From Extreme Fear to Extreme Sports + Crossing Antarctica On Foot (Akshay Nanavati)

You seem very calm for somebody that's an ultra, ultra, ultra endurance athlete.

Yeah.

What's that all about?

That. So the birth of this desire to play on these edges, it. It started when I was in the Marines. I joined the Marines, and that taught me the gift of suffering, of pushing myself onto an edge and to see my ability to transcend it, not just in service of my highest self, but in the Marines, especially. Living for others, living for the mission. The mission that transcends you. Right. And from there, I then started getting big into outdoor sports. So I. In every outdoor sports you can think of, because before this, I was scared of everything. Scared of heights. So I went rock climbing, mountain climbing, skydiving, Scared of tight spaces. So I went caving, cave diving, scuba diving, kind of, you name it. Every outdoor sports you can think of. Deployed to Iraq in 07, struggled a lot. After the war, it was. Hit rock bottom from drinking heavily, ptsd, depression, was on the verge of suicide, and I'm kind of jumping steps. We'll come back to it. Just to answer the. Answer the question.

There's a big history behind the weight of this question, and I want to respect all that history. Slowly.

Yeah.

No, I can feel the bolus of that history as to why it fuels you to do what you do.

Yeah. Because that was where it started. And then after hitting that rock bottom, you know, I started delving deep into neuroscience, psychology, spirituality, and I found my salvation playing on these edges, pushing myself, especially in the most extreme environments on the planet. Because out there, especially in nature, when nature acts out of hostility, it is not with intent or malice. The hostility in nature simply is. It's not attacking you. It just is. And the purity of that, that isness. It allows you to be a mirror to your own soul. And so I go out there to essentially, initially, especially. And now, it's just taken a deeper and deeper form, but to open doors into my own soul, into even the human soul that haven't been opened before, and to see what I would find, you know, in, like, in. In the movies and the legends, you have to battle the dragon to find the treasure. The bigger the dragon, the greater the treasure. And to me, out of all the outdoor sports have been blessed to experience. And I've really. It's been a privilege to have tapped into kind of every one of them. Polar travel is more suffering than any of them. It's negative 30 minus 40 minus 30 minus 40.

Yeah.

But even more so than often, it gets compared to, let's say, climbing mountains or Everest. And when you're climbing mountains, you know, as you go up and down the mountain, the views change, it's dynamic, the, the terrain changes. You take rest days to acclimatize. Often the environment forces you into flow. Like when I was on Denali, there's a ridge at thousand feet. It's so thin, you're putting one foot in front of the other and there's a thousand foot drop on each side. So your mind can't wander. Yeah, it's right in front of you. In that next step in polar travel, you're doing the same damn thing over and over and over again in empty white nothingness. For the most part, other than a few sections of Antarctica where I'll seem some mountains, Antarctica is empty white nothingness. So the monotony of that, it, it, it allows your mind to wander. And that's both a luxury, but it's also a burden because when your mind wanders, time can feel one minute can feel like a lifetime out there. So the draw, and especially now, why, to do this full crossing of Antarctica that's never been done before, part of it has never been done. So you're playing on the farthest edges, right? It's the last great unaccomplished feat in Antarctic exploration that hasn't been achieved.

Why hasn't it been?

It's very, very daunting to do a full crossing coast to coast with no kites or dogs. People have crossed it with dogs and with kites. But I mean literally. The expedition manager at ALE has said, ALE is Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions. They track and manage logistics for every adventure in modern history. The expedition manager there has said anyone who attempts this will probably fail. It's that big to pull off a 1700 mile crossing. And I'm dragging all my own food, all my own supplies, right? So I'm dragging £400 worth of food with fuel, all the supplies out there covering that distance and 110 days of complete isolation for sections of the journey. I will be the geographically the most isolated human being on the planet with.

No ability for contact whatsoever to other people.

There will be contact. I have a sat phone, okay, so if things go horribly wrong, you know, you call them. Like when I was in Antarctica two years ago, I lost two fingers to frostbite and when I got frostbite we called, called a sat phone to evacuate me. So that option is there for most of the journey. There's only one glacier or where they, where they can't pick you up on that glacier. But other than that, evacuation is a possibility.

Okay. Actually. Why?

Why?

Like why? There's something in your heart and soul. I don't know if you plan to wear this, but it reminds me of Carl Jung's tree in his quote where he says, you can't reach the branches of the tree to heaven unless the roots grow to hell.

The back.

No, I don't know if you plan to wear that.

The back of the shirt is one of my Fear of Honor shirt. It says, the greater your demons, the greater the divinity required to rise above them.

