Apolo Ohno's Masterclass in Resilience

Olympic speed skating champion Apolo Ohno opens up about his emotional battles after a race loss, his father's influential and rigorous upbringing, and the challenges faced by athletes post-retirement. He shares his experiences on 'Dancing with the Stars' and his subsequent rise to fame, emphasizing the importance of nature, gratitude, and having a supportive 'board of directors'. Apolo delves into his transition from professional sports to various ventures, highlighting the lessons learned and the mental health struggles many athletes face.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I had this initial reaction that was very depressive, like bitter, angry,
wanting to point the finger and didn't want to surrender
to the outcome. And the outcome was that the race
was completed and I could no longer change the result
of that particular race, whether I loved it, whether I
hated it. This was a masterclass in stoicism.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Straight up, right on right, like, yeah, man, I had
to let it go.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
I had to let it go, and I had to
clean the slate. I had to clear the brain, clear
the mechanism to prepare for the next race, because I
had more races to race and I had another chance
at winning more medals. I think that's the false city
exists of the male experience. Until you're quiet and you're alone,
and you're going through the comparison game, and you're comparing
against your friends and those are who are successful, and

(00:48):
you start making mistakes in your life, or your marriage fails,
or your partnership fails, or your family fails, or your
health fails or and then these cracks in your table,
the legs that are the sturdy part, they start to
get a little bit wobbly, and that's when it gets tricky.
For athletes is when they start to question their worth
and you start to wonder and maybe I'm not here

(01:12):
for any of it. Maybe the universe put me just
here to go and fucking circles my whole life. Maybe
that's what I was, the only skill set and value
I have on this planet, which is not true, which
is not true at all. But you start to listen
to that voice or wowow, I got this amazing offer
for you dancing with the Stars, And I'm like, what

(01:33):
the hell are you talking about? Like, and so I
had to watch the show. I was, you know, they
sent me some clips to the show and I was like, oh, EMMITTT.
Smith did this show. I love EMITTT. Smith. He's like
a badass. He made it. He made like dancing so
smooth and so cool. I was like, if I can
dance like Emmett, I'm gonna win the damn thing. And
I told Lea, I said, all right, here's a deal.
I'm gonna I'm gonna do the show, but I have

(01:55):
to win.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
Here.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Here are welcome to the Sino Show. Apollo, my brother, dude,
we made this happen.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
It's a long time coming, but it's good to see you.
Good to hear your voice.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
It's good to see you too. Are you in Miami
right now?

Speaker 1 (02:15):
I'm in Miami.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah, And it's like seventy six degrees out.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
It's actually eighty you know.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Oh my god, I'm so jealous. You get in the
water this morning. You do your whole thing.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
I did the whole thing this morning, as long as
it's not raining, and sometimes even when it's raining, I
try to get out there.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
And what is your morning routine these days?

Speaker 1 (02:32):
I wake up between six and seven. I kind of
mope around for a bit. I try to get out
to watch the sunrise every single morning. So this time
of the year, the sunrise hits about like six point fifty,
so I'm usually out there. Sometimes I'll do it with
a cuple of green tea. I'll just do it with

(02:53):
a couple of hot water. It just depends. I watch that.
I just you know, I try to soak it up
as much as possible. Then I come back aside and
I go, you know, prepare for my day. I go
work out in set my mind. I try to do
something that sucks early and I just get back into
work almost right away right after that. And then the

(03:14):
day kind of flows as it is, but I try
to move my body at least once a day.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
Pretty going, right.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Yeah, So listen, man, we have lots to talk about
Broiler and that amazing documentary on HBO Weight of Gold,
which you were heavily involved with. Michael Phelps said, none
of us came from normal childhoods. Security start there, Start
with your upbringing, your relationship with your pop, all that stuff.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
It's really something. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
I look, I grew up in the Seattle region. My
father is a Japanese immigrant who came to the US
with no money. Kind of typical story. Began his life, struggled,
had me, decided to take full custody to me. My
mom my father divorced at a really early age, and
my dad felt much more suited to kind of take
control of the situation. My mom was really young when

