Why Every Kid is One Caring Adult Away From Being a Success Story (Part 1)

The road gets narrower. In sobriety, this phrase gets tossed around early and often. When I was new to recovery, I had no idea what these words meant. Now I catch myself reprising this mantra daily. Translation: left to my own devices, I will unconsciously and obsessively latch onto and lose myself in almost anything that promises to remove me from myself, take me out of the moment, numb my emotions, undermine my productivity and (preferably) isolate me from other humans — this is alcoholism. If I want to grow, I have to be willing to let go of old habits that no longer serve me. The more sober I get, the more certain seemingly innocuous behaviors become problematic — impediments to accessing the best version of myself. Growth requires that such behaviors constantly be assessed, addressed, modified, and in some cases discarded altogether. For me, drugs and alcohol were obviously the first to go. But the inquiry didn't end there. When drugs and alcohol were removed from my system, my dis-ease had to find secondary behavioral weaknesses to exploit — things like how I navigate my relationships and intimacy, how I relate to food, and even how I use television. Changing my diet 8 years ago helped me understand the full extent to which I would use food to medicate and regulate my emotional state — something that never previously even occurred to me. Next up was TV – a perfect way to lose myself in “harmless” entertainment and “not feel” whatever I was experiencing emotionally. So a year ago we pulled the plug on DirectTV. This was not my idea. Like giving up drugs or cheeseburgers, this was not something I wanted to do. It was something I needed to do if I wanted to continue evolving. The detox was brutal. But I can tell you now that I would never go back — my life is way better now without the box. The road continues to grow narrower. My latest struggle? Owning up to the obsessive manner in which I use my iPhone to “check out.” What good is all the meditation and mindfulness work I have been doing if every time I have a free moment I impulsively grab my phone and start addictively scrolling through Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and e-mail? Without a doubt, its become my drug of choice. I am finally willing to admit that the compulsive nature of my relationship with my beloved device is not compatible with the man I would like to become. It's a walk that doesn't meet my talk. Things have to change. So today — thanks exclusively to my provocative conversation with this week's amazing guest — I deleted Twitter, Facebook and e-mail from my iPhone. Holy crap. If you know me, then you know this is not a small thing — I damn near live on my phone. The detox already rivals anything I have previously endured. This fact alone validates my decision, does it not? To be clear, I'm not quitting social media — it has been and continues to be a huge and tremendously valuable part of my daily life. What I am doing is taking Josh's advice (per our conversation) and creating healthy boundaries around my use of these platforms so I can grow. The desired result? Enhanced emotional well being; a reduction in anxiety; an elevation of mindfulness; qualitative improvement in my interpersonal interactions; greater appreciation for the present moment; and last, but hardly least, increased focus and productivity. Enter Josh Shipp. Abandoned by his birth parents before he even left the hospital. At risk foster kid. Victim of serial abuse. Given up on by countless foster parents. From the get go, the deck was stacked against Josh, and the house always wins. Josh's future was essentially predestined to be bleak and devoid of opportunity. Then he met someone who cared. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:06Rich Roll?

  Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, episode 116, part one of my conversation with Josh Ship.

• 1:23Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. My name's Rich Roll, and welcome to my humble little podcast. Got Josh Ship on the show this week. That's right, Josh Ship, the one and only, the teen whisperer. He's a really cool guy. We had a great conversation. More on that in a minute, but first, I just want to take a second to say thank you. Thanks for listening. Thanks for spreading the word with your friends, your colleagues, your coworkers, even with that crazy aunt of yours. Thanks for sharing the show. Thanks for tweeting. Thanks for Facebooking, Snapchatting, Instagramming, and whatever else the kids are doing these days. Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter at richroll.com, and thank you for supporting

• 2:04Rich Roll?

  the show by clicking through the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. That is the easiest and best way to support us financially at zero cost to you and about 2.1 seconds of time investment on your part. So, if you're not doing it, come on, you guys, get on it, support us. And to all of you out there who have been doing it, Thank you very much. What's up? Well, each week, the best and brightest and most forward-thinking paradigm-busting minds in health, wellness, wealth, fitness, sports, advocacy, the arts, and entrepreneurialism

• 2:46Rich Roll?

  sit down with me to share their experience, knowledge, and insights to help you discover, uncover, unlock, and unleash your best, most authentic self. Boom. Thanks for all the support with the Dean Karnaz's episode last week. That was a big one for us, you guys. iTunes helped promote it on their podcast homepage. And that was crazy because our iTunes ranking went through the roof. I checked it earlier today and it was like 38, the number 38 podcast of all podcasts. I mean, there's like 250,000 podcasts, so to be ranked, you know, even in the, even anywhere near that is insane. So, thank you, guys. It's because of you, it's because of the audience that we are kind of reaching that tipping point.

• 3:31Rich Roll?

  And I thank you very much. Real quick, as I announced the other week, I'm planning on adding in a weekly or maybe a bi-weekly Q and A edition of the podcast. So, please, send me your questions. Send them to [email protected] so I have some good stuff to pull from. And the idea here is I just want to create a little bit more of a connection, a little bit more intimacy between me and you guys here in this community that we've co-created together by talking about the things that you guys want to talk about. So, don't be shy, send me that email. And just a reminder that through December 20th, we're running a big sale on all our

• 4:15Rich Roll?

  products at ritual.com. We got $10 off my Repair Recovery Formula, the plant-based protein recovery formula, $10 off all our t-shirts, and we have that new awesome Peace and Plants themed t-shirt, which has been really popular, and two-for-one on our B12 supplement. So, check all of that out at ritual.com. It's a great way to pick up some cool gifts for the holidays, save a couple bucks. All right. Josh Shipp. Who is this guy, Josh Shipp? Well, he's a really interesting guy. We had an amazing conversation. He's got a lot of great insights and he has an incredible personal story, an incredible

• 4:57Rich Roll?

  personal arc in what he's endured and overcome. A former at-risk foster kid, this is a guy who was abandoned by his birth parents, he was serially abused, he was given up on by essentially everybody, countless foster parents and foster homes. And you would think that this is a guy whose future was predestined to be pretty grim, pretty devoid of opportunity. But Josh found a way to get out. He found a way to take his past of hurt and neglect and turn it around and use it as a catalyst for helping others. And as he so often says, "Every kid is one caring adult away from being a success story."

• 5:42Rich Roll?

  And I'm not going to spoil it, but that's essentially Josh's story. And that's the story that he tells the more than 2 million teens he has spoken to live that look to him for advice and insight and inspiration and guidance to take control of their lives and become something. Often referred to as the teen whisperer, Josh is a guy who helps adults understand teens, which is huge, you know, for all the parents out there like myself. I want to understand my teens and my soon-to-be teens. And he helps teens understand themselves. Today, Josh is a recognized teen behavior expert, he's a motivational speaker, he's a bestselling author, he's a TV host.

• 6:23Rich Roll?

  He's worked with, appeared on, and/or contributed to MTV, CNN, Fox, The New York Times, 2020, Anderson Cooper Live, Oprah.com, and even Good Morning America. In 2009, he was named to Inc. Magazine's 30 Under 30 of Successful Entrepreneurs. He's lectured at Harvard, he's lectured at Stanford, UCLA, MIT, and other major universities. He starred in two documentary-style television series, Jump Ship and Teen Trouble. He founded Youth Speaker University to help young people own and tell their stories. And he's even authored two books, The Teen's Guide to World Domination and Jump Ship: Turn

• 7:07Rich Roll?

  Your Passion Into a Profession.

• 7:11Rich Roll?

  So how did Josh find his way out? And what do adults most misunderstand about teens? What are some of the biggest mistakes parents make in trying to communicate with their kids? How do you reach an emotionally withdrawn youth? How does Josh's experience inform his own parenting? And what is the path from helplessness to empowerment? This is a path that Josh would say begins when you truly embrace the idea that your imperfections are what make you human. And your humanity is what makes you influential. I had a feeling Josh and I were going to hit it off, and we totally did.

• 7:54Rich Roll?

  This is such an amazing conversation on so many levels. I left inspired and I left compelled to focus on some areas of my life that really need redress, that need improvement. And Josh and I could have talked all day. We almost did. This is a long one, so I decided to break this podcast conversation up into two parts. This is part one, obviously, and I'll post part two on Wednesday night, Pacific Standard Time. I think that's December 10th, later this week. So tune in again for that. Your imperfections make you human. Your humanity makes you influential. What does that even mean?

• 8:37Rich Roll?

  Well, let's dive into Josh's universe. We were just talking before the podcast, you know, I refuse to spend a bunch of money on hotel rooms while all I'm going to do is sleep there. And I thought, I was like, well, I'll go to his house, we'll do the podcast there. And you're like, no, too many kids or whatever. And I'm like, okay, so here we are.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  I would have loved to have you at the ranch. So I grew up in Oklahoma, like I was mentioning, and then we moved to a place with a little bit of land, and so we call it the ranch. And, oh, it would have been perfect, but I'd know, like... I got a three-year-old, I got a five-year-old bedtime, just the audio would just be insane. You would just hear like weeping and gnashing of teeth in the background.

• 9:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, I have four kids, nineteen, eighteen, ten, and seven, and then our nephew is living with us. And we have a friend, we have a bunch of land too, and a friend just moved to our property and is living on an airstream. So we're building our own commune there.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Oh, man, you got like a compound going on.

• 9:41Rich Roll?

  And, you know, I generally, I do the podcast in different locations, but most of the time I do it in our garage. But it's always, it's always a speech with the kids ahead of time. Okay, you guys, we're locking the door, you can't come, I don't care, unless you like, you know, crack your head open.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  That's right, that's right.

• 9:57Rich Roll?

  But, you know, then they inevitably do, but it's okay. It adds to the ambiance and the flair.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 10:03Rich Roll?

  So, anyway, man, it's, it's great to talk to you and you have so much to offer. So I'm blessed that you are going to be sharing with my audience, man.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, I'm excited and I think, I think there's kind of the, the things that I'm known for that, that I kind of talk about a lot. But then there are also some more kind of subtle mindsets, disciplines, things I've learned mainly by failing, to be honest, and being terrible at certain things in my own life and going, man, that really causes me a lot of pain or that causes people that I earnestly, genuinely love and care about a lot of pain, sort of these ugly sides of me. And so I gotta, I gotta go about fixing that, I gotta go about trying to find people who are way smarter than me at that and, and experiment with that in my own life. So I'm, I'm stoked and excited to talk about all sides of things. I'm an open book, dude, let's, where we want to go.

