The Untapped Potential Inside You | Colin O'Brady

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Good to see you, man.

My man, great to see you. How you doing, man?

Doing good. I'm doing great. I'm doing great.

Good, man. Now, for those that don't know about you, you just finished an incredible journey, uh, in Antarctica, crossing 60— well, 55 days, right?

Yeah, 54 days.

54 days in an unaided journey, dragging a 300-pound sled or something crazy like this, where no one was able to touch you or support you in the process of crossing this part of Antarctica.

Yeah.

And it was 54 days. You got like a 60-day plan. Yeah. But you sprinted the last like 2 days or something.

Indeed. Yeah.

And it was incredible to watch this journey. Uh, you've been all over the news lately, and you were kind of racing against another guy who was doing the same thing. And what an incredible journey, man. Congrats on completing it.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it was a, it was a wild ride to say the least. You know, it was, uh, you had a few other world records, um, to my name previous to that in the mountains, but this was a world first. You know, this was something no one in history had ever accomplished. And going back 100 years, people have tried. You know, Ernest Shackleton 100 years ago was kind of one of my heroes, one of the early pioneering explorers that said like, "Man should cross the continent of Antarctica." And it's been done now in teams of people, or as well as, you know, using wind aid, kites, dogs, but it has never still been done in its most pure form, which is solo, completely alone, unsupported, so no resupplies of food or few drop-offs, and unaided, meaning, you know, no kites, no dogs, no vehicles. Just this is like a man versus nature. Mono e mono out there. And so it was a beautiful challenge to take on as I'm really just fascinated as myself is just tapping into the potential that I think we all have inside of us and unlocking that. So this curiosity inside me as an athlete led me to want to go after this. And I didn't know if it was possible. I literally named my project as I set off, The Impossible First. Amazing. Yeah.

Amazing, man. Now Antarctica is huge, right?

Yeah.

It's pretty big. How big is it so people know?

Gosh, I think, I wish I should know the answer to this question. It's big. It's massive. The traverse that I was making, so it was basically from one side of the ocean via the South Pole to the other side, was just under 1,000 miles.

1,000 miles?

Yeah.

Pulling a sled? Yeah. In the snow? What was the temperature most of the time?

So the average temperature in Antarctica is about -25, -30, and that's with no wind. Antarctica is the windiest and coldest continent in the world, and so often days would be 50, 60 mile per hour wind gusts, and you'd literally have gosh, I don't know, -80 degrees wind chill. The easiest way for me to describe— I know you're from Ohio, so I know you know a little bit about cold weather and whatnot. But the— what I will say is this: I couldn't experience that cold until I realized I took a cup of boiling water from my tent and I would throw it in the air and it would immediately turn into ice. Like, that's how cold that is.

Yeah.

So then for me, that's like sometimes it's hard to put in perspective where it's like, yeah, it was cold. Well, that's real cold. No, like it's so cold that boiling water could turn into ice in a second.

Now, how do you make sure you keep your temperature, I guess, regulated because I sweat when I'm moving, even in the snow. Can you sweat in temperatures like that?

No, no. So there's sort of an adage in the world of polar exploration, which is, "If you sweat, you die." Wow. And it's potentially a little hyperbolic, but to be honest, it's pretty true in that, you know, if you're pulling a 375-pound sled, it's amazing you can stay pretty warm while you're moving. But you stop for 5 seconds, 10 seconds to get a swig of water, to eat a little bit of food, and you can immediately go hypothermic. And so it's a matter of what I say is staying comfortably cool. Cool. So it's moving at a pace that keeps you warm enough, but also being aware enough of your body temperature that you're not sweating. But when I would stop, I would eat food every— kind of a steady flow of food in these column bars that were self-created for this project. I would eat very frequently, but even in those little 30-second breaks, I'd put on a huge puffy jacket immediately. It's not like— you don't stand around in the cold at all. I mean, it's that cold. Hypothermic frostbite can set in. I got a little bit of frostbite on my cheeks and nose from these windstorms. The Conditions are real out there, no doubt.

Wow, man. How many world records do you have for this first?

So, um, you've done Everest, you've done all these different mountains. Yeah, so I set the world record for something called the Explorers Grand Slam in 2016, and so that was one of my bigger first big world record projects. And the goal there was to be the fastest person to complete the Explorers Grand Slam, which is climbing the tallest mountain on each of the 7 continents— of course Everest, Denali, Kilimanjaro, etc.— as well as complete expeditions to both the North Pole and the South Pole. And these polar journeys were just across the last degree of latitude. So that was only, but 69 miles to reach each of the poles across the last degree of latitude. Unaided? Yeah, unaided. Seemed hard at the time, but now when I've done a 1,000-mile journey in Africa, but that project was 139 days consecutive. So all 9 of those expeditions, Everest, Denali, et cetera, back to back to back to back without any rest, 139 days.

So you broke the world record for the fastest.

Cumulative time of that. Fewer than 50 people had ever completed the Grand Slam. Most of those people have done so in 5 years or 10 years, train for an expedition, rest in between, plan the next one. And I built it to do it all consecutively throughout.

Crazy, man.

Yeah, yeah.

How long does it take to get to the top of Everest?

So generally Everest expedition will last about 2 months. Uh, in my case, I was coming straight off the North Pole. So what's crazy is the North Pole is at sea level. It's literally ice floating around in the middle of the ocean. Um, and I had to go straight from there to Everest. And because I was at sea level, I was not acclimatized at all. So flying to Everest, but I was late and delayed because the sea ice was cracking in the North Pole. Literally, you can fall through the cracks into the frozen ocean. It's a crazy place. There's polar bears. I mean, it's one of the wildest landscapes ever in the middle of a floating ocean. You're at the North Pole and the ice is floating around you. You're actually moving away from the pole and you're having to walk back because it's just a GPS point in the middle of the ocean, basically. But to fly from there all the way to Everest, I only had 3 weeks rather than 2 months to climb it. And that in itself was just an epic battle. And this came because of the weather windows on that project towards the end of my project. So Everest was the 8th of the last 9 expeditions. But what happened up there is I made it into the death zone. Which is above 26,000 feet. It's known because the human body, even with supplemental oxygen, can't survive for long. Oh my gosh. And—

How many feet is that up?

That's at 26,000 feet where the death zone starts, but Everest is 29,000 feet. Oh my gosh. And so I pushed for the summit, my very first push. No, I didn't have any guides with me, just one Sherpa who was climbing with a guy by the name of Pasang Bode, incredible Nepalese Sherpa. And we got caught up in a massive storm. I mean, the weather came in, winds blowing, you know, 50, 60 mile per hour winds, and we quickly know we gotta abandon our summit attempt. We were lucky to even get our tent up, took 2 or 3 hours. Had to descend off the mountain. Thought my entire project had disappeared, but we kind of found the strength and courage to go back up in another massive challenging storm, but made it to the summit 3 days later. But you'll love this. So I come back down, I get back into Camp 4, into the death zone. I've summited Everest. It's a beautiful moment for me, and I'm one mountain away from setting the world record. And I'm about 2 months ahead of schedule. So I'm like, if I get to Nali, I could probably do this. It's coming into reality. And my wife, Jenna, who is not just a supportive partner but really just the co-creator with me. We dream up these projects together. We build a nonprofit around inspiring young people and kids. There's tons of public schools, hundreds of thousands of public school kids following along this project at the time. And that's really where our passion lies around health and wellness. Now we can talk more about that later. But anyways, I call home to Jenna and I say, Jenna, you know, I just summited Everest. We got one mountain to go. And she goes, okay, great. Like, how are you feeling? I'm like, well, I'm exhausted. I'm still up at 26,000 feet. It's going to take me a few days to get down and we can regroup for this next mountain. She goes, "Yeah." And she says something I'll never forget. She goes, "I actually need you to put your boots back on right now." I'm like, "Wait, what?" And she's like, "Yes, we've been doing some calculating back home, and it just so happens that if you can get down from Everest today, I've arranged for a helicopter to pick you up in base camp. The helicopter's gonna take you to Kathmandu, but there's no time for you to rest in a hotel. An evening flight's gonna take you to Dubai, to Seattle, to Anchorage, and instead of having 3 weeks to climb Denali, you'll have 3 days. But if you can do all that, You'll set not one but two world records. You can have the Seven Summits record as well.