(04:08):
she when she had me, and so when they separated,
my dad just began to raise me as this quasi
kind of deep Japanese cultural influence mixed with this New
Age Americana, which which he was seeking, right. My father
came to United States because he was hungry to pursue
the American dream of freedom of expression of all the
things that you know, you come here and you do

(04:30):
the work, there's extraordinary things that could happen. So growing
up in a single parent household, I was very active
as a kid, played all different types of sports. My
father was the atypical tiger father, so to speak, so
he had My dad just he pushed me so hard
in all activities, whether it was rooted in academia, really

(04:51):
rooted in music and play of acting, reading, sports of course,
and because growing up in a sing a parent house,
my dad was working almost all of the time trying
to provide for us. I didn't grow up with a
lot of money. And the process of me really getting
I think integrated into the world of sport really began

(05:11):
because I had nothing else to do and that was
the only place for the outlet of the excess energy
that I had that could be directed in a positive perspective.
So I was a swimmer. I did all the traditional
American stick and ball sports baseball, basketball, football, track and field.
I remember when I was like thirteen, fourteen years old,
the kids who were in my school, I mean I
was probably really small, so I don't remember, but I

(05:33):
just remember they were like giants, Like these guys are
built out of granted.

Speaker 3 (05:36):
At fourteen years old, oh my god.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
Yeah, so very quickly, I knew that football was probably
not going to be the thing. Basketball was out track
and field. Like these guys were so fast twitched. They
looked at these beautiful race horses. I remember after school
one time we were doing the track practice and I
was next to my two friends, Dimitri and Adrian. They
were these twins in my school, and they were so
genetically superior. I just remember, like they therebers and their

(06:00):
calves were like all screening. I just looked like a short,
like chubby kid who was eating cereal every morning.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
Right, Oh man, that's beautiful. Wow. Yeah, even then you
knew how to line up the competition.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah, I was competitive. And then my dad saw that
I had a real natural knack and talent for speed skating,
which started in the world of roller skating, which you know,
because in Seattle it rained so much the Friday and
Saturday nights. Typically in my neighborhood, the parents would drop
the kids off at the local roller skating rink and
they would go there for a couple of hours and
listen to music and meet up with their friends. And

(06:35):
that's where I learned how to actually skate like roller skate,
and then that transferred into inline skating, and then I
joined the inline skating team. So this is I'm about
twelve years old. Just to give you some context about
like the pressure my dad put it. At really early age.
When I was twelve and a half years old, I
was getting invites to be a part of the local
roller skating training club.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
Right.

Speaker 1 (06:56):
It's like a local is really small, and they had
these local competitions and national championships in Lincoln, Nebraska, and
my dad didn't have time to take me to the
roller skating rank because he was working in downtown Seattle
and it was it was quite far from me to
bike there from my house. And so what he did
instead was he used to wake me up at three
thirty four o'clock in the morning and then he would
drive me to these empty school and church parking lots

(07:19):
and he would tape this miner's light on my helmet
when I was twelve and a half years old, and
he would force me to skate around in these empty,
empty church parking lots. You know, I had they had
the street lights like with the parking lot lights. And
then we had an old beat up like Volkswagen Bug
or something, but Volkswagen Rabbit. At the time, this this
car was so shitty. I remember we always break up
now and my dad he had he was out there

(07:42):
with his clipboard. I don't know what the hell this
guy was rinning down, but he's just like taking notes,
right I'm twelve and a half years old. He's like
he's building some sort of a machine. And it was
that my memory served me correctly that that was the prespice,
you know, of my father trying to inject this ideaology
that many times in life you will be at a

(08:04):
significant disadvantage and you got to show up and you
got to figure out another way. So like, I don't
recommend anyone doing that now to their kids, right, it's
probably not the most conducive the.

Speaker 3 (08:13):
Rest of her trial and days.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
Right now, my god, back there, it's called you just yeah,
pushing your kid right on?

