Fearvana: A Transformative Conversation with Akshay Nanavati and Joe Polish

So as soon as you separate yourself, I'm feeling this emotion. Now what do I do with it? That's how you start to make fear your friend and then you have to play in the arena and that means going to war with yourself. It's in that battle that you actually develop it. Because we can sit here and talk all day long, but the confidence, the self belief, the belief is built on the battlefield. So it's going to war with yourself that you ultimately find that peace with fear or any negative quote unquote emotion.

So alright man, just to get right into it, you do crazy shit.

Yes, I do.

Okay, so now that's from my perspective and everyone will hear what I just read and what you're attempting to do, what you have done and what are some of the ways that people have described you and how do they typically respond when you tell them these things that you do?

I've gotten, you're crazy, you're stupid. What's wrong with you? When I lost my finger to frostbite in Antarctica last year, people who loved me and cared about me would be like, why would you possibly want to go back? I get that range. If there's something wrong, I've had the therapist tell me there's something genuinely wrong with the way I think about things. So let's see, I kind of get the gamut of that, right?

So even then you're like, you know, fuck it, I'm gonna go to Antarctica.

I was planning my return as soon as I got evacuated from the ice in Antarctica, I was planning the return to go back. You can't. We all know you can't let a little obstacle stop you from achieving the dream. Right? That's the nature of the beast. So yeah, and I play a dangerous game in some dangerous environments. So it's inevitable that. Well, I wouldn't say inevitable, but these things happen when you play in this terrain. Yeah, Y.

I'm just going to go through some questions that I think would be most useful for some framing and how to think about this. And then we'll do some Q and A with the audience. So what is fear and how does someone make it their friend? That's my first basic question.

Roger that. Fear at its most simple level, like, you know, consider an evolutionary response to danger, to the perceived risk, not necessarily actual risk. Right. Now the problem is that fear is demonized. When we hear words like fear, suffering, anxiety, struggle, guilt, adversity of these words, nobody thinks of them as positive words. That's the fundamental problem. So the first step Is reframing your relationship to fear, that fear is not the enemy. There are no bad or good emotions. There are only emotions. And it's entirely up to us to decide what we do with them. So as a very concrete example, when I came back from the war, I struggled with survivor's guilt. I lost a very close friend of mine to the war. Everybody told me, don't feel guilty. And rationally, I got it. In war, you can't control what happens. Bullets fly where they fly. Bombs explode where they explode. Vehicle drove over an active bomb in Iraq. It didn't explode. My friends drove over an active bomb, and it exploded. No idea why that happened. Right. But it happened. And so everybody told me not to feel guilty. And I get it rationally, but the guilt wasn't going away. And that guilt wasn't a bad emotion. It wasn't a negative emotion. It was an expression of love. So instead of demonizing it, I reframed it, and I put a poster of my friend that I lost up in the. That I lost in the war up on my wall, and it said, this should have been. You earned this. My guilt became my ally. So thank you. Thank you. And that was. That helped me sober up. That's what helped me get to this place that I'm now at. But the same thing applies to any emotion, right? Fear. And a simple way to kind of. To make it your friend as soon as you notice it. And they were talking about this earlier. Doug spoke about it, about emotional intelligence. Being with the emotion is accepting the isness. Like, I'm feeling this emotion. So neuroscience has also shown if you label an emotion, it reduces activity in the emotional parts of a brain and increases activity in the prefrontal cortex, the human part of our brain. So I'm feeling fear accepting the isness. The problem, then, is what we do once that fear shows up, as Doug was talking about. Right. So what I call this, in fear of honor, second dart syndrome. So Buddha said, we're all stabbed by the two darts of suffering. The first dart is the one we don't control. So, for example, if somebody came in this room right now with a gun, I would feel fear. I'm not choosing it. My brain's seeing risk. It's responding with fear. Fear. The second dart is what we do with that emotion once it shows up. And that's when we say things like. Like, it is another example. I give some time when people, like, if I stub my toe against the door, the pain in the toe is the first dart. The second Dart is, why do bad things happen to me? God hates me. World is stupid. This is stupid. I'm stupid. We go in that self dialogue, right? Even with fear or anxiety, I can't tell you how many clients I've worked with. They'll feel anxiety. I should not feel this. We'll tell people we love don't feel fear. What are you saying? You're saying don't feel what you feel? Right. So release the second darts. And the point of second dart is it don't get so caught up in the. Sometimes people ask me, like, what's the first dart? Is it the guy coming in the door with the gun or is it the fear? It doesn't really matter. The second dart is the point of power. So as soon as you separate yourself, I'm feeling this emotion. Now what do I do with it? That's how you start to make fear your friend. And then you have to play in the arena. And that means going to war with yourself. It's in that battle that you actually develop it. Because we can sit here and talk all day long, but the confidence, the self belief, the belief is built on the battlefield. So it's going to war with yourself that you ultimately find that peace with fear or any negative quote unquote emotion.

What were you like as a kid?

