand doing what I do best, which is these extreme adventures. And I love, like, being on shows like you are sharing the fear of honor journey, sharing, you know, and and doing that, like, being the front stage of it and having other people run it. So I'm not there yet, but I'm working towards that point. So even when I was in Denali for 3 weeks, just, like, literally few weeks ago, I was there 3 weeks in Denali. You know, it was managed we figured out some gaps for sure in the system, but, but, you know, learning that how to build a system around it that people will run the fear of honor universe, and I'll be doing what I do best. Like, because, like, if I had to label myself with one word, it would like, one category, it would be adventurer first, entrepreneur second, not the other way around. So the adventure thing is what drives me, whether it be exploring, like, nature or doing, like, experiences in post conflict zones like Liberia. Exploring humanity and nature at its most extreme is what lights me up. You should, you should do the Fjeravana tour. So, like, okay. This week, we're doing the the the darkness retreat in Germany. This week, we're going to Antarctica for a month. This time, we're gonna go climb, the tallest mountain in North America. Take people on if you're on a journey. Like okay. Yeah. You could say, look. I'm only taking people on who are gonna be dedicated for a year. So that. However it is, and it costs, you know, a $100,000, like some outrageous price. And, because you're you're curating an intense life experience for them that they're gonna remember forever. Like so that's that's one idea. And then another thing you could do for those people who don't wanna spend the $100,000 and have it all set up for them, you can write a a a book, an ancillary book to fear of Anna, which is the fear of Anna tour, like recommended experiences to to achieve fear of Anna. Love that. And, basically, make the cat like, the whole earth catalog was this kind of, like, catalog of things and experiences in the seventies or sixties for people who wanted to, live a more organic life. You're gonna write the the fear of Anna, you know, catalog or tour or tour guide or whatever, where you, kind of give people a choice of, like, a 100 different experiences that they could pick and choose to do on their own. I love that. That's It's it's That's very cool. Yeah. That's actually that's what it's really cool. I love that idea. And that kind of, like it reminds me of, like like like what so the long term vision of fear of honor, like, the big flagship thing that I wanna create, this will be post, like, in 2023 because that's a big expeditions coming up before that is creating a fear of honor journeys platform. So I wanna get in the tech startup world where we're gonna create, like and I have much far smarter friends than me in tech startup. We're we're gonna create a platform that's, like, basically, like a video game that interacts with the real world, but people are the character. So if you're on a journey says this is a platform. Like, it's a tech thing. It's a you're using technology to help people find, live, and love their worthy struggle. So how do like, creating a, like, essentially creating a video game for each person to live their life, but they're the character in their own video game. So I don't know if you remember, like, Pokemon Go where they're using augmented reality and stuff like that. But unlike Pokemon Go, we're just finding eggs. Like, it's like you're playing the video game of your own life to live your own hero's journey. So that's, like, the long term of what I wanna get into. And so I it reminded me of of what you're saying because, like, creating these curated journeys. And then part of it is, like, helping people live their own worthy struggle because it doesn't have to be climbing mountains. But I love what you said, and I'm gonna incorporate that as well as we grow. But that's, like, the flagship thing I wanna create is getting into the tech startup world and helping people find, live, and love their own worthy struggle because I think that's what the path to happiness is. Right? I I love that. Okay. I have an idea for a card game. So you have all you have all the Fjeravana type of experiences. Like, oh, you're gonna do a 27 100 mile polar expedition in Antarctica. You're gonna climb Mount Denali. And let's say you have let's say you have 200 of these. You make them, into cards where you describe the experience. You have some photos, whatever. And now, let's say people are gonna sit let's say 4 or 5 people are playing it. Each person picks 2 cards. They they then have to privately write down which experience they're more afraid of, and then everyone has to vote which experience they think their friend will be most afraid of. If they vote wrong, he gets a point, and they lose points. And if they wrote vote right, everyone who voted right, gets a point. And that could just be kind of a fun card game, but also teach people about their fear of experience. I love that. That reminds me of those games, like, I I can't remember what they're called. Like, there's one, like, the memes There's card against cards against a human. