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I was a corporate lawyer working 60 to 80-hour weeks

for many years.

I had spent the better part of my life chasing

that American dream without ever really thinking about what I

wanted to do with my life.

And I wasn't taking care of myself physically.

I'd become a junk food addict.

I was not exercising at all.

I was 50 pounds overweight, and I have a history

of addiction and alcoholism.

I was also very depressed.

And it all caught up to me shortly

before my 40th birthday.

Late one evening as I was making my way

up a simple flight of stairs, I literally had to pause.

I was so winded.

I had tightness in my chest and shortness of breath

and sweat on my brow and really, like, fear in my heart

that I was on the precipice of having a heart incident.

My whole life, my mother would say,

you got to watch what you eat and be careful,

but it all became very crystal clear to me in that moment,

not only that I needed to change how I was living,

how I was behaving, how I was prioritizing

my time and my energy, but also that I

wanted to make that change.

I had a willingness to take a leap of faith

and try something different.

The first thing that I did was a seven-day fruit and vegetable

juice cleanse, which was crazy at the time.

It was so out of left field from anything I'd ever experienced.

I'd never gone a single day in my entire life

without eating solid food.

But I knew that that was something that would kind

of shock me out of my habits.

It didn't have to do with detoxing or any of that.

I just needed to do something extreme to kind of reframe

my relationship with food, and it was very effective

in that regard.

Over that seven-day period, I can

remember lying on the couch, being listless and sweating

and thinking, how am I going to make it through the day?

But the remarkable thing is that at the end

of that one-week week period, I felt completely revitalized.

I had a resurgence of vitality and energy and mental clarity

that I hadn't experienced since I was a young person.

And I had all this energy for the first time

in as long as I could remember.

So the impulse to actually move myself physically

occurred to me, which is something

I hadn't felt in a while also.

And so I started exercising again, first very casually.

But I realized very quickly that I enjoyed that,

and it was a big part of what I was about as a child

and something that I love very much

and had really lost touch with it.

But I think what it evolved into was this pursuit of trying

to unlock hidden potential.

In a very short period of time after changing

my relationship with food, I had completely transformed.

I lost 50 pounds.

I looked different.

I felt different.

It was quite radical, and yet the changes that I made

were relatively simple.

And the thought occurred to me, if I

could change this drastically, this dramatically

in such a short period of time, what

are the other areas of my life that I'm overlooking where I'm

sitting on top of mountains of potential

that I'm just not consciously aware of?

And that's what lured me into the world of triathlon

initially and ultimately into ultra endurance athletics

because I was a swimmer in college,

so I had that background, and I knew

how to train and push myself.

And as I sort of got fitter and more invested

in this food adventure that I was on,

I started getting more interested in fitness

in general.

And I had unfinished business as a competitive swimmer,

and I never felt like I achieved my potential as an athlete.

And so here I was at 40, 41 years old

having this kind of renaissance experience and thinking, well,

maybe I can be competitive again.

Let's give this a go.

And I read this article about this crazy race, Ultraman,

which is a double Ironman distance triathlon that

circumnavigates the entire big island of Hawaii

over three days.

It's 320 miles.

It's absolutely bananas.

It was like a light switch went off in my mind and I thought,

that's the race for me.

It made no sense.

It's not logical at all.

It was more like this bizarre calling that I felt. Like,

it just felt right.

I was like, that's what I'm doing,

and I could see myself, in my mind,

lining up at the start line.

I knew it was going to happen.

It was like a foregone conclusion despite the fact

that it made no sense whatsoever.

And I had one goal, and that goal was don't die.

We don't set goals or define success based on our own

self-identity but based on what I call the culturescape.

The culturescape is that tangled web of rituals, habits,

beliefs, mythologies, practices that our culture,

our religions, our countries, through schooling,

through education, through media,

infuse us in terms of what is the right way

to function in the world.

Now, post-World War II, the culturescape

was really about rebuilding, about being safe.

But in today's world, we are safe.

And so in today's world, the millennial generation,

the big thing that they want to pursue is self-discovery,

is creation.

The problem is, the culturescape keeps engulfing us and telling

us that we need a college degree,

we need to get a good career, we need to work the 9:00 to 5:00

so we can make partner in that law firm

so we can have 2.5 cars in the garage, a wife, and two kids

so that someday when we are 60, we can finally retire and see

the world.

But the thing is, those rules don't apply anymore.

The culturescape was designed to keep us safe.

But it was never designed to keep us happy.

We were taught in the '80s and the '90s, which is

basically consumerism, which was lean on other things,

which was attain power, money, wealth, status,

and you'll feel good--

but you have an entire economy now

that's chugged along pretty well for decade after decade

after decade.

You've got a lot of comfort, especially in the United States

and the Western worlds now.

