Colin O'Brady on Making the Impossible Possible for Everyone

Living a Life in Full is a conversation you always wanted to have with that person who gave an amazing TED Talk or the author of one of your favorite books, or that inspirational Olympian you always wanted to know more about. It's graduate level conversations with those making a difference in the world and in the lives of others. This show brings you new ideas and approaches so that you can live a life in full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout and I hope you enjoy this episode. This episode is brought to you by Libsyn. Do you have an idea for a great new podcast? Picking the proper hosting platform is the critical first step. That's why we chose Libsyn. All five seasons of Living a Life in Full have been hosted on Libsyn and we love it. I think Libsyn is the best platform because it has everything you need to plan for, launch and grow your podcast. Libsyn provides some of the best resources created by expert podcasters who will show you everything you need to know what equipment you should use, how to record great quality audio, how to get your show onto Apple Podcasts and other popular platforms. We're on over 30 platforms with more than five RSS feeds and you get so much more with Libsyn. Plus, as a listener and a friend of Living a Life in Full, if you sign up now, you will get your first month of hosting free. There has never been a better time to start podcasting. Visit Libsyn.com and use the code FRIEND that's LibsynLibs y-n.com and use the code friend to get started and create your podcast today. I look forward to listening. Welcome to another episode of Living Life in Full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout. Millions of people dream of living a more fulfilling life, yet many settle for a life of comfortable complacency, allowing excuses and negative thoughts to invade their minds. I don't have enough time. I don't have enough money. I'm afraid to fail. I don't have what it takes and we allow these limiting beliefs to control us. Well, Colin o' Brady has an empowered way of thinking that can help gain back that control. You may have already heard of Colin. He was a guest on the show back in season one and he's a 10 time world record breaking explorer and one of the world's best endurance athletes, garnering over 500 million media impressions and more than 50 social media. 50 million social media impressions. His work has been featured by the New York Times and he's been a guest on the Tonight show, the Joe Rogan Experience and the Today show. And he isn't your typical adventurer. Despite his unmatched athletic accomplishments. His resume includes a world first solo, unsupported and fully human powered crossing of Antarctica, a world first human powered ocean crossing of the Drake Passage, which is in between South America and Antarctica, and summiting Mount Everest twice. But his first summiting of Everest was part of his setting a speed record for climbing the seven summits. He did that in 133 days. And then after that, because that wasn't enough, he then added the record breaking edition of what's known as the Explorer's Grand Slam by by adding the north and South Poles to his trek when he did all of that within 139 days. He's also a former triathlon champion and he was the first snap from the summit of Mount Everest gaining over 22 million views, which is pretty cool. Colin is an expert on mindset and a highly sought after keynote speaker at Fortune 100 companies such as Nike, Google and Amazon and at top universities including Harvard, Yale and UPenn. His TEDx talk has nearly 3 million views. He's also been a television host, an executive producer and an entrepreneur who has built and sold companies. He's the author of the New York Times bestseller the Impossible first and a new book that we'll focus on today, the 12 hour invest one day, conquer your mind and unlock your best life. Hey man, welcome back to the show. You've been keeping busy since we last talked.

Yeah, it's great to be back here with you.

It's been awesome. I think the last time I saw you was at One of Jesse Itzler's 29, 29 climbs in Vermont. And that just seems like a lifetime ago. And I just, you know, I've given kind of like a highlight reel of your origin story and there's a deep dive into that when you were first on the show. So I'll put that in the show link in the show notes. But you know, for the folks that aren't familiar with that comeback story, I just highly recommend it because just that's, you know, that's a wonderful experience in and of it itself. But I do want to talk about your latest book, the 12 Hour Walk. But before we do, could we step through maybe a little bit of a. I'll organize an outline for your highlight reel of your accomplishment for the audience, for the people in the audience that may not be up to date since that first show back in summer 2018 was it you did the, the 50 HP, the 50 high points projects. Can you project, can you tell us a little bit about that and what spurred that?

Yeah, yeah. So coming off the Explorers Grand Slam and seven summits world records, we. I was, it was fun to set a speed record on all the big mountains, you know, tallest mountain each of the seven continents, north and South Pole. But I was like, I want to do something kind of on home soil, you know. So I set my sights on something called the 50 GP, which was to set the speed record for climbing the tallest mountain on each of the 50 US states in record time. And of course, as depending on where you're sitting, if you're in the United States right now, if you're sitting on the east coast somewhere, you're like, there's not even mountains here. You know, that's right in Florida. It's a 390 foot hill on the side of the road in the Panhandle. But of course, you know, Denali in Alaska is a pretty serious mountain, so it's everything in between. But I managed to, you know, climb all 50 peaks in just 21 days. So it was a physical as well as a logistical masterpiece of sorts. Most of the logistics are courtesy of my incredible wife and team. So yeah, it was a, it was a fun project for sure. And actually it was, you know, not that I don't talk about it, but I don't talk about it it as frequently as, you know, solo crossing Antarctica and things like that. But it was fun to write a chapter in the new book the 12 Hour Walk about the 50hp, because it was truly one of my favorite expeditions. What was really cool about it actually is we did something on that expedition that I called at the time the Forest Gump effect. So I basically on my social media said to people, hey, here's where I am, here's my live tracking. Come join me, like if you live nearby the trailhead or, you know, you want to hike a couple miles of me and you made one of the easier mountains or whatnot. And people from all over the country joined me for just various legs. Some people came for an hour, some people came from multiple mountains and drove behind me in their own kind of caravan, totally self supported. So it was really fun way to see the country, meet amazing people and then by the end basically push my body because I was on the verge of exhaustion. Only sleeping about two hours a night for about 21 days to get them all in well.

And I think too that Forrest Gump effect, we'll get to it with the 12 hour walk. Because you also have kind of a standing reservation, so to speak. You can. People have been invited to either join, you know, wherever they are on the day that you're going to be doing it, which we'll get to. But I just, I love that it's, it's much more engaging and I think it gets to your mindset point about, you know, what people are capable of. So that's very cool. And I just, I, I did Whitney a number of years ago, and I remember you also had that hiccup that there was like forest fires or something and they closed the trailhead, the portal for it and stuff. Yeah, yeah. Good Lord.

Whitney can be kind of complicated because you gotta have a permit and it's all stuff. And we planned a whole project around it and arrived there on the day in the middle of this world record project. I've finished like 42 of the mountains. I'm ready to go up Mount Whitney. Boom. Lightning strikes the trailhead that morning. And thought that might shut down the whole project, so we had to leave and let you read all the details in the book, but. Circuitous way to get back to that summit, but got it done.

You and your team and your wife are quite the logistical magicians at the. That was really, that was just another level of excitement, like it wasn't challenging enough. So then after that, you, man, you do not let any, you know, any moss grow, but you then did a Greenland crossing. Was that kind of. Was that comparable to what the impossible first in Antarctica was like? Was that a training thing? Was that solo? Or was that a Forrest Gump effect as well, too? Or tell us about the Greenland crossing.

Yeah, so, you know, I had some experience in Antarctica doing a smaller expedition as part of the explorers grand slam when I went to both the North Pole and South Pole, crossing the last degree of latitude, but that's only, you know, 69 statute miles, the last degree of latitude to reach both of those poles. And I'd set myself in 2018, the massive goal of completing, you know, the world's first solo crossing of the entire continent of Antarctica. So nearly 1,000 miles. Pulling a sled solo, something that people have tried and failed to do. And, you know, unfortunately, people died trying, you know.

Yeah.

You know, so it was a massive goal. And I'm as you. As you're well aware that I love to set big goals, but also you got to figure out how to train and prep for them. And so Greenland is the second largest ice sheet in the world, next to Antarctica, of course. And so I thought, what better place to go and explore and text my gear and try a bunch of different things. And so it's funny to say a full crossing of Greenland, which takes a month, was my training, my prep, so to speak, for 54 days loan in Antarctica. But it was, it was essential, man, it was crucial. I remember getting to Antarctica and thinking, thinking, man, if I hadn't gone to Greenland, and it was just not long before, you know, 50 HP happened. I was home for two weeks, went to Greenland for a month, I was home for three weeks, and then I left for the full Antarctica crossing. So these were kind of stacked. 2018 was a lot of things stacked, stack, stack stacked on top of each other. But Greenland was amazing and in a lot of ways similar to Antarctica, obviously, cold and white and snowy and, you know, crevasses and all the dangers you have in a polar arctic environment. But it also is different in a lot of ways. You know, Antarctica, a lot of people don't realize this is the world's largest desert. So it's actually quite dry. Now, of course, you're surrounded by snow. So what do you mean by dry? Just means that there's not a lot of precipitation, there's a lot of wind. It feels like it's snowing all the time because the snow is blowing in your face. But it's mostly from wind, interestingly enough. Whereas Greenland, you know, up in the Arctic, the other side of the planet, a lot more humidity, a lot wetter. And then of course, it gets dark. That gets dark at night. In Antarctica, in the Antarctic summer, when I was crossing solo, it's 24 hours of daylight, you know, straight up, you know, it's hot, it feels like high noon, 3 o' clock in the morning, I'd wake up and, you know, it's high noon. You know, no matter what the time, high noon, the shadows never change. Whereas in Greenland. One of the real challenges of that expedition in that crossing was it was, it was August, so there were some longer summer days, but there was, you know, six, seven hours of proper darkness. And so you can imagine a polar environment where, you know, it's cold during the day, minus 30, but then the sun goes down and gets dark. It is, it is brutal. But it was a great testing ground, a great proving ground to prepare me for Antarctica for sure.

