Lessons Learned & Empathy Earned: The Story Behind The Story

Now for something a little bit different. What it was like. What happened. And what it's like now. Moments shared. Lessons learned. And the growth that remains. For those new to me, 13 years ago found me utterly disconnected from my higher self. After many years lost in the throes of alcohol, I had managed the sober road to happy destiny for nearly a decade. And yet, on the cusp of turning 40, I awoke to find myself in an existential crisis. Stuck in a career that never served me. Unhealthy. Overweight. And totally blind to the path forward. Through a grace more powerful than myself, I found a way out. It's a journey that began with nutrition. Evolved through fitness. Matured through service. And ultimately has taken me to heights I previously thought unimaginable. It could be said that I reinvented myself wholesale. And transformed others' lives in the process. Along the way, I've experienced success and failure. High highs. Low lows. And growth at the cost of more missteps than I care to admit. Today I am greatly privileged to live a life beyond my wildest imagination. And yet I am often oblivious to this fact, lost in myopia about the work that remains. The stones yet unturned. The character defects that continue to arise. And the past mistakes left uncorrected. I need to be reminded that on occasion it’s important to stop. Honor the path you have blazed. And express gratitude for those in your life that have supported you. Because nobody achieves dreams alone. When Outside Magazine reached out to me last fall to express interest in featuring me on the cover of their January issue, I was convinced I misheard. Unlike so many of my heroes who have graced the cover of this iconic publication, I’m not an Olympic champion or world-class adventurer. I’ve never won a big race. None of my books have ever made a bestseller list. And my podcast is hardly the largest. As surreal as it continues to sound, somehow I did end up on that cover. I could feign 'low key'. But the honest truth is that it was a very proud moment. An honor I receive with gratitude. A symbol for the many difficult choices I have made. And the faith I was compelled to endure with a whopping dose of humility. Alongside this honor was the opportunity to be a guest on the Outside Podcast. It's an interview conducted by Peter Vigneron (who penned my Outside cover profile) that was in turn beautifully produced, written, and edited by Michael Roberts with music by Robbie Carver. Over the years, I’ve had the honor to guest on many of the world's top podcasts. I’ve been on Joe Rogan twice (JRE #642 & #266) and other great programs like Impact Theory, Good Life Project, School of Greatness, Gary Vee, Adam Carolla, Chase Jarvis, James Altucher and many others. I’ve never repurposed any of those experiences on this feed. But this conversation distinguishes itself. A beautiful meditation that best captures how I think about the path I've blazed. And what can be gleaned from lessons learned for the benefit of others. So I’m doing what I’ve never done before, resharing that conversation with you here today. Thank you Michael, Peter and everyone at Outside for sharing my story. And special thanks to photographer Beau Grealy for his cover image and the wonderful portraits that accompanied that article and this episode. All of it means means more than you know. If you’re stuck in your version of my past and can’t see the way forward, my hope is that this conversation will help spark a shift in perspective that will inspire you to think more openly about possibility. Embolden you to embark upon your version of what I have been blessed to experience. And bring life to the more self-actualized, authentic self within. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout.

• 1:05Rich Roll?

  The veneers of denial were starting to fall away, and I was starting to get a picture of the truth of how I was living. What I thought was cool ultimately turned out to be something very dark. But ultimately, you know, I reached that point that you hear with other people in recovery, that point of no return where you wake up and you finally have the willingness to do whatever it takes. And that's when I ended up in rehab in Oregon. The challenge of crashing and having to pick yourself back up is really what reveals character. Like, that's the test. If my journey's been about anything, it's about kind of trusting those whispers and being willing to have faith and invest in those little signals that are just so faint

• 1:49Rich Roll?

  and yet potentially life-altering and meaningful, you know? And everything good in my life has come as an outgrowth of putting service first and recovery first, and just allowing whatever else is gonna come, come. Yes, that's right. You heard it correctly. That is indeed me, Rich Roll, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:23Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. So I'm going to do something a little bit different today. Either I'm getting mushy with age, or perhaps I'm evolving a bit. I choose to believe it's the latter. But either way, I've been feeling a great deal of gratitude as of late. All of you guys, the audience, has a great deal to do with this emotion. And I just wanted to publicly acknowledge it and, and take a moment to reflect on the journey that got me to this place. Because I think it's important to stop for a beat, to honor yourself. And more than that, those that helped get you where you are. For those relatively new to the show, who, who might not know that much about my personal story.

• 3:09Rich Roll?

  About 13 years ago, I was somebody who I would characterize as relatively disconnected from my higher self. And although I had strung together some years sober, after many years lost in the throes of alcohol, I found myself stuck in a career that didn't serve me. I was unhealthy, I was overweight, and essentially totally blind to the best path forward. Ultimately, I found this way out. It was a journey that began with diet and nutrition and fitness that took me places I'd never thought possible, conquering ultra endurance challenges previously unimaginable, and ultimately reinventing my life wholesale along the way.

• 3:52Rich Roll?