I was. Well, it was kind of weird. Like, looking back at my life, I was terrified of everything. So I used to be scared of a Ferris wheel, scared of open water, scared of, I mean, you name it, scared of heights. So that's why after joining the Marines is when I systematically started confronting my fear. But at the same time, there was a part of me that kind of loved the battle. I remember when I was a kid in India, I would play rugby and if I would get cut on my knee, I loved that war wound. You know, this was like my battle scar that I earned. So there was, I think, remnants of this Akshay waiting to be unleashed. But I didn't fully. You know, drugs was my vehicle of expression at one point, but. And that's why I went ham on that edge. But now it's. That same identity has been channeled. And that's why I kind of confronted all my fears. Like every fear. I had open water. So I went scuba diving and cave diving. Scared of heights. So I went free solo rock climbing and mountain climbing. Scared of tight spaces. So I went caving. Right, all of it, and explored that systematically. After the Marines.

Yeah, well, I'm going to come back to some of the things related to Fear I want to talk about. So you know you recently did your 10 day darkness retreat in total darkness for 10 days. You put yourself in these situations that most people would consider massively enduring and incredibly uncomfortable. And you're getting, and you're going to go and spend 110 days out. And when I was over your house, you were showing me the zipper of the bag that if you didn't get there and how quickly you literally get exposure and you just die.

Well, I mean frostbite in those conditions is very rapid. So everything you have to train. So I'm training how to undo zips with my gloves. I'm training how to like I'm going through the motions in my house of how to pee, how to poop, how to my tent, all of those things with gloves on.

So like you're going to be out there for 110 days so you're not obviously going to take a warm shower.

No showers, want underwear. So I mean like you get kind of stinky after a few days.

I could imagine.

Boy.

I mean, so I'm sitting there thinking, okay, it's a 5% chance of success.

Yeah. So this year, this season in Antarctica, three expeditions attempted a partial crossing, not even a full coast to coast crossing. All three failed. They just couldn't make the distance. So the odds of success this are very low. To cover that much distance with that heavy a sled for that much time is quite daunting.

So what is appealing about this to you?

Why? Right. And I get that a lot. So you know, to I guess ultimately let's pause by saying why do anything really? Right. And I think we all want to experience more life.

And by the way, let me say this, I'm not come into any of this saying what you're doing is wrong or in any way. I think it's a fucking question. Fascinating and awesome and everyone has their journey, right?

Yeah, it's a fair question. I get that a lot as you might imagine. So the thing is if you want to experience the heights of awe, you have to explore the depths of the abyss. So a very concrete example of this is when you mentioned the darkness retreat. So I did when I spent 10 days in complete darkness and isolation. But before that I did seven days in complete darkness and isolation. And when I came out of the darkness and the first time I saw the light, I took off my mask that came out of the dark room, put a mask on me. I was in the Black Forest in Germany. And the way the light looked in that moment, it was blinding, and it was so awe inspiring. I remember feeling this visceral. Like tears were coming down my eyes and this visceral sense of gratitude for every bit of suffering I'd ever experienced. Because I realized that you cannot really know the light unless you have first been in the dark. So the greater you play on those edges, the more you experience the adventure of life. And you have to play on those edges to experience all of the depth and the beauty that life has to offer. But so many of us, and even us, everybody here has struggled to get to where they're at. You've worked your ass off. You worked hard, but there's the burden of expertise, if you want to call it that, or sometimes I call it the prison of prowess. Is that as we used to say in the Marines, when you. When you train yourself to become a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So we all are now trapped in a new prison. Everybody is. Because you don't know what you don't know. So we've worked hard to get here, and now we're trapped in this prison. And there's something beyond that prison, and it's scary to go there. Because life is good, right? Making money, life is good. So if we leap, we could fall, and we could fall hard. And I don't just mean, like, losing money. I mean, like the spiritual, emotional pain. But when you play on those edges of pain, you're also tasting that pleasure. So I go into the absolute depths of suffering and the spiritual suffering, because the journey within is the ultimate journey worth playing. It's the hero. The real hero's journey is the journey within. So it's seeking out the complete edge of suffering, complete edge of pain. Because it's when you play on the edge of suffering that you actually find salvation.

You know, the Joseph Campbell line that I've always found quite interesting is the cave we fear to enter holds the treasure that we seek. And, you know, it's. So there's. I would imagine most people read Fearvana because they're something. Ask someone out on a date, Try to go for this. Try to achieve something. What is it that is, you know, a crippling fear. So you describe it in the. In the first introduction to your book. What is fear of honor? So explain that. How did you come up with the name and what does it mean?

So I define fear of honor as the bliss that results from engaging our fears to pursue our own worthy struggle. And I call it your worthy struggle. It doesn't have to be skiing across Antarctica, Certainly not the Only path to enlightenment here, but finding your worthy struggle. It could be writing a book, it could be playing the guitar. And when you do it, if you keep pushing that edge to go beyond what you know inevitably will be scary, inevitably you suffer, inevitably you struggle. But when you push past it, there's a bliss that comes from it and that's that experience of awe. So fear of honor is this, is this idea that these two seemingly contradictory notions, fear and nirvana, that they're not in fact enemies, that fear is not the antithesis of nirvana, but it's the access point to it. So it's to help people reframe that relationship to fear so they can play on the edge of fear and ultimately find not just healing from their own pain, but nirvana.