Wow. Wow.

So.

And that was solo as well too.

No, sorry, yeah, you asked that question. Greenland. I was with a group of other people. It was kind of not, say, last minute thing, but it was, it was easier to arrange the logistics to be with some other kind of. It kind of tagged on to an expedition that had already had their logistics in place. I've been working on so many logistics with 50 HP right before that in Antarctica. After that I was like, I can't plan another whole expedition, can I just

show up who has a permit, whatever.

So I went with another group of people. I sort of operated somewhat autonomously of them. I mean, we would camp near each other at night and stay in proximity, but of course trying to simulate alone and problem solve alone, et cetera. And so it was a little bit of a hybrid. I tagged onto them, stayed with them a lot of the time, but also did a lot of my kind of own thing to be able to kind of test and simulate that solo environment. But I figured, you know what, I'm going to spend a lot of time solo upcoming, so maybe having a few people around to chat with now and again might be good for my mental health before I go to Antarctica. Completely low for a couple months.

Yeah, that's a good point. So then that then kind of led to the Impossible first. And actually also then that begat your first bestseller, the Impossible First From Fire to Ice Crossing Antarctica Alone. Let me just say what the New York Times said about it. O' Brady's culminating effort in Antarctica joined some of the most remarkable achievements in polar history, which, you know, I just can't underline and hear, hear that enough. And then Angela Duckwerk Duckworth said, author of Grit for those that Don't Know, a jaw dropping tale of passion and perseverance. If your dreams sometimes seem beset by doubts in equal measure, read this book. It will help tip the balance. And then of all people, Paul Simon, which I want you to talk about, your connection with him, said the body breaking physical trials he endured and his mind expanding spiritual experiences are described here in an epic tale of adventure and discovery. And there's bits and pieces of that that are in the new book as well too. But can you tell us just again a little bit more than like you did the Greenland thing that was kind of teeing up for Antarctica, but tell us about that because again, it was kind of really the root of your 12 hour walk, right? 12 hours a day kind of thing?

Yeah, absolutely, yeah. So the Antarctica crossing, it was a big one, obviously. It was certainly the largest goal that I had ever set for myself and still sort of remains in my mind as maybe I don't know if it's the peak, but certainly a big peak for me, you know, professionally, personally. You know, mind, body, spirit, you know, every ounce of my energy, you know, went into completing that project. And yeah, it, in a lot of ways it is sort of the, the origin story of this new book, the twelve hour Walk. But, you know, in crossing Antarctica alone, um, so the thing that I was trying to do that no one had ever done before was solo, but also unsupported. So that means no resupplies of food or fuel along the way, as well as fully human power. People have done some incredible crossings of Antarctica solo, but with kites. You know, different ways to propel them. You know, kites. And even way, way back in the day, Amundsen used dogs. Dogs are now completely banned from the entire continent of Antarctica. This was solo, mano a mano, pulling all your gear, no resupplies, man hauling a sled. And that meant that my sled was £375 on the first day. So it was, it was quite heavy to say the least. And the, the reason it's that heavy is because you want to put as much food and fuel as you can in your sled. It's not like I had a bunch of extra gears. I literally, literally didn't have an extra change of underwear. I didn't change my clothes the entire time. So it's not like I was like, you know, bringing a bunch of spare stuff with me. As much food as you can carry. Because when people have attempted this before, they've run out of food or they've had to get, you know, evacuated rescue. Because the math equation, like basically almost doesn't work out. Which is to say that if, if you had a thousand pounds of food, you'd have a ton of food, but you won't be able to pull your sled anywhere on the first day.

There's a certain paradox in that. And Rudd gave you some, some baloney about that, some, some crap about that, about your caloric intake or something, right? When you guys were.

Yeah, it was funny. So I had these kind of custom bars that I created and designed. And I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take 7,000 calories per day. And he was like, that's way too much. I'm only doing 5,500. We were both burning 10,000 calories a day, to be clear. So I was still eating 7,000 calories. I was on a 3,000 calorie deficit. You know, I was a bag of bones. I lost some 30 some pounds or something like that. Hips protruding, ribs protruding.

You have pictures in your books and it's like, holy smokes, man, you're stitching up your pants because you know, you lost so many inches around your waist.

Totally, totally. So, but yeah, that, you know, you mentioned Rudd. I would, I thought I was just racing history. That was the plan. And then right before I get down to fly down there, I find out there's actually another guy by the name of Captain Lewis Rudd, A badass military special forces British dude who's done some incredible projects in Antarctica. Have a lot of respect for announces he's trying at the same time. And when I say the same time, I literally mean the same time, which is safe. There's one guy with one plane that can drop you off on the edge of the Antarctic continent. And we both called that one guy, it turns out. And we find ourselves sitting shoulder to shoulder in a tiny little cargo plane flying to the edge of Antarctica to what we both thought was to race history, to be the first. But now if you're both trying to say the first, what's that? That's a head to head race.

I love the picture. You have a shot of the two of you, you know, sitting, you know, elbow to elbow on this plane. Neither one of you are looking too happy at that point in time.

So yeah, it was very intense and he was in my head and, and I wish I could say oh yeah, but he wasn't in my head and I got dropped off and you know, I kicked his butt, you know, right out of the gate. Which couldn't be further from the truth. He absolutely crushed my spirit and my soul. On day one, I, I can barely pull my 375 pound sled. In my first book, the Impossible first, the chapter I read on this, it's literally called Frozen Tears because I started crying in those first few hours, feeling so pathetic for myself. When it's minus 30 degrees outside, it turns out the tears, they actually freeze to your face, which is an all time pathetic feeling in its own right, that's for sure.

Well, and also you were very, I gotta say, you were so transparent because you've got some videos of that experience and you know, tip of the hat, man. I mean, it's one thing to do these amazing feats and you know, have a big S on your chest, but it's another thing to be that open and transparent about. This is emotional, this is scary. You know, what have I gotten myself into? You know, I think if there's probably a number of other people that have been in not exactly that kind of circumstance, but other kinds of circumstances, where that would be on the editing floor, you know, that would not make it to daylight and public consumption. So I really respect that about you too, Colin, that you, you make these things much more honest and real and authentic by, you know, by sharing those things too. Not just, you know, the yahoo, you know, won the race kind of thing, but then also the trepidation and the difficulty in the process of getting there. So deep respect for that, my friend.

Well, I appreciate that. You know, for me, I love sharing stories. I'm a passionate storyteller. I love, you know, hearing other people's stories. I'm an avid reader, et cetera. And, you know, I, I think the truth is what we all deserve. You know, it's, it's, you know, it'd be easy for me to sit here with 10 world records and write this epic, heroic, I'm so badass. But, yeah, the truth of the matter is pretty much all my success, I should say all of my successes have come on the back of failures and trials and tribulations and challenges.

Yeah.