  And then about eight years ago, I published a memoir chronicling that journey called Finding Ultra. And that book changed a lot for me and for other people. And I've continued to grow and evolve and misstep and fail and learn since that moment. And look, I'm not unaware that today I have this amazing privilege of living this life that is basically well beyond my wildest imagination. But I will also freely admit that I often lose sight of this fact, daily at times, focused on... Finishing up the next project, or lost in thought about the work that remains, the stones that are unturned, the past mistakes that are unrectified. And I need to be reminded all the time that it's important to take off those blinders,

• 4:37Rich Roll?

  to stop for a moment, to reflect back, to honor the path you've blazed, and express gratitude for those in your life that support you. Because nobody, nobody achieves dreams alone. When Outside Magazine reached out to me a couple of months ago, saying that they wanted to put me on the cover of their January issue, I honestly thought that I misheard them. Unlike so many of my heroes who have graced the cover of this iconic publication over the years, I didn't see myself anywhere near that category. I'm not an Olympic champion, I'm not a world-class adventurer. I've never even won a big race. My books never made the New York Times Bestseller list.

• 5:19Rich Roll?

  And my podcast, which I love and which is phenomenal, is hardly the largest. But this has been a really proud moment for me. It's an honor that I receive with gratitude and a whopping dose of humility. And alongside that honor was this opportunity to be a guest on the Outside Podcast, which kind of served as part of the interview that was conducted by Peter Wigneron, who wrote the article in the publication, and a conversation that was in turn beautifully produced and written and edited by Michael Roberts with music by Robbie Carver. Over the years, I've guested on a ton of great shows. I've been on Joe Rogan twice, Impact Theory, Good Life Project, School of Greatness, Gary Vee, Adam Carolla, James Altucher,

• 6:03Rich Roll?

  and many, many other great shows, which I will link in the show notes. But I've never repurposed any of those experiences on this feed. But this conversation really stands out to me. I think it captures the best of how I explain and think about this wild journey that I've been on. And perhaps even more importantly, what can be gleaned from it for the benefit of others. So I'm doing what I've never done before, and I'm resharing that conversation with all of you guys today. But first, let's take care of some business.

• 6:43Rich Roll?

  Okay, so as I mentioned, this episode, in so many ways, marks a milestone in my life that I will always look back on somewhat astounded, very proud, and perpetually humbled. If you're stuck in a version of my past and can't see your way forward, my hope is that this conversation will help spark something in you, inspire you to perhaps think differently and more openly about possibility, and ultimately embolden you to embark upon your version of what I've been blessed to experience, to do the inside work, to see yourself and all your beauty and character defects more objectively, so you can set a better trajectory to face

• 7:27Rich Roll?

  and ultimately overcome those shortcomings. I hope it will open you to the experience of courage that occurs when you walk through fear, and help you breathe just a little bit more life into the more self-actualized, authentic self within. If you enjoy what is momentarily to follow, you can find the Outside podcast in all the usual podcast places and at outsideonline.com/podcast. I want to thank Michael, Peter, and everyone at Outside for helping share my story, including Beau Greeley for his cover image and wonderful photography. It all means more to me than you guys can possibly imagine. So, without further ado, please enjoy.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Just relax. That is the big idea behind Outside magazine's current issue. And to be honest, it's the kind of "improve your health" message we tend to deliver every January, just like a lot of other media outlets. At the start of the new year, people are looking for guidance on how to meet their lofty resolutions, and we're happy to deliver. Hey, we need it too. But while many past January issues have focused on fitness and athletic performance, this year, we really wanted to help our readers chill out. Our goal was to provide remedies for the frenetic, angst-ridden state of being that we all seem to be experiencing these days. It seems that everyone is constantly overworked.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  We're also bombarded by terrifying news about the climate. We're pickled and angry politics. And we respond by rebooting our nutrition, ramping up our workouts, hacking our time to supercharge our productivity. It's all exhausting and it's not helping. With that in mind, we wanted to create an issue offering alternative strategies that point in the opposite direction, away from all the striving and towards relaxing. From the moment we settled on this plan, we knew who we wanted to put on the cover, Rich Roll, the massively popular podcast host and vegan athlete who is an icon for radical life transformation. Here's someone who has faced addiction,

• 9:39Speaker 01

  who boldly abandoned his career as a lawyer to chase his passion for endurance sports, who found a purpose in his recovery. On his weekly show, Roll interviews everyone from elite athletes to spiritual leaders to bestselling authors, all in the interest of humbly empowering the rest of us to make better decisions. The entrepreneur and life coach Jesse Itzler aptly said that Roll is like the endurance athlete version of Oprah. And so we sent frequent outside contributor Peter Wigner on to Southern California to spend some time with Roll. He started by attending a live edition of the Rich Roll podcast, held in LA's Wilshire Ebbel Theater, where Roll interviewed the environmentalist Paul Hawken. The most memorable moment of that evening