So— Wow.

It's this moment where I just laugh now. I love this quote. You've probably heard it, but it's a Henry Ford quote. He who says he can and he who says he can't are usually both right. One of the ones I've lived by. And this is a moment of like, you know, hey, I know better than to not listen to my wife because she's a badass and she's amazing and knows when to push me. But I'm like, all right, maybe we can pull this off. And sure enough, 100 hours after standing on the summit of Everest, I'm on the other side of the world at the base of Denali 3 days battling this insane storm, but on May 27th, 2016, make it up to the summit of Denali and in this case set not one world record but two world records. Wow, man. Finishing this project.

3 days later started climbing Denali.

Yeah, 100 hours after being on the summit of Everest, I got to the base of Denali, and then Denali usually takes 3 weeks itself to climb best-case scenario, and only about 30 or 40% of people attempting it even make the summit, and I managed to get to the summit in 3 days battling this ridiculous storm there as well.

How do you get there in 3 days? How is that even possible?

Like I said, it was come straight down from Everest, not sleep a night, go all the way back down to base camp through the other 4 camps. There's a helicopter waiting there that took me to Kathmandu, fly to the other side of the world via a bunch of stops. Jenna's there in Anchorage to pick me up and drive me to the base of the national park. But in Denali, a bush plane has to fly you into the base of the mountain. It's a whole, like, logistic, like, not— like I said, Jenna is a mastermind, not just of pushing my body, knowing my mindset, knowing how to support and love me and be compassionate, running our nonprofit, profit, but logistics, man. Like, we're talking about 9 locations, 7 continents, red tape. I mean, all this sort of stuff. So, um, it was an incredible project for us to, uh, cut our teeth on. And I mean, in the spirit of— in the spirit of what I know you're about, I love this podcast, man, and I love, um, just the entrepreneurial spirit that really, you know, shines through in the innovation. Like, Jenna and I dreamed this up with nothing. Like, we dreamed this up on a whiteboard. I had been racing triathlon professionally. We'd gotten engaged. I mean, like, what do we want to do with our life? Like, what do we care about?. And we had this moment where we literally wrote on a whiteboard in our one-bedroom apartment, like, what if we could set this world record but build a media campaign around it that has a lot of impact? And it sounded like this great idea, but like, wait, I haven't really climbed mountains. We've never started a nonprofit. I have like 200 Instagram followers. We don't have a platform. We know nothing about media. We know nothing about PR. We're literally Googling on day one, Google, what's the difference between marketing and PR?

Sure.

But in the end, it was a year of of no, no, no, everyone's saying no, like no support, but just built it day by day, kept showing up. And ultimately a year and a half later, I'm on this project. She built it into something that had 500 million earned media impressions. We had a nonprofit, we had a partnership with nonprofit where there was millions of kids following along, all these things. But it came out of literally nothing. I didn't, we both didn't grow up with money. We don't have this background in any of these things, but just this belief of like, we want to create this and put this love and impact out into the world through this storytelling, through this, this. And so it was fun to see that come come to life, and now this Antarctica project is the latest version or iteration of this passion for us.

How many of these journeys have you done so far? So different adventures.

Yeah. So the other world record that I set between this was that we did something called the 50 High Points. And so I set the speed record for climbing the tallest mountain in each of the US 50 states. And some of those are like little hills. Yeah, some are little hills. Exactly. But it was fun, man. It was— we did it in— I did it in 21 days. The previous record had been 42. But the funnest part for me, because for me I don't really want to think, I don't think of myself as this athlete in the arena. Like, hey, watch me do this world record. To me, that's like not interesting at all. In fact, I've started to think of myself way less as an athlete and more so as an artist. I've started to think of myself, my canvas just happens to be endurance sports. But through that, I want to paint these masterpieces that I can share with people out in the world that have this reverberation of positivity and inspiration. And so with this 50 High Points project before Antarctica, our goal with that canvas, with that masterpiece or that art project that we were trying to create, and did something we called the Forrest Gump effect. So we literally got on social media and we said, hey, join us. We're gonna be going all over the country. What we wanna do is meet people. We wanna meet people in each one of these states. Show us your backyard, hike a mile with us, meet us on the top of a summit. We're gonna be coming through here fast and hot, but like come hang out. And we met thousands of incredible people. We met, you know, remember in Virginia, we were on the summit of Virginia with, you know, 50, 60 school kids, students who had never, you know, camped out before, never been in the backcountry, never been on a hike, but they came and joined us on a 7-mile hike. I met an 85-year-old great-grandmother in Illinois. Granted, the hike in Illinois, it's pretty flat out there. It wasn't huge, but she did it. It was a mile hike. Came with us. And I walked back with her and I said, what's the secret? Like, what's the essence of life? And she's talking to me about life and love and her story and compassion. And so it's this way of, yes, I am doing these art projects or these athletic feats or world records or world firsts, whatever that is, but as a way to just connect with humanity, have these amazing conversations, meet people both in person and virtually. And for me, that's what lights me up.

Yeah, amazing, man. Why do you want to do these things in the first place? Because this is like— we did a— for those that don't know, we, we did Jesse Itzler's, uh, 29029 climb, which is like the equivalent of Everest, but it's like the dad's club version where you're like climbing a mountain. What was it, like a mile up?

Yeah, so it was like a mile up. Yeah, what was it, like 1,700 feet per lap? It's in Stratton, Vermont, and you have to do 17 laps of it uphill which equals 29,029 feet, the equivalent of Everest.

And this is like, you know, the dad's club version of climbing Everest. But I'm telling you, I was dying. Look, this is 35 years, 35 hours, and I was just like dead, dude.

It was amazing.

And so you saw me?

No, we met there. Yeah, yeah.

We were like dying, dude.

We met there. We shared a tent and, you know, obviously we get to know each other. We're having a good time and you guys are out there chipping away. You know, I'm climbing the last laps. Not straight at all. No, you guys were coming off your big, your big event.

No, not in shape.

Yeah. And I remember you were like, I remember coming in, I was 2 laps ahead of you guys. I'm like, I'm going to go get a little bit of sleep. And it was like 11:00 AM, 11:00 PM, and we've been— you've been going for like 15 hours straight. And you're like, Colin, I want to get to the same number that you're on so that tomorrow we can all finish together. And I was like, I was like, awesome, great. So you're like, I'm going to head about for 2 laps. And each lap had been taking like an hour, maybe an hour 15, hour 20, something like that, And 6 hours went by and I woke up and I was like, oh man, Lewis just must have blew me off and just went through the night like a badass. Sure enough, you unzip the tent and you're shaking.

I thought I had hypothermia, dude.

You're like, turn the heater on, turn the heater on. I'm shaking. I'm like trying to heat the tent up.

There was no heat. You were just smiling cozy in your tent. I was like, dude, I feel like—

I was like, bro, did you finish? And you were like, I was like, no, I just did the 2 that you said I was gonna do. We gotta get back up for tomorrow.

But it was like so wet outside.

Oh my God.