But figuring out how to overcome them and ultimately the 12 hour walk, which I know we're going to talk more about, is framed around this idea of limiting beliefs, you know, that we all have these limiting beliefs in our mind. You read some in the open, but, you know, I'm afraid to fail. What, you know, what if people criticize me, I'm not strong enough, I hate being uncomfortable, etc. And the book is me sharing stories with you of all of the times I have felt that way. Right. I'm actually putting myself, you know, intentionally and sharing, saying, hey, look, like, don't be fooled by the resume. You know, I've been through all of this, but the reason I've gotten where I am is, is because I've also been figuring out how to reorient that mind, you know, as a segue a little bit. The last chapter of my impossible first book is not called and I did it. I beat Rudd and I'm the best in the world. You know, I guess you could have ended there. The last chapter of that book is called Infinite Love, which is after all of the competitiveness. And I did eventually catch back up to Lou and pass him and all the sort of battling, you know, alone 54 days in Antarctica, etc. I wasn't left with the ego was completely gone. Everything was stripped bare. I was at my purest essence of myself and what I felt in the end, although my body was so beat up, like I said, ribs and hips sticking out, you know, just Completely beat up. My mind got stronger. My mind actually got stronger as I went, as all of the solitude, all of the silence. And I started feeling just this deep gratitude and, and love for my wife and my family and community and the impact I was having with my nonprofit. I just felt, you know, full up. I felt deeply fulfilled in this moment. Wow. And 12 hours was my normal typical day. It's what I had to do to basically stay in front of Rudd and so hence the name the 12 Hour Walk. But what was amazing was to find that place, that. That place of stillness, you know, within myself. And I thought, you know, hey, you know, I want to skip too far ahead here. But I thought to myself, hey, you know, I figured it out. I figured it out. I got it. Like, I've got this now. I've learned this lesson. I know how to dive deep into my mind, body and spirit. And that was true for some period of time afterwards. But then, just like so many of us, I found myself in a cove in the COVID lockdown the spring of 2020, with, you know, not only my whole life disrupted because all of ours were, and that's the least of the world's worries, but also just surrounded in this kind of, you know, this moment of uncertainty, right? Like people are dying, people are sick. Don't leave your house. How about your grandparents? How about your parents? You know, they're, you know, high risk, you know, all the. Just sort of that. And the headlines, right? Just doom scrolling the news day after day after day. I'm locked in lockdown. My wife and I went to the Oregon coast. My family has a small cabin and we're there with our dog, and it's just the two of us. And she looks over at me one day and she's like, you know, you haven't changed out of your pajamas in a few days, right? Like he's been sitting on the couch, like, just like, you know, strung out on the news, you know, I don't really recognize you because it's not my normal way of being. But I'll be honest, I'm not impervious to low moments. Man, I was full of anxiety, full of fear, depressed, afraid, you know, all of these things in this moment. And I thought back in that moment, like, when was the last time that I felt kind of at peace in my body, mind and spirit? And I said, you know, it's crazy to say, but it was when I was crossing Antarctica. It was when I was walking 12 hours a day in silence and solitude. And so I said, to my wife that day on the Oregon coast, I said, hey, look, tomorrow I'm trying to dust these cobwebs off. I'm gonna go out for a long walk, maybe 12 hours. I'll stay out all day. And she's like, kind of looks at me like, yeah, you know, Colin does silly stuff all the time. Sure, you know, have fun. I'll see you for dinner. And I walk out the front door, and about 20 minutes into this walk, my phone buzzes in my pocket. And just like, instinctively, right, pull my phone out of my pocket, my buddy's texting me, about to text him back. I think myself, like, wait, what am I doing? Like, I've been staring at my phone, staring at social media doom, scrolling the news like I can take a day away from my phone. And so instinctively, I put it on airplane mode. And that immediately brought me back to Antarctica, right? Being so cut off from the rest of the world just for a moment in time, and end up walking that entire day in stillness, in silence, no music, no podcasts, you know, fully in solitude. And it was a great experience. And I walked back in my front door and my dog jumps up on me and my wife's wife's over there and she says to me, she goes, you're back. And I said, yeah, yeah, I told you I was coming back. After 12 hours. She goes, no, no, I can see it. You're back. Like, you're back.

My spirit, My spirit, existentially, you're back. Yeah.

And I said to her, I said, you're right. You know, I feel better than I felt. And it looked, it was a turning point for me, but it wasn't like, oh, I should write a book about it. I should tell everyone about this. I'm the guy who walks across Antarctica 12 hours a day, 54 days alone. Like, you know, whatever. This is just like a me thing, right? This is not everyone thing, but all sorts of different people. As we all knew, of course, during that COVID lockdown, we're having a hard time, right? Everyone you get on the phone with, oh man, I've been doing Zoom calls for 12 hours a day. I'm trapped in this. I'm certain about this. I lost my job, I'm afraid about my grandma has Covid, you know, whatever that is, Right?

Right.

And so I started just suggesting to my inner community, friends, family members, colleagues, etc. Like, well, hey, I know this might sound ridiculous, but I went for this 12 hour walk and it really, really reset my mind, body, body and spirit. And A lot of people took me up on it. You know, it's a little bit to my surprise at first, not surprising now anymore. Now I know the positive impacts of it written. I haven't written a book about it, but people from all walks of life, young, old, fit, not so fit. My 77 year old grandmother took the, or, excuse me, my 70 year old mother in law took the 12 hour walk. And I say to people, it doesn't matter if you go for one mile or 50 miles, you don't have to walk the whole time. Take as many breaks as you want, but take the 12 hours alone in silence, in solitude. For my 77 year old mother in law, that looked like one time around her block in North Carolina, then sitting on her front porch for an hour maintaining the silence and solitude. And another time around the block, my ultra marathon friends, people have walked 50 miles. There's no, there's no winning at the 12 hour walk as long as you're engaging the stillness and silence. And every single person that I have known to take the 12 hour walk comes back fundamentally shifted, fundamentally reset. On one hand, the 12 hours seems like a long period of time. But I say on the subtitle of the book, invest one day, conquer your mind and unlock your best life. The shift that I have seen people have over the course of just taking that one day unplugged. And the book really is an essential companion that frames through rich storytelling around mindset, around these limiting beliefs and how we can overcome them and ultimately harness what I call a possible mindset, which is an empowered way of thinking that unlocks a life of limitless possibilities. So I don't know, sorry, long ramble. You hear my voice. I'm just passionate about this and my goal is to inspire 10 million people to take this 12 hour walk. So yeah, man, I'm excited to talk more about it.

Well, good. Yeah. And this is the, this is the depth that I want to kind of get into it with before we leave and I'm sure because we'll kind of circle back to Antarctica, but I got to tell you too, I don't know that you know this. So when, when we were together, I mean, not, I mean, when you were there, you're way, way ahead of me and a number of laps ahead of me at the Vermont mountain, Itzler's little gig with his version of Everest. And there were people like when you talked about that one night over dinner to the group about you were teeing up and getting ready to do this. There was kind of like this balance of or mix of like awe, like holy smokes, that's really amazing. And some other people that I think knew you personally and were supporters of yours and involved with your work frankly said, I'm really worried that this is going to be the one that we're going to lose Colin at. I mean, everything you've done has, you know, high risks. I mean, you know, death rates and, you know, all of that. I mean, you kind of made mention of it too. You know, people sometimes just simply don't survive walking across Antarctica or climbing up Mount Everest or, you know, anything else. Denali, et cetera. So, so anyway, people really had a sincere concern about that. So I just wanted to share that. There's a lot of love out there for you, man. And people, no one's going to say don't do it. But it kind of got back to that same how we started off with the intro and what you talk about in the 12 hour walk in the book, that there are these limiting beliefs and sometimes people hear that in their day in, day out life. Oh, Colin, you can't do that. Oh, Chris, that's ridiculous. Whatever. And you start to kind of make that part of your own mindset. You start to adopt these kind of, you know, external limiting beliefs and then they become your internal limiting beliefs. So I want to get into this, but before I always have to kind of give a shout out of what other people have said about your book. So let's get into the book. But first, Sarah Blakely, who people probably recognize that name, she's a Spanx founder and she was one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the world, said about Your book, Colin O' Brady is a fountain of inspiration. The 12 hour walk reminds us that every great achievement starts with a strong mindset. When we spend time alone, we can access our intuition and our deepest thoughts. Those thoughts are the fuel that tell us we can go the distance. We just have to listen. And Mark Hyman, who people also probably recognize and have read his books, he's got 14 New York Times bestseller best sellers. He said about your book, it's a must read if you're looking for mental clarity. Add the 12 hour walk to your toolkit. So let's get into it. I've got my copy here. And as you were talking about the limiting beliefs, that's kind of how you structured the book. The part two chapters two through 12, all kind of take that as the rubric of setting up the chapters. So maybe just kind of tell us about the structure of the book and then like that section two about, you know, how, how you get into that.

Yeah. So, you know, there's some introduction, those first couple chapters just to kind of frame around goal setting, around fulfillment, around living a life without regrets. And again, just, just to help frame this conversation. People aren't sitting there with a book. Hopefully you go out and buy the book and enjoy it. It's all through rich storytelling. So this is not a dense. A textbook of some kind or, you know, a book full of graphs and charts. Right.

Hallelujah.