• 10:24Speaker 01

  actually came in Roll's introduction, when he threw out a planned speech and instead read an email he'd gotten from one of his listeners.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  And I thought that it would be good to read this one because the person who sent it to me happens to be here this evening. So bear with me. This is from Ron. Ron writes, hi, Rich. I'm headed to LA tomorrow to join you for the live podcast event and very excited for the experience. We met at the Conscious Capitalism CEO Summit coming on two years ago. We had lunch with a small group and I shared with you afterwards that my 16-year-old son was in treatment for drug and alcohol addiction. You said the greatest thing to me, and that was, wow. What I would have been able to have done with my life if I'd learned the recovery skills

• 11:17Speaker 02

  at 16 versus 40. You wrote 40, it was actually 31. And that comment gave me hope. I also started listening to your podcast on a regular basis, and it has been part of my journey to be a better father, husband, and leader. I get to share that through my involvement as the founder and board chair of Conscious Capitalism, Kansas City, so thank you. Jumping back to this week, my son that I mentioned will be in the audience with me. He is now 18. He's been accepted to LMU in Los Angeles for Fall of 2020. He is at LMU this week, taking part in the dedication of their new Lions for Recovery Center in the Student Union, and speaking on a panel, sharing his story.

• 12:02Speaker 02

  Right? And this is the part that got me. So you were right, and I learned that recovery gives expansion and not contraction. Recovery gives expansion and not contraction. I appreciate you for being a light and inspiration to us to live better lives and create a better world with gratitude. Ron. Ron Hill, are you here? Can you stand up and wave? And your son, Alec. I can't see the crowd, but there you are. Beautiful.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Two days after that event, Bignar went to Rol's home in the Santa Monica Mountains, where he lives with his wife, the vegan cookbook author Julie Pyatt, and the youngest two of their four children. They sat down in Rol's home recording studio to talk about his long journey. He'd grown up in a suburb of Washington DC, where he attended an all-boys prep school. He was extremely hardworking, a strong student, and a top swimmer. He wasn't the kind of kid who got into trouble. That changed, though, when he started getting recruited by college swim teams.

• 13:12Rich Roll?

  Part of the whole recruiting trip thing is you party, right? And like, I hadn't really been to parties in my life, but here I am, going to house parties and going to bars and all this kind of stuff. And that was really kind of my first real introduction to alcohol. And there's a...

• 13:32Rich Roll?

  There was this one time I was recruited to the University of Michigan.

• 13:37Rich Roll?

  The coach at the time is John Arbancheck, still my favorite coach. I think he's like the most amazing swim coach in the world. And Michigan was very much on the rise. And I have a personal family connection to the University of Michigan. My mom went to the University of Michigan and my dad went to law school at the University of Michigan. Everybody in my family and extended family is from Michigan. They're all, they all bleed maize and blue. And my grandfather, who died before I was born, was captain of the University of Michigan swim team. I believe in 1928, if I'm not mistaken. He held an American record in the 150 meter backstroke or yard backstroke, which is not an event anymore, but was at the time.

• 14:17Rich Roll?

  An Olympic hopeful, he barely missed a berth for the, he was, you know, he was like a peer of Johnny Weismuller in that era of swimming. So this is the legacy with which I go on this recruiting trip to the University of Michigan. And there was a dual meet that weekend, which I was able to watch. And then following that, there was a house party. So I'm at this house party with all the swimmers. And there's a keg and it's a good time, you know, happening. And, and I remember, um, you know, being given like a big gulp thing of beer to drink and drinking it. I've got this buzz on and one of the divers,

• 15:03Rich Roll?

  Bruce Kimball, who was, was the second most famous diver in the world at that time, behind Greg Louganis, whose father was the diving coach at the University of Michigan, Dick Kimball, legendary diving coach. Bruce also liked to party and he pulled off right in front of me, the greatest party trick I have ever seen to date, which is, he was holding a cup of beer, keg beer, and from, from, from being flat footed, he jumped in the air and did a, did a backflip, holding this cup of beer and landed and did not spill one drop of this beer.

• 15:41Rich Roll?

  And I just, my mind was blown. I could not believe it. And I just thought, whatever that guy has, I want it. And I was all in. I was like, if that guy can party like that and do what he's done, it was like, I was like, I want to be a part of this community. And like, it was almost like this permission to drink in a way that I felt prior to that was like, not okay. Suddenly, it felt like it was okay, like this is, yeah, like, look at this guy and what he's done with his life. Now, for those that don't know, fast forward to what, you know, happened in the not-too-distant future of Bruce Kimball, which was that he, um, he was drunk and he plowed into, I believe,

• 16:26Rich Roll?

  I don't want to get this wrong, I may have this a little bit wrong, but I believe he plowed into a group of people, drunk driving, killed somebody, went to prison. You know, he basically, you know, was an alcoholic who suffered very dire consequences as a result of being an alcoholic. So what I thought was cool ultimately turned out to be something very dark. And, and I had to experience my own version of that later on.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  But Rich didn't go to Michigan. He chose Stanford, which was another powerhouse for swimmers. It was a big change for a kid from the East Coast, and Rich made the swim team as a walk-on.