We were just walking through water and mud. It was like snowing or whatever and it was miserable. But I knew that if I timed this out, I was like, I need to get a certain amount of hours of sleep. If I don't get to 13 laps, I think it was, like I probably won't finish tomorrow with like 4 hours of sleep. And I remember waking up, you were like, okay, we're gonna wake you up in 3 hours. You slept 4 hours. I was like, okay, I'll be good. You woke me up and I was like, I wanna lay here all day.

I was like, Lewis, let's go. And you're like, yeah, don't bet.

I almost had a moment where I was like, I don't think I'm gonna finish. Yeah. I had that moment in my mind. I was like, I gave an amazing effort. My body is busted, broken. I was like, I, I can't break through this. And then I think you left after being like, okay, we hope to see you out there. And Matt was like, dude, we're doing this. Let's just do one lap. Yeah.

Yup, that's how it starts, man.

You gotta focus on one lap, not like I have 5 more to go.

You're starting to do the time, you're like that's like 6 or 7 more hours. I know, I was like, let's go. But in the end, you guys got out there and crushed it.

Finished it in 5.

35 hours with like an hour remaining.

An hour to go.

And like, I mean, that event's tough. Like what, 50% of people finish and don't? What I love about that event though is that it's a celebration of everyone being out. That's not a race, it's not competitive. It's kind of, you know, Jesse says it's you against you. And I love that. And then that's why I think that race is, race, you know, that event is really cool because you guys are out there, I'm out there. Like we're hanging out. It's just a fun, like, participatory—

great experience.

Such a good experience.

We didn't have a strategy going into it until day 2 when we had to stop like every 20 feet once it got steep. I had to drag my legs up the hill. You're like walking up just like no poles, just having fun. I'm dragging my legs. I feel like I tore both my hip flexors. And I realized then like you've got to have a strategy.

Yeah.

And you had a strategy your whole time. Every time you do one of these experiences, you have a strategy. You don't just say, okay, I'm going to just push through until I'm dead. Yeah, you have a strategy and it sounds like Jenna is really helping you craft the strategy. I am big on simple daily habits that support how you show up, and this is about building a routine that helps you eat, sleep, thrive, repeat. Nature's Bounty is all about helping you thrive from your head to your heels. You can support your heart, bone, nerve, and muscle health with magnesium glycinate. And if you want a little extra heart support, there is Vital Heart Rapid Release Softgel. Made with magnesium and CoQ10. And for digestive and immune health, Probiotic 10 delivers 20 billion live probiotic cultures in a one-pill-per-day formula, which makes it easy to stay consistent. And if you care about building habits that support your goals, this is one way to stay intentional with your health. Nature's Bounty. It's in your nature. Learn more at naturesbounty.com. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. The School of Greatness is proudly sponsored by Amica Insurance. You know what they say, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. So go with Amica and get coverage from a mutual insurer that's built for their customers, one that looks after what's important to you together. Auto, home, life, and more coverage that fits your unique needs. Amica helps you protect what matters most. Visit amica.com and get a quote today. Back to school starts now. Get long-lasting battery life on the Dell XPS laptop powered by Series 3 Intel Core so you can work from anywhere. Now starting at $699 with exclusive student pricing starting at $599. Complete your setup with savings on select monitors and must-have electronics and accessories. Limited-time deals and free shipping on PCs and more await you at Dell.com/deals. That's Dell.com/deals. But how does someone, you know, for me in this physical challenge, like I got up and I did one lap and I was like, okay, let me do one more. Yeah. And then one more. And I was like, okay, now we have two more to go.

Yeah.

We can finish this. How do people push through these mental or physical challenges when it seems like, gosh, it's gonna take me 10 years to launch a podcast like what Lewis Howes or 10 years to build this business or to do this thing. How do people push through that barrier?

And how do you do it? You know, for me, people love to ask me about my physical training, how did I get strong. There's some fun stories about the crazy training that I did to prepare for this and whatnot, but I believe that it's the muscle 6 inches between your ears. It's about flexing your mind is really what it comes down to. And I describe that moment of Jen and I writing our dreams onto this whiteboard. Sadly, as you know, that's where 99.9% of dreams die as an idea, because all of a sudden we have these doubts in our mind. Oh, I can't, or it's going to take 10 years, or I could never catch up to this person or that person or this metric or that metric, but it's about showing up. It's about getting out there every single day. So in Antarctica, and it's also the ability to be able to adapt. So actually, my first day in Antarctica I think is really emblematic of that. And to be fair about the 20 in 0, 29 event, you're like, Colin, what are you doing in a couple weeks? You seem like you're in pretty good shape. And I was like, well, I'm going to try to cross Antarctica by myself in like 2 weeks, literally like 2 weeks before I was leaving. So I was pretty well trained at that moment. But I get out there, we've been planning this project for well over a year. It's a world first, no one's ever done it. There's so many doubters and naysayers. Someone actually died 100 miles from the finish line 3 years ago trying this project. Another one of the best explorers in the world went out there the following year and after 52 days ran out of food and had to be picked up and didn't make it. So there's a lot of people, there's a lot of print articles in big magazines saying it's physically impossible to do this thing. And so like, I know that going in. And so we build this strategy and the unsupported nature means you can't take any extra supplies with you. Basically what you have in your sled to start, no one can give you anything. Essentially. And so in that case, like, weight is of the essence. And so I pack my sled as much of food and as much fuel. The fuel, I melt the ice into water, and I don't bring extra anything. I literally don't even have an extra pair of underwear with me for 54 days because, like, I can't. I'd rather have 100 more calories in my sled of food. Same underwear for 54 days.

That's straight. Oh my God.

Not fancy. Yeah, soggy underwear right there. Yeah, that's not nice. Oh man.

Do you clean it at least? You try to?

No, not much.

You can't.

Yeah, you just kind of like ride it out. Wow, man. So no, not smelling good.

One day of chafing and you're done too.

Yeah, so you gotta look after your body. But I get out there, I fly, this plane lands me on the edge of the Antarctic continent, takes off. I'm all alone out there, right? Like I'm dropped off alone. And well, actually you had mentioned before there was another guy out there, which is important to mention at this point because another British explorer, one of the actually the most experienced in the world in terms of the amount of miles traversed in Antarctica on various other projects, he also decides that he wants to try to be the first. So not only am I now racing history, but this guy's a British Navy SEAL equivalent, you know, special forces guy. His name's Lou Rudd, and he's like a badass, and he wants to do this as well. It was his friend who died 3 years ago. He's doing that to honor him. And I got a lot of respect for all of them. There's a camaraderie as well, of course, and we both know what we're going going through. But we also both clearly want to be first. And he's looking at me like, who's this, you know, bit younger guy who doesn't have the real experience in Antarctica? Who does he think he is? And I'm kind of like trying to be like confident in my plan. And so plane drops us off, we're a mile apart from each other, equidistant from the first waypoint, the first like GPS marker on the map. And I get out there and I've got this video of me being like, it's a blue sky day, it's great! After all year of planning, it's finally time for me to like try to cross Antarctica. I'm taking the first step and I bend down and I pull the strap on my sled to tighten it for first time, and ping, the strap breaks. Literally, the strap breaks. Like, it's -25 and the plastic can't handle it, breaks. So right out of the gate, I'm like, wow, this is going to be a long journey. This is before the first step. So then I strap into my sled, and the sled's the heaviest on the first day, 375 pounds. To start was about the maximum I thought I could pull, so I put as much food as I could, even though I knew I was going to burn 10,000 calories per day, and I factored I could carry about 7,000 calories. So I was going to lose weight every single day straight from the get-go, even eating 7,000 calories. That's how intense and cold it is. And so I start pulling my sled, and you asked me before about sweat, about 1 hour in I'm sweating, and I'm like, wait, this sled's so heavy, but I can't not pull it without sweating, and so I start sweating. Then I realize I actually don't think I can pull this sled, and I start crying. I literally start crying, but what happens when you cry when it's -25 degrees out? It freezes to your face, so I have frozen tears to my face, and I'm 1 hour, 2 hours into this journey, and so I do the only thing I could think of is I call home to Jenna.