Which, you know, there's a time and books like that. But this is not this book. You know, this. This book is edgier seat rich storytelling throughout, very conversational in. In tone. I'm both telling you stories. I'm also talking directly to the reader, again, sharing some prescriptive advice and things that I've learned over time that are hopefully helpful. Helpful to the reader. But yeah, so, you know, I set up the frame of the 12 hour walk. You know, I share a little bit about that story around Covid of what this 12 hour walk is and ultimately, you know, kind of wink at people and say, hey, read this book. This book in itself has a lot of wisdom and a lot of power, but there is a call to action here. I'm actually going to be asking you to do this yourself. So don't take your mind fully off this. I'm going to entertain you and bring you. But don't forget, I'm inviting you to do this yourself because what I found in a lot of books, and like I said, I'm an avid reader, oftentimes in the personal development genre, for lack of a better word, it lives and dies on the page. Right. Like a bunch of advice and a bunch of wisdom and a bunch do this, do that, don't do this, don't do that. And that's it. Where again, I think there's a lot of value in that. But I wanted to take it a step further to it to invite people to have this experience that actually imprints on them through visceral experience, through somatic experience of their own. And so anyways, the first couple chapters, again through storytelling through Antarctica, et cetera, kind of bring you into that. But then, and as you mentioned, you know, these aren't equal parts. They're technically three parts of the book. But you know, 85% of the book lives in part two, what you just said. These 10 stories are the main meat of the book. You know, I surveyed my Instagram audience I knew a ton of public speaking. So I've asked thousands and thousands of people this question, which is, you know, what's standing in the way of you reaching your dreams? What's standing in the way of you living your quote unquote best life? However you want to define that. And you know, I thought you asked thousands of people this question. You might think you're going to get thousands of different answers. It turned out that I just kept getting the same 10 answers over and over and over again from thousands of people. And they basically were all limiting beliefs. You know, some people call them excuses, doubts, fears. You know, I choose to call them limiting beliefs for a specific reason. But whatever you want to call them, you know, it's, hey, Colin, I'm not living my best life because I don't have enough money, I don't have enough time, I'm afraid to fail, what if people criticize me, etc. And as I, as I heard those answers, I thought to myself, man, I have also had every single one of those thoughts many, many, many, many times throughout my life. But I've also figured out how to overcome them. Pivot them, shift them, evolve them. And that's why I call them limiting beliefs. That, you know, if they were limiting truths or limiting facts, well, they'd be facts and that's the end. But beliefs are just that, right? Beliefs can be rewritten and beliefs can be reshaped. I love to say we are the stories that we tell ourselves. When I was pulling my sled, a slight, a slight divergence of a rabbit hole. But when I was pulling my sled across Antarctica those first couple days, I said, I used to wake up in my tent and I'd be like, and guess who was there with me? And people like, wait, I thought you were alone. Lou's there with you. No, no, I was in my tent at the first thing, Lou's kicking my butt. I've got frozen tears on my face. I was in my tent with the five worst versions of myself. I felt like I was packed in there with a bunch of different versions of myself. Colin, you idiot. Colin, you told the New York Times you were going to cross this continent. You can'. Make it a day if you fool. This is so embarrassing. Right? Like we. These limiting beliefs are often our self beating up on ourselves. Right? Right. And we know that. And so I wanted to structure the book around each one of these big topics. Like, wow, if thousands of people are actually, you know, finding the same exact obstacles, basically obstacles of their mind, let's Talk about it, let's get into them, let's share stories about them, but let's talk about how we can also overcome them ultimately through this prescription of the 12 hour walk. But additionally, as you know from reading the additional anecdotes and wisdom of overcoming those. And so, you know, I also, it's funny, I'm really proud of the Impossible first, obviously, New York Times bestseller is my debut book, really proud of it. And the memoir style, rich storytelling of the Antarctica crossing was sort of interwoven narrative about my life up to that point. But, you know, as you sort of mentioned in the kickoff here, you're like, like, well, you've done a bunch of different expeditions and you've done it up a bunch of different things. Not just expeditions, but pieces from my life. And I thought, you know, I kind of want to write a book that's short stories. Not that the stories aren't connected with one another, but you're probably well aware of the term in media race right in the middle, which is I, I started, I start every single chapter of this, of this book, of the meat of this book, right in it. It. Right in it. And look, I love, I love spinning along yarn. I love a good story and I love setting up context and, you know, slowly building and developing the characters and making metaphors and shifting around this. But in this book, I was like, let's just get right into it, you know, like, let's literally get right into it. I got the book right here. I'm gonna just read the first, the first sentence of the first chapter of chapter three, which is the first part that we're talking about in part two here. It's. I gripped the oars with everything I had. The waves were coming in violent sets. Boom, boom, boom. Heaving in our small boat with a brutal force that lifted us from the surface and cannonballed us back down. You know, it's not okay. So I dreamed about rowing a boat across Drake Passage and I trained for it and I did. It's like you are in Drake Passage with me in the tiny little RoboBo with the 40 foot swell in a tempest like, boom. Like in it. Yeah, and that was a. And that's a fun, a fun way to tell and construct stories too. And so, yeah, you know, as you said, it's structured around that. Each one of those stories are really specific to a moment in time when I'm struggling with this limiting belief, when I'm deep in the depths of despair in my own mind, but also sharing ways, like I said, to shift off of that, overcome it. And ultimately, for all of us, you know, the essence of this book. And I love. I say it throughout, I say, say, look, I'm telling you some stories from my life, but this is not, as you said, s on the chest. Me, chest beating. Like, I say, I say it explicitly. I am not the hero of this story. I am not the hero of this story. You, you, the reader, you, if you're listening to the audiobook, you are the hero of this story. And so to me, I'm passionate about sharing it from that perspective and kind of, you know, shifting the mirror, shifting the lens a little bit, you know, breaking the fourth wall, so to speak, and bringing it back to the reader.

I remember in your first book, you also did that, that same kind of style with your. Your tent was. You had, like, taken a little shortcut and your tent had caught wind, and you were grabbing it just with this, you know, fear. Like, if it went off into the horizon, you would never find, then you'd go chase it, and then you'd come back and you'd be lost, and you couldn't find your sled, and your hands were cramping, and it was just like, okay, I cannot read this book before I go to bed. It really, you're, You're, You're. Your writing style. I mean, no wonder it's a New York Times bestseller. It's not just the content of, like, oh, my gosh, what is this all about? But your engaging style of writing throughout that book and now again throughout this book and bringing the reader really into it. So just again, bravo for that. So we mentioned before off mic about, like, book structure, and I'm a real literary nerd about these kinds of things. And you start off like, you have these limiting beliefs sort of as the headers, and then your experience, and then you push, really pull the reader into a practical kind of way, briefly of, like, how it applies to you, you know, because some people may say, well, I'm not going to, you know, row across the Drake Passage, I'm not going to do the Seven Summits, et cetera, et cetera, but you nevertheless bring these different kinds of experiences that you've had in your life to. That are, you know, quite amplified in the sense of risk and challenge to, you know, to all of us, to, you know, you don't have to be a climber, an endurance athlete to be able to do that. And then you, you very. Thank you very much also for, like, a key takeaway, you know, and then how you can apply that or how it applies to the 12 hour walk and the possible mindset, et cetera. So can I just ask, like, how did you design that? How did you come up with that? I just, I love it. It makes it so applicable from what some people might, you know, leave it on the shelf and say, oh, gosh, you know, this would never. I don't. That's not who I am. But you do make it an everyman and every person kind of book.

Yeah, you know, I, again, I, I'm really proud and I love the both books that I've written, but they're, they're different in that way. Right, right. You know, and what, what's fun for me, I, I do a lot of public speaking, you know, big, you know, Fortune 100 companies, whatever, do a lot of public speaking. And I started, you know, you know, they, they say like, I guess like stand up comics, they, they test, you know, before they do the big Netflix special or something like that, they go to a bunch of like, small comedy clubs and like test out material.

Right.