• 17:06Rich Roll?

  I arrived on that campus and just fell in love with everything about it. It was so different from growing up in Washington, and there was an openness to it. And it seemed like everybody that I'd met had something unique and cool about them. Like, it was such an incredibly dynamic and supportive environment, and I thrived in it. You know, I felt like I could be myself. I was doing well academically, and I showed up ready to go. Like, I showed up in shape for swimming, because I realized, like, I'm walking onto this team, and I'm going to be training with Pablo Morales and John Moffett and Jeff Kostoff. I mean, these were the absolute legends of the time. Like, and if I expect to be of any value to this team, I've got to earn my spot, and

• 17:51Rich Roll?

  I can't mess around. So my first meet, it was against Texas. We were number one, they were number two, uh, and I almost won the 200 butterfly in, like, my very first dual meet. Against Billy Stapleton, who would kind of famously go on to be Lance Armstrong's agent. It was a very, it was a very positive auspicious start for this young walk-on freshman. Who, by the way, had suffered a cracked rib like the week before because I was drunk at a football game. So, the cracks in the, you know, it's like you could kind of, it was a foreshadowing of what would, of what would soon, you know, come to pass.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  By the spring of his freshman year, Rich was drinking four or five nights a week. But he didn't think he had a problem. This was college, and he felt like he was just having fun. Still, he did start to notice that when everyone else would be headed home, he was the guy staying out. For a time, he says, the drinking eroded his ambition and his self-confidence. His swimming career peaked when he was a freshman. He got slower the next year, and in the spring of his junior year, he quit the team. After that, Rich says he wandered pretty much aimlessly for a long time. He graduated Stanford, and he went to law school, mostly because he didn't know what else to do. He even got engaged, but the marriage ended during the honeymoon, a huge sign that something

• 19:12Speaker 01

  was very wrong with his life. Around the same time, he had moved to Los Angeles to work for an entertainment law firm, and proceeded to get arrested twice in two months for drunk driving. The second time proved to be an important turning point.

• 19:26Rich Roll?

  So, the second DUI that I got, got pulled over, it was like 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, driving the wrong way down a one-way street in Beverly Hills. Get pulled over, blood alcohol tested, .27, I think. Arresting officer confiscates my wallet, like sees my business card in my wallet, realizes that he knows my boss, calls my boss, who is a prominent litigator in Los Angeles who had done a lot of work for the LAPD and the Beverly Hills Police Department over the years. Says, "I picked up one of your boys." So, Monday morning, you know, I go to jail for the night, but I get out of jail and I'm

• 20:11Rich Roll?

  just gonna show up at work, pretend like nothing happened.

• 20:15Rich Roll?

  You know, even though my license has been suspended, this is two DUIs in a row. Like, I'm living in a dreamland, you know, because basically I'm going to jail and I'm pretending like everything's fine. Boss calls me in, says, I got an interesting phone call over the weekend. Like, I don't want to get involved in your personal life, but like, it sounds like, you know, your shit's upside down, dude. Like, and I can't have that. We were preparing for a trial at the time where I was going to second chair of this trial. It was a very intense work period. So he's like, I need you to call this lawyer. This is going to be your guy. And, you know, just solve it. Like, I don't want to hear about it. Of course, this lawyer was extremely expensive.

• 20:57Rich Roll?

  He's like, you know, high-powered, you know, criminal lawyer in Los Angeles. His name was Charlie. And Charlie just gave it to me straight. He's like, you're drunk, you're going to jail. You know, I'm not, I'm not a miracle worker here. Like, you know, look at this on paper. Like, this is what you're giving me to work with? Like, you're going to go to jail, dude. And that really scared me, you know, really, really scared me. Because it was like, the veneers of denial were starting to, you know, fall away. And I was starting to get a picture of the truth of how I was living.

• 21:33Rich Roll?

  And then this really remarkable thing happened, which is the file, the court file for my first DUI, got lost. And I was never prosecuted for that. So that just disappeared and went away out of the blue. Charlie's like, you don't understand, I've been practicing law for 40 years, I've never seen that happen once. So, I go to court for the second one, and I get probation. And basically, you know, my, my license is stripped, you know, I've got, there's things I have to do, and I've got to go to, you know, AA and get court cars and all that. But like, I didn't have to go to jail. It was this gift.

• 22:20Rich Roll?

  That should never have happened. And that's when I realized like, you know, I'm being looked out for. Like something else is going on because that doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Now, that doesn't mean that I was struck sober and never drank again. Like I had a very elegant, you know, nonlinear relationship with recovery for a period of months after that. But ultimately, you know, I reached that point that you hear with other people in recovery, that that that point of no return where you wake up and you finally have the willingness to do whatever it takes. And that's when I ended up in a rehab in Oregon.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Roel was 31 years old when he went to rehab. Initially, he expected to stay at the center for just a couple of weeks. That's not what happened.

• 23:08Rich Roll?