Wow.

And so I pick up the phone and I I go, hey babe, yeah, we may have named our project the right thing. It appears to be impossible. 'Cause we had called it The Impossible first. And she's like, uh-oh. And so she tries to, she's like, okay, well. And meanwhile, I'm seeing Lew disappear on the horizon with this beautiful ski stroke, totally knows what he's doing, strong and steady out there. And at this point, I can't even think about the fact that there's a race in place. I mean, I'm just trying to get through the first day. And so she says to me, Colin, how far are you from the first waypoint? Like, she knows the route, we've studied it, she knows everything. The first waypoint's only a few miles from the drop-off point. And I'm like, I'm 0.63 miles from the— it's as if I'm saying it's a million miles. But she's like, okay, so you're half a mile from the first waypoint. Like, this goes back to your original question of strategy, right? And she's like, do me a favor. Like, whatever you do, I know it's heavy, I know you're sweating, I know you're exhausted, and you're probably a little bit afraid. Understand. Really like, get to the first waypoint. Get to that first waypoint, and you'll have felt like you got somewhere on the first day. So for the next hour, I struggled and battled and get to that first waypoint, set up my tent, get inside my tent, and I say to Jenna, like, I call her again. It's kind of our safety check at night off the satellite. She's like, how you doing? I was like, obviously I'm stressed. She says, look, I actually went out there intentionally with not a lot of music, not a lot of podcasts, because I wanted to explore the silence of these flow states that I hope to tap into in my mind. Something I'm very curious about, the sort of mental side of this. She goes, "Tomorrow, do me a favor. Try to find the flow even if just for a minute or 2 minutes. It's going to be a hard day." So just those words, I went to sleep and I was like, "Okay, I made it to the first waypoint. I'll get up tomorrow and kind of regroup." And then I woke up, and I'm big on mantras, but this mantra had never been with me before this, and just came to me out loud as my alarm went off to wake me up on my first real full day out there. I said out loud to myself, I said, "Collin, you are strong. You are capable." You are strong. You are capable. And that ended up being my mantra every single day. Really? Waking up for the rest of the entire 54-day journey. And sure enough, that next day, was it stupid challenging? Yes. But instead of 2 miles, I made it 8 miles. And I found that flow state for a minute. The next day was 9 miles, and I found that flow for 2 or 3 minutes. And so we had a strategy. It went out the window on day 1. Had to refocus, refocus on the mind, adjust a few things with our strategy because I was hoping to go further distances in that. She's like, well, like maybe it's not shorter distances at this at first, but as it gets lighter, maybe you'll go longer and all this kind of stuff. And so, you know, how do you strategize and plan for something that's been told is impossible? You're stepping into the unknown. It's by being adaptable and ultimately realizing that these things are happening in our minds, these doubts, these fears. That's a human thing. I don't care who you are. I still have them. I have 4 world records and I've had you know, some bit of success in my life through challenges. But like, I wake up every day with doubts and fears and challenges, but it's being able to quiet that in my mind and continue to get to that first waypoint or get to that next step forward in whatever you're doing.

Man, what, um, what did you do to get into flow every day then? Besides the mantra, how did you get into flow and how'd you stay into it?

Yeah, so that's something that I've just been fascinated with. So I grew up as a kid, uh, as swimmer. And it's funny, my, my, my 5 older sisters actually, and I'm the baby boy. Yeah. And an older brother as well. But I mean, I'm a little boy of 7, blended family, but a big family, a loving, supportive environment. And my sisters and my parents will always be like, you're always talking all the time, you're always this, like, always trying to hang out with them, follow my sisters into the room, like, always like chatting and all this kind of stuff. But what I realized is I spent 4 hours a day as a kid swimming, 2 hours before school, 2 hours after school, putting in those reps of quiet. Swimming is this weird sport where you're staring at a black line like you can't talk. There's no eye contact. There's no, you know, really can't really chat to your teammates even. You're kind of in this zone. And so before I knew the word flow state or high performance, this is me as a kid, I realized I was sort of tapping in and out of those states. And I became more conscious of that as I went through my life and became a professional triathlete after Whole other crazy tangent of my life being severely burned in a fire in Thailand and being told I would never walk again. We can talk about that if you want. But more so, what happened when I was racing triathlon is a friend of mine came to me and she said, I don't know much about sports. This is a Turkish woman who's a wife of a good friend of mine named Ece. And she says, I don't know much about sports, but just by observing this, I see that like this is all in your guys' minds out here. And I was like, yeah, absolutely.

Like— Talking about swimming or the outdoor stuff?

This was triathlon. So this is triathlon. And she, this is when I was racing triathlon professionally. Said, you know, I'd recommend that you go to these meditation retreats. And I was like, cool, I'm interested in meditation, but I don't like know a lot about it. I haven't done this. This is 2011. And she's like, yeah, if you've heard of Vipassana meditation, it's these 10-day silent meditation retreats. 10 days, no reading, no writing, no eye contact, deep meditation. And she's like, you should try it. And I was like, well, don't I need like a little background in meditation before this? Or she's like, no, like just, just do it. It's free. There's centers around the world. It's completely free to go. Like, go. And so me being the kind of like jump in headfirst type of person, as you could probably tell here, I was like, great, I'll go. So my off-season in triathlon that year, I signed up for this meditation retreat. My stepdad, he drives me up to the retreat and he goes, he goes, hey Colin, like I've pretty much never heard you shut up for a minute in your life. And so I'm going to wait here in the parking lot for an hour because once you realize this is a terrible idea, I'll be here waiting to drive you home. You know, joking. He's an amazing mentor and influence in my life. Incredible man. But he's literally going like, you're pretty extroverted and you're telling me you're going to sit in silence by yourself for 10 minutes? 10 days. Sure enough, I stayed for those 10 days, and it had just a profound impact on my life of learning about that self-awareness in my mind, in my brain, etc. And so what from that practice, which I've gone back to the 10-day retreat— I try to go every single year if I can, um, done several— and, um, as well as have a daily practice with it, I've kind of taken that into my, into my canvas, into my artwork, into my sport.

Yeah.

