Jesse Itzler On Building Your Life Resume & Why Happiness Is An Action

It's easy to take risks when your back is against the wall. But it's the rare individual that will continue to push the envelope, face fear and embrace the unknown when that person could choose to live without self-imposed obstacles. Jesse Itzler is one such human. After a barnburner appearance on the podcast back in 2015 (check RRP #197 if you missed it), the man who lives so far “out of the box” that there is no box returns for another stellar exchange that does not disappoint. For those new to the show, this is a guy who fast-talked his way right out of college into a recording contract, ultimately taking his music all the way to MTV, the Billboard 100 and even an Emmy. Jesse then takes a wild entrepreneurial left-turn, creating and ultimately selling big companies like Marquis Jet, the world’s largest prepaid private jet card company, and Zico Coconut Water, before wooing Spanx founder (and Shark Tank guest host) Sarah Blakely all the way to the altar. Despite his tremendous success as a serial entrepreneur, Jesse started to feel his life stagnate. Desperate to avoid the malaise of risk adversity visited upon many a prosperous peer, he embarks on a hare-brained scheme to invite adventure back into his life by convincing Navy SEAL David Goggins — the most popular episode in the history of this show — to move in with him. David relents on one condition: that Jesse comply with David's every demand, no matter how severe. The insanity that ensues is hilariously chronicled in Living With A SEAL, Jesse's well deserved New York Times bestseller. He eats only fruit before noon. He runs 100 mile races. He raises millions for charity. And when he isn't playing super dad to his four kids (check his Instagram stories for daily dad episodes), he's an in demand motivational speaker (check out his TEDx Talk) who just happens to own the Atlanta Hawks NBA franchise with a few friends. No biggie. So the question is: how does this guy have such an extraordinary life? Jesse boils it down to one singular mission statement: Live life full blast. Never be afraid to fail. And never, ever allow yourself to stagnate. Enjoy! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Jesse Itzler?

  Two words that changed my life, and those words are remember tomorrow. When you have a split-second decision that you have to make, remember how that decision's going to make you feel tomorrow. You want to drop out of the marathon at mile 18? Fine. How are you going to feel tomorrow when someone says, "How'd you do?" You want to take off your shirt and drink tequila at the holiday party and dance on the table and swing around and be the life of the party? That's amazing at the party until tomorrow. You know, those two words, if you really think about it, when you have a key decision or you're at a critical juncture in something big, how are you going to feel when you make this decision tomorrow? Those words have really impacted me.

• 1:46Rich Roll?

  That's Jesse Itzler, and this, my friends, is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:04Rich Roll?

  Hey everybody. What's going on? How are you? What is happening? Rich Roll here, your host of this podcast, the show where I go deep with some of the most intriguing, the most interesting, the most compelling thought leaders, change makers, intellects, and personalities to probe a panoply of themes, health, wellness, medicine, nutrition, longevity, entrepreneurship, philanthropy, entertainment, technology, psychology, environmentalism, athleticism, and in the case of today's guest, fitness, adventure, and essentially, how to live your best life. My guest today is none other than Jesse Itzler.

• 2:45Rich Roll?

  And let me tell you, this guy is a world-class character. Many of you may know Jesse as the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Living with a SEAL, which is this extraordinary chronicle of what happened when Jesse moved Navy SEAL David Goggins into his home. You guys know David from my podcast with him about a year and a half ago. That was episode 266. And essentially, makes Jesse agree to do everything David asked of him for a period of 30 days. And this is an experience that Jesse and I discussed at length in our first podcast together, episode 197, back in 2015. Check that out if you missed it. It's a good

• 3:29Rich Roll?

  one. This is a guy who enjoys living life out of the box. In fact, he's a guy who's so out of the box that there really is no box. This is a guy who fast talked his way right out of college into a recording contract, ultimately taking his music all the way to MTV, the Billboard 100, and even winning an Emmy. He then takes this crazy, wild entrepreneurial left turn, creating and selling huge companies, companies like Marquis Jet, the world's largest prepaid private jet card company, as well as Zyko Coconut Water, before basically wooing Spanx founder Sarah Blakely, all the way to the altar with whom, to this day, he has four kids.

• 4:13Rich Roll?

  Jesse is a guy who only eats fruit before noon. He runs 100-mile races. He raises millions of dollars for charity. He's an in-demand motivational speaker, who also just so happens to own the Atlanta Hawks NBA franchise with a few friends. So, the obvious question is, how does this guy have such a huge, amazing life? And I think Jesse would say that it's in large part due to his central mission statement, which is basically, "Live life full blast. Never be afraid to fail, and never, ever allow yourself to stagnate."

• 5:05Rich Roll?

  Jesse Itzler, living full blast, living boundless, embracing adventure. Well, consistent with this theme, this life mission, and motivated by his enthusiasm for sharing adventure, Jesse recently launched this really cool, crazy series of endurance challenge events, inspired, sort of inspired, I think it's inspired by the Seven Summit series. It's called "Made of Challenges," which are these immersive, super-engaged, end-to-end weekend experiences that are kind of one part wellness retreat, complete with like clamping tents, and one part totally unique athletic challenge. He rents a mountain. We get into all the details today, so just stay tuned for the conversation to learn more

• 5:48Rich Roll?

  about that. In addition, Jesse has a brand-new book that releases this week. It's entitled, "Living with the Monks." It's essentially a sequel to "Living with a Seal." On the spiritual front, it's like this unconventional spiritual adventure about him living with Russian Orthodox monks in a monastery in upstate New York. That's basically one part memoir and one part primer or roadmap for living a less stressful and vibrant life. So today, we get into all of it. That's it. That's all I want to say. So let's, uh, let's just blast into it. This is me and the great Jesse Itzler.

• 6:30Rich Roll?

  We can talk about whatever you want, man. I'm excited to have you back, dude. It's good to see you.

• 6:35Jesse Itzler?

  You too, man.

• 6:36Rich Roll?

  Thanks for, uh, thanks for coming out, man. I appreciate it.

• 6:38Jesse Itzler?

  No, I'm, you know, you've done a lot for me, man. I really just, not just stuff that you've done for me personally. I mean, you've always been, you know, you've been a good friend to me and supportive, but just do your best as a fan, you know? I mean, uh, I've learned so much and it's just great to see how people gravitate towards the, you know, just the genuine, you're just genuine, man. And so I, there's a lot of snake oil out there.

• 7:04Rich Roll?

  There's definitely a lot of snake oil out there, but I, you know, I don't know. I mean, that's, that's the thing that I'm trying to be most conscious of all the time. Like, is this real? Like, am I being real? Or am I, you know, am I, is there artifice here that I need to strip away from? Like, you know, the word authenticity now has become so co-opted that I don't even know what that means anymore. But it is true. Like, I'm trying to just, you know, I'm just trying to, you know, present these people and ask them the questions that I want to know the answers to, and then I think the audience wants to know the answers to, and just fucking keep it real, man.

• 7:37Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah.

• 7:37Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 7:38Jesse Itzler?

  Yep.

• 7:38Rich Roll?

  So it's good to, it's good to have you. And, uh, there's been, I mean, I was thinking, like, when I first met you, I went to your house in Atlanta. We didn't know each other, really. And I didn't know what to expect. We had a great conversation, but you've done a lot since then. I feel like at that moment in time, it was right on the, right at the beginning of when Living with a Seal was coming out.

• 7:59Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah.

• 7:59Rich Roll?

  And, and you were kind of like, okay, entrepreneur who like, wrote this book. And now, I mean, how long ago was that? Three years ago or something like that? Now, you've got this other book coming out that I want to talk about, but you've kind of stepped into this world of like, like motivational guru guy, you know, creating all these events. Like, you're really out, like cultivating community around these ideas in a way that you weren't doing at that point in time, right? Like, that's kind of an evolution for you.

• 8:30Jesse Itzler?

  It is. It has been a process and like many things in my life, it wasn't planned. I didn't plan it. I didn't, you know, even the book with, with David, I didn't invite David to come live with me and say, okay, we're gonna write a book. And I think it would have been a totally different outcome if that was the case. He lived with me and it was an amazing journey and I started sharing the story and people were gravitating towards like, what makes a guy like that tick? And how do I get the secret sauce and drive and consistency and discipline of someone like that? And, and ultimately it led to, well, let me share that. And the same thing with this whole kind of, I don't know if I would call it, I definitely would call it guru, but motivation or whatever. It's just honesty. It's like, this is how I live my life. And

• 9:15Jesse Itzler?

  if people are into it, let me give you a look inside, under the hood of, you know, how I live my life. I think I live it differently than others, but it's just how I want to live it, you know?

• 9:26Rich Roll?

  Did you make a conscious decision like, okay, I'm gonna start sharing this stuff? Or was it because people were responding to you in a different way? Or like, how did that evolve?

• 9:36Jesse Itzler?

  It started like anything else, super small. Like, my wife always says, start small, think big and scale fast in business. And this was the same kind of thing. Friends would come to my house and they would be like, this was an amazing day. Like, I can't believe. And I'm like, I do this every day. You know, this is what I do. Like, you know, we get up, we have a good, healthy meal, we work out, we, you know, we talk about stuff, we live as big and as fun and as happy as we possibly can. And of course, there's hiccups. And I'm like, wow, this, you know, like, you want more of this? Come over again. And then like, more people would come and-

• 10:10Rich Roll?

  But when it's your normal, you're just like, well, this is, this is, isn't everybody doing this? Right? And you don't realize until you invite those other people over, the contrast between how you're living versus other people. Like, I get a little bit of that. Just, you know, we live a pretty unique kind of non-traditional, you know, life here. Here, you got a little idea of that. But when you're just-

• 10:32Jesse Itzler?

  You're sleeping at 10.

• 10:33Rich Roll?

  It's just my normal thing. But I'm like, yeah, but everybody should do that. You know?

• 10:38Jesse Itzler?

  People would think that's a little bit different.

• 10:41Rich Roll?

  I think when I first spoke to you, it had just been made public that David Goggins was the guy in the book, because in Living with a Seal, you never name him.

• 10:49Jesse Itzler?

  Correct.

• 10:50Rich Roll?

  And there was some question as to whether you were ever gonna be able to like, say who it was specifically. And it's been interesting over the last couple of years, and maybe just even in the last year alone, how David has made this kind of conscious effort to step out into the public eye and share his story in a real way. I mean, I was able to get him on the podcast, and now I've seen he's done a bunch of shows, and he's working on a book, and all that kind of stuff. So that's been kind of cool to see, too.

• 11:15Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah.

• 11:15Rich Roll?

  Because, as you know, and as I, you know, knew going way back, I'm like, this guy needs to like, share what he's got, you know? Like, people don't realize what he's sitting on top of.

• 11:25Jesse Itzler?

  Right.

• 11:25Rich Roll?

  And then when he goes and he does these shows, people are just like, what? You know? They can't even wrap their head around it.

• 11:31Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah. Well, you know, I think people are so, myself included, we get caught in our own routine. And what I found, at least in my own life, is time goes really fast when you're in a routine. And you're doing the same thing over and over. And before you know it, you wake up and you're 70 or 80, and you're like, oh, man, I can't climb that mountain that I wanted to climb anymore. And, you know, when you see people that are doing something differently, and you gravitate towards that, and you change, time slows down. You feel super alive. And, you know, his story is so compelling. I mean, it's so interesting, A, how he thinks and how he approaches life. But I think anyone like, that has a different outlook, that gives you a little bit of nugget

• 12:12Jesse Itzler?

  or wisdom, that helps you improve, can really, you know, have changed the effect on how you live. We were just talking about it a minute ago, before we started the podcast, of how I'm turning 50. And the thing that's fundamentally shifted for me as I turned 50 is my relationship with time. And I think that people, we think of relationships in terms of my relationship with my family, my kids, my wife, my parents. But we don't think of relationships in terms of money and time. And, you know, my relationship with time was out of whack. And as I turned 50, I realized, like, man, the average American lives to be 78. Now, I hope I'm not average, but that's a fact.

• 12:55Jesse Itzler?

  And if I am the average, I got 28 summers left. And my summers between 70 and 80 are gonna be, you know, my relevant years shrink dramatically as a percentage every year I get older. So I'm not gonna be able to do what I love to do, what makes me tick. That's hopefully I will, but likely, I didn't see a lot of people doing the 100 mile run I did that were 75 years old.

• 13:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 13:19Jesse Itzler?

  I got 28, if you have 28 summers, it's like, well, who do you want to spend that time with and how, what do you want to do? And it's like, something happened as I'm turning 50 that I'm so damn aware of it, that literally, literally, it's in my DNA. It's like every night I go to sleep, I'm like, did I maximize the day? You know, and like, Jesse, man, you got, you know, if you have 28 years left, what in the world do you want to accomplish before that time is up? You know, so I've had this fundamental shift and it's fucking with me.

• 13:53Rich Roll?