You know, I have this, you know, fortunate context where I get to speak regularly and share stories and, you know, hopefully none of my material ever bombs. But like, a comic might tell a joke and no one laughs. Right. But, you know, I can. I've told lots of different stories from my life and oriented them sort of from different perspectives. And I realized, you know, a really distinct shift and thinking about, I'll get back to the specific structure, which is I can tell some stories from my life and have people come up to me after a speech or, you know, in a metaphoric sense after reading the book, if they could read or could walk up to me afterwards. But a speech is an easy way to have that touch point. Right. And someone can say, wow, man, what you just told me the story of your life. Holy cow. Like, that is inspiring. Thank you. You know, and that's great. You know, that feels nice. But what was way more interesting to me and way more impactful because I think, I don't think I'm any different than anyone else. I think I'm a human on this planet having a human experience. And I think we all have masterpieces inside of us to paint. The canvas that I happen to paint on is the ends of the earth, mountaintops. And I don't blame you if you don't want to go freeze your butt off in the middle of nowhere by yourself if that's not your thing, if it's not for most people. But I think you do have A passion. You do have an Everest. You do have a curiosity about that. And so what I found the most interesting conversations that I felt the most lit up by were conversations that would go like this. And this depend on how it orient the story. They would go, wow, Colin, thank you for sharing that speech. You know that, that story you told about Antarctica, it was so inspiring because it got me thinking about the time in my life when I was and they'd be going into a whole story about their life. It opened their mind to thinking about, oh, maybe I should have done this differently or maybe next time I approach this, I should do this. And so the narration or the narration shift, literally me speaking directly to the reader in this sense is inviting that, right? And with the 12 hour walk, even taking it one step further, which is to people be actually to do the 12 hour walk, right, they it goes even further. It's like, wow, I read this, it inspired me to take this action. Now I've had this experience and I want to share with you about the experience that I had in my 12 hour walk in the depths of my own mind. Mind, right. And structure wise, look, I think that there are some. Sometimes if you stick to a formula, it can feel very repetitive, right? It can feel kind of, oh, this is formulaic, I get it, you know, A to B, B to C, C to D. But this book does follow formula and very intentionally so. Again, it's a fast read. These are tight, quick stories, you know, they get to the point, et cetera. But. But I also find that when we're trying to absorb concepts, at least for me, maybe not for everyone, but I think for a lot of people, it is helpful for our brain to recognize a pattern. And so I, when I sat down and mapped this out and I worked really closely with my wife, she's been an amazing, credible sounding board on everything I've done. Jenna. And a dear colleague of mine, my friend Blake, who's just a dear friend, amazing, creative, great sounding board. And so I'm whiteboarding stuff and I'm like, does this make sense to you guys if it's like this? And whatever. And they've provided me know, so much feedback over the time. Both books I've written are tremendously better because of their, you know, input and willingness to share their advice with me over the course of the long journey of writing a book. But I wanted to make sure that there was actionable takeaways and I wanted to make sure that although it's not deliberate as an obvious and boring etcetera but it's also digestible, not kind of like, well, what, you know, I, you know, I'm a big, I'm a big Hemingway fan. I'm no Hemingway, but I'm a big Hemingway fan in the sense that, that he likes to use a parsity of words, right? And kind of just get straight to the point versus a Faulkner, right? Who's hiding the deepest metaphor under the longest rambling paragraphs or whatever. To each their own. But I'm a little more kind of straight to the point. So people have given me back who have read the book are like, man, I feel like I'm just sitting there having a conversation with you. And in that context, I can absorb that and learn that. And we're almost having a dialogue. And so I really set the book up, up to have that. And a final point on that is there's these 10 limiting beliefs that I talk about, and again, I've listed off a number of them already. And what I found is that pretty much all of us have experienced all 10 of these limiting beliefs at some point in our lives. However, at any given moment. And, you know, I had a group of, a group of, you know, family and friend read an early manuscript of the draft and I asked them, tell me which chapters were your favorite, which chapters are your least favorite. And you know, I'm soliciting some feedback along the way to, you know, kind of help improve this and make the end product as good as it can be. But I had a thesis. I had a thesis. My thesis was that certain people's favorite chapter are going to be other people's least favorite chapter. And that's not to say that they, they thought it was a terrible piece of writing, right? But I said there's one of two things are going to happen. Either everyone's going to say the same chapter is their favorite chapter, and everyone's going to say their least favorite chapter is the least favorite chapter. And if that's the case, well, I better work on that least favorite chapter because everyone hates it, right? Like that would be an easy decision. But my thesis was, is that it's going to be a spread distribution, which is to say, because each one of us living this human experience are experiencing something different in the moment that they read this book. A few of the limiting beliefs are going to be the most apropos for that person in the moment, whereas they might read another and go like, oh, actually I don't have that setback right now. I've overcome that earlier in my life and I'M good, you know, and so that thesis, again, it was a thesis, and I wanted to test the thesis, turned out to be true, which is there was an even distribution of people like, oh, my God, chapter five, that. Oh, I needed that. Thank you. And then someone else just being like, oh, yeah, that one didn't resonate with me because I, you know, not that I didn't like the story, but, like, that that wasn't you isn't top of mind for me in this moment. And so it was fun to structure that book in that way, to realize that different people are going to. Of course, every person's coming to this book with their own bias, their own moment in time in their life, and the stories are rich and fun and entertaining. That I think even if the limiting belief is not perfectly square, you know, nail on the head, what you're dealing with in that moment, you're still brought through the story in a way that is meaningful. And it's a good reminder. But it's also interesting to know that, you know, different moments, of course, reach people differently. And so that sort of structure allows people to absorb the chapters that are really, really. I've yet to read meet the person. I even say it in the beginning of the book. I say, if you have no limiting beliefs and you're already crushing life so hard, like, feel free to set the book down, like, and I want to meet you. Can I hang out with you? Because, like, you've got it all figured out.

Yeah.

That's awesome. So I think there's something in this book for everyone, and I wanted to structure it in a way that really, you know, acknowledged that.

You raise a good point about, like, time in a person's life and reading a book. And I know a lot of times, myself included, people will reread the same book at different points in their life and pick up different things from it. So I think you're spot on with that. You also have a very clever technique or tool with the QR code at the end of each chapter, which then takes the reader to a companion website. Can you talk about that?

Yeah. So, you know, my first book, and obviously very, very traditional, normal thing to do is to have a photo insert in a book, right? Particularly, you know. You know, even when I do my public speaking, I feel very confident on a stage with. With no av. But I always tell people, but it's better if I can show you some pictures. I can use as many words as I can to describe the wind blowing across the Antarctica, you know, ice. But you Know, at some point it's like I just got to see the. That, Yeah, I need to see that, right? It's just so far out of, you know, scope, you know, most people haven't, don't have a reference point for that.

Right.

And you know, I was thinking, I was like, okay, like we could put some amazing photos in this book. It'd be great. You know, I love the photos that are in the Impossible First. And I was like, but I've got all this amazing archival video content, you know, self shot stuff, you know, and not on like grainy or shitty or anything like that, but you know, it's self shot gopros and me on these mountains and these intimate moments and this. And I was like, share some of that on social and stuff like that. But I was like, how cool would that be if I could put that into a book? Now I'm sure I'm not the first person to have done this. Although I don't know of any books up the top of my head that have used this strategy. Again, I'm certain there's others, but I just asked myself, wouldn't that be cool if you could see it? So I tell you a story about rowing a boat across Drake Passage. You get to the end, you know, the take home about, you know, overcoming the limiting belief of I hate being uncomfortable. And I'm like, hey, do you want to actually see that? And so at the end of each chapter you can scan with your phone a QR code and you know, it takes you. These are short videos, 1, 2, 3 minutes long on the 12 Hour Walk website that, that really bring that entire story to life, you know, in a visual, in a visual framework. And so it was fun to edit and put those, put those in there. And I think it's a unique companion to that. And also the 12 Hour Walk website is kind of of the home base for signing up for the walk. You know, it's free to sign up, anyone can do it. I invite you to do it out your front door. But I want to know about it. I want to know it. I've also built an app. The app puts your phone in airplane mode, but it still tracks you. It says, okay, you've gone this far, you can't get lost because you got, you know, this Google Maps interface. So I've taken that excuse off the table for you. And just a way to kind of really build also just community around this to say, you know, who are all these other like minded people around the world? My goal is to inspire 10 million people to take this 12 hour walk. So it's a book, but it's a book with videos. It's a book that really at its core is more of a, I think of it more of as a global call to action, a global movement. And so it's a book, an app, a website, a community, etc. It's all those things and that's really why I'm so excited about it because it lives well beyond the page, that's for sure.

That is so cool. And just FYI and big plug, I've signed up and I'm strategizing to I think do it on the same day as you on the 10th, July of, of September. So just to kind of keep, yeah. Keep that community vibe out. And you know, it's like one of these things too. I mean I, I enjoy kind of the planning and you know, put thinking about it and stuff. And one of my, I don't know, things is that like when I go for like long runs or even with a bike ride and stuff, I cannot like my head gets into a different place and I have this little mini recorder. I don't usually carry a full phone with me or anything, but I do always carry like this little mini recorder because it never fails. Like I'm a couple miles into a run, my head's now kind of cleared. I start thinking about some project or some problem that needs a solution or whatever and I start to get ideas and it's like then I'm afraid like before I started carrying a recorder it'd be like, then I get like this, this bad mojo of like, okay, I'm gonna forget this before I get back.

Yeah.

So now I need to figure, you know, I'm not gonna carry a pistol, pencil and paper or whatever. So then it's sort of, I speak it in like just a little shorthand note and verbal note into my recorder and then that frees. Okay, I didn't lose it, it's still there. And then that allows me to, you know, think about something else or think more deeply about that first one because I'm not now worried about, I'm going to forget about it. So I plan that, you know, my 12 hour walk will be, I'll come back with like if this doesn't break any 12 hour walk rules. But you know, like I'll have a million notes, notes to myself, you know, of, of reflections and thoughts and stuff.