• 10:59Rich Roll?

  Well, you being an open book is a big, is a big part of what I want to talk about because it speaks to authenticity. It speaks to vulnerability, it speaks to issues of what it means to be a man, what qualifies as masculine. And, you know, there's so many subjects that we can talk about, we can talk about entrepreneurialism, we can talk about parenting. And, you know, I want to get into your backstory and all of that. But I think, you know, to kind of kick it off, I'd like to just, you know, touch on the importance of authenticity. I mean, you opened this by saying, you know, I have all these failures, I have all these flaws that I'm working on. And I think it's your transparency in speaking to that, that I find to be very powerful and, you know, maybe the most helpful in terms of, of guiding people through transformation.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, well, thank you for that. And to me, I just, I wasn't always like this, to be honest. And I think when I wasn't okay with being who I am, both kind of the awesome of me and the awkward of me, you know, just kind of, I think we all are made up of that of, you know, we all have beautiful things about us and we all have sort of these ugly sides of us. And, you know, now just being okay with that, I feel that there is, that life is much more stable. Instead of either I'm pretending like everything's perfect or like I have it all together or that I'm confident and brave in everything, which really no one is, you know,

• 12:26Speaker 01

  you're brave and confident at a handful of things. I feel like now that I can just honestly take a look at both sides of that, it's so helpful, but I wasn't always like that. And, you know, that came out of ego and pride and fear and, you know, being so afraid. It's just crazy to think back on my life, which I know we'll get into, but how much time I spent worrying about how other people perceived me instead of getting about the challenging, difficult work of trying to better myself for myself and my circle of influence, you know, the people I care about, friends, family, that sort of thing. I spent so much time being concerned

• 13:10Speaker 01

  about making other people happy or pleasing someone else or trying to be a certain thing to fit in some sort of mold, instead of saying, man, just let me take inventory. Like, what's going great? What's going terrible? Be honest about both. You know, though I'm labeled as a motivational speaker, I, you know, I think being, I like to say wishful thinking is not a strategy. You know, it's good to be positive. It's great to be optimistic. All of that matters. But it's also not a strategy. It's not enough just to look at everything that's going great, but also take an honest look at what's going bad, what's going poorly, and then come up with a strategy in which to not stay there.

• 13:53Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, it's that strategy that allowed you to transform, to sort of emerge out of this horrible upbringing that you had, that again, we're going to touch on in a minute, that commitment to transcending that, that created this narrative around you, that then kind of put you on the map, and then suddenly you're out speaking on that subject. And I'm sure everybody wants you to get up on stage and share that story because it is so empowering and inspirational. But along with that comes a pressure to always be that guy. And instantly, once you're up on stage, there is, whether it's spoken or unspoken, looking down at the

• 14:32Rich Roll?

  crowd going, well, they want to hear this story, and I have to be that person. I've already reached this destination. So there isn't room for sharing your flaws in that. Like that somehow becomes dismissive or undercuts the power of the message you're trying to promote, right?

• 14:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:53Rich Roll?

  And then you carry this dissonance with you. Like, you're up there, you give the speech, and then you're like, yeah, but, you know.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  It's interesting you hit on that. Dude, as I was driving over here, I was literally having this thought, kind of this clear thought about it that I've never, ever had before. It's that, and I've seen this with friends of mine who are musicians, or writers, or whatever. You get to some place in your life where you've got good support systems, and people who know you and love you, yet aren't impressed by you. People who call you on your crap and encourage you at what you're great at. It's kind of that ecosystem that we all need to be successful in, whether it's being a dad, or in some sort of business thing, or whatever.

• 15:36Rich Roll?

  Just to be grounded.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Exactly. So you get that. And then typically, from that kind of being a stable person, you begin to get opportunities. You begin to get chances to go out and speak, or play your music, or whatever, which kind of draws you away. From that support system, from that grounding system, and if you're not careful, if you stay out there too long, doing the thing, writing, giving to other people, and you don't come back enough to that support system, to those people that aren't impressed by you, by those people that that know you for more than just the resume, or the website, or the demo reel, or the cool title you have, or that thing that you did, that's a really dangerous spot

• 16:22Speaker 01

  to be in, and, you know, particularly for me, and my mom was seventeen when she had me, and kind of gave birth to me, took off, so, you know, I was in the foster care system sort of immediately as a kid, and, and I remember, early on, just, well, as soon as I could remember, just not trusting any sort of adult, anyone, because I had this experience early on of being left as a baby, though I didn't remember it at the time, obviously, but once I began to think back on it, it was so clear to me that because this initial adult broke my trust, kind of took off, that I assumed every subsequent adult, or sort

• 17:06Speaker 01

  of person who claimed they were there to care for me, to take care of me, that sort of thing would would do the same thing.

• 17:12Rich Roll?

  Of course, I mean, for most people, that's irreparable, you know, and as I understand the story, not only, you know, were you abandoned as a baby, I mean, she did, she left the hospital without even filling out the paperwork, like she was gone.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  I don't know exactly how that works.

• 17:27Rich Roll?

  You know, yeah, like, I can't imagine, you know, I mean, that's, that's so intense, you know, so how do you go from that to being somebody who can then, once again, rely on another human being?

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Well, for, for many years, I couldn't, well, or perhaps I could, but I wasn't. Willing or old enough or mature enough or whatever to kind of deal with those pains, with those struggles, with kind of those ghosts of my past, to then go, okay, it's not that everyone's not worth trusting, it's, you know, a handful of people aren't, but most people are, or, you know, take it a step at a time, or these sorts of things. And for me, it's, you know, and I certainly don't want to make this a woe is me thing because it's not the spot I live in now, I don't, interestingly, man, there are so many things we can talk about, but interestingly, I don't find my story particularly inspiring or particularly like painful, because for me, I knew no different.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Like, I get that it's kind of a crazy story, and I get that it's not the usual upbringing. But to me, there's also this side of me that's like, well, I knew no difference, so it just kind of is what it is, and I got dealt what I got dealt. You know, by the time I was 14, I was in, I think, around a dozen different homes. So I just, I kind of bounced from home to home. It's crazy, I had a notebook, kind of like this, but not a Moleskine, obviously, like you have, Rich, but I would.

• 18:52Rich Roll?

  Super high end.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  That's right, yeah. Unlike the hotel room.

• 18:55Rich Roll?

  Unlike the hotel room.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  That's right, that's right. I don't, I don't mean to bring it up, but I'm just saying, folks, if you saw it, you would, you would flee in terror.

• 19:01Rich Roll?

  No video today.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  That's right, that's right, no photos, nothing. So I had a notebook like that, and I would enter in the date that I entered a foster home, and then I would enter in the date I got kicked out, and I would write down like the strategy or the approach in which I got kicked out. And I was so emotionally distant from it, that it became like a game to me, of like, all right, it took me three months to get kicked out of this home, let me try to beat my high score.

• 19:28Rich Roll?

  See if I can get out of the next home. Yeah, you're a ward of the state, you're bouncing around through, through all these families, and, you know, what I interpret from that is really kind of an emotional defense mechanism, because, because you were abandoned, you know, the idea of intimacy with another human being is so terrifying, that the only, the only way to navigate your life is to repel people before they have the opportunity to be sufficiently emotionally connected with you, that they can cause you further pain by abandoning you, which is, you know, what, which is the expectation.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Exact, yeah, I mean, yeah, man, that's 100% right, and I... You know, I think my philosophy then wasn't quite that sophisticated, but it was just like, "Well, you're gonna give up on me, or hurt me, so let's just get out of the way." And let me be, I'd rather the ball be in my court, I'd rather sort of me push you away, me give up on you, or me kind of be in power and control.

• 20:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, then you have control.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Exactly, versus the opposite. Which has now, as an adult, as someone who's, you know, done hundreds of hours of counseling, and I'm married, I've been married for ten years, even though I know I look like a child. You know, I got kids. Man, it is fascinating how that pops up and how that, that never goes away. I just have to be very intentional, very cautious about anticipating it. Really trying to look for the lie in it. You know, this fear, this anxiety, this insecurity I'm having with my wife, or my kids, or this friendship that really matters to me. You know, what do I feel like is going on here, and what's really going on?

• 21:02Speaker 01

  And I'm the sort of person that I have to, I don't know if this is right or wrong, but I have to second guess my initial emotional reactions, because there, you know, there are some lies in my past, and some ghosts in my past that will sometimes try to sort of creep back up and, you know, and sabotage things.

• 21:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that requires a significant degree of emotional maturity, you know, to be able to have that insight, to develop that objectivity on your intuition and your instincts. I mean, the analogy that I could draw from that is, you know, I'm somebody who's been in recovery for a long time, and, you know, I have to figure out when my instincts are reliable, and when they're being informed by, you know, a disease that wants me to

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 21:50Rich Roll?

  self sabotage, you know? And the only way I can do that is by being open, vulnerable, and honest with You know, my board of advisors, you know, people that I trust, that I keep close, who know what are, know what's going on with me, who can give me the honest feedback to say, you know, you might want to think about this, or do you think of it from this direction?

• 22:08Speaker 01

  So these, these board of advisors, is that something kind of informal that, that you've pieced together, together? Is that something kind of as a part of the recovery program that's more kind of like, hey, you should have like, these number of people and meet this often, or?

• 22:20Rich Roll?

  It's both. I mean, in recovery, you know, a core principle is, oh, you have a sponsor, and then I have like, a group of guys, you know, that know me well, that I meet with, you know, throughout the week, and, and a phone list of guys that I can call.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:33Rich Roll?

  And say, this is coming up for me, you know, what do you think? Because they know me so well, they can provide objective feedback. The informal aspect of it is the kind of board of advisors that, that I put together for other areas in my life that aren't necessarily related to my emotional sobriety, but, you know, what my career and, you know, my relationship with my wife and things like that. Like, people that have gone through things that I'm going through, that have experience, because it's, it's not really about advice, it's about sharing experience, you know, because that's what I, that's what I value. And I think it's, you know, it goes to mentorship, which is a big thing that you talk about a lot, and it's been such a huge part of, of what you've received and what you give back, and I think it's crucial for anybody and everybody.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Well, I love what you're doing there, because I, I think there's this whole myth out there of kind of the super mentor, meaning like,

• 23:22Rich Roll?