And this curiosity of the mind and where we can go in our mind and brain. And so one of my deep curiosity about Antarctica Africa, honestly, was yes, unlocking the physical potential inside of me, but as a gateway to do that, exploring the mind. And what better place to be alone in this endlessly white landscape? The sun never sets, there's no change of days. No dark. There's no dark. It's a blank white canvas. And like I said, I literally deleted almost all the media from my iPhone as to not, I actually had a couple School of Greatness podcasts, a couple of Rich Roll podcasts, a few podcasts, listened to a few albums out there. I listened to some Paul Simon, Graceland, a couple others, but there was very few. I spent 80, 90% of the time in complete silence. And it was a beautiful thing to explore that. So how did I tap into that flow? Like I said, some of these times it was 30 seconds. Some of the times it was a minute or two. But as I kept on these repetition of days exploring this place in my mind, sometimes it was days, 2 days, 3 days where the sequence of days would come through in high performance. And the stakes are high. It's 50, 60 mile per hour winds. I have no shelter. It's gone. It's 80 degrees wind chill, -80 degrees wind chill. But I'm finding the space in my mind that is locked in and calm. And the most kind of most profound experience of that was actually on my very last day. So it's worthy of mentioning, after the 6th day, I did catch up to Mr. Captain Lou Rudd and surpassed him and ended up in front of him the rest of the time. And I, on the 52nd day, I woke up and I'm 77 miles away from the finish. I'm thinking it's about 3 days, probably, give or take that. It's Christmas morning, and I wake up and I get outside of my tent, and the deepest flow state of my entire life just comes over me. I just realize— I recognize it. I say my mantra, I tap in, and I start exploring. When I'm in the deepest flow states, I'm also hyper-aware. And so I started thinking, like, how many more miles do I have to go? How much time would that take? Oh, it's 3 days, but what if I did it back back. What if I did it in one big final push? I've never gone more than 33 miles in an individual day, and I average about 15 to 17 miles a day. So I'm 77 miles away from the finish, and I'm 53 days in this expedition. But I get into this place in my mind that's so deep where I feel this strength and this power and this flow that I start to say to myself, whoa, we have this capacity as humans— not me, not me, but as humans. Humans, and I'm tapped into the vibration of my family and friends and the school kids that are following along, and just this radiant positivity that I'm shining out but receiving back in such a significant way that I tap into this flow. And for the next 32 hours, I don't stop.

Wow.

I continue onwards. I have to stop at hour 18 to put up my tent to melt a little bit of snow to get some more water because I'd ran out of water. Call home to my family. It's Christmas night. It's 7 PM for them on Christmas night. They're all gathered together They're like, "You did your best day ever, 18 miles, 18 hours. I can't believe it. You're almost a day or two from the finish." I was like, "I'm not stopping. I'm still going." And my mother, who's been a huge influence in my life, and certainly Jenna, my sister, these strong women who have just been like these amazingly positive influences on my life, they hear it in my voice. And of course, as a mother or as a wife or as a sister, you're a little bit worried. You know, your person is out there in this intense environment. But they just, they reflect now as they've told me the story from their point of view and they have it recorded on Christmas Day, this conversation that we had. And they were like, we could hear it in your voice. You were more focused and more clear than you've ever been. And they just said, I can't wait to hear from you in 12 hours. You're gonna cross this finish line and create history.

Wow.

Go live your destiny. That's crazy. And it was just this beautiful, beautiful moment of the mind. And I think, I mean, I'll say that coming back home and it was asked all these questions in the media and press, which is super humbling. And this question that kept coming up and it keeps coming up, which is, Colin, are you superhuman? And my question is simple. It's like, yeah, I'm superhuman. And so are you. And so are you. Like, what I'm tapping into in my mind is accessible to all of us. And like, yes, you may not want to walk across Antarctica by yourself. In fact, I don't blame you for not wanting to do that for seriously. But like, whatever it is you talk about— business, entrepreneurship, innovation, music, art, love, creation, positivity, whatever that is— like, that is within us. And that's what I tapped into out there. There, which is the most special thing for me to come back and be able to share, is, is that resonant positivity and the power that we all have within us.

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You know, it— what was cool about that really deeper flow was I said the clarity. And so it was actually two things happened. One, the passage of time started to feel feel different. 32 hours, I mean, if I told you to sit here at your desk for 32 hours, you'd be like, bro, it's like, come on. Or we climbed 29.029 for 35 hours. We're talking like, it's a long time to do something like that. And I'm just staring at this compass. I'm just literally staring at a compass in endless white space.

So you're looking at a compass the whole time?

Pretty much, 'cause it's very hard to, you can't even really see the distance in front of you, especially when it's whiteout and these blizzard conditions. I'm just staring at something.

Wow.

So you're just blank, 'cause blank would be in your mind.

You're pulling it around your waist or your shoulders?

Pulling it around your shoulders. Shoulders. I've got a compass strapped to my chest that I'm staring down at, and it's white on white. And sometimes— yeah, skiing, but like with skins on the bottom. So it's not like people think skiing, it's basically like glorified snowshoes. So it's got skins on the bottom just to give you a grip, but so you're not digging into the deep snow. So anyways, pulling this sled, but yeah, in that flow state, I'm thinking about what actually happened in those last 15 or 20 hours. And this was really cool, is that I realized that all the memories we have— so if I said, hey Lewis, um, tell me about your high school graduation, you probably have a memory pops in your mind right now, like I've got an image of that day. But then we're going to keep talking and we're going to talk about other things. You'll get distracted. But in that quiet space, in that flow state, the memories in my mind, even of the mundane, became so rich. And so I start thinking about all the points in my life, but I'm a 5-year-old kid on a swimming pool deck with my mom encouraging me to dive in for my first swim race. But I'm not there for a flash instant in my mind. I'm there and I can feel the wind blowing and I can see my mom on the other side holding a red towel. Towel, and I can see my sister who's going to race in the race behind me and all this. I started going back to driving to school with my sister Caitlin, actually, and we did that every single day to high school for years and years and years. We're siblings. Sometimes we would talk, sometimes we wouldn't talk. Sometimes we'd listen to music, sometimes we wouldn't. I actually could start to remember full sequences of 10, 15-minute drives over and over and over again. In this flow state, I was almost in this lucid dream state where I discovered that the memories, everything we've been through, even those memories you think like, that's not a part of me, or I've let that go, or that's not there, like they are there and in rich detail. And so in this flow state, I'm actually remembering all of the things that happened to me through my life to lead up to this moment. The kid in the swimming pool, the 22-year-old that got severely burned in a fire in Thailand, was told I would never walk again, spent 3 months in the hospital, my mom's, you know, recovery, helping me recover through that, and the creativity, triathlon, heartbreak in relationships, love, family, community, all of these things in this lucid detail, in this dreamlike state, walking across Antarctica for 32 hours to the finish line. It was an unbelievable experience.

Crazy, man.

Yeah.

Tell me about this burn in Thailand. What happened? When was this?

Yeah, definitely a pivotal moment in my life, to say the least. Just after graduating from college, I'd been a swimmer in college and, you know, didn't grow up with a lot of money as a kid, but I'd always dreamed like, hey, like one day I want to like see the world, you know. I had this kind of wanderlust inside of me. I grew up in Portland, Oregon, and glad that I grew up there because even though we couldn't travel far and wide, we, you know, my parents would take me hiking and biking in the outdoors and things like that, a place that really embraces that. But I'd never really been abroad, hadn't seen other countries much, anything like that. And so I'd been paying painting houses as a kid since I was 15 years old. And every summer I would save up, you know, $1,000 in my like life savings account. And so when I graduated from college, I had $10,000. I felt like I was like the richest man in the world, you know, like from 8 summers painting houses. And that was the money I also had to pay for like books and like, you know, day-to-day expenses. So it was just carving off this little amount every single year. But when I graduated, I had $10,000 and I was like, I'm gonna go travel around the the whole world as long as I can. And so I bought a one-way plane ticket and the first plane ticket was from the West Coast to New Zealand. But this is back in the day. You remember a place called STA Travel? It was like this student travel agency. This dates the story. So I graduated college in 2006. I think we're similar ages.

2005.

Actually, did I read your birthday is March 16th? Yeah. Me too.

No way.

Yeah, bro.

What year?

1985. So, yeah, yeah. My sister Caitlin, who I mentioned, is March 15th, '83. No way. Literally, literally. Actually, we've got some symmetry. We got some symmetry.

5 people on March 16th.