We haven't solved all the problems.

There's a lot of still people living in just abject poverty.

But as more and more of the world reaches middle class,

then they fought to get there, then they kind of look around

go, is this it?

I still don't feel good.

I still feel like I did when I was broke.

I still feel like I did when I was struggling.

And people are having trouble connecting with themselves.

As Henry David Thoreau said so eloquently, I truly believe,

"the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,"

and "what is considered resignation is confirmed

desperation."

I think it was true in his time.

I think it's probably more true now.

There are so many people who are dissatisfied with their lives.

They're living their lives reactively, compulsively,

and not mindfully or consciously.

And it's really not even their own fault.

We are living all in this system that's

set up to drive us onto career paths

that we're not consciously choosing for ourselves

or that are out of alignment with who we truly are.

But we take goals that belong to society.

We take goals that belong to our parents.

We take goals that we think and justify

and rationalize that we need in order to be happy.

And I found myself reaching the pinnacle

of these mountains, the mountain being a metaphor for life.

So I'd reached this pinnacle, and I'd

stand on the top this mountain and look around and go,

I thought I would feel different.

I thought I'd be happy or I thought I'd be more content.

And then I'd look across the horizon.

I'd see another mountain in the distance.

I'd go, ah, here's the problem, I climbed the wrong mountain.

Now, when I climb that mountain in the distance,

then I'll be happy.

And I would come down off this, mountain

and I'd cross the valley.

And again, this valley represented years of my life

in some cases.

And I'd climb another mountain, which

represented another business, another financial goal,

another material goal, or even a relationship goal.

I'd get to the top of that, and the same pattern followed me.

Why don't I just stop and ask myself,

why, when I achieve something, is it not enough?

Hunter S. Thompson, the American writer,

in 1953 was asked to write a letter to a friend.

His friend was asking for advice.

Hunter says, the danger with goal setting

is very often the goals that you set are not your goals.

They are the culturescape's definition

of how you are meant to be safe in the world.

But that is one of the sure response to misery,

to waking up one day at the age of 40 going,

what the hell happened to my life?

And so we always have to question.

One of the keys to setting goals that are really going

to be incredible for you is, do they excite you?

If you look at them on that piece of paper,

does it bring you to life?

Does it bring you joy?

Does it make you have those little mix of fear

and anticipation, and you're like,

you can't wait to dive into them?

If not, something's probably wrong.

So if we're setting goals out of fear or a place of pain,

that's not necessarily bad.

We can either change our lives from a space

of inspiration or desperation.

And so many of us hit a pain point where we're suffering,

we're depressed.

We have hit this place in our lives,

whether it's emotionally in a relationship,

financially in our careers, where something is not working.

And we find ourselves feeling like we're beating

our head against a wall.

If you're setting a goal out of I can't take this pain anymore,

that's not necessarily bad because we

have to start where we are.

But when you're looking at your goals,

if they don't make you want to jump out of bed,

stay up all night, just get so fired up

about figuring out how to bring them into the world,

then I think it's time for some re-evaluation.

I think a lot of people set goals based on what

their family or their peers want them to do.

And that's good if it's also what you want to do.

But a lot of times, people chase things

that they don't fully love, and so they're

living someone else's life.

So I think you got to figure out,

what are the things that brings you the most joy, the most

passion, the most meaning?

For me, it was simple as I just love jumping

into a swimming pool in the morning or I love the feeling

of how the sun hits my shoulder on a trail run at dawn.

Those were things I wanted to have more of in my life--

very simple, basic, ultimately quite primal instincts.

2008 was my first Ultraman, and I

was very conservative in my approach and very conscious

that I was a newcomer in this sport.

But I ended up being the second fastest American.

I think I was 11th overall that year,

far exceeding my expectations and the expectations

of everyone else involved in the event.

So I thought, what would happen if I trained a whole year

and went back to that race fully prepared with some experience?

So in 2009, that's what I did.

I was the fastest American that year and was sixth overall.

Ultraman was really driven by this question, this quest

that I was on, which was to determine

the outer limits of my capabilities,

physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

What am I truly capable of if I really put it on the line

and test myself?

When I was a kid, I was watching sports with my dad

on the couch, and we'd see these all-Americans who were

the greatest in the country, and I said, well,

that's what I want to be.

I want to be one of the greatest in the country.

That was the dream, and I actually

achieved that dream of being all-American in two sports.

But then, ultimately, it's to go get paid to do what you love,

and that was to be a professional football player.

I did it for a little bit until I got injured.

I broke my wrist diving into a wall playing arena football

and snapped my wrist.

And so for the next year and a half,

I was on my sister's couch, six months in a full arm cast.

I didn't have a college degree at the time.

I didn't really go to school to learn anything

except for to play sports.

