54 Days Alone in Antarctica, Pulling 375 Pounds | Colin O’Brady

Colin O'Brady -- world record holder for the Explorers Grand Slam (all Seven Summits plus both poles in 139 consecutive days) and first person to complete a solo, unsupported, unaided crossing of Antarctica (The Impossible First, approximately 1,000 miles in 54 days) -- discusses flow state training, Vipassana silent meditation retreats, and the daily mantra "you are strong, you are capable." He covers his recovery from severe burns in Thailand that doctors said would prevent him from walking, his path to winning the Chicago Triathlon 18 months after his accident, the philosophy of infinite love and untapped human potential, and the 50 High Points speed record. Also discussed: competing against British explorer Lou Rudd, wife and co-creator Jenna O'Brady's role in strategy and logistics, and the universality of human potential beyond elite achievement.

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness podcast. We've got the legend in the house. Good to see you.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  My man, great to see you. How you doing, man?

• 0:06Lewis Howes?

  Doing good.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  I'm doing great. I'm doing great.

• 0:09Lewis Howes?

  Good, man. Now, for those that don't know about you, you just finished an incredible journey in Antarctica, crossing sixty, well, fifty-five days, right?

• 0:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, fifty-four days.

• 0:19Lewis Howes?

  Fifty-four days in an unaided journey, dragging a three-hundred-pound sled or something crazy like this, where no one was able to touch you or support you in the process of crossing this part of Antarctica.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:35Lewis Howes?

  And it was fifty-four days. You had like a sixty-day plan.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:39Lewis Howes?

  But you sprinted the last like two days or something.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Indeed, indeed, yeah.

• 0:42Lewis Howes?

  And it was incredible. Watch this journey. You've been all over the news lately, and you were kind of racing against another guy who was doing the same thing. And what an incredible journey, man. Congrats on completing it.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Thank you, thank you. Yeah, it was a, it was a wild ride, to say the least. You know, it was a, you know, I had a few other world records to my name previous to that in the mountains, but this was a world first. You know, this was something that no one in history had ever accomplished. And going back a hundred years, people have tried. You know, Ernest Shackleton, a hundred years ago, was kind of one of my heroes, one of the early pioneering explorers, said like, "Man should cross the continent of Antarctica." And it's been done now in teams of people, as well as, you know, using wind aid, kites, dogs, but it has never still been done in its most pure form, which is solo, completely alone, unsupported, so no resupplies of food or few drop-offs, and unaided, meaning, you know, no kites, no dogs, no vehicles, just this is like a man versus nature, mono

• 1:37Speaker 01

  e mono out there. And so, it was a, it was a beautiful challenge to take on, as I'm really, you know, just fascinated as myself, is just tapping into the potential that I think we all have inside of us and unlocking that. So this curiosity inside me as an athlete led me to want to go after this. And I didn't know if it was possible. I literally named my project as I set off the impossible first.

• 1:57Lewis Howes?

  Amazing.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58Lewis Howes?

  It's amazing, man. Now, Antarctica is huge, right?

• 2:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00Lewis Howes?

  It's pretty big. How big is it, so people know?

• 2:03Speaker 01

  Gosh, I think, I'm gonna, I wish I should know the answer to this question. The, yeah, it's massive. The traverse that I was making, so it was basically from one side of the ocean via the South Pole to the other side, was just under a thousand miles.

• 2:16Lewis Howes?

  A thousand miles.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18Lewis Howes?

  Pulling a sled.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19Lewis Howes?

  In the snow. What was the temperature most of the time?

• 2:21Speaker 01

  So the average temperature in Antarctica is about minus twenty-five, minus thirty, and that's with no wind. Antarctica is the windiest and coldest continent in the world. And so, often days, it'd be fifty, sixty mile-per-hour wind gusts, and you'd literally have, gosh, I don't know, minus eighty degrees wind chill. The easiest way for me to describe, I know you're from Ohio, so I know you know a little bit about cold weather and whatnot, but the, what I will say is this, I couldn't experience that cold until I realized I took a cup of boiling water from my tent, and I would throw it in the air, and it would immediately turn into ice. Like, that's how cold that is. Yeah. So, then for me, that's like, sometimes it's hard to put in perspective, where it's like, "Yeah, it was cold. Wow, that's real cold." No, like, it's so cold that boiling water could turn into ice in a second.

• 3:03Lewis Howes?

  Now, how do you make sure you keep your temperature, I guess, regulated? Because I sweat when I'm moving, even in the snow.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:09Lewis Howes?

  And can you sweat in temperatures like that?

• 3:11Speaker 01

  No, no. So, there's a sort of an adage in the world of polar exploration, which is, if you sweat, you die.

• 3:18Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  And it potentially a little hyperbolic, but to be honest, it's pretty true in that, you know, if you're pulling a three-hundred-seventy-five-pound sled, it's amazing, you can stay pretty warm while you're moving. But you stop for five seconds, ten seconds, to get a swig of water, to eat a little bit of food, and you could immediately go hypothermic. And so, it's a matter of, what I say is staying comfortably cool. So it's moving at a pace that, you know, keeps you warm enough, but also being aware enough of your body temperature that you're not sweating. But when I would stop, I would eat food every, you know, kind of a steady flow of food, and these column bars that were self-created for this project, I would, you know, eat very, very frequently. But even in those little, like, thirty-second breaks, I'd put on a huge puffy jacket.

• 3:59Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Like, immediately. It's not like you don't stand around in the cold at all. I mean, it's that cold, you know, hypothermic frostbite can set in. I got a little bit of frostbite on my cheeks and nose from these windstorms. Like, the, the conditions are real out there, no doubt.

• 4:12Lewis Howes?

  Wow, man. How many world records do you have for this first?

• 4:17Speaker 01

  So...

• 4:18Lewis Howes?

  You've done Everest, you've done all these different mountains.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I set the world record for something called the Explorers Grand Slam in 2016. And so that was one of my bigger, first big world record projects. And the goal there was to be the fastest person to complete the Explorers Grand Slam, which is climbing the tallest mountain on each of the seven continents. Of course, Everest, Denali, Kilimanjaro, et cetera, as well as complete expeditions both the North Pole and the South Pole. And these polar journeys were just across the last degree of latitude. So that was only six, only, but sixty-nine miles to reach each of the poles across the last degree of latitude.

• 4:49Lewis Howes?

  Unaided or...

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Unaided, yeah, exactly, unaided. Seemed hard at the time, but now, when I've done a thousand-mile journey in Antarctica, but that was a, that project was a hundred and thirty-nine days consecutive. So, all nine of those expeditions, Everest, Denali, et cetera, back to back to back to back, without any rest, a hundred and thirty-nine days.

• 5:04Lewis Howes?

  So you broke the world record for the fastest.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Cumulative time of that. You know, fewer than fifty people had ever completed the Grand Slam. Most of those people have done so in five years or ten years, trained for an expedition, rested between, planned the next one. And I built it to do it all consecutively throughout.

• 5:19Lewis Howes?

  Crazy, man.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:20Lewis Howes?

  How long does it take to get to the top of Everest?

• 5:23Speaker 01

  So generally, Everest expedition will last about two months. In my case, I was coming straight off the North Pole. So what's crazy is the North Pole's at sea level. It's literally ice floating around in the middle of the ocean. And I had to go straight from there to Everest. And because I was at sea level, I was not acclimatized at all. So flying to Everest, but I was late and delayed because the sea ice was cracking in the North Pole. Literally, you can fall through the cracks into the frozen ocean. It's a crazy place. There's polar bear. I mean, it's one of the wildest landscapes ever in the middle of a floating ocean. You're at the North Pole, and the ice is floating around you. You're actually moving away from the pole, and you're having to walk back because it's just a GPS point in the middle of the ocean, basically. But to fly from there all the way to Everest, I only had three weeks rather than two months to climb it. And that in itself was just an epic battle. And this came because of the weather windows on that

• 6:08Speaker 01

  project towards the end of my project. So Everest was the eighth of the last nine expeditions. But what happened up there is, I made it into the death zone, which is above twenty-six thousand feet. It's known because like the human body, even with supplemental oxygen, can't survive for long.

• 6:21Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  And...

• 6:23Lewis Howes?

  How many feet is that up?

• 6:23Speaker 01

  That's at twenty-six thousand feet where the death zone starts, but Everest is twenty-nine thousand feet.