  But what I think is interesting about you is, I mean, first of all, I would agree, like, for, for me, you know, 40 was what it was, but like 50 is a different deal, you know? Like, and it really hit me at 51, like, we were talking before the podcast, like, my, my hair started going gray, like immediately, and it's like, oh, my back's a little tight. You know, it's like, it's the first instance of experiencing, you know, any kind of aging, because I always just feel like I'm 24 or whatever. And for the most part, I still feel that way. But it is, you know, I found it to be significant. But I think what's, what's, what's unique about you is, look, you, you, you live your life in, you know, a pretty unique set of circumstances. Like, you can fucking do whatever you want, right?

• 14:37Rich Roll?

  And most people who are, you know, in your scenario are just chilling, you know? They're, they're going on nice vacations and they're just relaxing and they're not continuing to push themselves. So like, what is it inside of you that's always like trying, you know, that, that like impulse to like continually grow and put yourself in uncomfortable situations and expand your horizons?

• 15:01Jesse Itzler?

  Well, I think I'm driven, for me, I'm a big believer in building your life resume versus your personal resume. I mean, having a business resume is important, but I think a life resume is a real good look of your own, of your real body of work. It's a real indication of who you are and what you're becoming. And I am not, nobody cares that the Dallas Mavericks or, or won the championship five years ago, or that Alabama won the football. It's like, what's next? And that's how I live my life. It's like, check the box. I don't want to sit and dwell on the fact that, okay, Jesse, you ran this marathon, or you completed, you sold this, or whatever. Because tomorrow, no one cares about that. And so it's like, check the box and move on. And that's, that's, it's like, how can I build,

• 15:45Jesse Itzler?

  build the biggest life resume that I can build? And those things and those challenges and pushing myself, again, for me, is the only way to really know what I'm made of. It's where all the growth is. All the growth is there. And it truly, and you know, it truly, in my heart of hearts, makes me feel the most alive. It's what I like to do. If I didn't like it, I wouldn't do it. I would just be like, all right, I'm gonna go to a fancy hotel and sit in the lobby and drink martinis.

• 16:14Rich Roll?

  But it requires, I think what it does is it, it forces you to confront yourself in a very humbling way. Like, it requires some humility, right?

• 16:22Jesse Itzler?

  Absolutely.

• 16:23Rich Roll?

  Like, you gotta check your ego at the door. And you're, you know, you're in a situation where you could just be feeding your ego all day long, right? So, so it's about like, always remembering, like, there's more to do, there's more to, there's more to learn, like, um, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's always a horizon that's a little bit outside of your reach. And if you have the willingness to approach that, that's where some magic can happen for yourself. And that's where you feel alive. And that's where that, you, you, you do experience that thing where time slows down.

• 16:55Jesse Itzler?

  You do. And I think, you know, I've had plenty of regrets in my life. If I could go back, they would say, like, what would you tell your 21-year-old self? And what would you do differently? And there's a lot of stuff. It's easy to look back and play Monday morning quarterback and say, this is what I would do. And I have a lot of regrets. But from those lessons, it's like, I don't want to have those regrets. I want to do as much as I can to prevent that forward. So, um...

• 17:20Jesse Itzler?

  You know, you only get one, we all have the same 24 hours in a day.

• 17:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 17:24Jesse Itzler?

  You're, everybody listening, you, myself, it's just how do you spend it? And I'm super, obviously you have to work and you have to bring in income. But you get one life, you know, like you can't, there's no redo. And I don't want to live it like streamlined, like just a steady line going across. I want to kind of always, who doesn't want to live it with an uptick? Always trying to kind of reach. So that's why I love the challenges and you, you're wired the same way. I mean.

• 17:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think a lot of people though, think like, they don't, they don't, they consciously know they don't get a redo. But so many people, and I'm guilty of this, this is the way I used to live. Like you just sort of resign yourself to how you're living. And, and there's some part of you that does think like, well, next time I'll do it differently. This idea that there is going to be a next time. It's, you know, the, the reality of like the 28 summers is like, you know, that just puts it into perspective in, in a, in a very real way.

• 18:22Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah, for, and when you start to realize your own, like you, you get in tune with your own mortality. Like you, you start to realize that like in a hundred years, nobody that you see on the street is going to be here anymore. You know, like, first of all, it, it's a great motivator to get over fear. Cause who cares, but we're all going to be dead in like 80 years. So like, who cares what this guy thinks about me, you know? But when you start to realize that, let's just take the 28 summers, and I hope I'm wrong. I hope I live, we all live longer, but let's just say that that is the case. You know, when you look at it that way and say like, I have, my parents are both alive. And my parents, are your parents alive? How old are your parents?

• 19:03Rich Roll?

  Seventy six, seventy four.

• 19:05Jesse Itzler?

  And where do they live?

• 19:06Rich Roll?

  Washington DC.

• 19:07Jesse Itzler?

  And how often do you see them?

• 19:09Rich Roll?

  Like twice a year.

• 19:10Jesse Itzler?

  Okay, so most people be like, okay, you know, I have, let's say your parents live till 80. So they have five more years. Okay. Let's just say roughly. You would say I have five more years of my parents, but I would say, no. You have 10 more times with your parents if you see them twice a year. You see them twice a year, times five, you have 10 more times to see them. When you start thinking of things like that, your first reaction is, I want to go see my parents. At least that's mine. You know, my parents are 88. They live in Florida. I live in Atlanta. And I'm like, I see him two times a year. I'm like, man, if they live to be 91, I'm gonna see him six more times. That's unacceptable to me. So you change the way you approach it. I'm like,

• 19:52Jesse Itzler?

  I'm gonna go see my parents every other month. You know, I'm gonna make it a priority. And we don't think like that. We think ahead. You know, it's like, nothing's gonna happen. It's always gonna be great. You know, in two years, we're going on a vacation. We're going here. I'm gonna put it off. I'm gonna do it next year. There's, when you start to think backwards, you, it creates insane urgency. At least it has for me. You know, and that's what led me to the monastery. I was like, I, like, I'm not waiting five years to do anything.

• 20:23Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. I think there's a watch that you can get that counts down from the

• 20:28Jesse Itzler?

  I have that watch.

• 20:28Rich Roll?

  Don't you do?

• 20:29Jesse Itzler?

  I do.

• 20:30Rich Roll?

  I thought about that the other day and I was like, yeah, that would just freak me out, though, to be always looking at it that way. That could, that could make you neurotic, too, I think.

• 20:37Jesse Itzler?

  It could. And it's not like, it's not like I'm obsessed with the whole notion of time and, and that. And you can see that, you know, you could think like, that could be depressing. But for me, it's motivating and it's exciting.

• 20:49Rich Roll?

  But we don't, we don't think about death in a healthy way in our culture. We just, we pretend it's not gonna happen. On some, on some level, we all kind of think somehow we're gonna avoid it, you know?

• 21:00Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah.

• 21:01Rich Roll?

  And, and when it does happen, it makes us very uncomfortable. We don't know how to communicate around it. And, and I feel like if we could, if we could bring awareness about our own mortality into our daily existence, which is basically what you're, you're saying right now, that it will allow us to appreciate, you know, our days in a way that we're challenged by right now.

• 21:24Jesse Itzler?

  I think so, very much so. I think that's part one. And I think part two is as we age, not like we're 90, Rich. You know, like, you're 51, we're having a conversation like we're 89 years old each. We have plenty of great years left ahead of us. But, you know, one of my goals is to age with vibrancy, you know, and not be medicated and, and restricted as I get into my 70s and 80s. Uh, you know, I think, I think the average American, I think there's four billion prescriptions prescribed every year.

• 21:56Rich Roll?

  It's insane.

• 21:57Jesse Itzler?

  It's like thirteen for every man, woman, and child in this country or something, something like that, some outrageous number. I think that actually might be the stat. And I'm not, I'm not a statistician, but I would just say by looking at my parents and their inner circle, a lot of that are to the elderly, blood thinners and this thing and heart and pain and this. And it's like, why? Why? Just to, you know, like, my goal is to, or one of my goals is to just to live now in a way that will allow me to be vibrant in the future.

• 22:32Rich Roll?

  And the challenge is that you present to yourself, like always pushing yourself and putting yourself in these uncomfortable situations, that, that creates that plasticity that, that, that keeps you young, I think. It keeps you engaged, it keeps you, you know, vibrant, like you said. And, and I think that's, you know, that's really the way, if you, if you want like the recipe for youth, you know, to be connected to other people, to cultivate community, to put yourself in these uncomfortable situations, to the extent that you can continue to do that, because it is, it's, it is about the quality of the time that you're spending. It's not just getting old, like how long are you gonna live? Like, what are those last eight years gonna look like for you?

• 23:14Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah, I mean, exactly. I mean, that's thirty-three percent of my life.

• 23:17Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 23:18Jesse Itzler?

  You know, left.

• 23:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 23:19Jesse Itzler?

  No, it's a big, I'm serious, it's a big, you know, you have to think like, I think it's important to think like that, as opposed to being in a bubble and living, you know, you plan everything else. We plan so far ahead, you probably talk to your wife, what are we gonna do on Christmas Vacation? You know, what are we gonna do? Like, everything is forward, but reverse engineer. It's no different than like, it's like... When I was, when I was starting out in business and we had, Mark, any of the ventures that I've been in, I've always had the, the end of the movie in my head. The script had to be filled in and the script might have rewrites along the way. But the end of the movie was always crystal clear. It's like, okay, this is gonna, you know, there was no like B plan.

• 24:03Jesse Itzler?

  This is what, this is where we have to get to and this now let's figure out, let's figure this shit out and who do we have to hire to get there and, and what do we have to do? It's the same thing with like, kinda like life, right? I mean, like, you know, you wanna be 80, but what does 80 look like for, for a rich role?

• 24:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think I need to do a better job of that. I mean, you said to me before the podcast, like, you know, what does your life look like in five years? And I was like, I'm not sure.

• 24:27Jesse Itzler?

  I was like, what do you mean?

• 24:29Rich Roll?

  I know, yeah, yeah. You're like, oh, I, I always have a crystal clear view of, you know, what this, how this is gonna work out at the end, what the end game looks like. And I, you know, I think I could, I think I have a, a lot of improvement in that regard 'cause I, I, I don't tend to think in those terms.

• 24:46Jesse Itzler?

  For starters, tell yourself in five years, you know, you're gonna be 35 years old. Just your reverse, reverse age in your head.

• 24:53Rich Roll?

  That's good.

• 24:55Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah. Cause I mean, I think part of it is, you know, like you mentioned, part of the fountain of youth is doing these challenges and working out and being active and...

• 25:03Rich Roll?

  But how much of your life is because you forecasted five, 10 years ahead of time? Like, I feel like a lot, like you just said at the beginning, like, oh, this is all happening organically, like now you're, you're being this motivational guy. Like this wasn't a whiteboarded, you know, agenda for you. This is like a natural, organic outgrowth of the things that you're just, you're magnetized by, that you're interested in.

• 25:26Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah, so I mean, I didn't, I didn't plan any of this. I didn't plan the, the, living with the, you know, the CO book and where, where writing books has taken me or speaking or any of that stuff. But now that I'm here and I have Elaine, I have a vision and, and I'm always kind of, now I'm projecting out three to five years, like, you know, I'm enjoying it first of all. If it, if it doesn't resonate, I'm outta here. And if I don't enjoy it, I'm outta here. Um, you know, which goes to like, when I look at things like that, I look at it like in, in a very, very simple way.

• 26:03Jesse Itzler?

  Risk aggravation versus reward. If it's low aggravation, and we talked about this before the podcast, I was asking about your system and everything. It's like low aggravation, high reward is the target for anything. People, work. If it's high aggravation, high reward, when you're young, that's okay. But as you get older, you don't want high aggravation in your life. I, we talked about this. I could see it in your face. You slept in a tent. You're a low aggravation guy.

• 26:34Rich Roll?

  That's, that's not an aggravating thing for me at all. That's a rejuvenating thing.

• 26:38Jesse Itzler?

  It's telltale. You know, so if it becomes high aggravation, then it would be something that I would exit. But it wasn't planned, but now that I have this lane, I am projecting out three to five years, you know, like what could it be and how big could it be?

• 26:52Rich Roll?

  And what is the vision?

• 26:56Jesse Itzler?

  Well, I have this little, an online, and I don't want, this isn't pitchy. I'm just, you asked. I have an online course, so that's something I think could scale and, and that's something I'm, I'm putting a lot of energy into. I enjoy speaking. It's just staying in the lanes that I like and making them bigger.

• 27:10Rich Roll?

  Right. So you're going around, you're, you're, you're doing tons of talks, right? Like you're traveling a lot, doing a lot of public speaking and like you do, but you, but you, it's not just like you show up and you give a speech, like you're going on runs with people and you're taking them out into the, out into nature and having these experiences. And now you're creating these adventure endurance challenge slash, you know, wellness retreat, like weekends. So let's talk about that. I mean, I just, in the podcast that went up last night, I did a, I did a read for your, you know, the new thing that you're doing, um, the maiden Denali thing, which is super cool.