  You're going to have this one guy.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can find like, one guy or one lady that's like, amazing at everything, and, you know, he or she can teach you every aspect of your life, but, you know, I, I practice a very similar thing in my life, where I've got a group, group of guys that hold me accountable on the good, the bad, the ugly, all of that. You know, they're not impressed by me, they, they know the good of me, they know the bad of me, they know my insecurities, and what I'll do if I'm sort of left to myself. But then also, you know, I have very specific kind of mentors of like, you know, this guy's been amazing as a, as a father, and as a husband, and his kids are grown and respect him and like him, so, man, I can learn so much from him, and then-

• 24:05Rich Roll?

  Right, and maybe his career has nothing to do with what you do.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Exactly, oh, yeah.

• 24:09Rich Roll?

  And he's not the person you call for that, but you call for-

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 24:12Rich Roll?

  How do I be a better dad?

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I think that super mentor thing, you gotta be careful, because it tends to be- I think a bit of a shiny object, you know, someone tends to be like someone kind of famous or really well-known or whatever, which can be kind of more of an ego-driven thing, like I would, I would like to be on the radar, or I would like them to know what I'm up to versus can I really learn about being a father from that person?

• 24:37Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah, like, like, I'm gonna get Gary Vee to be my, you know, my mentor. Well, that guy's bandwidth is so limited, yeah, he's amazing at what he does, but you might be better off with somebody who isn't well-known, who has, you know, copious experience, but is more willing to share and is more willing to invest in you.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:56Rich Roll?

  You know, it's like, how much, how much, you know, of this person's attention are you really, do you really expect to get, or is fair to that person?

• 25:04Speaker 01

  And it wouldn't give you what you're, what you're daydreaming of would, anyway, you know, I mean, Gary's best advice on his, on kind of that wheelhouse is, is in a book or a podcast or something, and you can get it there, and that's, it's never information, it's always implementation.

• 25:19Rich Roll?

  Josh, that would require work.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Well, well, we're not here to condone that, my goodness. But I think it's never information, it's always implementation. Almost none of us don't know what we need to do, or what the sacrifices we need to make, or whatever, it's, like you said, having someone in your life who can say, you know, you're on the right track, but I think, you know, you're self-sabotaging here, or you're doubting yourself here, or, okay, you say you have this kind of big goal, let's break it up into baby steps together, and I'm gonna hold you accountable, not on the end result, the shiny thing, but what you need to do next week in order to make that, you know, big dream happen in two years, three years, or whatever.

• 26:00Rich Roll?

  Right, and, you know, I speak a lot on, on goal-setting and, and the like, and the most important thing, and I know you share this idea, is, is what are you doing right now, and what's the next thing to do? Because we get caught up in, in the grand goal, but that becomes all too often paralyzing for people, or not accessible enough where they're, they're willing to kind of lay out, you know, the brick-by-brick

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:26Rich Roll?

  approach. We get caught up in, you know, the destination, as opposed to the very unsexy daily rigor that's involved, and really, that's the only thing that's important, is what you're doing next.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, with young people, I, I kind of deem it as talking about what I call step esteem. Meaning I kind of revolt against this idea of self-esteem because of the preconceived ideas it conjures up, which means it's something that's given to you at birth, if you're tall, dark and handsome and athletic and articulate and brave and all of these things that ninety percent of us oftentimes don't feel like we are. But I like to think of it as step-esteem, meaning each step you take towards something that's good for you, yet that intimidates you, you gain an esteem, not because it's something that's given, but rather it's something that's earned by facing something that scares the crap out of you.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  And even if you fail, your mind begins to reprogram itself instead of, oh, I'm such a stupid loser that can't do anything, to huh, okay, that wasn't terrible. You know, maybe it was a minor success or a minor failure, but you go, hmm, maybe I'm capable of far more than I sometimes give myself credit for. So I think it's that, I like to think of it as step-esteem, and I like the young people I work with to think of it as step-esteem, because it's not something your parents are going to give you, or your teachers, or that you're born with, even if you're naturally bright or talented or athletic or whatever, you've got to step out and go get it. You've got to put that one foot in front of the other and go out and grab that esteem because it's earned through esteemable acts.

• 28:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's directly proportionate to the extent to which you are willing to endure some temporary discomfort. And I call it self-esteem earned through performing esteemable acts.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 28:17Rich Roll?

  It's like, and I think it brings up something that's going on right now that I see because I'm, as a parent, we've kind of stepped into this culture, and I don't know who decided this was a good idea, but suddenly, you know, everybody's a winner, you know, everybody gets a participation medal. And, you know, we're so worried about self-esteem that we edit ourselves and we're fearful of, you know, awarding the victor for the sake of, you know, potentially damaging the person who was the runner-up. And I don't really think that that is serving us very well. So I'm interested in, you know, to the extent that you work with kids and are really connected to what's going on right now, what you see.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree. I think that's a very troubling trend. I think the idea that you can sort of protect your child from

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Those sorts of social issues, you know, whether it be kind of trying to, you know, private school them away from kids that are mean, that's not possible. From harboring them away from, you know, realizing whether or not, you know, they were the best at something, which to me, it's kind of grading and looking at the wrong thing. I spoke at Harvard a couple of years ago and the thing I didn't expect, I mean, I was obviously very intimidated going into that gig. Mm-hmm. And the thing I didn't expect afterwards were the conversations with kid after kid who's like, "I'll be honest with you, man, I feel lost here because I went from being like the smartest kid at my high school to now every kid is the freaking smartest kid

• 29:55Speaker 01

  here, you know, and was that kid." So, you know, sometimes that, you know, you're, you're, you know, the most smart or you're the most talented or the most athletic can be dependent upon who's around you versus what kind of effort are you putting forth. And to me, I'd much rather applaud that effort, I'd much rather applaud, you know, did you give your best, did you put your all into this, what kind of preparation did you put into this, how did you do in the moment? And indeed not protect them from, you know, someone being first place and someone being 10th place or whatever, because to a certain degree, that's how the world works. Mm-hmm.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  And I think, I think that's part of the beautiful, terrifying responsibility we have as parents is, you know, I got 18 years or whatever to try to, while they're in the comfort of my home, prepare them for what it's going to be like out there. Mm-hmm. So if, while they're in here, they've never experienced difficulty or having to clean up their own messes or taking extraordinary personal responsibility for things that they do, both good and bad, or, or being ranked or held accountable or judged based on their performance, then what happens when I'm not there? What, and, and then they're presented with that. Mm-hmm. Do they melt down, do they, do they, do they jump into something destructive to try to?

• 31:24Speaker 01

  You know, deal with that. What happens then? I think that's a very challenging situation.

• 31:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and if they lack the experience with having weathered that, when the stakes are lower, what's going to happen when they're out in the world and the stakes are significantly higher?

• 31:49Rich Roll?

  I mean, what do you see as some of the most common mistakes that most parents make when they're trying to, you know, child rear or even just communicate effectively with, you know, young teens, young teenage kids?

• 32:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'm a dad. I got a three and five-year-old, and I'm certainly not an expert in that category. That's something I'm, you know, struggling with and having great days and terrible days, you know, myself. I literally had like my worst, well, one of my worst moments as a father thus far the other day. One of the things I try to do, even with my young kids, is put them in situations of things that will stretch them. So instead of watering things down, like, I want them to have to do it. I want, you know, I want them to buckle their car seat if they're age-appropriate. I'm not going to do it for you. Like, we'll wait. Like, you got it. You're going to do it. So that's kind of my MO, right?

• 32:46Speaker 01

  So my son, he's five, he's insanely cute, he's very tender-hearted. We're talking about the dog, and the dog's like 12-years-old. And just, I just blurt this out. I'm like, you know one day Buddy's going to die. And my wife's head just like snaps. And like, obviously, it's true, but it's like, oh, and then, you ever seen Shrek?

• 33:08Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  You remember the cat in Shrek with like the eyes that...

• 33:12Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah, they get huge.

• 33:13Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. Yeah, that became my son, and he's just like weeping. What does that mean and what happens? And Sarah was just kind of like, you know, under her breath, just completely laughing at me. So that side I don't so much have figured out.

• 33:29Rich Roll?

  So despite being a teen expert, you're still a fallible human being.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  Right, not so much a kid expert. Not so much a kid expert. So, you know, the thing that I, and I've been working with teenagers and parents for the past 12 years, and there are a few trends that I see. And let me start off by saying this. I think to, to put it very simply, to parent a teen well, you need to do two things. Consistent encouragement and consistent consequences. At the end of the day, if you can do both of those things consistently, your kid's gonna be fine. Not perfect, not without issue, not without, you know, fault or flaw or whatever, they're still gonna be human.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  But for the most part, you will have an independent, responsible, caring, young person on your hands at the end of that. And with most parents that I see, that I've worked with, they tend to err on being really, really good at one or the other, but not so much both. So, you know, sometimes we can be, in the media and such, very harsh on parents that sort of coddle their kids. And we can say, "Oh, you're raising entitled kids and don't you realize what you're doing." But that so often comes from a good place of like, they wanna be encouraging and maybe they weren't encouraged as a child and it was like a very, sort of insanely strict, like,

• 34:55Speaker 01

  home with, with, with all tough and no tender. And so they're like, "Well, I'm not gonna make that mistake again."

• 35:00Rich Roll?

  Right, they're compensating in the other direction.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so, you know, there has to be that encouragement, but there also has to be consistent consequences. And, and the consequences side can sometimes be the thing that's tricky because to really do it well, the consequences need to be premeditated, predetermined. The entire family needs to be on the same page. Not at, not at the time of war, but the time before war. Like, meaning before-

• 35:31Rich Roll?

  Because once you're in the war, it's, you're reactive and you're impulsive and emotional and suddenly you're saying things that you didn't sort of plan out ahead of time and that creates inconsistencies.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Right, you flip in or you flip out, you know, depending on your personality type. Like, you either snap- And the punishment is too harsh, or you say things, you look back at and go, ah, that was so stupid, I wish I wouldn't have said that, that could cause some kind of pain, or whatever. Or you flip in, because, you know, you're not sure what to do, you're exhausted from your day, the stuff going on in your own life, you don't have a game plan ahead of time, so you just flip in and you go, eh, it's not a big deal, or it's not something I really need to worry about. And maybe, in the beginning, it's not, but that- You're creating a pattern. That left to itself could eventually grow into some sort of beast, and it's tough,

• 36:25Speaker 01

  man, because, you know, when your kid becomes a teenager, they sort of fire you as the number one influence in their life. And that tends to go to friends, which even if their friends are great, you have, you know, folks with 15 years of experience on the planet, guiding people that have a similar amount of time on the planet, and, you know, while the kid is trying to become a teen and get that independence, you know, they begin to push away the parent. And the way I always think about this is kind of like a roller coaster, meaning, you know, when you get in the roller coaster seat, they put like the lap bar down in your lap, and if you're like me, you kind of grab that bar and like wiggle the crap out of it.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  See if it's actually locked in. Yeah, I'm just, I'm a little OCD in general, but also like, alright, I want to make sure like, you know, this is safe and this is secure, and I wiggle it and I push it and I prod it, not hoping it will give, leading to my inevitable death, but I push it and I prod it and I test it, hoping it will hold. And kids who are going into the teen years are going to do the exact same thing to you. And they're not pushing and prodding and testing- Hoping that you will give, but rather hoping that you will hold, you know, hoping that at this time in their life when so many things are uncertain and so many things are unsure, that you're certain and that you're sure.