  And when I got there, I just realized that like when the fog started to clear, I just realized the gravity of my situation and how horribly wrong, you know, I had I had gone. And I never wanted to be in this place again. And I really developed the willingness to just do whatever it was going to take to create a foundation of sobriety so that I could, you know, basically reinvent myself. When I started telling the truth and being honest about how I was actually living, they were like, you have a case of alcoholism we typically only see in lifelong drinkers, like 65 year old dudes. And, you know, if you don't figure this out, like you, you're, you're going to die. You know, it's like, this is not a joke.

• 23:51Rich Roll?

  And we think, we know you want to get back into the world and blah, blah, blah, but, you know, and it's your choice, but we really think you should stay longer. And I just said, I'll stay as long as you think I should. And I ended up staying 100 days.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Roel describes his early years of recovery like a mission to fix everything he had broken while he'd been drinking. Went about this with a lot of intensity, but he also ignored other key aspects of a healthy and fulfilling life.

• 24:17Rich Roll?

  And when I got sober, my goal was to

• 24:22Rich Roll?

  Repair all the wreckage that I created as a result of my drinking and using. Like, I had, the fall from grace was so precipitous. Like, I had been this person with all this potential, and I squandered it. And there was so much shame about that. And I was like, I really was intent upon becoming a productive member of society. You know, somebody who, who, who could earn another person's respect and who could show up on time and like, do all this stuff. And that involved repairing the relationship with my family and with friends and all of that. And, you know, I was very dedicated to that, and I was successful in that. So, between 31 and 39, I had bridged that gap. And, you know, successful as a lawyer, you know, in good with my friends and family

• 25:06Rich Roll?

  again, and, and kind of had gotten all this stuff. Like, I was driving a sports car and like, you know, Julie's building this house. And it just all looked really groovy.

• 25:19Rich Roll?

  But, what I, what I, what I hadn't done was enough of the inside work to come to terms with the fact that I was chasing somebody else's life. Even though, in rehab, I was introduced to these spiritual principles about how to live, and I had, and I had grabbed onto those and had made progress. Like, I had figured out a way to no longer use drugs and alcohol and to kind of expand my horizons on the possibilities for my life. I was still very much, you know, in the, in the amateur leagues of, of, of understanding how to apply those principles to my life in a, in a, in a fundamental and tactile way.

• 26:00Rich Roll?

  And I was pursuing this career out of ego and fear and insecurity. Not because it was my, my passion for what I wanted my life to look like. And so... What happened was the pain of that experience caught up to me in the same way that the pain of my drinking and using ultimately did. And it culminated in this evening shortly before my 40th birthday, when I was walking up a simple flight of stairs after a long day of work, and had tightness in my chest and was out of breath. Like, I couldn't walk up a simple flight of stairs without taking a break.

• 26:42Rich Roll?

  And that realization, like, that was another breaking of the denial, because I still thought of myself, "I'm the Stanford swimmer." But I was carrying around 50 pounds extra around the midsection. You know, I didn't really look in the... You know, if I was honest with myself, I was so far away from that human being. Because during that eight-, nine-year period, I was like a workaholic. Like, I wasn't... I was eating, you know, I was just a junk food junkie, and takeout food in the law firm, and not exercising, and just working the 70-, 80-hour weeks and all that kind of stuff in pursuit of this other person's life. And so, the existential crisis kind of collided with this realization about my poor health. And that was the perfect brew, like, you know,

• 27:27Rich Roll?

  this collision of ingredients that created this second moment of reckoning. And I think because I had experienced that by going to rehab and realizing how much my life had changed by making one simple decision, I had enough self-awareness to realize, you know, on that staircase that I was being revisited by a very similar opportunity. And that if I grabbed onto it, perhaps I could make another, you know, big change. Like, this is another bottom, but it's also another opportunity. And I did that, and that's really kind of what set in motion everything that's followed.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  The first big change Rome made after a second moment of reckoning was to overhaul his diet. With the enthusiastic support of his wife, Julie Pyatt, who he'd married just a couple of years into his recovery, he became a vegan. He also began exercising again, swimming and running. It wasn't anything crazy, at least not at first, but he was reclaiming his fitness quickly and feeling good. Soon, he was running five or six miles at a time, and then, very unexpectedly, what was supposed to be another routine run, he just kept going.

• 28:45Rich Roll?

  ... on these trails. And I was just gonna run for 45 minutes or an hour, and I just, I had one of those moments that every runner is familiar with, where you kind of drop into this flow state and you feel bulletproof and like you can run forever, and you know, each mile you feel stronger than than the one before, and I'd never experienced that before. And just decided to go with it, and ultimately ended up running like 24 miles, and you know, four hours I'm out on the trail. It was like, the craziest thing, like, the last thing I thought would happen. And, and another, you know, kind of moment of, you know, realizing that maybe my life could look differently.

• 29:25Rich Roll?