Yeah. So we're both March 16th. It's funny. I don't know. That popped up in something. I saw that. I was like, Lewis, you have the same birthday as me. That's cool. Anyways, so I set off in the world and the first stop in STA Travel tells me, oh, you're buying a one-way ticket for a student. You can actually stop and feed Fiji for free. And I'm like, great, for free? Like, heck yeah, sign me up. I'm just, I'm a 22-year-old kid just trying to like, you know, see the world a little bit. So I stop, and sure enough, on this tiny little beach in Fiji, on this island that you could walk around the circumference in 5 minutes, I meet Jenna, 2007, who's now my wife. Fiji, first stop of my trip, I meet this 20-year-old beautiful, uh, college girl who's on a study abroad in Australia. She's American, um, but I meet, I meet this girl, and it's kind of a chance encounter for a day or two, and then like I continue traveling and she moves back to Australia, but our lives can intertwine. And here we are married and she's the light of my life and the strongest anchor of everything that we've done. And so I'd say this trip started off to a good start.

Right, right.

Then I went and hitchhiked around New Zealand. I mean, I basically have no money. I'm hitchhiking, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, oatmeal, youth hostels, sleeping on floors, like, I mean, whatever I can get, you know. But just to be out in the world, it was amazing at the time. And I find myself on this rural beach in Thailand. An island called Koh Tao. And have you been over to Thailand before? I have. So you've probably seen there's fire dancing and poi balls and all this kind of stuff. And at 22 years old, when a bunch of people are jumping a flaming jump rope, I thought to myself, like, sure, why not? That looks like fun. And clearly hindsight is 20/20, because the rope, the flaming rope wrapped around my legs, lit me on fire, sprayed kerosene the length of my body, lit me on fire completely to my neck. I jumped into the ocean to extinguish the flames, which ultimately saved my life, but not before 25% of my body was severely burned, predominantly my legs and feet, and I'm here, I'm in Thailand, I'm in the middle of nowhere on a beach on an island. There's no hospital on the entire island, no ambulance, so I'm on a moped ride down a dirt path to a one-room nursing station, like the size of this room that we're sitting in right now, basically, with like one bed, and I have to go undergo 8 surgeries there, where there's a cat running around my bed in this makeshift ICU. And the worst thing is, the doctors are looking at me through this sort of broken translation of cultural and language barrier, saying like, you'll probably never walk again normally. Like the damage to your ligaments, the knee joints, the ankle joints, the depth of the burn, like it honestly, you're probably not gonna be like fully functional, you know, full mobility back again. And you know, obviously super dark time in my life, just this downward spiral, physical trauma, emotional trauma. I thought I was this young person seeing this world. How could I be so stupid? I'm down on myself, all these things. And the heroine of this story is my mother who's just this incredible woman. And I don't have kids yet, although that's something I would like another adventure I'd like to go on pretty soon, I think. But my mother comes in, and I can only imagine what it's like to be a mother to see your kid on the other side of the world in this makeshift hospital, bandaged to the waist up, having doctors say this. And I know now that she's afraid. She's in the hallways crying and pleading with the doctors, asking for good news, begging for anything. But she comes into my hospital room every single day with this smile on her face, with just this air of positivity. Where she's going like, "Colin, like, what do you want to do when you get out of here? Like, let's set a goal. Let's look towards the future." I'm like, "Mom, are you kidding me? Like, my life is over as I know it. Like, I'm never gonna be the same again. I mean, all I can see is the darkness." And she just fills me with this love and this positivity and leans in. And she finally says to me like, "Do me a favor. Close your eyes." I sit there, I'm like, "Okay, I'll play along." I close my eyes. She goes, "Visualize yourself. Just picture yourself in a positive light doing something in the future." future. And in that moment, for whatever reason, probably because I was an athlete, I guess, I see myself crossing a triathlon finish line. And I open my eyes and I go, fine, you want me to set a goal? And I'm kind of saying it as a precocious kind of kid just trying to play along with my mom a little bit. I'm like, you know what, one day I'm gonna race a triathlon. And I love my mother so much for this. Instead of her going like, oh, I said set a goal, but maybe within the parameters of what the doctors are saying your diagnosis is, or what whatever. She's like, great, that's what you're gonna do. Let's learn everything about triathlon. I've never raced a triathlon before. I swam in college, but I never like biked competitively, run competitively. I don't even know like how you change your shoes from a bike to a run. I don't know any of this stuff. But she's like, great, that's your goal. And so it was 3 months that I was in that Thai hospital, and I was finally flown back to the United States to Portland, Oregon, where I'm from. Haven't taken a single step. I was carried on and off the plane, placed in a wheelchair when I got home. And I'm in my mother's kitchen that first day, and my mom says to me, she goes, Colin, she goes, I know you've got this big triathlon goal, but you got to figure out how to take your very first step. And she grabs this chair from our kitchen table that I grew up, you know, eating around. She puts it one step in front of my wheelchair. She goes, I'm gonna leave the room, but your entire goal for the day is to get out of that wheelchair and take one step and show me that you can sit in that chair that's one step away from you. It was 3 hours staring at that chair, like, looking at it. I finally— I get up. 3 hours of courage and strength. I haven't taken a single step in months, and I take that one step. And the next day she moves the chair 5 steps away. And the next day 10 steps away. Each day a few more steps. And it went on like that for a year and a half. The steps turned into moving from the couch in the living room to the dinner table at night. And then one time I was like, I said, "Mom, I'm jogging." I'm literally shuffling down the street, probably like 30-minute mile pace. I mean, it's barely shuffling, but that day jogging just felt like flying. I'm just on top of the world. 'Cause I'm imagining myself racing this triathlon. And so sure enough, 18 months later, a year and a half after my accident, I'm trying to get my life together. I gotta get a job, I gotta get out of my parents' basement. I take a job in finance in Chicago. How old are you there? 23, maybe just turned 24. I take a job in finance in Chicago. I'd studied economics in school. And kind of trying to figure out my future, you know? Trying to do something, I guess. And I honor this goal. I said, I move to Chicago, and I was like, okay, they've got a big triathlon here. Chicago Triathlon at the time was the biggest race in the country. It was 5,000, 4,000 participants or something like that. So I sign up for the race, I train at this local gym asking these random people in spin class, again, how do you change your shoes? I mean, I know nothing. I know how to train 'cause I'm an athlete, but I'm like, recovering from this injury, I don't really know. And I show up at the Chicago Triathlon and I race the race and I finish the race. My grandmother, who's since passed away, she's at the finish line to congratulate me. Like, you did it, oh my God, you finished a triathlon. A mile swim, 25 miles bike, 6.2 miles run. It's an Olympic distance triathlon. And we go and we collect my bike, and the way triathlons work is like people start in different staggered waves of 100 or so people, and we come back around after having lunch. She goes, "Don't you wanna go check how you did in your age group, or see like how'd you did in the event?" And I'm like, "Sure, why not? Let's wander past the scorer's table." We wander past the scorer's table. I'm like, "Hi, trying to figure out what placement I'm in. What's your name?" Colleen O'Brady, go, "We've been calling your name over the loudspeaker." Speaker, you won the entire race.

Wow.

