Build An Unbreakable Mindset - Marcus Smith | Modern Wisdom Podcast 250

Marcus Smith is an ultra endurance athlete and gym owner. From breaking his body in a cycling accident to running 30 marathons in 30 days, Marcus embodies an Ultra Mindset, the man is an animal Expect to learn the framework Marcus uses to overcome any obstacle, how it feels to hit a wall at 54km/h, what it's like to run for 24 hours straight, why your parents were right to tell you to relax, how to maintain motivation when life gets hard and much more... Sponsor: Get 20% discount on the best coffee in Britain with Uncommon Coffee’s entire range at http://uncommoncoffee.co.uk/ (use code MW20) Extra Stuff: Follow Marcus on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/mjd_smith Check out Innerfight - https://www.innerfight.com Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #endurance #ultramarathon #mindset - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Running marathons, going to work, building relationships, you choose. No one's forcing you. And we need to get comfortable with that. We need to embrace that. We need to acknowledge that. Everyone's like, "I have to go to work." No, you don't. You have to go to work in a number of scenarios because at the end of the month, you get what's called a paycheck, which then gets you the shit car that you like.

• 0:24Speaker 00

  And that car is feeding into your insecurities. It's giving you temporary happiness. And it's giving you temporary happiness because it's numbing a block that you're not willing to address, which could come from a previous subconscious behaviour. You don't have to go to work tomorrow. Nobody has to go to work tomorrow. You choose to. So when I'm in trouble, I chose to be here.

• 0:52Chris Williamson?

  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I'm joined by the one and only Marcus Smith. How are you, brother?

• 0:57Speaker 00

  Thank you. I'm awesome. How can I not be good right here, right now?

• 1:02Chris Williamson?

  It's not a bad backdrop, is it?

• 1:04Speaker 00

  Mate, I don't know if this class is a working holiday for you, but if you're watching, anyway.

• 1:11Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, exactly. Tune in on YouTube on the 25th floor of Dubai Marina, overlooking a backdrop that, yeah, it could be like, it's epic. It's absolutely epic.

• 1:19Speaker 00

  It's pretty good, mate.

• 1:20Chris Williamson?

  Joe Rogan, never heard of him.

• 1:23Chris Williamson?

  So I've been doing my research a lot since I've been out here, knowing I was going to record with you, and you just continually do mad shit. Closet psychopath. What are you working on at the moment? What's next?

• 1:35Speaker 00

  Interesting, because sometimes we start waving this all start, you've gone straight into what's next, which I quite like, because next is a, we're actually going to run, mate. And this is quite interesting because obviously this year has been mental for absolutely everyone. And we've seen a lot of people naturally get frustrated that events are cancelled, travel's cancelled. And a lot of people have literally just thrown their hands up in the air, "What this?", and done nothing, put on white. Motivation's gone down and it's terrible on a number of levels. We were like, well, we know we're not going to travel this year. And this year I would have run probably about three ultras all around in different countries around the world. And so what we did is we looked at the map of the UAE.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  And I think this is actually the first time I've said this to, I classed you as the media mate, to the media. Um, we looked at the map of the UAE and I was like, okay, what's the challenging parts of the UAE? And lots of people think Dubai in the UAE is what we see around us now, which is Marina, it's very beautiful. But there's actually a high point of the UAE, which is just about two thousand metres in the mountains. And there's a mountain range that divides the east coast and the west coast called the Hajar Mountains. And I thought to myself, it'd be really interesting if we could sort of traverse that mountain range and then take a, take a turn inland and end up at my gym.

• 3:04Speaker 00

  And I sort of said, and this is how these things start, mate, like, you know, there's a couple of mates and we'll, we'll get on Google Maps and we'll just draw on our phones and just send different things to each other. It's almost like a gamble or a guessing game. How far is it? And one of the boys goes, oh, I think that's about two fifty. I said, yeah, I think it's a bit longer. I think it's about three hundred. Anyway, so we got this idea and then, and this is honestly, mate, how it starts is then one of the lads goes, oh, the boy I was sending it to, Rob, he goes, when are we doing it? And so this is how these challenges kind of start a lot of the time, mate. And, you know, it's.

• 3:44Chris Williamson?

  Some people, it's like, the way that you guys go on about endurance events.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:48Chris Williamson?

  Is how normal people talk about going out for dinner.

• 3:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, kind of.

• 3:52Chris Williamson?

  So have you heard about that new place? Yeah, just do good sushi, the seafood's really nice. You guys look on Google Maps, like the, the trip advisor of suffering.

• 4:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:02Chris Williamson?

  And you're like, yeah, that one looks like it could really fuck us up. Let's do that.

• 4:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, let's do that. And that's, that's kind of what it was. And we're like, we've got to finish the year strong. We've got to make it count. And, and we've got to, we have a. I consider that we have an incredible responsibility to the people and it's something I take quite seriously to to set an example. People need to come into an environment and have people that they look up to that are doing good things. And I take that very, very seriously and very, very personally as well that I should always be raising the bar for myself and for other people. It it is quite selfish in a way that I want to explore my potential, but in doing so, I wanna let make people think actually what is what is my potential? And we're all climbing a different Everest, if if you want a cliched way of looking at it.

• 4:48Speaker 00

  So if someone can look and go, well, these idiots are gonna do this, then I can do this. So, yeah, mate, to answer the the question, we're gonna run three hundred kilometres. It is three hundred kilometres from the highest point of V A E. It's two hundred kilometres through the Hajar Mountain Range, which is about six thousand metres of elevation. And then we're gonna take a hard right turn. And then the last hundred kilometres is across desert. And that will take us to to to my gym, to Inner Fight. And the initial plan, and this is kind of where the whole year has just been amazing for timelines. And and when we talk about goals, you know, if anyone that uses the SMART principle, it has to be time related, you know?

• 5:31Speaker 00

  And I was training a few weeks ago and I was I was descending and and and my knee sort of I came across a problem with my knee, let's put it that way, like a sharp knife going through my knee. And so now the date that we were gonna complete that challenge is obviously not realistic anymore, it doesn't work. And I sat down with Rob and and actually I think we did it over WhatsApp and I said, listen, mate, if you wanna continue the challenge without me, I'm there. I'll ride a bike next to you, I'll drive a car as much as I can next to you. And he's like, mate, time's not a problem, we'll wait and we'll do it as soon as you're ready. So hopefully by the end of the year, mate, we'll be the first piece pe- people to, which is quite important for certain reasons.

• 6:11Speaker 00

  We'll be the first people to sort of transcend the the Hajar Mountain Range, three hundred kilometres. And hopefully we'll get it done in just over two days, so.

• 6:20Chris Williamson?

  Really? So and what will you do? Will you aim to have little rest stuff?

• 6:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. So the way that we look at it is that we we'd go for about six hours and we'd try and complete about a marathon every six hours and then we would rest and feed, which would take anywhere ninety minutes up to two hours. Also, what we also, it's important to understand that although these races and these challenges are races, you need to respect your your body and your mind and we always try and buffer on the edge. If we push like, we could go twenty four hours straight, we've both done more than that before, but then we might fall off the end. So we're we're looking at sort of six on, two off, and we'd get through it. We think we'd get through it in just over two days.

• 7:06Speaker 00

  So, I mean, it's easy to say you've got those two hours and you sleep, but mate, with adrenaline and like I've been in races before and it's like, okay, it's rest time now and you try and lay down and your heart's just going.

• 7:17Chris Williamson?

  I was gonna say, what does that feel like? Obviously, you know that you have this small window in which to do the recovery. And you're there and you can't get yourself, everyone that's listening knows what it's like to try and get to sleep. I need to be up early tomorrow. The difference is you need to be up and start running.

• 7:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like, it's savage and it's a, it's it's a mindset thing though as well. Like, there's two things going on. There's the actual chemical reactions in your body, what your dopamine's doing, your serotonin's all over the place, your cortisol's through the roof, like, that's, that's real. So it's not like, I can't sleep. Like, you can't sleep. So you've got to sort of deal with that, but you also, it's almost like, how can I frame this? If you've, if you're scared of flying and you've got a flight the next day, you don't sleep. And I I'm sure you don't sleep. Or if you're scared of anything that's coming up, it's the same thing, because after six hours, six hours in, we'll have run forty to fifty K, we still have two hundred and fifty kilometers to go.