Yeah. And there's even a yin yang.

That's the Fear of Honor logo.

Okay.

Ye.

So I. Yeah, you really breathe and walk your brand. I can feel that. And. But still, the ultimate question is why? Why would one go to the depths of hell like that?

Every big goal, I believe, should have two motivations. Selfish and selfless. Selfishly, for me, it is an access point to enlightenment. When you go into those spaces, the depths of solitude, the depths of suffering. In that level of silence, you really start to hear. You hear God, the universe, consciousness, whatever you want to call it. You hear the things you don't get to hear. In the distraction of the world, especially at those. Those depths right out there on those edges, life is amplified. The volume of life is dialed as high as it can go. So the highs are as high as possible, but the lows are also as low as possible. And so you get to experience the intensity of the human condition at its rawest, at its most amplified out there. And that while extremely hard, because, as I said, the lows are so low, it is a privilege to experience that out there in these playgrounds. You also, when I say enlightenment, to me, what that means is you get to see the oneness of all that is coexisting in nature. And here's what I mean by that. In life, there's a series of dualities that encompass the human experience, right? Life and death, masculine, feminine, pain, pleasure, ego, humility, contentment, discontentment, suffering, play. All of these, right? The fear and nirvana. Even fear of honor is essentially two seemingly contradictory forces that do in fact coexist. Now, in. In the world, in conventionally, in society, we often demonize one side of any duality as bad. Ego is bad, the darkness is bad, Fear is bad, pain is bad. We have a negative relationship to one side. They're not bad. Every side is neither bad or good. It simply is true mastery, spiritual awakenings. Enlightenment is the recognition, and I don't just mean the conceptual recognition, the inner knowing that two of these forces can Coexist and must coexist as one. Neither is bad, neither is good. You can be with and live with and embrace both simultaneously. When you play on these edges in nature, you get to experience that in a very visceral way. For example, in Antarctica, it is the most humbling place on Earth. It's massive. You are nothing out there.

When you breathe in the air, it's like, do you have to have, like, a certain temperature increase? Do you have to wear gear that increases the air temperature?

No, it is cold. Obviously, your lungs just adapt. Yeah. You deal with it. You can manage it out there. But it's so, so humbling because it is so powerful. So powerful. You're small out there. When you're being hammered by winds, I mean, hurricane force wins. Right. Unforgiving cold, it makes you realize how small we are. But at the same time, you feel all powerful out there because you simply by stepping in that playground to control your reality, to be there, to survive, to thrive out there, you feel more powerful than you've ever felt. It's an experience of both power and surrender, control and surrender, ego and humility. All these forces. So selfishly, it's that tapping into that.

Yeah.

Selflessly. It's to bring back the wisdom from the edge. Because everybody's battling their own polar storm. Everybody has their own version of an Antarctica to cross. And because I get to go so far out onto the edge, and it is a privilege. Right. I get to. I get to choose my own.

It's not cheap. It's like a million dollars.

It's like 7-800-7508.

That's what this entire campaign is about.

Exactly.

To support you. People can actually sponsor each part of the trip.

Go.

Be with you energetically.

Exactly.

Pretty amazing.

Thank you, brother. Thank you. So it's not cheap. And again, I get to go there. But by going there, as I was saying earlier. Right. You're opening doors into the human soul that have very rarely been opened. And that gives me access to wisdom. I'm simply a messenger for this wisdom. Like, I wouldn't be here with conversations, having this conversation with you and many others. And when I speak and without having access to this wisdom. So as a messenger of this wisdom that is. That is that you can receive from the edge, it's my responsibility and my role to bring it back and help others navigate their own polar storms.

Okay. How do you. So you're on this edge. Right. And it's a pretty serious edge.

Yes, it is.

I mean, if nobody's ever done something you have got to be feeling natural, human, rational fear because there's irrational fear, right? Like, oh, my God, is she gonna like me? It's like, well, that's irrational. Oh, my God, there's an edge. Oh, my God, I'm out in the middle of nowhere and there could be white caps that devour me or a polar bear come and eat me or whoever the hell knows. Like, that's. That's rational fear. How do you deal with the rational fear of your spiritual quest?

You use your fear to prepare. I actually. And with all due respect, I actually don't use the term, or don't like the term irrational fear, because fear is a. Fear is a response to stimuli that you don't control. So you can't just as you won't judge the liver, for example, as rational or irrational. It simply is. The subconscious is mostly beyond our control. It's entirely beyond our control. So when the brain responds to fear, I don't deem it rational or irrational because it simply is assigning a judgment to. It has. In. In my experience of navigating it on some of these edges, it demonizes the experience of that fear. So whenever fear shows up, it just is however it shows up. Right. So for me, whether it shows up, and to be clear, you met my fiance. I was more scared going on a date with my fiance than I am doing all the crazy shit that I do.

