Take Control Of Your Life & Never Be Lazy Again EP 1280

Dean Karnazes has been named one of the “Top 100 Most Influential People in the World" by TIME magazine, was hailed one of the fittest men on the planet by Men’s Fitness. and was called "A real superhuman" by Marvel Comics fame Stan Lee. An acclaimed endurance athlete and NY Times bestselling author, Dean Karnazes has pushed his body and mind to inconceivable limits. Among his many accomplishments, he has run 50 marathons, in all 50 US states, in 50 consecutive days, he’s run 350 continuous miles, foregoing sleep for three nights. He’s run across the Sahara Desert in 120-degree temperatures, and he’s run a marathon to the South Pole in negative 40 degrees. On ten separate occasions he’s run a 200-mile relay race solo, racing alongside teams of twelve. His long list of competitive achievements include winning the World’s Toughest Footrace, the Badwater Ultramarathon, running 135 miles nonstop across Death Valley during the middle of summer. He has raced and competed on all seven continents of the planet, twice over. In this episode, you will learn:How to craft the life you dream ofHow to celebrate the journey, not the goalWhy you might be financially successful but personally emptyHow to train your mind to push past your limitsFor more, go to: lewishowes.com/1280Kobe Bryant on Mamba Mentality, NBA Titles, and Oscars: https://link.chtbl.com/691-podKevin Hart Breaks Down His Secrets to Success: https://link.chtbl.com/956-podKatherine Schwarzenegger Pratt on the Power of Forgiveness: https://link.chtbl.com/925-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  What's the longest you ran nonstop? 350 miles. 350 miles without sleeping? Yeah, and 81 hours. How does your body keep going after the first night? I just focus on the here and now, and I just tell myself...

• 0:12Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:35Lewis Howes?

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• 1:16Lewis Howes?

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• 1:59Lewis Howes?

  For a limited time, get 20% off the entire InsideTracker store. Just go to inside tracker dot com forward slash School of Greatness for more.

• 2:12Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have Dean Karnazes in the house. My man, so good to see you, man. You're a legend, you're an inspiration. So grateful that you're here.

• 2:23Speaker 00

  It's a paid endorsement here.

• 2:25Lewis Howes?

  You have done some incredible things. I just want to read a few things. You've run 50 marathons in all 50 states consecutive days, 50 days. You've done Death Valley in the middle of the summer and a marathon to the South Pole. How many miles total do you feel like you've run in your life? Do you know?

• 2:41Speaker 00

  You know, back a napkin, probably 100,000, maybe a little more than 100,000.

• 2:45Lewis Howes?

  100,000 miles?

• 2:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:48Lewis Howes?

  What is that? If you could go around the earth, how many times? I don't know, do you even know what that is?

• 2:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a little over four.

• 2:54Lewis Howes?

  Four times around the earth running? That's incredible.

• 2:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:57Lewis Howes?

  And you've been doing it for how long now?

• 3:00Speaker 00

  You know, I started when I was five. But I got into like hardcore ultra marathoning 30 years ago. So coming up on three decades.

• 3:07Lewis Howes?

  Three decades consistently? When you were 30, you got into it, right? When your 30th birthday, you ran 30 miles, is that right?

• 3:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, I walked out of a bar in San Francisco drunk on my 30th birthday. And I was drinking with my buddies. I was doing what you do on your 30th birthday. And at midnight, I told them I'm leaving. They said, let's have another round of tequila to celebrate. And I said, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna run 30 miles to celebrate right now instead. And they looked at me and they said, but you're not a runner. You know, you're drunk. And I said, I am, and I'm still gonna do it.

• 3:35Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 3:36Speaker 00

  And I walked out of the bar. I'll never forget, I didn't own running gear, but I had on these like silk boxer shorts, like these silk underwear. So I peeled off my pants and just threw them down the alleyway and started stumbling south, knowing that Half Moon Bay was 30 miles away. And I thought, just run to Half Moon Bay.

• 3:53Lewis Howes?

  30 miles one direction?

• 3:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:55Lewis Howes?

  And how did you get back?

• 3:57Speaker 00

  Well, you know, I sobered up about 10 miles down. What the hell am I doing? This is not a good idea. But something just felt right, like it was the most... Spiritual moment I've ever had, like it was as though I felt like I was supposed to be where I was, doing what I was doing at that moment in time. It's like God said, you're doing what you're put on earth to do, just keep going.

• 4:21Lewis Howes?

  What was your vision 15 years prior to that? And within those 15 years where you weren't running?

• 4:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, I, I went to college, I went to graduate school, then I went and got a business degree, an MBA, and I, you know, I thought if I had a great job, you know, and a fat paycheck, and stock options, company car, I'm living in San Francisco, I'm a yuppie, if you remember that term. I thought I'd be just so happy, so fulfilled, and I was just hollow inside.

• 4:48Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 4:48Speaker 00

  Oh, I was empty, I, I just, I hated being a business guy. Like, it just didn't, it wasn't part of my composition, it was just so foreign to me. I, I didn't like doing deals, and I was doing a lot of deals, making a lot of cash, and just was miserable. And I think that night it just came to a head, like I,

• 5:06Lewis Howes?

  It was a reflection moment, it was your birthday, it was a decade birthday, you were like, do I really want to do this?

• 5:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was, this woman starts hitting on me that I knew, that was friends with my wife as well. You know, I married my high school sweetheart, I'd never had an affair or anything like that, and she starts hitting on me, and I'm like, you know, I'm married, and she's like, so am I. She shows me her ring, and then she keeps hitting on me.

• 5:27Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 5:28Speaker 00

  And I'm like, I could see the writing on the wall, like, where's my life gonna go? Am I gonna wake up at 50, you know, with, on my third wife, bald, driving a really nice Ferrari or something? Or am I gonna just follow my heart and like, do what I really love?

• 5:41Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:42Lewis Howes?

  But you used to run when you were growing up, right? Didn't you run in high school too some?

• 5:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was, I was a good runner. I ran as a freshman on the high school cross-country team in San Clemente, so just,

• 5:53Lewis Howes?

  Close by.

• 5:53Speaker 00

  Beast town nearby, we won the league championships, and I thought, that's as far as I'm ever gonna take my running.

• 5:58Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 5:58Speaker 00

  You know, yeah, I'm like, I'm over it.

• 6:00Lewis Howes?

  So you didn't want to go into college and run, or?

• 6:03Speaker 00

  No, I didn't harbor any desires. Like, I, you know, I like cross-country. It was a kind of ragtag group of guys, you know, we're like...

• 6:12Lewis Howes?

  Skinny hippies, and yeah.

• 6:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, hippies is what we were. And the track guys, like, there's this track guys, they're running around the track, you know, and they were like lanky and, you know, had really thin shoulders, you know. We were like surfers, a bunch of just grungy guys. We didn't know what the hell we were. We were running on trails, no one knew what that was about. And, you know, my cross-country coach, Benner Cummings, was like this sage, you know. I remember at the finals, the league finals, I was cramping up and I said, "Benner, what do I do? Like, my legs, I'm not sure what's going on, I'm tightening up." He's like, "Don't run with your legs, run with your heart." And I'm like, "Wow, okay, I'll run with my heart." And, uh, and the track guys were all about, "All right," you know, they're yelling and banging on their clipboards. I'm like, "I want to run with my heart, like, I just want to go run on a trail somewhere."

• 6:58Speaker 00

  And just thought, "I don't need it."

• 7:00Lewis Howes?

  Right. How do you switch from when you're in pain, with a cramp in your side, or a cramp in your legs, from shifting your mindset to feeling that pain, to transitioning it into running into your heart?

• 7:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, you, um, you learn to embrace the pain, instead of running from it. And to celebrate the pain, and to value it as an emotion. Like, you know, you want to experience the full range of human emotions. The joyous joys, the super highs, you know, the runner's highs. And the, just the devastating lows, when you're in so much pain, you don't feel like you can take another step.

• 7:36Lewis Howes?

  How do you overcome it, if it feels crippling to you, so that it doesn't stop you?

• 7:41Speaker 00

  You know, there are, uh, levels of pain and levels of where I go when I'm confronting pain. And, you know, some of these runs I've done, you know, I've run hundreds of miles, non-stop, through, you know, multiple nights without sleep, and...

• 7:58Speaker 00

  When the pain gets so intense, you know, you just want it to stop, right? When you're, when you're struggling, you're just, you want it to go away. And you start thinking about where's the next aid station? Where's the next fuel stop? I mean, you just ran a marathon, right? You're at a point, you're counting, you're like, there's mile 13, where's the mile 14?

• 8:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I'm looking for the 15.

• 8:17Speaker 00

  Everything. So I just turn, I just put on the blinders to the future. Anything in the future is irrelevant. And I don't reflect on the past. I just focus on the here and now. And I just tell myself, take your next footstep to the best of your ability. Okay, take your next footstep to the best of your ability. Don't think about when the next aid station is coming. Don't think about the finish line. Don't think about anything except your next footstep. And so it's almost zen-like. It's like you're almost in a trance where you're just saying, next footstep, next footstep. And I'll do that sometimes for five or six hours where that's all I do.

• 8:52Lewis Howes?

  Where you're in pain, though.

• 8:53Speaker 00

  You don't feel, you don't feel anything. You just, you go someplace else and you just say, take your next footstep. And it takes some discipline because your mind wanders. I mean, our minds are so active. We're always thinking about this or that. And I don't let that happen. I always bring myself back to my next footstep. Yeah.

• 9:11Lewis Howes?

  Is there a period of time where you're like, okay, let's say you're experiencing pain in your legs, your lungs for a half an hour. And then you get into this trance, you get in this state. Does it eventually, the pain just goes away where you feel nothing? Or you're just so present, you're in a runner's high? Or what, what happens? How do you transition that pain?

• 9:31Speaker 00

  I think, I think by being in the present, the here and now, and taking your focus away from the pain, just to your next footstep, it just kind of, it amorphosizes. It just kind of, you know, goes into the ether.

• 9:44Lewis Howes?

  You transcend it.

• 9:45Speaker 00

  You transcend it, yeah, yeah. And it's almost like a numbness. You don't feel necessarily good. You don't feel necessarily bad. You just are there. You're just a presence, yeah.

• 9:55Lewis Howes?

  So what would you say you were on a scale of one to 10 on your 30th birthday before you started that run? In terms of self-confidence and self-love? Being 10 being at the highest, one being at the lowest? Where were you that day before the run?

• 10:11Speaker 00

  I was confused. Yeah, I wasn't, I didn't feel a sense of purpose. There was no meaning in my life. I think I was maybe depressed. I mean, now that we understand a lot more about depression, I think that there was an emptiness, a hollowness that just was with me all the time. I couldn't necessarily pinpoint it. You know, I thought I was supposed to be happy. You know, I was, I had a great house, you know, a great car. These things were supposed to bring me happiness. And I think I was so comfortable, I was miserable. So, you know, my self-esteem was not very high. I mean, it was, it's just, it was a turbulent time.

• 10:47Lewis Howes?

  So were you not running or working out at all? Were you doing like a couple of miles here and there? Were you lifting? Were you doing, just kind of hanging out? What were you doing?

• 10:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was, I got into windsurfing. So I was windsurfing, you know, and I was living in San Francisco. And it's good wind, yeah, good wind up there. So I was windsurfing. I wasn't a slacker, but I had a little paunch, you know. I wasn't, I wasn't, no cardiovascular health whatsoever. I remember walking upstairs and I'd get winded, yeah.

• 11:11Lewis Howes?

  So you were comfortable, you were making money, you had the, the physical things on the outside of what the world was looking for, but you felt you had no meaning, no real desire and no purpose? Is that right?

• 11:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I was, my life is rudderless. Like, you know, where's this all leading to?

• 11:28Lewis Howes?

  Just kind of wandering. Do you think it's possible for us to be fulfilled without a purpose?

• 11:34Speaker 00

  If you're highly enlightened, I think so. If you're a monk, yeah, yeah.

• 11:39Lewis Howes?

  Unless that's your purpose, maybe, yeah.

• 11:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, maybe that is your purpose.

• 11:44Lewis Howes?

  But do you think if someone's doing activities in life that doesn't align with their unique talents and their unique desires or their unique vision of life, of who they want to be, can they be truly fulfilled?

• 11:57Speaker 00

  I don't think so, no, I don't. I think that everyone has a desire to be something. And I always tell people, like, when they say to me, "I don't know what I want to do, what I want to be," I just say, "Just take out a pen and script your perfect life. Just say, 'Tomorrow morning, when I wake up, I can be and do anything I want.' Just write down free form. Where would I be living? You know, what would I be doing? You know, get very granular. What kind of car would I be driving? What would make me, like, what would I really love to do if I didn't have to go to work tomorrow and I could just do whatever I wanted?" And you know, like I did this with my son, he's like, oh yeah, I'll be at a in Tahiti at a beach drinking a Mai Tai.