• 27:42Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah, it was, it's, you know, I've gained so much from doing challenging things. And I feel like the same courage, the same resilience and persistence to accomplish a really tough endurance event translates into business, parenting.

• 27:59Jesse Itzler?

  All the areas of your life. It's almost like, it's almost like that's the workout for all these other buckets, you know, because it translates that grit. It doesn't disappear because the race is over. You can apply it to patience with your kids and when they're having a tantrum or, I mean, they asked Richard Branson with the, what the, the biggest key to his success was, and he said, he said, exercise. And I don't think he meant like physically exercising. I think he meant the consistency, the discipline, going out on days when it was raining, when he didn't want to do it. You know, the things that, that it takes during training and this kind of stuff, because it translates into all, into your blood, into your DNA. So I did,

• 28:40Jesse Itzler?

  I created this series of events. The first one was called, uh, 29029, which we, we rented, uh, the entire mountain of Stratton in Vermont. Right. Which is crazy and brought in tents, which you would love because you'd be like the Four Seasons for you. You'd sleep in these tents. You'd feel like you're like. Super nice. You might not even do the race. Come sleep in these tents. And we bring in bands and food trucks. But the challenge was, you know, get up to the top of, of the mountain at Stratton, take the gondola down, repeat until you climb the vertical equivalent of Everest, 29,000, um, 29,000 plus feet. And so now we, we've created a summit series of all the seven summits with similar kind of themes. The next one being in Utah, uh,

• 29:24Jesse Itzler?

  which is the equivalent of Denali. Right. So you're going to go up this mountain in Utah. You gotta do it nine times, right? Yeah. It's like 2.3 miles. Uh huh. For, for 20,322 feet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's cool. Like I know that, um, my friend Colin O'Brady did the one in Stratton, right? Yeah. He's an insane athlete. Did he win it or? I mean, he, he's, first of all, I met him on the mountain. Uh huh. You never met him before? No, and didn't know much about him. And I met him at around 11 o'clock at night. It's pitch dark. It's windy. It's cold. I'm on the top, almost at the top of the mountain. And I see a light, a headlight behind me, maybe like a hundred yards, but coming like a mountain goat.

• 30:07Jesse Itzler?

  Approaching me like, approaching me like he's like a leopard, you know? And I turned around, I'm like, is that a human? You know, like, who is that? And he came over and started talking and introduced himself and slowed down tremendously. And told me his story, which is fascinating, amazing backstory. And then went on his merry way until the light disappeared. I think by the time I got finally to the top of the summit, he had already circled down on the gondola, came back and caught me again and continued to continue the conversation. He, yeah, he was, he's super impressive.

• 30:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, you're doing this series, you're gonna do, you're gonna do an event for each one of the seven summits. And this is the guy who has a world record for the fastest to do all of those, right? In a year.

• 30:54Jesse Itzler?

  Yes, yes.

• 30:55Rich Roll?

  So he's the perfect dude.

• 30:57Jesse Itzler?

  And I was picking his brain, like, the whole time, I'm like, you know, what's the best way for me? You know, it's like, part of these things are social. You meet amazing people, like, he and I became really close after the event. And I learned so much from him and others, because what I love about this, we've almost created a new category, endurance hiking, is despite the fact that it's low impact, which for me, I, I want right now, you know, I'm craving stuff that's not gonna pound my limbs and I've done all that. And it's totally doable. My wife, you know, did 12 of the 17 summits. But it's really social, because when the gondola is going down, it's going over the course. You see, you see everybody the whole time.

• 31:42Jesse Itzler?

  And you get a chance to really meet some interesting people, and he was, he was one of them.

• 31:45Rich Roll?

  And you also have like, this, it's, it's not just the event. Like, you do this immersive weekend and you bring bands and speakers in. Like, for the thing, for the one in Utah, I mean, it sounds almost like a wellness retreat.

• 31:58Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah, so the day before, we married a wellness retreat with an endurance challenge. And I, I just feel like, you know, a lot of these events out there, races included, are, they're all kinda similar. You know, like, here's a 10K, but, okay.

• 32:12Rich Roll?

  You go and you do the thing and then you go home.

• 32:13Jesse Itzler?

  You go home. And I just wanted to put a twist on it. So why not have speakers around people that run a 10K would want? Like, let's have, let's have someone talk about recovery. Let's have someone talk about nutrition. Let's have a mindset expert, you know, come in and talk about. How to keep going when you want to stop. So that's the theme.

• 32:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's cool. So how many people can you can you take for these events? Like, how many can you manage?

• 32:39Jesse Itzler?

  We we keep it kind of tight. We keep it limited to about 200 because, yeah. Small, but not small, because it just that's kind of this it's kind of the sweet spot. If it becomes too big, it becomes not as special and not as intimate, in my opinion. You know, if we scale it down the road, but right now, that's that's seems to be working well.

• 32:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I like that. I like the community aspect of it, you know, like you go and it's a bit you do all the training and you show up. And then sometimes, you know, whether it's an Ironman or a marathon, like you're you're with all these people. But there's such an amazing opportunity to connect more deeply with everybody that I think gets missed.

• 33:19Jesse Itzler?

  There's no bond like suffering through a race any on any level.

• 33:24Rich Roll?

  I mean, ultras do because you're there for so long and they're they tend to be smaller that you get to really know those people a little bit better.

• 33:29Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah, I think in ultras, at least the one that a couple that I ran, it's so individualized. Like, people aren't like chatting it up and like you're in your own world. And this is way this is way more social from the one from the event that we did in Vermont. Nine of the of the nine of the participants that didn't know each other have come together and are now all running Leadville this summer. Training together, having monthly dinners together. So a lot and that's my intent. My intent is to kind of bring people together.

• 34:00Rich Roll?

  Did this grow out of you used to maybe you still do that this thing where you do this hill run thing like out in the Hamptons or something like that? Was that the original like kernel of inspiration for these?

• 34:12Jesse Itzler?

  Yes, I'm just so bored with traditional races. You know, it's like I'm just so bored with obstacle runs and not knocking them. I'm just bored of marathons.

• 34:24Rich Roll?

  That's why I did the Otillo last year. It was just so different.

• 34:27Jesse Itzler?

  It's just different. So I have an event at my house called Hell on the Hill. It's for charity. And where you run up and down this super steep incline hill, which is my backyard, 100 times. It takes about three hours and it's brutal. It's so brutal. But that was the genesis of this. It's kind of like, OK, well, what are the themes?

• 34:50Rich Roll?

  What if we go to a real mountain?

• 34:52Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah, like the hill's not big enough. We've not grown the hill. Let's go rent a mountain.

• 35:03Rich Roll?

  Cool, man. Well, let's, let's talk a little bit about the new book. I mean, it comes out, and it doesn't come out for another month or so, right? A month and a half or something. But I was aware that you went, you, you, you went to this monastery. So you got this book coming out, like, Living with, Living with the Monks? Living with Monks?

• 35:19Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah.

• 35:19Rich Roll?

  Is that what it's called?

• 35:20Jesse Itzler?

  Living with the Monks.

• 35:21Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. So walk me through this. Like, this is the sequel to Living with a Seal.

• 35:26Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah. I think, you know, I did the physical part with Goggins in Living with the Seal. And now I wanted to just get into this spiritual side a little bit, which is completely new to me.

• 35:37Rich Roll?

  I have a hard time seeing you sit down for very long.

• 35:40Jesse Itzler?

  I know. Insanely ADD. And so that was very difficult for me, as was being away from my family. But yeah, I went to, I lived on a monastery for 15 days with eight monks, four of which have been there for 50 years. 50 years. And there was no, you know, no cellphone, no internet, no wife, none of that stuff.

• 36:06Rich Roll?

  Was it a silent retreat?

• 36:07Jesse Itzler?

  It was, there were periods of silence, but it wasn't, it wasn't all silent. And they weren't Buddhist. They were Russian Orthodox.

• 36:13Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 36:13Jesse Itzler?

  Which I didn't even-

• 36:14Rich Roll?

  It's kind of like a weird, how did you select this monastery?

• 36:17Jesse Itzler?

  So I didn't select it. I, I, I always wanted to learn more about this whole kind of like, you know, you think of monks, you think of like, the spiritual experts in a way, at least I did, you know, my vision in my head. And my publisher of Living with the Seal had a relationship with a monastery just south of Canada, in, on 500 acres in the middle of nowhere. And she suggested that this would be a good place to go, that they would allow me to go and, and spend some time there. So I was like, cool. They're like, get me, can I go in a week? And, and I did. And I went up there, really not knowing what to expect. And as it turns out, this particular monastery is world famous for breeding

• 37:02Jesse Itzler?

  and training German shepherds.

• 37:05Rich Roll?

  That's just-

• 37:06Jesse Itzler?

  So-

• 37:06Rich Roll?

  Super weird.

• 37:09Jesse Itzler?

  So what?

• 37:09Rich Roll?

  But you show up like you shaved your head, right? Are you like posted on Instagram? So you are you thinking you're gonna go into this Buddhist, you know, sanctuary?

• 37:18Jesse Itzler?

  Yes, I thought I was going to, I thought I was gonna go to, I, and I don't know what, I wanted to go with no, I did really no research because I wanted to go completely just open minded. I don't want to have any, anyone else's take on what to expect. I wanted my own, I just wanted to experience verse, you know, have any kind of notions. So I thought there would be like 60 people there. I thought monastery equal community. I thought that it would, everyone would just be walking around silent and all day we would sit in a circle and think. And there was some of that, there's a lot of sitting around and thinking, but there are only, there are only eight monks. And most of the day, surprisingly, was centered around labor.

• 38:03Jesse Itzler?

  And I was, most of my day was working, you know, like mopping, cleaning, cleaning the toilets.

• 38:09Rich Roll?

  It's like, it's like a weird German shepherd kibbutz.

• 38:12Jesse Itzler?

  It was like, it was like I was the, you know, like the rookie on the football team.

• 38:17Rich Roll?

  Were you learning meditation, though? Were there other people doing what you were doing there? Or were you just showed up and it's you and the monks?

• 38:23Jesse Itzler?

  It was me and, it was me, eight monks, 11 German shepherds. And there was a cook that came in a couple of days a week.

• 38:33Rich Roll?

  And a wheelbarrow.

• 38:34Jesse Itzler?

  And one intern.

• 38:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 38:35Jesse Itzler?

  They had an intern.

• 38:36Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 38:37Jesse Itzler?

  And that was it. And when I got there the first day, they gave me a quick tour where brother, brother Christopher, who was like kind of my go to monk, and it's kind of assigned to me as like my senior guy. And he gave me a quick tour and he took me into my room, which was the size of, you know, no, not that much bigger than width wise of your desk. And there was a light and a small little table. And he put me, went in my room and he said, you know, tomorrow, well, at 7:15 a.m. We will start with meditation, prayer and reflection. When you hear the bells ring, head over to the sanctuary. I said, okay, it's 6 o'clock P.M. right now. What do I do for the next 13 hours?

• 39:22Jesse Itzler?

  You know, like, there's nothing to do. And he looked at me like dead in my eye and he's like, you think? And I was like, okay. So he left the room.

• 39:33Rich Roll?

  No books.

• 39:34Jesse Itzler?

  Nothing. Zero.

• 39:36Rich Roll?

  Do you have to give him your phone or you leave that at home?

• 39:38Jesse Itzler?

  It was like, it was like the Russians, you know, silenced any kind of phone. There was, my phone was, it didn't matter that I had a phone. There was no, it was like grayed out. So I sat in my room and I'm like, all right, I'm going to try to meditate. You know, I, I'd taken a transcendental meditation kind of crash course. They gave me a mantra. I'm like, told me to set my timer for 20 minutes. So I did. I got out my timer and I set it for 20 minutes. And I closed my eyes and I started to, you know, try to focus on my word and immediately, you know, I'm getting bombarded with like, what are my kids doing? You know, the hawks aren't doing great. You know, like all these thoughts are going through my head.

• 40:19Jesse Itzler?

  And I'm like, whoa, the thing hasn't beeped. I've been doing this for a while. So I thought maybe, well, let me make sure I set my timer. I'm like, no, I must be just underestimating the time, you know? So I went back into my mantra and started thinking and again, I, very hard for me to block stuff out, but after a lot of time passed, I'm like, nothing, I haven't beeped. So I'm like, I have to set my timer and I'll just start over. So I took out my timer and I opened my eyes and it said three minutes and 27 seconds.

• 40:47Jesse Itzler?