Gotcha. So like fear, as I interpret it and understand it, that keeps people from doing many of the things they could do. I think a huge part of fear is what other people think or that I'm going to let someone down. I mean, you take a parent who might be well intentioned that wants their child to go a certain path in a career and knowingly or unknowingly, they, you know, like the Pink Floyd song, mama's gonna put all of her fears into you. You know, where I've often seen parents that for whatever reason, their own agendas, they direct their kids or they do things in a certain way that doesn't empower them. Now the fighting back and saying fuck you to the world oftentimes is what is needed, is the obstacle for some people to actually go past it. Sometimes it becomes fuel, other times it becomes an inhibitor. And so we live in a world where there's tons of people putting their agendas on others because the fear is not that person's fear, it's that the parent's fear or it's a well intended friend saying, oh, I don't know if you should try for this job or you should try. Like how many of you starting your businesses had many forces, relatives, friends, otherwise that did everything they could to talk you out of it? Right, so whose fear was that? Right. And then if we decide to go along with it, we listen to it or them. Why? You know, for approval for. I mean, were they genuinely concerned? And oftentimes I don't think anyone would say, of course I was concerned. But sometimes the biggest, the fear of the planet is one of the most destructive forces, especially when the fear becomes contagious. So how do you deal with your own? Like in your case, if you had a wife and three kids and A baby on the way. Would you be going to the Antarctica to do 100? Would you still do it?

So I was married for a while and my marriage did not. Most people think it ended because of the things that I do. It did not. Without going into that story. She was fully supportive. Two months after getting married, I went and skied across Greenland for a month. I did a one month crossing similar to Antarctica, just a condensed version. So I think it's about having the conversation to manage the risk. Because when there's that responsibility and we had that like one of my first dates with my now ex wife, I took. It's not the smartest idea, but I went free solo rock climbing. She was. And she watched me and she realized that that's apparently not something that a lot of rock climbers do. And so we had a negotiation that all right, that line of risk is too high. And I agree with it. And that was the last time I've ever free soloed rock climbed, you know, So I think it's about having that dialogue. But like the games I play in polar exploration, it's not as dangerous as mountain climbing or as rock. Free solo rock climbing. Many of you all might have seen free solo with Alex Honhold. This is not as dangerous, but this is just a lot more suffering.

Let me speak to that. Just because you brought up. So Alex and free solo. I mean, you're on the edge of your seat watching that. I mean it's like intense. Right. And what's interesting is I actually believe the people we have relationships with, especially intimate love relationships, we find people whose dents match our dents. Right. There's like some sort of frequency. And I really watched his girlfriend. And so on one level she's like fearful, but she's totally attracted to that. Right. And she wants to be. And it's like if you were to get into the psychology, psychology of attachment and attraction, I mean, there's a lot going on there.

It amplifies your aliveness. So I think that draws people to.

Totally, Totally. Yeah. So, okay, so let me. So what would you say to someone who's struggling to like let go, deal with or process some of the traumatic parts of their past? Because I think some things you can let go of, others you just. There's other ways you process it or you deal with it.