• 12:37Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 12:37Speaker 00

  And then he thought about it and he's like.

• 12:39Lewis Howes?

  After a month, it gets boring.

• 12:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, he kind of thought about that and he's like, you know, I want, I want to be a sportscaster, like I really love sports and it's like, I, I, that's kind of what I want to do. I'm like, and why are you selling commercial real estate?

• 12:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 12:54Speaker 00

  But until you have that, like, what kind of blueprint, you know, if you don't know where you're going, you're never going to get there. So at least you have some idea of like, my perfect life would look like this.

• 13:03Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 13:04Speaker 00

  And you have some idea of the direction you want to move.

• 13:06Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm. So from thirty to forty, you took on a lot of ultra marathon running, right? In the first decade, would you say, was that where you did a lot of it?

• 13:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's been. I keep thinking, you know, I'm going to age out of this.

• 13:22Lewis Howes?

  No, you keep doing it.

• 13:23Speaker 00

  I just ran a hundred miler in Patagonia a couple of weeks ago, so it's, yeah.

• 13:26Lewis Howes?

  Still going.

• 13:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:27Lewis Howes?

  The first decade of doing this though, what would you say was the number one thing you learned about yourself from thirty to forty? Doing the ultras?

• 13:35Speaker 00

  That I was better than I thought I was and I could go further than I thought I could. I think that running teaches you that your limitations are all up here.

• 13:46Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 13:47Speaker 00

  Because if someone had said to me, hey, you're going to go run a hundred miles, I would say, what, you know, over how many weeks or you know, where are the hotels you sleep in along the way? And you prove to yourself that, wow, I did it, like I, I, I did something that I thought was impossible. And for a lot of people, it's a marathon.

• 14:06Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 14:07Speaker 00

  People hear, you know, I say to them, you should run a marathon, they think, no, it's other people that run a marathon, it's never me. I'm like, that's why you should run a marathon.

• 14:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's one of the reasons why I did it. I was, I just turned thirty nine. I remember thinking to myself, it'd be good to do one before I'm forty, right? Just to say I've done it because I've, I've never won, I've had no desire to do a marathon. I've always been a sprinter, like we were talking about before, played football, basketball, that stuff. And three miles was a lot. I would do it as a workout, but I didn't enjoy it.

• 14:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:36Lewis Howes?

  I was like, why am I gonna push myself for 26?

• 14:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:40Lewis Howes?

  You know, it seemed like just not fun or enjoyable.

• 14:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:43Lewis Howes?

  And then I switched it. I watched the LA Marathon a couple of years ago and I was just was so inspired by all the body types, all the age ranges.

• 14:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:52Lewis Howes?

  And people going at every pace, you know, I was like, okay, I don't have to win this thing. I can just enjoy it my first time and see how it is.

• 14:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:00Lewis Howes?

  And see what I learned in that accomplishment of whatever the five or six hours. And it was a powerful lesson to see, you know, how far I could push myself. And I think the challenge is when I would run or try to do longer miles, five or eight miles, which is not long, that's a walk for you, that's a warm up for you. But when I was trying to do those five or eight milers before, I didn't have a strategy. And so I would kind of burn out quickly. I would run it like it was a sprint, get tired, need to walk and think, how am I gonna do this marathon thing?

• 15:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:31Lewis Howes?

  And it wasn't until I created a game plan of saying, I don't need to win. I'm just going to, you know, take it at my pace and, and complete this and have a game plan. It would have became more enjoyable in the process. And I think for anyone who hasn't done, you know, any distances, creating the game plan first and making it more enjoyable, not about the suffering or the pain. And the pain definitely came, but I had a game plan on how to manage it. And that allowed me to get through it. So that's, that's what worked for me at least.

• 15:58Speaker 00

  Did you have a time goal or just to?

• 15:59Lewis Howes?

  I wanted to break six hours, which again is very, it's like you can walk a marathon and do that. But I, for a big guy, you know, I'm 6'4", 240. I was like, my goal was to not get injured. That was the main goal. I was like, I want to be able to walk the next day. Cause I had done 29029 where I kind of tweaked my hip. Cause I pushed it too hard the first time. Then the second time I was fine. I did it. So I was like, I want to be able to walk and be able to work out within a day or two. And I want to be able to finish it within six hours. And I don't want to be in extreme pain where I'm pushing, cause I know my mind will push through an injury and I'll hurt myself.

• 16:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:38Lewis Howes?

  I can, if I'm committed to it, I'll finish it.

• 16:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:41Lewis Howes?

  But it's like, I don't want to be injured and regretting it.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:44Lewis Howes?

  So it's kind of like, let me just get through this and enjoy it. I also said, I want to smile on every mile. So I'm gonna smile every mile.

• 16:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:51Lewis Howes?

  And literally, I was just like so happy to be there. I was like just smiling at people, high-fiving people. I was engaging with the moment.

• 16:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:58Lewis Howes?

  And that made it, like I remember eight, 10 miles, I was like, oh, this is fun. You know, I brought joy to the experience, not this scary suffering, you know, thought that I had had for so long. And I think that allowed me to get through it a lot easier.

• 17:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, you know, it's for you to run a marathon is tough because it's just your size. I mean, you know, you're, the more weight you carry, the bigger you are, the tougher it is. And I mean, I, I really admire that you stuck, stuck to it and, and you're gonna do New York next.

• 17:30Lewis Howes?

  I'm doing New York. Yeah, yeah. So maybe I'll try to get, if I can break 530, I think that'll be a win. You know, be a huge win.

• 17:36Speaker 00

  New York's tough.

• 17:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's a fun journey though. I'm glad I did it because I said, I'm only gonna do one and then I'm done. And then that week, I was like, you know what? My legs feel okay. Let's sign up for New York.

• 17:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:47Lewis Howes?

  And at least do New York and LA and, you know, we'll see from there, but.

• 17:51Speaker 00

  I think you gotta do like a 50 miler as well. So, you know, in LA, in this area, there's some great 50, even a 50K, which is 31 miles.

• 17:59Lewis Howes?

  That sounds more reasonable to me.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  On the trails, it's a, it's a different game. It's, it might take you eight or 10 hours.

• 18:04Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 18:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. The hills are so steep, you can't, even the elite athletes can't run up some of the hills. It's their, what they call unrunnable.

• 18:11Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 18:11Speaker 00

  So you power hike up, yeah.

• 18:12Lewis Howes?

  So you hike, so it's gonna take eight hours?

• 18:14Speaker 00

  Take eight hours.

• 18:15Lewis Howes?

  That seems.

• 18:15Speaker 00

  And you're out there by yourself a lot more. Like the, you know, the LA marathon, San Francisco marathon, New York City marathon, you're surrounded by humanity. When you do like an ultra on the trails, there's a lot of time you're out there by yourself, just in nature. It's a different, it's a different experience, yeah.

• 18:31Lewis Howes?

  It's probably a lot harder because you don't have the cheering and the support and everyone running with you. The solo runner.

• 18:37Speaker 00

  I don't know. I mean, you have moments with yourself, you know, when you're in nature. I mean, you know, you can get enough of most things in life, but never nature. You know, that's one thing you just can never get, me at least, can never get enough of.

• 18:50Lewis Howes?

  What was the biggest lesson you learned from 40 to 50 in that decade of running?

• 18:55Speaker 00

  That I could still keep it up and still be competitive. You know, I was still, I mean, I won the world's toughest foot race we were talking about, the Badwater Ultra Marathon. I was 42. And I mean, that's the most elite of the elite in the sport. And, you know, you hear about like Nadal, who's 35. I think he turned 36. He was just like, amazing. He's been going for so long, which is amazing. But here are there ultra marathoners in their mid 40s that are, you know, winning these races. Yeah.

• 19:25Lewis Howes?

  And then, how old are you now?

• 19:27Speaker 00

  Ah, I'm closer to 60 than 50.

• 19:29Lewis Howes?

  Closer to 60. So in this decade from 50 to where you are now, what's been the biggest lesson?

• 19:35Speaker 00

  From running itself or just? That the history of ultra marathoning has been around a long time. So I'm 100% Greek and I started studying classics. And I started learning about the ancient Greeks and how they had these foot heralds called Hemerhal me that were essentially a faster internet. The Greeks realized that in the mountainous and, you know, rocky and steep and hot terrain of southern Greece, a man could outrun a horse.

• 20:07Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 20:08Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 20:09Lewis Howes?

  Huh.

• 20:09Speaker 00

  Literally.

• 20:10Lewis Howes?

  How is that possible? Because the horse would just get too tired, too big?

• 20:13Speaker 00

  Yep, yep. I've outrun a horse. I've done a 100 mile foot race in Vermont against a horse and I beat the horse.

• 20:19Lewis Howes?

  Because the horse just got tired and stopped?

• 20:21Speaker 00

  The horse, you know, they can't dissipate heat. There's a lot of theories about it. They can't dissipate heat because they have fur in our hair where we breathe and we can sweat, you know, and we get that evaporative cooling where they don't have that. So that's one reason. Yeah, I mean, obviously a horse can out sprint us, but in the long run, a man can outrun a horse.

• 20:39Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 20:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:41Lewis Howes?

  So the man in Greece would run and what was the process?

• 20:45Speaker 00

  They were like literally the faster internet. So they could dispatch these heralds all around to like gather intelligence, disseminate information.

• 20:54Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 20:55Speaker 00

  So if they got invaded by like the Persians invaded at Marathon, you know, in 490 B.C., instead of the Persian cavalry being able to get out there quicker, they sent this Greek runner, Vitepides, that outran these horses and got to Sparta. And if you've seen 300, you know the, so he tried to recruit the Spartans to come help the Athenians and he ran 153 miles. And, you know, Herodotus says he arrived the day after setting up, which is like sub 36 hours.

• 21:25Speaker 00

  And I thought, how could a guy do this 2,500 years ago? You know, he didn't have hokas.

• 21:29Lewis Howes?

  No shoes, yeah.

• 21:29Speaker 00

  No hokas, yeah, he was eating, you know, figs and he was foraging all along. He didn't have a headlamp at night, I mean, how did he navigate? It was just amazing to learn about, you know, the history of endurance.

• 21:41Lewis Howes?

  Wow. What would you say is the thing you think about the most when you go out on your runs today? What's, is there a reoccurring thought that brings you joy? Is there a thought that makes you suffer? Is there anything you think about more consistently?

• 21:59Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, I've come to the age where it's just gonna suck when you start out.

• 22:05Lewis Howes?

  Just getting going.

• 22:06Speaker 00

  Just getting going. And anyone realizes that, you know, sometimes the biggest challenge is just to get out the front door. You know, so.

• 22:12Lewis Howes?

  Put the shoes on and start going.

• 22:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I've got the self-discipline now. I can get out the front door, but I just know that, okay, this first mile is gonna hurt like it never used to. Like, it used to be springy on the first mile. Now you're gonna have to warm up.

• 22:24Lewis Howes?

  Really, you gotta stretch, you gotta warm up.

• 22:26Speaker 00

  I've never warmed up, I've never stretched, I've never done foam rollers, I haven't done anything. And, and so now, there's just kind of that expectation, it's gonna hurt a little bit when you start out. But, you know, the, the joy is still there. I still feel the magic of running. And it's that high that, it's like a drug, but it's a good drug, right? There's, there's no repercussions, right? I mean, there's, there's no withdrawal symptoms, I mean, kind of withdrawal symptoms, you just miss it. But it's not like, you know, an actual drug where you, you know, you're going to the, to with, actual withdrawal. So, I don't see any downside to running, you know?

• 23:04Lewis Howes?

  What about the, there's some science coming out there saying that running that far in your body, older in life, is gonna hurt yourself. It's gonna make, you know, give yourself more pain or hurt the joints or the knees, the hips, these things, which could be harder to extend your life. Have you heard any of this information out there, seen this science?

• 23:26Speaker 00

  No, I mean, I've heard of, you know, telomeres extending when you are an endurance athlete.

• 23:32Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 23:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, oh yeah. Yeah, it's one of the best ways to preserve your telomeres is through

• 23:40Speaker 00

  aerobic exercise.

• 23:41Lewis Howes?

  What about joint, joint functionality?

• 23:44Speaker 00

  I don't subscribe. You know, some people say you only have so many foot strikes in your life and then, you know, your, your joints are gone, but I don't subscribe to that at all. I mean, I know that's not true.

• 23:53Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 23:54Speaker 00

  So, I think that when you can, when you go to the LA Marathon, for instance, you know, if you stood at that finish line long enough, you'd see 70, 80 year olds coming through the finish line.

• 24:02Lewis Howes?

  It's amazing, yeah.