Speaker 1 (08:18):
Yeah. And I my dad, my dad, by the way,
who's a who's like a He owns a hair salon
in downtown Sea I cuts hair for a living, still
owned it forty five years, same location. And I remember
my dad said that he would tell his his clients
that he was doing this to his son, and his
clients would like stop, like you keep you can't do that,
Like that's not OK.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
My Dad's like, what are your doubt? Your dad was
a philosopher, he.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
Was tapped in. But on the nutrition side, my dad
was like thirty years ahead of the game. So my
dad was seeking ways to buy from like local farmers,
really cheap produce and meat and vegetables and food that
was all organic. It wasn't labeled organic, but it was
organic right from these farmers long time ago. And I

(09:06):
was like, I was like, yeah, why do we have
to drive all the way out here to get this
fruits and berries and stuff? And he's like, oh, because
there's no passicides spray on. So somebody was teaching him
about early early early. I remember if you know how
everyone drinks green juices in La, like it's pretty like
wise man. He used to call it like the power smoothie.
I swear to god, this guy would make me these
power smoothies. It was like spinach and banana and like

(09:30):
be pollen and like Siberian gin saying. And I was
like thirteen years old, right wow.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
But Paul Beck, I mean, were you like it's three
in the morning or three three in the morning, You're
driving out there, Like, were you like, Dad, I don't
want to do this.

Speaker 3 (09:44):
Were you like yes, sir no, sir uh.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
In the beginning, I just you know, you kind of
go along with it because your dad. But eventually you
really despise getting up that early. And I remember one
time I was complaining and I was telling my dad
I really, you know, basically, I want to quit. And
I this was a really powerful moment because he had
pulled over and he was really upset because he had

(10:08):
I don't know what other stresses he had going on.
I'm assuming there was a lot of stress going on
in his life, but he he he pulled over and
he almost like tried to force me to tell him
the exact reason why I was going to quit. And
it was really painful to actually go through that exercise,
and he didn't and he didn't let me quit. Eventually,

(10:30):
you know, I think we kind of grew out of
that phase of waking up so early. But that's just
that was like the level of intensity that my dad
pushed me in.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
And yeah, and but Apollo, when did it When did
it become clear to you? And your father that you
had an extraordinary gift like what I mean early, but
like when he's like, oh, we could actually really do
when did that happen?

Speaker 1 (10:55):
Well, if he talked to my dad, my dad will
tell you that I had extraordinary gifts when I was
very young. Of course, I probably didn't see any extraordinary
gift until even though I was showing and exhibiting amazing
signs of physical and athletic talent very early. Like I
was breaking like state championship records in swimming when I
was like twelve, thirteen years old, like stuff like like that.

(11:17):
It held for like twenty years, and I had no
idea right what that even meant. I was too young.
But when I first made the team to go to
Lake Placid, So there's a junior development program where they
prepare athletes. Think of this as like a preparatory junior
Olympic training program before you go to the big leagues.

(11:38):
Think about the minor leagues going to the big leagues.
That's what it was like for the winter athletes that
would go to Upstate New York and train in Lake Placid.
So I was fourteen years old when I received this invite,
and you know, I eventually made my way out there.
But when I was there was when I realized that
I had I didn't know that I was that good.
I just, you know, almost like you're kind of naive,

(12:00):
so everything seems really simple. That's the beauty of childlike
play when you're in these moments of flow, is that
you're so good. Uh, it doesn't really matter that there's
a really famous and people who are maybe listening to
this don't don't remember, but there was a very famous
match between this young phenom prodigy and Stephanie Graff. This

(12:21):
you know, female tennis player, amazing Steffie Graff, and Stephanie
was playing against this I think she might have been
fifteen years old, maybe even fourteen. Her name was Jennifer
Capriotti and Jennifer Capriotti. I don't remember if she I
can't remember if she beat Stephfie Graff, but there was
some points where she did like completely dominate the set.