• 6:27Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  And so I pushed for the summit. My very first push, no, I didn't have any guides with me, just one Sherpa who was climbing with a guy by the name of Pasang Bodhi, incredible Nepali Sherpa. And we got caught up in a massive storm. I mean, the weather came in, winds blowing, you know, fifty, sixty mile-per-hour winds, and we quickly know we got to abandon our summit attempt. It took, we were lucky to even get our tent up, took two or three hours, had to descend off the mountain, thought my entire project, you know, had disappeared. But we kind of found the strength and courage to go back up in another massive, you know, challenging storm, but made it to the summit three days later. But you'll love this. The, so I come back down, I get back into Camp Four, into the death zone. I've summited Everest. It's a, you know, a beautiful moment for me, and I'm one mountain away from setting the world record, and I'm about two months ahead of schedule. So I'm like, if I get

• 7:11Speaker 01

  to Denali, like, I could probably do this. Like, it's coming into reality. And my wife, Jenna, who is not just a supportive partner, but really just the co-creator with me, we dream up these projects together. We build a nonprofit around inspiring young people and kids. There's tons of public schools, a hundred, hundreds of thousands of public schools kids falling along this project at the time. And that's really where our passion lies, around health and wellness. Now, we can talk more about that later. But anyways, I call home to Jenna, and I say, "Jenna, you know, I just summited Everest, we got one mountain to go." And she goes, "Okay, great. Like, how are you feeling?" I'm like, "Well, I'm exhausted. I'm still up at twenty-six thousand feet. It's gonna take me a few days to get down, and we can regroup for this next mountain." And she goes, "Yeah." And she says something I'll never forget. She goes, "I actually need you to put your boots back on right now." I'm like, "Wait, what?" And she's like, "Yeah, so we've been doing

• 7:56Speaker 01

  some calculating back home, and it just so happens that if you can get down from Everest today, I've arranged for a helicopter to pick you up in base camp. The helicopter's gonna take you to Kathmandu, but there's no time for you to rest in a hotel. An evening flight's gonna take you to Dubai, to Seattle, to Anchorage. And instead of having three weeks to climb Denali, you'll have three days. But if you can do all that, you'll set not one, but two world records. You can have the seven summits record as well."

• 8:18Lewis Howes?

  So...

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Wow. It's this moment where I just laugh now. I love this quote, you've probably heard it, but it's a Henry Ford quote, "He who says he can and he who says he can't are usually both right."

• 8:28Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  One of the ones I've lived by, and this is a moment of like, you know, A, I know better than to not listen to my wife, because she's a badass, and she's amazing, and knows when to push me. But I'm like, "All right, maybe we can pull this off." And sure enough, a hundred hours after standing on the summit of Everest, I'm on the other side of the world at the base of Denali, three days battling this insane storm. But on, you know, May twenty-seventh, twenty sixteen, make it up to the summit of Denali, and in this case, set not one world record, but two world records.

• 8:54Lewis Howes?

  Wow, man.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Finishing this project.

• 8:56Lewis Howes?

  Three days later, started climbing Denali.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, a hundred, a hundred hours after being on the summit of Everest, I got to the base of Denali. And then Denali usually takes three weeks itself to climb, best-case scenario. And only about thirty or forty percent of people attempting it even make the summit. And I managed to get to the summit in three days, battling this ridiculous storm there as well.

• 9:14Lewis Howes?

  How do you get there in three days? How's that even possible?

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Like I said, it was come straight down from Everest, not sleep a night, go all the way back down to base camp through the other four camps. There's a helicopter waiting there that took me to Kathmandu, fly to the other side of the world via a bunch of stops. Jenna's there in Anchorage to pick me up and drive me to the base of the national park. But in Denali, a bush plane has to fly you into the base of the mountain. It's a whole, like, the logistic, like, not, like I said, Jenna is a mastermind, not just of pushing my body, knowing my mindset, knowing how to support and love me and be compassionate, running our nonprofit, but logistics, man. Like, we're talking about nine locations, seven continents, red tape, I mean, all this sort of stuff. So, it was an incredible project for us to cut our teeth on. And I mean, in the spirit of, in the spirit of what

• 9:58Speaker 01

  I know you're about, I love this podcast, man, and I love just the entrepreneurial spirit that really, you know, shines through, and the innovation. Like, Jenna and I dreamed this up with nothing. Like, we dreamed this up on a whiteboard. I had been racing triathlon professionally. We'd gotten engaged, and I'm like, "What do we want to do with our life? Like, what do we care about?" And we had this moment where we literally rode on a whiteboard in our one-bedroom apartment, like, "What if we could set this world record, but build a media campaign around it that has a lot of impact?" And it sounded like this great idea, but like, "Wait, I haven't really climbed mountains. We've never started a nonprofit. I have like two hundred Instagram followers. We don't have a platform. We know nothing about media. We know nothing about PR. We're literally Googling on day one. Google, what's the difference between marketing and PR?"

• 10:40Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  But in the end, it was a year of no, no, no, everyone saying no, like, no support, but just built it day by day, kept showing up. And ultimately, a year and a half later, I'm on this project. She built it into something that had five hundred million earned media impressions. We had a nonprofit. We had a partnership with a nonprofit where there's millions of kids following along, all these things. But it came out of literally nothing. I didn't, we both didn't grow up with money. We don't have this background in any of these things. But just this belief of like, "We want to create this and put this love and impact out into the world through this storytelling, through this, this." And so it was fun to see that come to life. And now this Antarctica project is the latest version or iteration of this, of this passion for us.

• 11:19Lewis Howes?

  How many of these journeys have you done so far?

• 11:22Speaker 01

  So

• 11:22Lewis Howes?

  Different adventures.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the other world record that I set between this was that we did something called the fifty high points. And so I set the speed record for climbing the tallest mountain in each of the US fifty states.

• 11:34Lewis Howes?

  Some of those are like little hills.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, some of them are little hills, exactly. But it was fun, man. It was, we did it in, I did it in twenty one days. The previous record had been forty two, but the funnest part for me, because for me, I don't really wanna think, I don't think of myself as this athlete in the arena, like, hey, watch me do this world record. To me, that's like, not interesting at all. In fact, I've started to think of myself way less as an athlete and more so as an artist. I've started to think of myself, my canvas just happens to be endurance sports. But through that, I wanna paint these masterpieces that I can share with people out in the world that have this reverberation of positivity and inspiration. And so with this fifty high points project before Antarctica, our goal with that canvas, with that masterpiece or that art project that we were trying to create, we did something we called the Forrest Gump effect.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  So we literally got on social media and we said, hey, like, join us. We're gonna be going all over the country. What we wanna do is meet people. We wanna meet people in each one of these states. Show us your backyard, hike a mile with us, meet us on the top of a summit. We're gonna be coming through here fast and hot, but like, come hang out. And we met thousands of incredible people. We met, you know, remember in Virginia, we were on the summit of Virginia with, you know, fifty, sixty school kids, students who had never, you know, camped out before, never been in the backcountry, never been on a hike, but they came and joined us on a seven mile hike. I met an eighty five year old great grandmother in Illinois. Granted, the hike in Illinois, it's pretty flat out there, it wasn't huge, but she did it. It was a mile hike, came with us. And I gotta, I walked back with her and I said, what's the secret?

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Like, what's the essence of, and she's talking to me about life and love and her story and compassion. And so it's this way of, yes, I am doing these art projects or these athletic feats or world records or world first, whatever that is, but as a way to just connect with humanity, have these amazing conversations, meet people both in person and virtually. And for me, that's what lights me up.

• 13:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, amazing, man. Why do you wanna do these things in the first place? Because this is like, we did a, for those that don't know, we did Jesse Itzler's twenty nine oh two nine climb, which is like the equivalent of Everest, but it's like the dad's club version where you're like climbing a mountain, what was it, like a mile up?

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it was like a mile up.

• 13:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  What was it, like seventeen hundred feet per lap? It's in Stratton, Vermont, and you have to do seventeen laps of it uphill, which equals twenty nine thousand feet, the equivalent of twenty nine thousand, twenty nine feet, the equivalent of Everest.

• 13:54Lewis Howes?

  And this is like, you know, the dad's club version of climbing Everest, but I'm telling you, I was dying. Thirty five year, or thirty five hours, and I was just like, dead, dude.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  It was amazing, so.

• 14:05Lewis Howes?