• 8:15Speaker 00

  This part is a complete mindset. The physiological side, what's happening in your, in in your brain neurologically, you, that is normal. But the mindset of how to control. Be it anxiety and to stay cool, that's something you can actually train mate. And from my first race till now, now it's it's not that difficult. Like I've done stuff, I trained a little bit for for what they call backyard ultra, which is six point seven Ks on the hour, every hour for for as long as we can go. And I trained that one night on my own out here in the desert for 12 hours. And the first two hours was pretty shit because I I didn't know how to behave.

• 8:58Speaker 00

  But after that mate, I'd come in at about forty to forty five minutes, quickly drink something, eat something and then just get into, literally mate, into a shavasana position from yoga and just breathe. Alarm would go off at two minutes to the hour, shoes were already on, stand up, drink some water and go. And I trained that for 10 hours. So now coming into that relaxed state actually becomes easier. And I think if if people can take anything from from what I've learned is we have to train these things, like they don't just happen. You have to, I had 12 hours that night training it. A lot of people want to want to be able to do stuff,

• 9:40Speaker 00

  be it related to mental resilience, be it a number of different areas of life. And they're not willing to spend that time in like experimentation, if you want to say, and and and with that a little bit of discomfort as well, you know.

• 9:54Chris Williamson?

  I've been thinking a lot this year about mental masturbation. Everybody, everyone this year has had far too much time to think and far too little time to do.

• 10:01Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 10:02Chris Williamson?

  And a lot of that has been outside of our control. Gyms have been closed. If your gym's closed and you don't have weights at home, you you're restricted, you're stuck to.

• 10:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:10Chris Williamson?

  Fucking everyone's sick of burpees in 2020. But what that causes and all of us that listen to podcasts and consume audiobooks and read and stuff like that, we can end up being so cerebral that we forget that the implementation is where the work happens. Yes, it's important to know what you need to do. Because if you don't know what you need to do when you go to do it, you're just kind of flopping around.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:34Chris Williamson?

  But you need to go and do it.

• 10:36Speaker 00

  You you have to do mate, a hundred percent. Like you ask anyone who's listening to this show, how many books, podcasts, YouTube videos, et cetera, et cetera, have you tuned into, have you learnt from in 2020 versus 2019, 2018? You're probably up two or three hundred percent. How much action have you taken with the knowledge that you have? You're probably down a thousand percent. So we've got all of this knowledge now, and got all of these thoughts going along. And we're making excuses that we can't do. You can still do. If you read in, in, in, what's one of the big books that I've read this year? Ross Edgley, The Art of Resilience, True Art of Resilience, incredible guy.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  There's a lot of learnings in that, but there's a lot of stuff that you could implement on a daily basis. Like really, how does your, and I was talking to a guy the other day, who was having problems with, essentially with, with, with rejection and self-confidence. So he gets scared when he's coming to teach, coming into contact with people, to talk with people. I was like, how often outside of those situations are you actually training that? You know, man, I love to create like, just like scenarios. And I was like, well, I wonder if a way to overcome that would be to go and run down the beach track one morning and force yourself to make eye contact with and say hello to absolutely every person you see.

• 12:06Speaker 00

  It's quite a sick sort of trick, isn't it? But if you've got confidence issues, at the beach track in the morning, you might see 200 people. Guaranteed, 100 people are going to reject you. Either because they're fucking assholes, or because they're just in their zone. And I respect that, mate. Not everyone says hello. I always abuse someone. They don't. But that's, do you know what I mean? And I'm like, we can create these scenarios to do with all this knowledge that we've learned. But we have to be committed and they're doing, it's easy to read and to get excited and for dopamine to be released in our brain. And, and literally, mate, it's masturbation. Like, we've got a fucking boner. Oh, it's so exciting. I'm not sure what you can tell on this job, but still, we're super excited about it.

• 12:51Speaker 00

  But let's go out and do, like, let's, let's keep on the masturbation side. Let's stop reading the porno and let's call the girl up and go on a date. This is your first time answering people, mate, so.

• 13:03Chris Williamson?

  It's an analogy everyone can listen, can understand from 2020, I think, yeah, absolutely. It's been good for a lot of things, but bad for sex. Good for moustaches, good for podcasts, but terrible for partnerships. And a couple of years ago, you had a huge accident, broke a bunch of ribs, punctured a lung, pulled your scapular off, and you said it was part of one of the best years of your life.

• 13:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:25Chris Williamson?

  How, how does that work? How does that fit in?

• 13:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, mate, it's interesting. Three, I guess, three things, three big things happened in 2018 that are, I believe that moments in our life obviously define us. And when I look back at 2018, three really big things happened, maybe four, which if you kick it off on the 9th of February, and, and this is totally legit, you can't change this. Go back to my Instagram, MJD underscore Smith, 9th of February, I posted a quote, said, "Everything happens for a reason." 10th of February, at about quarter to eight in the morning, I nearly lose my life.

• 14:01Speaker 00

  Wild. Three days in intensive care, five days in hospital, injuries that you just said. And when I was in that hospital bed, I thought to myself, if you can't ride a bike, what can you do? And the answer was run. And I, I have quite a decent background, I've run a lot in running, and I was like, well, I'll run. And I read Dean Karnassa's book, Fifty Marathons in Fifty States in Fifty Days, in, I think it was May or June time. And then I made the decision that in line with Dubai Fitness Challenge of 2018, which is a 30-day fitness challenge here in Dubai, I'd run 30 marathons in 30 days.

• 14:42Speaker 00

  And I was like, what a better way to, to, to come back from it. So I've crashed. And then I've proven that you can recover. And then about a week after I finished, on the 24th of November, I finished, and on the 5th of December was my 40th birthday. Like, how can that not be the best year of your life, you know?

• 15:03Chris Williamson?

  Well, I mean, the crash, the crash to most people would seem like something that would be a huge setback.

• 15:08Speaker 00

  But why though, mate?

• 15:10Chris Williamson?

  Well, because you've gone from someone who was capable, who had these plans for ultra bike races in a year across different countries, and that's now stopped. And when we go from one world to another, often that's perceived as a challenge or a bad thing.

• 15:28Speaker 00

  Setback, yeah. And that's, I wanna, like, the word you just used there is super important. It's perceived. And we're living a lot on perception. Perceptions and thoughts that we create based on the opinions of others a lot of the time. We've been told that those things are bad. And this relationship is always bad. I'm, I'm not in a good place. And mentally, we, mate, I still have it, don't get me wrong, I'm not, not bulletproof from it. The first few days after I'm a buck on my knee, oh, I was not in a good place, mate. And we know what goes with it, relationship, I'm not having a good time with my wife in those days. You know, at, at work, it's just too much.

• 16:11Speaker 00

  We're not, but this is because this, in my opinion, it's a subconscious behaviour that we've been drilled into us around perception. Because we're told, guys, shit happens. Things happen for a reason, and even when things happen, we can't change them because they've already happened. But perception says it sends us backwards. Come on. Twenty eighteen, I learnt shit that I would have never learned. I had tough times, mate. Don't get me wrong, I fuck, like, I was like, why is this happening to me? You know, I'm, I'm bulletproof. But then you look at it and you go, this is the way it's supposed to be.

• 16:55Speaker 00

  And that's when we have to embrace this stuff. Otherwise, yeah, we see it as regret, we see it as setback. And we get asked this a lot, like, what do you regret the most in your life? Fuck off, nothing. Because if I regret, I'm holding on to these things, mate. So it's easy to sit here and say that. And we're almost reading the porno where we should be having sex.

• 17:20Chris Williamson?

  But you've, you've, you've been there, this is you post-coitly, this is the pillow talk from you, right? You've done.

• 17:27Speaker 00

  This is gonna go through the whole show.

• 17:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's a common thread. Welcome to the porno podcast. Uh, yeah, so a big part of that is the fact that you've been there and proven it.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  Um, and I think that that's the difference between hearing a motivational speaker and hearing someone who has been forged in battle. Yeah.