Yeah, I think for one, if you can't let go of it, it's okay. I don't think I'll ever let go of losing my friend to war. And that feeling that survivor's Guilt, but that's okay. But even our whole relationship to trauma is so deeply flawed. So for example, as I mentioned when I came back, I was diagnosed with post Traumatic stress disorder. I struggled with survivor's guilt. I was very hypervigilant of loud noises. I didn't like being in crowds. I would get anxiety with loud crowds like this. And everybody told me, all the therapists and whatnot, that this is Post Traumatic stress disorder. As I started to delve into the research, I started to realize there's a very clear distinction between post traumatic stress and Post Traumatic stress disorder. And they are not one in the same. So having being jumpy with loud noises was a very normal response to war. I spent seven months in a place where loud noises meant death. Obviously I'm hypervigilant. That's not a disorder. That's a normal human response to war. The disorder becomes a label that then becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. There is something wrong with me. This is a disorder that was the problem. It was the second dart of Post traumatic stress disorder until I started to release this. Post traumatic stress is not indicative of Post Traumatic stress disorder. So I accepted that I had it. And as I mentioned, I reframed the guilt. But the key thing is also like, it all boils into a lot of the mindfulness, but also exploring the depths of that trauma. So I have now played with like to this day, I sometimes watch scenes from war movies knowing they will make me cry. I was doing it. I'm going to the Arctic on Saturday. So right before going, I do that because I'm now tapping into that darkness. So when you, when you play with that trauma, it now becomes a weapon you can use instead of running away from, instead of like avoiding it, you know. And I'll give you a concrete example of that. I was doing a run across Liberia. It was about 167mile run across the country. It was like a marathon a day for a week to help raise funds to build a school. And on day four of the run I had this aching pain hit me here. I was like 17 miles into the run. I stopped, I tried to put some cream on it, massage. It wasn't going away. So I was like, gotta suck it up. I got, you know how to hit at least 25 miles today. So I was limping for a little bit and like navigating the psychological as well as the physical pain. If I still had three more days of this. And then I just started sprinting. And the whole time I was saying things to myself, like, remember Neil, that's my buddy who died. It should have been you who died in the war. You should have died out there. Suck it the fuck up. Earn this. People are suffering all around you. If you quit now, you deserve a coward's death. Like these very dark things to myself. But that was the fastest five miles I ran that entire trip. So my darkness became a weapon, because we all have that. And so it's about actually going into the trauma. Like, playing in that trauma trench, if you want to call it that. Like, I'll give you another example. I was working with this now friend, and she had gone through this. Sounds like to be. This is gonna sound really fucked up, what I'm about to say. But she was ready to go there, so we were ready to go to this place. But she, you know, we. As we were talking about this horrific childhood trauma she went through, and, you know, we'd done a lot of work at this point and finally asked her, what if you deserved what you went through? She goes, whoa, everybody. How can you tell somebody you deserved that as a child, right? And I asked, does some part of you feel like you deserved it? She goes, yes. Does some part of you feel guilty for it? She goes, yes. I said, good. Explore that part. Give that part a voice. What does that mean about you? What does that mean about God? What does that mean about the world? So that night, she sent me a text. She goes, fuck you, Akshay. Because she went into a very dark place. But she came out the next day for the first time ever after 25 years. She shared with her husband what actually happened. So you have to play. You have to go into the trauma to not let it consume you. Carl Jung says, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. And he also said, one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. So you got to play with that darkness.

Now, some people that do play with the darkness become dark to other people and they hurt other people. Although I don't think that's mostly the case. I mean, I very much believe there's tremendous usefulness in shadow work, because had I not done my own versions of that, I'd still be stuck in a lot of the, you know, soup of the crap that I spent a good chunk of my life in. So, Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it, absolutely Free. There's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. So what exactly is the mindset and experience of Fearvana? Because that's pretty much kind of what you, I think are laying out and teaching people.

Yeah. So the core essence of the teaching is to do really three things. Find, live and love your worthy structure struggle. Right. Like find, live and love your own worthy struggle. What is that? And I think when you find that that's you're going to experience your version of fear of honor. Because many people, if they come and play in my playground, there will not be in any state of bliss. It's just my friends want nothing to do with the places I go play in. So it's not about like again doing what I do. Right. It's about finding, living and loving that worthy struggle. And then I mean there's so many tools, tools in the mindset place of going there. It's not like one hack right. Or anything. I don't like that term. There's so many different weapons to navigate the pain cave, you know. And I think, I think if I just share one that was most, I think most valuable for me is kind of Fervana at a meta level is it's a duality. Right. So in Buddhism there's the concept of non dualism. So what I've kind of, I've been playing around with this a lot in my mindset training for Antarctica. What I ended up kind of calling it is the duality doctrine. So essentially, essentially what it means is any internal friction is caused by playing too far on one edge of a duality. And I'll explain this in a concrete way so you understand what I mean and you play on the other edge, you'll find peace. So for example, a little while ago I remember going for a run and I saw this sign on this run that said 5k fun run. And without even choosing it, I had this visceral disgust at the idea of a fun run. Like you don't run for fun, you have to suffer. If you're not suffering suffering, you're wrong. Now that wasn't healthy. That was not healthy. Right. And I realized that I had gotten so far on this edge of suffering and gotten comfortable with it, playing with it, that fun became the enemy. And so what I've started doing so at every point in my life. I literally have this whole list of dualities in life. There's all these dualities, right? Darkness and light, ego, humility, contentment, discontentment, control, surrender, life and death, masculine, feminine. There's these series of dualities, actually have a whole list I'm always playing with. And at every point in my life, I'm looking for one duality causing me the most friction, and I go play on the other edge of it. And when you do, you find a kind of oneness in that, that the darkness and light can coexist in a very visceral way. When I was in the dark room, the brightest white light I've ever seen in my entire life was sitting in a dark room. I was blindingly. I was like, covering my eyes like this and touching my eyelids. I couldn't tell if it was open or closed. In a visceral way, I saw darkness and light coexist. And so when you play on all edges of it, you start to find that. That they can coexist. It's not bad. Like, ego is not bad. Even if you look at ego and humility, ego is not inherently bad. It can be an incredibly. You have to have ego to do the things that I do. Like, I have to believe I'm the hardest motherfucker alive in order to do it. At the same time, I have the humility to always be learning from people around me and look at where I can, which, like in this library of the world, how can I access that to use to my benefit in this particular or craft that I'm training for? Right? So looking for a duality that causes you friction. So the one that I was just working on was control and surrender. Until I went to the darkness retreat and embraced surrendering into 10 days in darkness. Now, the current duality is fun and suffering. I kind of worked on that before, but sometimes things re show up, and I tend to lean too harsh to the edge of suffering. So I think for me, I kind of keep playing with it. So right now, I'm very much playing with fun, bringing fun to the Arctic and to the places I'm about to go. So that's like one mindset tool to look for another simple one. When you're in pain, I call it the suffering smile. So it's like when you're in that pain cave, there's a different kind of smile that happens. It's like the eye of the tiger, right? I see. See, you're nodding. You know exactly what I'm talking about, right? Like, you. You. It's this. It's this animality, you know, I think sometimes we're so trapped in our human, human consciousness, you lose sight of that primal nature and it's this. And you just choose to smile and you become, you're tapping into something darker within yourself, something more profound within yourself that is just raw power. Like as an example, when I was in Antarctica last year and we had gone for one of the days, I think we were 15 days in, we've been going for about nine hours. And we had one more big hill left before camp and I was kind of hurting, my legs were a little hurting, you know, not feeling great, not looking forward to this big hill in front of me. And then one of the guys in my team was really struggling with his weight. So I offered, I was like, you know, are you okay? Do you want to take some weight for you? So I took like 20 kilos from his sled and as soon as I did it was like, alright, let's go now. This is my house. Immediately I get into a place that was kind of like, I was literally smiling and I entered a place that I started to call the cage. And inside the cage I was like an animal. This was my world. I was literally talking my talking out loud while I was going up this, this final hill. Switchbacking. And the whole time I'm saying things to myself like, this is your fucking house. This is what you were born for. And you can see like this intensity and this raw power consumed me. My team was, later on they saw me and they were like, dude, you are out of your mind. But I'm glad you're on my team. So it was quite psychotic. But you enter, you create that cage, right? Like you create that cage, you, you have that, you put that smile on your face and you just become, I mean it's something else. Like you awaken the animal, you know.