  You saw me in the tent.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:07Lewis Howes?

  I'm like dying, dude.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  We met there, we shared a tent and, you know, obviously we get to know each other, we're having a good time and you guys are out there chipping away, you know, I'm climbing the laps.

• 14:17Lewis Howes?

  Not training with us at all.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  No, you guys were coming off your big, your big event.

• 14:21Lewis Howes?

  No shape, yeah.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  And I remember you were like, I remember coming in, I was two laps ahead of you guys. I'm like, I'm gonna go get a little bit of sleep. And it was like eleven, eleven PM. And we've been, you've been going for like fifteen hours straight. And you're like, Colin, I wanna get to the same number that you're on so that tomorrow we can all finish together. And I was like, I was like, awesome, great. So you're like, I'm gonna head about for two laps. And each lap had been taking like an hour, maybe an hour fifteen, hour twenty, something like that, right? And six hours went by and I woke up and I was like, oh man, Louis just must have blew me off and just went through the night like a badass. Sure enough, you unzip the tent and you're shaking.

• 14:58Lewis Howes?

  I thought I had hypothermia, dude.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  You're like, turn the heater on, turn the heater on, I'm shaking, I'm like trying to heat the tent up.

• 15:05Lewis Howes?

  There was no heat, you were just smiling cozy in your tent. I was like, dude, I feel like.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  I was like, bro, did you finish? And you were like, no, I just did the two that you said I was gonna do. We gotta get back out there tomorrow.

• 15:17Lewis Howes?

  So wet outside.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 15:19Lewis Howes?

  We were just walking through water and mud and it's like snowing or whatever and was miserable. But I knew that if I timed this out, I was like, I need to get a certain amount of hours of sleep. If I don't get to thirteen laps, I think it was, like, I probably won't finish tomorrow with like four hours of sleep. And I remember waking up, you were like, okay, we're gonna wake you up at three hours or four hours. I was like, okay, I'll be good. You woke me up and I was like, I wanna lay here all day.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  I was like, Louis, let's go. And you're like, yeah, that'll be bad.

• 15:47Lewis Howes?

  I almost had a moment where I was like, I don't think I'm gonna finish.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:50Lewis Howes?

  I had that moment in my mind, I was like, I gave it an amazing effort, my body is busted, broken. I was like, I, I can't break through this. And then I think you left after being like, okay, we'll hope to see you out there. And Matt was like, dude, we're doing this, let's just do one lap.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  Yep, that's how it starts, man.

• 16:09Lewis Howes?

  You gotta focus on one lap, not like, I have five more to go.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  You're starting to do the time, you're like, that's like six or seven more hours, that's this. But in the end, you guys got out there, crushed it, thirty five hours with like an hour remaining.

• 16:19Lewis Howes?

  Hour to go.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  And like, I mean, that event's tough, like, what, fifty percent of people finish and don't? What I love about that event, though, is that it's a celebration of everyone being out. That's not a race, it's not competitive, it's kind of, you know, Jesse says it's you against you. And I love that. And then that's why I think that race is a race, you know, that event is really cool because you guys are out there, I'm out there, like, we're hanging out. It's just a fun, like participatory, such a good experience.

• 16:43Lewis Howes?

  We didn't have a strategy going into it until day two, when we had to stop like every twenty feet. Once it got steep, I had to drag my legs up to hit. You're like walking up, just like no poles, just having fun. I'm dragging my legs, I feel like I tore both my hip flexors. And I realized then, like, you've gotta have a strategy.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:02Lewis Howes?

  And you had a strategy your whole, every time you do one of these experiences, you have a strategy. You don't just say, okay, I'm gonna just push through until I'm dead.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:10Lewis Howes?

  You have a strategy and it sounds like Jenna's really helping you craft this strategy.

• 17:16Lewis Howes?

  But how does someone, you know, for me in this physical challenge, like, I got up and I did one lap and I was like, okay, let me do one more.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:24Lewis Howes?

  And then one more and I was like, okay, now we have two more to go.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:27Lewis Howes?

  We can finish this. How do people push through these mental or physical challenges when it seems like, gosh, it's gonna take me ten years to launch a podcast like what Louis has, or ten years to build this business or to do this thing? How do people push through that barrier and how do you do it?

• 17:44Speaker 01

  You know, for me, people love to ask me about my physical training, how do I get strong? There's some fun stories about the crazy training that I did to prepare for this and whatnot. But I believe that it's the muscle six inches between your ears. It's about flexing your mind is really what it comes down to. And I described that moment of Jen and I writing our dreams onto this whiteboard. Sadly, as you know, that's where ninety nine point nine percent of dreams die as an idea. Because all of a sudden, we have these doubts in our mind, oh, I can't, or it's gonna take ten years, or I could never catch up to this person or that person or this metric or that metric. But it's about showing up, it's about getting out there every single day. So in Antarctica, and it's also the ability to be able to adapt. So actually, my first day in Antarctica, I think, is really emblematic of that. And to be fair about the twenty nine oh twenty nine event, you're like, Colin, what are you doing in a couple of weeks? You seem like you're in pretty good shape.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  And I was like, well, I'm gonna try to cross Antarctica by myself in like two, it was like two weeks before I was leaving. So I was pretty well trained at that moment, but, you know, I get out there, we've been playing this project for well over a year. It's a world first, no one's ever done it. There's so many doubters and naysayers. Someone actually died a hundred miles from the finish line three years ago trying this project. Another one of the best explorers in the world went out there the following year and after fifty two days ran out of food and had to be picked up and, and didn't make it. So there's a lot of people, there's a lot of print articles and big magazines saying it's physically impossible to do this thing. And so like, I know that going in, and so we build this strategy. And the unsupported nature means you can't take any extra supplies with you.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Basically, what you have in your sled to start, no one can give you anything, essentially. And so that case, like, weight is of the essence. And so I packed my sled as much of food and as much fuel, the fuel I melt the ice into water. And I don't bring extra anything. I literally don't even have an extra pair of underwear with me for fifty four days because like, I can't, I'd rather have a hundred more calories in my sled of food.

• 19:31Lewis Howes?

  Same underwear.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Same underwear for fifty four days, that's.

• 19:33Lewis Howes?

  Straight, oh my god.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  Not fancy, yeah.

• 19:36Lewis Howes?

  Soggy underwear right there.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's not, that's not.

• 19:38Lewis Howes?

  Oh man, you cleaned it at least, you tried to?

• 19:41Speaker 01

  No, not much.

• 19:42Lewis Howes?

  You can't.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're just kinda like ride it out.

• 19:44Lewis Howes?

  Wow, man.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  So, no, not smelling good.

• 19:46Lewis Howes?

  One day of chafing and you're done too.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  So yeah, look after your body. But I get out there, I fly, this plane lands me on the edge of the Antarctic continent, takes off, I'm all alone out there, right? Like, I'm, I've dropped off alone. And, well, actually, you had mentioned before, there was another, another guy out there, which is important to mention at this point because another British explorer, one of the, actually the most experienced in the world in terms of amount of miles traversed in Antarctica and various other projects. He also decides that he wants to try to be the first. So not only am I now racing history, but this guy's a British Navy SEAL equivalent, you know, special forces guy, his name's Lou Rudd. And he's like a badass and he wants to do this as well. It was his friend who died three years ago, he's doing that to honor him. And I got a lot of respect for all, I mean, there's a camaraderie as well, of course.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  And we both know what we're going through, but we also both clearly wanna be first. And he's looking at me like, who's this, you know, bit younger guy who doesn't have the real experience in Antarctica? Who does he think he is? And I'm kind of like, trying to be like confident in my plan. And so plane drops us off, we're at a mile apart from each other, equidistant from the first waypoint, the first like GPS marker on the map. And I get out there and I've got this video of me being like, it's a blue sky day, it's great. After all year of planning, it's finally time for me to like try to cross Antarctica. I'm taking the first step and I bend down and I pull the strap on my sled to tighten it for the first time and ping, the strap breaks. Literally, the strap breaks, like, it's minus twenty five and the plastic can't handle it, breaks. So right out of the gate, I'm like, wow, this is gonna be a long journey. This is before the first step.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  So then I strap into my sled and the sled's the heaviest on the first day, three hundred seventy five pounds to start was about the maximum I thought I could pull. So I put as much food as I could, even though I knew I was gonna burn ten thousand calories per day and I factored I could carry about seven thousand calories. So I was gonna lose weight every single day, straight from the get go, even eating seven thousand calories, that's how intense and cold it is. And so I start pulling my sled and you asked me before about sweat. About one hour in, I'm sweating and I'm like, wait, this sled's so heavy, but I can't not pull it without sweating. And so I start sweating. Then I realized, I actually don't think I can pull this sled and I start crying. I literally start crying, but what happens when you cry when it's minus twenty five degrees out? It freezes to your face.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  So I have frozen tears to my face and I'm one hour, two hours into this journey. And so I do, the only thing I could think of is I call home to Jenna.