So I placed first out of 4,000-some participants in my first race ever, and it was a complete and utter surprise. Even crossing the finish line, because of the staggered start, I had no idea. I literally had no idea. People were finishing before I started because they started an hour before because they're in different waves and all this kind of stuff. And it was just this incredible moment when I really think about the entire sequence there, and I look for, you know, this was 11 years ago now when this of what's happened since then is it was in that moment that I didn't go like, oh wow, I'm the champion of Chicago triathlon. I'm so cool. I'm so amazing. What I thought about was like gratitude. Like what would have happened had my mom not come into that hospital room with this positivity, daring me to dream about the future, forcing me to set this tangible goal for the future. Where would my life have ended up, right? And so it's this moment where I look back and then I was like, Wait, I was able to do this? But I don't think of myself as special. I was like, as humans, I realized we all have these reservoirs of this untapped potential inside of us and can achieve these extraordinary things when we're focused, when we shine positivity and light, when we lean into those that we love and uplift and co-create together. And so really this journey that I've been on, these world record projects, ultimately I quit my day job as a finance trader and became a professional triathlete the next day, which is not like being an NBA player, MLB player, anything like that. Dads, it's like still sleeping on couches and floors, but I gotta race my bike around the world for several years. And it was an incredible journey to be up beyond, but it really started in that moment of turning this tragedy into a great lesson for unlocking potential inside of myself. And why I love, and I'm humbled to be able to share the story in the formats that I get to, is in the public speaking I do and podcasts like this, or through my art creations and my projects out in the world, is that what I want to shine out in the the world is this, this essence that we have this inside of us, that we really all have this ability inside of us to create and, and do incredible and extraordinary things with our life. And that doesn't mean like your name in a newspaper or having a tech exit or whatever. That's one type of high performance. But I mean like loving each other and leaning in and being happy and playful and enjoying life and co-creating, inspiring and lifting up all of the different ways that, you know, aren't necessarily the key metrics of success the way we think of them, but that's how I, how I define it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

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Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Like, there's— that's the, that's the easiest answer. Thank you for asking me a layup, a softball of a question.

How much could you create on your own without that support?

You know, I think that, you know, there was 20 years of my life before I met Jenna, and it's not like I was doing nothing. You know, I, you know, as a town talented athlete, swimmer, you know, collegiate athlete, those type of things. But ultimately, the next level came from this partnership, from this teamwork. And that, before I even met Jenna, although I had just met Jenna previous to this, it's having this, this strong mother that's influenced my life, these 5 sisters who brought me under their wing and teased me and played with me but ultimately loved me and uplifted me. You know, my mom, when she's interviewed about certain things, she says, careful what you wish for when you tell your kids they can do anything they set their minds to. And she says that because she still worries about me, of course, as a mother would when your kid's gonna go walk across, you know, Antarctica by himself. But she's proud of me. She's never held me back. She's encouraged me. But Jenna, in that partnership of that coming together of, of love and romantic love as well as business savvy and strategy and support, I could never have done it without that. And I recognize in saying that we all don't— in this moment in life when you're listening to this podcast, in this moment, like, maybe you're not in a romantic relationship, or maybe you are, or maybe you're the one that's not serving you, or maybe you're, maybe you're not. But whether that's your romantic partner, your best friend, your brother, someone you have yet to meet, I believe we are stronger together. And although it's an interesting thing to say because people have pointed out, like, if you just look at the top headline of the New York Times, man crosses Antarctica solo, it's like, oh, here's this guy completely by himself doing this badass thing that no one's ever done, like that couldn't be further than the truth of the essence of this. Like this is a, I am a compilation of all of the people who have put love and energy into me throughout my entire life, as well as the people that have sat in the trenches with me when I've had a crazy idea on a whiteboard and didn't say that's not possible. They said, cool, let's figure it out. Let's create. Yeah.

What's the mission moving forward? You're taking some time to recover.

Yeah. To eat, enjoy life. Yeah.

Um, you know, back at the whiteboard soon, or are you just kind of taking it all in right now?

You know, for me, I finished, um, 2 months ago yesterday, so it's only been 2 months since I finished. And actually, after finishing, I knew that Lewis Howes was just a few days behind me. And so as badly as I wanted to change those underwear and get out of there with a warm meal and get the heck out of Antarctica— I was pretty done with it— I wanted to honor him, and I waited at the finish line until he crossed. So I stayed there for a couple of extra days, waited for him to cross. He ultimately completed it, becoming the second person, the only other person on the planet that has done this crossing. And it was so amazing to be there, to be the first person to congratulate him on what was an extraordinary achievement as well. So that was kind of the first order of business. I stayed in Antarctica a little bit longer and then finally flew back to the United States. And I've been incredibly humbled by the press and the media and interviews and things like that. Been amazing in that regard. And the reason that I am proud of that, again, is not just because I like seeing my name in print, but more so it validates this art piece, this reverberation of positivity, and giving me this platform to speak about the things that I care about. And so having the opportunities now to, you know, I already was doing a bunch of public speaking before, but, you know, speaking at businesses and corporations, all the stuff that I do in schools with the school curriculums, I do with school kids and continue nonprofit work with Jenna and the stuff that we do there. I'm writing a book now. All these types of things is an amazing way to share this story. Are there other adventures on the horizon? Yes, I'm already of course sowing the seeds of those next adventures and ways that I can push my limits. But what I'm really passionate about in this moment is having this ability to kind of take a breath, take it all in and enjoy this moment and enjoy the ability to build off this platform that I've created to really share those human messages out in the world that I think are so important. One of the other, one of the other things that came into my mind when I was out there, it wasn't so much as a mantra, but this idea that kind of kept hitting me was these two words, which was infinite love. Infinite love. Infinite love. It just kind of kept playing in my mind, not so much as a mantra, but this realization that like love is not finite in this world. Positivity is not fine. It's not like a zero-sum game. Like if I'm happy one day, that means you have to be sad. Actually, and I think, I mean, your podcast is an incredible, you know, example of this in my opinion, of sharing and shining your light in the world and sharing that positivity. And so the more people doing that, and there's certainly people that have uplifted me to be able to have a moment in time right now where I have the ability to shine that back out in the world and have a multiplying effect on that. I love it when people reach out to me, you know, sharing the story every night on Instagram. I carried this satellite modem.

Crazy, man.

It took an hour to load one image every single night. So I'm exhausted at night writing this thing and this thing's like, it's worse than like a 1995 AOL dial-up modem. Like it's like, like it's super slow, one picture and it takes an hour. But I want to share it out. And it's amazing to have that come back and people having, hey, I followed you along and now I have started that business or I'm leaning into the love in my life or I'm, you know, I'm going to the gym for the first time. And this is having that, that sort of, it's like, oh, I I sent out this energy to the world and that's coming back. Not to pat me on the back, but it's like, not, hey Colin, I watched you do this, you're really cool. It's like, hey Colin, I watched you do this and now I am taking that energy you sent out and creating in my life. And when that person does that in their life, I can only imagine the 5 other people that's gonna touch or the hundreds of people that's gonna touch and the multiplying effect of that positivity. And so that's what I'm excited about doing. I think you know that better than anyone, the power of that.

Dang, that's cool. Who is the athlete you admire the most in the world, or respect? Who do you follow and admire?

God, that's an interesting question. I love that question.

It could be an adventurer or an athlete or any type of athlete.

I'm gonna say two. This is just off the cuff, the first thing that popped into my mind. This is truthful. When I passed Lou on the 6th day out there, I said I've spent most of the time in silence. This is a true story. It's not like a candid, I'm on the Lewis Howes podcast. I'm gonna tell Lewis Howes story. This is this true story. I happened to pop on your podcast and I had downloaded like maybe 10 episodes randomly, the top 10, the top, the most recent 10 right before I left. But again, I limited the content I had with me. And the first one I play is your Kobe Bryant interview. And when I had met you, it said, hey, I just did this Kobe interview.

I was like, gotta check it out.

It's exciting, you gotta check it out. And so I had it up there and you know, I've admired Kobe from afar, although I'm a Portland Trail Blazers fan through and through. So we have a little problem with the Lakers, but they will beat us a couple times down the stretch in the early 2000s when I was a kid. But there was something about that interview and his ethic that was so pertinent to where I was in that day.

Perfect for you.