  So I immediately calculated how many minutes I have left. 15 days times 24 hours times 60, you know, or 57 minutes. And I was like, oh shit, like, I'm not, this is, I mean, this is, I mean, I'm not in Kansas. Like this is real. I'm stuck in this room with no contact to my family. I don't know what my kids are doing. I don't know if my wife is mad at me for being here. God forbid, something happens. I mean, all these fears and thoughts and the clock slowed down. It literally like stopped. And then it was eight o'clock and I'm like, it's only eight o'clock, day one.

• 41:26Jesse Itzler?

  Like, and it just really flipped me out and took me to a, I wouldn't say a dark place, but like, um, somewhere I've never been before. Cause I'm, I walk around everywhere. We both have our phones right here.

• 41:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 41:39Jesse Itzler?

  I'm never without my phone or, you know, I can watch something unfold in China, real time on my phone if I want to. And now I'm looking at trees. I'm in isolation and I have 15 days ahead of me. So it was interesting.

• 41:55Rich Roll?

  How long did it take you to kind of acclimate to that rhythm?

• 41:59Jesse Itzler?

  You know,

• 42:00Rich Roll?

  Did you never?

• 42:01Jesse Itzler?

  No, it took, it took until about 10 days, literally, where I finally, you know what happened? I started having all this self doubt in my head and I, I started giving myself outs. Like saying, okay, after seven days, I can leave because no one's going to care if I went for seven days or 15 days. I'll say I went for a week. Like that sounds good, good enough. So on day four, I'm like, I'm out of here in three days. And I planted these seeds of giving myself an out.

• 42:28Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 42:29Jesse Itzler?

  And then I got to day seven and I'm like, let me stay one more day. So I can go say I got, I was over a week, you know? And then at day 10, I'm like, no, Jesse, you committed to 15 days. You're here for 15 days. Start experiencing and enjoying this and embracing it for what it is. Instead of like fighting it. And once I did that and I was, I really settled in, that's when all the lessons started to kind of open up for me. And that's when I started to really kind of, you know, because we always give ourselves some kind of out. Or maybe it's going to rain tomorrow. I don't have to run.

• 43:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, it's kind of like an ultra, like it's so overwhelming in its breadth and length that the only way to wrap your head around it is to break it up into the like, okay, it's six. I have to get to eight o'clock or I'll just make it a week and I'll deal with whatever I have to deal with after that. You know, it's the only way for your brain to like process what's happening.

• 43:21Jesse Itzler?

  And similar to an ultra, like, you know, you can read, before I ran my 100 miler, I did so much research around. You know, at the time, not that many people had ran 100 miles, maybe like 400 Americans, I think, is all that I could identify back then. I read every blog and everything I could about goal setting and all this stuff. But at mile 93, when I had six toenails in my shoe floating around, all the stuff that I had read and all the preparation, it goes out the window and it's just you. And that's how I felt in that moment, like nothing I read about, oh, you know, people telling me it's only going to be two weeks.

• 44:01Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah. Tell me that at one o'clock on day two, when I'm sitting in the room and it's, there's no one around. You know, like only two weeks that goes away fat. And then you look at your watch and like only 17 minutes have gone, like time stops.

• 44:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 44:16Jesse Itzler?

  And then you start thinking, what am I missing with my children? Why, what's the point of this? Like this is, what am I doing?

• 44:23Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 44:24Jesse Itzler?

  And you start to flip out. So and then but then you learn about yourself, you know, like, well, what am I missing? What am I not? What am I doing in the day?

• 44:34Rich Roll?

  You know, that Well, it I'm sure it makes it very clear the extent to which you're, first of all, like addicted to the device, because we're never put in a position where we have to be away from it, you know? And then it becomes so real, like, oh, my God, like, I can't, I can't distract myself. I can't, you know, solve my, you know, boredom by just watching a video or scrolling through whatever social media platform.

• 44:56Jesse Itzler?

  I know. And, you know, it's interesting, even if you go out of a movie for two hours, you're separated from your phone, maybe, or maybe you're checking it during slow points in the movie. But the second the movie's over, you grab your phone and you respond, you feel like, and what happens is, and, you know, everybody knows this, but someone emails you, you feel like you have to respond immediately. Well, that means they control your time. And that's every day times 50, right? Like, every time you get a text, and if you don't, they, I just emailed you. Why didn't you email me back? And getting away from it all, like, one thing I was very aware of, like, do I really care that someone is posting a picture of themselves drinking a Corona in Mexico right now on my

• 45:38Jesse Itzler?

  Facebook page? And like, I'm not responding to it? No, I don't miss that at all. And I became very clear, it became very clear what is important, but also things that aren't important that I spend a lot of time on during the day.

• 45:54Rich Roll?

  Such as?

• 45:55Jesse Itzler?

  Um, such as TV, sporting events. I went during the final, during the March Madness, so I probably would have watched 200 hours of basketball, you know, or something like that. And I didn't miss it at all. I didn't think about it. I wasn't really even curious about it, because I was so separated from it. And I was, I became super present in all the tasks that I did. And I realized that during the day, I'm rushing to complete a task to get to the next task, so I can do as many tasks as I can do in a day, because that equals cross it off my to do list, and that equals accomplishment. With the monks,

• 46:35Jesse Itzler?

  everything was monotasking. It's like if they, if the chore today was to clean the church, or which I did a lot, there was no times, like, when you're done and it's perfect.

• 46:49Jesse Itzler?

  Leave the church and go to the next task. You know, and so it's like-

• 46:53Rich Roll?

  But be fully present, like show up with everything that you have for that task.

• 46:58Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah. So when the monks come to go to the monastery, they pledge all their possessions to the monastery. So they have zero possessions. And, you know, obviously, they live a very simple life, but a very full, like, you know, very full life and a very strong sense of community. I realized how important, like, you know, community is. One thing that I want to work on at home, you know, is just 100 years ago was all about community. And now that our worlds are very, way, way smaller, I've found, at least in my life.

• 47:36Jesse Itzler?

  So, um, yeah, it was just really interesting to see how happy people could be with so little. And how much energy, mental energy and clarity was freed up by not having to worry about so many things that are irrelevant.

• 47:54Rich Roll?

  Right. Is that the biggest takeaway?

• 47:59Jesse Itzler?

  You know, what was interesting for me, there were so many small little take, you know, there were something small little takeaways for me. But for me, and it goes back to what we were talking about earlier about experiences. They give you a layer. They give you an edge. As you do different experiences and try different things, you get a different layer added to Rich Roll. He goes up and-

• 48:23Rich Roll?

  Like another ring on the tree.

• 48:24Jesse Itzler?

  Another ring on the tree. And it's something you can always tap into. And, and the takeaway wasn't like, oh, here's this specific takeaway. Everyone knows to be present. Everybody knows if you slow down and meditate, there's benefits. Everybody knows that they shouldn't be on their phone as much as, we're not at all, do it. We all, we all know all that stuff. And yeah, that was all reinforced and simplicity was reinforced. And, you know, I love my wife and my kids, obviously was reinforced. But when I left the monastery and the driver picked me up and he said, how was it? How do you feel? My answer was proud. It was another layer for me of something that I said I was gonna do that was super hard. And I was proud of myself for not giving

• 49:09Jesse Itzler?

  up at day seven and sticking to it.

• 49:11Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 49:12Jesse Itzler?

  Now, there are times when my kids have, you know, um, you know, they're going crazy. They're out of control or something. They're having a meltdown. And I've definitely found myself to be more patient and more present. And that was a good lesson. But it's, it's a layer in me that I can tap into when I need it.

• 49:30Rich Roll?

  Right. So when you come back, how do you re-acclimate? And do you end up kind of, so you have that extra layer, but I would imagine it's like, okay, well, the phone's back in the picture. Like, have you reframed your relationship to the phone, for example? Or do you slowly just sort of revert back to like what you were doing before with a little bit more awareness, but perhaps, but kind of essentially being the same dude?

• 49:55Jesse Itzler?

  Well, I realized that I wanted a lot of things that they had, but I didn't want to give up a lot of things that I had. And I did, I did gradually, it was, it was hard to re-enter. You know, I went from a very quiet, no music, no kids, no TV, everyone's talking like this, slowly, to a very like, rambunctious, you know, like, crazy household with four kids under eight that have, you know, it was hard. It took me a while to, and I lost a ton of weight. So it took me like a while to just get back into the flow. And now, I would say that I still am checking my phone before I get up. But there's other areas. For example, when I, when I went around day nine or 10.

• 50:38Jesse Itzler?

  At the monastery, all the decisions are taken away from you. So they say that the average American makes between thirty to sixty thousand decisions a day. It's exhausting. We only have a limited amount of energy. At the monastery, all the decisions are taken away from you. You eat when they tell you to eat. You eat what they give you. You wear one outfit. I showered one time I was there. There, no one cared. There's no, there are no, there's no like, well, there's not like you have Netflix, Hulu, and eight thousand channels and like you short circuit. There's so much you don't even know what to watch. You're like, fuck it, I'm just gonna go to bed. There are no decisions. When that kicks in, the amount of energy that you get is, you don't even, I didn't know what to do with myself.

• 51:20Jesse Itzler?

  I walked a hundred and twenty miles up and down their driveway while I was there. I had so much energy and clarity, like my to do, I just organized my entire life. And I, when I came home, the first morning, my wife woke up and we were in the kitchen, and she said to me, I'm gonna take the kids to school. I'm like, great, sweetie. You know, and she's like, I'm gonna take the blue car. We have two cars. I'm like, great, take the blue car. And then she came running in, she's like, nope, I decided I'm gonna take, I think I should take the silver car because I wanna maybe go to Whole Foods and with the trunk space. I'm like, great, take the silver car. And then she came in a minute later, she's like, oh, no, no, no, no, I'm taking the blue car, cuz I'm gonna, I'm like, Sarah, do you know how much energy you just used on a meaningless decision?

• 52:05Jesse Itzler?

  Like, you just spent fifteen minutes debating in your head what car to take? And then I realized that, like, we do that all day long. And it's exhausting. It's exhausting.

• 52:17Rich Roll?

  So how do you take that awareness back into your life and streamline things so that you're, you're eliminating a lot of that decision fatigue?

• 52:25Jesse Itzler?

  So the first thing I did was I got a journal, and I just, anytime I have a thought or something I have to do, I get it out of my head and I put it on paper. Now, that doesn't mean it goes away. I still have to do it, but it's not, I don't have to have the, use the energy to remember it. Oh, I have to get little Ralph an eight-year-old birthday party for Sunday's birthday. I'll just write it down. And now I don't, I know I never have to think about it again. I'll look at my journal at night and in the morning, but I started just dumping everything out of my head, every idea. I keep it with me everywhere I go, and it's just a running list, so it doesn't stay. We keep so much in our head, and for me, it's worked. It's like a two journal system.

• 53:04Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 53:05Jesse Itzler?

  I have one book where I have all my thoughts and to do's and this and that. And then on a daily basis, I take out the key things I had to do that day and take them off the list.

• 53:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 53:17Jesse Itzler?

  And you know what I realized, Rich? If I lose, if I lost the master book with 10,000 things, nothing in my life would change.

• 53:24Rich Roll?

  It wouldn't change, right?

• 53:25Jesse Itzler?

  Life would go on.

• 53:27Rich Roll?

  I've often thought like, I wonder what would happen if I just

• 53:30Jesse Itzler?

  Hit delete.

• 53:30Rich Roll?

  Selected all my emails and just deleted all of them because I just, there's no way I'll ever get to inbox zero. It's a losing battle and it creates so much stress and, and anxiety in me like, oh, there's, I should be getting back to all these people. And it's, I, I, I can't imagine, I mean, this is, this is an epidemic amongst most people, right? We're constantly in this state of anxiety because we're not able to manage like just our basic communication.

• 53:58Jesse Itzler?

  When I went off email for 15 days, when I came back, the first thing that I said is I'm never going back on email. And I have.

• 54:06Rich Roll?

  Oh, you have.

• 54:07Jesse Itzler?

  I have.

• 54:07Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 54:08Jesse Itzler?

  But it is a goal of mine.

• 54:09Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 54:09Jesse Itzler?

  It is a goal of mine. I don't know how realistic it is in today's, in today's world, but how amazing would that be? If you need me, you have myself, those that need me have my cell phone.

• 54:19Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 54:20Jesse Itzler?

  That really need me. The, the owner of the, of the Baltimore Ravens told me that he is off email completely.

• 54:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, there's always those baller guys that like, they can do it, you know? It's like, it's a different situation.

• 54:34Jesse Itzler?

  Well, a lot of people are going analog now. They're just kind of printing, you know, the emails out and keep, you know, tracking it a different way. But I don't know, but it would be amazingly freeing to do it. I'm not there yet, but.

• 54:49Rich Roll?

  I know. It's like, it's, it's a weird like fantasy. I mean, Look, we're the last generation that knows what it's like to live without the internet, right? Like, we're in a very unique situation because we grew up without it, and now it's omnipresent, and there will never, ever be another generation of people who had that experience that we had, right? So, so having like, one foot on one side of it and one foot on the other side of it, like, we know what it was like without it. And is life better with it? You know, with all these decisions and all these complications that we have? Probably, but...