• 17:46Chris Williamson?

  Talking about their experience. That's why it resonates with people so much more.

• 17:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:50Chris Williamson?

  Um, so I just want to go back just a little bit. You had this accident, you're laying there. I just want to go through kind of what's in your mind because hearing this.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:00Chris Williamson?

  And hearing you where you are now with this, these lessons that you've taken away, this mental resilience.

• 18:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:08Chris Williamson?

  It's hard for people to believe that this guy could ever have a negative thought, could ever feel like things are going badly.

• 18:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, he just bounces off stuff like a, like a rubber ball.

• 18:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:20Chris Williamson?

  So what goes through your mind when you're hit by a truck? What goes through your mind when you're laid up in hospital and you don't know what your recovery is going to be like?

• 18:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:29Chris Williamson?

  Can we just talk about the mindset?

• 18:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I, and the example is really, or, or the reality, it's not an example, is what happened. So I wake up in, in ICU and mate, ICU is pretty rough. Like it's, the ICU I was in was just curtains, not separate rooms. So literally, the guy next to me is dying, like he's, he's dying, mate. And I'm trying not to die, like it's pretty fucked up. So I'm laying in this bed and you've got, I've got oxygen going in through my nose and it's uncomfortable because you've got these things up your nose. And they've just put a, they've just put a tube into my lungs to, to drain the blood off.

• 19:11Speaker 00

  And I've got catheter in and you're like, you've got different bits and then a machine up here that's just beeping your pulse. And I'm like, you know, can you turn it off? They're like, no. I'm like, why not? And they're like, because then we won't know if you're dead or alive. And it's brutal, mate. And, and you're drugged up, which is the only good thing because you need the, those drugs to take away the pain. And so you're on and off sleepy. And I remember waking up, mate, and I was, I, I was in a low point. It was awful. I was, I was really, I think to, the easiest way to explain it was I was, I was playing the victim mindset. I was like, why has this happened to me? What if it was different?

• 19:56Speaker 00

  And, I, mate, we'd ridden the route before. And every time we'd ride this route, we'd stop at petrol station, it'd be about an hour to the petrol station. Lads would have a coffee, bit of banter, and then we'd carry on the way. We'd pull into the petrol station on this day. My round, lads, who wants a coffee? No one wants a coffee. It's okay, no worries. So we'd just get some water and we'd go. Obviously, mate, if we'd have had a coffee, the truck wouldn't have been there, it would have already gone out. If there's one, like, what's the biggest learning?

• 20:27Chris Williamson?

  Always have coffee.

• 20:28Speaker 00

  Always have a fucking coffee. You know what I mean? And I'm there, mate, and I'm, I'm really just thinking all these thoughts and I'm like, what if, why me? I just wish it wasn't happening. And Holly was laid, was sat at the side of my bed. And I could see, she could see some discomfort in my face. And she said, what's wrong with you? And I tried to, I sort of started explaining, you know, why me? And she looked at me, mate, and she says I'm not emotional enough. And I say that she's too emotional. But literally, in this scenario, it was flipped one eighty.

• 21:11Speaker 00

  And she just looked straight at me and she said, it happened.

• 21:17Speaker 00

  Literally heartbroken.

• 21:19Chris Williamson?

  The one time one is a fucking stupid.

• 21:22Speaker 00

  And she, she just sat there, mate. She didn't cry, she, nothing. And she said, it happened.

• 21:31Speaker 00

  It's like literally someone's just taken the wind out of my sails. And I sort of just, I didn't react and I laid there. I was like, she's fucking right. And then I went a little bit back to sleep with this thought. And I think it was that point where I just accepted. And acceptance is hard. You break a leg, to accept that you've broken your leg and you can't walk for a time. Your relationship breaks, to accept that you're gonna be on your own, you're gonna have to. It's awful, mate. But we have to go through it, it's part of the healing process. And it's, it's what I call the ultra mindset.

• 22:14Speaker 00

  Is that a lot of the time, our first point is denial, didn't happen. This relationship's fine. No, it's not. You know what I mean? I couldn't kid myself, mate, I was laid vaguely across the bed, I had these tubes coming out from me. I could hardly breathe, I couldn't move my hand, like. I can't say I'm not here. So the first step is we have to admit that there's a problem. And her saying that got me out of that victim mindset. And it was funny because I sort of probably went back to sleep and then I woke up and I looked at her. And I smiled. And she's like, what's wrong with you? I said, you're right.

• 22:57Speaker 00

  I said, you know what I'm gonna do? She's like, what? I said, I'm gonna start training.

• 23:03Speaker 00

  She's looking at me, she's, I don't know if she wanted to cry, mate, if she was laughing or, or, or what was going on. And I looked down at my body and I think. They'd cut my cycling kit, which hurt my soul. Favorite cycling kit. They're cutting through it. I think I still had my cycling shorts on, but they'd cut all the bit bit off. And literally, mate, I'm laying like this and I put a hand on the table and I looked at this hand, the whole left side of my body is fucking broken. And I just went, I just said, what can I do right now? And honestly, mate, with everything I had. I just turned this hand like this.

• 23:46Speaker 00

  And I was so emotional. But I couldn't cry. I'm not, I'm not a very good crier, mate. Long story.

• 23:57Speaker 00

  Amazing, and I've got it to here. And then I'm like, I think I'm fucking a dog with two dicks. I've gone, I wonder if I can get it back.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  Do you know what I mean? And everything is reset. And I'd done it once, and then of course, I'm like, okay, I can do it once, I can do it ten times. Literally, mate, and that took me about five minutes. And I don't know if physically I was drained, but mentally, emotionally, everything else in my body was completely drained. I was crying without tears because I knew that that was the point where I'd started my recovery. Because I knew, admitting to Holly and her being that cold with me, that honest with me, that it happened. Had let me get out of denial and admit the problem, and now I can start to recover.

• 24:53Chris Williamson?

  So what are the principles that you've taken away from that? The radical acceptance of things that have happened, understanding that you can't change the past?

• 24:59Speaker 00

  Yes, that's number one.

• 25:01Chris Williamson?

  Focusing on what you can do to improve your future?

• 25:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:05Chris Williamson?

  What else?

• 25:05Speaker 00

  The, the, I mean, and that's, that's the process that, that we go through. Admit that there's a problem. Then you sort of, you, you reject that that problem is gonna stop you from, from achieving what you wanna achieve in life. These things are gonna happen, mate. Right now, I can't run. That's fine.

• 25:23Chris Williamson?

  I snapped an Achilles three months ago.

• 25:25Speaker 00

  Same thing, you know, but look at the energy that you're putting into the podcast, for example. So then we, we, we reject the fact that it's gonna stop us. Then, and it's the hardest thing, mate, just relax. We can't, you know, how many times when we were kids, do our parents just send us to the room? Calm down for ten minutes. Ah, you're banging the door down, you're having a fit. Just calm down for ten minutes. So the third point is you have to relax. And then the fourth point, the most important point is what I did and how I explained it with my hand there. Is what can I do right now to make this situation better? There is always something you can do.

• 26:06Speaker 00

  In some scenarios, if you and I have an argument and we're just about to blow. Sometimes what I can do right now to make this situation better for both of us is just to walk away from you. That doesn't feel like, that doesn't feel like it's going towards the goal. And this is the problem because we're told all the time that you've got to keep tracking it up. You've got to keep moving forward. You've got to get closer to your goal. Every day is a day to win. But that doesn't, and it's true, but it doesn't mean that we have to be going this way.

• 26:38Chris Williamson?

  The path's not necessarily linear.

• 26:39Speaker 00

  It's not linear, mate. Why is it not fucking linear? What you can do right now is what your parents tell you. Go to your room, sit down, relax. You know, so honestly, mate, they're the four key things that I, I, I take away from it. Admit that there's a problem. Reject the fact that it's going to stop you from getting what you want. Stay relaxed and figure out what you can do right now. And what you can do right now sometimes is, and I've said it before, when, when, when I speak about my ultra races. Sometimes I have to sit under a tree for five minutes and let the competition fly past. Because I'm on that red line and if I keep going, I'm going to go over that red line. Sit under the tree for five minutes and later that day you go sailing past them.