So I didn't have any other skills.

This was in the height of the economic challenge in the US

in 2008, 2009, where people with degrees weren't getting jobs.

I really didn't know what to do next.

My whole identity was wrapped around in being an athlete,

and now I couldn't do that anymore.

Your friends no longer want to hang out with you.

You're not getting acknowledged.

So for me, it was extremely depressing for many months.

It's really challenging when you lose your identity, especially

as an athlete.

This is the way you've been praised.

This is the way you've been acknowledged your entire life

as being this good or great athlete, known for this one

thing that you can do.

So when you can no longer do the one thing

that everyone praises you and acknowledges you for,

then you don't get acknowledgment anymore.

So I'm just thinking, well, who am I?

Why am I here?

What's my purpose?

And that's the challenge is rediscovering and reinventing

my purpose once I lost my dream.

So I had to learn about just how to become a better human being

and not rely on my athletic abilities.

In my first half my life, I really

was committed to my dreams in order to prove people wrong.

I wanted to be a professional athlete because people

said I couldn't do it, because kids picked on me, because I

was picked last on the dodgeball game,

because I didn't have many friends growing up

in elementary school.

So I said, I'm going to do this to prove

everyone wrong about me and to prove to them how good I am.

So for the first half of my life,

I was driven by a negative fuel around this goal,

and that negative drive was so powerful

that it allowed me to--

it helped me to achieve my goal.

I was so focused.

I knew exactly what I wanted.

But the energy behind it was negative.

It was to prove five people wrong who doubted me.

And so when I achieved my goal, I

remember feeling so empty inside.

It's like, OK, I had the goal.

I had the structure.

I had the game plan, the daily actions, all the things

we talk about, and it happened.

Why am I still not happy?

Why am I unfulfilled?

Why was I actually angrier after I achieved it than ever before?

I was so disciplined for 15 years of my life,

and now I got exactly what I wanted, and I wasn't happy.

And I reflected on this and said, well, maybe my goal

is just not big enough.

I need to go after a bigger goal.

And so I kept going after these unrealistic goals in business

and life, but it was all based on this negative fuel

of proving people wrong.

So often when someone sets out to achieve something

significant that they've set out--

and even though they have this inkling in their soul

that this is not me anymore, this this

is not aligned to who I am--

they've set it out as an intention to the world,

so they can't let it go.

So we just stubbornly move towards the edge

of the cliff, which represents an emotional crisis,

a breakdown, a slap in the face, whatever you want to call it.

The question I always ask is, who are you seeking validation

from?

And if you sit with that question

and honestly answer that, truthfully look in the mirror

and really answer that question and sit with that question,

I have never found a human being that's not seeking validation

from somebody else.

And typically, it's those closest to us.

So if we think about humans, a lot of humans

care deeply what other people think.

You bring that back to your own home, your family, your mother,

your father, typically, you can multiply that by 1,000.

And when you look at that and then

you basically look at the goals and dreams

that you've set for yourself, what you'll find

is often you're trying to achieve something

because you want to get that approval, that validation

from your dad, from your mother.

I have literally worked with athletes

who have gone to the pinnacle of their career--

they have gone to the Olympics, they

have gone to the World Cup soccer--

and their single motivation, when you get to the core,

was they wanted their father, in most cases-- some cases,

their mother--

to turn round and say, I am proud of you.

I love you.

And they have spent 10 and 15 and 20

years trying to achieve the pinnacle of this sport

for no other reason than seeking validation

from the person that has been close with them most

of their lives.

And I realized I was trying to prove people wrong still,

and that's when I shifted to saying,

I'm not going to try to prove people wrong anymore,

I'm going to try to lift others up and prove people right

and live a life of service and impact people.

And that's when I felt at peace about my goal setting.

Michael Beckwith taught me a model which is really

interesting.

It's called Kensho versus Satori.

When you're living life moving towards a particular purpose,

there are two very important things to understand.

Life helps us grow and correct and evolve

true Kensho, which is growth by pain,

or Satori, which is growth by insight.

Every now and then, you'll have a Satori moment,

a sudden awakening, a eureka moment, an insight that

helps you move forward.

But, for most people, that isn't really going to be as easy.

Most of us grow true Kensho.

Kensho is growth from pain.

You fall sick and end up hospitalized,

but you emerge with newfound respect for your body

and making new choices in how you're

going to treat your health.

You start a business, and it fails, and it's painful,

but that's Kensho because now you

know what not to do in your next business.

A relationship dissolves, and you experience heartbreak.

But that's Kensho because now you

know the man or woman you need to evolve to to create

even better relationships.

So when you see life as Satori moment,

sudden awakenings, and Kensho, growth through pain,

fear dissolves because you know that even when

something bad happens to you, it's simply

a friendly universe giving you a lesson or fine tuning

and tweaking your direction so you can get to your purpose

even faster.