When he literally says, he goes, I'm trying to stay ahead of Lou. This guy's more experienced than me. He's like more badass adventure outdoorsman than me with all the miles he's done in Antarctica. Narctica. And Kobe says in that interview, he goes, talks about being at the gym and being like, I'm just going to stay here longer than any other guy. I'm going to outwork him longer than any other guy. And so right in that moment when I'm in front of Lew, I actually clicked in and I go, okay, Lew and I are tied now. I was supposed to be out here for 10 hours. How long am I going to stay out here today? 1 hour longer than Lew. He goes 10, I go 11. He goes 11, I go 12. So it's, I would I would never have said before that Kobe Bryant was one of my favorite, but I'd say influentially in this moment, Kobe Bryant, that in his message of working and beating on the craft and him talking about studying the game film and the tape and all these things is a reflection of me as I work on my craft of public speaking or writing or creating these other projects. It's not only to look forward to the future, but to look back and learn these lessons from that. But that work ethic of working hard or harder than somebody else was really valuable in that moment.

And when do you feel the most loved?

Ah, it's a good question. I like where we're going with this. I like where we're going. This is great. Um, when do I feel most loved?

Is it when you accomplish something big? Is it when you're in strategy sessions? Is it when you're in the flow state? Is it when your mom says something to you?

There's, um, I was just having a conversation about this yesterday. Jenna, of course, is a nucleus of this, but a dear friend of mine, a guy named Blake Brinker, has been a huge influence in my life over the past couple of years, and particularly with helping me with some of my public speaking and things like that. And we're talking about one of the times that I felt the most loved actually was a couple years ago. I had the opportunity to give a TEDx talk, and as you know, if you've given one or not, but you seem like the type of guy that would have—

I've been asked to do—

I was gonna say, I'm Many people would want you to do that.

Yeah, waiting for teaching.

The right one, of course, sure, of course. I was honored by the invitation to do that, and that's not something you get paid to do or whatever, but again, it's just that it's a format that I love and I've always found inspiration in, so I wanted to take it very seriously. And we ended up having, you know, he was a tech founder working on something else or whatever, and he kind of stopped what he was doing for a couple of months and really dove into the ability to help me craft this story. And this is a story of the Seven Summits and the Explorers' Grand Slam and sort of talking through my journey, one of the first, one of the bigger public. This is a couple years ago. We ultimately called the speech "Change Your Mindset and Achieve Anything," and it's something I'm really proud of. But it's not the essence of that— the fact that it's, you know, 1.5 million views. I mean, that doesn't matter. The part that I felt loved in was that in a moment of creativity where I like had something I wanted to say but didn't know exactly how I wanted to say it and express it in the world, and Jenna was right there with me supporting me, a friend a friend who has no stake in this, who has nothing to gain from this, just loved me and said, "Let's create together.

Let's play.

Let's laugh." And we ended up— you know, it started out as being like, "I'll help you out for a couple, you know, hours and review a couple of drafts and like, let's hear you say your talk once." And it ended up me, Jenna, and him for 2 months, probably spending 100 or 200 hours. And yes, we created a TED Talk in the world that I'm proud of, but the love was this playful space of creation behind the scenes of us laughing, and we cried, and we got into real stuff, not just about me and my story, but about him and his story and his life and Jenna's life and all this. And so I love these shared experiences, whether that's climbing a mountain with a friend, whether that's having the tangible goal of creating a speech or art or whatever that is. Those are the moments where I feel— I think I'm, I'm also intertwining joy, but joy and love, um, in these moments of, of work and play and creation, innovation together.

Yeah, that's Yeah. What are we missing? Anything else you want to share? Where can people support you right now? What can they—

Yeah.

Jump on the next journey with you?

You know, you know, just, just base level, follow along on Instagram. That's a platform I'm most active on. It's just my name, @ColinOBrady. You know, love sharing my insights and visuals and images and my journey and path there. And certainly my next expedition or creation will be told through that lens as well as any other. So, and come say hi. I love it. I mean, I read my DMs. I love people, you know, saying hi to me, telling me what your plans are, your Everest, your canvases, whatever that is. I love hearing that. That's amazing. And I get so much inspiration from that. So, so come say hi on Instagram. Then @ColinOBrady is just my website. It's got all my speaking stuff and everything up there. So, you know, you can find me there. And as I'm working on writing this book, it's not out yet, but it'll be out next year. So I would love, love the support and love as I, as I go through that journey and, you know, people hopefully like what I have to say in that medium as well. Yeah.

Well, your Instagram just blew up over— I think you had like 10,000 followers when—

before. Yeah, I think it was like 30,000. That's like small.

And then it just— yeah, every day I just kept seeing it grow.

200 and something now and it's going up. So yeah, it's been fun to kind of dive into that platform. It's just, it's a fun way to reach people and talk to folks.

If you guys want to go go follow him right now. You can see the whole journey like day by day because he posted a photo I think almost every day.

Every day, yeah, every day.

And it was cool to just hear, like, to read the captions and learn what you were thinking and what you were going through. So if you guys want to really kind of follow along, you can go follow you and watch that. Yeah, a couple months back. Um, this is called the 3 truths, this question. I think you might have heard it from the Kobe interview. So imagine it's your last day. You've accomplished every dream that you've written up on a whiteboard. You've 100 world records or whatever you want to do.

All the world records.

Every world record, you own them. Uh, you're the first to do every crazy thing. You're still alive and happy and healthy, but you got to pick the day you got to go. It could be 100-something years from now, but it's the last day. Uh, and every book you've written and thing you've done, you've got to take that information with you so no one has access to the content anymore. But you get to write down 3 things you know to be true about all your experiences, the 3 lessons that you would share with the world, what would be your 3 truths?

Hmm, it's a good one. I think the first one I would say is achievement is not for the select few. It's for the person who can overcome what I think is the greatest obstacle of all, but our own minds. And the second you can tap into that mindset, there is that reservoir of untapped potential waiting to released by you. By you. You are the creator of that. So that was a lesson that I would definitely share with the world. So that's number one. Um, second of all, I said this before, but infinite love. Infinite love. Infinite love. This reverberation of the abundance of love that we have the capacity to both love ourselves, share out in the and the importance of that and how we can all uplift and create in that way. And third, I'm gonna go with this mantra that certainly just changed my life. I would just write it down on this paper that you just said, this paper that I could leave behind for someone else to read. You are strong, you are capable.

I love that, man. Well, I gotta acknowledge you, Collin, for your infinite love. When I first met you in the tent You just exuded this joyfulness. Even when we were climbing up and just dying, you were just like smiling and just talking along, pushing us forward with your energy. So I appreciate your inspiration. I acknowledge you for completing this. It's unbelievable you completed this thing when no one's ever done it. And the push you give people, you know, you striving to be your best and be superhuman allows other people to do the same. So I acknowledge you for all the gifts you bring in the world. And I also acknowledge you for— you're not like this specimen of a freak athlete.

Yeah, you know what I mean?

You're not like this prototypical looking shredded, like, super speedy fast guy. Yeah, you look like an average looking dude.

Yeah, not a bad— I know what you mean, but you look like an average looking athlete.

Yeah, but you're able to push your mind past boundaries that most fit athletes can't. And that's what I acknowledge you for, showing us what's possible.

Thank you.

Even when it doesn't seem that way. So I acknowledge you for that, my man. Um, we can follow you on Instagram @ColinOBrady, website, get your book when it comes out. And what's your definition of greatness? Final question.

Definition of greatness. I think too often greatness is thought to be the amount of dollars in your bank account or the amount amount of Instagram likes or whatever external metrics are in there, but I'll choose something that is— that I've sort of tapped into, which is impact. And so, you know, the amount of millions or billions or trillions or whatever you have, a reverberation of your impact on others and that infinite love that you shine out there, that's greatness to me.

Colin, thanks, brother.

Thanks.

I I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

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