• 22:05Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  And so I pick up the phone and I go, hey babe, um, yeah, we may have named our project the right thing. It appears to be impossible, because we had called it the impossible first.

• 22:17Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  And she's like, uh, uh-oh. And so she tries to, you know, she's like, okay, well, and meanwhile, I'm seeing Lou disappear on the horizon with this beautiful like ski stroke, like totally knows what he's doing, like strong and steady out there. And like, at this point, I can't even think about the fact that there's a race in place. I mean, I'm just trying to like get through the first day. And so she says to me, Colin. How far are you from the first waypoint? Like she knows the route, we've studied it, she knows everything. The first waypoint is only a few miles from the drop off point. And I'm like, I'm point six three miles from you. It's as if I'm saying it's a million miles, but she's like, okay, so you're half a mile from the first waypoint? Like, and this goes back to your original question, the strategy, right? And she's like, do me a favor.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Like, whatever you do, I know it's heavy, I know you're sweating, I know you're exhausted and you're probably a little bit afraid, understandably. Like, get to the first waypoint. Get to that first waypoint and you'll have felt like you got somewhere on the first day. So for the next hour, I struggled and battled and get to that first waypoint, set up my tent, get inside my tent. And I say to Jenna, like, I call her again, it's kind of our safety check at night off the sat phone. And she's like, how are you doing? I was like, obviously I'm stressed. She says, look, I actually went out there intentionally with not a lot of music, not a lot of podcasts. Cause I wanted to explore the silence of these flow states that I hope to tap into in my mind, something I'm very curious about, the sort of mental side of this. And she goes, tomorrow, do me a favor, try to find the flow, even if just for a minute or two minutes, it's gonna be a hard day.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  And so just those words, I went to sleep and I was like, okay, I made it to the first waypoint, I'll get up tomorrow and kind of regroup. And then I woke up and I'm big on mantras, but this mantra had never been with me before this. And just came to me out loud as my alarm went off to wake me up on my first real full day out there. I said out loud to myself, I said, Colin, you are strong, you are capable, you are strong, you are capable. And that ended up being my mantra every single day, waking up for the rest of the entire 54 day journey. And sure enough, that next day, was it stupid challenging? Yes, but instead of two miles, I made it eight miles and I found that flow state for a minute. The next day was nine miles and I found that flow for two or three minutes. And so we had a strategy, it went out the window on day one.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  Had to refocus, refocus on the mind, adjust a few things with our strategy. Cause I was hoping to go further distances and that. She's like, well, like, maybe it's not short distances at this at first, but as it gets lighter, maybe it'll go longer and all this kind of stuff. And so, you know, how do you strategize and plan for something that's been told is impossible? You're stepping into the unknown. It's by being adaptable and ultimately realizing that these things are happening in our minds, these doubts, these fears. That's a human thing. I don't care who you are, I still have them. I have four world records and I've had, you know, some bit of success in my life through challenges. But like, I wake up every day with doubts and fears and challenges, but it's being able to quiet that in my mind and continue to get to that first waypoint or get to that next step forward is whatever you're doing.

• 25:10Lewis Howes?

  Man, what, um, what did you do to get into flow every day then? Besides the mantra, how did you get into flow and how did you stay into it?

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's something that I've just been fascinated with. So I grew up as a kid as a swimmer. And it's funny, my, um, my, my, I have five older sisters, actually. And I'm the baby boy and an older brother as well. But I'm, you know, I'm a little, little boy of seven, blended family, but a big family, a loving, supportive environment. And my sisters and my parents would always be like, you're always talking all the time, you're always this. Like, I was trying to hang out with them, follow my sisters into their room, like always like chatting and all this kind of stuff. But what I realized is I spent four hours a day as a kid, swimming two hours before school, two hours after school, putting in those reps of quiet.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  Swimming is this weird sport where you're staring at a black line, like you can't talk, there's no eye contact, there's no, you know, really can't really chat to your teammates even. You're kind of in this zone. And so before I knew the word flow state or high performance, this is me as a kid, I realized I was sort of tapping in and out of those states. And I became more conscious of that as I went through my life and became a, you know, professional triathlete after whole other crazy tangent of my life, being severely burned in the fire in Thailand and being told I would never walk again. We can talk about that if you want, but the, uh, more so, what happened when I was racing triathlon is a friend of mine came to me and she said, I don't know much about sports, is this Turkish woman who's a wife of a good friend of mine named Ece.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  And she says, I don't know much about sports, but just by observing this, I see that like, this is all in your guys' minds out here. And I was like, yeah, absolutely, like.

• 26:44Lewis Howes?

  So, uh, swimming or the?

• 26:45Speaker 01

  This is triathlon, this is triathlon. And she, this one I was racing triathlon professional, and she said, you know, I'd recommend that you go to these meditation retreats. And I was like, cool, I'm interested in meditation, but I don't like know a lot about it. I haven't done this since 2011. And she's like, yeah, if you've heard of a pasta meditation, it's these 10 days silent meditation retreats, 10 days, no reading, no writing, no eye contact, deep meditation. And she's like, you should try it. And I was like, well, don't I need like a little background in meditation before this? And she was just like, no, like just, just do it, it's free. There's centers around the world, it's completely free to go, like go. And so me being the kind of like jump in head first type of person, as you can probably tell here, I was like, great, I'll go. So in my off season in triathlon that year, I signed up for this meditation retreat and my stepdad, he drives me up to the retreat and he goes,

• 27:29Speaker 01

  he goes, hey Colin, like I've pretty much never heard you shut up for a minute in your life. And so I'm gonna wait here in the parking lot for an hour, because once you realize this is a terrible idea, I'll be here waiting to drive you home. You know, joking, he's, he's my stepdad, he's this amazing mentor and influence in my life, incredible man. But he's literally going like, you're pretty extroverted and you're telling me you're gonna sit in silence by yourself for 10 days? Sure enough, I stayed for those 10 days and it had just a profound impact on my life of learning about that self-awareness in my mind, in my brain, et cetera. And so what from that practice, which I've gone back to this 10 day retreat, I try to go every single year if I can. Done several and as well as have a daily practice with it. I've kind of taken that into my, into my canvas, into my artwork, into my sport.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  And this curiosity of the mind and where we can go in our mind and brain. And so one of my deep curiosity about Antarctica, honestly, was yes, unlocking the physical potential inside of me. But as a gateway to do that, exploring the mind and what better place to be alone in this endlessly white landscape? The sun never sets, there's no change of days, there's no dark, it's a blank white canvas. And like I said, I literally deleted almost all the media from my iPhone as to not, I actually had a couple of School of Greatness podcasts, a couple, a couple of ritual podcasts, a couple, a few podcasts and a few albums out there, listening to some Paul Simon Gray's and a couple others. But there's very few, I spent 80, 90% of the time in complete silence. And, um, it was, it was a beautiful thing to explore that.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  So how did I tap into that flow? Like I said, some of the times it was 30 seconds, some of the times it was, it was a minute or two. But as I kept on these repetition of days, exploring this place in my mind, sometimes it was days, two days, three days, where the sequence of days would come through in high performance and the stakes are high, it's 50, 60 mile per hour winds. If I let go of my tent, I have no shelter, it's gone, it's 80 day degrees wind chill, minus 80 degrees wind chill. But I'm finding the space in my mind that is locked in and calm. And the most kind of most profound experience of that was actually on my very last day. So it's worthy of mentioning, after the sixth day, I did catch up to Mr. Captain Lou Rudd and surpassed them and ended up in front of him the rest of the time.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  And I, uh, on the 52nd day, I woke up and I'm 77 miles away from the finish. And I'm thinking it's about three days, probably give or take that. It's Christmas morning and I wake up and I get outside of my tent and the deepest flow state of my entire life just comes over me. I just realized, I recognize it, I say my mantra, I tap in and I start exploring. When I've in the deepest flow states, I'm also hyper aware. And so I started thinking like, how many more miles do I have to go? How much time would that take? Oh, it's three days, but what if I did it back to back? What if I did it in one big final push? I've never gone more than 33 miles in an individual day and I averaged about 15 to 17 miles a day.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  So I'm 77 miles away from the finish and I'm 53 days in this expedition. But I get into this place in my mind that's so deep, where I feel this strength and this power and this flow, that I start to say to myself, whoa, we have this capacity as humans, not me, not me, but as humans. And I'm tapped into the vibration of my family and friends and the school kids that are following along and just this radiant positivity that I'm shining out, but receiving back in such a significant way, that I tap into this flow and for the next 32 hours, I don't stop.