• 24:03Speaker 00

  And compared to their peers, their joints are, you know, they have less osteoarthritis, they have less rheumatoid arthritis, they're in much better shape, so I, I think we're made to move, made to run, yeah.

• 24:16Lewis Howes?

  Are you doing any lifting as well, or any other type of exercise, or mostly running?

• 24:21Speaker 00

  No, I mean, my whole day is exercise, literally. I mean, I view my life through the lens of being the best animal I can be, and that is, involves my training, my cross training, my sleep, obviously my interpersonal relationships, which I think are really important. I think that a lot of athletes overlook that if you have turbulent interpersonal relationships, it impacts, negatively impacts your performance. So, I try to optimize all of these things. And one thing I've learned is that I, I don't, I do not sit down, like, my, when I'm at home, I mean, I had to, you know, sit down here because I had to get a flight and fly down here, but during the normal course of a day, when I get out of bed, I don't, I don't sit until I get back into bed, so.

• 25:06Lewis Howes?

  Even for meals?

• 25:07Speaker 00

  Nothing. Yeah, my whole house and my home office is all engineered for standing. So, all my writing is done standing, and then I have this HIIT training routine I do, which mainly body weight, with pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups, chair dips.

• 25:24Lewis Howes?

  Squats, yeah.

• 25:25Speaker 00

  And burpees, which.

• 25:26Lewis Howes?

  Oh, I know.

• 25:28Speaker 00

  So, I do those, I probably do five or six, sometimes seven sets of that throughout the day. It's about a 12 to 13 minute HIIT routine, and it's, you know, the pull-up bar is right outside my house, so I like to exercise outside. So, I go do body weight exercise mostly, so not, not so much weights. Yeah. Does that answer your question?

• 25:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and then how much are you running a day? Just depends on the day.

• 25:52Speaker 00

  It depends on the day, yeah. Yeah, it depends if I have a training block, if something's coming up. But, you know, a lot of times I'm racing so much that I'm kind of, I'm racing and then I'm recovering and then I'm kind of tapering for the next race and then I'm racing, so.

• 26:09Lewis Howes?

  It's always.

• 26:09Speaker 00

  Sometimes it's like every weekend I'm running a race, yeah, yeah.

• 26:13Lewis Howes?

  Did you always know how important sleep was for performance and recovery in your 30s? Or was that something more you've learned in the last 10 plus years?

• 26:24Speaker 00

  Very much the latter.

• 26:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 26:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was kind of known as a guy who like sleeps three to four hours a night.

• 26:30Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  And I would do that for months on end. And I, you know, sometimes I'd feel tired and I'd just think that's because you haven't exercised enough. So, yeah, I really.

• 26:40Lewis Howes?

  Just push through it.

• 26:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly, yeah. Push through the sleep by exercising.

• 26:44Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh. What do you think that did to your body for those years?

• 26:49Speaker 00

  I think I could have, you know, hindsight's 2020, right? I mean, I think I could have done a lot of things differently that I would have been healthier. I mean, I used to think that when I first started ultra marathoning, that just any sort of calorie was a calorie.

• 27:02Lewis Howes?

  Pizza, ice cream, cookies, didn't matter.

• 27:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I've never lived on the story of ordering a pizza. You know, I was doing this 12-person, 200-mile relay race.

• 27:11Lewis Howes?

  But you ran it by yourself.

• 27:12Speaker 00

  But I had 11 friends, so, yeah. So I was stuck out in the middle of the night on this backcountry route and there was no food. I, there was nothing around, but I had a Motorola flip phone. Remember those? Oh, you don't remember those?

• 27:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course, no, I remember.

• 27:24Speaker 00

  And a credit card. And I ordered a pizza and had the guy deliver it to me and, you know.

• 27:28Lewis Howes?

  You said, hey, I'm running on this highway, drop it off here in 30 minutes.

• 27:32Speaker 00

  I told him where I'd be, yeah. And like, I'll be on, he's like, what house are you in? I'm like, I'm not, I'm running. He's like, well, how will I find you? Like, I'm the only guy. It's 11 o'clock at night with a headlamp, running on the side of the road on this country, this backcountry road, so.

• 27:46Lewis Howes?

  Wow, so he delivered it, whole pizza, did you eat the whole thing and did you run and eat it? Were you walking?

• 27:51Speaker 00

  No, I mean, I told him, don't slice it and make it with a really thin crust.

• 27:56Lewis Howes?

  So you could eat a lot of this?

• 27:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I said also Hawaiian style. I know it's kind of controversial these days with pineapple on my pizza, but I said, I thought pepperoni would be too spicy. So I ordered Hawaiian style and I just rolled it into this big Italian like burrito.

• 28:10Lewis Howes?

  That's amazing, he just ate it.

• 28:13Speaker 00

  It got all over me, but it was so good. Yeah, I had a whole pizza, but I mean, people say, how do you eat a pizza and run? I was running for 45 hours. You know, when was the last time you ran for 45 hours? There's only so many gel packs you can eat, you know.

• 28:25Lewis Howes?

  Right, your stomach is, you need that thing. Forty-five hours you ran?

• 28:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:30Lewis Howes?

  What's the longest you ran non-stop? I mean, without stopping to go to the bathroom, but not stopping?

• 28:36Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, in one, like I've run across America, so I've run 20 or 3200 miles, but I've run-

• 28:41Lewis Howes?

  Without sleeping, I should say.

• 28:42Speaker 00

  350 miles.

• 28:43Lewis Howes?

  350 miles without sleeping?

• 28:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, in 81 hours.

• 28:47Lewis Howes?

  Eighty-one hours?

• 28:47Speaker 00

  Eighty hours and 44 minutes, yeah.

• 28:50Lewis Howes?

  350 miles?

• 28:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:52Lewis Howes?

  How far is that? That's like LA, LA, that's like LA to San Francisco? What is that now?

• 28:58Speaker 00

  It's pretty, it's pretty close. It's like Ventura to San Francisco.

• 29:01Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's incredible.

• 29:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. It was interesting because the second night without sleep-

• 29:07Lewis Howes?

  What is that, three, four days?

• 29:08Speaker 00

  It was three nights without sleep.

• 29:10Lewis Howes?

  Three nights without sleep? How did your body keep going after the first night?

• 29:15Speaker 00

  I can run through one night without sleep, no problem. I can run through two nights, no problem. The third night got a little dicey, yeah.

• 29:23Lewis Howes?

  You're getting loopy probably at that point, right?

• 29:25Speaker 00

  Well, I woke up one time in the middle of the road and I'm like, why am I running down the middle of the road? Like, I know better than to do this. So I kind of meandered over the shoulder and then it happened again. I, I'm running down the middle of the road. I'm like-

• 29:38Lewis Howes?

  Oh, you weren't even, you fell asleep running?

• 29:39Speaker 00

  I was asleep. I willed myself to keep going, yeah.

• 29:43Lewis Howes?

  So your eyes kind of fell asleep while you're just jogging?

• 29:45Speaker 00

  While I'm jogging.

• 29:46Lewis Howes?

  And you weren't even aware where you were?

• 29:47Speaker 00

  No. Remember cramming for like a final, it's like, you know, you do the head bob? It was one of those things. I'm just running and- And I wake up going, Jesus, I'm running.

• 29:57Lewis Howes?

  How do you train your mind to push through three nights of no sleep and 350 miles consistently? How do you go to a place in your mind that says, I'm gonna keep going even though this seems crazy?

• 30:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, people say, what do you think about? And I don't. I mean, thinking is what gets you in trouble. Because you start thinking, you start doing the math, you start thinking, this is insanely impossible. Like, this will never work. So you don't, you don't think. You just execute by taking your next step.

• 30:28Lewis Howes?

  And you do that for 80 hours? How do you not think for 80 hours, though? Do you, do you look and see the landscape? Are you thinking about relationships in your life? Or, or none of that comes into place? You're just thinking, next step, next step, for 80 hours?

• 30:47Speaker 00

  Early on, you think about all the things you just mentioned. You know, you look at the landscape, you watch the beautiful sunset, the moonrise. You see all these things. But as you progress, you, you start seeing less and less. You just start being a presence. I mean, you literally lose your, you go, you lose every sense of being. You're, you're just something moving along down the road. The third morning that I, you know, after sleep running, it was dawn and the sun's coming up. I'm still a little groggy, as you can imagine.

• 31:15Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 31:15Speaker 00

  And I see like a praying mantis down below my feet. I'm looking down at this stick figure, this bug, like, like an army man, kind of moving along. I'm like, what the heck is that? And it dawned on me, that's, that's me. Like, I think I had an out of body experience. It was as though I was in a helicopter, like a hot air balloon, looking down on this thing. And I'm like, that's me.

• 31:39Lewis Howes?

  So you'd actually see a praying mantis?

• 31:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm looking, it wasn't, there was no praying mantis. It was like, it was this figure between my feet.

• 31:45Lewis Howes?

  It's an hallucination?

• 31:46Speaker 00

  It was like, and then when I tuned in on that image, it's like, oh, that's me down there.

• 31:51Lewis Howes?

  You're a truly out of body experience.

• 31:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think so.

• 31:55Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 31:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:56Lewis Howes?

  What is the most spiritual experience you had while running?

• 31:59Speaker 00

  You know, this gets a little sentimental, but I had a kid sister who was like my best friend, Perry. And she was killed in a car accident on her 18th birthday. And I was a couple of years older and... I still, I talk to her a lot. It's funny, that's the only time, like, I really, like, seem like I'm connecting with her.

• 32:17Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 32:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, vividly, vividly.

• 32:20Lewis Howes?

  Your kid's sister?

• 32:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, and this is, you know, I mean, I was 21, so I'm not, you know, I'm closer to 60 than 50 now, so this is many, many decades ago, and we still.

• 32:31Lewis Howes?

  You have a conversation with her?

• 32:32Speaker 00

  We have a conversation, yeah.

• 32:34Lewis Howes?

  What do you talk about?

• 32:35Speaker 00

  All kinds of things. We talk about, she knew my wife Julie, because Julie was my high school sweetheart. She asked how Julie's doing. She said, are you worried about mom and dad? They're getting, because my parents are still around.

• 32:45Lewis Howes?

  This is your younger sister?

• 32:46Speaker 00

  My younger sister.

• 32:47Lewis Howes?

  Wow, so she died when she was 18, you said?

• 32:49Speaker 00

  She was 18, I was 21.

• 32:51Lewis Howes?

  Oh, wow.

• 32:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:53Lewis Howes?

  So you have these conversations with her?

• 32:55Speaker 00

  Conversations, yeah.

• 32:57Lewis Howes?

  That's beautiful. Would you say every week you have these conversations, or?

• 33:00Speaker 00

  No, no, this during longer runs, and it's usually when, um, like I said, I was just in Patagonia, running a 100 mile race. And, you know, it's South America, and it's very different than, than running, like, in the San Gabriel Mountains or anywhere around here. And we had a lot of conversations. You know, like, wow, look at this, I mean, it's so different here. And we, I saw some, I thought they were llamas, they're alpacas. And I said, you know, these things are so treppy looking.

• 33:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 33:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:27Lewis Howes?

  What is the biggest, uh, lesson she's taught you in these conversations?

• 33:32Speaker 00

  To do what you love. It always comes back to, I'm so, she's so proud of me, like, you, you, like, you actually did what you love and you're still doing it. This is, yeah, because she always, she was very whimsical. And I thought she was impractical. I'm like, come on, you, you know, you can't conduct your life like this. But she was, like, so smart, but she never studied. And she was so, like,

• 33:58Speaker 00

  wise, but, yeah, she was like a force, and, uh, I, I didn't know how she got through a day. She was just always, like, looking at flowers, and I'm like, she, her mind is somewhere else, like, she, and she's so, she so appreciated beauty. She would look at things and say, wow, isn't that beautiful? And I would like, it's a tree, come on, there's gold. Yeah.

• 34:20Lewis Howes?

  Wow, was it just you and her, or did you have other siblings?

• 34:23Speaker 00

  I have a brother as well.

• 34:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, a younger brother, a year younger, but we weren't as tight, like, he's a different kind of guy than me.

• 34:29Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 34:31Lewis Howes?

  So decades later, you still have these conversations. That's pretty interesting. Would you feel like you're more connected to her spirit now than when she was alive?

• 34:38Speaker 00

  You know, I mean, I do. And whether this is a construct in my own mind, you know, whether I'm actually connecting with someone. But I've kept her alive, you know? And she's always, she hasn't aged, which is so funny. I'm always talking to this 18-year-old. Well, she's like Socrates, and she's 18 years old, and it's the same figure. Yeah.

• 35:01Lewis Howes?