(12:42):
And someone had asked Jennifer much later like why, like
why did you think that you had the kind of
resilience or even the the ability to step up with
someone who's a legend. And when she, you know, she said,
she's like I just didn't see why I couldn't. So
the simplicity that exists when you when you haven't yet
f pain, I guess that's the real story. Like you
don't have the scars and the callouses yet that restrict you.

(13:06):
There's a beautiful thick a young child who's playing and
they're creating something. They're not thinking about the consequence of
losing yet because they haven't felt that. They don't know
the pain of that. So it's all about infinite possibility
and just trying and trying and trying. And that's what
it was very early, was that I had this raw
natural talent, had a great u mentor and coach who

(13:27):
saw that natural talent, was able to hone in and
harness the power of that through structured training, through you know,
some psychological work of helping me focus and concentrate, and
then I kind of rose to the top of the
ranks in the world of speed skating. By the time
I was fourteen years old, I was ranked the number
one the United States.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
That's impressive. But if I remember also, it'd be very
clear you were you had a.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
Very rebellious nature, Okay, And if I remember correctly the story,
what was it your dad dropped you off at the
airport and you were I guess you're going to New
York for one of the and you didn't show up
right or the story there.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
So because I was I was being invited to this
Junior Olympic training program in Lake Placid, New York, in
upstate New York. This was the pre Olympic year, so
this was like a very important year that the athletes
were required to come train and the minimum age requirement
was fifteen years old. I was only fourteen, So the

(14:25):
US Olympic Committee had to pull some story. They basically
had to break and bend the rules to allow me
to become invited. The reason why they were doing that
was because the coaches the scouts had been communicating to
the USOOC at the time US Olympic Training US Olympic
Committee Training Center that this is kid is a prodigy.
We have to take advantage of this talent. Hone his talent,

(14:45):
sharpen his talent, and he will go on to the
next Olympics in a year and he will went. And
by the way, they were right, because when I went
to Lake Placid, I actually ended up winning the trials
less than a year later before that getting to the
actual location we did so. Yes, I was very rebellious.
I don't know where this came from. I have no idea,
but I just had always gone against the grain, and

(15:07):
my dad had been arguing with me about this incredible
opportunity to go to like Placid. To me, I didn't
you know when you're that young, so you know, you
just you have no idea. You have what opportunity even
means you can't. I had no idea. I just wanted
to hang out in Seattle was the summertime, and it
was like my time to hang out and basically just
hang out with my friend and be normal. I wanted
to be normal. My dad never treated me normal, if

(15:29):
that makes any sense. Like he always tried to do
something great. Whatever was like academics and choir acting, speed reading,
like this crazy stuff. Right, And the first time he
took me to the airport, he drops me off and
it tells me like, look, if you don't enjoy this,
you come back home after one month and we'll figure

(15:49):
out another plan for you. And he dropped me off
at SeaTac Airport. I immediately went to you inside the
terminal when I saw him leave I came back outside
the terminal with my two bags that I had rolled in.
I had called my friend and I said, Hey, I'm
supposed to go to New York. Today I'm no longer going,
so can I stay at your house for a couple
of days. He's like, yeah, like, no problem, come come

(16:11):
hang out. So for the next like nine days, I
basically bounced around from house to house while my dad
believed that I was still in New York. But I
was so pissed off I wouldn't call him. And you know,
it's just like rambunctious young stuff. My dad found out somehow,
you know, he got the call from the coach, and
the coach was like, mister Ono, we still very much

(16:33):
want you to be a part of this program, but
we you know, we haven't heard from you or your son.
Do you still plan on sending your son out here?
And my dad, my dad just I had never called
him because I was but we didn't have cell phones, right,
this is all payphone stuff, and so when I didn't
know how the training program worked, he didn't know how
like much I should be communicating. But he definitely knew
that something was off because I had not talked to
him in like three or four days, and you know,

(16:55):
he said, oh, you lost my son. We have a
big problem, you know, like what's going on? And finds
at which house I was at, picks me up from
the house, explains to me that I'm throwing away this
amazing opportunity to represent the United States and go compete
and potentially even medal. And I didn't get it. I
just I just did not get it, no matter what