• 30:57Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  I continue onwards, I have to stop at hour 18 to put up my tent to melt a little bit of snow to get some more water, cause I ran out of water. Call home to my family, it's Christmas night, it's 7:00 PM for them on Christmas night, they're all gathered together, they're like, you did your best day ever, 18 mile, 18 hours, I can't believe it, you're almost a day or two from the finish. And I was like, I'm not stopping, I'm still going. And my mother, who's been a huge influence in my life and certainly Jenna, my sister, these strong women who have just been like these amazingly positive influences on my life. They hear it in my voice and of course, as a mother or as a wife or as a sister, you're a little bit worried, you're, you know, your person is out there in this intense environment, but they just, they, they reflect now as they've told me the story from their point of view and they have it recorded on Christmas day.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  You know, this, this conversation that we had and they were like, we could hear it in your voice. You were more focused and more clear than you've ever been. And they just said, I can't wait to hear from you in 12 hours, you're gonna cross this finish line and create history.

• 31:53Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Go live your destiny. And it was just this beautiful, beautiful moment of, of the mind. And I think, I mean, I'll, I'll say that, you know, coming back home and it is asked all these questions in the media and press, which is, you know, super humbling. And these question that kept coming up and it keeps coming up, which is, Colin, are you superhuman? And my question is similar, it's like, yeah, I'm superhuman and so are you. And so are you, like what I'm tapping into in my mind is accessible to all of us. And like, yes, you may not want to walk across Antarctica by yourself. In fact, I don't blame you for not wanting to do that for seriousness, but like, whatever it is, you talk about business, entrepreneurship, innovation, music, art, love, creation, positivity, whatever that is.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Like, that is within us and that's what I tapped into out there, which is the most special thing for me to come back and be able to share is, is that resonant positivity and the power that we all have within us.

• 32:43Lewis Howes?

  It's crazy, man.

• 32:47Lewis Howes?

  What was the things you were saying to yourself the final 12, 15, 20 hours? Like, are you saying the mantra over and over? Are you white space in your mind? Are you having a conversation with yourself? Was it kind of random?

• 33:00Speaker 01

  You know, it, what was cool about that really deeper flow was, I said, the clarity. And so it was actually, two things happened. One, the passage of time started to feel different, you know? 32 hours, I mean, if I told you to sit here at your desk for 32 hours, you'd be like, bro, it's like, come on, like, are we climbing 29029 for 35 hours? It's a long time to do something like that. And I'm just staring at this compass. I mean, just literally staring at a compass in endless white space.

• 33:24Lewis Howes?

  So you're looking at a compass the whole time?

• 33:25Speaker 01

  Pretty much, because it's very hard to, you can't even really see the, the distance in front of you, especially when it's white out and these blizzard conditions. I'm just staring at something.

• 33:33Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  So yours is blank, because blank can be in your mind.

• 33:35Lewis Howes?

  You're pulling it around your waist or your shoulders?

• 33:37Speaker 01

  Pulling around your shoulders. I've got a, a compass strapped to my chest that I'm staring down at. And it's white on white. And sometimes, yeah, skiing, but like with skins on the bottom. So it's not like, people think skiing is basically like glorified snowshoes. So it's got skins on the bottom just to give you a grip. And so you're not digging into the deep snow. So anyways, pulling a sled, but yeah, in that flow state, I'm, I'm thinking about what actually happened in those last 15 or 20 hours. And this was really cool is that I realized that all the memories we had. So if I said, hey, Louis, um, tell me about your high school graduation. You probably have a memory pops in your mind right now, like you've got an image of that day. But then we're going to keep talking and we're going to talk about other things. You'll get distracted. But in that quiet space, in that flow state, the memories in my mind, even of the mundane, became so rich.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  And so I start thinking about all the points in my life, but I'm a five-year-old kid on a swimming pool deck with my mom encouraging me to dive in for my first swim race. But I'm not there for a flash instant in my mind. I'm there and I can feel the wind blowing and I can see my mom on the other side holding a red towel. And I can see, you know, my sister who's going to race and the race behind me and all this. Or like, I started going back to driving to school with my sister Caitlin, actually. And we did that every single day to high school for years and years and years. You know, we're siblings. Sometimes we would talk, sometimes we wouldn't talk, sometimes we'd listen to music, sometimes we wouldn't. I actually could start to remember full sequences of 10, 15-minute, these drives over and over and over again. So in this flow state, I was almost in this lucid dream state where I discovered that

• 35:03Speaker 01

  the memories, everything we've been through, even those memories you think like, that's not a part of me, or I've let that go, or that's not there, like, they are there and in rich detail. And so in this flow state, I'm actually remembering all of the things that happened to me through my life to lead up to this moment. The kid in the swimming pool, the 22-year-old that got severely burned in a fire in Thailand, was told I would never walk again, spent three months in a hospital. My mom's, you know, recovery, helping me recover through that and the positivity, triathlon, heartbreak in relationships, love, family, community, all of these things in this lucid detail, in this dreamlike state, walking across Antarctica for 32 hours to the finish line. It was an unbelievable experience.

• 35:43Lewis Howes?

  Crazy, man.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:44Lewis Howes?

  Tell me about this, uh, burn in Thailand. What happened? When was this?

• 35:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, definitely a pivotal moment in my life, to say the least. I, um, just after graduating from college, uh, I'd been a swimmer in college and, uh, you know, didn't grow up with a lot of money as a kid, but I'd always dreamed like, hey, like, one day I want to like see the world, you know? I had this kind of wanderlust inside of me. I grew up in Portland, Oregon, and I'm glad that I grew up there because even though we couldn't travel far and wide, we, you know, my parents would take me hiking and biking and the outdoors and things like that, a place that really embraces that.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  But I'd never really been abroad, hadn't seen other countries much, anything like that. And so I'd been painting houses as a kid since I was 15 years old. And every summer I would save up, you know, a thousand bucks in my like life savings account. And so when I graduated from college, I had $10,000. I felt like I was like the richest man in the world, you know? From eight, it was eight summers painting houses and, and that was the money I also had to pay for like books and like, you know, day-to-day expenses. So it was this, this carving off this little amount, um, every single year. But when I graduated, I had $10,000 and I was like, I'm going to go travel around the whole world as long as I can. And, uh, so I bought a one-way plane ticket, um, and the first plane ticket was from, uh, the west coast to New Zealand. But this is back in the day. You remember a place called STA Travel?

• 37:02Speaker 01

  It was like this, like, it was like this student travel agency. This dates the story. So I graduated college in 2006. I think we're similar ages.

• 37:08Lewis Howes?

  2005.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  Actually, did I read your birthday is March 16th?

• 37:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 37:12Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:13Lewis Howes?

  What year?

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Eighty-five.

• 37:15Lewis Howes?

  Eighty-three.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. My sister Caitlin, who I mentioned, is March 15th, 83.

• 37:20Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  A day before, literally, literally the actual day before. So we've got some symmetry. We've got some Pisces symmetry.

• 37:25Lewis Howes?

  Four or five people on March 16th.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we're both March 16th birthdays. It's funny, I don't know, that popped up in something, I saw that, I was like, Louis has the same birthday as me.

• 37:32Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's cool.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Anyways, um, so I set off from the world and the first stop in STA Travel tells me, oh, you're buying a one-way ticket for a student. You can actually stop in Fiji for free. And I'm like, great, for free? Like, heck, yeah, sign me up. I'm just, I'm a 22-year-old kid, just trying to like, you know, see the world a little bit. So I stop and sure enough, on this tiny little beach in Fiji, on this island that you could walk around the circumference in five minutes, I meet Jenna, 2007, who's now my wife.