  That's pretty interesting. I like that. I mean, my, you know, something's coming up for me because my father passed in February this year, and I feel like I'm more connected to him now than when he was alive. And I have conversations with him, I speak to him, so. But I never had anyone close to me pass away until recently. And so it's, it's been interesting to have that experience and see the best of him consistently, you know, in that spiritual space. So that's kind of interesting. Does she just come to you? Is it more she's running alongside you? Or is she just kind of in your thought while you're running?

• 35:37Speaker 00

  No, we have actual conversations. And it's, it's not.

• 35:40Lewis Howes?

  She's with you, she's like there.

• 35:41Speaker 00

  She's with me, and I don't know why it happens. Like, I don't, I kind of, because I'm like thinking to myself, am I crazy? Like, am I losing my mind? And this is where I'm headed for the insane asylum. Like, where's the finish line here? But I don't, she just pops in. Like, it's not, I'm trying to think, am I set? Is there some kernel that I'm planting that's like bringing this on? But it doesn't, it just randomly happens at times when you would otherwise not think it. You know, it just, yeah. I don't know why it happens, yeah.

• 36:09Lewis Howes?

  That's pretty cool. Usually on the longer runs.

• 36:11Speaker 00

  It's usually the longer runs. And it's always, it's always in the wilderness, you know, in the mountains.

• 36:17Lewis Howes?

  When you prepare for a, a big race, a big ultra.

• 36:23Lewis Howes?

  Hundred plus miles, even though that might seem like a five K to you now, a hundred miler. But when you're preparing for something a hundred plus, or a day long plus, how does your mind prepare? You know, the week before, the day before, right before the start of it, where do you go mentally? Or is at this point, you're just so automatic, you just, I know what to eat, I know how to train, I know how to sleep, I just show up and I just do it.

• 36:50Speaker 00

  No, I still think about it quite a bit, yeah, and I try to prepare.

• 36:54Lewis Howes?

  A game plan, a strategy.

• 36:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, a game plan, you know, you plan for the best, but, I mean, you hope for the best, but you plan for the worst, so I'm always, worst case scenario, do you have a backup? Like this run in Patagonia, this is crazy, but I took three flashlight, three headlamps.

• 37:09Lewis Howes?

  Cause if one goes down, you're screwed.

• 37:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're screwed. All three of them, like, two of them didn't turn on.

• 37:15Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 37:16Speaker 00

  I couldn't believe it, I'm always like, have a backup plan for your backup plan. Okay, here's my back, no worries, I got another flashlight. Did not work, yeah.

• 37:24Lewis Howes?

  All three?

• 37:25Speaker 00

  All three of them.

• 37:26Lewis Howes?

  Didn't work?

• 37:27Speaker 00

  Did not work.

• 37:28Lewis Howes?

  Did you check the batteries beforehand and make sure?

• 37:30Speaker 00

  I did everything, I mean, I did every, I charged, like, two of them, one was, two of them were with batteries, and the other was, you charged it, so I charged it in the hotel all night, so it was fully charged, I knew to do that. None of them worked, yeah.

• 37:45Lewis Howes?

  Wow, so what did you do? When everything goes wrong, when you have a backup plan and that goes wrong, how do you keep going?

• 37:52Speaker 00

  I made, with two guys who found me out there, who didn't, my Spanish is horrible, these guys didn't speak any English, I did, you know, hand signaling, and they said, sure, and they kind of escorted me, so we all ran together with the power of their headlamp behind me, you know, they knew how to do it. And I'm talking about ten miles through single track in Patagonia in the middle of the night, so it was, you know, it was really skilled, because, you know, I wanted to go a little bit faster than they were going, but it's like, I'm not.

• 38:19Lewis Howes?

  But you had to go slower than them.

• 38:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I mean, I'm so grateful. Anyway, they got me to the next aid station, and they went and started talking to some people, and there was a guy there, another aid station volunteer, was a mountaineer, and he had a headlamp, and he just gave me his, I mean, these are, these are, these are people out in, you know, these are not rich people.

• 38:39Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 38:40Speaker 00

  I mean, I don't know how long it took this guy to work to buy this headlamp. So I want, I try to give my headlamps, like here, these are good, you just, he wouldn't have it. He would not, and I just, at a point, I said, you know what, it's, he's giving to me, accept it.

• 38:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 38:56Speaker 00

  And he gave me his headlamp, and the thing lasted through two nights.

• 38:59Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 39:00Speaker 00

  I couldn't, yeah, it lasted, well, no, um, just three batteries were in there, it lasted through two nights.

• 39:05Lewis Howes?

  And all three of yours didn't work?

• 39:06Speaker 00

  All three of them, go figure that. So anyway, that's a long-winded answer to your question. I do plan. But, uh, you know, when I'm at the starting line, uh, I used to get very nervous.

• 39:19Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 39:19Speaker 00

  And now, yeah, I mean, even, even at a marathon, I get nervous. But now I just have the same commitment that, you know, I'm going to be the best that I can be today. Like, I'm gonna lay it all out, I'm not gonna leave anything on the course. Like, I'm gonna be the best, Dean, and I'm gonna give it my all, and even if I fail, I'm gonna not fail because I'm gonna have given it everything I've got. There's gonna be no compromising.

• 39:43Lewis Howes?

  But you're, but you're one of the most incredible runners in the world. How do you still get nervous?

• 39:48Speaker 00

  I think it's a good thing. I never take it for granted, you know? Yeah.

• 39:53Lewis Howes?

  Wow. That's incredible, man. So you're still nervous. How do you calm your nerves then, before a big race?

• 40:00Speaker 00

  I just, again, it's just coming back to the, the fact that I can't, there's so many things you can't control. It's very, you know, it's maybe stoic, but, you know, you can't control the weather, you can't control the competition, you can control yourself. So my commitment is just, Dean, you're gonna give it your all today. You know, whatever happens, you might win, you might fail, but you're not gonna walk away without giving it your all. You know, they're gonna carry you out of here on a stretcher.

• 40:23Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 40:24Speaker 00

  You're gonna fight to the very end. Yeah.

• 40:26Lewis Howes?

  Is that what it takes for you to stop being like carried out on a stretcher? It's happened before.

• 40:32Speaker 00

  Really? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's my fight, you know, I mean, I'm not a UFC fighter, and, you know, I see what those guys do, I couldn't do that. But I will run until it beats me or I beat it.

• 40:44Lewis Howes?

  Have you ever broken any leg, uh, you know, bones in your legs, your feet?

• 40:48Speaker 00

  Just a rib, just a rib.

• 40:51Lewis Howes?

  Running?

• 40:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, I mean, I had a, a little skirmish with a tree root. I got my foot stuck under one and went over the handlebars and landed on a rock in Colorado.

• 41:01Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 41:02Speaker 00

  And it just broke one of my ribs.

• 41:04Lewis Howes?

  But have you ever fractured your feet or toes or just like swollen and?

• 41:09Speaker 00

  You know, it's funny. I've never had a running related injury of any sort. Yeah.

• 41:14Lewis Howes?

  You get on a bicycle though, you get hurt, huh?

• 41:17Speaker 00

  Probably would. Yeah. Tried to drive a car, I'd get hurt. I sold my car like 10 years ago.

• 41:23Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 41:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:24Lewis Howes?

  You just run everywhere?

• 41:25Speaker 00

  I run everywhere.

• 41:26Lewis Howes?

  Grocery store, you run to the grocery store?

• 41:28Speaker 00

  I have different sized packs depending on what I'm gonna do, like what kind of errand I'm gonna run. Yeah.

• 41:34Lewis Howes?

  But you don't run in a car. You actually run the errand?

• 41:37Speaker 00

  I run the errand. Yeah, literally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, I used to think people would think I was weird. Like if I have a meeting in San Francisco, I live about an hour and a half north in a place called Marin County. So I leave an hour and a half early and I just, you know, use the bathroom, kind of sponge off.

• 41:52Lewis Howes?

  An hour and a half run north, you mean?

• 41:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I run to San Francisco, have a meeting. And I used to think people would think it's weird that I'm walking in kind of sweaty, you know, with a running pack. And they're like, you ran here? No shit.

• 42:04Lewis Howes?

  From Marin County? Yeah.

• 42:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And then I run home. So.

• 42:07Lewis Howes?

  That's amazing.

• 42:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:09Lewis Howes?

  So no car. Do you take a bike anywhere or no?

• 42:12Speaker 00

  No, I mean, I have this thing called an elliptigo, which is like a standing, it's like a standing bike. Elliptigo. Like, it's kind of a weird name.

• 42:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's like a standing.

• 42:22Speaker 00

  It moves, but the handlebars are like bike handlebars, but you, it's more like a running motion.

• 42:27Lewis Howes?

  Yes, I know. I've seen this.

• 42:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're kind of weird. They look like a big praying mantis, but I wouldn't know. It's more like a running motion. It's a good cross training.

• 42:34Lewis Howes?

  So you do that and you run and you walk?

• 42:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:38Lewis Howes?

  And you'll take a plane?

• 42:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:40Lewis Howes?

  And a taxi every now and then?

• 42:41Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, I was sponsored by Volkswagen and it came time to renew our agreement. And I'm like, you know, guys, I don't feel good about this. Like, why? You're killing it. And I'm like, look at the car. It's got 2,000. I've had it for a year. It's got 2,000 miles and most of that was just driving to the airport and back.

• 42:59Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 42:59Speaker 00

  And like, I can't, I don't feel very good about this. Like I, I can't promote a car if I don't drive. So, and I thought, you know, this is, we all talk about what we can do for the environment. Like here's something tangible I can actually do is I'm not gonna drive. And people say, well, I could never do this. It'd be so inconvenient. Yeah, it's, it's very inconvenient. Yeah. But I've adjusted my lifestyle to make it that way.

• 43:23Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 43:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:25Lewis Howes?

  When you think about failure, how do you overcome the thought around failing at anything you're doing?

• 43:31Speaker 00

  I think again, it's that commitment that just you I'm gonna give it my all. And I'm gonna go out fighting, even if I fail, yeah.

• 43:38Lewis Howes?

  And do you ever doubt yourself?

• 43:40Speaker 00

  All the time.

• 43:41Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 43:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, all the time.

• 43:42Lewis Howes?

  How do you overcome that self doubt?

• 43:44Speaker 00

  Drive, I think, yeah.

• 43:47Lewis Howes?

  When you doubt yourself, is it, well, I'm just so driven to make this happen? Or see what if I can make this dream come true that it's more powerful than the self doubt? Where it doesn't hold you back or what does that do?

• 44:01Speaker 00

  It motivates me, it motivates, I mean, I've had some success in my life. But I I grovel every day, like every morning I get up like, how the hell am I gonna make a living today?

• 44:11Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 44:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, how am I gonna have an impact? Like I'm nothing, like you get out there and do something, make something of yourself. Yeah, I don't I don't know why I feel that way.

• 44:21Lewis Howes?

  But you've had so many massive successes and broken so many records and impacted so many lives. Why do you feel that at this age?

• 44:28Speaker 00

  Maybe it's imposter syndrome, I don't know, I've I've analyzed it a bit, you know? I think that, you know, success is is is is simple, is is being all you can be. Right? If you if you're if you really believe you're all you can be, then you're successful. And maybe I think that I could be more, you know, that I'm letting myself down.

• 44:49Lewis Howes?

  What more could you be?

• 44:51Speaker 00

  Oh, I've got dreams, you know, I mean, I I just finished a a movie script. I mean, this sounds so crazy. Yeah, it's about Socrates.

• 44:58Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 44:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it's a it's a modern telling of Socrates.

• 45:02Lewis Howes?

  So you just wrote a movie script?

• 45:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I mean, it is it is based on Socrates' life, so it's a retelling. It's based on like literally heroditus, so it's based on historic record.

• 45:13Lewis Howes?

  Interesting, but more from modern day or back then?

• 45:17Speaker 00

  That's the that's the irony of the thing, when you read it, it's it's hard to tell. Because I mean, they're talking about democracy failing and how it can be better. I mean, and and you and you read about like there's, you know, we need to free the slaves, women need equal rights. They were talking about this 25, 100 years ago.

• 45:34Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 45:35Speaker 00

  And so you read it and you're like, hold it, these are the same things we're like discussing today. Literally, yeah, it's the same topics, yeah.

• 45:44Lewis Howes?

  Who the, which philosopher and ancient philosopher are you most inspired by? Is it Socrates?

• 45:50Speaker 00

  Socrates or, there was a, a guy named Aeschylus who fought in the Battle of Marathon.

• 45:56Lewis Howes?

  Okay, Aeschylus.

• 45:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:58Lewis Howes?

  What's his story?

• 46:00Speaker 00

  Uh, he was, he was a playwright. He was a, uh, tragedian, they call him, writing tragic, tragic plays. And he just has a lot of great quotes, you know, like, uh, "Men seek God and seeking find him." So it's all about this, that you, you find God when you seek. So, I mean, he, he, Aeschylus is, yeah, with an A.