• 27:24Speaker 00

  If you don't, they'll beat you every time. It's the hardest thing to do. It's a very tricky way to look at things to either go back because society, perception. Tells us we've always got to go forward, but in going back, you're going forward. And that's really important.

• 27:44Chris Williamson?

  One of the things that I'm fascinated by is maintaining motivation outside of situations like that. So during that period when you're just coming off an accident, you're just coming out of an incident. Everyone will know that it's the New Year's Day motivation, right? I've just had this, the emotions are high, I'm compelled, I've filled myself full of all the stoicism and Ross Edgley that I can. And I feel like I'm able to get over this. How are you ensuring that you don't start to lose motivation in the in the messy middle? That you hit that valley of despair when the motivation and the energy starts to dip? And for me, this is a personal question. I'm at three and a half months post-op now on my Achilles.

• 28:26Chris Williamson?

  The it's the most drudge work, boring, consistent, everyday heel raises, everyday stretching. It's painful, it hurts every step that I take, every step I'm reminded that I snapped my Achilles.

• 28:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:41Chris Williamson?

  Every single time that I want to walk, I can't move as quick as my friends, I can't. I tried to hop across the street yesterday in Dubai and I haven't tried to move quicker than a walk. And I realised that I had to do this weird like heel hop thing where I cause I've got no, I've still got no tension in my Achilles.

• 28:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:57Chris Williamson?

  And I'm like, every single day, this sucks, this sucks. Three and a half months in and this is that valley of despair. How are you continuing your recovery? And also, how long was the recovery to get yourself back to full fitness from your accident?

• 29:08Speaker 00

  Super good questions. There's a, there's a, there's a lot going on and a few different answers, mate. The number one thing I want to share is a lot of people say, oh, you recovered super fast. I'm like, no, I didn't. You never saw the 10,000 reps I did like this, or the 5,000 reps I did like that. You never saw it. I spent hours and we all spend hours. I feel your pain, mate. Achilles heel raises, the whole thing, it's brutal. How do you maintain that? One of the, let's talk about what tools we have right now. Smartphones. We're non-stop taking selfies.

• 29:53Speaker 00

  I often look back to the pictures that I have on my camera reel of when I was in hospital, when I was in intensive care.

• 30:03Speaker 00

  At my lowest point. And then I'll take a selfie on that day. And you see the difference in your face, your body language, it's incredible, mate. We're not taking enough, what I would call inventory of where we're at on a number of levels. You, three months ago, three and a half months ago, when you snapped your Achilles, you couldn't walk. When I walked in here today, you came up to the door. You lunged forward towards me, you're on your toes, and we embraced. That takes an incredible amount of power from the Achilles. You're in an incredible position, mate. But, we feel the pain the whole time, it's almost there to remind us.

• 30:49Speaker 00

  But what's that pain there to remind us? Relax, just, today we're only going to this level, we're not gonna run again. People get down because they're not tracking their process, their progress, they're not taking inventory. Flip back through your camera roll of what you could do, of what you can do now, how your face looks, how your body language looks. It's all there, it really is all there, we're not using, technology, I love it and hate it, mate. We're able to sit here now, have this conversation, and in a few days' time, people around the world are able to go through their, walk through the marina and listen to us talking shit. It's fucking brilliant. And we use it for that, but when we're in a hole, we don't use it.

• 31:32Speaker 00

  There's gonna be dark times. Fourteen, sixteen weeks, not able to walk properly, pain in your Achilles is a nightmare. Especially the Achilles, because it does everything, you know, I just want to get this pot out, oh, I can't, you know. You just, there's so many things you just can't do, it's like a carpentry, it's awful. So we're, we're, we're constantly reminded about the negative side of it. That again feeds into our subconscious and makes us think that we're not doing well, we're not progressing. Spend time each day feeding your subconscious, not bullshit.

• 32:11Speaker 00

  And this is the difference, lots of people say, I'm okay, I'm getting better, I'm getting, I've lost one gram this week, I'm really in good shape, no, you're still a fat fuck. You know what I mean, like, it just, it's not like that, when we need to bullshit ourselves. But we need to keep feeding our subconscious the positive things as well, because there's a lot.

• 32:29Speaker 00

  We need to celebrate the small victories, like literally mate, the day that I could bring my hand to parallel, to eye level was just incredible.

• 32:38Chris Williamson?

  So who are you celebrating with? Are you celebrating with yourself? Is it important to share this with other people?

• 32:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, me, I celebrate a lot with myself, which sounds a little bit fucked up, doesn't it? Like, because I think for me personally, a lot of time, I don't think people can understand it, not because I'm special or, but there's no one that's inside my head except me. Sometimes I'll celebrate, I'll, I'll, I'll tell Holly I'm super excited about something, but without sounding nasty to Holly, she can't connect with that thing. Like, I try and explain what I feel when I, when I run 10K or when I run 100K. It doesn't resonate with her.

• 33:28Speaker 00

  So you're not gonna, and this hurts us as well, we're not gonna get a positive reception from someone who doesn't understand. It just doesn't happen. You have to pick the people in your life that understand you.

• 33:41Chris Williamson?

  Who understands you?

• 33:43Speaker 00

  I have a few people, mate. I have a few mentors that I've developed over time or just incredibly good friends. I don't have many friends, I'll be honest. I know a shit ton of people. There's not many people that, not because I don't want to develop friendships, but that I just don't feel, understand me in a certain way.

• 34:04Chris Williamson?

  I've got this quote from Alain de Botton, the guy behind the School of Life, and he says, loneliness is a kind of tax that we have to pay to atone for a certain complexity of mind.

• 34:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:14Chris Williamson?

  And it's my favourite video, Why We're Fated to be Lonely.

• 34:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:17Chris Williamson?

  Um, and that's natural. No one looks at the things that you do physically and presumes that you are a normal representation of a human, because not many people run 30 marathons in 30 days and decide to do the stuff that you do. And yet, when we hear that someone like that, non-typical physically. Yeah. Is non-typical socially. Maybe struggles to find people with whom they can connect. Yeah. That doesn't necessarily click straight away, but it should make sense. Loneliness is a kind of tax we have to pay to atone for a certain complexity of mind. Yeah. And the more extraordinary you are, the fewer people are like you. Yeah.

• 35:01Chris Williamson?

  Given the choice between honesty and acceptability, a lot of people choose the latter. A lot of people will choose to nerf the edges of the way that they operate, the way that they think. And that feeds us back into what you were talking about before, that we we absorb our values and our desires and our operating procedures from society, from the people around us, and that really rids us of what makes us special. Yeah. You are, you are a very unique combination of your genetics, your past traumas, your passive least resistance, the way that you speak, the way that you move, the fact that when you do a snatch, your right arm doesn't go as far back as your left arm, you know, all of the individual things that make up the uniqueness that is you. Yes.

• 35:44Chris Williamson?

  And I am a huge champion of people trying to embrace their weirdness. Like, stay weird. Yeah. Is the most the single most powerful phrase that I've heard over the last few years. Yeah. It reminds us that our uniqueness is our competitive advantage. Agreed, mate. Um, and yeah, I think that it's interesting for people to hear that, looking from the outside in at this guy who owns a gym, you know, thousands of people, tens of thousands of people in Dubai who will have seen him, you're on the side of the Burj Khalifa, running up the side of the world's tallest building. Not physically. In a crop top. In a crop, in a crop top, yeah, exactly. Um, and yeah.

• 36:25Chris Williamson?

  There's challenges with making connection with people because the price that you have to pay in order for that level of performance is this slight disconnect. And again, this is something else I've been talking about a lot this year. What is the price that you have to pay to be that person? What's the price you have to pay to be Elon Musk? Like, everyone looks at him and thinks, unbelievably productive guy, running Tesla, getting us to Mars, doing all of this stuff. But you don't know what Elon Musk's relationship with his body is like. Maybe he hates what he sees in the mirror. Maybe he's not had an erection in years. Maybe he can't, uh, he doesn't have a relationship with his father. Do you want to pay that price? To be Elon Musk? Conor McGregor, everyone looks at him, ubiquitous success.