Like if you were to sit and think of people that are crazy, let's use that person's crazy. What does crazy mean to you?

I mean, I don't think I'm crazy.

No, no, I'm not saying you. I mean like, how do you interpret what is crazy?

I think it's, I think it's like it's all relative, the person saying it, right? Because in like I went to my, when my first, when I first did a 24 hour run, my family had never known that people could do that in my world. Like a lot of ultra runners do that. So that's not crazy. So I think it's just relative to the person using the term there. I don't think I ever, I mean, I Hear it a lot in reference to myself, but I don't.

Okay, so crazy. But when does one, like, literally lose their mind and you're past the point of no return?

Great question. So this is coming back to the duality. This is why a lot of people in my playground go push so far off the edge, they die doing what they do. Right. This is why I'm always looking for the duality. If I'm going too far into the darkness, it's time to play a little bit in the light, you know, and you play on that. So that time when I was in Liberia, doing like. Like, I didn't talk to myself the whole time that way. I was also saying things like, this is beautiful. Embracing gratitude, you know, falling in love with the lighter side of it. So I'm always looking for, am I going too far on that edge, that I'm losing myself to this, that I'm. And that requires that constant practice of self awareness or stillness. Stillness is something we so avoid. You know, also said, I love quality. And clearly he said, people will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid confronting their own soul.

Yeah.

So me and Evan were chatting like a simple practice. Put yourself in a dark room, in a clot in your closet for 20 minutes a day. See where it takes you. Practice stillness. Because the more still you are, the more you will open doors within your own soul that you've never opened before. And what you will find, you will not be ready for because you are going deeper than you've ever gone before. You know, Ben had that picture of the deepest fish, right? Is down there. Go there. And stillness is the vehicle to go there. Like stillness and that suffering of the spirit, you know, as I was saying earlier, like one of my core mantras, when you seek out suffering of the spirit, you will find salvation of the soul.

So you say suffering is a gift. Explain that.

If you keep doing what you've always gotten, you're always going to get more of the same thing in order to get something new, whether it be financially, mentally, physically, spiritually. You have to go to places you've never gone before. And when you go to those places, you are going to suffer because you've never been there. How inevitably it's like even when sometimes people say you have to be confident to take action. How can you be confident at something if you've never done before? Right. Like, confidence is the result, not the fuel. So you're going to suffer when you step into the new arena. And the reward of that are why you must go you know, you have to battle the dragon to find the treasure. And that's why polar exploration draws me. You know, as I was saying earlier, it's not as dangerous as mountain climbing, but it is miserable. Like it is the deepest, darkest suffering. So. But because of that you're accessing new doors into the spirit that you cannot access otherwise.