When we have difficult times, that difficulty can either

define us, it can diminish us, or it can develop us.

We hear a lot about post-traumatic stress,

but we don't hear a lot about this other area of study

called post-traumatic growth.

This is where you come through difficulty,

you come through adversity, and on the other side,

you would never wish those situations for anybody,

but you also wouldn't change it for yourself,

that because you went through those challenging times,

it changed you, that you found a deeper meaning.

You found a new strength.

You found your mission.

You found your purpose going through those difficult times.

I don't know a lot of people in life

that have a strength that had easy lives, really easy lives,

because through our struggles, we find sometimes

our superpowers.

I had pretty much followed the prescription for happiness.

I went to graduate school.

I got a business degree, an MBA.

I had a cush corporate job with all the perks.

I had stock options, company car.

These things are supposed to bring you happiness,

and I thought that would be the case with me,

and I wasn't happy.

I was young, I was successful, and I was miserable.

I didn't like being a business guy.

It wasn't who I was.

I was in a nightclub on my 30th birthday getting drunk

with my buddies, and at 11 o'clock at night,

I had a midlife crisis, an epiphany, if you will.

And I said, you know, I don't like

the course my life is going down,

and I'm going to change it right now.

I'm going to become a runner again.

I used to love to run when I was a kid,

but I hadn't run in over a decade.

And I just saw that I would either

pursue a life of kind of quiet desperation

or I would do what I really wanted to do,

and that was exploration and run and just see the world.

And I had no idea I was going to pay for it all,

but I thought, you know, it just feels better doing this.

So I left the night club.

I walked out of the bar, 11 o'clock at night, and said,

I'm leaving.

I'm running 30 miles right now.

Three sheets to the wind, I just took off,

started running south from San Francisco.

I knew if I made it to a town called Half

Moon Bay, that was 30 miles away.

About 15 miles into it, I sobered up,

and I thought, what the hell am I doing?

But it just felt right, so I kept going.

And that night forever changed the direction of my life.

I'm a prolific runner, and I love

running in extreme conditions as well as

running extreme distances.

So I've run across Death Valley in the middle of summer

towards over 130 degrees Fahrenheit.

I've run a marathon to the South Pole.

I've run across the Gobi, across the Atacama Desert.

I ran across the Ancient Silk Road from Uzbekistan

through Kyrgyzstan to Kazakhstan.

I've run on all seven continents twice now.

I wanted to run a marathon every state of the union,

and my kids only had 50 days off for summer break--

so yeah, 50 marathon, 50 states, 50 consecutive days.

Running and physical endurance is the way I kind of manifest

that striving to be the best that I can be, to reach my,

as the Greeks say, the [SPEAKING GREEK],,

the perfect alignment of mind, body, and spirit.

So other people can achieve their bestness

through following their own passion,

and running isn't for everyone.

I like to tell people, if it's basket

weaving you love, throw your heart and your passion

into basket weaving, and you'll make a go of it.

I mean, people are like, how am I ever going

to make a living doing this?

It's ridiculous.

You'll figure out a way if you follow

what you are truly happy about.

And I tell people, script your perfect life.

Just take a pen and a sheet of paper--

not a computer-- and just freeform, just in one paragraph

describe what your day would look like if you

were living the perfect life.

Dream.

Make it outrageous.

And then you have kind of a blueprint

of where you want to go.

You really need to look inward, and that

requires quiet reflection, which is

hard to find in our modern day, right?

I mean, you're constantly bombarded

with noise and distractions.

I can tell if somebody is trapped in conformity

by looking at their first 60 minutes this morning.

That's how I know.

Are you really living your life?

Let's gauge it.

If you wake up and you do what 86% of smartphone owners do--

they grab their phone.

It's right next to the bed.

They grab their phone, they look at it,

and they go into the social media.

They go into their email.

They go into their text, their voice message, their games,

and they're starting their day in reaction.

If you're living a conforming life, it means you're waking up

and you are a consumer.

That's how you know .

You're waking up.

Your mind is not directing the day.

You're not planning.

You're not asking what you want.

People who wake up and they check

their inbox is a great example.

The inbox is nothing but a convenient organizing system

of other people's agendas.

So you wake up, you check in.

It's all these people asking you for something,

and now it's the world directing your attention and your day.

One of the biggest things we have to look at is how addicted

we are to our screens and how much that we've given control

over to technology, thinking about how often we're looking

at our phones, how many times--

I think it's up to 150 per day at a minimum

that people are picking up their phones and checking on them.

And all we're doing is giving away

our time, our power, and our attention.

There's no connection in there with a real human being.

There's no connection with nature.