• 55:26Jesse Itzler?

  I don't know.

• 55:27Rich Roll?

  There's something about like that that I kind of wish we could go back to.

• 55:31Jesse Itzler?

  If you were to ask my parents, or your parents, they would probably say, "Life was better 10 or 20 years ago." I don't know. Think about how our parents got around. When my mom dropped me off at school, or at playdate, or at the park, or whatever, and then she went to the grocery store, my father had no way of getting in touch with her.

• 55:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 55:53Jesse Itzler?

  Like, if there was an emergency, or like, "Oh, honey, we forgot, can you get an extra loaf of bread?", she'd have to come home and put it on the list for next week. There was no way, like, instant, I mean, I've been on a route to get groceries or whatever, and gotten an alert, you know, something from my wife, being like, "No, go pick up our son at the soccer game immediately, and then go to..." I forgot. And you change your whole life.

• 56:15Rich Roll?

  Well, in those moments when you are out of touch because someone's phone died, like, it instills like, almost like a panic.

• 56:22Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I think there's gotta be a balance, but, um, we're getting bombarded, and it's overwhelming, man. It's not good.

• 56:35Rich Roll?

  It's not good for us. So when you were writing this book, did you do it in the same vernacular and style as the SEAL book? Like, sort of blog entry, like, experiential? I mean, that would be something, were you doing that when you were at the monastery? Going, you know, back to the room every night and contemporaneously, like, writing your, what was going on?

• 57:00Jesse Itzler?

  So I struggled with the book. I struggled with it during the process, and you've gone through it, as you've written a book, multiple.

• 57:09Jesse Itzler?

  Um, because first of all, I felt a tremendous amount of pressure after the Seal Book. Because with the Seal, with, I had no expectation. I didn't even really promote the Seal Book initially because I was scared. Like, what if people don't like it? I wanted to get it, you know, I didn't know how the game was played. You know how the book game is played, big sales, week one and all that stuff to get on the New York Times bestseller.

• 57:33Rich Roll?

  There's a lot of shenanigans.

• 57:34Jesse Itzler?

  There's all these shenanigans. And I was like, man, I'm not playing the shenanigans. I don't, and I was getting pressure from the publisher on how to do all that stuff. I don't want to do it. So I put it out. Let's see if people like it. Kind of like how you started your podcast. And then, you know, if they like it, we can get momentum and wins will build on it. And then because the book was successful and ultimately went on to be a bestseller. Okay, how do, well now, what if the second movie is as good as the first movie? This is a completely different book. So, um, I felt that the whole way. Every page, is it funny? Are people gonna, is there, is there a takeaway? You know, I started like really analyzing it. So it took me a while till I got into a rhythm.

• 58:15Jesse Itzler?

  And it's set up similar, there's, you know, uh, the, the time that it took to get me to the monastery and kind of what got me there. And this revelation I had on the top of Mount Washington about time and my relationship with time, which kind of led me to the monastery in a way. And then there, and then there's a 15 day diary and then there's 10 specific takeaways, uh, in, in the book.

• 58:37Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:38Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah. So it's similar.

• 58:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I like it, but I can imagine, yeah, that pressure. Cause that book was so, I mean, that book was super successful, Living with the Seal. So now you gotta like, you gotta top it, right?

• 58:51Jesse Itzler?

  Or do I?

• 58:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 58:52Jesse Itzler?

  You know, I mean, I, I, uh, yeah, but I mean, you want to, but my, you know, you just, projects like this, you know, you, you, you have to have thick skin. You have to have thick skin and you're so vulnerable. Cause people put reviews out on Amazon. You give someone a sixth grade that's like, Rich was an asshole.

• 59:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know. Well, and also it's, it's such a, I mean, it's your experience. So the review, if there's a negative review, they're kind of reviewing you as a person, you know, it's not like you wrote a novel.

• 59:22Jesse Itzler?

  But it's like anything in life. You're here for a hun- no, no one's gonna be around in a hundred years. You know, is that gonna be enough to stop you? The fear that you might get a bad review is the fear that your product might get critiqued. There's someone that like, might not like Zico coconut water or have a bad flight. So we're not gonna start Marquis Jet. You know, you have to go. It's like, the more, the bigger the risk you take, the bigger the reward.

• 59:43Rich Roll?

  Right. I, I, I know what your third book should be.

• 59:47Jesse Itzler?

  You wanna live together?

• 59:48Rich Roll?

  No, not with me, no. It's so obvious, dude.

• 59:51Jesse Itzler?

  What's that?

• 59:52Rich Roll?

  Living with Sarah.

• 59:54Jesse Itzler?

  I know.

• 59:54Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? Like, she's such a unique person, right? And you always describe her as like, you know, one, one part Lucille Ball, one part Einstein. But like, you know, that in and of itself, I mean, how your marriage works and, and you know, how you guys parent your kids. I mean, you know, I think would be super interesting.

• 1:00:11Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah. We, I, I would love that. She's so interesting to live with. Because one thing that Sarah does really, really well, that I do terribly, is she's really good at accepting criticism. And when I get criticized, you know, I'm immediately defensive. Probably like most of our listeners are, fuck you. What are you talking about telling the other? You don't know what you're talking about. You get defensive. She takes it in and processes it and, you know, and is comfortable with that. And she, there's so many buckets of her life where she does things completely differently than most people

• 1:00:53Jesse Itzler?

  that are like amazing life lessons. I get to live with that.

• 1:00:57Rich Roll?

  Like, give me an example.

• 1:00:59Jesse Itzler?

  Well, that's a good example. Uh, the way she parents, she really pro- she really praises the effort. She makes a big, I mean, I see it every day, emphasizing the effort and not the result. So, you know, instead of saying, oh, you dominated the basketball game, which none of my kids do. She says like, you practiced so hard and it really showed today. All that hard work. Keep it up.

• 1:01:22Jesse Itzler?

  Criticism is another one. Um, how she just-

• 1:01:28Jesse Itzler?

  How important product is to her. Like, I'm a rusher. I'm like, let's put it out there and we can always fix it. And she is a no. I mean, she spent, she spent two years working and perfecting her product, Spanx, the first product that came out before she released it. She is working on a product now at Spanx. It's like kind of her secret product. And they were in Italy and they've had all these teams of people working on it. And they all came, they said, the product, everyone, we've tested it, we've worn the product. We're so excited about it. And Sarah said, can I put it on? And everyone's in the room and the guys flew in from Italy that have been working on it. And she put

• 1:02:10Jesse Itzler?

  on the product and she's like, you know, send it back. It's 97%, but it's not, it's not there. And she just, you know, I think most people would probably be okay with that. But I don't think, you know, Elon Musk would. I don't think, you know,

• 1:02:27Rich Roll?

  Right. That Steve Jobs level of perfectionism.

• 1:02:30Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah. In a positive way. It's like, you know, in looking at it through the lens of the customer and looking at it through the lens of the competitor. Like, yeah, maybe everybody else is comfortable at 95%. But the gold is in the last 5%.

• 1:02:43Rich Roll?

  And this company is where it's at because of that.

• 1:02:45Jesse Itzler?

  Without question.

• 1:02:46Rich Roll?

  I think I was at the Museum of Modern Art and I saw Spanx there and I took a picture and texted you. I was like, that's so bizarre, you know? But that speaks to what you're saying, right? Like, it doesn't, that happens because you have somebody at the helm who's providing that attention to detail.

• 1:03:04Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:05Rich Roll?

  But at the same time, just based on like, you know, following you on Instagram, like, she also seems like she's bananas.

• 1:03:13Jesse Itzler?

  She's bananas. Which is fun. I mean, you know, she heard that. And that's another lesson, just like her outlook on life. You know, she's had all this business success and she's done so much for so many people through her philanthropy and her efforts. Yet she has this completely Lucille Ball side to her.

• 1:03:31Rich Roll?

  Right. Like, you guys travel and you get there and she opens up the suitcase and there's nothing in it. Or like, stuff like that.

• 1:03:37Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah. She brought the wrong suitcase. Or like, you know, yeah. Like, the other, I mean, the other day, I'm in California and obviously, and I called her to say goodnight. And I was saying, you know, I'm exhausted. You know, I just got, I flew in this today and it was, it was eight at night. And she's like, you're exhausted? It's only eight o'clock at night there. And I'm like, it's 11 o'clock. Like, you know, I just got here. Like,

• 1:04:05Jesse Itzler?

  you think if I went to China and it's one in the afternoon, I wouldn't be tired?

• 1:04:10Jesse Itzler?

  What are you talking about? So she has this other side to her that, but it's playful and it's, it's fun and it keeps us young.

• 1:04:19Rich Roll?

  So on some level, I mean, I don't know if you guys are opposites, but you do come at things in a different way. Like, and that's something I can relate to. My wife and I are very different. Like, how do you make that work in your marriage?

• 1:04:32Jesse Itzler?

  Just being accepting, I think, I think, I think a big part of marriage, I'm not a marriage expert for all, it's a work in progress for us and sure for everybody. But if our movies in our heads aren't aligned, if her expectation is very different than my expectation, it's going to lead, it's going to lead to disappointment. So one of the things the monks did, which was interesting, is every Friday night, they have something called sharing. And all eight of them sit around and they talk about during the week, anything that anyone has done that pissed them off. And they talk about the expectations going forward. So they're all on the same page and they all get everything out.

• 1:05:12Rich Roll?

  Just getting all your shit out on the table.

• 1:05:14Jesse Itzler?

  Right. And it's something that we just started doing, you know, like, we've been married for 10 years. And we've never, ever, ever sat down and been like, okay, let's talk about what our family goals are, what our individual goals are. Like, what's bothering you about me? What's bothering me about you? And now we have this like, once a month, minimum

• 1:05:37Jesse Itzler?

  sharing session where we go and it's so helpful, man. And I realize like,

• 1:05:41Rich Roll?

  Do you get defensive, though?

• 1:05:43Jesse Itzler?

  I do.

• 1:05:45Jesse Itzler?

  I do, but now,

• 1:05:46Rich Roll?

  But she can hear it?

• 1:05:47Jesse Itzler?

  She could hear it, but it's part of it. And she absorbs it. It's like, you know, I'm like yelling at her and she's like, that's a good point, sweetie. Let me process that and I'll take, you know, let thank you for sharing it. But, um, you know, but it's super helpful. And I think, so that is, even though we're very different, you know, I eat fruit and bananas only in the morning and she loves Cheez-Its and, you know, we're opposite in, and we're opposite in some of our parenting styles, too. I think that's the way to kind of bridge the gap because if we didn't and she thought, I, you know, I was gonna act one way and I'm like, what are you talking? You never told me that. You never told me that you wanted me to be asleep at nine o'clock, you know?

• 1:06:30Jesse Itzler?

  And you, and she bottles it inside, you know, it's gonna ultimately lead down a bad road.

• 1:06:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that's super important because not only could you be walking around with totally different mental pictures of, of, you know, what you think your life is, is, you know, should be about and where you're headed, you project that onto the other person and it's all based on assumption because there's no communication and I think that's where a lot of people just get into tons of trouble.

• 1:06:56Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah, I do too. And I recognize that. And I didn't recognize it for a while. I had my own movie in my head. It was different than her movie.

• 1:07:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:07:04Jesse Itzler?

  On parent, even just the way we parent, you know?

• 1:07:07Rich Roll?

  What are the differences in how you parent?

• 1:07:09Jesse Itzler?

  Um, good cop, bad cop, I think a little bit. I think, um, we're aligned in the fact that we want our kids to see us do as many things that are hard and challenging that might result in failure as possible. So when Sarah was a kid, at the dinner table every Friday, her father would ask her brother and herself what they failed at. And if she said, oh, I tried out for cheerleading and I failed, I didn't make the team, her dad would high five her. And he really just redefined failure as being effort and not trying versus, you know, putting the effort in. So we tried to do the same thing. For example, I just, I took my son to, um, a polar plunge that the fire department and police department

• 1:07:52Jesse Itzler?

  were having at Lake Lanier in Georgia where we live. And on the way there, he was five at the time and the water's freezing. I'm getting him so pumped up. We're listening to Rocky in the car and I'm grabbing him, like yelling at him. He's yelling at me like, you're gonna do this, we're gonna be amazing, man. And we get there and they blow the whistle and everybody runs into the water except my son, who's standing on the beach alone.

• 1:08:14Rich Roll?

  I'm not doing that.

• 1:08:14Jesse Itzler?

  He's like, I'm not doing that. He's like shivering.

• 1:08:16Rich Roll?

  He's the only smart one.

• 1:08:17Jesse Itzler?