(17:15):
my dad said. I really just when he would for
some reason, I was so and maybe this is just
how kids are, but I whenever he would say something
like the sky is blue, I'd said, no, it's red,
just just to like defy him, right, just to deny
that he was right in any way. And the next
time he took me to the airport, he obviously parked
the car, came inside with me all the way to

(17:38):
Lake Placid, dropped me off, went right up to the
coach when we got there, looked him in the eyes,
shook his hand and said good luck, and then went out.
He just like balanced, Wow, Yeah, that was that was
the beginnings. Like that was it was really hard to
get me even commit to that thing. And then you know,
when I was there is when I actually fell in

(17:59):
love with the sport. I always liked the sport, but
when I was there, I got to understand the intricacies
of training at the basic level. I found the beauty
of being in flow state. I learned about the power
of breadthor like really early, and man, it was addictive,
really addictive. And then I remember even asked my coach

(18:20):
one time, at the age of fourteen, I said, you know, coach,
is it possible that I get good too early and
I just burn out? He's like, don't worry about that, Like,
don't worry about getting good too early burn out. We
can worry about that later, but like, don't worry about that.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
So yeah, well, buddy.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
You know, in recovery, we talk about the necessity you've
got to have a tribe. You got to have a tribe,
you got to have a community. And your amazing book
Hard Pivot, and we're going to talk a lot about
that because it's so well written and so good for everybody,
certainly people. In recovery, you talk about your board of directors, right,
your people, and like the sixth woman, that woman who

(19:00):
Jonna Victor Frankel. Can you talk about your tribe and
some of those early teachers, and you know what you've
learned or why that's so important.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
Yeah, I think that the personal board of directors is
not something that I fully understood or could comprehend when
I was training as an athlete. It wasn't until much
later that I realized that the core reinforcement circle was
there not because they knew what was best for me,
but because they had believed in me and they wanted

(19:29):
what was best for me. It's a little bit of
a difference. And so every core personal boarding director is
just like a company. A company is supposed to select
their boarding directors based upon the skill, let the experience,
and the amount of value they can provide to the
executive team to make the best possible decisions moving forward
in that business's trajectory. Same thing for our personal life.

(19:51):
If we don't have people around us who number one,
care about us the most and want us to succeed
in some way, tell us to hard radical truths even
when it hurts. Becomes difficult because we start to question
our path. We don't really know the direction we're going,
and everybody gets a little bit wobbly at times, and
their only sole job and purpose is really to reinforce
that foundational layer to help you stand tall again, not

(20:14):
do it for you, but really just provide that support system.
So my personal board directors was my training, my coach,
my dad, my sports psychologist, one of my best friends
who is my roommate who's now one of my managers.
We work together on the business side, and it was
just this really core group of people who at times

(20:37):
believed in me more than I believed in myself. And
that was really really powerful because I think a lot
of times athletes and even people in business, they don't
believe fully that they're as good as they actually are,
or they don't see that they are as good as
they actually are, or they don't see the potential that
they could be as good as they actually are. They

(21:00):
have like this kind of you reach for what you
can touch, right, and the people around you or the
coach is supposed to say, well, I want you to
reach for what you can't reach, reach for that unequal
so that it forces you to stretch. And as we
know through you know neuroscience and psychology, that when you
stretch is we're in the greatest amount of growth. Same
thing as a muscle right, when you do a peck

(21:20):
fly right and you have the deepest, deep form of
ecentric stretch, that's where you actually create the most amount
of growth. Same thing with a psychological mind, but you
need that friction, and that's where those people come into play,
is when you reach those points in your life and
the friction points start to get really, really nasty. They're
there to make sure that you can see those things

(21:42):
through even when you can't, because you believe that it's
possible and feasible. And I mean, you know this is
what you work. You work at this at the depths
of the human psyche far beyond I mean the walls
of the stuff that you've built and even some of
the kind of anonymous story that you share with me
are the remarkable in terms of the power of the
human spirit, and sometimes that human doesn't yet know it.