We're losing connection with our own body, our vessel,

all of the wisdom inside that tells us whether or not

we're on track or we're off track

because, again, we're screen sucking so much of the time.

So I think that, apart from materialism,

I think so much of the problem, at least right now

and it will probably continue, is

how much time we're spending looking at our phones

and looking at screens.

We weren't designed to live this way.

So many of us live these sedentary lives.

We're staring at a screen, what, eight, nine, 12 hours a day,

spending hardly any time in nature,

very little time with our loved ones.

Even when we are having a dinner,

how many times are kids either on their iPads

or looking at phones?

And everybody's checking texts and Instagram

and all social media.

All of that is leaving us feeling so empty,

and what we're doing is reaching for things,

whether it's material things or food or anything else,

to try and fill up these holes because we're lacking presence,

and we're lacking connection, and we're lacking the sense

that we actually matter.

It's like, we have so much happening, so much wisdom

in these bodies.

All of our intuition lives in there.

All of our creativity lives in our body.

And if we deaden it because we're living from the neck up

and we're constantly just in these screens,

we're missing out on the joy and the beauty and the passion

and the energy of what this life is about.

So part of what we need to do is understand that we're

in control, not these phones.

We did this study in High Performance Academy where we

said, you cannot check your email or any social media

for the first 60 minutes of your day.

We increased productivity in people's

self-reported productivity over the course of seven days

by 30%, and it held for 90 days.

Imagine if you got 30% more productively each day.

Well, the way you do it, stop conforming to what

the world is throwing at you.

Don't wake up and go into reaction mode.

Wake up and say, what do I want this day to be about?

Wake up and set some good intentions for yourself.

Wake up and move your body to open up some health,

open up some breath, open up some endorphins.

Sit down with a piece of paper and say, OK,

what are my main projects today?

Who do I need to reach out to and ask questions of?

So it's like, first plan your day.

Ask what you want of it before you go and say,

what does everybody else need?

Our culturescape has taught us an if-then version

of happiness.

If I get this job, then I will be happy.

If I get this girl, then I will be happy.

The problem with that is that happiness, you see,

is not a byproduct of getting something.

Happiness is a state of being, and happiness is not

what you get from achieving your goal.

Happiness is rocket fuel towards your goal.

Happiness moves you towards your goals.

Happiness increases your productivity.

Doctors who are primed to be happy

are 19% better at performing diagnoses.

Salespeople who are more optimistic

are 50% better than pessimistic salespeople.

Students do better in their tests

when they are primed to be happy.

So the trick, the real trick to success in life

is not to not set goals, it's to have these goals,

but to untangle your happiness from these goals,

to be happy before you attain them,

to use that happiness as a fuel so that day to day,

as you're pursuing these goals, which can get tricky,

which can get challenging, that happiness

is like your ally that moves you along,

that helps dampen the downsides of occasional obstacles

or failure, that carries you forward,

that puts you in an optimistic level of mind

so you attract the right people, you

can work with the right people to pursue your goal.

So I think all of us get to think about, well,

what is the thing that brings us the most joy, the most passion,

the most excitement for life, because that is going to fuel

our actions when we go through adversity, challenges,

struggles, stress, depression, because we're all going to face

challenges.

So what's the fuel that's going to get us

through those challenges of life?

And I think our why and our vision

support us in having that fuel.

I grew up in a trailer--

my mom and dad, four kids.

We had a lot of canned food, like hot dogs, smoked sausages.

I grew up on powdered milk and all the processed food.

And I always felt, like, a little bit left out,

a little bit different because we didn't have much.

And the kids would make fun of me and my clothes

and being skinny, and just everything

was very much bullied a lot at a young age.

I wasn't used to being around people.

All I knew was I wanted to get out of the country.

I wanted to be a part of the in crowd.

I didn't want to be the country girl with the Helping Hand

clothes and hair was always messed up.

I didn't know what to do, so I turned to sports.

And at first, I tried to try out for cheerleading,

didn't make the team.

I tried out for basketball.

I was so clumsy.

I had a growth spurt, didn't make the basketball team.

So I remember thinking that, like, what can I do,

who do I have to be, because, as I was, I didn't feel accepted.

I didn't feel loved.

And so I started to run.

And I said, I know, I can get on the track team

because I would run and catch the bus,

and I'd always get close to beating my brothers,

and I was really fast.

So didn't make the cheerleading team, didn't

make the basketball, so I went out for track and field,

and I made the track and field team.

When I started getting on a track and field team

and getting these accolades and getting faster and faster,

I found my sense of purpose.

It was like, oh, I'm important because I can run fast,

and people are nice to me, are kind to me.

My mom and dad cheer for me.

And so that was my first feeling of being accepted.

When I went through college my first year,

I was training so hard.