• 46:22Lewis Howes?

  Aeschylus with an A.

• 46:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:23Lewis Howes?

  Aeschylus with an A, okay.

• 46:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:25Lewis Howes?

  I'll check him out. That's interesting. What's the greatest lessons that Socrates or Aeschylus has taught you?

• 46:30Speaker 00

  You know, Socrates, I mean, I, I could go on and on about Socrates, but, you know, he said, "The only, the only thing I know is that I know nothing at all."

• 46:40Speaker 00

  Which he just had an open mind like that, yeah. He said, "It's, um, it's, it's better to suffer wrong than do wrong." He, he did no wrong. There's no such thing as revenge.

• 46:51Lewis Howes?

  It's better to suffer wrong than to do wrong. What does that mean for you?

• 46:55Speaker 00

  That means that it's a theory of revenge. I mean, it's, it's so, Greeks were so conflicted because, you know, here you have like, uh, Odysseus and Troy and Achilles, you know, trying to get revenge on the Trojans. And, and then Socrates saying, "No, it's, uh, you do no wrong, no matter what. It's an absolute, like, you just never do wrong." And I think if you conduct your way, life that way, um, you know, he said, "There's no, there's no pillow so soft as a, as a clear conscience." And I think there's a lot to that.

• 47:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, 'cause revenge might feel good in the moment, but then you're doing something wrong. You're trying to right a wrong through a wrong.

• 47:32Speaker 00

  Do a wrong, yeah. You sound like a Greek philosopher.

• 47:36Lewis Howes?

  You're just not gonna feel good at the end of the day.

• 47:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 47:38Lewis Howes?

  You'll be thinking about what you did for hour long.

• 47:40Speaker 00

  Exactly. And he said, "Never tear down others, focus all your energy on bettering yourself." And I think we all have a tendency, you know, to get jealous. He had no jealousy. I mean, when you read about Socrates, he didn't know the feeling of jealousy. You really start to believe that, you know? He didn't have envy. That's like a prison, right? If you feel envy, it's a horrible feeling. So if you don't have those feelings, you just feel better throughout the course of the day. So I don't envy anymore, and I celebrate other people, even my competitors. I celebrate their success. It feels so much better than being envious.

• 48:12Lewis Howes?

  Than being angry or upset.

• 48:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 48:14Lewis Howes?

  What was the biggest challenge for you to overcome in the last three decades on this journey? Whether it was jealousy, or doubting yourself, or envy, or...

• 48:25Speaker 00

  It's the same thing everyone has to overcome, it's themselves, right? It's your own limitations that are self-contrived. We all live in a prison with the door wide open, you know?

• 48:37Lewis Howes?

  What has been your biggest limit that you've overcome?

• 48:40Speaker 00

  I'm incredibly, incredibly nervous right now. I am an introvert. I could be a monk, and I'd be very happy.

• 48:47Lewis Howes?

  You mean in this moment, you're nervous?

• 48:49Speaker 00

  Dude.

• 48:49Lewis Howes?

  Why? You're D. Tornassis, man. You're the legend.

• 48:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, people say that to me all the time. They have no idea like how much anxiety I have. Yeah, no, I just, I mean, I'm talking to someone that's just so, like, you're so far beyond me. I can't even comprehend how you build a business like you've done. I can't manage my own life, let alone manage other people, you know?

• 49:12Lewis Howes?

  But you can manage your running. You can manage your health and fitness, which most people don't. You know, what is it, a third of the US is now obese? It's like you can manage so much more than a lot of people struggle with.

• 49:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, I guess that's a way to look at it. It doesn't really...

• 49:28Lewis Howes?

  Most people can't complete anything. You complete something every day that is more people, that people do in their entire lives.

• 49:35Speaker 00

  Maybe because it's some of it comes kinda easy. I don't understand how, yeah, but I guess, I mean, I go, I give corporate keynotes, kinda like you do. You should see me in the green room. Oh, dude. Yeah, I mean, I'm so nervous.

• 49:50Lewis Howes?

  Where do you think those?

• 49:51Speaker 00

  You don't get nervous? Like, you're not nervous right now?

• 49:53Lewis Howes?

  I used to get nervous speaking a lot because I wasn't a good speaker. And, and then I studied for a year. I did Toastmasters where I went to a public speaking class every week for a year. Got in front of a small group, maybe 20 people, where they gave you feedback. But it was positive feedback and you practiced your speaking. Every time I did that, I was terrified, even for a group that was like supposed to support you. It was still scary to put myself out there. Then for years, I would go and speak at events and I'd get nervous. I'd get nervous for years. And even when I started getting paid a lot more money, I still was really nervous. And it wasn't until maybe four years ago where I remember saying, I shouldn't be, why am I still nervous?

• 50:38Lewis Howes?

  You know, I've been doing this for about 10 years almost, speaking. I was like, why am I still nervous? I don't understand. I should, I should be fine by now. I should be, I should not be this thing. And I called my friend and coach, Chris Lee, at the time. This was probably an hour before the speech and I go, I don't know why I'm still so nervous before this. Like, I'm getting paid great money, just like you're getting paid. People come to, they wanna see me now, when no one knew who I was before. And I said, why is it? Can you help me? And he said, he gave me a tool, which was, has been a great gift. He was like, you're making it about you and not about the audience. You're so worried about what people think about you. You're so worried and consumed about saying the right joke or making sure you say all the right lines or telling the stories in the right way.

• 51:23Lewis Howes?

  As opposed to knowing you're not gonna be perfect, accepting that. You're gonna forget some stuff and focusing all your energy on how can you serve the people in the room. And I just started practicing that, saying, you know what? I know I'm not gonna be perfect today. This is not, you know, I'm gonna give it my all, but I'm here to serve. And if only one person's paying attention, I'm gonna give my energy to that one person. And not worry about other people talking or people on their phone or whatever I'm insecure about. But focused on the people that I can impact the most. So I just started thinking about who are the one, two or three people in this room that need to hear this message? And how can I speak to them? And by doing that,

• 52:04Lewis Howes?

  I let go of my nerves about worrying while everyone's thinking about me, trying to look good. And that's been a helpful tool and strategy moving forward. I still get nervous sometimes when I'm doing interviews or speaking for sure, but that practice gets me back into a place of service as opposed to self. And my other friend Rory Vaden said, "It's hard to be nervous when your heart's on service." And so when I focus my heart on service, not I want to look good, or you know, I want people to praise me.

• 52:40Lewis Howes?

  You're gonna look good and people will praise you when you focus on them, not on yourself.

• 52:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, when you're giving versus taking.

• 52:45Lewis Howes?

  Exactly, or when you're just worried about how I look.

• 52:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're self-conscious.

• 52:49Lewis Howes?

  Which is my whole life, you know, was about worried about what people would think about me.

• 52:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:54Lewis Howes?

  And I'm, we're human beings, so I think at some point, we're probably still gonna, you know, want to make sure people like us, but that practice has allowed me to let go of the feeling of the stress a little bit easier.

• 53:07Speaker 00

  I'll think about that next time I'm on a stage, yeah.

• 53:10Lewis Howes?

  And it's doing exactly what you do when you run. You say you take the pain from your legs and you run from your heart, not from your body.

• 53:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:18Lewis Howes?

  And so when you're on stage, you're, you're thinking from something else other than your heart. And when you put it back in your heart, just like you're running, I bet it'll perform in a lot, a lot different way.

• 53:28Speaker 00

  I'm learning.

• 53:29Lewis Howes?

  My thoughts, my thoughts.

• 53:31Speaker 00

  Good thoughts, yeah.

• 53:33Lewis Howes?

  Did you always run from your heart, or did it take a period of time to you to understand how to run from your heart?

• 53:38Speaker 00

  I think when my coach said it, it clicked immediately because I was always running from my watch. I mean, a lot of people are, I mean, especially nowadays, I mean, we quantify everything. I mean, you talk to a lot of runners. Yeah, every, like, I can

• 53:51Lewis Howes?

  How many calories you in right now? How much water you drinking? How much of this?

• 53:54Speaker 00

  How much REM did you get last night? Deep sleep, you know, what's your EPOC? Yeah, you can go on and on. Uh, but I think You know, if you want to learn to love running, you need to learn to love running by itself, right? Running is not about, oh, I'm going to listen to music to kind of divert the pain. I'm going to see if I can, you know, be, you know, set my personal record or whatever. Running is worthwhile in itself as a form of play. And if you can make running that, then you get the joy. So I just, I started viewing running as a form of play. It was just, you know, big boy play.

• 54:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's cool. Has there ever been a time where you're like, I don't think this running thing is for me anymore?

• 54:35Speaker 00

  No, there really hasn't. I always, I love to run. I just love it. Yeah. I mean, I thought a lot of times, like, dude, you can't take it any further. Like, get a job. Come on. You're still, you're still kind of employed. You got an MBA somewhere. You had some business experience. You know, send out some resumes, get on LinkedIn, get a job.

• 54:57Lewis Howes?

  Really? You think that way sometimes?

• 54:59Speaker 00

  I'm hustling every day. I mean, if you look at the, I put a list of sponsors and it's like a hundred sponsors long. I mean, you know, sponsors come and go.

• 55:07Lewis Howes?

  You mean that you've had?

• 55:07Speaker 00

  That I've had. So I'm prospecting, you know?

• 55:09Lewis Howes?

  They come for six months, maybe a quarter, maybe a year.

• 55:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's a marketing campaign. Hey, let's get Dean. A year goes by, okay, you know, see you later. So, you know, I talk a lot about the hustle that's involved in making a living doing what I'm doing.

• 55:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and you live in an expensive city, in an expensive state, so you gotta, you know, pay your bills.

• 55:28Speaker 00

  Yep, and people say, you know, why don't you, why don't you become like you, you know, grow an empire? I'm like, I'm not a good boss. I couldn't do it. You're, you're obviously a great boss. I'm not.

• 55:39Lewis Howes?

  I'm not, I'm not that good a boss. Ask my team. Matt, Matt manages and organizes the team while I'm doing the interviews mostly. But he's, he's the one who's a great leader. I just try to leave with my vision and let him, you know, manage the team. But it's, it's hard to do it on your own. I don't think I'd be able to do both. I think it's hard to excel as a great runner or to do your thing and then also build a team at the same time. I think it's very challenging. And I knew my strengths going into this. If I didn't do any interviews or any content creation or write any books, then I couldn't manage a team well because I would have my time and attention and develop skills towards doing that.

• 56:23Lewis Howes?

  But when I'm doing this all day long, I can't also be checking in with my team as much as I would like to. Obviously, I do in certain days, but... You're a runner, you know, that's what you do and that's what you're great at. So it's having someone support you to help build the thing you want to build, which I'm sure you have a manager or someone on your team to help.

• 56:41Speaker 00

  I've got a literary agent. I mean, I think CAA is around here somewhere.

• 56:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's right next door.

• 56:45Speaker 00

  Okay, I used to work with CAA, so I've had managers, but you know, you fall through the cracks in an agency like that because, you know, I'm an endurance sports athlete. I mean, they know what to do with football players and, you know, baseball players, basketball players. Those guys are, you know, the infrastructure is in place where, you know, you play high school ball and you're good, you get a scholarship. Now you go right to the pros from high school. But it's, that network is there. You've got to be really, really good, but it's all kind of done for you if you can play at that level.

• 57:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course.

• 57:15Speaker 00

  If you run at the level I'm running at, you've still got to make a go of it on your own, right? You've got to create that whole infrastructure because it's not out there.

• 57:24Lewis Howes?

  How are the ways that you generate revenue as a runner then? Is it through books? Is it through sponsorships, speaking deals, consulting? What are the main revenue streams?

• 57:32Speaker 00

  You just named most of them, yeah. And also I do some like angel investing with a little bit of money I've been able to save because I get, I mean, on my doorstep, I get sent so much stuff. A lot of it is garbage, I'll be honest, but some of it I'm like, wow, this is pretty innovative. Like, I think this is something I want to look into further. So instead of, you know, trying to take money from a company that's just starting up, I take a little bit of equity and try to help promote the company and build the company.

• 58:01Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 58:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:02Lewis Howes?

  Do you have, you know, are you able to save money and invest as well? Or do you feel like you're kind of running year by year financially?

• 58:10Speaker 00

  I've got assets. I've got some great assets. And every night I'm lying in bed going, how am I going to make a dollar tomorrow?

• 58:18Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 58:19Speaker 00

  You know, I mean, I've got a retirement fund. Yeah, I mean, I could literally close down shop and

• 58:25Lewis Howes?

  Survive.

• 58:26Speaker 00

  Survive the rest of my life, pretty comfortably. But I just, every night I have this money anxiety where you better get up and hustle tomorrow, man, because you're going to end up homeless if you don't.