(22:05):
So we need to facilitate these conversations of people who
are not clouded by the fog of war, right because
we have our own prison of fighting inside of our
own mind. And that's the whole concept of the facilitator.
The facilitator is there because they could see clearly right
where you cannot, especially when you are in the fight.

(22:27):
The fight can be. You know, I'm going through some
really hard stuff with my partner or my business or myself.
And when you're in the fight so much, sometimes you
can't actually even you're not even paying attention because you're
facing the wall. And if you just turned forty five degrees,
there's light at the end of the tunnel, but you
didn't turn because you thought that this was the only

(22:47):
space that you could use. There's like a beautiful picture
that my friend say Hill Bloom just posted for his
new book, and it's a picture of this bird in
this cage, but the reality and the bird's grapping on
to the two bars and make it look like it's
a prison. Okay, but in the back half of the
cage is empty, there's no cage, but the bird is

(23:10):
looking out olding.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (23:12):
I love this.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
Because it's a reinforced, self imposed prison that it really
takes someone to tell them, hey, let's shift you around,
let's get you to turn around, look on this way.
Oh my god, I am not in this prison. I
actually have a perceptive choice to move and fly. So
that to me metaphorically was really powerful.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
Well, that's that's incredible. Thank you for sharing that. Man, God,
that's good stuff. But he walk us through your first Olympics.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yeah, first Olympics. So in two thousand and one, September eleventh,
I remember going to the training rink and before we
had gone, obviously the attacks and the World Trade Centers
was happening, and everyone's very scared and uncertain, you know,
a little bit less than six months later, the Winter
Olympic Games were being held in Salt Lake City. So

(24:07):
the air, the atmosphere was like very thick in terms
of like the energy that was there. There was a
lot of uncertainty, there was a lot of pride, a
tremendous amount of needed unification for the kind of patriotism
for the US, and people really just needed to use
those games to come together. So this was my first Olympics.

(24:29):
So I had been three, I was nineteen. I always
say I was nineteen going on fifteen, right, And as
I was going into the Olympic opening ceremony, there's like
snipers and Special Forces guys on top of rooftops. It
was like it was a gnarly time. And I think
today we would probably think that's pretty normal. Back then,

(24:50):
that was not normal, and they just had beefed up
security just in case there was any potential threat that
could potentially happen on the grounds there in the world's
greatest Olympic event, in the greatest athletic event, the pinnacle.
And that was the first moment I went from this
is all about me to this is actually much bigger

(25:10):
than me. This is about we, This is about us.
This is about setting some semblance of a story that
people can grasp onto and share in the humility of
the human experience and share for these athletes that to
dedicate their lives to this moment. And so in my
first race, I was the favorite. It was the men's
one thousand meter final. I was in the lead with
three laps to go, two laps to go, one lap

(25:32):
to go, half lap to go, quarter lap to go.
Less than three seconds remained, less than two seconds remaining
the race, and boom, a guy falls into my left
hip as I'm rounding the corner. We all go down.
There's like four of us that all fell down, crashing
into the pads. I ended up stabbing my own left
thigh with my own skate blade because of the jolt
of the blade, a jolt of the crash scrambled to

(25:53):
my feet through my skates across the finish line and
it was days and confused. Man, I had no idea
what happened. I was I also, my natural raw instinct
was like really pissed and upset because in these moments
you're very reactive to where man like someone's that someone

(26:16):
stole something from me. I was supposed to win that race.
I could taste it. It's gone forever. I may never
get that chance ever again in my life. Everything that
I worked on and when you're in the moment, everything
seems so important and then this is like do or
die For me. It wasn't, but it felt like that.
And I remember rushing back to the locker room and

(26:37):
my strength physio came in. His name was Brent, and
Brent was from Boston, and he came rushing in because
I had ripped my racing suit down and there was
like this little gash, you know, in my in my
left thigh. And he comes rushing and he had this
really wild look on his face. And remember he looks
at me and he's like, that was the craziest race
I've ever seen in my life. How did you get
back up? And it was it was It's cool, man.