Yeah. So you mentioned September 10th. The obviously the walk can be done any day. Sign up on the website, pick your day, etc. But I have put out there that I am doing the 12 hour walk on September 10th and inviting mass participation on that day. If that day doesn't work for you, people are doing it literally every day of the week. I have people sign up to do it. So it's great. But on September 10th is this sort of this larger call to action, so to speak, speak of just saying you're still going to be doing this alone, you're still doing this from your front door. But if it encourages you to know there's other people out there all around the world doing it on the same day. And we're probably going to do some zoom meetups before and after things like that to really feel like a community context again. It's a solo activity, but I find that we can integrate and learn from each other so much by sharing that experience. And even that'll be a Fun Day on September 10th. And I'm so excited that you'll be joining us, us on that day. And I can't wait to hear how your walk goes. And absolutely, I encourage people bring a notebook, bring a little piece of paper. I even have people take a video of themselves before and after, you know, just for themselves to set an intention and to reflect on afterwards so that a week from now, a month from now, you know, afterwards, you can look back and go, what was I thinking about? Right. Because I've had that same feeling of I have all these great thoughts, my mind's lit up. I don't want to forget about this. I'm an avid journaler throughout my entire life, which has, you know, helped me, of course, in writing my books because I have journals since I was a little kid, all the way through my whole life, life. So I, I'm definitely not telling anyone not to write down some, some good ideas that come to mind for sure. But yeah, and that September 10th date should be, should be really fun for, for a lot of people to join and participate and really feel a part of this, this larger global movement. And I think that there's, you know, even in a smaller context, I'm sure I'll do other, you know, as this book, you know, hopefully has, has legs for years and decades in the future. I'll definitely do other dates where I'm doing the walk and invite people to do it with me on that day. But I also tell people, hey, you know, if you're looking for accountability with this, you know, accountability is a great thing, right? We all know when you tell your buddy you're Gonna meet them at the gym. You're like 90% more likely to actually get up and do your workout because you know somebody else that's expecting you to be there. It's the same kind of thing with a 12 hour walk. I've noticed these little pods of people, people. And I've got that group text of all my buddies, you know, from college, that I stay in touch with, you know, or, you know, this group of friends, or my mother, my family, my sister, my best friend. You know, you shoot that text out to that group and say, hey, guys, I want to do this. How's three Saturdays from now? Okay, great. Everyone's down. Let's put that on the calendar. Still you're walking alone. Maybe you live in the same town, you say, all right, you on your front porch, 6:00am, 7:00am whenever you leave. Yeah, yeah, I'm here. You walking out? Okay, I am. Phone's going on airplane mode. Let's end our walk at the local restaurant or come over to my house afterwards and we'll talk about our experience, you know, over dinner or tomorrow or what that is. And that's to say you're walking, you're walking alone. You're having your own adventure, this individual deep experience, you know, conquering these limiting beliefs, conjuring that possible mindset. But you've also got that accountability, like, oh, my buddy's out there. So. So I got to get up, I got to do this. And I, I find so much, so much power in that. So it's fun to see even these kind of smaller subgroups of people joining along in the process.

That's cool. In, in the very tail end of the book, in your appendices, you've got six steps for that. Can you speak to those?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, the, the, the, the instructions of, of the walk are somewhat simple. They're on the website, they're in the book in a couple places. But the first one is commit. Literally. You know, pick a day. Actually not be like, oh, I'm gonna do that at some point, but pick a day. You know, commit to it and sign up on the, on the website. You know, part of sign up is completely free. It's not like I get a dollar for every person who signs up. It's just that it allows you to be committed. Like, okay, I wrote that down. I'm doing that. It's on my calendar. I picked the date. Great. And then in the morning of your walk, I invite people to record. So literally, just take out your phone, right for you Know it's on airplane mode, but your camera still works. And just talk to yourself a little bit, just set an intention. Hey, you know, it's 7:00am here in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm doing this 12 hour walk thing. I don't, you know, I'm hoping to think about this or that. Just, you know, I think it helps ground and bring you in the experience. Yeah. And then, and perhaps the most important one other than the walk one is unplug. You know, to actually say, hey, unplug. Put your phone on airplane mode. The app directs you to do this as well, in case you need an extra prompt. Like, this is no music, no podcast, no social, social media. You're taking a day. And that's the part that, you know, there's the walking and like I said, take as many breaks as you want. There's no break from the solitude. There's no break from the solitude. You know, you. That's the part that you have to commit to the entire time because that's really where the challenge is in this. I say this is an exercise way more of the mind than it is the body. Not to say your feet might get tired, your legs might get tired, etc. But that's the next thing. Unplug and then you walk, then you walk. And I love to say, people, where did I go? I love it. If you want to plan your route, amazing. But I say, just like life, you choose the destination. And one thing that's important to note, which is you can do this in Manhattan, you can do this in la, you can do this in a big city, you can do this at your front door or the ambient city nice. Or traffic or people walking past you on the street. That's not breaking your solitude. Your solitude is your own individual commitment to not putting any external outputs into your brain that you can control effectively. So it's not any less. I mean, actually, New York City is one of my favorite places to walk. So I think it's a great. It's different than some trails somewhere, but there's not one better than the rest. In fact, I have found that people walking out their front door have the deepest imprint. And the reason is, is they don't go, oh, I'm going to wait until vacation to do this on this walk on this trail. When I'm on vacation in this place or whatever, the walk starts to feel a part of other. What I mean by that is it starts to feel a part of vacation, a different time place in your life, so to speak. Whereas you do it at your front door. Then you're commuting to work, you know, a couple days later, and you pass an intersection five miles from your house. You go, oh, I remember I walked past here. And when I walked past here, I was thinking about this or that feeling, you know, that high peak arc of fulfillment and joy you get, you get it walking back your front door. You create a memory on your front porch and that imprints, that imprints for yourself. So that's the walk part. And then the last two steps are a rest. Like I said, take as many breaks as you want. It's not a race. It doesn't matter if you go further or faster. You don't get an extra award for that. This is you versus you, battling your own mind and thought. And then lastly is to kind of close the loop when you get back to reflect. And again, I encourage people to, to pull up that phone again. You spent the day off your phone and I'm not saying go check your social media, take off airplane mode and check all your emails. You know, probably don't do that, but reflect, you know, take a video of yourself. You know, if nothing else, just for yourself when you're having a tough day a week later, a month later or whatever, to be like, wait, what was I? Oh, wow. And it usually these videos and a lot of people have shared these videos with me, there's some really beautiful ones. And people are in this pure state, pure state of joy, fulfillment, depth, curiosity. They've learned something about themselves and sometimes we. And the reason I want people to record that in that moment, just their true authentic self, is so they can look back on that moment, Go, right, right, this exists. This is, this is me, this is inside of me. And I can carry this with me forward throughout the rest of time.

Love it. That's so good. Yeah, I think that's a, you know, it becomes then sort of like this digital video totem, so to speak, when those times are tough. You know that this is an additive building nice reminiscence to be able to, you know, get through that next time when things are a bit of a challenge. So I love that. So you also talk in your book about type one fun and type two fun. Explain what that is.

Yeah, so type, type one fun is the fun that we normally think about. Right? It's the, you know, I don't know, dancing, laughing, hanging out with your buddies, skiing, powder, curling up, reading a book that you're super engaged. I don't know, it can look in a different versus fun. It's just fun. Like, I'm just having fun right now. This is fun. Like, that's what we think of as fun, right? Type 2 fun is in the moment. It feels kind of terrible. Like, it's not that. Like, you're tired or you're stressed. This is climbing a mountain. This is a classic. Climbing a mountain.

You're like.

Like the wind's blowing your face. It's kind of scary. That drops off on either side of you. Like, you're thinking, like, why the hell am I out here? And you're like, you're with a friend. Like, what. What do we get ourselves into?

Yeah.

But then, like, a week later, you're out, you're at the bar with your buddy, drinking a beer, and you're like, remember, we're up on that mountaintop. It was epic, man. Like, the wind was blowing in our face. You know, this, that, the other thing, which is to say type 2 fun is maybe not always fun when it's happening, but it's the best afterwards. Like, nostalgic. Like, oh, man, that was epic. And look, so I think a lot. You know, I write about this in the book, but it connects to this concept, which is I've really started to think about life on the scale of 1 to 10, you know, 1 being our lowest low moments, you know. You know, I was burning a fire in Thailand. I was told I'd never walk again normally before I did any of this stuff or, you know. You know, just, you know, being in Antarctica alone, there were some deep, dark, low moments. You know, we know what these low moments are, these tough moments in life. I don't care who you are, you don't escape life without living some ones. And the tens of the peak arcs, right? Like the peak, peak moments of, you know, in my life that we've talked about, you know, finishing Antarctica and becoming the first. You know, that was a great achievement. Or falling in love or the day your first child is born, you know. You know, these are. These are tens. We know. We all want the tens. Who doesn't want the tens? They're the best. Right? Right. But when I think about my tens, I've come to realize that I don't experience them very often in. In spite of my ones. I actually experience them because of my ones. I usually go through a 1 to get to a 10. You know, that fulfillment on the other side of Crossing Antarctica is born on the back of risk and struggle and stress and challenge. And what I've come to realize is that in our modern society, it is so easy to live what I call in the zone of comfortable complacency between four and six. You know, just you got a job, you don't love it, you don't hate it, you go to work every day, it's fine. It's like 5, 5, 5, 5, 5. Or you got a, you know, a relationship in your life. And you know, it's not like it's toxic, it's not bad, but it's kind of on autopilot. You're cohabitating and you know, it's just like five, just day after day. Five, five, five. It's not bad. It's just like, it's just right in the middle. And the reason is, and I'm not saying, you know, I think we all got to have some five days in our life, but a life only built on fives. I think you end up at the end of life full of regrets, threats.

Yeah.

And what's interesting is that a lot of reason people stay between four and six in that, in that comfort zone is because we're so afraid of experiencing ones we're hedging so hard against. I don't want to experience any of that, challenge any of that adversity. So I'm just going to play it safe over and over and over and over again in all sorts of ways of life. But what I find out what ends up happening is you start hedging too hard against not experiencing any ones, you also take the tens I off the table. Take the tens off the table. And so this walk is somewhat of a metaphor for that. It's saying, hey, you've probably never walked 12 hours by yourself before. You probably never turned off your phone and been alone in silence. Very few people have done that. To be honest, I've asked a lot of people. It's pretty rare. Yeah, this is going to be outside of your comfort zone. And guess what? Your feet might hurt at some point. And guess what? Now we're seven. When your feet are tired and you're looping on some crazy, you know, negative thought in your mind, you might be like, this is horrible. Why did I have this Colin o'. Brady? Guys.