• 37:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's interesting. I think it requires some discernment because as the parent, when you're on the receiving end of that, you can interpret it as something different, as rebellion or whatever, when it's really just a testing of the waters on behalf of the kid to see, hey, are you holding up this wall for me?

• 38:10Speaker 01

  And it's so hard not to take it personal.

• 38:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  There's, I mean, there's a woman that I run with, I won't say her name, but man, she's going through that right now. And she could not be a better mother, you know? I mean, none of us are perfect as parents, but she could not be coming from a more earnest, genuine, caring place. She really wants the best for her kid, as 98% of parents do. But man, when, when her kid is pushing and her kid is throwing daggers, like she's taking them, and she's taking them to heart, and she's taking them personal, and you know, that whole flip in, flip out, like her kid is flipping out because of this uncertainty

• 38:52Speaker 01

  and these boundaries and all these sorts of things. And it's so hard not to take that personal. It's so hard not to take those things that they'll flippantly say to you. Those very things we flippantly said to people who did nothing more than tried to care for us and love us when we were kids. But it's so freaking hard not to take those things to heart and say, oh, you know, I am a terrible parent, or I've never felt understood, or you guys don't care about. It's not, it's so hard not to, not to take that bait.

• 39:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah. When I, I posted on Twitter yesterday that I was going to be sitting down with you and I said, you know, what do you, you know, what do you want me to talk about? What do you want to know? And a kind of consistent response that I got was, how do I? How do I communicate and connect with my 13-year-old who is emotionally withdrawing from me? I think it's particularly specific to girls, it seems to happen, like when they turn 13 and suddenly the door in the bedroom shuts.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:53Rich Roll?

  And the communication goes on lockdown and there's a withdrawal. I haven't, I'm lucky, our two older ones are boys, they never went through that. We have a great, very communicative relationship, so I don't have any personal experience with that, but I have a daughter who's 10 and everyone says, "Oh, wait till they're 13." And my wife says, "Mathis was such a Hellion when she was young, she already went through that."

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Out of her system.

• 40:15Rich Roll?

  And I'm like, "Well, we'll see, I don't know." But I know that that is something that causes a lot of trauma for a lot of parents and probably for the kid, too. Like, how do you navigate that period of time when the hormones kick in and suddenly the child becomes a completely different human being that becomes hard to reach?

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's frustrating because what used to work now when they're a teen sometimes doesn't work. So, there are a few very practical things, I would say. Number one is focus on asking questions instead of lecturing. This is huge because, as a parent, it's natural to want to lecture because you feel like you have this valuable piece of information that could help save this kid some headache or whatever, so you want to sort of implant it in their head. And so naturally, you just kind of lecture, it's like, "All right, I got this smart thing I figured out through trial and error," or whatever, "and I want to implant this in your head, so I'm just going to kind of lecture it at you."

• 41:13Speaker 01

  But when you lecture, the kid tunes you out.

• 41:17Rich Roll?

  It's shut down.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  That's all you get, that's all you get. When you lecture, it leads to them tuning you out. So then you become the boy who cried wolf. You've got this wonderful, important, perhaps life-saving information, but nobody's listening. So rather, you've got to really focus on asking questions. So lecturing leads to them tuning you out, questioning leads to critical thinking.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  Meaning, you know, take that kind of lecture you would want to give, like, you know, I can't believe you did that, you know, that was so foolish, or whatever, which, again, natural to feel that way. And just pose it as a question, you know, what went on there? What did you learn? You know, would you do that again? These sorts of things. And in the beginning, here's the thing, you might not like their response.

• 42:05Rich Roll?

  Well, isn't, aren't the responses often very truncated? Like, you know, how are you doing? Fine. What's wrong? Nothing, you know? Can we talk? I don't care. You know, like, you get that sort of shutdown reply.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  We'll get to that, because that can sometimes be timing, environment, kind of more subtle things like that. But in the beginning, the whole idea of this questioning is twofold. Number one, to train critical thinking, not, because you already know what the smart thing is to do about blank. They need to come to the place where they believe the smart thing to do about blank is a similar thing. Because lecturing, again, like, when your kid is a kid, there's a lot of control. You know, you control where they go, because you're driving them there. You control what they're eating, because you're preparing it or with them. You're controlling who they're with, for the most part.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  When the kid is a teen, the name of the game is influence, which means, you know, questioning and training and this and that, but you're not always there. Which is why the questioning is so important. It's not just kind of some kind of clever little thing a guy like me says on a podcast. There's really a method to the madness, because that question, well, first of all, you, when you ask them a question about where they lie on a particular issue, and pop culture is actually a great thing to use to your advantage, like, let's say some teen celebrities doing something stupid in the media, this is a great way to find out where your kid lies on an issue, without a feeling like you're directly attacking them. You know, so it's not like, oh, Rich, something you did wrong, or something I'm worried about with you.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  It's like, oh, did you see what these celebrities and like their, like nude photos getting hacked? Like, isn't, isn't that crazy? Like, what's going on with that? You know, or, who's at fault here? Is it the celebrity, because they shouldn't have done it, and that's stupid? Is it the hackers, because everyone's, you know, deserves to have their own privacy, or whatever? So when you ask them something, you're gonna find out immediately where they lie on the issue, not where you do, but where they do. So they might say something absolutely foolish and immature and just where you're like wanting to pull your hair out because the thinking is so flawed. Now, okay, you make a note of that. It doesn't mean now you attack them like, "What are you thinking? That's stupid."

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Like, "You better not be taking nude photos, boy, I will beat you." You know, it's not like that. Because now you go, "Okay, hmm, man, their line of thinking in regards to how they're gonna be, you know, interacting on Facebook or Instagram or whatever, I need to be concerned. I have some training to do here because where they lie on the issue, you know, is an area in which I'm concerned about." And then, secondly, as I said, it just, it trains them to think critically so that when they're out there at a party and they can get in a car with someone who's been drinking, you know, you're not there.

• 45:06Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  So that they can think critically, independent of you, and in that moment that really matters, make a wise decision.

• 45:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's amazing advice. I mean, it's more about preparing them or training them to think than it is about the specific issue.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  You're in-

• 45:26Rich Roll?

  And it goes back to self-esteem. Like, if you value yourself, then you're gonna make a decision that is going to, you know, sort of put yourself in a better position than a self-sabotaging decision.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, think of yourself as a coach and think about what a good coach does. Coach prepares the athletes before the game. Let's run drills, let's go through scenarios. What's that, you're being bullied at school emotionally, you know, some kids being a, you know, jerk to you verbally? Let's go through that, you know? Let's talk about how you're currently responding. Hmm, do you think that kind of perpetuates the situation? Do you think they're getting a rise out of that? Like, they like to see you snap or cry or yell or whatever? Like, let's go through the different scenarios you're gonna be in. Just like a coach does before the game, let's run the drills, let's go through the stuff, great job here, you know, watch that, that's, there's the thing that's going to get you.

• 46:17Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  After the game, the coach, great job on this, let's work on this, let's review, here's what went well, here's what didn't, but during the game, it's all on them, you know, we can't step on the court.

• 46:28Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  That, that's not how it works, and I think that's really the game when we talk about influence versus control, that's what it looks like to have a teen, is that, is that you're not out there on the court, you're not out there on the field, you don't sadly have control, but you have influence, which means even if you can't control in that moment, because you're not there, or they're at school, or they're out with friends, or they're out god knows where, you do have that influence before and after to try to train them to execute appropriately.

• 47:01Rich Roll?

  And I think a big aspect of that is creating a safe space where they feel comfortable keeping the channels of communication open, because especially once they get into high school, like you want your kid to come home and say, you know, Johnny, you know, was, wanted me to get in the car and he was, he was drunk and I decided not to, but to even have that conversation, they have to feel safe to share that without, you know, being shamed or, or being disciplined, you know what I mean, like, like it has to be open enough, and I think that, that's such a crucial aspect of it, like, for your kid to feel comfortable letting the, letting the parent know what's actually happening at school.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:45Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely, and, you know, and there are little things, like we were kind of talking about timing and such, you know, it's, it's very natural when kid, you know, first gets home, or maybe you, you know, maybe they're, they don't have a car, so you're picking them up from school, it's real easy, like, right there to kind of bombard them, like... How was your day? What's going on? How'd that thing go? Blah, blah, blah. I mean, just think about yourself, like, at the end of a long, exhausting day. Like, you probably just want some time to decompress. You probably just want some time to chill out. Uh, you know, so it like, it doesn't have to all be done right then and right there. Uh, that can, again, not every single time, but that can, you know, save you from getting kind of those, those one-word responses, which can sometimes just come from an earnest place of like,

• 48:31Speaker 01

  "I'm exhausted. Like, chill out. Let me, give me some room to breathe here. I just got done with like, high school and that old madhouse. Like, give me some time to breathe."

• 48:41Speaker 01

  You know, another thing can be to, you know, when it's not directly after school. So there, it's interesting with teen boys and teen girls. So, think about it, when teen girls have a good relationship, like, typically, stereotypically, they're talking, they're chatting. This is kind of the modality of teen girls. It is, you know, chit-chat, chit-chat, chit-chat. And so it's face-to-face. But typically, when two girls are in conflict with each other, it's gossiping, it's drama, it's talking behind their backs. So now, instead of face-to-face, it's back-to-back. Whereas guys are the opposite. Like, guys tend to bond over like, "Let's go for a bike ride," or "Let's go for a run together," "Let's go watch a movie," "Let's, let's do something side-by-side."

• 49:26Speaker 01

  But if we're in conflict, like, we're in, we're in each other's face. Right. And, uh, like, we're up in each other's face and like, yelling and this and that. So, guys, that conflict tends to be interpreted face-to-face. Just think about that. And then guys get over it pretty quickly, too. Right, right. But think about that, whether you have like, a teen girl or a teen, uh, son, is that the way in which they interpret either kind of a casual conversation versus conflict. So, with your teen son...