(27:00):
It was like I had this initial reaction that was
very depressive, like bitter, angry, wanting to point the finger
and didn't want to surrender to the outcome. And the
outcome was that the race was completed and I could
no longer change the result of that particular race, whether
I loved it, whether I hated it. This was a

(27:20):
masterclass in stoicism.

Speaker 3 (27:23):
Straight up, right on right like man, I had to
let it go.

Speaker 1 (27:27):
I had to let it go, and I had to
clean the slate. I had to clear the brain, clear
the mechanism to prepare for the next race, because I
had more races to race and I had another chance
at winning more medals. And I remember I got out
there and I celebrated receiving the silver. I when I
got up and scrambled across the finish line, I won silver,

(27:48):
and I gotta tell you, man, I celebrated it as
if it was gold. And you know, I was being
stitched up by my childhood idol. For those who don't know,
they're our our like Michael Jordan of our era in
speeds getting was a guy named Eric Heiden who won
five consecutive gold medals in a single Olympic Games, meaning
he won every single distance in Olympic Games, which would

(28:09):
be the equivalent of Usain Bolt winning the one hundred,
the two hundred, the four hundred, the mile and like
the marathon. That's like the of what this all in
one Olympics, Like it's never gonna happen ever again, And
I mean maybe I don't think so and so yeah,
so he stits me up and and you know, like

(28:30):
this is a weird like deja vu thing that happened.
And man, I just it was. That was the first
Olympic Games. My next race was the fifteen hundred meters.
I ended up winning that race with a bit of controversy. Controversy,
but I ended up winning a gold in that race.
And you know, Salt Lake City was where the games
were held, was a very different time. I mean, people

(28:52):
were the military or the local police were handing out
these like fake goot tea patches as people entered into
the ice arena with the Knights that I was racing.
I didn't know this until fifteen years later, ten years later.
Oh wow, yeah uh, and they were out and people

(29:12):
would stick them on here and they would cheer. Now
again this is the first time, so you know that
most people had ever even seen short track speat skating,
let alone. They don't know what this this? Like, this
kid Apollo is very culturally ambiguous. Kid. Is he Hawaiian?
Is he from la? Like? What is he? Is he Hispanic?
Is he Latin Asian? What is this kid? And turns

(29:33):
out I'm just like a half Japanese kid from Seattle
that you know that, like had.

Speaker 3 (29:37):
I have a brother.

Speaker 2 (29:37):
You listen most beat skaters and you'll correct me if
I'm wrong. Kind of have a look, they're kind of straight.
You were like a fucking rock and rollagion out there.
The bandana, you know, the whole thing, the hair, the
whole thing. It was like, I mean, you changed me.
People watched it now, right? Are you really cool?

Speaker 1 (29:54):
It was really cool. So the tremendous amount of support
from those games and.

Speaker 3 (29:59):
Paula me ask you what thing? Walk me through? What's
it like?

Speaker 2 (30:02):
Man? I just want to cry thinking about it, knowing
who you are and your story being on the platform
the first time and they put that metal on you.
What's going through your head?

Speaker 3 (30:11):
Man?

Speaker 1 (30:14):
So I think one, you know, it's a combination of
like shit, I hope I don't mess up like the
words as I sing along here to the national anthems
being played, you know, you kind of go brain dead.
And there's like there's a there's a huge tremendous sigh
of relief that the race is over because there was
so much pressure that I would place on myself. And

(30:36):
then there's also like this beautiful especially when I want gold,
there's this like beautiful feeling of like I did it,
we did it, like we did this, and I remember
I I, you know, I very quintessential storybook. I slept
with my metal that night, you know, next to me.
It's like a little kid, and it was beautiful. But

(30:57):
I got to tell you, man, after the race, I
felt pretty normal. And that was the biggest surprise. Was
I had thought, as with every young athlete at the time,
we didn't have access to information on social media now
like we do today, so people couldn't tell their stories
as munch and so often. I thought that there was
going to be some transformative life event that would happen.