I wasn't getting enough sleep.

I graduated with a 3.8, but all those studies

left me not getting enough sleep,

not getting enough recovery time.

We were supposed to get in the cold whirlpool, rehab our body,

go swimming, things to counterbalance

all the things we were doing on the track,

and I would skip those things to study.

And so eventually, my sophomore year,

I got a stress fracture in my lower back.

And it was the most devastating thing

that had happened to me because I

was slated to win the conference the next year,

and all of a sudden, my coach was like, I'm sorry,

you're out for the season.

And I'm just, like--

it was just in shock.

I didn't believe it, and I got really sad.

I was crying in classes, and my teachers

sent me to the counselor.

And the counselor was like, you know what,

I think you should try yoga.

And at the time, I didn't know what yoga was.

I just thought yoga was Buddha, and it

was separate from Christianity, and I couldn't do it.

But she was like, no, it's just stretching.

I was like, OK, well, I don't have a choice.

I got kicked out of class.

I gotta go do this yoga stretching thing.

And so I went to class, and I remember

trying to do a Headstand, and I felt

like my brain was going to ooze out the top of my skull.

I was just like, I am not made for this.

This is painful, and this is not me.

And I remember my teacher seeing me struggle.

She came up to me, and she looked at me,

and she was like, I just want you to breathe.

I took a big inhale with her, and we exhaled together,

and for that moment, I felt spirit.

Then eventually, after a year of swimming and biking

and meditation and yoga, I came back

to win the conference meet in college,

and I led Wichita State to its first women's championship.

And it was because of yoga.

And so, of course, I was like, yay, win.

So I moved to California to train

in San Diego, which is close to the Olympic Training Center

because if I'm so close--

I've only had one year.

If I could do all of that in one year,

what can I do if I had a really great coach and really

great training?

And I came out here and I did.

Every time I stepped on the track,

I got better and better and better.

But, again, I wasn't taking care of myself.

I became a personal trainer at 24 Hour Fitness.

I was working from 5:00 AM to 10:00,

and then I'd run track from 11:00 to about 3:00,

and then I would go back and work from 5:00 to 10:00 again.

I had a full list of clients, getting great results

with them, but I was getting very little

sleep and, of course, very little recovery.

So what happens?

Injured again-- this time, I pulled my hamstring.

So here I am, injured again, and so where do I turn--

yoga, meditation.

This time, it healed me again, and this time, I

was like, you know what, there's something to this.

This is amazing.

And I was like, you know what, I can't let this go again.

I need to commit to this as a lifestyle

and not just come in and out of it.

So I decided to sign up for my first yoga teacher

training and not just any yoga teacher training.

I signed up for Ashtanga, which is the hardest

form of yoga you possibly do.

And in that 30 days, I completely changed my life.

I had visions.

I felt so connected.

I saw my purpose.

I saw me making a difference in people's lives.

I didn't know how.

I didn't know I would be doing what I'm doing today,

but I knew that I was going to be doing something great just

using my life and my voice.

And in that moment, I made a commitment to do yoga daily.

The last time I checked, which was 2015,

there were 1,400 different studies on the power

of meditation, everything from helping reduce the onset

of heart disease to helping improve your skin to improving

productivity to improving compassion and empathy.

So meditation is one of those powerful tools

that any human being can bring in their life to improve

their functioning in the world.

The thing is, we don't know why meditation works.

Nobody has yet figured out the exact reasons

why meditation causes all of these feelings.

There are theories, but no one has really boiled it down.

But just because we don't know why it works

doesn't mean we can't use it.

I mean, for the longest time, human beings

had no idea what the sun was.

Ancient cultures thought it was a god or a giant fireball,

but we could still use the sun for agriculture,

for navigation, for warmth, for direction, for heat.

And likewise, we don't know why meditation works,

but 1,400 studies have now shown that meditation pretty much

enhances so many multiple dimensions of human living

that every single human being should

be making this part of their daily practice.

I know so many people that meditate from sports stars

to high performers on every level,

and everyone has their own flavor and their own style.

Some people it's a form of visualization,

and some people it's just a form of concentration.

Everyone has to find their own practice.

But what we know, without any doubt,

is that all of the science of both mindfulness and meditation

is proving over and over again, we

can decrease our stress by will, by going

into a meditative state we can improve

our overall health by will by going into a meditative state.

We can improve our daily productivity, our creativity,

our resilience, our relationships.

Every facet of our life we can improve by meditation,

but meditation doesn't just happen.

You have to take the time and go in that.

Place.

So there's tools out there, but the first step is to really

give yourself permission to slow down and giving yourself

permission to do nothing.

And that nothingness can come on your meditation pillow,

or that nothingness can come even if you give yourself

five minutes in the morning to sit with your tea

and look out the window with no device near you at all,

with no to-do list in your mind, but to do nothing.