  Right. And now he's crying and everyone's looking at me and I'm like, oh my God, this is a disaster. So I went out of the water and I was like, no, this is amazing. You got to see, I loved it. And you got to cheer me on and thank you for supporting me and da, da, da, da. But he's a shy kid. And it affected him because he had to live with that disappointment. He felt like he disappointed me and that failure for a year. We go back next year, same thing, listening to Rocky, firing him up. They blow the whistle. He's the first one in. They blow the whistle to come out. He won't come out. I'm like, it's over, buddy. We did it. Get on out. And the lesson was if you stick with it and try again, and now you conquer it, even after you failed, that's a huge, powerful lesson.

• 1:09:00Rich Roll?

  Right. Removing the stigma.

• 1:09:02Jesse Itzler?

  The stigma, sticking with it, you know.

• 1:09:04Rich Roll?

  Or just using a different word altogether than failure. I mean, failure is just a terrible word.

• 1:09:09Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah. Yeah. So those kinds of things, I think, you know, we were aligned in and then, you know, Sarah's, I think I'm probably the bad cop and she's, she's probably the good cop.

• 1:09:19Rich Roll?

  You strike me more as like, kind of like the coach, right? You're like raising your kids like you're the, you're the coach and they're the team.

• 1:09:27Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:28Rich Roll?

  But you're, but I mean, adventure is like a huge, I mean, this is like infuses everything that you do, right? So how does that like spill down into how you raise your kids?

• 1:09:36Jesse Itzler?

  I mean, I just took my son, who's eight, to Mount Washington in New Hampshire and we slept outside in the snow in a minus 40 degree sleeping bag overnight. And it was phenomenal. And we trained for a month. I got him a pack. We went through it. We talked about the safety. He went to, we broke the ice and got water out of the stream and boiled it. And he got to experience that. And, you know, I said to him when we were up there, you know, look around, ladies, his name is Lazer. I said, look around. There's no one out here and there's no kids out here. This is like a special moment and, you know, you worked hard to get here. And we, I want you to, like, we have to appreciate this. And

• 1:10:19Jesse Itzler?

  like, you know, he's like, Dad, this is amazing. And A, we had the alone time together, which we have a ton of alone time. But I wanted him to experience.

• 1:10:30Jesse Itzler?

  The elements, I want him to experience something that was hard. I want him to feel victory. And he's not super athletic, so this is a way that he can have his own victories and go and talk about it at school. And I wanted, I wanted, I want him to do whatever he wants to do, but I want to expose him to as many different things as he can.

• 1:10:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah. How old is he?

• 1:10:51Jesse Itzler?

  He's eight.

• 1:10:52Rich Roll?

  Eight, wow.

• 1:10:53Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah, it was amazing.

• 1:10:53Rich Roll?

  That's pretty intense for an eight year old.

• 1:10:55Jesse Itzler?

  Rich, I got lectured before I went, you know, how, how bad an idea this is.

• 1:11:00Rich Roll?

  Well, if that went south, you'd be like, you know.

• 1:11:02Jesse Itzler?

  At one in the morning, he said to me, it was pitch dark. I can't even see one inch in front of me. And it's, I'm talking, I'm saying it's pitch dark.

• 1:11:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:12Jesse Itzler?

  And he says, Dad, I have a flashlight, but you can't even see the flashlight, you know? Says, Dad, I'm cold, which is the last thing you want to hear at, on the, you know, it's minus five degrees. And I reach over to see where he is and, and, and feel his head and, you know, just kind of get his temperature and just see what's what. And as I reach over, his sleeping bag is completely covered in snow because it was snowing.

• 1:11:34Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:11:35Jesse Itzler?

  And I said to him, get in your bag and don't come out. And, cause there's no way to get down. We're two and a half miles up and there's no light, no trail. This is impossible and there's no humans around. So, um, he woke up at like nine the next morning and everything was cool and he slept great. But it was a moment of near, I, I didn't sleep one minute, you know?

• 1:11:57Rich Roll?

  Man, this could have been a bad idea.

• 1:11:58Jesse Itzler?

  This is so bad. I'm like, I'm gonna have to put him in my bag and I'll just bundle up and, but it ended up being fine and he loved it and we're going back.

• 1:12:05Rich Roll?

  Wow. Did you go, did you do like a, a Mount Washington expedition that you're, when you were doing like 2017 of everything? I just remember like on Instagram, like you guys were, it was dark and you were, you were with your buddies or something like that. Going like in the middle of the winter.

• 1:12:20Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:21Rich Roll?

  To go climb up Mount Washington.

• 1:12:22Jesse Itzler?

  It was a bad idea.

• 1:12:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it didn't work out, right?

• 1:12:24Jesse Itzler?

  No, it didn't. Yeah. We, we, none of us were experienced. We didn't, we didn't have a guide.

• 1:12:30Rich Roll?

  You were fired up, though.

• 1:12:31Jesse Itzler?

  I was so fired up. And we got about a quarter of a mile to the summit, but, but it was so hairy out. I mean, it was like 50 mile an hour winds and it was minus 30 and um, we, it was getting dark. It was about, well, we, we wouldn't have enough time to get down for it. So we, we aborted about a quarter of a mile from the summit. When we got home, I told my wife, like, I was so disappointed because I invited all my friends and kind of guaranteed we would get up there and we didn't. And I'm like, we failed. And she was like, sweetie, you know, go back next winter, get a tour guide that can help you navigate the mountain and train for it and break your boots in. And I'm like, next winter? I'm going back on Saturday. Because, and I

• 1:13:15Jesse Itzler?

  did. And we went back five days later.

• 1:13:17Rich Roll?

  All the same guys?

• 1:13:18Jesse Itzler?

  Same guys. And we summited, and we summited it. And the reason was, like, there was no, I said to her, like, there is no guarantee. It's exactly what we're talking about in the beginning of the podcast. There's no guarantee what next winter looks like. What if I break my leg next winter? What if next winter, the world changes? And we came, I'm like, next winter? I'm going Saturday. Urgency. And I'm glad I did. And check it off.

• 1:13:43Rich Roll?

  And you guys made it.

• 1:13:44Jesse Itzler?

  We made it. It was phenomenal. Have you ever done any cold, wet, like, winter camping?

• 1:13:50Rich Roll?

  No.

• 1:13:51Jesse Itzler?

  It's a whole different animal. And it's, it is, it is so, it's thrilling. It's like, it's um, it's amazing. It's amazing. I hadn't, I hadn't either.

• 1:14:03Rich Roll?

  Do you, do you have a desire to do, you know, these crazy alpine expeditions like Everest and the like?

• 1:14:09Jesse Itzler?

  Not Everest. Colin O'Brady asked me to do Denali this year, but the dates didn't, this, this summer, but the dates didn't work. But yeah, not, not Everest, just because of the time commitment and the risk. I'm not, I'm not a thrill seeker like that. But I do, I, I did love Washington. I want to do, you know, every year, as I plan out my year, my five years, that's something on my, on my list. Every year.

• 1:14:33Rich Roll?

  What else is on the five-year list?

• 1:14:35Jesse Itzler?

  Well, I don't have a five-year list as far as, other than that, and I have a bucket list instead of a bucket list. And on my bucket list are probably 10 things. You know, just things I've always wanted. I want to ride my bike cross-country. I found a loophole in the NCAA regulations, actually, and I have eligibility to row crew. So I want to go try to make like, try to make like the Virginia crew team or Harvard.

• 1:15:03Rich Roll?

  Really?

• 1:15:03Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:04Rich Roll?

  Hold on a second. You can go back to college and your eligibility will still stand?

• 1:15:08Jesse Itzler?

  Uh, there's a loophole as it relates to crew.

• 1:15:11Rich Roll?

  Just crew?

• 1:15:13Jesse Itzler?

  Yes.

• 1:15:13Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:15:14Jesse Itzler?

  Uh, maybe some other sports, too.

• 1:15:15Rich Roll?

  So this is the, this is the other book?

• 1:15:18Jesse Itzler?

  Uh, I don't know if I'm gonna do a book, but I am gonna do it, so.

• 1:15:21Rich Roll?

  You're gonna enroll in college?

• 1:15:23Jesse Itzler?

  Uh, well, here's the deal. So, most of the, most of the high-end, all of the high-end Division One sports teams are sanctioned by the NCAA.

• 1:15:33Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:15:34Jesse Itzler?

  And all the elite teams are Division One teams, et cetera, et cetera. As it relates to crew, of the top 20 teams, some of them are club teams, which are not sanctioned by the NCAA, which means if you take three or four credits at the school and you can make the team, regardless of how old you are or whatever, because it's not sanctioned by the league, it's a club team. If you're part of the school, you can do it. So I can go make the Virginia crew team, which is like, I think, a top 20 team.

• 1:15:59Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:16:00Jesse Itzler?

  And row in the NCAA tournament or whatever.

• 1:16:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:03Jesse Itzler?

  By taking three credits there. So.

• 1:16:07Rich Roll?

  That's awesome.

• 1:16:07Jesse Itzler?

  Like, if I want to go row in University of Georgia, as long as I'm good enough to make the team, I could do it tomorrow.

• 1:16:12Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:16:13Jesse Itzler?

  At 50.

• 1:16:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you gotta do that.

• 1:16:16Jesse Itzler?

  Absolutely.

• 1:16:16Rich Roll?

  Have you rowed crew before at all?

• 1:16:18Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah, so, so what happened was, I realized that a friend of mine's son, who rose at GW, when he was a junior in high school, the way this whole thing came to be, he, I was following him, and the way they give out crew scholarships is, they get the elite rowers in high school to a school, like BU or something, they put them on an ERG. Rowing machine and they time them in the 2000 meter. That because it eliminates, you know, currents and wind and body weight and all that stuff. If you can row a six 20 to a six 25 2000, they basically hand you a scholarship. So when I looked at the elite, the guys that were getting like six 15, six 20, like the elite,

• 1:16:59Jesse Itzler?

  elite guys are like six four, 185. I'm like, that's like my frame. Like I'm six, three, one, you know, I could be 185 if I want to. So I'm like, I gotta see if I can row, how fast I can row 2000. So I had read that like Cam Newton broke seven minutes and like threw up in a bucket. Like rowing a six 15 2000 is brill- it's like, that's a proper, proper athlete. And I was nowhere close. So it became a goal. Like, all right, you know, I gotta knock a minute. I gotta knock a minute off and get my SATs up a little bit.

• 1:17:35Rich Roll?

  So, so are you training for that right now?

• 1:17:38Jesse Itzler?

  It's on my radar. Absolutely. I bought two herds.

• 1:17:40Rich Roll?

  It's like very George Plimpton, you know?

• 1:17:44Jesse Itzler?

  Well, you know, it's like, um, why not? I mean, I think it would be, how fun would that be? I mean, I think it would be super fun.

• 1:17:52Rich Roll?

  You should go back to college too, right?

• 1:17:54Jesse Itzler?

  Absolutely.

• 1:17:55Rich Roll?

  What are we doing after practice?

• 1:17:56Jesse Itzler?

  I said to Sarah, when I discovered this thing, I'm like, you know what? Would you be willing to move to Cambridge, you know, Harvard?

• 1:18:04Rich Roll?

  That would be so funny.

• 1:18:05Jesse Itzler?

  Like, let me get a, see if we can get a broker in, uh, Boston that can, can get us a nice little apartment on the Charles.

• 1:18:10Rich Roll?

  So you can row crew, your kids are like, what? You're doing what, dad?

• 1:18:15Jesse Itzler?

  But what I am doing, Rich, is as I turn 50, I mentioned this to you. Uh, I'm, uh, you know, I have certain things that I want to kind of semi master that I always wanted to kind of be good at, but I'm not good at. And I'm going to bring in instructors around those 50 things for my own birthday present to myself.

• 1:18:34Rich Roll?

  Right. You were talking about this before the podcast. So like everything from like ping pong to what?

• 1:18:39Jesse Itzler?

  Ping pong, to freediving, to wakesurfing, to chess, to ballroom dancing.

• 1:18:46Jesse Itzler?

  You know, just 50 different things. I'm gonna try to have an instructor live with me for a week for each of those of those disciplines and see if I can kind of semi master them to the best of my ability. You will not want to play me in ping pong a year from now.

• 1:19:01Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, I mean, a week, you're not gonna be able to master anything in a week, but exposure.

• 1:19:07Jesse Itzler?

  I'll get better.

• 1:19:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:08Jesse Itzler?

  And I'll learn a little bit about about each of those kind of nuance, you know, disciplines.

• 1:19:14Rich Roll?

  And time will slow down. It is true. Like, it is that weird thing as you get older, like, it does go so fast. But when you're, when you when you're trying to learn something new, that's where the clock, your relationship with the clock changes.

• 1:19:30Jesse Itzler?

  It does. And isn't that all what we all want to do? Slow down the clock?

• 1:19:34Rich Roll?

  We do, you know, and it's weird how we have this idea of of what 50 should look like, like, you know, I mean, dude, when my dad was 50, I thought like, well, this dude's ancient, you know? And I don't know whether it's like a generational thing, like the vitality that, you know, 50 year olds have now versus then, or whether it's like a socialization thing, but I feel like, I mean, I, yeah, I don't feel 24, but like, I don't feel like what I thought 50 was supposed to feel like.