• 49:56Speaker 01

  Windshield time, meaning when you're driving kind of side by side, that's a great opportunity to have some sort of conversation because you're not looking face to face, so it doesn't feel as confrontational. You know, if they're in the car, you kind of have them where you want them. They're kind of, you know, unless the conversation gets really dicey, it's not like they're going to open up the door and roll out of the car on the highway. So that can be something that you can work and use to your advantage. And then similarly with a daughter, you know, she's going to interpret sort of that respectful, kind conversation more of like face to face. Let's sit down, let's get away from the house or whatever, let's sit down and have some quality time together.

• 50:34Rich Roll?

  Interesting. When you look at the educational system, you've spoken to heaps of high school students all over the country, I think you probably have a pretty good grip on what goes on in most high schools. You know, what's, what is endemically wrong with the system? What would you change? Like, where are we missing an opportunity to improve the educational system? Because I look at it and I see, I just, I see so many things broken and antiquated.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  That's a great question. I certainly don't have any expert opinion on it. I don't claim to be an expert in education. I more so focus on teen, teen behavior, sort of that, you know, psychological, emotional side of it. But, you know, I certainly have opinions and I think, you know, one thing that I see is just how, how does sort of factory system, the entire, you know, school system is, meaning, you know, it's so much sitting and it's so much one modality and one method of learning that tends to lead to sort of one modality and one method of employment or sort of that life after high school or life after college, what is that going to look like? And so...

• 51:46Speaker 01

  What's frustrating is that you get kids who don't perform naturally at that particular style of learning, and then those kids think that they're not particularly bright or talented or whatever, and the truth is, no, you're just not particularly bright or talented at that style of learning. So, you know, how can we, in a system that's so enormous, and I don't, I don't claim to know the answer to this, but how can we, in a system that's so enormous, serve so many kids without those kids becoming a number? Mm-hmm. Without it's like, alright, here's kind of this best practice way of learning, here's kind of the best thing we can come up with to serve this enormous swath of people, but now, you know, every single student is under that.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  And for me, the, the kids that I see that really thrive are the kids that have that extracurricular activity that kind of feed into the way in which they learn, the stuff they just naturally love to nerd out about and are fascinated by. Mm-hmm. Whether that be theater, or public speaking, or sports, or student government, or something, you know, why is it that those kids tend to thrive, tend to do better academically, tend to have less behavior problems, tend to come to school and, and look forward to it? It's because they have that outlet. It's because, alright, if even, you know, these other six, seven hours of the day are

• 53:11Speaker 01

  terrible, at least I know I have this thing after school, or this last hour of school that I have to look forward to, where I feel like it gets me and I get it, and it, and it just clicks.

• 53:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they have something that they're passionate about that, that, that is interesting to them, and they can use that as a lens through which to, you know, learn a variety of skills which will benefit them in all aspects of life and school. I mean, in our, my personal situation, you know, we're homeschooling our kids. And it wasn't something that I thought that we were going to be doing. It was really kind of motivated out of our 10-year-old daughter and her experience. We had her in a bunch of different schools and we could just see the square peg trying to get jammed into the round hole and we came to the conclusion that really the best way to serve her was by pulling her out of the system and trying to find a new way. And I don't profess to have the answer and it's an evolving experiment and it's very

• 54:05Rich Roll?

  much an unschooling method right now, but she's found something that she's super passionate about, which is fashion design. And so we're supporting that with a mentor and through sort of curriculum-based learning that revolves around that passion pursuit. So it's a platform through which she can learn a variety of disciplines. And what we've noticed is that it's created a lot of self-momentum, you know, because she's inspired, right? So she's trying to solve this problem related to what she's interested in.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 54:35Rich Roll?

  And that requires that, you know, she's going to have to write and learn math and do all these sorts of things. And so she's motivated to learn these things because it's applicable to what she cares about.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 54:46Rich Roll?

  You know, and I think that in this sort of warehouse system, that gets lost. You know, we don't, we don't give, and this sort of applies to maybe kind of the helicopter parenting that you see a lot of, you know, what happened to giving kids space to just breathe and figure out who they are, you know? Sort of in the summertime, like, hey, they run out the back door and they're riding bikes around the neighborhood and they're just with their friends and they're just, you know, they're outdoors and they have time to be with themselves and their friends and they develop a relationship with themselves that informs the decisions they're going to make later in life. And now we're so programmed

• 55:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:24Rich Roll?

  that we've lost that space. And that's, you know, technology is to blame for that as well and video games and all those sorts of things that have monopolized, you know, every waking minute of every day that we don't, I think we need to reprioritize somehow. I don't know that I have the solution as to how to do that, but, you know, that's just my observation.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  But you have to experiment and, you know, like you said, you know, we don't claim to have all the answers with this homeschooling thing, but we're giving it a try. I think you, I think you have to experiment. I think you have to be intentional. You know, it's, It's not just going to happen, you know, I mean, anything good in life is not just going to magically appear, magically gonna happen. You're gonna have to try something, then you're gonna have to take the temperature of it and say, alright, these aspects are working, mm, this not so much, we gotta be careful with that, or get some help there, or some support there, or whatever, and just, and just sort of wash and repeat. But, you know, I, I've done a lot of work privately, and then, for a while, I had a TV show that was

• 56:25Speaker 01

  airing, where I was working with these extremely at-risk young people. I mean, I'm talking about kids who, who had been addicted to heroin since they were 12, 11 years old, and had been on it for many, many years. And it was fascinating to work with these kids, and then follow up with them a year later, two years later, three years later, five years later. And ultimately, you know, in the beginning, it's about, you know, intervening and getting them help, getting them very serious, intentional, day in, day out, hour in, hour out, help. But then, once, once that aspect was kind of handled, it was, you know, finding out, what is their dream? What is that thing? What's that thing they're

• 57:09Speaker 01

  gonna nerd out about, be excited about? What's that thing that's, that could be more compelling to that young lady than heroin? What's, what's that new drug going to be? What's that new high? What's that new fascination? What is that? Because it's not just enough to teach kids what to say no to, you gotta teach them what to say yes to. And if you're saying yes to things, you know, whether you're a kid or an adult, that matter, and that are meaningful, and this and that, you will naturally, as a byproduct of that, protect yourself from things that seek to sabotage that, or seek to hurt that, or seek to harm that.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  But I, I think it not only starts with, here are, here are the things not to do, but, but here's, you gotta go find your yes. What is that thing that you are gonna do and be excited about?

• 58:00Rich Roll?

  Right. And how are you going to create a foundation that is gonna be sustainable? So, it's not like... You know, the biggest loser where they lose a ton of weight and then a year later they're, you know, overweight again. You know, how do you create sustainable, long-lasting, permanent, you know, or semi-permanent habits that will serve this person and create a brand-new, forge a new trajectory for them?

• 58:24Speaker 01

  And the cool news is, and I'm not just trying to be positive, it's, that is genuinely possible for anybody.

• 58:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm gonna say, we're talking about kids, but this is, these are, this applies to...

• 58:38Speaker 01

  I'm not, I'm talking about all of us. I mean, truly, if there, you know, if there is something that matters to you, some different kind of li, you know, I mean, right now, there's someone who finds himself in a situation where they're frustrated with their job, or frustrated with their life, or some, some aspect of their life, and, and I, I've been there, and I know how dark and discouraging and helpless and alone that can feel, but it is genuinely possible to come out of that. Not, not immediately, not quickly, not overnight success, myth, style, but if, if you can be willing to raise your hand and get help, if you can be willing

• 59:23Speaker 01

  to turn around and face those demons for a period of time, and then if you can put together some sort of intentional plan for your life that's gonna move you away from those things, intentionally towards things that you care about, whatever that is, doesn't matter, you know, you'll look back, and you'll have a life that, that matters and that is meaningful, and that, that you're proud of, but it's not, you know, it takes so much more than just the desire to.

• 59:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Thoreau famously said, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," and, you know, I think it's a... More true than ever now, and, you know, men and women, but particularly men. I think, in my experience, I've witnessed just an emasculating effect of people in jobs that they don't like, they've sort of been funneled into, that maybe they don't even feel like they consciously chose this life path that they're on. And it's very kind of tried to go, well, you have to find your passion and live that. And a lot of people are so disconnected that they're not even sure what that is, or the

• 1:00:32Rich Roll?

  process of even beginning to grapple with that idea, let alone make changes in their life.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  When we're in a place that we don't want to be, there's almost like this goal pornography that exists, where it's like, oh, if I could have this job, or do this thing, or earn this amount of money, or accomplish this thing. And we just get so fixated on that, and we just love to sit around and dream about it, and we love to look up stuff on the internet about it, and we love to sit around and talk to people about it. But that isn't your next step. You know, where you are and that shiny thing, there are probably 38 steps between that. And so though that can be a good carrot, though that kind of pot of gold at the end

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  of the rainbow, or whatever, can maybe keep you going when things inevitably get difficult, challenging, frustrating, harder than you expected, et cetera, to me, the only thing that practically matters is...

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  What are my exact next three steps? Not 1 through 28. But what are the exact three next steps? And then, and I think this is subtle but important. Don't go and get training and accountability around the end goal. I think that's an earnest mistake I see a lot of people making. Here's this thing I want, so I'm gonna go get training and accountability to that. Rather, when you can, or get some help to define those next three steps. Get training and accountability exclusively and only around those three things.

• 1:02:29Rich Roll?

  I would take it one step further even and say that you can't even necessarily trust that your goal or this thing that you've, you know, sort of put on a pedestal is the thing that you think is gonna fix you. It's really the right thing for you to even be chasing unless you've invested enough in the interior work required to be in that place where your instincts are reliable, which is kind of what we started the podcast talking about. Like, you know, you have a certain level of emotional maturity because of what you've endured and the choices that you've made in your life. And I think that that's mandatory before we even get to the discussion about what it is that you're chasing.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:12Rich Roll?

  You know, so a perfect example is, and I've used this before, but somebody says, "I wanna run a marathon," or "I wanna do an Ironman." And I was like, "Well, why do you wanna do that? What's going on in your life that suddenly that's important?" Let's look at that first and figure out what's going on internally with you, what's going on emotionally with you, what's going on mentally, spiritually, all of these things, and do an inventory of that. We'll assess the Ironman goal later. Maybe there's a different goal that you're not aware of that would be more appropriate. But until we know what's going on over here first... We're not sure, you know?