  Like, either these lifestyle changes I've made are more profound than I anticipated, or, and/or, like, I've unlocked this potential, or this gene that was dormant, or that I didn't even know that I had. And, you know, if my journey's been about anything, it's about kind of trusting those whispers and being willing to have faith and invest in those little signals that are just so faint, and yet, potentially, life-altering and meaningful.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  The whispers in this case were clearly telling him to start training harder and with more focus, which he did. He also signed up for his first triathlon. It didn't go so well. He started throwing up during the swim and he wasn't able to finish. And yet, he enjoyed it. So he hired a coach and he began hunting around for another event to enter. He wanted something really, really hard. What he found was Ultraman, which is essentially a double length Ironman around the big island of Hawaii.

• 30:30Rich Roll?

  This race that very few people know about, that had been around for a very long time, and was really more of a spiritual odyssey than an athletic event. Every year, Jane Bockus, the director of this race, would handpick 35 people from all over the world to participate. Not necessarily the best athletes, but people she felt like could benefit the most from having this kind of experience. It's a self-supported race. You bring your own crew. Over this three-day period, you circumnavigate this entire island. It's a race and it's a world championship and there are athletes that are vying for that title. But ultimately, the greater goal is that every single person, athlete and crew

• 31:09Rich Roll?

  member, be transformed as a result of going on this collective three-day caravan. And that really connected with me. And I was like, that's what I'm looking for. Like, that is the experience that I'm missing in my life. And I want to feel like what it would feel like to embark upon something so difficult. Like, it bent my mind that people could actually do this double Ironman thing. It was insane. But once I got comfortable with that, it was like, this is, this is not about a race. This is about like broadening your perspective on who you are and connecting with yourself in a really profound way.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Before he could compete, Rola had to get accepted into the event. His only credential was not finishing a much shorter triathlon. But he called the Ultraman race director anyway, and he told her his story. She didn't say no, though she didn't say yes either. She said maybe, which was all the encouragement Raul needed. So he had a coach, a training plan, and a goal. His biggest challenge, Raul was still a lawyer.

• 32:11Rich Roll?

  I'm working, trying to make a living. I'm training for this race. And this is, look, now the idea of like the digital nomad is so widely accepted. But this was a period of time where the internet was still pretty new, like using it for for much else other than email was not really like that functional. So the the notion that like this lawyer is gonna have to like pull over off his bike and like handle a conference call like in the middle of the day, you know, thinking like everybody's in suits in their offices, like if they could see me now, and I'm trying to play it off like I'm in an like, there was a, it was a shell game for a while. I was living this double life, like I was pursuing this one area, but also trying to hold myself out as this like person who's in the office

• 32:51Rich Roll?

  all day long, have all my stuff in my truck. And, you know, I would, I would just go wash myself off in in gas station bathrooms and, you know, have changes of clothes and have all my training gear with me. So I literally was like camping, sort of, all the time.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  Raul was eventually accepted into the 2008 Ultraman, and he stunned everyone at the event, including himself, by finishing in 11th place overall, and third among Americans. Convinced he could do even better, he signed up again in 2009. But while out on a training ride on his bike in the Southern California hills that spring, he crashed badly, smashing his head and face so hard that even today, he can't feel his lower lip. He still has scars on his face. Raul doesn't remember much from the accident, but he does recall being in the emergency room with his wife and wondering if he should quit.

• 33:45Rich Roll?

  That really made me question, you know, the, the wisdom in what I was doing. Like, I've got kids, like, I'm a lawyer, like, what are you doing, man? You know, like, crack your head wide open? Like, for what? You know, and? You know, it was a, it was a, it was a moment in which I really had to get clear on, on truly what it was that I wanted to do. And Julie said to me, as I was laying in that bed, like, if this was it and it was all done, like, would you do it again? Is this, do you regret it? Like, you know, what do you want your life to be? And I was like, I know, this is what I want to do. She's like, good, then do it. It wasn't that I had answered all the questions that I had for myself, but I felt like my compass was

• 34:25Rich Roll?

  being calibrated somehow. Not in the sense that this was going to be a vocation, but, but there was something about what I was trying to do and what I was pursuing that just felt in alignment. Like, I felt like this is the direction I need to go in. And I have, I can't see past two weeks from now in terms of where this is going to lead me. I just feel convicted that, that the answers that I seek are going to be discovered and revealed by continuing to pull on this thread rather than reverting back to what I know.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  In his next Ultraman, Raul finished the first day leading the field by 10 minutes. Then on day two, he crashed his bike again, and he lost any chance at a podium finish. He struggled on through a lot of pain, and he ended up finishing sixth, beating his time from the year before by two hours.

• 35:16Rich Roll?