• 37:09Chris Williamson?

  But do you want to live in your parents' attic for six years, rolling the same sequences, throwing the same combinations with a, on job seekers allowance?

• 37:19Speaker 00

  Mental.

• 37:19Chris Williamson?

  With no promise of success at the end of it? Do you want that life because that's the price you have to pay to be him?

• 37:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:25Chris Williamson?

  And I think because we only get to see the highlight reel. Of most people's lives. And even when people decide to post the open and honest insights into their lives, they don't get as much exposure. As the successes do. Inevitably, we presume that people live in these highlight reels where actually it's just front row seat failure as you fall from like mistake to mistake. And, and hearing insights like that, I think are really, really important. Because it reminds us that even the people we think are superhuman have

• 38:04Chris Williamson?

  their weaknesses and their vulnerabilities and their failings that we might not have.

• 38:11Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 38:11Chris Williamson?

  You know?

• 38:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, mate, and it, it's totally true what, what you're saying because I'll wake up some mornings and we all get it, mate. I'm just not feeling it. I'm just not feeling it, you know, but when you have a decision making process, and I think this is the biggest thing that's lacking, we're all humans. We all have a lot of the same feelings and emotions. We go through ups, we go, wake up, we're not feeling it. Not every day, mate, do I feel like going out and doing my training. I have the same thoughts that you have, that someone who's, you know, feels like they're at what bottom, we have it.

• 38:51Speaker 00

  But we've narrowed the choices because, for example, my decision making process where my alarm goes off is to get up. I don't have a choice at that time. If I wake up and I'm feeling like shit, there's only still one choice, get up. If I've planned a training session, there's only one choice, do it.

• 39:14Speaker 00

  Unless there's a real reason why I shouldn't, obviously, the day after I-

• 39:18Chris Williamson?

  So that unless, that is the point at which get up, unless, and the tolerance that people have for that-

• 39:27Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 39:28Chris Williamson?

  Is where the rubber meets the road with this stuff?

• 39:30Speaker 00

  Absolutely, mate. And that's the problem is that, you know, I'll set my alarm for seven in the morning and if I wake up and I feel okay, I'll, I'll probably go to the gym. Like, come on, you're never gonna go. Like, you know you're not gonna go. Whereas I set my alarm for five fifty-nine because I'm gonna get out of bed, I'm gonna put my trainers on, I'm gonna go for a walk. Which suddenly changed the whole world.

• 39:57Speaker 00

  If you don't feel great when you wake up, that's okay. It's fine, it's normal. There has to be, Brene Brown talks about it, it has to be this vulnerability, mate. I, I go through lows, but when I'm in that low, the, the, the option is, or the goal is, is to make that trough as small as possible. I've got clients and we've all known people that have been off for two weeks, just not feeling themselves. Far out. What have you done about it?

• 40:28Chris Williamson?

  Nothing yet. How long have you been feeling like this? A month?

• 40:31Speaker 00

  What? So you've tolerated waking up every morning for a month feeling like shit?

• 40:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I thought it was gonna get better.

• 40:40Speaker 00

  It doesn't get better. And this is where we have to understand, we all go through it. But I think people that, what you use, bounce back. Just identify it, go back to what we were saying earlier, admit it. I'm feeling shit. No, there's nothing wrong. I feel like shit. There is something wrong. We admit that there's a problem. Let's go for a walk and let's see what happens. Is it my mind? Is it my thoughts? Is it physically? Do we scan our body? Do we take a morning naked bathroom mirror selfie? Back to the phone, one of the best things, man, to track your progress. Naked bathroom mirror selfie. Please make sure your iCloud is not.

• 41:25Chris Williamson?

  Not linked yet, sadly. This is, this is one of those huge, huge data breaches that ends up happening with.

• 41:30Speaker 00

  Isn't it?

• 41:31Chris Williamson?

  Marcus Smith's new flake on the internet, doesn't it?

• 41:33Speaker 00

  But we have to have this decision-making process. If anyone thinks that Elon's not having a bad day. If anyone thinks that I can sit and talk about motivation and I, because I run. You're making an excuse for yourself. We're all going through tough times. It's not easy, but that decision-making process and our tolerance of how long we're gonna be in a bad mood is totally our choice and we've got to have, but we also have to train it. And not everything you try will work on every situation. It's like being a handyman and only having a hammer. You know, I know that's a shit cliche, but really, that's the thing.

• 42:14Speaker 00

  And you've learned, we've said it, you've learned all these tools in 2020. We've read more books, listened to more podcasts than ever before. Try some of those tools. Don't just, we're, we're pretty quick to accept. And I think that sucks because we accept that feeling shit is part of life. It is, but it should only be a small part is, is, is our objective.

• 42:37Chris Williamson?

  There's a thing that Marcus Aurelius used to do called the equanimity game.

• 42:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:42Chris Williamson?

  And he used to imagine falling off a horse and it was a game to get back on. And increasingly, like life is a game, is something that continues to come back. I really do, I I haven't quite worked out why I love it so much. But I think it just reminds us that a lot of the challenges that we're coming up against will in some future point just be a memory. They'll just be like an instant replay that we can go back to in our mind. Like a perfect example of this was after I had my operation. Um, some of the opiates that I was put on caused stomach inflammation. So for about three days after my op, I was unable to sleep, unable to eat, was laid up in bed with my foot on a big wedge, just in constant seven out of 10 pain.

• 43:27Chris Williamson?

  Couldn't do anything, like for three days straight. No one could take the pain away.

• 43:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:32Chris Williamson?

  I'd stopped taking the oral morphine, the codeine, the paracetamol, the ibuprofen, because I wanted the stomach pain to stop, which meant that my ankle now, only a couple of days post-op was, that pain was through the roof.

• 43:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:44Chris Williamson?

  And I was doing all of this with one leg. So when I needed to go to the bathroom to not do anything, I was hopping there, I was having to use crutches, I was in the dark, I was feeling miserable, I was on my own. Mum and dad would come and see me, all my housemates would come see me, all my friends would come see me, they can't do anything, they can't take it away. And at the time, it feels like a, a existential curse that's been given just to you.

• 44:06Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 44:07Chris Williamson?

  That this is your pain, this is your suffering to bear. And now, when I look back, it's just a story I tell on a podcast. And I'm like, me then would hate hearing me now being so flippant about it. It's like, no, it was really, it was, it was bad. You're not forgetting how bad it was. And I'm like, no, no, it's not about that. And trying to put ourselves into that third party perspective, I think, like treating life as the equanimity game. How quickly can I get back on the horse? Okay, like I'm inevitably going to fall off.

• 44:34Speaker 00

  Of course, yeah.

• 44:35Chris Williamson?

  How quickly can I get back on? I think that that's a really nice way for us to frame it. And I'm a big fan of Maxims and Pythi's statements because I think that they, they spearhead big concepts that would take us 10 minutes to remind ourselves of.

• 44:49Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 44:49Chris Williamson?

  Into just little aphorisms.

• 44:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:52Chris Williamson?

  Are there any of the things, you're going through an event, you're suffering, you're deep in the hole.

• 44:57Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 44:58Chris Williamson?

  What are the things during that time that you remind yourself of? Are there certain phrases and aphorisms or concepts that you rely on to keep going?

• 45:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've been asked this a lot recently. I, I don't know, I don't know why, so I've, I've actually had more thoughts about it. But one of the things that I think of the most is, you chose to be here.

• 45:17Speaker 00

  I choose what I'm doing. No one's got a gun at my head. And when you think about it, we have now more than ever, an insane amount of choice. And running marathons, going to work, building relationships, you choose. No one's forcing you. And we need to get comfortable with that. We need to embrace that. We need to acknowledge that. Everyone's like, I have to go to work. No, you don't. You have to go to work in a number of scenarios because at the end of the month, you get what's called a paycheck, which then gets you the shit car that you like.

• 46:04Speaker 00

  And that car is feeding into your insecurities. It's giving you temporary happiness. And it's giving you temporary happiness because it's it's numbing a block that you're not willing to address, which could come from a previous subconscious behaviour. You don't have to go to work tomorrow. Nobody has to go to work tomorrow. You choose to. So when I'm in trouble, I I chose to be here. The other thing is, and I think it's, there's a few other things as well, is that this is the moment. So a lot of the time we'll get, I wish I wasn't here. I wish I was on the beach.