• 58:37Lewis Howes?

  Where do you think that anxiety comes from around money?

• 58:40Speaker 00

  I think maybe my parents, you know, we never had money. My mom was a public school teacher. My dad's a field naturalist.

• 58:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you're not making money doing that.

• 58:48Speaker 00

  No, no. And I thought, I don't wanna, like, I don't wanna, I just saw the compromises they made. I'm like, I don't wanna make those sort of life compromises. Like, I wanna be, I want my family to be comfortable. I mean, at the end of the day, I'm most proud that I put two kids through college. You know, I got them through and I put my wife through dental school. I mean, I paid for her bills when, you know, we got married young and she wanted to be a dentist, so.

• 59:10Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 59:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, that makes me the most proud. I mean, I tell people, you know, I've made a couple hundred million dollars. I've lost a couple hundred million dollars. And I've raised a couple hundred million dollars for charity.

• 59:20Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 59:21Speaker 00

  And the third makes me feel the best.

• 59:22Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 59:23Speaker 00

  You know?

• 59:24Lewis Howes?

  Making a couple hundred million dollars.

• 59:26Speaker 00

  Not a hundred million. I wish a hundred.

• 59:27Lewis Howes?

  A couple million dollars. Gotcha, I was like, damn, a couple hundred million dollars, you still have anxiety, wow.

• 59:31Speaker 00

  I think that would solve the problem, a couple hundred million, yeah, yeah, just a couple million, yeah.

• 59:36Lewis Howes?

  What is the biggest lesson your wife taught you about life? Because to have an extreme passion, drive, you're not a normal human being. You travel a lot, you're gone a lot. Is it about the person you choose to be able to support and accept you for this lifestyle? Because that's not where you were in the first, probably 10 years of marriage, I'm assuming, right? But it's like, then you changed as a person and said, I'm gonna go on this crazy adventure.

• 1:00:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:02Lewis Howes?

  And be gone for three days at a time, running and exhausted, you know? How supportive has she been?

• 1:00:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. She, you know, she was my first love, literally my highest. We met, this sounds so cliche, because we were in Orange County. We met in junior lifeguards.

• 1:00:19Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:00:21Speaker 00

  And I just knew at that point, like, I wanna spend my life with this, with this girl. And so at 14, we became a couple, you know, a thing and, and, you know, we, how many years later is that? You know, over 45 years later, we're still together. And people change, as you know. I think the, the biggest quality that Julie possesses is she's just, she's fiercely independent. So she doesn't mind when I'm gone, because I'm gone a lot. And I know for a lot of people, that would not work. So she's very independent. We have a really great relationship. I mean. It's not the quantity of time you spend with someone, it's the quality. I think if you spend too much time with someone, that's a little smothering, actually.

• 1:01:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:05Speaker 00

  For everyone, but I'm just made to wander. I mean, I've tried to make like a life because, I mean, we live in Western culture and I've tried to do do good by my family because they they might not want to be such a nomad like me, but I, you know, if I could, I would just cut the cord and just wander the rest of it.

• 1:01:24Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:01:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:25Lewis Howes?

  You'd have no house, you would just, yeah?

• 1:01:26Speaker 00

  No, I wouldn't, yeah. I wouldn't have any things either, like I, nothing, I don't have, yeah, I mean, it, yeah.

• 1:01:34Lewis Howes?

  What's the, uh, the greatest lessons around marriage of the personality type that you are? What are the greatest lessons that you've learned over the last forty plus years being married that you could share with this unique lifestyle? Which is not like you have a nine to five and you're going someplace and you come home and you're there on the weekends. You're constantly pursuing your dream. What have you learned?

• 1:01:59Speaker 00

  I think that-

• 1:02:00Lewis Howes?

  And how to make it work, too.

• 1:02:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:02Lewis Howes?

  It's like, how do you stay together in a happy place for that long?

• 1:02:06Speaker 00

  I think that mutual respect is really important, that you respect each other. And I also think that there has to be underlying love. I don't, how do you define love? There's got to be that authentic love and that'll get you through anything. If you don't have that that that underlying love, then, you know, things are going to come unraveled. But, and love is is is authentic and it's it's very, uh, you know, you can spot hypocrisy. If someone says they love you and, you know, those are hollow words unless you really feel loved. So I think if you have that underlying love, it doesn't matter how you structure the relationship.

• 1:02:45Lewis Howes?

  Right. What's been the hardest thing to overcome? In the marriage for forty plus years.

• 1:02:50Speaker 00

  People say, don't you wish, you know, your wife ran with you? And sometimes I do, I think sometimes it'd be really nice to have a partner. That, hey, let's go, let's go running is, you know, we live in a beautiful place. Let's go run up in the, in the hills for a while. But that's just not who she is. So, I mean, that's, that's been, at times, like, that'd be kind of cool. But at other times, like, I so love being out there by myself. Like, I'm very comfortable running in nature for eight or 10 hours.

• 1:03:17Lewis Howes?

  Alone.

• 1:03:18Speaker 00

  Alone, yeah, I, I really enjoy it.

• 1:03:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then there's not a lot of people that are like that, right?

• 1:03:23Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:24Speaker 00

  I think that we came from nature, but we're so removed from it. When was the last time you just went and walked on a trail for eight hours?

• 1:03:33Lewis Howes?

  Eight hours, probably never, but I mean, I try to go for an hour and a half on a trail and walk with my girlfriend.

• 1:03:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:39Lewis Howes?

  Every month.

• 1:03:40Speaker 00

  And you're unusual, I mean, head, head east from here.

• 1:03:44Lewis Howes?

  I know.

• 1:03:44Speaker 00

  Head across America and see how many people have an actual relationship with nature. They don't, I mean, they, they live in a house, they get in a car.

• 1:03:53Lewis Howes?

  Go to an office.

• 1:03:54Speaker 00

  I saw statistics, something like nine, people, most people spend 95% of their time indoors. Their lives, 95%.

• 1:04:01Lewis Howes?

  They're disconnected from nature.

• 1:04:03Speaker 00

  Completely, yeah, and I mean, that's so fundamental to being human.

• 1:04:08Lewis Howes?

  Tell me about goal setting. How do you set and accomplish goals? From small goals to impossible goals? What's your process around that?

• 1:04:18Speaker 00

  What would be the best adventure ever? You know, like, when I ran 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days? I just thought, I want my kids to see the whole US. I'd love to be in every state, I haven't seen the whole US, so that'd be really cool. Put everyone in a van and just, let's set a course and just go run 50 miles and check out the whole country. So, you know, I'm, I'm working with a buddy of mine, Charlie Engel, who, great interview if you want to bring a guy on. He's, he's got an interesting story, Charlie. Including spending some time in a federal penitentiary. Yeah, but we're planning on running from the lowest point on earth to the highest point on earth next year.

• 1:05:00Lewis Howes?

  So.

• 1:05:01Speaker 00

  You probably know where the highest point on earth is. On earth.

• 1:05:04Lewis Howes?

  You're talking about Everest?

• 1:05:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:05Lewis Howes?

  Holy.

• 1:05:06Speaker 00

  So actual Everesting, not just.

• 1:05:09Lewis Howes?

  So you're gonna climb on, yeah, yeah, not just going seventeen times like I did.

• 1:05:12Speaker 00

  The skiers aren't getting in a chair.

• 1:05:14Lewis Howes?

  So you're gonna go from the lowest point, where's the lowest point?

• 1:05:16Speaker 00

  The Dead Sea.

• 1:05:19Lewis Howes?

  Okay, where would that be? What's, what's city?

• 1:05:21Speaker 00

  Like, we'd start in Israel.

• 1:05:22Lewis Howes?

  In Israel, yeah. In, in Tel Aviv or near Tel Aviv, I guess, right?

• 1:05:27Speaker 00

  It's not far, yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:29Lewis Howes?

  So you'd start there and then you'd go from there to Everest?

• 1:05:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, we'd run from there to, obviously, we wouldn't run to the top of Everest. We'd get the base camp, yeah, we'd change into, you know, mountain air and gear.

• 1:05:42Lewis Howes?

  How far is that from Israel to Everest?

• 1:05:46Speaker 00

  It's, it's a two-pronged question because the most direct route

• 1:05:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:51Speaker 00

  is through Iraq and Iran.

• 1:05:53Lewis Howes?

  Oh, geez.

• 1:05:53Speaker 00

  Which, getting through those countries is not gonna be easy.

• 1:05:56Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 1:05:57Speaker 00

  And then the least direct route is going up through the stands, you know, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan. So that's more like a forty-five-hundred-mile route versus about a twenty-three-hundred-mile route.

• 1:06:10Lewis Howes?

  Twenty-three-hundred miles sounds a lot better than forty-five-hundred.

• 1:06:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, but running through Iraq.

• 1:06:16Lewis Howes?

  You'd need like, you would need like, military support or some type of escort, I'm assuming, right? To, in a van to.

• 1:06:23Speaker 00

  Well, part of the beauty of running is it unites people. I mean, there's so many things in this world that divide us, right? Be it the color of our skin, you know, the god we worship, you know, our socioeconomic level. But running is a great unifier because it's something, it's a commonality all humans share. So I think we have to go through Iraq and Iran. That's why I keep telling Charlie, like, we have to, it's just, that's, that is our mission.

• 1:06:48Lewis Howes?

  Have you been there before?

• 1:06:50Speaker 00

  No, I haven't, but I've been, like, on Facebook groups with running groups in Iran. They're like.

• 1:06:55Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 1:06:56Speaker 00

  You show up at our border, they're like, we'll have a hundred people with you.

• 1:06:59Lewis Howes?

  Guide you through.

• 1:07:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're like, we'll take you through the whole country.

• 1:07:01Lewis Howes?

  That's amazing, you gotta do it.

• 1:07:03Speaker 00

  Tell the state, the state, the government's like, I don't care if you got a thousand people running with you, you are not entering that country.

• 1:07:09Lewis Howes?

  You should, I think you should, that'd be powerful.

• 1:07:11Speaker 00

  I do too, I think that makes the journey.

• 1:07:13Lewis Howes?

  That's the way to do it.

• 1:07:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:14Lewis Howes?

  How long would that take? Twenty-five-hundred miles to get to the base, I guess, of Everest?

• 1:07:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:21Lewis Howes?

  How long do you think that would take?

• 1:07:22Speaker 00

  We're thinking between three and four months. Yeah, and we're probably gonna start early and if we get there a little, like we start, you know, putting some mileage in the bank, if you will, we'll start backing down our mileage, but you only have a certain window, I don't know if you know, to climb Everest, like it's like a May.

• 1:07:37Lewis Howes?

  It's like a couple months.

• 1:07:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like six weeks. Although, that's changing now, unfortunately.

• 1:07:43Lewis Howes?

  So many people are, so many people are doing it now. It's like thousands are doing it every year or something, right? It's like lines of people trying to get up Everest.

• 1:07:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a bit of a game now. Yeah. It's like, I mean, have you ever hiked up Mount Whitney here, just locally?

• 1:07:57Lewis Howes?

  I haven't done that now, but that's gotta be.

• 1:08:00Speaker 00

  That's a good one too, but I mean, it's again, it's like, when I used to go as a kid, you'd never see anyone, now it's like Congo lines.

• 1:08:06Lewis Howes?

  Ha, really?

• 1:08:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:10Lewis Howes?

  Is there water you have to cross, or no?

• 1:08:12Speaker 00

  Well, that's, that's another reason you should have Charlie on, he's like, well, if we, instead of going all the way north, let's just, we'll just row across the Indian Ocean.

• 1:08:23Lewis Howes?

  That'd be cool.

• 1:08:24Speaker 00

  Rowing across the Indian Ocean, oh, like, how long is that gonna take, Charlie? He's like, well, it's just two weeks, just two weeks in a boat with you. He's like, I've done some research, so that's the other option, is to row across the Indian Ocean.

• 1:08:39Lewis Howes?

  So you, when you set a goal, you think of what's the coolest thing or the craziest thing you can do, and then you start what, planning it? And some of these things probably take six months to a year to plan. The crazier the idea.

• 1:08:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:50Lewis Howes?

  It takes more time.

• 1:08:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:52Lewis Howes?

  So you set up the idea, what would be crazier, cooler, fun for you? And then you start thinking about logistics, is that right?

• 1:08:58Speaker 00

  Logistics, yeah. Other, I guess it's kind of team building, like, you know, who, what sponsors, like, would take an interest to this, cause I mean, that's, it's gonna fall flat with some sponsors, have no business there, they're not global, I mean, they don't care if their brand logo's on our, on our shirts, because they're not gonna see much of a, you know, the needle's not gonna move very far, but others, they might, and they might think, wow, this is, we gotta get behind this. So then, you know, they usually, depending on the size of them, of the sponsor, you know, they have their agencies they work with, and they would say, we're gonna bring in our agency to kinda.