Damn it, Colin.

He's an idiot. Why did he tell me to do this? But I have never. I have yet to meet the person who doesn't complete the 12 hour walk. And that pendulum hasn't swung back in the direction of the 8, the 9, the 10. They're fulfilled. They're proud of what they've accomplished. They've done something new. You know, how many days in our life that go by we can't even remember, what'd you do last Tuesday? What'd you do a month ago?

Right.

Five years from now, 10 years from now, someone says, you ever go on a long walk? Well, actually I've done a 12 hour walk. You're going to remember, remember this and it will imprint in a positive way. And so by it's not going to be a five, I promise you this. You're not going to be like, oh yeah, that was just another five day that I don't remember anything about.

Yeah.

And so it's a way to shake it up. And the reason that the 12 hour walk is ultimately a metaphor for life and what it teaches, it teaches viscerally how to overcome each one of those limiting beliefs. And I talk more about that and kind of the key takeaways in the book. But the, but you get through that and you go, oh, right, I did that thing. It was different. It shook it up. What other things can I do in my life that are like that? Oh, it's okay to feel a little bit tired or a little bit uncomfortable because that brings in the joy and the fulfillment on the back end of that.

So yeah, I love that. You know, maybe it's the flip side of your coin of the limiting beliefs I've talked a lot about. I mean, obviously the name of the show is called Living a Life in Full. So I think, you know, obviously, so you're like the guest to be on this. But I've lectured a lot about what I call, you know, because I'm from a medical background of the pox of the untils and you know, similar to the limiting beliefs, a lot of folks then say to themselves too, I'm going to wait until, I'm going to wait until I graduate. I'm going to wait until I get a job. I'm going to wait until I get a raise. I'm going to wait until, until until until and then, you know, people have finite lifespans and they get to this, you know, maybe the latter years of their lifespan and it's sort of like crap, you know, I waited too long, you know, those, those boats have set sail and now I can't do these kinds of things where I could have had that more, you know, fulfilling life. And I think when you combine the, the whatever it takes to not do the, you know, the putting things off and I think that's probably born from the limiting beliefs kind of aspect that you have, I think that's really ways for People to, to have it be more rich and you know, what you're talking about, too, with like, the lows of the ones to appreciate the highs of the tens. I mean, that seems, you know, I'm so certainly no Ryan Holiday or anything, but it seems to kind of be like the stoic philosophy, you know, that if everything's all roses and butterflies, you kind of acclimate to those and accommodate to those and they kind of lose their potency or their positivity. But do you ascribe to any kind of like, personal philosophy or does anything resonate with you when you're out there on those, you know, difficult times and, and by yourself?

Yeah, I mean, I, I don't know if I have a word for it, you know, whether it's stoicism or, you know, I'm, I, I, I think Ryan Holiday's work is excellent, so I'm a fan of his work for sure. But yeah, you know, I'm, I don't know if I'm, I'm not senec. But, but yeah, I think, you know, honestly, I think that the 12 hour walk is in some regards, a manifesto of my personal philosophy all throughout it, you know, of all the different things of, you know, lots of different things that I say in the book, right around, you know, stepping outside of your comfort zone around surrounding yourself with the right people, because I believe the right people in your community and being able to support others is hugely valuable to a fulfilling life. Life, you know, the idea I, I talk about money because a lot of people are hung up on that, you know, and I, I grew up without very many resources, and I've, you know, created abundance in my life. But I think even that as a mindset shift, you know, there's a mindset of scarcity and a mindset of an abundance, and they take you really down two different paths. So anyways, yeah, I could go on and on, but I really do feel like the answer to that question is like the book is that it's a, it's a living, breathing expression of my kind of personal manifesto or follow.

Well, and really kind of, you know, pun intended, walking the talk, so to speak. So how, how does you also talk about infinite love and, you know, kind of having that experience, you know, at the end of the, the challenge in Antarctica. Can you kind of unpack that a little bit more about what, how that manifests and, and what you, what, what you mean by infinite love and how, what we can take from that and try and add that to our practice?

Yeah, for sure. You know, crossing Antarctica alone, I didn't know what I would find out there. But my thesis, and I don't think it's a crazy one to have, is to say if I spend, you know, 50 some days alone in this place, and I deleted almost all my music, all my podcasts, etc, while I was making the crossing and to dive, you know, intentionally deep into my mind. And I was, you know, as an athlete, you know, trying to find flow, as a spiritual seeker trying to find fulfillment and peace, but you never know what you're gonna find in there. I often joke, you know, spending that much time alone is like throwing a party and all your angels and demons are invited. You know, they're both there, they're both on, they're both on full display, that's for sure. Yeah, but. But, you know, for me, it. What ended up happening and somewhat on unexpected, is that even though I was literally, you know, know, quite literally maybe the most alone person on the planet or certainly the most remote, lonely person like out there, the solitude wasn't lonely. What I actually ended up feeling is deep connection to my wife, deep connection to my family, deep connection to the students that I was trying to impact with my nonprofit through that expedition, you know, deep, deep connection to humanity. And I actually felt this resonance of what I call infinite love. I mean, it sounds silly, maybe I was hallucinating or a little off my rocker up there, but I would sometimes times hold my arms out wide on the ice and say, infinite love. Infinite love. And I could feel like it was actually warming me, actually warming my cold, frozen, tired body. And then I could send that back out one right after my Antarctica expedition, there was a lot of, you know, intrigue and press and media exposure, etc. And before even flying home, I ended up flying to New York City to be on the Today show and do some live television, which was great and humbling. Also doing that after being alone for that however long, being in Manhattan with a bunch of people talking to you is like, whoa, very disorienting.

Yeah.

But a friend of mine, he right in that same period, that same few days, really close friend of mine, he organized just a hangout with a group of our friends. And a lot of people had known about the crossing. And so before I know it, there was, you know, friends and friends of friends and there was a hundred people from my, you know, community of friends and lots, you know, some, of course, that I didn't know in this tiny little townhouse in Manhattan, backed in like Shoulder Shores is not generally A lot of big rooms in Manhattan. So 100 people, you know, packs a room in Manhattan, for sure, generally speaking. And it was just. He was like, hey, I just want to. Let's just do, like, a Fireside Chat or just a little Q and A about, like, your experience. And again, this wasn't, like, scripted. This wasn't a podcast. This is like, I've been off the ice for a few days, and friends of mine are just like, dude, like, instead of you telling us each individually about the story, let's all get together and just share it. Share about was a really fun conversation and really, I guess, present in the sense that I was, you know, it was just so fresh. Right. And I hadn't sat and read a book about it. I hadn't reflected on it beyond just. I was still almost in the experience.

Yeah.

And someone raised their hand and said, well, weren't you? You must have been so lonely out there. I mean, God, how did you deal with that? And I said. And I kind of reflect on what I said about infinite love. And then I said, okay, everyone in this room lives in New York, right? You guys are all New Yorkers. Everyone's like, yeah. Nods their head, and I go, raise your hand. Raise your hand if the latter, if you know the name of the person you share a wall with in your apartment building. Nobody raises their hand. Literally, not a single person raises their hand. Wow. I said, or how about, raise your hand the last time you spoke to somebody, look them in the eye on an elevator or a subway. You ride an elevator in the subway every single day. When's the last time you turned the person next to you and said, hey, how you doing? I'm calling, blah, blah, blah, like, whatever. And everyone was like, dude, you don't do that. Everyone knows you don't do that in New York, man. What are you talking about? And I said, look, I may have been in solitude, but I felt more connected to community, friendship, love, infinite love than ever before in my life. I've also spent a lot of time in New York. I love that city. I'm flying there today, later today, actually, for some press. And literally, I said, you can be in New York city surrounded by 10 million people and be lonely as all get out. And so connection, connection, deep connection isn't necessarily the proximity to others. But again, as I love to draw back on, it's about mindset. It's about a state of being.

That's awesome. I know. Speaking of heading out to New York, we do have a hard stop. There's Just a couple of other things I'd like to. To at least get on the record if you got a couple minutes left, man.

Yeah, for sure. Let's do it.

So I have to also give a shout out to your betrothed. You and Jenna. She summited Everest. You guys did it together. And if my stats are right, she was the 89th. Only the 89th American woman to summit. Is that right?

Yeah, yeah, it's correct. Yeah. It was incredible. And as you know, won't give away all the details, but. But it's a long and winding road of how she gotcha. But it was, you know, just such a beautiful experience. People have followed me and know my story. Some people have said that both of my books are ultimately just love letters to my wife, which I take as the highest.

What a beautiful way to say that. That's good. Yeah.