• 38:00Lewis Howes?

  Fiji.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  First stop of my trip, I meet this 20-year-old, beautiful, uh, college girl who's on a study abroad in Australia. She's American, um, but I meet, I meet this girl and it's a kind of a chance encounter for a day or two. And then like I continue traveling and she moves back to Australia, but our lives can intertwine and here we are, married and she's the light of my life and the strongest anchor of everything that we've done. And so I'd say this trip started off to a good start.

• 38:24Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  Then I went hitchhiked around New Zealand. I mean, I have, I basically have no money. I'm hitchhiking, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, oatmeal, youth hostels, sleeping on floors, like, I mean, whatever I can get, you know? But just to be out in the world, it was amazing at the time. And I find myself on this rural beach in Thailand, island called Kowtaw. And, uh, have you been over to Thailand before?

• 38:43Lewis Howes?

  I have.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  So you've probably seen there's fire dancing and poi balls and all this kind of stuff. And at 22 years old, when a bunch of people are jumping a flaming jump rope, I thought to myself like, sure, why not? That looks like fun. And, uh, clearly hindsight is 2020 because the rope, the flaming rope wrapped around my legs lit me on, my body sprayed kerosene the length of my body, lit me on fire completely to my neck. I jumped into the ocean to extinguish the flames, which ultimately saved my life, but not before 25% of my body was severely burned, predominantly my legs and feet. And I'm here, I'm in Thailand, I'm in the middle of nowhere on a beach on an island. There's no hospital on the entire island, no ambulance. So I'm on a moped ride down a dirt path to a one-room nursing station, like the size of this room that we're sitting in right now, basically with like one bed.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  And I have to go undergo eight surgeries there where there's a cat running around my bed in this makeshift ICU. And the worst thing is the doctors are looking at me through this sort of broken translation of cultural and language barrier. And they're saying like, you'll probably never walk again normally. Like the damage to your ligaments, the knee joints, the ankle joints, that's the depth of the burn, like honestly, you're probably not going to be like fully functional, um, you know, full mobility back again. And, you know, obviously super dark time in my life, just this downward spiral of physical trauma, emotional trauma. I thought I was this young person seeing this world. How could I be so stupid? I'm down with myself, all these things. And the, the, the heroine of this story is my mother, who's just this incredible woman.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  And I don't have kids yet, although that's something I'd like, another adventure I'd like to go on pretty soon, I think. But, um, the, uh, my mother comes in and I can only imagine what it's like to be a mother, to see your kid on the other side of the world in this makeshift hospital, bandaged to the waist up, having doctors say this. And I know now that she's afraid, she's in the hallways crying and pleading with the doctors, asking for good news, begging for anything. But she comes into my hospital room every single day with this smile on her face, with just this air of positivity where she's going like, Colin, like, what do you want to do when you get out of here? Like, let's set a goal, let's look towards the future. I'm like, mom, are you kidding me? Like, my life is, is over as I know it. Like, I'm never going to be the same again. I mean, all I can see is the darkness.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  And she just fills me with this love and this positivity and leans in. And she finally says to me like, do me a favor, close your eyes. I sit there, I'm like, okay, I'll play along. I close my eyes. She goes, visualize yourself, just picture yourself in a positive light, doing something in the future. And in that moment, for whatever reason, probably because I was an athlete, I guess, I see myself crossing a triathlon finish line. And I open my eyes and I go, fine, you want me to set a goal? And I'm kind of saying it as a precocious kind of kid, just trying to play along with my mom a little bit. And I'm like, you know what? One day I'm going to race a triathlon. And I love my mother so much for this. Instead of her going like, oh, I said, set a goal, but maybe within the parameters of what the doctors are saying your diagnosis is or whatever.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  She's like, great, that's what you're gonna do. Let's learn everything about triathlon. I've never raced a triathlon. I swam in college, but never like bike competitively, run competitively. I don't even know like how you change your shoes from a bike to a run. I don't know any of this stuff. But she's like, great, that's your goal. And so it was three months that I was in that Thai hospital. And I was finally flown back to the United States to Portland, Oregon, where I'm from. Haven't taken a single step. Um, I was carried on and off the plane, placed in a wheelchair when I got home and I'm in my mother's kitchen that first day. And my mom says to me, she goes, Colin, um, she goes, I know you've got this big triathlon goal, but you gotta figure out how to take your very first step. And she grabs this chair from our kitchen table that I grew up, you know, eating around. She puts it one step in front of my wheelchair. She goes, I'm gonna leave the room, but your entire goal for the day is to get out of that

• 42:16Speaker 01

  wheelchair and take one step and show me that you can sit in that chair that's one step away from you. It was three hours staring at that chair, like looking at it. And I finally, I get up, three hours of courage and strength. I haven't taken a single step in months and I take that one step. And the next day she moves a chair five steps away and the next day 10 steps away. Each day a few more steps. And it went on like that for a year and a half. You know, the steps turned into moving from the couch in the living room to the dinner table at night. And then one time I was like, so I said, mom, I'm jogging. I'm literally like shuffling down the street, probably like 30 minute mile pace. I mean, it's like barely shuffling, but like that day jogging just felt like flying. Like I'm just like on top of the world. Cause I'm imagining myself racing this triathlon. And so sure enough, 18 months later, a year and a half after my accident, I'm trying to like get my life together. Like I gotta get a job.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  I gotta get out of my parents basement. I take a job in finance in Chicago, 23, maybe just turned 24. Um, I take a job in finance in Chicago. I'd say economics in school and uh, kinda trying to figure out my future, you know, like I'm trying to do something, I guess. And I honor this goal. I said, I moved to Chicago and I was like, okay, they've got a big triathlon here. In fact, the Chicago triathlon at the time was the biggest race in the country. It was 5,000, 4,000 participants or something like that. So I signed up for the race. I trained at this local gym, asking these random people like in spin class, like how do you get, how do you change your shoes? Like, I mean, I know nothing. I know how to train cause I'm an athlete, but I'm like, curve of this injury. I don't really know. And I show up at the Chicago triathlon and I raced the race and I finished the race. My grandmother, um, who's since passed away, she's at the finish line to congratulate me like, you did it.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Oh my God, you finished a triathlon, you know, a mile swim, 25 miles bike, 6.2 miles run. It's an Olympic distance triathlon. And we go and we collect my bike and the way that triathlons work is like people start in different staggered waves of a hundred or so people. And we come back around after having lunch. She goes, don't you wanna go check how you did in your age group or see like, you know, how'd you did in the event? And I'm like, sure, why not? Let's wander past the scorer's table. We wander past the scorer's table. I'm like, hi, trying to figure out my placement. What's your name? Colin O'Brady go, we've been calling your name over the loudspeaker. You won the entire race.

• 44:16Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  So I had placed first out of 4,000 some participants in my first race ever. And it was a complete and utter surprise, even crossing the finish line because of the staggered start. I had no idea. I literally had no idea. People finished before I started because they started an hour before, cause they're in different waves and all this kinda stuff. And it was just this incredible moment when I really think about the entire sequence there. And I look for, you know, this was 11 years ago now and this happened of what's happened since then, is it was in that moment that I didn't go like, oh wow, I'm the champion of Chicago triathlon. I'm so cool. I'm so amazing. What I thought about was like gratitude, like what would have happened had my mom not come into that hospital room with this positivity, daring me to dream about the future, forcing me to set this tangible goal for the future, where would my life have ended up?

• 45:02Speaker 01

  Right? And so it's this moment where I look back and then I was like, wait, like I was able to do this? But I don't think of myself as special. I was like, as humans, I've realized like, we all have these reservoirs and this untapped potential inside of us and can achieve these extraordinary things when we're focused, when we shine positivity and light, when we lean into those that we love and uplift and co-create together. And so really this journey that I've been on, these world record projects, ultimately I, I quit my day job as a finance trader and became a professional triathlete the next day, which is not like being an NBA player, MLB player, anything like that. It's like still sleeping on couches and floors, but I gotta race my bike around the world for several years. And it was an incredible journey to be up beyond, but it really started in that moment

• 45:45Speaker 01

  of turning this tragedy into a great lesson for unlocking potential inside of myself and why I love and I'm humbled to be able to share the story in the formats that I get to is in the public speaking I do and podcasts like this, or through my art creations and my projects out in the world, is that what I wanna shine out in the world is this, this essence that we have this inside of us, that we really all have this ability inside of us to create and, and do incredible and extraordinary things with our life. And that doesn't mean like your name in a newspaper or having a tech exit or whatever. That's one type of high performance, but I mean like loving each other and leaning in and being happy and playful and enjoying life and co-creating, inspiring and lifting

• 46:26Speaker 01

  up, all of the different ways that, you know, aren't necessarily the key metrics of success the way we think of them, but that's how I, how I define it.