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Where you have to pick yeah. Like, that kind of stuff. Exactly. I love that idea to explore people's fears and play for Nirvana. These are awesome, James. Both all of these, I I love it. I'm gonna definitely I love the idea of curating journeys of 2 that, like, epic journeys you take people around the world and and just the because the the bond that you form, the camaraderie that forms these kind of experiences and then create a card game to help people, like, explore their own fears, that's really cool. Thank you, James. This is a good stuff. Yeah. You know, and you you got me thinking too, like, this is not anywhere near in your category of intense experience or fear or whatever, but I'm very bad. And, again, this is gonna sound almost simplistic. Like, everyone listening to this is like, oh, James is so stupid for bringing this up. But I'm very bad at calling people back, and then I feel and then the second time he hits me, I feel guilty, and I and I never call them back after that. And I've lost touch with people because of that, because it just cycles into shame and despair, and I'm afraid. And so it reminds me, like, one suffering I could do that I could choose is not going to Antarctica, but simply calling someone back who I'm terrified what they're going to say to me once I call them back. So I love it. I and just, like, experiencing that. Love for your day. Think of, like, more psychological ones because I'm not really a runner. I mean, I know people who say that should then be runners to challenge that, but I do other things to I've suffered enough, and I do other things to suffer. And but that's something that I have to deal with that that my fear of awkwardness there and and and, you know, how what people are gonna think of it. Love for you to take that on, and I'd love to hear how that goes and what you get from it. Yeah. It reminds me. I once had a podcast. This is, like, 6 years ago. I did a podcast with Noah Kagan, and he said, right after this podcast, go to a local Starbucks, offer a coffee, some chips, whatever. And right when they ring you up, say, hey. Can I have 10% off? And if they ask you, why do you want 10% off? Just say, I just want 10% off. Can I have it? And that's something that feels very awkward to people. And the first time I did it, it felt awkward to me. But now I gotten so used to it because I do this on a regular basis now. A, sometimes it works. But That's nice. To get around tonight. And, b, it's just like a fun way to get rid of that awkwardness. And, again Yeah. It's not running an ultra marathon. It's not No. But it's it's all to go to war? Yeah. To face your fears, to face that awkwardness. So, yeah, you you should totally call one person after this call, James, that you've been awarding and and get face that and see what, and see what happens. Alright. I'm gonna do it. I will do it. I'll write it up. Yeah. But Get me posted. Akshay Nanavati, your book, Firovanna, touted not only by Seth Godin, but by his holiness, the Dalai Lama, and and and your a lot of your other, people who who have the quotes on the back of the book. It's like a who's who of people who've been on my podcast. So and and Jordan Harbinger, who has an excellent podcast, the Jordan Harbinger show. He introduced us. So shout out to to Jordan. He's a great great guy, great podcaster. And, and look, I learned so much, and and you've really been through a lot. And I and I hope the audience benefits from well. And where where can people keep track of your experiences? You can find me on Instagram at fear of honor. The book, as as you mentioned, is unavailable on Amazon, Kindle, and paperback in, and all the profits go to charity and beautiful causes we support. And then fear of honor dot com, you can find me where I share my adventures, and I also got some trainings on there on how I master myself dialogue and go deeper into into that when I'm deep in the pain cave. So just some tools to help people navigate the, the respective struggles we face. So, yeah, fear of honor on all the social medias, and the book's available on Amazon. Excellent. And it's a great cover. Who did your cover? My publisher. They I can't take credit for it, so I can openly say with no ego that it was awesome. I take no credit for it because it was amazing. I I really love it. The best cover I've ever seen a publisher do. It's really great. You. I was very blessed. They did a great job. Yeah. I was very blessed. And you have, like, an unbelievably high star rating. You're on on Amazon. Like, almost everybody's giving you 5 stars. And Happy to make a difference. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I like how you related to neuroscience and, you know, show that this is not just your theories, but, like, it's backed by by hardcore science. Yeah. So, research. Yeah. So so great. Well, actually, you're you're, once a guest, always a guest. So you're always welcome back on the podcast anytime you wanna share some stories, and, you know, good luck on all your journeys in the future. Will will you be reachable by email when you're in Antarctica? Actually, I will. I'll be I'll be so I'll be posting video like, posting updates from the ice cap, for sure. I'm still figuring out the tech to do it, but there is a way to do it, and I'm gonna be doing it for sure. So posting updates while I'm out there. So I will be Excellent. Access. Well, good luck. And Thank you, my friend. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. No. You've been a great guest. This has been a fun podcast. Thanks so much for coming on. Appreciate you.
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