• 1:09:32Lewis Howes?

  Manage or whatever.

• 1:09:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, start managing in, start doing some of the PR and. And yeah, it kind of builds on itself like that.

• 1:09:39Lewis Howes?

  What are you, are you doing all these deals yourself, pretty much? Or do you have a manager helping you do the sponsorships? Or is it mostly you just calling companies and saying, hey, I'm gonna do this run, will you sponsor it?

• 1:09:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's kind of the latter.

• 1:09:51Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:09:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, I have, obviously, in doing this for a long time, I have contacts. So I kind of know who to go, you know.

• 1:09:57Lewis Howes?

  You got your top 10 guys that say, hey, I'm doing this thing, it might be up your alley, can you throw in a certain amount?

• 1:10:03Speaker 00

  And the thing is, runners, you probably kind of learned in this, are very supportive of other runners.

• 1:10:07Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 1:10:08Speaker 00

  And runners are typically high achievers, so, you know, there's a lot of C-level runners. And when they hear about a project like this, they're like, oh, we gotta support another runner, you know, this is great.

• 1:10:17Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:10:18Speaker 00

  So, that's a lot of how it works as well.

• 1:10:20Lewis Howes?

  That's pretty cool.

• 1:10:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:21Lewis Howes?

  That's exciting, man.

• 1:10:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:22Lewis Howes?

  What do you do when you accomplish a big goal? Do you celebrate, do you take time to actually acknowledge yourself for the hard work you've put in and the journey? Or are you right on to the next thing?

• 1:10:36Speaker 00

  You know, what I've learned is that completing the journey is, is the sad part. Because it's the journey, it really is. I mean, life is lived along the journey. And when you reach the end, yeah, there's some champagne, you know, some corks popping and this and that, but I'm always let down, like, ah, man, that was, I wish, because you just, you love it so much while you're doing it. And then it's over. So, I'm always on to the next thing, because I just love the journey, you know?

• 1:11:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Do you think it's important to celebrate, though, that, for that day, or that, you know, couple of days of like, the actual hard work you've put in? Or do you think it's not worth the celebration?

• 1:11:17Speaker 00

  I think the celebration is lived along the journey, yeah.

• 1:11:20Lewis Howes?

  Celebrating the process.

• 1:11:21Speaker 00

  The process, it's, exactly, that's a good way to put it, yeah.

• 1:11:24Lewis Howes?

  It's kind of like when I was doing the marathon, I literally wasn't really thinking about the finish. I was more just like, I'm gonna enjoy and smile every mile. That was my, like, motto, I'm gonna smile every mile, when I feel in pain, smile.

• 1:11:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:36Lewis Howes?

  You know, just be grateful to be out here. I never thought I'd do a marathon, so now I'm doing it, it's like, this is cool, you know? And for me, that's what worked in that process. And I think it works, it's, it's meaningful for a lot of people, because when I was younger, I used to be driven to accomplish these big goals, specifically in sports. And when I would accomplish them, I'd be very let down and upset. Because I was so fixated on the end result. That I was doing the journey with a lot of, let's say, drive from anger, not drive from joy. I was driven to accomplish out of like resentment, or proving people wrong, or frustration, or not feeling good enough.

• 1:12:19Lewis Howes?

  As opposed to, this is something I truly love. And when I started to shift, probably in my early thirty, when I hit thirty, I was like, I'm gonna do everything because I love it, not because I'm trying to do it to prove people wrong. And that became a different feeling inside. It was kind of like coming from my heart as opposed to from my ego. Of why I was doing something. And it's been a lot more enjoyable day-to-day process as opposed to, I just need to accomplish this thing financially or this goal, and then I'll be, you know, happier, but then.

• 1:12:53Speaker 00

  How did you feel when you crossed the finish line in the marathon? I'm really curious.

• 1:12:56Lewis Howes?

  I felt, I felt actually, I mean, I felt really.

• 1:12:59Speaker 00

  Did you feel relieved? Like, ah, fuck, it's over?

• 1:13:01Lewis Howes?

  I felt, I felt proud of myself, to be honest, because I had done twenty-nine oh two nine, which was probably the hardest thing I'd ever done in terms of endurance. It was like thirty-five hours or whatever, right? Or, can't remember how long, thirty-five hours.

• 1:13:14Speaker 00

  You did it in Vermont, right?

• 1:13:15Lewis Howes?

  Vermont, and we slept maybe four hours or something, yeah. But for me, I'd never pushed myself endurance-wise that hard. I'd done three days in football camp for two weeks. You know, I've been in extreme pain. I've lifted hard, I've ran hard, sprinted hard. I was a decathlete, so I did two days of decathlon in college, you know. That was extremely demanding with just strength and power and speed and agility and all these things. But thirty-five hours of just walking straight up a mountain was exhausting for me, mentally and emotionally and physically. And I just wasn't really prepared for it the first time. So when I accomplished, it was kind of the same feeling, like when I completed that, I was like, I just didn't think my body could do something like that. So I was very proud

• 1:14:00Lewis Howes?

  of the completion. But when I did the marathon, I was proud of the completion, but I was proud of the, the way I enjoyed the process of it too. And I was like, and I had fun. Yeah, I was in pain, and yeah, this happened, and yeah, I took it slow, and I didn't go as fast as I wanted to. But I enjoyed being a part of the marathon experience. And so I was really proud. I was with Matt, and, you know, he'd run a few before, so this is my first one, so I gave him a hug, and I was just like.

• 1:14:31Lewis Howes?

  Okay, I don't know if I want to do this again, but I'm proud of you.

• 1:14:35Lewis Howes?

  But then the next couple of days, like literally the next few days, I was like, man, that was a lot of fun, you know, I didn't look at it as this painful thing, even though it was challenging. I was just like, man, it was really fun. I'd never seen LA like that.

• 1:14:49Speaker 00

  On foot?

• 1:14:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I'd never been to these neighborhoods and I never, never drove this far, you know, in LA. It just kind of stayed in my pocket and I was like, huh. And then a friend of ours who's on our team, I think he said he's done like five or six New York marathons. And he goes, it's so much fun because it's like a party every mile.

• 1:15:05Speaker 00

  You see all the burrows.

• 1:15:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, and I was like, I've never done that. That could be a cool adventure. So I was like, oh, let's sign up for it. And I never thought I would do that. I never thought I would do more than one. I was like, one and done, one and done. And who knows if I'll do more or not. It's like, but.

• 1:15:21Speaker 00

  There's a whole community of these sort of people, largely half marathoners. That, and they're, they're older. Most of them are retired, but they travel all around the world to run these half marathons just to see places. That's how they like.

• 1:15:35Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 1:15:36Speaker 00

  It's, it's a great form of tourism, isn't it? It's much better than getting a tour bus or something. And they say, yeah, I'd never run down these streets in Italy before. And, you know, this is a great way to do it. Yeah.

• 1:15:46Lewis Howes?

  I think you expressing how you were kind of had this hollow feeling, this empty feeling. You were making money at, at 30, had the job and all these different things, but you didn't have the mission. There wasn't meaning.

• 1:15:58Speaker 00

  There's no meaning.

• 1:15:59Lewis Howes?

  Inside of it.

• 1:15:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:00Lewis Howes?

  And with the meaning now, it's like creating these adventures, there's meaning behind it. And there's a mission behind it. And you're not looking to complete it. You're looking to enjoy every moment of it. And I think that's really cool. And if people could take this away from this conversation with whatever they're doing, they could just have much more of a rich life in general, is what I'm hearing.

• 1:16:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think so. And I think, you know, I'm thinking about the stories I tell in my most recent book. And people read it and they're just, they say that you, you just seem so happy doing what kind of seems miserable, like running a hundred miles through the mountains. There's so much joy and it's like bleeding from these pages. It's obvious. Even when you're struggling, it's like, there's so much life in it.

• 1:16:49Lewis Howes?

  Why is there so much joy in the struggle when you take on a challenge?

• 1:16:55Speaker 00

  I think we're most alive when we're struggling and striving for something. I think that Dolf Gerske said that the sole origins of consciousness are suffering. I mean, life is about suffering, mostly. I mean, especially as you get older. You deal a lot more with loss. Life gets tougher in a lot of ways. And it's just not... No, everyone's fighting a battle, right? No matter who you meet, you walk out on the street and you ask someone, "Tell me about your problems." They're gonna go on for a long... It's gonna be a long run, right? So I think everyone is struggling. And I think that running holds a mirror up to you. I mean, it says, "Here's your struggle.

• 1:17:39Speaker 00

  Here you are. How are you gonna deal with it?" And you get to look at yourself and say, "Here's what I do when things get tough." You know, there's a saying that, you know, "Without war, we don't know if we're heroes or cowards," right? A marathon gives you that war. You learn, "Hey, I'm a hero. Like, I can suffer. I can get through this." Yeah.

• 1:18:01Lewis Howes?

  How... Where do you think your mental health would be if you didn't have these adventures and journeys and consistent kind of suffering through endurance? Do you think you'd be as happy?

• 1:18:11Speaker 00

  No, I don't think I could even exist.

• 1:18:13Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:18:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't think I... Like, if I was to get an injury, like, I've thought about this a bit. I've always taken for granted, "I'm never gonna get an injury. I'm just gonna run as fast as I can, as hard as I can, push as hard as I can." I've never held back. And at some point, the machine's gonna break, I imagine. I don't know what I'm gonna do. Like, I cannot see myself as a non-runner. There's... Like, that Dean doesn't exist. My whole identity is built around... Running is my freedom. I mean, it's how I relate to the world. It's how I express myself. It's everything. So if that happens, I don't know.

• 1:18:54Lewis Howes?

  If you could only run with one person...

• 1:18:59Lewis Howes?

  Who's not around anymore? You could choose any person from history. And you could take one marathoner and run with them. Who would that be?

• 1:19:08Speaker 00

  Well, you're asking a Greek marathoner about who we'd run with. Phidippides, the original marathoner, who ran from the battlefield of Marathon to the Acropolis and proclaimed Nike, Nike, or Nike, Nike, which means victory, victory. We are victorious, and then he died.

• 1:19:29Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:19:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think every marathoner should know this story. So, and the company, the sports wear company Nike, that's where they have the term, it's Nike, the victory, yeah.

• 1:19:38Lewis Howes?

  What would you ask him?

• 1:19:40Speaker 00

  How the hell he does it? I'd want to run with him, you know, I, I don't.

• 1:19:44Lewis Howes?

  Where would you run to and from with him? And what, what three questions would you ask?

• 1:19:50Speaker 00

  I think we'd run from the Acropolis to Sparta, which is what he did, yes, it's 153 miles.

• 1:19:57Lewis Howes?

  Oh, that's so cool.

• 1:19:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, you know, the thing with runners is, you don't need to talk, you don't need to talk. No, no, I mean, you, you, you learn about each other through the movement of your body, right? I mean, it's.

• 1:20:07Lewis Howes?

  The breathing and the pain, the, yeah.

• 1:20:10Speaker 00

  The gait, I mean, when you run with someone, you get to know them. I mean, I think we learn a lot about ourselves through the movement of our body. And I think that a lot of us have forgotten about that because our bodies are not the temples, maybe, that they should be here, they once were. So, our bodies don't, the feedback we get from our bodies is not necessarily a good one. But when you run with someone, you learn about their body. You, you see how they, you know, they deal with obstacles, do they spring over, you know, rocks? Or do they step gingerly over rocks? I mean, you learn, do they aggressively charge the hills? Or do they just kind of back off? So you learn about their, you know, their constitution, yeah.

• 1:20:48Lewis Howes?

  If you could ask them three questions, what would it be during that 150 miles?

• 1:20:54Speaker 00

  Why? You want, I always want to ask a runner, why? Like, what's going on in your head? Like, why do you do this? Is it your job? Because it was his job and you get paid to do this. Is there any love or passion there? You know, what does he eat? That's a common question that we get. And, uh, gosh, you know, I'm asking a guy who's 2,500 years older than us. So, how do you relate to someone on that level? I can't ask him what brand of footwear he uses.

• 1:21:19Lewis Howes?

  Is he running barefoot? Yeah, it's gotta be hard.

• 1:21:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, running barefoot.

• 1:21:23Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy.

• 1:21:24Speaker 00

  Uh, I would ask him like, uh, if, where's his favorite, uh, place to take a vacation?

• 1:21:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:30Speaker 00

  Where's your favorite beach in Greece? Yeah.

• 1:21:32Lewis Howes?

  Uh, there you go.

• 1:21:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:33Lewis Howes?

  All the Greek islands, yeah.

• 1:21:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:35Lewis Howes?