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  I don't disagree with you. I think I have a complementary viewpoint to this. I mean, I also, well, the way in which I agree with you is this. If someone wants to do a marathon thinking it's gonna make them happy or change their life forever, it's not.

• 1:03:59Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  It'll change your life for a day, and you'll be like, "That was amazing. I can't believe I did that. Why are my nipples bleeding?" You know, that kind of thing. But you're gonna wake up the next day and be the exact same person.

• 1:04:09Rich Roll?

  But you've performed an assailable act which will lead to self-esteem, arguably. Right. You know, it's, it has, I'm not saying that these things don't have value. I'm just saying, when you're forecasting far into the future, it's sort of like you set this trajectory to go to the moon, right? And if you're, you know, one degree off, you're, you're, you're gonna miss the moon by thousands of miles, right?

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:04:32Rich Roll?

  So, so what trajectory are we, are we embarking on today that's gonna take you in the best direction for you?

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  And I, and I love that idea of being brutally honest about, "Why do I really wanna do this?" Not, not, "Why would I tell people?" You know, not, "Why would I tell someone if they asked me?" You know, particularly someone I didn't really, really know, but why genuinely, selfishly? What's the real motive there? Because I think that's the thing you really gotta check. Because if it's, you know, you're banking on it to be this thing, like, if you're banking on a job, any job, even a job that sounds amazing, and, and, "I love my job." Doesn't make me a better person.

• 1:05:14Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  Uh, there's actually things about my job that can make me a worse person. But it doesn't make me a better person. It doesn't forever sustain some sort of happiness, or joy, or whatever. I'm appreciative, and I'm grateful, and, and all of that, but it, it, it doesn't, you know, that thing isn't going to give you what you think it is. So you're still going to show up there, that same person that you are, or that you were, or that you're working towards.

• 1:05:46Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  Um, you know, I do think, I was mentioning to you, I've, uh, ran, I think, eight or nine marathons now.

• 1:05:54Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  I got into it because there was this... There was this guy who I wanted to be sort of a career mentor to me. And I met him through my wife. My wife's a Pilates instructor and was like training him because, you know, he's a runner, so he's like, you know, trying to do the Pilates thing so he doesn't throw out his hip or whatever. And I was like, man, this is a cool dude. Like, he's wise, he's, you know, no ego, confident, but he's accomplished a lot of stuff. I could, I could learn from this guy. So I was like, hey, I want to- Better start running. Right. Oh, yeah. That's what he's like. He's like, oh, you know, I, you know, gave a real nice overture to him, like, hey, I would, here's who I am, and I would love to pick your brain, and I'll be respectful of your time, and, you know, blah, blah,

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  blah. He's like, yeah, you can pick my brain, just show up here at 5:30 a.m. What? What did he know? The first litmus test. Exactly. Yeah. So he roped me into running, and I've just been fascinating, fascinated, rather, how, you know, sort of that marathon running, that threshold training, how much that has translated positively into other areas of my life, just realizing, you know, if you haven't ever run a marathon, you can't, probably can't run one tomorrow, but you could, anyone, I think, I'm not a professional, but anyone could in about a year. Anyone

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  could in about nine months, with a plan, and probably a community of people, so you don't hit the snooze button, so you show up, like, intentionality and leading into it. And then eventually, yeah, you can do that thing that you want to do. And I've, I've just been so encouraged with how that sort of threshold mentality has translated into me being a dad, and to me being a husband, and the work that I do, because I, from time to time, I mean, almost consistently, every week, find myself in a situation-

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  Where I feel uncomfortable, where I feel like I can't go any further, like I don't, I don't have any more answers, I don't have any more insights, I'm not sure how to deal with this, my maturity isn't to that degree in which I need it to be to deal with this in the way I've seen other people deal with it. But then having something anchored in my past of like, alright, this is, you know, kind of like that marathon, what do you do? You push past, you get answers, there's a plan, there's training. That's been amazing and something, you know, for my personal circle of friends, I'm like, this whole like pushing your thresholds physically, you'll just be amazed at what it does for your mental state.

• 1:08:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's no question about it. I mean, especially when I'm struggling with something, you know, in the real world, whether it's emotional or financial or relationship oriented, career, what have you, and I feel like I'm stuck and I can't see my way through it, it's like, let's go for a run.

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:00Rich Roll?

  It's amazing the extent to which I solve my problems out on a run, and I think a lot of that goes back to the principles of meditation, because it gets you into a place of, of the present, the now, of no mindedness, where, you know, that, that, that place is where you can start to, you know, receive the, the messages that you need, like, it creates space, right?

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  It's weird, because if you'd have told me this before I started running, I would think, oh, you're a nice guy, but I kind of don't believe you.

• 1:09:29Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:30Speaker 01

  You know, but now I know, like, yeah, it's true.

• 1:09:32Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  You know, you're frustrated or upset or not being, you know, thinking clearly, and you're right, you go for a run, a bike ride, whatever that thing is for you, and inevitably somehow you get clarity, or you go, ah, maybe not clarity, but clarity on, I'm overreacting, or... This isn't as big of a deal as I'm making it out to be, or I'm just getting wound up unnecessarily about something.

• 1:09:56Rich Roll?

  Or what's your next best move in whatever it is you're trying to achieve in some other area of your life. My only problem with it is I'll have those epiphanies and then, you know, I don't, it's not like I have a pen and paper and I write them down, you know, like sometimes I'll pull my phone out and I'll make a voice memo or something like that because I'm afraid I'm gonna forget and many times I have forgotten. But I also think it's a great, very tactile, tangible example of this principle that we were talking about at the outset, which is what's your next best move? Like you can run a marathon, if, you know, you can find plans on the internet, there's a million of them, and it's about what are you doing today? So people say to me all the time, like, "I can't believe that you did these crazy ultra races, like how do you do that?"

• 1:10:38Rich Roll?

  And it's sort of like putting the frog in the lukewarm water and turning the heat up gradually, like you don't notice it because you're just building brick by brick, day by day. So, you know, I only look at what is the workout that I have to do today, you know, and if I start thinking about what I have to do tomorrow, or that huge ride I gotta do on Saturday, you know, I'll just get freaked out, you know, I just like, I just, right now, I had to get through this one workout, that's all I have to do.

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:04Rich Roll?

  And I get through it, and then, you know, I worry about the rest tomorrow, and it's the same in recovery, like all I have to do today is not drink or use. That's it. When my pillow hits the, you know, when my head hits the pillow tonight, that's all I have to worry about.

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  I see this pattern a lot in my work as a mentor. Um, I've, for the last few years, I've been mentoring and training other people who want to speak to young people.

• 1:11:27Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  And it's been an absolute joy, like it's, I love it, it's like one of the things that's just so fascinating and fun and challenging and a joy to me. But there's this interesting pattern that I see, and again, I, no fault of their own, but folks who are interested in speaking to kids, they want the career I have now, not the career I had 10 years ago. You know, they wanna be on the cool stage with a couple thousand kids, and it's going well, and the kids are laughing and responding and these sorts of things. Not like 10 years ago where I'm giving some convoluted speech about coleslaw, swear to God, true story, and, you know, to like eight people, and no one cares, and no one

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  wants to hire me, and these sorts of things. And I think it's so helpful.

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  Not to just look at someone who inspires you, not, not just their end result, but their first step. Cause the end results can be like inspiring long-term, you know, like someone like you. It's like, oh, like what he's doing now, that's, that's cool. And that's awesome. That's something I could strive towards eventually. But when you look at any mentor or hero in your minds, their first step, it's actually a much better on-ramp. Because you'll find doubt and failure, and they weren't that good, and they weren't that impressive, and they weren't that confident nor competent at that point yet. But they simply got going, fine-tune, fine-tune, fine-tune, fine-tune. And now, for some reason, there's

• 1:13:00Speaker 01

  someone that, whose work inspires you, you know, whether that be in, you know, something like what we do, or a writer, or a parent, or whatever. I think our culture is so fixated on these beautiful media stories of this kind of false overnight success.

• 1:13:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  And it's just not true. It's like, it takes 10 years to become an overnight success.

• 1:13:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I, I talk about that all the time. It's such a fallacy. And, you know, but media loves that narrative, and it's an easy sell, and that's what gets clicks and page views and all that kind of stuff.

• 1:13:31Speaker 01

  And they got eight minutes to tell a story, so I get it.

• 1:13:33Rich Roll?

  Right. And so, but it's never true. You know, pick any example, and, and I'll show you the failures and the long road that led up to it. It's a super important point, and again, I'm trying, doing an analogy to recovery again, but...

• 1:13:48Speaker 01

  It's this hotel room. It's conjuring up old images.

• 1:13:51Rich Roll?

  This is like a hotel room when you're hitting your bottom.

• 1:13:53Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:13:54Rich Roll?

  But, you know, they often say, in the rooms, like, you know, somebody who's brand new, you know, is coming in, they, you know, they're, they're on day one of sobriety, and, and they're scared, and they don't know where to turn. The person they're gonna relate to is the guy who's got... Four days or seven days of sobriety, not the speaker up at the podium.

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:14:16Rich Roll?

  Who's got forty years. It's like, that's just not, I can't even fathom that. I can't relate to that. I can't connect to that. But the guy who's got four days, like, how did you do that? Like, that's the guy I want to know. And so, again, it goes back to this idea of choosing these mentors who are so far down the line, who are inspiring and have done amazing things. But maybe the better mentor is the guy who's just four steps ahead of you.

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:14:35Rich Roll?

  How did you get to that point? Like, let's just focus on that.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  I think you need both.

• 1:14:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  I think you need, like, the rock star that's like, whoa, that's, that's going to push what I think is possible. That's going to push what I think success looks like. It's going to cause me to dream bigger, want to do more. But also, I need, like, here's, like, my next step and my next chapter. And this, this is what it looks like for me for, for a certain period of time.

• 1:14:58Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, let's, let's go back to your story a little bit.

• 1:15:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:03Rich Roll?

  Because we just touched on it, but we didn't really get through it. So, you know, you're a ward of the state. You're in all these foster homes. But eventually, you end up in, in the care of, of some pretty, you know, sort of astounding sounding parents that really changed everything for you. The Weida Myers. And, and that's really kind of the first, uh, what it sounds like to me, at least as the narrative goes. That's what really changed everything for you.