Yeah, well, see, this is, this is an interesting thing for me and I really had to think through this in my book, what's in it for Them? Where there's this line that I really like which is, don't handicap your children by making their lives too easy. And we oftentimes want to take away the pain of somebody's or the gift of somebody's suffering. And some people just, you know, there is not just take weightlifters, right? You're not going to put on muscle size with a. Without tearing something down. You're going to have to exert effort and tremendous oomph in order to get almost anything done in many arenas. So parents oftentimes don't want their kids to have the life of pain that they had. But then what kind of life do they have if you try to make everything so easy? My experience of you, it's interesting because you have this intensity, but you're also very much a compassionate, empathetic person. Everything about my experience of you're very loving, very caring, very courteous, and you also do all this crazy ass shit, right? So it's like, huh. So you know, how do you. So when someone trains with you, like, I have a friend, Jonathan, you know, sends me a message the other day. I think you guys are like hiking up some damn mountain for like 10 hours straight or something. And it's great too because this dude is like not at all used to anything like that. And at the same time I'm seeing how quickly he's growing because he's being put in these situations that, I mean, six months ago it never would have even occurred to him. He's doing the crazy shit that you have been doing. And so the thing about it is at what point do you take what it is, how you've perceived the world, how do you interact with others? And when do you say no, this is too much for you? I mean, how do you evaluate so two things. One, how do you do this with other people? And when do you ever ask for help? Like, at what point do you're like, man, this is too much or are you just like, it doesn't matter, I'm just the limit is whatever I can Force myself to do so. I'd love to have you speak to those two.

As far as the first question of taking other people, you have to know a little bit about where their edge is to take them. Because if you go so far off the cliff, it's not beneficial anymore, right? Then you're consumed, they'll break. And you have to find. In flow, Professor Chikmansihy talks about. How does he call it, the challenge zone? Right? The. The right. The right place between the flow and the fear kind of thing. That or the risk and the level of training. So you have to find that right balance of just pushing hard enough, you know, and then helping people get there a little bit past that edge and then pushing them further. And then pushing them further. Like, I worked with one client who was just terrified. He was going to Iceland for a vacation on his own, and he was terrified. And then he was beating himself up because he looked at all the crazy shit I did and he was like, you know, you do all this. But I wasn't brave enough. It's only because at that point I had more references. My brain had new data to say this is no longer risky. His brain did not have that data, so he was scared. The problem was the second dart around the fear, not the fear in and of itself. Right. So helping people find that edge, like Jonathan came tire dragging with me yesterday and you make sure they suffer a little bit. They have to. As my friends know, I'm all about that. So pushing them a little bit, but finding that. So especially if somebody's going to come play with me, I feel like I've done a. I don't think I've broken anybody yet. So, you know, hopefully done a good job of finding that edge.

We take everyone through the tire drag tomorrow here.

We'll actually see Bring my tires out. So, yeah, I think that's how you find at least you help other people. And that edge doesn't of course, just mean physical. Right. Like I said, with that person that was guiding through trauma, she was ready to go there. When I asked that question, do you feel like you deserve it? Because if you ask somebody that question when they're not ready to go there, that can be very dark to have to confront that. Right. To imagine that you deserve it. So you have to. That's part of doing the work, you know, who was it Victor Frankl said? Know all the theories, master all the techniques, but when you connect with the human soul, just be a human soul. And I think that's the core of it. So you master all the techniques and doing the work I do as a, you know, the trainer and all that. But then I think just being a soul with the other soul helps you find that place to go.

Gotcha.

And then I think the second part of the question was, how do I navigate when I in that space or.

Do I. Yeah, like, when do you. Do you ever ask for help? Do you ever, like, have you ever. When do you give yourself grace? You know, when do you decide, like, okay, I've done enough. I don't need to, you know, I've pushed it enough or now it's becoming extremely counterproductive mentally or physically to you.

I think I'm definitely open. I couldn't be more blessed for people in my life who, like, I couldn't do what I do, even though I'm alone on the ice with the army of people who make it possible. Right. All my friends just, like, have the greatest friends in the world and make it possible. So in that sense, I ask for help. And we all are very like givers in our tribe, so we support each other immensely. But when it comes to my own physical battles, there is no. I don't go there. Like, if I'm in the hell of pain cave, the only way out is to push harder. And I. And I think the. I'm trying to think if I've ever sort of. You actually have to go deeper into it to find your way through it. So when I'm in the. In the. In the. In the crazy things I do, at that point, I'm not asking for help. At that point, I have to, like, the only help. I mean, my version of what I believe God is, is finding God through the battle. But it's often actually, like going deeper into it. Like another good example of it. When the pandemic first hit, all the gyms were closed. And regardless of right wrong. That's not the point. The point is a lot of people are saying, oh, I can't go work out now, so I'm putting all this weight.

Yeah, this is the best.

So to show people, look, you don't need a gym or park. I ran 50 miles around a cul de sac. It was a thousand loops around a.005 mile cul de sac around my house all night. There's always a way to suffer.

How many hours did you run for straight?

It was all night. I can't remember how long it took me. I remember, like running into my neighbor the night before and then the morning he's going to work he's like, dude, what are you doing? Just looping around.

Could you imagine the neighbors? Someone comes over, there's this dude that lives over here.