• 1:20:03Jesse Itzler?

  Well, you know what? 100 years ago, you know what the life expectancy of an American was?

• 1:20:06Rich Roll?

  It's like 30, right?

• 1:20:07Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah, 45. So because we were lucky enough to be born, you know, 40, what, 50, I was 60, so 40 years later, we basically have almost double the life, basically live twice as much life, just because of how lucky we were. And at the current rate, if it continues to, if the, if life expectancy continues to expand like that, think about this. If it was 45, 100 years ago, and now it's 75, that means that in theory, at that pace, humans could live to be 500. No, you shake your head, but think about it.

• 1:20:44Rich Roll?

  I didn't shake my head. I was just letting it sink in.

• 1:20:47Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:47Rich Roll?

  500.

• 1:20:48Jesse Itzler?

  Well, look at the trajectory. Look at the trajectory. Now, maybe yourself, but why not?

• 1:20:55Rich Roll?

  Well, if they get stem cell stuff figured out and they get telomeres figured out and they get, you know, I mean, things are getting crazy, you know, in terms of what's happening with technology. So I feel like nothing's off the table. At a minimum, we're going to turn into some kind of weird, you know, cyber hybrid, you know, kind of thing.

• 1:21:17Jesse Itzler?

  Well, the flip side of that is, um, I heard that Stephen Hawkins, before he, probably the greatest.

• 1:21:25Rich Roll?

  Stephen Hawking?

• 1:21:26Jesse Itzler?

  Hawking.

• 1:21:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:27Jesse Itzler?

  I'm sorry. Probably one of the greatest minds of our generation, right? I mean, science minds, predicted that unless humans inhibit, inhabit, inhibit, now.

• 1:21:41Rich Roll?

  I don't know where you're going.

• 1:21:42Jesse Itzler?

  Okay.

• 1:21:43Rich Roll?

  Finish.

• 1:21:43Jesse Itzler?

  Okay, I'll finish. A different planet, get existence on a different planet.

• 1:21:47Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:21:48Jesse Itzler?

  That the human race on Earth would be wiped out in 500 years because of either famine, overpopulation, disease, war. He made that before he died, I believe he revised that prediction to 100 years.

• 1:22:03Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:22:03Jesse Itzler?

  If he's right, and we only had 100 years of, I'm not talking about us on Earth, but our.

• 1:22:09Rich Roll?

  Humanity.

• 1:22:10Jesse Itzler?

  Humanity. How would that change the way you live your life? It would change it dramatically, and it would change the way you raise your kids, you know, and there's no guarantees. I mean, the way, the way that the world is shaping up and, you know, I could see why that would be a possible prediction to make. And when you think of it through that lens, it changes the course of the way you want to live your life. And, you know, it's just interesting to hear different theories and different, different opinions around time, around longevity, and, and when you start looking at through a different lens, as we did with our parents earlier, uh, you have a different appreciation, a different urgency,

• 1:22:53Jesse Itzler?

  a different set of what's important and what's not important. And then you make shifts, fundamental shifts, in the way you want to live your life and who you want to spend your time with.

• 1:23:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah. The idea that in 100 years.

• 1:23:12Rich Roll?

  Humankind could be gone is a trip. But when you look at the extent to which, you know, we're, we're overpopulating the planet and our, you know, lack of regard for how to do it in a sustainable way. I think it's a very real prospect. And to reframe it that way, that's super interesting. I've never heard anybody put it that way. Like, what if in a hundred years, there's no more human beings? How does that change how you look at what you're gonna do today?

• 1:23:42Jesse Itzler?

  If you knew that was factual, you'd probably travel more. You'd wanna see more of the beauty of the world. You'd probably, you know, wouldn't be on your phone as much. You wouldn't be sitting there liking and texting and retweeting and doing all that stuff. You know, and we have a vision of what we think it's gonna be. But what if it's not? And what if it was gonna hap- what if that did happen? It's fascinating to think about, man. And like, you know, that's the shit that happens when you, when I've turned 50. I'm like, you know, my head hits the pillow and it's just like, oh, my God, man. You know, if I do have 30 years left, me personally, it's like, it just, it changes a lot of things for me.

• 1:24:27Jesse Itzler?

  And it's a lot different than my thought pattern when I was 20.

• 1:24:31Rich Roll?

  What was your thought pattern at 20?

• 1:24:34Jesse Itzler?

  No consequences for my actions, you know, wanted, trying to make money. When I was 20, I was laughing at jokes that weren't funny, you know, going to meetings and wanting to get a sale or sell a marquee Jack card. And I'd be like, you know, very often I'd be in a meeting and I'd be like, this guy is not my kinda guy. You know, this is not my kinda guy. And then he would tell a joke and I'd be like, ah! Because I wanted to make a s-

• 1:24:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, putting the mask on.

• 1:25:00Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah, and like, and it didn't feel good. It didn't feel good in those situations.

• 1:25:04Rich Roll?

  What does happiness look like for you now? I mean, I know you gave a TED Talk about this.

• 1:25:09Jesse Itzler?

  Uh, I did. It's, it's a lifestyle. It's not a decision. It's, it's not a, happiness is, for me, looks like a lifestyle and doing the things that, um, it really is. It's, it's a lot of, I think a lot of people look at happiness as a decision, like, oh, I wanna be happy now. And I look at it more of how I choose to live my life, doing things that make me happy with the people that make me happy.

• 1:25:35Rich Roll?

  There's so much power behind like the momentum of our daily habits. You know, and you know, as somebody who's like always, you're always putting yourself in these new situations, like that's very different from how most people live. Like, you know, they get up, they go to their job, you know, whether you're living for the weekend or whatever, you kind of have your routine. And as you age, it's easier and easier to settle into that and more and more difficult to like, think creatively out of the box about what the possibilities, you know, may be. So, you know, how do you, you're going around, you're giving all these talks and talking to all these people, like, what are you telling them? Like, how are you getting people to, you know, to try to like, jackhammer them out of like, their worldview?

• 1:26:20Jesse Itzler?

  Well, I think one thing is, I encourage people to put something big on their calendar every year, circle it, commit to it, tell the world. So you have, you know, it's easy to tell the world now with social media, so you have accountability. And I feel like if, if you follow through with that big event or challenge or whatever it is, I believe that the benefits are so great, they last a lifetime potentially, and it becomes somewhat addicting. So I, that's one thing I really encourage people to do. One very simple thing that I suggest doing is, when I was on top of Mount Washington with one of my friends, when I took my son, he took his daughter, there were four of us. I, I said to him, he's a police officer, and, you know, one of the happiest guys I've

• 1:27:04Jesse Itzler?

  ever met, I assume is not super wealthy, you know, he's a, works for the local police department, but mega happy. And I said to him, I said, Kevin, how many of these trips do you take? We're sitting in our sleeping bag at midnight, it's pitch dark. And he said, you know what? I take one trip a year with my high school friends. And I'm like, I gotta do that because I only see my high school friends once every five years, that means I'm only seeing them like, six more times, that's unacceptable. I can do that. And then he said, I take one trip, one or two trips, uh, every other month, I take a trip for myself, I just ran the LA marathon, I did whatever, and then I take a family trip. So every other month, he takes a weekend and he circles it. And he does something with his family or friends or whatever.

• 1:27:49Jesse Itzler?

  I call it the Kevin rule. I'm like, if I can't take one weekend out of every eight weekends of my life to do something with people that I love or that I want to do, then I'm living out of balance completely. And that's an easy thing to do. And most of those things don't cost money. Mount Washington, there's no, it's free to park.

• 1:28:10Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:28:11Jesse Itzler?

  There's no cost to go climb the mountain. Maybe to get gear, but you know, most of those things don't cost. And most, they don't have to be physical. It could be like, I want to be in a book club or whatever.

• 1:28:21Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:28:22Jesse Itzler?

  And, and that's a very easy thing to do, but so few of us do it. Honestly, because

• 1:28:28Rich Roll?

  And why do you think that is? Like, what's holding people back?

• 1:28:30Jesse Itzler?

  It's easy to be, it's easy and comfortable to be in your pattern and your routine. It's very hard to break habit. Food habits, daily habits, anything. And, you know, and people are very set in their ways. That's A. And then B, they're told what to do. It's like we have a universal playbook. You know, work your ass off and take two vacations a year, you know? And like, that's not living for me. And it has nothing to do with where I am in my life now. When I was 20, I'm doing the same shit, Rich, I was doing when I was 21. I run every morning for an hour. I eat fruit till noon. I have the same friends, the same shit gets me off. You know, it's like, I just, it might be, it's just grander.

• 1:29:13Jesse Itzler?

  But um, there's a playbook and the playbook is broken. If you look at the playbook, you know, with divorce rate at 40, 50%. Uh, what 40% of, of American males are obese. I think something like 66 Higher than that. 66% of American adults are unhappy. There's a Harris survey that just came out about that. I, there's an, it's like, I want to say it's like, I don't have the exact stat, but it's, it's, I think it's like 65%, it's even maybe more percent of all Americans over 35 don't have over a thousand dollars in savings. I mean, the playbook's broken.

• 1:29:52Jesse Itzler?

  It's broken.

• 1:29:52Rich Roll?

  And then you go to this monastery where these guys are living this super simple life and they're happy and you hear this from anybody who travels from, you know, you're in a small village in Peru or something like that where people have nothing or Costa Rica and there's community and these people are engaged and they're living longer and they don't have these diseases and they're not obese and they're not staring at their phones. And we're so judgmental, we have all these opinions about how people are supposed to live and we're such a prosperous nation, it's just, it's bizarre and disorienting that that we've, we've got so many things so wrong.

• 1:30:28Jesse Itzler?

  And I'm, listen, if people, if you love to work 80 hour work weeks and that, that's what you love to do, that's fine, I'm not knocking it. All I'm saying is I think there are a lot of people, and I fall into this area sometimes myself, and I catch myself, that have dreams and aspirations of things that they always wanted to do, but it wasn't the right time, or they didn't have enough money, or they didn't have enough experience, it's never the right time. You're never gonna have the right experience. And all of a sudden, you wake up and you're 70, and that's my point. And you're like, God, I wish I could have done it. And I think if you were to interview 1,000 elderly people, they would all probably say

• 1:31:10Jesse Itzler?

  the same thing, like, they, I wish I would have done this then. And if, once you become aware of that, the earlier you become aware of that, the fuller your life is.

• 1:31:20Rich Roll?

  Why do you think you were able to become so aware of it?

• 1:31:24Jesse Itzler?

  It's addicting. I did things early on and I was like, I love this, I don't love sitting in my office. It was very simple, I like to be outside.

• 1:31:34Rich Roll?

  How do you build all these businesses without like, sitting in an office?

• 1:31:37Jesse Itzler?

  Cause I did the Kevin rule. I always put a big, you know, I, I ran 100 miles in the middle of Marquis Jet. I ran at least a marathon a year in the middle of Marquis Jet.

• 1:31:46Rich Roll?

  But the other thing is, you're, you're like, a huge relationships guy, right? Like, you, I think you see and value, you know, the, you know, what relationships are and can be. And that kind of is a through line that runs through everything that you've done. Like, just the fact that you're, you're going and you're hiking these mountains with the cop or, you know, you wanna go on a trip with your high school buddies and you tell that story about like, you know, 50 Cent was your intern, like, you never know who you're gonna be working with, it's all about relationships.

• 1:32:16Jesse Itzler?

  It is. It is. It's always, I think, I think that's what happens when you get a 980 on your SAT. You gotta build up. You gotta rely on.

• 1:32:24Rich Roll?

  You're hung up on the SAT dude. You keep bringing it up.

• 1:32:26Jesse Itzler?

  You know what? Because I think I got ridiculed as a kid to think about it.

• 1:32:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's some pain around that, I think.

• 1:32:33Jesse Itzler?

  They make such a big deal, right? What'd you get on your SAT? What'd you get on your SAT?

• 1:32:37Rich Roll?

  I don't even remember.

• 1:32:38Jesse Itzler?

  Well, in my town, you know.

• 1:32:41Rich Roll?

  It's a thing.

• 1:32:42Jesse Itzler?

  It's a thing.

• 1:32:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:44Jesse Itzler?

  I'll tell you, um, something that's very interesting that just came into my head. I grew up in a really unique town. In my town, it was a small town.

• 1:32:54Rich Roll?

  It's like Long Island?

• 1:32:55Jesse Itzler?

  In Long Island. But in my town, we have two, two people that own or are owners of professional sports teams. There's not that many professional sports teams. We have two. We have several people in my grade have gone to jail. Several have committed suicide. Bernie Madoff is from my town. The biggest Ponzi scheme schemer ever. Everybody in my town went through the same school system, same teachers, same movie theater, same restaurants, same everything. I was thinking about the other day, how in the world did that happen?