  And that was incredible because the challenge of crashing and having to pick yourself back up is really what reveals character. Like, that's the test. Executing a race at the highest level and having everything go your way isn't exactly the learning experience that I was looking for, that I needed. Like, to me, it was a perfect race because I had crashed and I was like, I didn't want to finish the race and my ego was shattered and all of that. I still had to pick it up and finish it. And like, I learned more about myself as a result of that than I ever could if everything had gone my way. So, you know, I love everything about how that ended up. But it still left me thinking, like, I have capacities that I didn't realize that I had.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Pushing the limits of those capacities led Raul to partner with endurance athlete Jason Lester to take on something the two of them dubbed the Epic Five. They'd have him doing five Ironmans on five Hawaiian islands in under a week. There was another inspiring, life-changing experience. Meanwhile, though, real life matters. Things like the responsibilities of earning money and taking care of your home and your family, they were becoming increasingly difficult to manage at the same time. The only reason Raul was able to do it, he says, was because of the strength and dedication of his wife. Even during later years, when they were on the verge of losing everything, Julie's faith in what they were doing never faltered.

• 36:39Rich Roll?

  We went through an extended dark night of the soul. Julie calls it our dismantling. You know, we went through many years of not being able to pay our mortgage. We had our trash bins taken away because I couldn't pay the 60 bucks or 80 bucks or whatever it was. Just putting food on the table was a struggle. We had cars repossessed. Like, it was really challenging and really humiliating. And there were plenty of times where I thought I was insane. How could I, you know, like, I was this person who was in this place, and now I've gone through all of this, and now here I am, and this is what we're dealing with? Like, I must really be insane. Or what is fundamentally wrong with me?

• 37:22Rich Roll?

  And Julie would be like, no. Everything is the way it's supposed to be. And we are burning in the fires because we're being prepared for something else. And I was like, you're insane. You know, I'm very rational. And she has shown me time and time again the limits of that operating system and the expansiveness that can be experienced when you let go of that and allow yourself to live more in integrity with your inspiration and your intuition, which is a very difficult, delicate, ephemeral thing to do. But I really do have to, like, I would not be doing any of these things if left to my own devices.

• 38:04Rich Roll?

  And it was really her strength that gave me the permission to continue to move in this direction.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  From alcoholic to workaholic to plant-powered endurance hero who's willing to risk it all to pursue an enlightened path, it sounds like the making of a hell of a book, which it was. Rohl published Finding Ultra in the spring of 2012. The thing is, though, the book wasn't actually his idea and came from another former swimmer at Stanford who was early in his own addiction recovery when he read a short blurb about Rohl in the Alumni Magazine. He reached out to Rohl because he was looking for people to talk to, people who would understand him. They had regular conversations for months until, at one point, the guy says, "Hey, your story's amazing. You should write a book." As it happened, this person also knew the agent of Dean Karnazis, the superstar

• 38:57Speaker 01

  ultra runner, whose book about his transformation had been a breakout hit. It sounds like another lucky moment in the saga of Rich Roll, but as he sees it, it's also a result of his enduring commitment to addiction recovery.

• 39:11Rich Roll?

  And I look at it as a function of putting sobriety first. You know, like, my only goal was to be of service to this person who was newly sober, you know? And everything good in my life has come as an outgrowth of putting service first and recovery first and just letting, like, sort of allowing whatever else is gonna come, come.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  Rohl also credits recovery for teaching him how to understand and tell his own story and to listen and interpret other people's stories. These are valuable skills when you're writing a memoir or when you go on to create a podcast.

• 39:52Rich Roll?

  What you learn in the secret society rims of recovery that we're not allowed to talk about, you develop a huge capacity for empathy and you learn how to be vulnerable, you learn how to tell the truth, and you learn to listen, and you get practiced in telling your story. You sit and you listen to other people share their story, and you learn from their courage and their vulnerability and their emotional journey. And then it's your turn to go do that. And over the years, you get better, and the story starts to teach you what's important about it and what is impactful and helpful to other people. So... I learned how to share my story in those rooms.

• 40:37Rich Roll?

  I learned to be vulnerable. I learned to be comfortable expressing my truth and my emotions and my weaknesses and failures and the like. All of that comes from recovery. And I think it's interesting that a lot of successful podcast hosts are in recovery. That's not a mistake because you learn, you learn the craft of storytelling and you learn how to emotionally connect with other people. And, and I think that's, that's how I learned how to get up in front of people on stage and how I learned to be a good host and learn how to be a good listener when I have guests.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  On the day Finding Ultra came out, Raul ceremoniously did not renew his bar membership. He was done being a lawyer and all in on this new life, pursuing his passion. It wasn't as glorious as you might think.

• 41:33Rich Roll?

  Hence ushered in a very long extended period of time in which the phone did not ring, which ushered in financial hardship for many years, a lot of uncertainty about what life would look like and doubt. And it made me think, I'm just full of shit. Like I just wrote this book and I talk about all these spiritual principles and how you have to like do the inside work and trust your heart and follow that and all of that. And I'm like, you are so full of shit, man. Look at your life. It's a disaster right now. You're not an example for anything. We were on the precipice of losing our house. Like, you know, the, the material world was kind of collapsing on top of me.

• 42:17Rich Roll?