Yeah, we're talking about that.

What's not like kink. It's not exaggerating. Okay. But I use fear to prepare. So for the. With the fear for Antarctica, it is a reasonable fear. It can kill. It can. I mean, it's not a huge chance of death, but it's very scary. I will suffer. There is obviously a possibility of death, but I use that fear. One of my many mantras is fear propels you to prepare when you engage it. So one of the things I do, like even writing my book, fear of honor, I was terrified scared. Is it going to be judged badly? People are people and think I'm stupid. So when I have a big quest, like writing a book or going to Antarctica, I'll write down, what am I scared of? What's the worst case scenario? How do I prepare for the worst case scenario? And that's the ticket there. You know, in. Astronauts actually do this and they call it negative visualization. Visualize all the things that can go wrong.

Yeah.

This is not just about like, oh, everything is sunshine, rainbows. It's not. It's important to actually visualize all the Things that can go wrong. Because now you can prepare for that. So I am terrified and I want to be scared if I actually, every once in a while, if I start getting complacent in the day to day, I will like, activate the fear by reading a book about polar travel, watching some videos to remind myself what is coming. The storms, the horrors. Yeah. So I use fear to prepare.

See, the vibe that I get from you is different, though. Like, I've had on a pretty big handful of like, endurance athletes and even extreme athletes, and they run around the Austin community as well. And some of them, I get the essence from them that they're almost like addicted. They're fear junkies where they just want to feel that. That roller coaster, that high from like, doing the thing. I don't get that from you yet. I liked what you said. There's no such thing in your nomenclature about irrational. Irrational fear.

Yeah.

I think to juxtapose both of those, it's like this. I think to feel fear is to be human. Exactly. Because otherwise why would the creator that created us, whether it's God, universe, spirit, whatever you want to call it.

Yeah.

Why would that be something that we all universally.

Exactly.

So there's a universal lesson for us, and I think we put different words on fear, like irrational and rational, just to understand it. Maybe from my NLP training or whatever I've done with behavior change and just understanding how the mind works.

Yeah.

It's like we want to so badly use our mind to understand the mind self, yet really, in order to understand the mind, we have to allow it to be connected to the body and the heart. There's no way around that.

Yeah.

And I think we've intellectualized the shit out of this. We've intellectualized fear so much that it actually perpetuates more fear. What do you make of that?

Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. It is a very just. It's a human emotion. And all these emotions, fear, stress, anxiety, guilt, sadness, anger that we label as quote, unquote bad.

Yes.

It's the label of bad. It's the assignment of the judgment of the emotion that causes more problems than the emotion itself. The second you accept the isness of the emotion, become aware of the emotion, accept the isness of it without judging it, without deeming it bad, and simply embrace the isness of it, then you can use any emotion as fuel to drive you into something better. Because the truth is there's no bad emotions. There's no good emotions. There's only emotions.

That's right.

It's up to us.

They're literally just guideposts.

Exactly.

They're just trying to get our attention.

And they all have value, all of them. Any emotion, when you consciously engage, it has value to help you, drive you forward. Like, for example, even coming back from the war, I struggled a lot with survivor's guilt. And I had lost a friend to the war. Like, when I was in Iraq, my vehicle drove over an active bomb that didn't explode for some reason. My friend's vehicle, when he was in Iraq, drove over a bomb, it exploded and he died. Who knows why that happened, right? And I struggled with that for a long time. And everybody told me, don't feel guilty. It's not your fault. And I get it. In war, bullets fly where they fly. Bombs explode as they explode. You can't control that. Yeah. But the guilt wasn't the problem. The only reason I felt guilt was it was an expression of love for my brother. And even though rationally I understood how war works emotionally, that guilt was my love. Right. It wasn't a bad emotion. So instead of demonizing it or trying to make it go away, when I went kind of deep down this path, after hitting that rock bottom, to heal, to figure myself out, I reframed it. And I actually, for a long time, put a picture of my friend up on my wall. And it said, this should have been. You earned this life. My guilt became my ally. My guilt became fuel to drive me forward. And any emotion can.