Which is. Is the highest compliment because none of these records, none of these adventures, none of this happens without the love and support of Jenna. And that, that goes, as you know from reading, well beyond the. Oh, this is my wife who loves me. No, she's in the details. She's in the trenches. This is. These are just as much her expressions in the world as they are mine. And the deepest. The deepest of gratitude. I feel like the luckiest person on the planet too, that we have found each other and have been together for 15 years and continue to build a beautiful life together.

Yeah. You guys are just, you know, perfect yin and yang. So were you worried with Jenna there with you? I mean, it's one thing to be out there on your own or on an expedition team, you know, with partners and whatnot, when. When you do do those kinds of things with others, but there was there a different circumstance in your gut when it's like Jenna right there in the sense of worry.

Yeah. You know, it's funny. It's such a good question. It's such an obvious question, and it's not a question. I asked myself enough before doing that.

Okay.

Meaning that I've put myself in a lot of. Of life threatening, you know, intense situations, and I've lost friends, right?

Oh, gosh, yeah. K2. Good Lord.

And. But there's so. It's so weird, like. And maybe this is just, you know, stupid overconfidence, but it's like when I'm out there in Antarctica by myself, I'm like, I trust myself.

Yeah.

You know, you have to. To be able to be out there alone like that. Right.

Yeah.

And what I didn't quite realize is the Death zone. So above 26,000ft on Everest or on any mountain of that height, light. It's called the death zone because the human body is dying above 26,000ft. Even if you're using supplemental oxygen, you just cannot survive up that altitude for very long. And I remember reading in all the literature about, you know, growing up as a kid, reading John Crackers in the Thin air and all this sort of stuff. People say, look, if you fall down, no one can pick you up up there. The strongest team of Sherpas can't carry you down from the summit of Everest if you can't walk, if you can't move a little bit, there's no one getting you down. And I thought, well, I mean, that's a nice thing to say. And I understand a scare tactic, you know, makes sure people are prepared when they go up there. When I was summoning Everest the first time, 2016, I was coming off the summit, and I get back to this place called the South Summit. Just a few hundred vertical feet, but it's still a couple hours because you're moving so slow. But a few hundred vertical feet from the true summit. And there's a woman lying on the ground, you know, oxygen mask off, eyes rolled back. She's lying there in the snow. And it's a scary moment, obviously. And I realized I actually recognized her. I'd met her in base camp. Brazilian woman.

Oh, man.

This Brazilian woman named Ty. So I, you know, had a bunch of cup. You know, she was in a friend's camp. And so, you know, you spent a lot of extra time in base camp. You were drinking cups of tea and just hanging out with different people, right? I said, oh, my God, this Ty. And I said, oh, this is my moment. Okay? I gotta. I gotta. I gotta help this woman. I gotta rescue her. I gotta pick her up, put her on my back and carry her back down. I'm. And I'm calling. I'm strong, you know, all this. I'm headed on my way back down, and it hits me. I was like. Like I leaned down and I realized I can't move this woman a foot. I mean, I can't. There's no way I'm carrying her back. I mean, I can't even. Literally, there's no way that I can move this person. And she's. And again, it's not like a 250 pound, you know, huge jacked guy. Like, this is a woman, you know, relatively small, smaller than me, et cetera. And there is just no way.

Wow.

And so I re, you know, I, I, I, I realized her climbing partner in Tripa that she's climbing with is nearby. And they're trying to chip this ice off her, her oxygen mask. She's having problems or oxygen mask, mask. And so I say to Tyce, Tice, you gotta get up. You gotta get up. If you can hear me, you gotta get up. She, she didn't make any movements. Fortunately, they, they got the oxygen mask working again, put the oxygen back on her and it revived her and she got back up. Interestingly enough, she actually still summited the mountain safely.

Gosh.

And she said to me later, you know, we stayed in touch. She says, colin, I could hear you talking to me. I just couldn't respond. Wow. So anyways, that experience is burned in my mind. And as I get up into the death zone with my wife five years later, I'm like, oh, right, that means I couldn't carry Jenna down either if I needed to. And so there I will say that experience standing on top of the world together is one of the peak, peak, peak highlights. Talk about a 10among tens of my life, the experience of that. But it was every single step we were up there together was vulnerable and in a way, it's hard to describe. And maybe, you know, maybe that that's what it's like to be a parent. And you're just observing this thing that you love that you can't control in every single moment the entire time. But it's just like, wow, if something happens, even me being as strong as, as I am, I'm not sure that I can rescue you.

Right.

So let's like don't twist your ankle. Don't, you know, trip, Don't, Yeah, you know, whatever. But you know, there's beauty in that vulnerability as well. And it's certainly a moment that we will cherish for a lifetime.

Right. Okay. Yeah. That means like the, as the cliche goes, you know, when you summit, you're only half done, you know, so it's probably like the biggest celebration was being, you know, back down to base camp or something together, having, having done that so well. Again, I, I want to be respectful of your time. This has been awesome. I just do have to ask, and I know you're going to be doing 20 tours of the book. I know what you're going to be doing on September 10, but anything else on the, on the dockets in the future as to what's next, is it going to be the efra slotse traverse or kind of what's, what's cooking man.

Yeah, I haven't announced anything publicly yet in terms of the next big expedition. I truly am, and I say it at the end of the book. My next Everest is to inspire 10 million people to take the 12 hour walk. So I'm super. Not just like, oh, take the, do the book thing and so I can go back. You know, it's like I'm really passionate about, about this. But that said, of course, I've always got that long list of bucket lists and things and explorations and things that I want to do out in the world. So there, there, there's no shortage, there's no shortage of that there. And there will be definitely more expeditions in my life. But I also, you know, to me, maybe it's a good place to close up. Here is I, I love exploring, I love pushing my bodies and I will continue to do that through the rest of my life. There's no doubt about that. And I love to do it, you know, the highest level of high, high performance. But I also love, you know, the challenge of sitting down, you know, setting the goal for my first book. Hey, I've never written a book before, but I want to be a New York Times bestselling author and really learning about storytelling and writing and beating on that craft. I take my public speaking in the same way of always learning and always evolving. And so to me, they're all, you know, whether some of them are lit quite literally on the edge of the earth mountaintops, and others are sitting in my house, you know, in my front of my computer, or, you know, you know, trying to write better, trying to learn, trying to express myself more articulately, et cetera, you know, creativity at its core, it's just a creative expression. And when there's so many different ways to explore that. And so, yeah, yeah, for me, there's many. And that, and that goes to business, that goes to family, raising children, all the things. Right. So it's fun to think about all the different ways throughout life that I can express myself. But in short, there'll be, there will be other big expeditions. I can promise you that.

I would not be surprised so. Well, hey, I just have to say it's, it's a treat for us, you know, to be able to go along with you, you know, after the fact on some of these journeys. And it's a treat for us to like do the, the 50 high points or now the 12 hour walk, you know, maybe virtually together, if that's not too much of an alcohol oxymoron. And I just have to say, you know, you know, thank you for being such an inspiration. Thank you for like now operationalizing some of the tools and approaches that that have helped you get through some amazing challenges. And for you and thank goodness, a successful kind of way. It's really been so helpful and I just have to tip my hat. You know, again, I'm real involved in the humanitarian and nonprofit space and your commitment to being able to help others and helping kids live healthier lives and all the things that you bring as part of, you know, who you are to the table and to this world is just very much the gift. So thank you for that and maybe just also I'll put this in the show notes. There's the the 12 hour walk. That's one two for 12 hour walk.com again this will all be in the show notes so people can just, you know, check and click there. But any other things or shout outs of people ways to learn more, get your book, books follow you get your newsletter, get the app, those kinds of

things you can, you can follow along. I'm on Instagram, Colin O', Brady, pretty active there, but really for all things 12 Hour Walk, 12Hour Walk.com that's where you can sign up, commit the by the time this is out, the app will be out as well. That helps you kind of track and keep track of your walk. You can buy the book wherever books are sold. You know, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, your local bookstore, they'll be everywhere, airports probably as well. So, so pick up a copy of the book, read the book. It's full of my heart and soul. I know that there's a lot to be gained by it. And more than anything, there's a ton to be gained by committing to this walk, taking this walk and unlocking your best life. So really, really so fun to sit down with you, my friend.

Likewise.

I hope to see you again soon.

All right, take care. Safe travels and thanks again. Just love to have you on. Living a Life in Full is a production of Stout Media, a subsidiary of Gordian Knot, LLC. Assistant Producer Gracie Wong Music Dan O' Brien Executive Producer and Host, Dr. Chris Stout to learn more, stop by our website at lifeinfull for show notes and please recommend this to your friends and subscribe on your favorite platform. And as for the obligatory disclaimer, this podcast is for general information uses only and does not constitute the practice of psychology, medicine, nutrition or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical or psychological advice. No doctor patient relationship is formed. Lastly, and perhaps Most importantly, I take conflicts of interest seriously. For all of my disclosures as well as show notes, please see livingalifeinfull.org podcast and my LinkedIn profile. Thanks. And until next time,