I do it when I'm in a taxicab.

Instead of talking with the cab driver, I'm like, well,

you know what, he's going to talk to the next five people,

don't need to talk to me.

Close my eyes.

I meditate.

I also have transition meditation,

which I think is the most important thing today

because people are trying to do so many things.

Transition meditation means, OK, let's say

I have two big activities-- got to check my inbox,

and then I have to create a presentation.

Well, I don't just do my email and then jump in

and start creating that.

Instead, as soon as I'm done with the email, I get up,

I'll go walk around, I'll get some water,

I'll come back down, I'll sit, and I'll just

do a quick two, three-minute meditation,

then I'll start the presentation.

It's like, I tell people, hey, if you're a dad or you're a mom

and you're coming home from work and your spouse or the kids

are in the house, don't take that long commute where you're

frustrated and you're giving the bird to everybody who cuts you

off and then you go in the house with that energy of the day.

Pull up to your house, turn the engine off, close your eyes,

and let yourself turn off for a minute.

Take a five, 10, 15-minute meditation, then get up ,

then go into the house.

That transition from the commute to going into the house

gives you time to reset, to have some intention,

and to go in the house as a better mom, better dad,

a better caregiver, a better lover, because if we just

keep going from one thing to another thing to another thing,

to another thing, another thing, not only does that

lead to burnout, it makes us miss life.

It makes us lack the ability to bring

good energy into a moment.

And so I tell people, find your moments in between everything.

There is nothing-- if I have a full day of calls

and then I gotta go meet my wife,

I'm going to meditate between those two.

I have to, otherwise she's going to get Brendan

who just did the calls guy.

I don't want her to have that guy.

I want her to have her husband.

And the only way I can show up for her

is a transition meditation.

And as a human being who is very driven,

who is very type A, who works and puts effort

into everything, it's a really wonderful counterbalance.

And I also loved that it's not necessarily

attached to any particular religion

and that it's really open for all of us.

I found that I can use all of my type A, driven, get-it-doneness

in the rest of my life and have this really

beautiful, simple, straightforward practice

to help me dip down into this infinite intelligence,

this cosmic consciousness that I think many of us

have experienced or felt at different times in our life,

whether we're with a loved one or we're witnessing

the beauty of a flower or even in profound sadness when

we feel this level of connection of oneness

with everyone and everything.

And when I come out of my meditation,

I find myself feeling a level of energy and charge

that, frankly, I haven't been able to access

through any other method.

You have to be an active, consistent meditator.

Meditation is absolutely crucial.

It allows you to gain the upper hand and the control

over that thinking brain and that idle chatter

and allows you to be fully immersed

in that present moment.

And as an athlete, that's key.

You can't enter that flow state that you hear about

if you're entertaining thought.

You have to be fully present in what you're doing.

And what happens when you are consistently meditating

is that you develop this acumen.

It's like push-ups for the brain.

And you then are the master of the brain

rather than being its slave.

When you meditate, you go into this brainwave state

called alpha.

Alpha state is the state of a relaxed awareness,

and relaxed awareness is where you can train yourself,

actually, to learn a language faster,

to be able to learn rapidly because your conscious mind is

actually set aside and you just absorb information faster.

And we can see the brain opens in so many new areas when

we reach that state, meaning that you tap into different

things that were not accessible before.

And when you then start to connect

those areas and those thoughts and basically that network

of trillions of nerve cells, you can develop intuition.

Intuition is just our internal wisdom.

It's this natural knowing that each of us have

that oftentimes we're never listening to.

One of the benefits that I had was my mom trained me ever

since I was little to listen to the still, small voice inside.

And she said, you know, you will always

know the right move to make if you tap inside and you listen.

There will always be an answer.

So I heard this message over and over again.

So whenever in my adult life I'm wondering which way to go,

I get quiet and I pay attention to what's

happening on the inside.

Intuition is something that's been undervalued for many,

many years.

I think people are starting to really appreciate and respect

the fact that it has huge value and not

just in our personal lives.

People think of an intuition as just,

oh, it's some fluffy, kind of personal concept thing,

and it just works in my personal life.

It's got a massive application in business.

How many of us have got into relationships

that we know in our heart and soul, we know it's not aligned,

whether it's in business or it's in a personal relationship?

We do it anyway, and it goes south.

We get screwed eventually.

And sometimes we blame the person, sometimes we get angry.

But if we looked in the mirror and said,

OK, did you really know that that was in alignment or not,

and often the case is we absolutely did.

And I think sometimes we're absorbing so much information

that we're not giving it time to go from information

to knowledge, knowledge to wisdom, and wisdom

to awareness because I'm too busy running

to the next book and the next book and the next book.