• 1:33:34Jesse Itzler?

  Like, had it Madoff evolved and some people became billionaires and some people went to jail? But so many of the people had the same kind of, in some ways, opportunity. And I, I've been trying to kind of crack the code and get my arms around it. I went to a high school reunion a year or two ago and I was just thinking about like, this whole, my town and how this dynamic of this particular town, so much success, yet so much, yet the biggest con artist ever, yet some people with amazing parents or whatever, ended up in jail. It's like mind blowing to me.

• 1:34:17Rich Roll?

  So what do you make of that?

• 1:34:19Jesse Itzler?

  I was hoping you'd have to tell me.

• 1:34:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't know, man. What town was it?

• 1:34:23Jesse Itzler?

  Roslyn.

• 1:34:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:24Jesse Itzler?

  I think, uh, I think it was just, some people got, I think it was just the competitiveness, the decision making. This came to me because you were talking about the SATs and there was a lot of pressure in my town around where are you going to school? Are you going to Ivy League school? Are you going to this school? What'd you get in your SATs? You know what I mean?

• 1:34:44Rich Roll?

  I mean, I grew up around a lot of that.

• 1:34:46Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:46Rich Roll?

  In DC, everybody puts on the, they have the sticker on the back of the car for the college and the high school and it's all about that.

• 1:34:53Jesse Itzler?

  Did you care?

• 1:34:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I cared. I was super competitive about it, but I was able to make it work. Like I was not a good student when I was younger, but I sorted it out by the time I was in like 10th grade. So I was able to, I was able to play that game.

• 1:35:06Jesse Itzler?

  Huh.

• 1:35:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And make, and make it work. But yeah, hyper competitive. It's like sports, you know? And there's so much weird ego that gets played into that in a dysfunctional way with the parents as well, you know, that I think is really damaging.

• 1:35:20Jesse Itzler?

  So I think you're right. I think all those elements came into play. It was just, you know, it's a little out there, but I was, it just, it came into my head.

• 1:35:27Rich Roll?

  Well, I just noticed it because you brought it up like three times.

• 1:35:31Jesse Itzler?

  Thanks for, thanks for bringing, I'm not going to get defensive about it. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. And you know what? I'm gonna, I-

• 1:35:38Rich Roll?

  It's a pain point, dude.

• 1:35:39Jesse Itzler?

  I'm gonna surrender it.

• 1:35:40Rich Roll?

  You should. I think, I think you can put it to rest now. I don't think anybody fucking cares, dude.

• 1:35:47Jesse Itzler?

  It was 35 years ago.

• 1:35:49Rich Roll?

  I know, man. It's like, get over it already. But it's funny, like those are the, like, I'm still hung up on shit that happened way back then, you know? And it's like, you're talking about like how we're reframing our lives in terms of time and having a broader perspective on it. And it's like, why do I allow myself to still like look back on this thing that happened and use, either use it as an excuse or to, you know, kind of, there's, there's like a weird morbid pleasure and like, oh, how painful was that? You know what I mean? It's like, why can't I transcend that? You know?

• 1:36:18Jesse Itzler?

  It's so true. Well, thank you. This is like a therapy session for me.

• 1:36:23Rich Roll?

  No, it's good.

• 1:36:23Jesse Itzler?

  I've surrendered it.

• 1:36:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah. How long have you been going? We gotta wrap it up here. Hour and a half. That's perfect. Um, but all right. Well, let's close it down with-

• 1:36:33Rich Roll?

  And we've kind of already gone through this, but you know, for I always like to try to end it with, you know, a little bit of a lifeline for the person out there who, who is struggling, who's like, you know, in that job that isn't doing it for them, or, you know, maybe they just can't get off, off the couch, you know, whatever battle, you know, that person is waging, like, how do you shake that person up and, and get them to, you know, take action? Because I feel like so much of the podcast is like, oh, here's all the information you need, but there's this gap between the information and the action, like the implementation part of it. And that's where people really struggle.

• 1:37:10Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah. I think being aware of, you know, if I was going to summarize it, I would, I would say, you know, um, think about the notion of building a life resume, put something on the calendar, you know, and circle it. I think that's really important. Be aware of your time and how you use it and who do you want to spend it with and how do you want to spend it? Um, take action and realize that, you know, like, the clock ticks. If you're in a bad situation at work, and I've been there, I have, I've been there, you know, many times, or in a bad investment or a bad partners, you know, if you, if you let it go, all of a sudden, it's like, the longer you let it go without taking act,

• 1:37:54Jesse Itzler?

  it's like an addict. Every second that the addict decides he's not, he or she is not going to go to rehab, the odds of going go down so much. Right? I mean, is that, that's a true stat.

• 1:38:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:38:06Jesse Itzler?

  And it's no different than in, in life decisions like this. One of the things, maybe I'll wrap it up with this. One of the things that I, a takeaway that I write about in my book, one of the 10 are two words that changed my life. And those words are remember tomorrow. When you have a split second decision that you have to make or whatever, remember how that decision is going to make you feel tomorrow. You want to drop out of the marathon at mile 18? Fine. How are you going to feel tomorrow when someone says, how'd you do? You want to take off your shirt and drink tequila at the holiday party and dance on the table and swing around and be the life of the party? That's amazing at the party until tomorrow.

• 1:38:47Jesse Itzler?

  And you know, those two words, if you really think about it, when you have a key decision or you're at a critical juncture in something big, how are you going to feel when you make this decision tomorrow? And it comes to peer pressure with, you know, decisions, with drugs, with whatever. And that's really, those words have really impacted me. You know, I'm gonna blow off the workout today. Rich, we went late, it's an hour and a half. You haven't worked out yet. You know what? It's 30 the afternoon.

• 1:39:17Rich Roll?

  Fuck it.

• 1:39:18Jesse Itzler?

  How are you gonna feel tomorrow about that? You're gonna be pissed.

• 1:39:20Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:39:21Jesse Itzler?

  Right? So that's a powerful thing. And any technique or tool or thing that you can give yourself to give you an edge and help you be better is amazing. And for me, those techniques come through trial and error, trying a bunch of different things. And it's not some expert telling me what to do. Yeah, maybe I'll try it, but I have to convince myself that it works. You know, and that's been something, those words have been two words that really have worked for me.

• 1:39:52Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Powerful dude.

• 1:39:56Jesse Itzler?

  Does that make sense?

• 1:39:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it makes sense. I think, I think-

• 1:39:59Jesse Itzler?

  It makes sense for me.

• 1:40:00Rich Roll?

  Well, I think, I think what you have to do is you gotta, yeah, it's like you said, you gotta find the strategy that works for you. There's a million ways to do it. You can canvas, you know, a thousand successful people and they're all gonna tell you, you know, a different approach to how they do what they do. And so when you, you know, like read a book or listen to a podcast and it's like, here's the morning routines of the most successful people. Well, that's great, you know, like, but they're different, right? What works for you? What resonates with you? That does come through trial and error and you've got to find your own groove. Like you keep talking about like, oh, this lane that I'm in. It's like, you gotta find your lane.

• 1:40:35Jesse Itzler?

  Without question.

• 1:40:36Rich Roll?

  And the only way you find that lane is by trying on a million hats.

• 1:40:39Jesse Itzler?

  If someone with a lot of charisma tells you this is what he or she does. They might be able to pull it off because they have a lot of charisma. But if you're introverted, it's going to be very difficult to follow that advice. So.

• 1:40:52Rich Roll?

  Well, not only that, like if you're like, well, Richard Branson does this in the morning. The idea that if you mimic what Richard Branson does in the morning, that you're going to become Richard Branson is ridiculous. And I feel like there's a lot of disingenuous kind of snake oil out there.

• 1:41:07Jesse Itzler?

  Absolutely.

• 1:41:08Rich Roll?

  That's around selling these kinds of ideas rather than on getting people to do the inside work, to really figure out what makes them tick, to cultivate, you know, that that sense of self that will ultimately be the most powerful guiding force, you know, to set you on the trajectory that you're meant to be on.

• 1:41:27Jesse Itzler?

  Now, that's powerful. And you're right. It's what makes you tick.

• 1:41:31Rich Roll?

  Right. And, and that only comes through, like, people want to, they want to, they want to short circuit the inside job. They don't want to go to the monastery for 15 days. They don't want to have to sit at the edge of the bed with nothing to do because that's not sexy. You know, that's hard and that's uncomfortable. But if somebody does want to sidestep that, you're ultimately short circuiting your ultimate potential and success because it is that inner regard that ultimately will unlock what it is that's unique about you, that's going to be your like ultimate success equation.

• 1:42:10Jesse Itzler?

  I totally agree with you.

• 1:42:12Rich Roll?

  I think we did it, dude.

• 1:42:14Jesse Itzler?

  I love it. I feel great, man. I feel great. Yeah.

• 1:42:16Rich Roll?

  Good.

• 1:42:17Jesse Itzler?

  Ready to go to the tent.

• 1:42:18Rich Roll?

  All right, man. Let's do it. Awesome. So, thanks so much, man. I appreciate it. That was, that was super cool to talk to you. If you're digging on Jesse, you can connect with him online at HundredMileMan.

• 1:42:29Jesse Itzler?

  At The100.

• 1:42:31Rich Roll?

  The100MileMan.

• 1:42:32Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:32Rich Roll?

  On both Twitter and Instagram. It's the same.

• 1:42:34Jesse Itzler?

  Twitter and Instagram.

• 1:42:35Rich Roll?

  Living with the, Living with the Monks.

• 1:42:37Jesse Itzler?

  Living with the Monks. Yeah.

• 1:42:39Rich Roll?

  The Monks coming out.

• 1:42:39Jesse Itzler?

  Thank you so much.

• 1:42:41Rich Roll?

  End of May. Check that out. And of course, madeofdenali.com.

• 1:42:44Jesse Itzler?

  Yeah. You can go to, you can go to made of, if you're interested in the channel, just go to jesseitsler.com/boundless. Also, we'll take you there.

• 1:42:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cool.

• 1:42:54Jesse Itzler?

  Thank you so much for that, Rich.

• 1:42:55Rich Roll?

  Awesome.

• 1:42:56Jesse Itzler?

  Just appreciate you having me, man. Thank you. I really enjoyed it.

• 1:42:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cool. Thanks, dude. We'll do it again sometime.

• 1:43:01Jesse Itzler?

  Thank you, man.

• 1:43:02Rich Roll?

  Peace. Bananas.

• 1:43:07Rich Roll?

  We did it. Done deal. Wrapped that one up like a birthday present. Do you feel good? Are you inspired? I don't know. That guy always just puts me right where I want to live. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Please pick up Jesse's new book, Living with the Monks, and give him a shout out on Twitter at The 100 Mile Man, or on Instagram at Jesse Itzler. Let him know what you thought of today's conversation. And as always, please take a moment to check out the show notes for links and resources related to today's conversation to expand your experience of this exchange beyond the earbuds. You can find all that on the episode page at richroll.com. Another reminder, The Plant Power Way Italia, our new cookbook, is out in the world, in the wild. If you haven't done so already,

• 1:43:52Rich Roll?

  pick up a copy or gift it to a friend. I guarantee you, this book is next level. We're so proud of it. The recipes are insanely delicious. 125 Italian plant-based recipes inspired by that region's rich culinary tradition. Also, my new revised, updated version of Finding Ultra, also out in the wild, available on audiobook, on Kindle, and in paperback. If you want even more amazing plant-based recipes, recipes that perhaps are not Italian, check out our meal planner, meals.richroll.com. We have thousands of recipes, all completely customized based on your personal preferences. When you sign up, you got to fill out this major questionnaire that asks you a million different questions

• 1:44:35Rich Roll?

  about what you like, what you don't like, how many are you cooking for, what's your budget, how often do you go to the grocery store, what are you allergic to, what's your favorite food? All this stuff gets baked into the recipes that are sort of custom delivered to you. We even have grocery delivery, unlimited grocery lists, grocery delivery in most US cities, international delivery coming soon. All of this is available to you for just $1.90 a week when you sign up for a year. Really proud of this program. Everyone who signs up just absolutely loves it. For more, go to meals.richroll.com or click on Meal Planner on the top menu at richroll.com. If you would like to support my work, the easiest and best way is to share it with a friend. Tell your friend, grab their phone, subscribe them to the podcast.

• 1:45:18Rich Roll?

  And if you haven't done so already, please subscribe yourself on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to this fine content. And what else? Oh, you can support the show also on Patreon at richroll.com/donate. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiello, as always, he's been doing this for years, for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music, and whatever random fears pop into my head that forced me to call him in the middle of the night. Blake Curtis for video. Margot Lubin for editing and graphics. And theme music, as always, by Analemma. That's it. Thanks for the love, you guys. Get out there, have an adventure, embrace life, live large, be inspired by Jesse, put it to work. And I'll see you guys back here soon. Peace. Plas, namaste.