• 46:37Lewis Howes?

  Do you think it'd be possible to achieve everything you have without Jenna in your life?

• 46:42Speaker 01

  Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Like there's, that's the, that's the easiest answer. Thank you for asking me. I have a softball of a question.

• 46:50Lewis Howes?

  How much could you create on your own without that support?

• 46:53Speaker 01

  You know, I think that, you know, there was 20 years of my life before I met Jenna and I, it's not like I was doing nothing. You know, I, you know, I was a talented athlete, swimmer, you know, collegiate, collegiate athlete, that type of things. But ultimately the next level came from this partnership, from this teamwork. And that before I even met Jenna, although I had just met Jenna previous to this, it's having this, this strong mother, this influenced my life, these five sisters who brought me under their wing and teased me and played with me, but ultimately loved me and uplifted me. You know, my mom, when she's interviewed about certain things, she says, careful what you wish for when you tell your kids they can do anything they set their minds to. Um, and she says that cause she still worries about me, of course, as a mother would when your kid's gonna go walk across, you know, Antarctica by himself. Um, but she's proud of me. She's never held me back. She's encouraged me.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  But Jenna, in that partnership of that coming together of, of love and romantic love, as well as business savvy and strategy and support, I could never have done it without that. And I recognize in saying that, we all don't, in this moment in life, when you're listening to this podcast, you're in this moment, like maybe you're not in a romantic relationship or maybe you are, or maybe you're in one that's not serving you, or maybe you're, maybe you're not. But whether that's your romantic partner, your best friend, your brother, someone you have yet to meet, I believe we are stronger together. And although it's an interesting thing to say, because people have pointed out, like if you just look at the top headline of the New York Times, man crosses Antarctica solo.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  It's like, oh, here's this guy completely by himself doing this badass thing that no one's ever done. Like that couldn't be further than the truth of the essence of this. Like this is a, I am a compilation of all of the people who have put love and energy into me throughout my entire life, as well as the people that have sat in the trenches with me when I've had a crazy idea on a whiteboard and didn't say, that's not possible. They said, cool, let's figure it out. Let's create.

• 48:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. What's the mission moving forward? You're taking some time to recover?

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:50Lewis Howes?

  Enjoy life?

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:53Lewis Howes?

  Are you back at the whiteboard soon? Are you just kinda taking it all in right now?

• 48:57Speaker 01

  You know, for me, I finished, um, two months ago yesterday. So it's only been two months since I finished. And actually after finishing, I knew that Lou was just a few days behind me. And so as badly as I wanted to change those underwear and get out of there with like more meal and get the heck out of Antarctica, I was pretty done with it. Um, I wanted to honor him and I waited at the finish line until he crossed. So I stayed, I stayed there for a couple of extra days, um, waited for him to cross. He ultimately completed it, becoming the second person, the only other person on the planet that has done this crossing. And it was so amazing to be there, to be the first person to congratulate on him on what was an extraordinary achievement, um, as well. So that was, that was kinda the first order of business as I stayed in Antarctica a little bit longer. Um, and then finally flew back to the United States and I've been, you know, I've been

• 49:40Speaker 01

  incredibly humbled by the press and the media and interviews and, and things like that. It's been, been amazing, um, in that regard. And the reason that I, I'm proud of that again, is not just because I liked seeing my name in print, but more so it validates this art piece, this reverberation of positivity and giving me this platform to speak about the things that I care about. And so having the opportunities now to, you know, I already was doing a bunch of public speaking before, but you know, speaking of businesses and corporations, all the stuff that I do in schools with the school curriculums I do with school kids and continue my nonprofit work with, with Jenna and the stuff that we do there. Um, I'm writing a book now, you know, all of these types of things is an amazing way to share this story. Are there other adventures on the horizon? Yes, I'm already of course sowing the seeds of those next, you know, adventures in a

• 50:25Speaker 01

  way that I can push my limits. Um, but what I'm really passionate about in this moment is having this ability to kind of take a, take a breath, take it all in and enjoy this moment and enjoy the ability to build off this platform that I've created to really share those human messages out in the world that I think are, are so important. One of the other, one of the other things that came into my mind when I was out there, it wasn't so much the mantra, but this idea that kinda kept hitting me was these two words, which was infinite love, infinite love, infinite love. It just kind of kept playing in my mind, not so much as a mantra, but this realization that like, love is not finite in this world. Positivity is not finite. It's not like a zero sum game. Like if I'm happy one day, that means you have to be sad. Actually, and I think, I mean, your podcast is an incredible, you know, example of this

• 51:10Speaker 01

  in my opinion, of sharing and shining your light in the world and sharing that positivity. And so the more people doing that, and there's certainly people that have uplifted me to be able to have a moment in time right now where I have the ability to shine that back out in the world and have a multiplying effect on that. I love it when people reach out to me, you know, I was sharing this story every night on Instagram. I carried this satellite modem. It took an hour to load one image every single night. So I'm exhausted at night writing this thing and like this thing's like, it's like, it's worse than like a 1995 AOL dial-up modem. Like it's like, like it's super slow, one picture and it takes an hour. But I wanna share it out and it's amazing to have that come back and people having, hey, I followed you along and now I have started that business. Or I'm leaning into the love in my life.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  Or I'm, you know, I'm, I'm going to the gym for the first time in this, just having that, that sort of, it's like, oh, I sent out this energy to the world and that's coming back. Not to pat me on the back, but it's like, no, hey Colin, I watched you do this. You're really cool. It's like, hey Colin, I watched you do this and now I am taking that energy you sent out and creating in my life. And when that person does that in their life, I can only imagine the five other people that's gonna touch, or the hundred other people that's gonna touch and the multiplying effect of that positivity. And so that's what I'm excited about doing. And I think you know, you know that better than anyone, the power of that.

• 52:21Lewis Howes?

  Dang, that's cool. Um, who is the athlete you admire the most in the world or respect? Who do you follow and admire?

• 52:30Speaker 01

  God, that's a, that's an interesting question. I really, I love that question.

• 52:34Lewis Howes?

  You could be an adventurer or athlete or any type of athlete.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna say too, this is, this is like just off the cuff, the first thing that popped into my mind. This is, this is truthful. When I, uh, when I passed Lou on the sixth day out there, I said, I've spent most of the time in silence. This is, this is a true story. It's not like a candid, I'm on the Lewis Howes podcast. I'm gonna tell Lewis Howes story. This is this true story. I happened to pop on your podcast and I downloaded like maybe 10 episodes randomly. The top 10, the top, the most recent 10 right before I left. But again, I limited the content I had with me.

• 53:06Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  And the first one I play is your Kobe Bryant interview. Um, and when I'd met you and said, hey, I just did this Kobe interview.

• 53:12Lewis Howes?

  You gotta check it out.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  It's exciting. You gotta check it out. And so I had it up there and you know, I've admired Kobe from afar, although I'm a Portland Trail Blazers fan through and through. So you know, we have a little problem with the Lakers, but um, you know, they, they will beat us a couple of times, you know, down the stretch, uh, in the early 2000s when I was a kid. But there was something about that interview and his ethic that was so pertinent to where I was in that day.

• 53:34Lewis Howes?

  Perfect for you.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  When he literally says, he goes, I'm trying to stay ahead of Lou. This guy's more experienced in the, he's like more, kind of more badass adventure outdoorsman than me. You know, with all the miles he's done in Antarctica. And Kobe says in that interview, he goes, talks about being at the gym and being like, I'm just gonna stay here longer than any other guy. I'm gonna outwork him longer than any other guy. And so right in that moment, when I'm in front of Lou, I actually clicked in and I go, okay. Lou and I are tied now. I was supposed to be out here for 10 hours. How long am I gonna stay out here today? One hour longer than Lou. He goes 10, I go 11. He goes 11, I go 12. So it's, I, I would never have said before that Kobe Bryant was one of my favorite,

• 54:14Speaker 01

  but I'd say influentially in this moment, Kobe Bryant, that in his message of working and beating on the craft and him talking about studying the game film and the tape and all these things is a reflection of me is as I work on my craft of public speaking or writing or creating these other projects. It's not only to look forwards to the future, but to look back and learn these lessons from that. But that work ethic of working hard or harder than somebody else um, was really valuable in that moment.