The neighbors are used to my psychosis at this point now, but there was some point in the run, speaking about not asking for help, going into the pain cave. I was hurting, but kind of not that deep in the place I call the pain cave. So I went into a fascinating space. And I always feel like I have to qualify sometimes if I said it sounds psychotic, but I was literally calling forth the devil. I was walking around this house in the middle of the night, and I was mumbling to myself, and I was saying, I want the devil himself to rise out of hell in an attempt to break my soul so I can look that motherfucker in his eye and bury him in his own blood.

That's exactly what I'm trying to say, you know, Sorry.

Exactly. Let's go.

Yeah, we got to turn that into some sort of meme or something here. That's great. So in chapter 11 of your book, you talk about the most important habit of all. What is it and how do we apply it?

So the most important habit of all is paradoxically, not really habit at all. It's willpower. It's what I call cultivating courage. So willpower is not inherently not a habit, Right? A habit is automated. It's the things we don't have to think about. It's automated. Willpower inherently demands the world will. It demands consciousness. So that is the most important habit. Because no matter what you are trying to do, no matter what changes you're going to make, you'll get to a point where the behavior is automated. But in order to attain that next level of evolution, you now once have to get out of what's automated. You have to overload the self. So great athletes talk about this all the time. Stephen Curry, one of the greatest basketball player, talks about how he overloads in his training because at that point, and he's a master at his craft, right? But he's attained mastery to evolve, he has to go to places he's never been before. And overloading inherently means using the will. So that is the most important because once you learn how to, as I like to say, suffer well, once you learn how to suffer well, you can do anything. I mean, and that's the core thing we seek, right? I mean, if you use whatever words you want, happiness, fulfillment, bliss, inner peace, whatever lingo you want to use. Ultimately, at the core of why we do anything is that Right. And if you can embrace the suffering, if you can embrace that demand of the will, you can find bliss in the entire human journey, whether it's dark or whether it's light. And there's multiple, like, simple ways. I mean, cold tubs are a great way to cultivate that. And everybody knows cold tubs. Do darkness therapy. Lock yourself in a dark room for 20 minutes a day. You know, that will teach you something about yourself that you haven't gone. And if you want to go deeper, go for seven days, go for 10.

I was hoping we could do that with Michael Fishman. Just lock his ass up in any cold dam for any amount of time. Yeah. He will come out of there. Like, could you.

Yeah.

He'll have a machete and he'll be out there anyway.

Yeah. So the idea is, whether it's cold tubs or will or darkness, is do something on a regular basis where one party wants to quit and the other wants to fight the other ones to keep fighting. You know, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus says, war is the father of all. And I don't just mean. I mean, I think he was using it to apply to wars between nations, but apply it to that inner war. When you go to war with yourself, you will breed something new. Something new will birth from that, and what you will find is that battle, that war is the most important habit.

So let's. What's your perspective on love and faith?

I think love, faith, and fear are all interconnected. You know, we often hear in personal development, love is the enemy of fear. There's only two ways of being. But if you really view it, fear is not the enemy of love. Fear is an expression of love. Like, why am I. There was a point in my life when I went to war. I was not scared of dying because I didn't love my life that much. I had lost a friend in the war, and I thought if. If I had to die, I'd rather be me than somebody else. Today, I am terrified of death. Terrified of death because I love life. So love, faith and fear, all these things that are often framed as opposites, but they can absolutely coexist, you know, I'm terrified of not just Antarctica. In two days, I leave for the Arctic for three months on the ice, skiing to the North Pole as my final expedition. I'm terrified. I have sleepless nights about once a week. But I love what I'm about to experience. And I have faith in my version of what I believe God to be. You know, the universe, whatever we want to call it is with me on the journey, you know. And so all these three forces and this is coming back to the duality that the non dualism concept in Buddhism, like when you see the polarities can coexist as one, that's I think the essence of a spiritual awakening. And when you play with love, faith and fear, all as this is one, it's the essence of spiritual life. That's me, that's God.

Was that you? Someone clicked on your website? Probably. I bet you someone online it sounded.

Like it was me.

I think someone online could be like looking at his website right now. You meant to chime in.

That was Randy Long. Oh really?

Okay, we'll get to him. Maybe.

Yeah. So I think it's about like engaging all three, not as enemies. And when you do that, you'll find how they can all work in your favor.

Yeah, you know, I mean you're, I'm imagining quite a few times. Well, let me see the list of some of the things that this is. Some of the adventures that I'm not going to read all of them but Akshay has done. Climbed to over 21,000ft in the Himalayas and experienced incredibly painful altitude sickness on one of his climbs. Dragged 190 pound sled for 350 miles across the world's second largest ice cap in Greenland for one month in 40 degrees below zero temperature. Climbed Denali, the tallest mountain in North America. Got turned around at point some 17,000ft by brutal storms. Climbed Kilimanjara. Became one of only 26 people on Earth to ski up a remote and highly creviced glacier in Antarctica where you then got frostbite and happened to lose a tip of your finger. Many other mini polar expeditions, mountaineering trips. Broke four bones in three months from skydiving and rock climbing. Got Hypothermia after an 8 minute cold river dip in the middle of winter. Got heat exhaustion multiple times from being a dumbass on a four leaf plan run in the middle of summer. Almost got killed by a falling boulder while ice caving in the Himalayas. Cave diving in Mexico, one of the most dangerous sports in the world. This one's the best. Not really, but. Got diarrhea while exploring the cave for 12 hours. And you rank this up as one of the most miserable experiences.