• 46:46Speaker 00

  You have to go, you you mentioned Marcus Aurelius, you have to go a little bit stoic. You have to look at creating presence. You have to, everyone's tried Headspace this year, or Calm, or whatever for sure. About eighty percent of the people that are listening to podcasts have definitely tried it. And and probably ninety percent have stopped already because they don't need it. But you have to get in the moment. And this is something that's totally lost. Because the first thing we do when we face adversity is we try and leave the moment. We try and go back, I wish I was still on the beach, or we try and go, I can't wait till I go on the beach again.

• 47:29Speaker 00

  And that's what I was doing in that hospital bed. Until I went back to sleep and woke up and looked at myself and said, what can I do right now? Now I'm in the moment, I'm me, I'm with my hand, I'm going backwards and I'm going forwards. Presence is absolute key. Another thing is just to smile. Like honestly mate, the power, look at the research, the power of a smile is just insane. And okay, sometimes we have to cry, but a lot of the times after crying, we start to smile. Look at people that cry. When we get them out of it, how do we get them out of crying? We tell them jokes, we make light, and then people start crying and laughing.

• 48:15Speaker 00

  It's really, really powerful. So I think they're, they're probably choice, presence, and fun or smile are probably my three, and they always kind of have been mate, you know, I think, I just haven't really, like Holly gets upset with me sometimes, she goes, are you excited about going on holiday tomorrow? Like, yeah, I'm excited, but holy shit, I've still got 12 hours of today to live. And epic shit can happen right now, you know what I mean? And I'm like, mate, I'm excited for today, I'm excited to sit here with you, I was excited to wake up, I'm excited to go to the next meeting that I've got, I'm excited that tonight, you know, I'm excited for all these things.

• 48:57Speaker 00

  But right now, I'm not thinking about tonight, I have to be here and it's fun. You know, and I think, I think a lot of the time, this is because we're not fully happy in what we're doing. And we're having, you know, mate, in a nice way, I, I get asked to do different things with different people and most of the time like, you know, I can't say yes to everything. Why did I suddenly say yes to you?

• 49:24Speaker 00

  Because I just felt it was right. And then when you say yes, you commit a hundred percent. And we're all in. And we're here and we're gonna make this the best hour. And I wouldn't give a shit if I'd have turned up in, like luckily I checked out the podcast, listen, listen to the one with um Seth, he's one of my heroes, you know, and I'm like, this guy's gonna be cool. But even if I, I've got an hour of my life here, no matter if you're a good dude or not. I control if I want to. And I have to have the confidence to control it. I'm gonna have a good time in this hour if you're an absolute douchebag, or if you're, you're turned out to be a nice guy. But you know what I mean? We control it. And people are not taking the ownership, because people are going to dinner with fuckwits they don't like.

• 50:07Speaker 00

  They're hanging out with people that don't make their lives better, they only make it worse. Because that's what society says. It goes back to what you said. And I know we, we're sort of wrapping around here, but it's totally true. We're going out and hanging out with people that we don't actually even like.

• 50:23Chris Williamson?

  One of the things I've been thinking a lot about this year is the reason that people go and do big things. I say that as someone who's just taken a trip out to Dubai and is on the twenty fifth floor of Dubai Marina. But I think one of the reasons that people do big, impressive events, they book a trip away to somewhere that's grand, they decide to buy a new car, they do something epic. It's because it's very hard not to be present when you have that much stimulus.

• 50:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:52Chris Williamson?

  And one of the goals that everybody should have is to try and find that level of presence without that level of stimulus.

• 50:59Speaker 00

  Very hard though, right?

• 51:00Chris Williamson?

  Oh, absolutely. Like if you're taking the same route to work that you've taken a thousand times before. What's the reason for you to be present? You know that tree, you know that, like uh Ford Mondeo with the dent in the side of it, you know that, like guy with that dog, like you know all of this stuff. And Sam Harris has this beautiful quote where he says that what most of life is is giving our minds a reason to be here in the present moment. That's what we should be aiming to do in life.

• 51:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:30Chris Williamson?

  Giving ourselves a good enough reason to be here in the present moment. Now. You could do that by jumping out of a plane.

• 51:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:38Chris Williamson?

  That's one of the attractions, I think, of extreme sports. Also, probably one of the attractions of people that are into bondage. There's this famous dominatrix who says, nothing captures attention like a whip. And you think, like, if you want to get someone's attention, slap them.

• 51:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:53Chris Williamson?

  For one or two seconds after that, you're thinking of nothing else.

• 51:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:57Chris Williamson?

  I'm sure that as you, this moment in between hitting the truck and hitting the wall at fifty four kilometres an hour.

• 52:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:05Chris Williamson?

  I'm sure that that dilated out to feel like an eternity and you can delve back into that so quickly because it's such an extreme event.

• 52:12Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 52:13Chris Williamson?

  But the goal is to try and find that level of presence in everyday life. And it's, again, the armchair philosophizing can go on for forever. But the point is that there are things in the present moment we can find that make us feel happy, that make us feel fulfilled, that make us feel connected with other people. And the more that we're masking over that with shit friends, with nights out we don't even enjoy, with hobbies that haven't been relevant for five years, because if we leave them, we're not going to have the same support structure. Um, and it's one of the advantages, conversely, to something that maybe sounded like a weakness earlier, where you were like, well, you know, I struggle necessarily to connect with as many people as you might think.

• 52:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:52Chris Williamson?

  The advantage of that is it makes you a lot more agile and flexible to do just what you want without the influence of other people.

• 52:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:59Chris Williamson?

  Um, so again, it's, it's interesting how it all maps on.

• 53:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:02Chris Williamson?

  Oh, let's talk about self doubt.

• 53:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:05Chris Williamson?

  You don't sound like the sort of person that has doubts. When they come up, how do you deal with them?

• 53:10Speaker 00

  I think self doubt is a product of thoughts and behaviours. So why are you getting self doubt? Because you think that you can't do something. So thought, behaviour is the doing something.

• 53:28Speaker 00

  Why are we getting that? Why are we getting in that situation? Is it because something that's happened in our past? Or is it because of something actually real? And what example could we use? But I don't really have one off my head. But the point is, is that, okay, you go into interview. And we've heard people go into, how many people go to an interview and they're like, I'm ready for this, I'm an absolute fucking smash this and I'm probably gonna get this job. Almost no one. No one. How are you before your interview? Yeah, I'm a bit nervous. Well, I've applied for the job and, and, and the job's to drive a tractor. And I've only driven a scooter before.

• 54:11Speaker 00

  Okay, well, that, so that is, we don't have the behaviour to get that. So self doubt comes in. So sometimes it's, it's real. Because we're, we're signing up for something that the task, we don't have the skill set for. But we don't have the skill set for it yet. When I started ultra running, I didn't have the skill set for ultra running. The most I'd run was like marathons. But I wanted to develop that skill set. And I knew I could develop that skill set over time. And I knew it was a learning experience. At the start, was there self doubt? I don't think so, mate. I've never suffered really from self doubt because I think I've always had confidence.

• 54:54Speaker 00

  Because probably because of the way that I was brought up. I understand that a lot of people were brought up different from how I was brought up. And a lot of people have been told no a number of times. And that brings in self doubt. If we go back to what's important here is how can we eliminate self doubt? It's by training it. We have to put in things that. If you wanna drive the truck and you can only drive a scooter, then start upgrading your skill set. And then your doubt and your confidence is gonna come. And there's certain, it's like when we get people in that wanna lose weight. There's certain people that wanna go cold turkey and they're happy to, you know, we can drop five kilos off you in a month.

• 55:35Speaker 00

  And there's certain people that, okay, I'm not just willing to give up that quite yet. No worries. And that's fine. We can give up dairy, we can remove sugar, we can remove soft drinks, but you can keep your chocolate. And this is what people don't understand when it comes to health, weight loss, nutrition, is that you don't have to go cold turkey. You don't have to today drive a scooter and tomorrow go for truck driving lessons. You can go from a scooter to a car, to a this, to a that, and to the other. There's different routes we can go based on what's gonna make you feel comfortably uncomfortable. So it's still gonna push you out of the comfort zone. Do I get, do I sign up for things? Do I commit to things and sometimes wonder if I can achieve it?