• 1:15:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. And prior to that, there were, you know, like I said, probably a dozen different foster homes. I would try to get kicked out of them as soon as possible. Um, most of the homes were great. You know, the foster parents were well-meaning. I was just so hell-bent on pushing them away, on getting kicked out. Um, certainly to no fault of their own. You know, I think, uh, foster parents can get a bad rap because of the, you know, couple news stories, again, that are sort of scandalous and therefore get play. But, um, most of the foster parents I've ever met and most of the foster parents I ever lived with, who understandably said, eh, we're gonna need to find a different home for this kid. Man, they were great, well-intended. Um, I did have a couple of homes that were abusive.

• 1:16:09Speaker 01

  Uh, I was raped as an eight-year-old boy, uh, which was such a, to look back, it was, it was like a grenade in my heart, that moment. And, and even more than that moment, the secrecy of that moment for so many years, just never talking about it, never wanting to. Discuss it with a counselor, never wanting to bring it up and thinking that that it wasn't something that needed to be dealt with. But, you know, that stacked on top of, you know, the other forms of abuse caused to me by by other people that I couldn't control and then then the abuse I was causing to myself.

• 1:16:50Speaker 01

  And I mean, mostly emotional, just this flawed, terrible thinking I had about myself that, you know, I was eating a bunch and got overweight and bullied and became suicidal and just like this whole mess of this sort of stuff stacked on top of me.

• 1:17:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a spiral that that very few people would ever really be able to climb out of.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  So, so, so all of that, kind of, all of that nastiness and ugliness and, you know, I was just, I was just believing so many lies. I was believing the lies these kids were saying about me because I was a short, fat foster kid. I put so much stock in their words. I put so much weight in their words. I was listening to all the wrong voices. You know, here I was, I wouldn't give these loving foster home, these loving foster parents a chance. Not a chance at all. I'd already written them off. And then there's some, you know, kid who's being a jerk, likely dealing with their own insecurities, who's saying

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  things about me and why is it that I put so much stock and value in what they said? But at 14, I ended up, I tell this story a lot, so I'm trying to intentionally not do like the speaker version of it. No, I'm trying to be intentional about that, actually, which is fun for me. So, okay, 14. Social worker comes and picks me up and is like, "All right, here's these people, the Weidemires, Yukon, Oklahoma." And, you know, I'm just like tuning it out. I'm like, "All right, yep, here we go, yet another family, yet another family, they're gonna..."

• 1:18:38Rich Roll?

  You're clicking the stopwatch.

• 1:18:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, right, exactly. Come on, let's beat the high score here. You know, they're gonna put on the good show in front of the social worker and they're gonna welcome me into the home and this and that. And, you know, in the beginning, it felt like that. When I showed up and met them, it wasn't like, "Ah, here are these savior parents," or something. It's like, "All right, just, here we go again, let's see how long these people can last." And what I love about them and their story is that they have no unusual training, they have no... I mean, my foster dad, he was a middle school history teacher.

• 1:19:23Speaker 01

  My foster mother was a repo woman, which to me is like the perfect foster mom, which is like, very loving, but also has a concealed weapons license. So, like, I will hug you and then bust a cap in you if you get out of line. So, nothing, you know, nothing on the outside particularly sort of felt different or more uniquely qualified about these sets of parents. And I was, man, you know, those first couple of years, I was still kind of pushing and prodding and just trying to push them away and shove them away. And it became clear to me that at the least, they had stamina.

• 1:20:07Speaker 01

  And at the least, they were thick-skinned. Because I was trying to, I was kind of pulling out all my best stuff.

• 1:20:14Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, if you're a high school teacher and a repo man, you're not afraid of conflict and...

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  Exactly. And... You know, I was kind of slowly letting my guard down. Now, my goodness, I would never have told them that. I probably wasn't sort of leaking any intelligence that that's what was going on. I was trying to still kind of be the, you know, the stubborn kid that you weren't going to get through to, or whatever. But I was, I remember my heart was very slowly, and I mean very slowly, beginning to soften towards these folks and...

• 1:20:52Rich Roll?

  And what was it that was, that was different that allowed that to occur? Was it just their patience, or their unperturbed kind of nature about whatever you were throwing at them?

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  It kind of goes back to my key parenting philosophy, consistent encouragement and consistent consequences, and it was like, totally fair on both. Even though I'd complain, when there was a consequence, I'd get grounded because I did something stupid and I very well deserved to get grounded, even though I would, of course, complain like any teen is going to. I was like, "Man, yeah, yeah, they're right." You know, and again, I would... The crazy thing, you know, there's probably some parent who's just going through the thick of it right now. I did not even go back and thank them until I was, I don't know, 21 years old. You know, like, "Thank you for not giving up on me. Thank you for not getting rid of me. Thank you for not letting me push you away when I was doing

• 1:21:40Speaker 01

  everything humanly possible to do such. Like, you've saved my life, you've, you know..." So, at, I think I was 17 or 18, I kind of had a pretty big epiphany. I was, what you don't talk out, you act out. I had not yet kind of talked through my issues with the counselor and kind of brought it up and dealt with it and got clear on what the lies were and what was true and all that. So, I tried many tactics to feel better, you know, acting out and eating and drinking and all these sorts of things. And I was like, "Yeah, doesn't

• 1:22:24Speaker 01

  really last." So I thought, "Well, I've grown up so poor. Maybe money's the answer. Maybe things, stuff." So I got a checkbook and began to write upwards of around $10,000, $11,000 worth of hot checks. I've always been an overachiever, I guess.

• 1:22:44Rich Roll?

  You stole a checkbook?

• 1:22:45Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 1:22:46Rich Roll?

  Or you just wrote bad checks on your own account?

• 1:22:48Speaker 01

  Right. I had a legitimate checking account, but with like a hundred bucks in it or whatever. So I would just...

• 1:22:52Rich Roll?

  It's something you couldn't do that today.

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  No, I mean, I would, I would like go to a gas station, get gas, and then be like, alright, can I, can I write the check for over the additional amount and get cash? Yeah, up to a hundred bucks, so write the, you know, check for a hundred and twenty bucks and just go all over and do that and then buy stuff I wanted with it or whatever. So one of those hot checks I wrote was for my car insurance. And at least in Oklahoma, if you don't have insurance for a period of time, I guess they ping the DMV or what have you. And my driver's license was canceled. So I'm going down the road speeding to something and I get pulled over. And I knew, you know, I was going eighty-eight or something, that, that was pretty serious, but I didn't know that my driver's license had been canceled.

• 1:23:38Speaker 01

  But then, you know, the cop's like, I'm gonna need you to step back to the back of the car and he's handcuffing me and, you know, do you understand that your license has been revoked or suspended or whatever?

• 1:23:52Speaker 01

  And long and short of it, he takes me to jail, Stillwater, Oklahoma, near Oklahoma State University.

• 1:24:00Speaker 01

  And brings me in kind of this cell where there's, I don't know, like twenty people, mainly just like college kids who were drunk, probably being stupid in public.

• 1:24:10Speaker 01

  And, you know, I get to call my parents and tell them what went down. And they said, okay, we're not gonna bail you out tonight, but we'll see you tomorrow.

• 1:24:23Speaker 01

  And looking back, I just think of how, how freaking brilliant even, and loving.

• 1:24:32Speaker 01

  That move was for them to basically be like, we think it's so important for you to sit in your choice. Mm hmm. For a little while longer. We don't want to remove this, what I would now call, as cheesy as this may sound, we don't want to remove this blessing, this wonderful opportunity from your life. I didn't say that on the phone, but they're like, alright. Right. Your choice. We're not bailing you out tonight. You're gonna wear this suit? We'll see you tomorrow. Right. But looking back, I'm like, man, there's, there's some instinct or brilliance or, or something in that moment right there.

• 1:25:14Speaker 01

  And I think those are the, you know, those are the little moments that, that, that really matter, that turn into big moments. And I, I just remember sitting in that, in that cell in the corner and all these jail movies are going through my mind. So I'm like, my God, what's gonna happen? And I'm freaked out and, uh, I just remember thinking, man, I'm, I'm about to become that foster kid statistic. Uh, you know, dead in jail, homeless. More than 50% of homeless people are former foster kids. I'm like, man, this is, this is no longer cute and clever and, you know, acting out in class or being a pain to some foster mom until she kicks you out of the house.

• 1:25:58Speaker 01

  Like, I don't know what I want with my life, but I know for sure it's not this. Mm hmm. And I, it was just so heavy and so clear. Uh, and I, I had no idea what to do. I had no idea how to get help. I had no idea what help meant. I had, I had no idea what that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow was for me. And certainly not the 28 steps between. There and now.

• 1:26:26Rich Roll?

  Right, but this was your bottom, this was your moment of reckoning.

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, this isn't it.

• 1:26:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and when that comes, the blessing there is that little seedling of willingness to change.

• 1:26:38Speaker 01

  Yes, and I think you're exactly right, and that's the one thing no one can give you, is a willingness. Someone can come alongside you and say, "All right, are you serious? Like, serious this time? Really, you really mean it? You want to change? You want the help? You'll accept the help? Yes, okay, cool. Well, let's get you a counselor, let's get you a mentor, let's, you know, let's start doing this instead of that. Let's set up a schedule, let's remove your unscheduled time because you don't do well with that.

• 1:27:09Speaker 01

  But that willingness, no one can give you, no one can systematize, none of that. You have to get there yourself through either inspiration of like, "That's beautiful and I want to go towards that," or through your own stupidity of going, "I'm tired of this. Like, I've tried it and I'm done, I'm done."

• 1:27:31Rich Roll?

  Pain is the ultimate catalyst to willingness, you know, unfortunately. You know, if you could come up with, you know, a way to distill it down and inspire that level of willingness in people, then you're on to something, because it's tricky. You can't, you cannot give it to somebody. It has to be internally generated. And everybody's different, where that comes from is different. You know, in me, it was pain, it was a different version of what you just expressed, you know? But it didn't come until I realized I was out of other options, that there wasn't going to be a different way or an easier way.

• 1:28:08Speaker 01

  And going back to parenting, I think that's why consistent consequences is so key, is you give your kids the blessing the consequences can be. Meaning, they screw up in class, I mean, even something as minor as that, you're not bailing them out, you're not apologizing to the teacher, you're not figuring out how they're going to get their grades up.

• 1:28:30Rich Roll?

  No, all of that is codependent.

• 1:28:31Speaker 01

  They are.

• 1:28:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's on them.

• 1:28:33Speaker 01

  Like, I care, but you need to care more. You know, this is on you. So, the next morning, they pick me up.