  And there's this narrative out in the world or on the internet like, oh, Rich writes this book and starts this thing and it's all gravy and like, oh, it was a New York Times bestseller. It was not a New York Times bestseller. It did okay. And it found a little audience, but it wasn't like this book that then just captured the fascination of the world. You know, it wasn't like that at all.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Raul was thrown a lifeline by a wealthy friend who invited him and his family to stay on a property he owned in Hawaii, where he was establishing an organic farm. The friend asked Raul to help him develop some community pieces for the project. They lived in yurts. It was an adventure of sorts, but one that soon gave Raul a case of island fever. In the wake of the book, he was eager to figure out his next thing and hungry for another creative outlet. During his long hours of endurance training, Raul had listened to hours upon hours of podcasts and fallen in love with the medium. Now, he thought, maybe I could do something.

• 43:14Rich Roll?

  And when I looked at the health space, there was some interesting stuff, but I didn't feel like, I felt like there was a lot of opportunity there because there just wasn't that much, you know? And we were in Kauai. We were with my sons, who had all this musical equipment and microphones. I spent a day going online, trying to figure out how you start a podcast. And once I solved that, just turned a microphone on and my wife and I started talking and that was it. You know, and it was fun. And I thought, let's do that again tomorrow.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  From the outset, Raul knew what kind of show he wanted to create. It would be one focused on his guests, not himself. Also, he didn't want to host a podcast that was only for athletes.

• 43:56Rich Roll?

  It was very clear from episode one, like this is not going to be about me and it's not going to be about triathlon. You know, it's like, this is not going to be a training podcast. Like, I've grown to a certain point and there's so much growth to be had. Like, I want to continue to grow and I want to bring on people who can help do that, that I can do that with, who can teach me. And who are those people? And, and how can I create what I would have liked to have discovered 10, 15 years earlier, when I was trying to figure out who I wanted to be? And I felt like I couldn't be anything other than what other people's expectations for me were. What if I could create a curriculum that could empower people

• 44:39Rich Roll?

  to make better decisions about the trajectory of their lives? And that was really the kind of subtext or philosophy that has, you know, kind of empowered the whole, the whole thing.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  Another one of his guiding principles is to avoid labels. Raul isn't totally comfortable with the idea that he's part of the wellness or self-help industries. He says he's really just following his curiosity. His hope is to share conversations that help people to make real lasting changes.

• 45:10Rich Roll?

  I'm trying to catalyze people into action, right? And I think there is.

• 45:15Rich Roll?

  There is something to be said for people that read lots of self-help books and think that they're changing their lives, but they're not actually implementing any of that advice. They're just reading it and then they have a self-awareness like, oh, this person said this, isn't that amazing? And it's like, they're just, they're not making any changes in how they're living. So I am aware of that, but, but I'm constantly talking about action, you know? What are the actions that you're taking? It's not how you feel about things. It's not, you know, the idea that you have about them. It's like, it all boils down to like, what are you doing?

• 45:51Speaker 01

  After launching his podcast, Rich Roll didn't take a break for seven years. Every week, he faithfully uploaded a new episode. Someone who works in podcasting, I can tell you, that is insane. Roll finally recognized this, which is why he just took a month off. He unplugged for all of December, but we did pre-record a number of episodes beforehand, so his podcast kept rolling while he was gone.

• 46:18Rich Roll?

  I think for many years, I've been burning on, I've been sort of fueled by this unsustainable fuel source of like fear and desperation because, because, you know, that, that dark night of the soul and that, that like dismantling was so traumatic. It left me with a PTSD. And now like everything's working and, and like, it's all awesome. But I feel like I'm, I gotta double down. I gotta work hard. I work hard because like it was so hard before that I just don't want to miss this opportunity. And it's taken me a while to realize that like, I don't have to burn so hot, you know, like I have been. And that if I want to keep doing this, I really need to take a break. And I haven't taken a vacation in seven years.

• 47:02Rich Roll?

  And I feel like I really need to do that. So I'm going to go completely off, off radar for an entire month so that I can come back in the new year.

• 47:16Rich Roll?

  So how'd that one go down for you? I can't objectively assess this when the mics are turned around and I'm the one doing the talking. You guys are gonna have to decide for yourself. Something a little bit different. I thought it was cool. Hope you guys enjoyed that. Do me a big favor, show the folks at Outside Magazine a little bit of love. You can find them everywhere at Outside Magazine and you can find the Outside Podcast available in all the usual podcast places and at outsideonline.com/podcast. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the show, subscribe, rate, and comment on it on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify if you're on Android, and YouTube for the visually inclined. Share the show or your favorite episodes with friends or on social media. I love seeing all the screen grabs on Instagram floating around.

• 48:00Rich Roll?

  And you can always support us on Patreon at ritual.com/donate. This episode was produced, written, and edited by Michael Roberts, interview by Peter Vigneron, and music by Robbie Carver, with additional audio engineering and production by Jason Camiolo. I also want to thank Jessica Miranda for graphics, Beau Greeley for portraits, DK for advertising relationships, Georgia Whaley for copywriting, and theme music by Analemma. I love you all. I will see you back here in a couple days. Until then, stay true, be true. Peace. Plants. Namaste.