  And if there's one person you haven't run with, who's alive, that you'd like to run with? It's a five, 5K or 150 miles, who would that be?

• 1:21:45Speaker 00

  You know, I'd run with my dad. Yeah. He's, he's 86, great health. Uh, yeah, he, uh, I'd run with my dad and just say, you know, I love you. You're not gonna, I mean, I see, he's at my house right now. I did, I flew down here from, you know, Marin. He and my mom are staying with me for a week. We have a great relationship. We're all gonna go to Greece later this year, but

• 1:22:12Speaker 00

  I'm not sure he's gonna make it. Yeah, I mean, he's

• 1:22:14Lewis Howes?

  To Greece?

• 1:22:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm not, and that's in October. So, I'm really glad I'm seeing him now.

• 1:22:20Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 1:22:21Speaker 00

  And, uh, and you said something during our interview that like, touched me in a way that you don't even realize, that you lost your dad.

• 1:22:30Speaker 00

  I'm not ready for that yet. I'm not ready for that yet. Yeah, I don't, I don't know how, yeah.

• 1:22:36Lewis Howes?

  Well, is there anything you haven't said to him you need to say?

• 1:22:39Speaker 00

  I'm sorry about the loss of your sister, your daughter, my sister. Because, um, it hurt me bad, but, uh, you know, a loss of a child to a parent, there's, the, the worst thing that can happen to you has happened to you. Like, there's nothing else worse than that, that's, and it's gonna happen to you. And no one wants that fate, right? No one, so.

• 1:23:01Lewis Howes?

  Have you talked to him about that?

• 1:23:02Speaker 00

  No, it's, it's still too raw. We don't talk about it.

• 1:23:08Lewis Howes?

  Do you feel like you'd regret it if you don't talk about it?

• 1:23:11Speaker 00

  It's a weird dynamic. It's a, I mean, I, I visit, they live in Southern California, as I told you, in the same house I grew up in. San Clemente? San Clemente, and I stay, I was there a couple of weeks ago, I stayed with them, and I stay in my sister's bed, I mean, in her room. Like I said, that was four decades ago. Wow. It doesn't go away, yeah. How do you think you'd feel if you had that conversation? We're males, right, and I, it's something, we just would not, yeah. I, I can't ima, I can't even put my head, how we'd have it. We're, we're two Greek men, I mean, it's, there's too much ego, there's. Mm-hmm, I know that feeling. Yeah.

• 1:23:54Speaker 00

  You think he'd regret it, though, if he, if he passed and you didn't have that conversation? That's why I want to go in the, on the run, you said, if I could run with anyone. Yeah. Yeah. Now's the time, man. I guess so, yeah. He's here, take him on a little trail walk up in Marin County. See him in a couple hours, yeah. Can he run or not, is he more of a walk? He's a walker now, yeah, he's running, he's running, he ran the inaugural LA Marathon. That's cool. The first one, in 1985. That's cool. I'll never forget, because he trained for this marathon, and he said to my mom and I, "Meet me at mile 20, because that's where I'm gonna like, hit the wall." Uh-huh, support me, cheer me on. When I get there, tell me I look good and to keep going. So he comes running into mile 20, my mom looks at him, she's like,

• 1:24:38Speaker 00

  "You look horrible, why don't you stop?" "Mom!" She's like, "I'm just saying, telling you the truth." Oh, and he did look horrible. And you were talking about covered in salt, you know, oh, we found him in the medic tent afterward, wrapped in that Mylar blanket, oh. I'm like, I saw him, I, you know, I said to myself, I'm like, "I am never gonna run a marathon, like, never am I gonna do anything like that to myself." And. There you are.

• 1:25:06Lewis Howes?

  Well, I think, you know, all these adventures of, you know, going 2,500 miles and three sleepless nights and all these journeys you go on, I think this might be one of the most powerful spiritual journeys you have if you do have that conversation and that that walk slash jog with your dad while he's here. So it's my, my, uh, my call to adventure for you. One of the greatest obstacles I think you'll overcome is having that vulnerable conversation with your dad. I never got to have that and I really wish I did. And so you have the opportunity. It's, it's gonna be-

• 1:25:43Speaker 00

  This is a heavy interview.

• 1:25:45Lewis Howes?

  Running 300 miles, running 300 miles is easy for you. Having a 15 minute conversation with your dad like that is probably gonna be the hardest thing you ever do.

• 1:25:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I can, I'm projecting right now and I, yeah, I'm already, I feel my heart palpating. Yeah.

• 1:26:00Lewis Howes?

  I'll just, I'll just leave that right there for you to think about, but I think-

• 1:26:04Speaker 00

  This is not what I was expecting in this interview.

• 1:26:06Lewis Howes?

  This is the school of greatness, man.

• 1:26:07Speaker 00

  Jocular thing.

• 1:26:08Lewis Howes?

  This is the school of greatness. That means opening your heart.

• 1:26:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:26:11Lewis Howes?

  That means opening your heart to, to all the emotions of life, all the feelings, all the conversations. And the ones that scare us the most are the ones that usually set us free. So that's been my experience. You know, you've got, you've got a lot more wisdom and age on me, but, uh, that's been my experience in the last, you know, year

• 1:26:31Speaker 00

  I got age. I don't know if I got wisdom. I'll give you that, yeah.

• 1:26:35Lewis Howes?

  But I think it'd be a beautiful experience. I'm gonna follow up with you and text you in next week and see how it's going if you have the courage to do it. I'm not, I'm not forcing you to do it, but I think you should, uh, I think if you're feeling something that strongly, it would be, you know, something you might regret if you don't. So I'll just say that.

• 1:26:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's hitting home because I don't, I don't have a lot of time left to contemplate doing that.

• 1:26:59Lewis Howes?

  I would say everything you gotta say and especially that conversation, because you guys never talked about that, huh? When she passed, it was kind of like sadness, darkness, but then you never really discussed it.

• 1:27:08Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:27:10Speaker 00

  No, it's, yeah, you're right. It's been too long not to.

• 1:27:16Lewis Howes?

  What's her name?

• 1:27:17Speaker 00

  Perry.

• 1:27:17Lewis Howes?

  Perry. What do you think she would think if you had that conversation?

• 1:27:21Speaker 00

  She'd be proud of me.

• 1:27:23Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man, I'm getting emotional just thinking about this.

• 1:27:25Speaker 00

  We talked about life being a struggle. I mean, it is, it's a struggle.

• 1:27:31Lewis Howes?

  But this has been beautiful, man. I've got a couple of final questions for you. Your book, I want people to get access to your book and get a couple of copies. A runner's high. My Life in Motion by Dean Karnazes. Make sure you guys pick up a copy. Inspiring stuff. What's the main thing you want people to get from the book when they get it? What are they gonna go on? What type of adventure and journey are they gonna go on?

• 1:27:55Speaker 00

  There's a quote in there that says, "When you get to where you're going, keep going."

• 1:28:01Speaker 00

  So never stop exploring.

• 1:28:03Lewis Howes?

  And what are they gonna learn when they're diving in?

• 1:28:06Speaker 00

  Like, I got a message yesterday from a guy who said, "Hey, I was gonna read a couple of chapters of your book before I went to bed last night." He's like, "Five hours later, I finished the book." And then he said, "And then I got up and went running. I just had to." So, it's a story. It's not gonna tell you how to run. It's not prescriptive at all. Hopefully, it'll touch your soul and touch your spirit.

• 1:28:31Lewis Howes?

  I'm excited about this, man. People can follow you online. They can follow the adventures, the journeys, all the crazy adventures that you're going on in the future. You document them. You post about them, all that stuff, so people can see what you're up to. Ultramarathonman.com. If people want to sponsor you, they can probably go there and send you an email if there's someone listening that wants to sponsor. He's hustling every day, so send him some money to sponsor his next journey. You're on Twitter, Dean Karnazes on Twitter. Instagram, UltraMarathon on Instagram. Where do you spend the most time on social media? Where should we?

• 1:29:09Speaker 00

  Instagram.

• 1:29:09Lewis Howes?

  Instagram. UltraMarathon on Instagram, so we'll check you out there. How else can we be of support and service to you?

• 1:29:17Speaker 00

  Come run with me.

• 1:29:18Lewis Howes?

  Well, I'd love to, man. I'd love to go on a, I don't know if I can go as far as you, but I'd love to go a, you know, half marathon somewhere, or even just go the first five miles with you somewhere, then you can go.

• 1:29:27Speaker 00

  I would feel a lot more comfortable running together than in this interview. I promise you that.

• 1:29:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, because he wouldn't be speaking. He'd just be like, alright, shut up, Lewis, okay? You're in my territory. I'd love to go run sometime, man. Come to New York and I'll run the first few miles and then you'll just.

• 1:29:42Speaker 00

  I might be at the New York City Marathon. I've done it like fifteen, you know, Jesse Itzler, who we talked about. I think he's done it 25 times.

• 1:29:47Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 1:29:48Speaker 00

  That's the first time I met him, I think, is at the.

• 1:29:50Lewis Howes?

  I gotta see if he wants to come. It'd be fun. But you guys are so fast. I'm gonna be like so far behind, but. I'll do the first, stay back with me on a 11, 12 minute mile the first few miles, and then you guys can race off and do your six minute miles.

• 1:30:01Speaker 00

  I'm no longer about speed.

• 1:30:03Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:30:04Speaker 00

  Believe me, I'm no longer about speed, yeah.

• 1:30:06Lewis Howes?

  What's your marathon, you know, kinda average time right now, if you were just gonna go out and run one? You looking for under three hours, two and a half?

• 1:30:15Speaker 00

  I mean, I would have to work my ass off to run sub-three, where I used to be able to just kinda fake it, but now I'd have to, yeah, so I'm.

• 1:30:22Lewis Howes?

  Three and a half?

• 1:30:23Speaker 00

  Three and a half-ish, yeah.

• 1:30:24Lewis Howes?

  What is that, seven and a half minute mile? What is?

• 1:30:26Speaker 00

  I think it's around eight or something, yeah.

• 1:30:28Lewis Howes?

  That's amazing.

• 1:30:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:30Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so you run 11 minute mile the first three with me?

• 1:30:31Speaker 00

  We all cross the same. I guarantee the medal I get put around my neck is gonna be the same as yours.

• 1:30:38Lewis Howes?

  I love this, man. This is a question I ask everyone towards the end, Dean. It's called the three truths. So imagine a hypothetical scenario. Your last day on earth, many years away. You get to live as long as you want, but eventually it's your last day. And every adventure and crazy idea you have, you go and live them. You keep going, right? And you write books, and you speak, and you run, and all this stuff until the day you die. But for whatever reason, on your last day, you've gotta take all of your message with you. This book, this interview, anything you've ever shared publicly, it's gotta go with you to the next place. But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world that you've learned in your life. I call it the three truths. What would be those three truths for you?

• 1:31:25Speaker 00

  You're speaking to Greek again, so I mean, I'm gonna, I'm gonna literally plagiarize the oracle.

• 1:31:31Lewis Howes?

  Delphi.

• 1:31:32Speaker 00

  Oracle at Delphi, but know thyself.

• 1:31:38Speaker 00

  Be thyself.

• 1:31:41Speaker 00

  And all things in moderation, except running.

• 1:31:45Lewis Howes?

  I was gonna say.

• 1:31:49Speaker 00

  He was so wise, but he got the last one wrong.

• 1:31:51Lewis Howes?

  That's funny, man. I like that.

• 1:31:56Lewis Howes?

  I was like, wait a minute. I want to acknowledge you, Dean, for, for leaning into your, I guess, really your vulnerabilities, your insecurities. I didn't know you were so introverted. I guess I should have known that. But I've seen you in videos and interviews before, but for you opening up and talking about things that maybe you don't talk about normally. And people seeing this side of you, I think is really powerful. So I acknowledge you for having the courage to be vulnerable. Not just the courage to do the physically extreme, which it sounds like it's harder for you to be vulnerable than to run 500 miles. So I really acknowledge you for this.

• 1:32:30Speaker 00

  From the moment we set up this interview, I was like, every day I thought, oh, God, oh, God. It's coming up. It's coming up.

• 1:32:37Lewis Howes?

  I really acknowledge you, man. It's not easy. It took me a long time to learn how to open up and be vulnerable. And I spent years doing therapy and exercises and practices and just throwing myself into it. So it's not easy. I understand it. And I really hope you get to have that conversation with your dad in the next couple of weeks, so.

• 1:32:56Speaker 00

  Thanks for encouraging me.

• 1:32:57Lewis Howes?

  Of course, of course. My final question, what is your definition of greatness?

• 1:33:02Speaker 00

  Being true to yourself, being who you are.

• 1:33:07Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man. Dean, thanks so much, man. Appreciate it, brother. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.