I'm absorbing so much information,

but I'm not allowing it to translate into awareness

and understanding.

So to me, intuition is one of these things that's

been suppressed, it's been blocked,

and I would encourage anybody in the world,

if they want it, if they want to get in touch with more

intuition, if they want to increase their intuition,

if they want to uncover more of it,

don't go looking for it externally.

Ask yourself, why isn't it?

Why am I not in touch with it?

What's blocking it?

Intuition has just been blocked.

It's already there.

We all have it.

I believe that there is a tremendous amount of guidance

that I don't see with my physical eye.

And I believe that my primary job

is to just be in alignment with that source.

And as I align, I can hear that guidance.

I can allow that guidance to show up in my life,

open invisible doors, write through me, speak through me,

just move through me in magnificent ways.

And trust me, there's plenty of things

I get hung up about, things that are out of my control,

but I continue to come back to that space of surrender

because, as a human, I'm having a human experience of wanting

and trying to control timing of things that are completely out

of my hands.

But those are momentary lapses, and I've transformed that fear

into faith, and I've chosen to allow that faith

muscle to be stronger.

So it's not that I measure my spiritual success based

on how perfectly aligned I am.

I really measure it based on how quickly I come back

to alignment.

Take care of yourself.

A lot of people go hard at their career, go hard at parenting,

and without taking care of yourself,

you really can't take care of others.

The more you take care of yourself,

the more energy you're going to have to pour into others.

Fill your cup and then serve others from the overflow.

That's something one of my favorite speakers always says.

It's Lisa Nichols.

She's just like, you're supposed to serve from your saucer.

Meditation and yoga, all that together was

making me a stronger person.

Every day, I felt stronger and stronger.

Some of the things that I experienced when I was younger,

I started to release and let go through practicing

more and more yoga.

And it's like, the more yoga that I practiced,

the more I was able to release the past

and step into my strength as a person, as a teacher,

and as a leader.

Pay attention to that little voice there and bring

expression to that in your own life and, in so doing,

to perhaps connect with yourself more deeply and ultimately

express a more authentic version of who you are.

We're all interconnected, and to contribute your utmost

to society, to humanity, I think you need to pursue what it is

that's uniquely within you.

And I just think that that is the best course for humanity.

If everyone was to do that, I think the world

would be a happier place.

I think that we are all, all of us without exception,

sitting on top of mountains of untapped human potential just

waiting to be unlocked and unleashed.

And I was lucky enough to wake up at 40

and embark upon this journey.

And my responsibility with what I've experienced

is to share with others in hopes that I

can help to activate and catalyze their version of what

I've experienced.

Of course, not everyone wants to be an ultra endurance athlete.

It's not about that.

My hope is that people can look at those experiences

and my story and draw inspiration

from that to then examine their own lives under a microscope

to better identify what it is within them that has

gone unaddressed for too long.

Your dreams matter because you matter.

So follow your dreams because that's

the thing that brings us the most joy, when

we have something to look forward to,

when we have something we want to chase.

It gives us a purpose, a reason, and a meaning

to get up every single day and make a difference.

What is it about you that makes you uniquely you?

What gets you out of bed in the morning

and excited about your life?

And I'm not suspecting that everybody's

going to have an answer to that immediately,

but I think exploration of that inquiry

is the path forward to ultimately living

a more purposeful, meaningful life,

because if you can identify that thing--

and it can be as silly as I like making paper-mache birds,

or I want to tell jokes on stage,

or I want to learn how to play the guitar.

It doesn't have to be that thing of like, well,

I'm just going to quit my job overnight.

But I think the more you can invest yourself

in that journey of trying to identify

what it is that you are here to do, that is the path forward.

And I think if you commit yourself fully to that,

you will be amazed at what transpires over time.

[MUSIC - NICK BROADHURST, "ALWAYS YOU"]

(SINGING) Going back to where the story all began,

do you want to hear the journey of this man?

So maybe, maybe you're gonna call me crazy,

a feeling I know it can't be wrong.

So one day, you're gonna be my lover.

Everybody run for cover.

The ceiling's coming down.

And one day, we're gonna be forever.

Everybody said we'd never.

The ceiling's coming down.

So stop.

I'm gonna be there for you now.

Don't run.

I'm gonna be there for you now.

You, always you, always you.

I'll walk through the sunshine and the rain.

I believe that second chances come again.

So maybe, maybe, no longer call us

crazy, a feeling I know it wasn't wrong.

So one day, you're gonna be my lover.

Everybody run for cover.

The ceiling's coming down.

And one day, we're gonna be forever.

Everybody said we'd never.

The ceiling's coming down.

So stop.

I'm gonna be there for you now.

Don't run.

I'm gonna be there for you now.

You, always you.