• 56:19Speaker 00

  Yes, absolutely, mate. Again, I, I don't think that's, I would lie if I said no. Because then what's the point in signing up to things? Does three hundred K from the top of General J's to my gym, do I think, fuck, there's a chance that I could fail at this? Yeah, there's a legitimate chance. But I'm gonna do everything that I can. The, the first ten K is literally twenty percent downhill. There's no path. It's carnage, mate. And the time that we're gonna start to the time that we wanna finish, it's gonna be pitch black. There's absolute real chance that within the first hundred metres, I can trip over a rock, fall, break my leg, and the whole thing's over.

• 57:04Speaker 00

  And everything that I've told you that I'm gonna do it on the show, that I'm gonna tell all the other media, that I've trained, that I've woken up early, that I've left my wife on her own, I've sacrificed my business, time on my business, I've sacrificed time with relationships, is all gone in a hundred metres.

• 57:20Speaker 00

  But when I was coming here this morning, I could have got stuck in the lift. But I didn't think about that. So we kind of, why would we, we control? I got in the lift, I pressed the button. I'm done. If the lift breaks when I'm on the twenty fourth or twenty five floors, that's it. I've done all of the training. I've got all of my equipment right. I set off at the time, I go on the pace, I go on the track. And then I keep going. Why would I worry about it? We're worried about things that we can't control. I guess it's very stoic at the same time, mate, very, very stoic, you know? And the more, it's, it's, it's funny because three or four years ago, I started sort of

• 58:03Speaker 00

  reading more about stoicisms and, and stoicism and, and it sort of really started to resonate with me and then, you know, daily stoic podcast as well. And, and then, you know, Ross's Edley's Stoic Sports Science. Fire out, this is like, it's all just stuff that, but is it, is it the stoicism? Or is that just a way of human behaviour that they found, that they wrote about, that we find about being present? You know? Focusing on what you can control and putting all of your energy into what you can control will remove self doubt. You're only going to doubt stuff if you're not confident in the plan and the decision making process. I make bad decisions, mate. I've made a load of bad decisions.

• 58:48Speaker 00

  But we made decisions in that time, based on a decision making process. Have I since tweaked that decision making process based around certain situations? Absolutely. I think that's learning. And mate, I'm, I'm turning forty two next month. I'm still super young. I'm still trying to figure shit out. And whether my shit really works or not. But at the same time, I don't think, I think self doubt comes from issues that we, we're not addressing in the correct way. And why are we not, mate? Because we come. Everything we've spoken about, all these different angles that we've kind of gone through on this show, we kind of come to the same thing, that a lot of this could be based on subconscious behaviour from our past.

• 59:33Speaker 00

  That sometimes is really hard to address. The more I learn about motivation, I've worked with people in performance in really tough situations. Tonight, I'm gonna take a guy to the middle of the desert at six P M and he's gonna run for twenty four hours, non-stop.

• 59:48Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 59:50Speaker 00

  And he's gonna learn shit that he's never learnt before. He's gonna have moments that parts of his childhood and behaviour and with his relationship with his wife, with his kids, with his parents, he's gonna start to come and fuck with his mind. It's gonna be an insane experience for him. But he's gonna bring that behaviour, maybe, not definitely, right up here and get it out. It's really hard, mate. And that's why people are unable to achieve great things a lot of the time. That's why we have self-doubt, confidence, we have a victim mindset, because we've not dealt with things in the right way. And it's tragic.

• 1:00:29Chris Williamson?

  You mentioned your buddy who's about to run twenty four hours. You've done a variety of different endurance events as well. Is there a particular point that you could identify as the most discomfort you've been in during them?

• 1:00:44Speaker 00

  Every event's different, mate. Um, this time last year, I was running around a four hundred metre track. I did that for twenty four hours and it was about, it's quite a weird story this one, mate. But there's humour to it and then there's some quite serious fart. It was about eleven A M. I started at three P M. It was eleven A M. The next day, it was getting hot. When heat comes, the gut microbiome changes. I was incredibly fortunate that I had a lot of people that were running with me the whole time around the track. I think I only did like two laps on my own. So, and some of these people, I didn't really know them very well.

• 1:01:24Speaker 00

  So, which I shouldn't have done, and this is so like, not like me, but I didn't feel it was right to fart in front of them.

• 1:01:35Speaker 00

  So mate, literally, I'm fucking, I'm, I'm, I'm eighteen hours round the track. And when you're doing physical activity and you're taking on different foods and caffeine gels and it's not healthy, mate. Your guts are in a mess and I'm not able to fart. And I got to a point where, where Tom, Tom Walker, who, who works with me and, and, and helps me on a lot of these things. He's a, he's a very intelligent sports scientist. So when we want to get geeky, we go into stuff. He was running with me and I said to him, I said, mate, you've got to get rid of these people. He's like, mate, the people have come for you. And I'm like, well, mate, I'm literally about to shit myself.

• 1:02:19Speaker 00

  So he says to the people, he says, can you give him twenty metres? And he just needs a bit of space. And honestly, mate, there are some fantastic human beings on the planet in my life. And, and I am genuinely grateful. They all just said yes. And they just backed off. And I'm literally just farting like. But they're running downstream of you. They're running, yeah, it was a disaster. Oh, good god. You should have said, go ahead of me twenty metres. And I'm obviously incredibly fatigued. I'd done about hundred and eighty, hundred, something about hundred and eighty K, let's say. And this pain in my gut was getting worse when I was farting.

• 1:03:01Speaker 00

  And I said to Tom, I said, mate, this is, this is not really helping. And it was getting hot as well. It was about thirty degrees. We, we had everything. It's quite, it's quite good for Dubai. I mean, it rained, it was cold. Like at one point I was running in a long sleeve and, and then it was getting hot towards midday. And I said to him, I said, mate, I need to go, we need to go to the toilet. And he was like, well, of course we can go to the toilet. But I'd got in this sort of tunnel vision that I just had to keep running. And anyway, I'd gone to the toilet and literally I went in the toilet, mate, and I've got my sunglasses and my cap on, no shirt. And I dropped my shorts and I'm sat on the toilet and everything's come out and I'm in this incredible amount of pain.

• 1:03:47Speaker 00

  My legs are fucked, like completely. Running on a track is just, it's just the same ocean over and over. And I'm shitting myself. And I look around and I see the butt hose, which is very common here, the, the butt hose. You don't have it much in the UK. I'm just like. And I start having a shower.

• 1:04:09Speaker 00

  And I'm like, my legs are killing. And I'm like, I didn't know where I was. I was just in this, I was just in this insane state of

• 1:04:22Speaker 00

  pain, of just pure joy, of everything. Because I knew I was getting better, I was getting cooler. And, and Tom knocked on the door, I know it was three minutes later or five minutes later, he goes, "You okay in there, mate?"

• 1:04:40Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. And, and then I realised I was there to run. And I put the butt hose down and I pulled up my shorts, I'm dripping wet through, water everywhere. I don't even know if my arse was clean. And I just got up and I just went out to the track and I carried on running incredibly slow for the last two or three hours. Why do I share that, mate? Is because this is an incredible experience on so many different levels. There's so many different moving parts. There's not wanting to let people down. There's, am I embarrassed? Why do I care? There's the pain that I'm going through. Then there's just getting into this cubicle.

• 1:05:22Speaker 00

  And the pictures you've all just thought through, some of you are a bit more scarred than others, of this man laying back on a toilet like half on, almost like you find someone drunk in a nightclub or something, dare I say it? Just sharing with a butt hose. And it's literally one of the most amazing moments of my life because everything is coming together. I'm, I'm so fucking alive right now. And that's what these events do, mate. They, they cause you to go into such a an unusual situation, hallucinations, pain, call it what you will, mate. And then you just, and I had it, you go in the Sahara and

• 1:06:05Speaker 00

  I'll, I'll just walk around a corner, where it feels like a corner, there's really nice corners in the Sahara. And you just look up and you're like, fuck. I'm a human and this is earth. And I'm running across this fucking Sahara Desert. And it's amazing. It's like you're reborn, mate. And I was in Kenya last year. In hell, literally in hell, mate. I've got chafe and there's a picture of me. I, this race was self-supported, so I'm carrying everything. And it's awful and it's hot. And then I find a picture on my GoPro. And I'm next to a fucking giraffe.