One of the more miserable experiences.

Yeah, we should go do deep into that one. So you did seven days in darkness, ten days in darkness, isolation, ice diving, scuba diving in the Galapagos. Five day water fast where you average three hours of training each day to celebrate the Marine Corps birthday last year. Ran for 24 hours straight. Ran 50 to 55 miles. That's where you ran around the cul de sac all night. Over a thousand laps when the pandemic first hit. Just so he could show people you don't need to have access to a gym or a park. There's always an opportunity to suffer. Don't ever lose that opportunity. Ran 167 miles across Liberia, About a marathon a day for a week. As part of the run, you raised thousands of dollars to help build the first sustainable school in post war Liberia. Bringing clean water to villages across the country, distribute school supplies and do humanitarian work. Many other ultramarathons, including an 80 miler around a 02 mile loop, 72 miler, 1000 km and others. Served in Iraq as an infantry Marine where one of your jobs was to walk in front of vehicles looking for bombs. Became an adventure and sponsored athlete despite scoliosis, flat feet, in a condition where his body doesn't absorb nutrients well. And a blood disorder that transforms transports 25 to 30% less oxygen through your body. Two doctors told you it would kill you in the Marine Corps boot camp and a bunch more. I mean like this is crazy or normal depending on whose perspective. I wanted to have you come here because one of the things that I try to do in Genius Network is sell people what they want and give them what they need. And part of what people need is capability. And they need inspiration and they need encouragement and they need to come face to face with things that could either consciously or unconsciously prevent them to getting to where they want to go. Everyone here is ambitious. Everyone here has aspirations. Most people here, the reason that they wake up and work really hard every day is way beyond money and status. And this group is filled with givers and anything that will give them perspective so they can see their possibilities and expand their possibilities in greater ways is going to be, I believe, helpful to them. And so I always want to introduce different ways to reach that person perspective. And how many of you feel incredibly encouraged by listening to Akshay? Yeah. So you're an encourager. And I hope you go into this journey and obviously succeed and find what it is that you are looking for. Because as soon as you do that, I know you're then going to be onto the next mountain, whatever that is, metaphorically speaking. Right. So that's, that's pretty awesome. The book is Fearvana. The website is fearvana.com how else do people follow you? What else should they know that we have not discussed anything that I didn't ask you or that someone didn't ask you that you would like to share.

I think to build off what you both just said as a last part, to kind of close it out, is when you talked about the realm of possibility is how our constructs of what is and what is possible and what is real shapes reality. And how it's so important to be aware of those constructs and not be limited by them. Because at one point, you know, people said you couldn't climb Everest without oxygen. Doctors said it, you'd die. Two doctors told me boot camp would kill me. But that's their constructs, right? And even we all have our own constructs. Kind of was talking about earlier is how we're trapped by the. Our lens. Our lens of reality. And as a very, like, concrete example of that, I mean, everything in how we engage with the world is a construct. Like, if I see that hand and I see it red, how do I know that's a red hand? Because from a young age, I was taught that color means red. That's a hand. So that is a construct that has been assigned to me. That's a conceptual thought. And everything about how we engage with the world is a conceptual thought. And the more you start to acknowledge and accept the conceptual thoughts and the constructs that shape your reality, the quicker you can then free yourself from them. And that freedom is, I think, the. I don't think we're necessarily consciously saying we're seeking it, but I think we are seeking it. And that freedom is awe. You know, that freedom is life. That freedom is aliveness. And so releasing yourself from those constructs, playing on those edges of pain to not only heal your pain, but to find that evolution within the self, it'll free you and expand the possibilities. And a great example of that is from the Matrix, right? That. Anybody? Everybody seen the Matrix? That scene where he says, there is no spoon. The only thing that bends is your mind, right? It's our mind that shapes our reality. And free yourself from all constructs. And a simple way to practice that is just start, accept, start recognizing that everything is a construct. So even when I'm driving, I'll just be like, I'm creating my own illusion. I'm creating my own illusion. I'm creating my own illusion. I repeat that mantra to acknowledge that everything I'm seeing from the color of that car is an illusion that has been assigned to me. And then the more I do that just in practice, the more that when I'm playing in the arena, I can free myself from that illusion. So, to that question about how do I handle the mindset? I don't allow myself to be imprisoned by other constructs of what is possible. So I think just free your mind, I think, is the essence of where we find peace.

Akshay. Awesome, man.

Thank you, brother. Thank you, brother.

Thank you. Okay. I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead.

You're over here.

Do it now. Come on. Thank you.

Watching.