But guilt and shame, if you look at Hawkins scale, are at the very bottom. I mean, they vibrate at like 50 or 100. So how do you take something that vibratory energetically, actually isn't a sustainable fuel source? How do you. You obviously had to transcend that guilt and. And morph it into something else, because guilt is not a sustainable emotion to drive you forever. That's how people actually get sick and cancerous from guilt and shame. How do you do that?

It's about using it as you need it. So as I said, right. Like, for a long time, I had that picture of my friend up on my wall, and the guilt served me. Until it didn't. Yes, I got. So it worked for me. It helped me sober up. It helped me write my book Fearvana. And then it became too much. And then I had to take that down because now it was too much. So any emotion, when you transcend it, so the way you kind of make it work for you, I'll explain it. You had a picture of Buddha So let me quote Buddha for you. Buddha said, we're all stabbed by the two darts of suffering. The first dart is the one we don't control. So let's say, for example, somebody comes into this room with a gun, I'm gonna feel fear. I'm not choosing it. It responds to an external stimulus. Yeah, yeah. I don't control that response. Right. I was working with a client, for example, was going to Iceland on his own. He was feeling fear because he had never traveled on his own before. And the problem was not that the second dart is what we do with that first dart. The second dart of suffering is the real cause of suffering. That's when instead of. So instead of just feeling the fear. For example, my client in. When as he was traveling Iceland, he looked at all the things I do and be like, what's wrong with me? Why am I scared? You do all this crazy shit that you do and you're not scared. Comparison, I'm a piece of shit. Literally, his words. I'm a weak piece of shit. Why? What's wrong with me? I shouldn't be feeling this. Demonizing, the emotion, all of these things. The second dart of suffering is the real cause of suffering. And this. And what happens is, unless we pause that spiral, right? And we all can relate to this, we feel an emotion. And even the biggest names in personal development say, anxiety is bad, stress is bad, fear is bad. That was what even inspired me to write Fear of Honor. And to get down this rabbit hole to wreck it, to help combat the demonization of these quote, unquote, negative emotions. Because that's the first start. We don't control most of what happens in our brain. We're driving down the street, Cut. Somebody cuts me off, I want to murder that person that I choose. That thought, it arises. Most of our thoughts, most of our feeling, they arise without our awareness. That's the first start. So guilt was the first start. It was an expression of love. It's the second dart that gives us power. And if you don't step in consciously, with awareness, with purpose, with intention, then you go down that rabbit hole of what I call second dart syndrome. It's just that inner dialogue we can all relate to, right? That negative spiral. Instead, you pause. Got it. I'm feeling this emotion. It's not bad, it's not good. What do I do with it? You then transcend it. You then use it as fuel to help you. But just like you said, you can't use. You don't want to stay on that edge. Only Right. I was talking earlier about the dualities. So if you look at the duality of pain and pleasure, or any duality, if you live too far on that duality, that's when it gets unhealthy. Even pain and pleasure, we all know comfort, too much of it is a bad thing, but comfort inherently is not a bad thing, right? I want to be comfortable when I'm not suffering extremely. I enjoy my comfort, pain and pleasure. Pain is not bad, but too much of it can cause problems. Too much pleasure can cause problems. So it's about even the way I navigate and prevent myself from going too far on the edge. People have asked me, right? Doing what I do. People who go too far down the edge in the world of adventure, they often die doing what they do because they push that line so far. Especially in Everest, especially in mountaineering, solo climbing, things like that. Exactly. The way I make sure I don't go too far down that edge is if I find myself playing too far on an edge of any duality, I'll go play on the other edge of it. So even with guilt, even with pain, for example, like, there was a few years ago, I went on a run, and I saw this sign that said 5k fun run. And I had visceral disgust at the idea of a fun run. Not even, like, a conscious choice. I was like, you don't run for fun. This is bullshit. Everyone should be suffering. That wasn't healthy.

What year was that?

This was a long time ago now. It was a while ago. I've kind of navigated that since then. But every. Every run to me was, it has to be suffering. I felt like suffering was the. Was like I had gotten so comfortable with suffering that I was bringing it in all areas of my life. And I was like, this is not healthy either, Right? So now I started playing on the edge of fun. Playing on the edge of play. Like, I would go to a retreat, for example, and they'd be doing dancing during breaks. I would be. I would like. I would rather do 100 burpees in the corner than dance there. So now I started doing fun things, light things, playful things, singing and dancing while I'm in the car. So to your point about why I came in and why I'm also light and not because I'm playing on those edges. So as much as I am about embracing the hard, my fiance will tell you I'm the softest person you ever. She was like, dude, you're way more romantic than I imagined I thought you'd be. You know, some hard ass. But she was shocked at how romantic I was, how soft I was.

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