• 1:06:44Speaker 00

  And I'm like, is this real? Like, if I was fighting, which I was fighting the pain. But then you're just reborn, just through a giraffe. And this is one of the, the, the, the things that we haven't touched on, which I just think is super important. The power of the planet, of nature, of animals, of plants, of sunrises, of the circadian rhythm. Is absolutely incredible. It's hard for me to explain pain and suffering because I think it's different for everyone. And I can, we could do a whole hour about the pain I've been in. But it's irrelevant. I chose to be there.

• 1:07:27Speaker 00

  But the lessons from it and the amazing things that Ultra's given me, that human beings has given me. That allow me to be present, that allow me to live. I really think is what contributes to wanting to wake up early every single morning. Before my alarm, some days, some days on my alarm, mate. Some days I'm like, what the fuck? You know, I'm the same as everyone, like bang. And just get up and live and overcome those tough things of, you know, I don't feel a hundred percent today. And that's why I do this stuff, because those situations that I've been in.

• 1:08:06Speaker 00

  And we've all been in situations, but I chose to be there and I've unpicked those situations. And I've thought about, the track one is really, I don't think I've fully understood it yet. It's only a year on and you know, there's so many moving parts, there's what Tom did, there was the time in the cubicle, there's the people, there's so many different things going along and that's what's amazing, mate. I can literally sit and look at a picture that's on my camera roll from the ultras that I've done. And I'll look at it like it's the first time I've looked at it. And these are free tools to us. We're always looking and, and, but it's hard because I have to relive those situations.

• 1:08:48Speaker 00

  And that's tough because if you remember it for the pain. But a lot of time I try and remember it for what it's brought me. And the great tools it's brought me to deal with life. To deal, I have twenty five people working for me. I have relationships, I have parents that I have to deal with that are seventy five and wanna travel during Covid. You know what I mean? And there's these different things that you can, you can take from it. And one of the most beautiful things and the thing that I'm, I'm not one of these massive hashtag grateful, thankful gratitude people, but I do have an incredible amount of gratitude. And I think I don't need to show it off on, on Instagram with people, but through having these opportunities to do these challenges,

• 1:09:32Speaker 00

  I'm able to, the guy that's gonna, we've got a few guys running long tonight. I'm able to share that with him and then watch him and his relationships and his life grow. And that is one of the most incredible things. I've got somehow this gift that I can help someone do something better. I'm not Tony Robbins, I can't change a thousand people at once, but I can take him and I can, he's gonna be in hell. He's gonna address some things and tomorrow night at six P M when he stops running and he has a cold beer, he's gonna be reborn, mate. And it's literally, there's a, there's a picture and it's one of my, it's my favourite picture of twenty nineteen.

• 1:10:17Speaker 00

  I can't say it's my favourite picture of the decade, but it's one of my favourite pictures of twenty nineteen. Where at the end of my twenty four hour run, I was hugging Holly and one of my mates. Sent me a message, I don't know if he wrote it on the post or he sent me a message, he goes, in this situation, you feel like death, but in the same moment, you feel reborn. Quite the conundrum. I'm like, fuck, this is, this is really it? Like, mate, and you can see, like, I'm emotional about it because that's really it. You've been in such a tough place, but now you're just so fucking alive. And it's just, how do we get that more often?

• 1:11:01Chris Williamson?

  I've never wanted to do endurance stuff. And the last couple of days, last couple of weeks, I've been listening a lot to Brian Keenan.

• 1:11:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:08Chris Williamson?

  In a few weeks, I've been listening to yourself. Tom Otten is gonna come, he's gonna be sat where you are in a couple of hours' time. And I don't think I've ever heard people talk about endurance events in this sort of a way.

• 1:11:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:24Chris Williamson?

  And it just, if there was ever a front end of the funnel, man, for wanting to start doing this. I've never even wanted to run a half marathon.

• 1:11:32Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:11:33Chris Williamson?

  But I just think, wow, what an opportunity for growth, you know?

• 1:11:37Speaker 00

  I released a podcast today called It's Not About Running. And honestly, mate, I was, I didn't know what show I was gonna put out this week. I didn't have any guests lined up and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I went through a lot of my old articles. And I wrote an article in 2018 or 2019 called It's Not About Running. And I read it. And I was like, you know what? That's actually a really good article, like pat on the back sort of thing. And I was like, you know what? I can share this with people. And I can put it into a podcast because you said it there, I've never run a half or, it's not about the running, mate. I haven't talked to you about running. We've talked about life.

• 1:12:21Speaker 00

  And I don't think, I definitely didn't realise the power of ultra endurance. Until I got knee deep in it, mate. I never thought. How did it start is what a lot of people ask me and honestly, mate, a lady walked into my gym one day and said, I need your help. She said, I'm gonna run this ultra marathon. And I was like, never done one. She goes, no, I just wanted to help me on my strength and nutrition. Said I could do that. I said, would you mind if I learn? I said, because I find it difficult to tell someone to do something I haven't done. And that's what started it in two thousand nine. And it's incredible, mate. A lot of people.

• 1:13:00Speaker 00

  I'm so grateful again that you've spent the time and you've understood a little bit because a lot of people. Anything over their threshold and it's ten K, five K or twenty one K, it's all just running. But it's not, it's life. It's something that's so unique, mate. And it's something that's so innate. It's what we're designed to do. Without trying to sell it in endurance, it's actually what we're designed designed to do. Look back to our ancestors. They worked here, they got water here, ten miles away. We went by walking or running. It's only in the last fifty years that we don't move in the way that we're supposed to move. And that's led to all the problems that we've got now.

• 1:13:43Speaker 00

  It's so natural for us. Be a hippie about it. It's what we're supposed to do.

• 1:13:48Chris Williamson?

  Man, you might not be trying to advertise long distance stuff, but it's it's gassed me up and I'm sure it's really sort of invigorated a lot of people as well. And if ever there was a year to do it, like when your gyms have shut down, the number of people that I think have taken up distance running and hopefully. They'll have taken some of the lessons that you've had today from their own experience as well. So man, I I've adored today. You've got to get on. Um, and I've got, I need to have another coffee. I don't know what to do after this. I don't know whether I want to cry, whether I want to throw myself off the roof into the pool, whether I need a coffee, whether I need a sleep, I need something.

• 1:14:23Speaker 00

  Just try and keep it real, mate. I appreciate you chatting to me, mate. Honestly, really good questions. As I said at the start, I try and talk a lot because I try and share with people and get out as much as I can because I don't have all the answers, mate. And I just have these experiences and I just hope that other people will try and find experiences. Are we looking for answers? I don't know, but...

• 1:14:47Chris Williamson?

  Here's one thing that might be a nice part and insight for you. There's only a few people on the planet that have done the things that you've done. Bizarrely, there's a duty of those people to teach everyone else about their insights. We go to the moon, we collect samples, we come back home and people who are experienced analyse those samples.

• 1:15:09Chris Williamson?

  People who decide to push frontiers in other areas, whether that be with meditation, whether that be with physical training, whether that be with reading and compiling wisdom, whatever. It's their job, it's their duty. They are the person who knows it, they are the people who've experienced it. It's their duty to then teach the rest of us because that's how we move forward, right? And I think that very virtuously, that's what you're spending your time doing as well with these events. So people will want to check out more about you. Where should they go?

• 1:15:40Speaker 00

  The easiest thing is Instagram, mate. MJD underscore Smith. Hit me up on there. I reply to everyone. I'm not a rude prick.

• 1:15:49Speaker 00

  Dig for the Insta slots!

• 1:15:52Chris Williamson?

  Brother, thank you so much for your time. It's been amazing.

• 1:15:54Speaker 00

  Appreciate it. That was awesome.