• 54:42Lewis Howes?

  And when do you feel the most loved?

• 54:45Speaker 01

  Ah, that's a good question. I like where we're going with this. I like where we're going with this. This is great. Um, when do I feel most loved?

• 54:52Lewis Howes?

  Is it when you accomplish something big? Is it when you're in the strategy sessions? Is it when you're in the flow state? Is it when your mom says something to you?

• 55:01Speaker 01

  There is, um, I was just having a conversation about this yesterday. Um, Jenna, of course, is, is the nucleus of this, but a dear friend of mine, a guy named Blake Brinker, has been a huge influence in my life over the past couple of years. And particularly with helping me with, with some of my, my public speaking and things like that. And we're talking about one of the times that I felt the most loved actually was um, a couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to give a TEDx talk. Um, and as you, I don't know if you've given one or not, but you seem like the type of guy that would have.

• 55:30Lewis Howes?

  I've been asked to do many.

• 55:32Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, many people would want you to do that, but.

• 55:34Lewis Howes?

  Waiting for.

• 55:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, the right one, of course, sure, of course. Um, I was honored by the invitation to do that and it's, that's not something you get paid to do or whatever. But again, it's just that it's a, it's a format that I love and I've always found inspiration in. So I wanted to take it very seriously. And we ended up having, you know, he, he was a tech founder, working on something else or whatever. And he kind of stopped what he was doing um, for a couple of months and really dove into the ability to help me craft this story. And this was a story of the seven summers and explorers grand slam and sort of talking through my journey, one of the first from a bigger public. Um, this is a couple of years ago. We ultimately called the speech, Change Your Mindset and Achieve Anything. And it's something I'm really proud of, but it's not

• 56:12Speaker 01

  the, the essence of that, the fact that it's, you know, a million and a half views. I mean, that doesn't matter. The part that I felt loved in was that in a moment of creativity, where I like had something I wanted to say, but didn't know exactly how I wanted to say it and express it in the world. And Jenna was right there with me, supporting me, a friend who has no stake in this, who has nothing to gain from this, just loved me and said, let's create together. Let's play. Let's laugh. And we ended up, he, you know, it started out as being like, I'll help you out for a couple of, you know, hours and review a couple of drafts and like, let's hear you say your talk once. And ended up me, Jenna and him for two months, probably spending a hundred or 200 hours.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  And yes, we created a TED Talk in the world that I'm proud of, but that, the love was this playful space of creation behind the scenes of us laughing and, and we cried and we got into real stuff, not just about me and my story, but by him and his story and his life and Jenna's life and all this. And so I love these shared experiences, whether that's climbing a mountain with a friend, whether that's having a tangible goal of creating a speech or art or whatever that is. Those are the moments where I feel, I think I'm, I'm also intertwining joy, but joy and love um, is these moments of, of work and play and creation, innovation together.

• 57:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's cool, man.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:34Lewis Howes?

  What are we missing? Anything else you want to share? Where can people support you right now? What's, what can they?

• 57:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:40Lewis Howes?

  Jump on the next journey with you.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  You know, you know, just, just base level, follow along on Instagram. That's a platform I'm most active on. It's just my name, at Colin O'Brady. Um, you know, love sharing my insights and, and visuals and images and my journey and path there. And certainly my next expedition or creation will be told uh, through that lens as well as any other. So, and come say hi. I love it. I mean, I, I read my DMs. I love people, you know, saying hi to me, telling me what, what your plans are, your Everest, your canvases, whatever that is. I love hearing that. Um, that, that's amazing. And I get so much inspiration from that. So, so come, hey, say hi on Instagram. Um, and at Colin O'Brady is just my website. It's got all my speaking stuff and everything up there. So, um, you know, you can find me there.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  And as I, I'm working on writing this book. It's, it's not out yet, but it'll be out next year. So I would love, love the support and love as I, as I go through that journey. And um, you know, people hopefully uh, like what I have to say in that medium as well.

• 58:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Well, your Instagram just blew up over, I think you had like 10,000 followers when before you started.

• 58:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it was like 30,000. That's like.

• 58:39Lewis Howes?

  It was small. And then you just, yeah, every day I just kept seeing it grow.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  200 and something now and it's going up. So yeah, it's been fun to, to kind of dive into that platform. It's just, it's, it's a fun way to, to reach people and talk to folks.

• 58:51Lewis Howes?

  If you guys wanna go follow them right now, you can see the whole journey like day by day. Cause you posted a photo, I think almost every day.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  Every day, yeah, every day.

• 58:58Lewis Howes?

  And it was cool to just hear like, to read the captions and learn what you were thinking and what you were going through. So if you guys wanna really kind of follow along, you can go follow you and, and watch that.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:08Lewis Howes?

  Couple of months back. Um, this is called the three truths, this question. I think you might've heard it from the Kobe interview. So imagine it's your last day. You've accomplished every dream that you've written up on a whiteboard. You've 100 world records or whatever you wanna do.

• 59:23Speaker 01

  All the world records.

• 59:23Lewis Howes?

  Every world record. You own them. Uh, you're the first to do every crazy thing. You're still alive and happy and healthy, but you gotta pick the day you gotta go. Could be a hundred something a year from now, but it's the last day. Uh, and every book you've written and thing you've done, you've gotta take that information with you. So no one has access to the content anymore. But you get to write down three things you know to be true about all your experiences. The three lessons that you would share with the world. What would be your three truths?

• 59:51Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  The other one.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  I think the first one I would say is achievement is not for the select few. It's for the person who can overcome what I think is the greatest obstacle of all, but our own minds. And the second you can tap into that mindset, there is that reservoir of untapped potential waiting to be released by you. By you, you are the creator of that. So that was a lesson that I would definitely share um, with the world. So that's number one.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Second of all, and I said this before, but infinite love, infinite love, infinite love. This reverberation of the abundance of love that we have the capacity to both love ourselves, share out in the world and the importance of that and how we can all uplift and create in that way.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  And third, I'm gonna go with this mantra that certainly just changed my life. I would just write it down on this paper that you just said, this paper that I could leave behind for someone else to read. You are strong. You are capable.

• 1:01:00Lewis Howes?

  I love that, man. Well, I gotta acknowledge you Colin for your infinite love. When I first met you in the tent, you just exuded this joy for this. Even when we were climbing up and just dying, you were just like smiling and just talking along, pushing us forward with your energy. So I appreciate your inspiration. Uh, I acknowledge you for completing this. It's unbelievable. You completed this thing when no one's ever done it. And the, the push you give people, you know, you striving to be your best and be superhuman allows other people to do the same. So I acknowledge you for all the gifts you bring in the world. And I also acknowledge you for, you're not like this specimen of a freak athlete.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:40Lewis Howes?

  You know what I mean? You're not like this prototypical looking shredded, like super speedy, fast guy.

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:48Lewis Howes?

  You look like an average looking dude. Not in a bad way.

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  I know what you mean. I appreciate that.

• 1:01:52Lewis Howes?

  But you look like an average looking athlete.

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:55Lewis Howes?

  But you're able to push your mind past boundaries that most fit athletes can't. And that's what I acknowledge you for, showing us what's possible.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:02:03Lewis Howes?

  Even when it doesn't seem that way. So I acknowledge you for that, my man. Um, we can follow you on Instagram, at Colin O'Brady, website. Get your book when it comes out. And what's your definition of greatness? Final question.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  Hmm. Definition of greatness?

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  I think too often greatness is thought to be the amount of dollars in your bank account or the amount of Instagram likes or whatever external metrics are in there. But I'll choose something that is, that I've sort of tapped into, which is impact. And so, you know, the amount of millions or billions or trillions or whatever you have, a reverberation of your impact on others and that infinite love that you shine out there, that's greatness to me.

• 1:02:50Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. Colin, thanks, brother.

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  Thanks. I appreciate it.

• 1:02:53Lewis Howes?

  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 episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter.

• 1:03:37Lewis Howes?

  And now it's time to go out there and do something great.