• 1:28:46Speaker 01

  I'm wearing like the little orange suit. I mean, I'm so humiliated. I'm it's.

• 1:28:52Speaker 01

  I don't know. It was just, it was lousy. I didn't sleep at all.

• 1:28:57Speaker 01

  And I was expecting them to be pissed. I mean, I was expecting.

• 1:29:05Speaker 01

  They didn't, well. They almost never yelled at me, but they would understandably like I, I could, I could push her buttons and, and they would, they would yell. They were, they were never, you know, physical or anything inappropriate, but. I was expecting, I was expecting like a good old Oklahoma like, boy, listen here.

• 1:29:24Speaker 01

  And it was just kind of an awkward car ride home, not a lot of chit chat. Not much to say. They weren't getting on my case. You know, I always, you know, one of my, one of my insecurity blankets is humor. So I was probably making jokes and trying to be like, huh huh. About the whole situation.

• 1:29:44Speaker 01

  And they brought me home and I was like, all right, here comes the lecture, here comes the thing. And they said some stuff, but the thing that really zinged me is they said. You know, you can keep pushing us away. You can keep. Causing problems. You can keep trying to shove us away. But you just need to get it through your head that we don't see you as a problem. We see you as an opportunity. And it was, for whatever reason. Such a game changing moment for me. And I suspect they had said something like that. Probably hundreds of times.

• 1:30:17Rich Roll?

  Right. But you were finally in a place where you could, you could really hear it.

• 1:30:20Speaker 01

  Yes. And it.

• 1:30:24Speaker 01

  You know, as parents and as people, we sometimes. We do not realize how powerful our words can be. Particularly if you understand the mechanism of timing. And I think though they, they are not perfect and though they made mistakes again, as we all do. I think they understood. The unique window of time they had entered into. At a moment where this kid was as raw as he could be.

• 1:30:57Speaker 01

  To step up. And to say something meaningful and life giving and important and true. And true.

• 1:31:08Speaker 01

  It was so clear, so loud, crystal clear. It was that epiphany catalytic moment. Now, I think in one second, you can make a decision to change your life. Literally, one second. The process of actually changing your life, that's going to take years. But if you know that you have that willingness, be it through pain, which is how most of us get there, or through, here's something more ideal I would like, then it's just logistics. Then it's just resourcefulness.

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  Then it's just swallowing your pride, your ego, and I'm talking about me here, stubbornness, hard-headedness of, "Oh, I can handle this on my own. Really? How's that going?" And saying, "I don't care what it takes. Yes, yes to counseling, which I think is stupid. Yes to this thing that I thought was stupid, that I didn't want to do. Like, I'm in. I'll try whatever, because I don't know what I want, but I don't want this."

• 1:32:26Rich Roll?

  All right, you guys, we did it. We're done. We're out of here. At least, that's the end of part one. Don't forget, part two, I'm going to put that one up late Wednesday night. That's December 10th, Pacific Standard Time. So that will find its way to your MP3 player. I don't know when. Depends on where in this beautiful planet you happen to live. All right, so Josh hit some buttons for me, I gotta say. We recorded this conversation several weeks ago, but much of it has left me thinking long and hard about some of my habits, particularly my habits around technology, my habits around

• 1:33:08Rich Roll?

  social media, my habits surrounding, really, any kind of escape from my present reality and what I grab on to to achieve that end. And they say, and I say all the time on this podcast, that you're either growing or regressing in any given moment. There is no cruise control. Every decision you make, every thought that you have, every action that you take is either moving you towards a better version of yourself or away from that. And I know that I have at times engaged in sort of an unhealthy preoccupation with my devices. You know, I'm a guy who, you know what, I'm prone to be checking my Twitter and my Instagram and Snapchat and the Facebook and all of that stuff a little bit more than

• 1:33:53Rich Roll?

  I should be. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm completely addicted, or I have some kind of crazy obsession, but you know what, I catch myself doing it a lot. And I do it in places where I really just want to remove myself from the moment, you know, whether I'm standing in line somewhere, or I'm waiting for somebody, or I'm just in a situation where I'm bored, or I'm not enjoying myself. I can just go to my phone and go to that special place and remove myself from whatever presence I happen to be finding myself in at that moment. And you know what? I don't know if this is such a good thing. You know, I can justify it. I can say, well, this is part of my job. You know, it's part of my job to be engaged in these platforms. I need to be there. I need to be commenting.

• 1:34:38Rich Roll?

  I need to be seeing what people are saying. And, you know, this is how I'm making a living. I can give you 100 reasons why, you know, this is the right thing for me to do, to be engaged all the time. But I think a lot of that is BS. You know, I think I need to really get honest with myself and really embrace the idea that a lot of this activity is not productive, it's counterproductive. And it's also preventing me from being fully present in whatever it is I happen to be doing in that moment. I think I'm being productive, but am I? I mean, why am I doing so much meditation and all this other personal work that I'm doing if I'm then going to immediately escape the present by staring at my phone?

• 1:35:22Rich Roll?

  It doesn't make sense. It's counterintuitive. So here's what's up. I have decided, with Josh's help and urging, that I am going to do a 30-day trial run, a technology detox of sorts. Not a complete detox, but what I'm gonna do and what I'm committing to doing is taking Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and mail, that's right, even email, off my phone.

• 1:35:50Rich Roll?

  And the intention behind this is to really create healthy boundaries and rules around my online engagement. It's not that I'm not going to answer emails, it's just that I'm going to have set times when I look at it and respond to it. So it's not just constantly invading my consciousness. So when I post, when I don't post, when I allow myself to go on social media, when I allow myself to read and respond to email, all of these things will be consciously thought out ahead of time, so that I am curtailing the simple time that I have been wasting, living vicariously through other people's social media meanderings, and redirecting that attention, both inward and towards being

• 1:36:32Rich Roll?

  engaged and present in whatever I'm doing. So I can be better at whatever I'm doing in that moment, whether it's work, or whether it's with my kids, or with my wife, or even standing in line and saying hello to that person behind the cash register. How about that for a concept? So this is what I'm going to do. I'm a little bit scared, I'm a little bit intimidated, but I'm going to give it a go. Alright, you guys, so today Josh talked a lot about life transformation. I happen to have a little bit of guidance on that as well. So I want you guys to, if you haven't already, check out my online courses, The Ultimate Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition and The Art of Living with Purpose. They both can be found at MindBodyGreen.com. They both

• 1:37:13Rich Roll?

  offer multiple hours of streaming video content, downloadable tools, and they both feature interactive communities. Essentially, everything you need to get more plants in your active life, and we all could use this. Everything you need to set you on a new and healthier nutrition trajectory, help you probe more deeply inside yourself to learn more about what makes you tick, help you set the right goals for yourself, help you take those goals across the finish line, and ultimately raise the bar on your personal and athletic life experience. So if you want to learn more about how all of that works, go to MindBodyGreen.com, click "Video Courses" at the top of the homepage menu, and there's plenty more information there.

• 1:37:57Rich Roll?

  And of course, at richroll.com, we've got some nutritional products. We've got our e-cookbook. We have our meditation program. We've got merch, including a couple new awesome t-shirt designs we're super psyched about. And again, we're running an awesome sale through December 20th. $10 off all t-shirts, $10 off my Repair Plant-Based Protein Post-Workout Recovery Formula, and we're offering two-for-one on our B12 supplement. So you can find out more about all of that at richroll.com. Don't forget to subscribe to my newsletter there, and that way you can stay clued in as to what's what, including these sales. If you haven't already, give us a review on iTunes. Come on, you guys. It only takes two seconds.

• 1:38:37Rich Roll?

  Hook me up. If you're in LA, come to our new restaurant, Joy Cafe, J-O-I Cafe, out in the Westlake Village area. You can find me there eating lunch a couple times a week. Engage me. Eat some great food. Leave feeling great. You want to learn more about Joy Cafe? Go to their website, J-O-I Cafe.com. And yeah, there you go. As you may know, but if you're new, maybe you don't, iTunes only offers the most recent 50 episodes of the podcast. So if you want to go back into the catalog, go back to the beginning, hear some

• 1:39:14Rich Roll?

  of the early stuff. The only way to do that is if you get our free app. It's for all iOS devices, iPhone, iPad, all of that. If you go to the iTunes App Store, just type in my name, Rich Roll, you'll see the app there. Download it completely free, and you will have access to the entire RRP canon. So check that out, too. Continue to support the show by telling friends, using the Amazon banner ad, and keep Instagramming, sharing on your social media. When I'm at those moments of time when I'm allowed to go online socially, I will check it and I will comment. So don't forget to tag me at Rich Roll. Thanks so

• 1:39:56Rich Roll?

  much. All right, let's close it down. The assignment, this week's assignment. Well, if you've been listening to me, if you've heard this preface, then today's assignment should come as no surprise to you guys. I'm going to need you to do what I'm doing. I'm going to need you to look down at that precious phone of yours, that precious smartphone, and I want you to stare at all those beautiful, pretty, colorful apps, and I want you to pick an app. I want you to pick the app that you love, not just any app. I want you to pick the app that creates that obsession. The app that creates that habit, that compulsion, that go-to preoccupation you can count on to

• 1:40:38Rich Roll?

  remove you from whatever uncomfortable or boring situation you're in and soothe you with its dynamic interface. That's the app. That's the app I'm talking about. Then I want you to look at that app and I want you to delete it. That's right, you guys, delete it. I know you don't want to do it. I don't want to do it. It's not fun. It's not comfortable. I can give you 10 reasons why it's a bad idea for me personally, but I'm going to do it anyway. You know what? I'm going to do it right now. I'm on the mic with you guys here. I've got my phone right here, turning it on. You know what? Let's look at Twitter. I'm going to do Twitter. There it is.

• 1:41:21Rich Roll?

  I'm going to hold my finger down on the button until it like quivers like that on my iPhone. And then I'm going to hit that little X on the upper left corner. Delete Twitter. Deleting Twitter will also delete all of its data. That's pretty scary. All right. Here we go. Delete. I did it. Wow. I just deleted Twitter from my phone. Did I just do that, really? Whoa. Wow. Now I feel like I'm standing in front of my high school assembly naked. That feels weird. I'm not sure about this, but you know, if you want to grow, you got to do things that make you uncomfortable. And for me, this is uncomfortable.

• 1:42:06Rich Roll?

  So I'll keep you posted. I'll see you in a few days with part two of my conversation with Josh and I'll give you an update on how I'm doing with all this technology detox stuff. Peace, you guys. Plants.