(31:22):
And I woke up the next day, man, and I
was the same dude, and it was it wasn't a letdown,
but there was like a there was like this epiphany
of like, hmm, that's different than I actually thought what
would have happened? And I finished out the rest of
the races. Now, when I had returned home from the Olympics,
my life had really changed. That's when things were different.

(31:42):
Where going on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, going
on all these talk shows and morning shows everywhere that
I went. I remember I went to go ring the
New York Stock Exchange bell in New York City on
Wall Street, and guys were running up to me in
their full suits, running up shaking my hand, shaking my

(32:03):
father's hand, saying thank you so much for what you
did for our country. And I'm like, what I did
for a country? I miss an athlete, Like I'm not.
I'm not a serviceman, you know, I don't. I'm not
on the front lines. I'm just a simple amateur athlete
who was doing what I love. But people, they rallied
behind it, right, And so there was this man I was.

(32:24):
It made me so proud to be an American. It
felt so good to be out there and I just
did not even know. I felt like I was a
goldfish in the middle of a glass bowl and everyone
was watching. Oh wow, it was a weird time, right
because speed skating in the US is a very tiny sport.
It's not like an Asia or in Europe, where you know,

(32:46):
tens of thousands people watch these things. In the US,
like people don't watch them. They don't watch speed skating,
you know, unless there's like someone who's really winning all time.
It's not not broadcasts all the time. So my life
had really and radically transformed, like instantaneously, literally overnight. It
was completely different. I couldn't go anywhere without being recognized.
It was a really it was my first taste of
like quasi celebrity, I guess I could say.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
And did you adjust to it? Was it overwhelming? Did
your ego get involved? Was it scary? What was it like?
Did you miss your privacy?

Speaker 1 (33:17):
So I think a great question. By the way, I
think some athletes love it, and they it grows with them,
and the ego grows with them and it inflates. I
really didn't. I didn't enjoy it. I really prefer the
privacy and the normalcy of being anonymous, and that was gone.
I was stripped away, man. I mean, you know it

(33:38):
was crazy.

Speaker 3 (33:38):
Man.

Speaker 1 (33:38):
I remember checking into hotels and the hotel manager would
literally just upgrade me to the penthouse suite for the
whole stay. Like I remember I came to l A
one time. I forgot which hotel it was. Might have been,
might have been the Wilshire, the Beverly Wilshire, the one
from Pretty Women and I think someone I don't remember it.
It was a four seats I would have they upgraded

(34:01):
to this. I mean, while I was a kid, I'm
not growing up with money. We had wings in this
hotel room that I just got lost. I was like,
is this what it's supposed to be like for the
rest of my life? And that's not healthy, right, because
it's not real life. It's not real. But that was
like my you know, I had stylists. I had Georgia
OLMANI like giving me suits and jewelry to wear like

(34:22):
on red carpets. It was just so freaking weird. Man.
That's why I really like with celebrities. People don't fully
recognize and understand the subtle behavior changes that incur because
of the fame that's associated with what they've done. Number one,
they have number of privacy. Number two, it's like this

(34:44):
this weird like momentum like domino effect where if you
ask for something, you get it, you know, and then
you try to pay and it'll let you pay. It's
it's I mean, it's amazing, don't even wrong. Very amazing,
but not something that.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
But if you're not right minded, it can be dangerous
and getting all kinds of interesting trabil Yeah.

Speaker 3 (35:05):
Absolutely, but let's do this. If you can't, why don't
you walk me through the next.

Speaker 2 (35:09):
Couple Olympic some highlights, some things you wanted to talk about,
and then let's get into post Olympics.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
Sure. So my next Olympic games, I knew right away
that I wanted to continue to compete. These were being
held in Torono, Italy. I won a goal there in
the men's five hundred meters. It was something I called
perfect race. The perfect race for me was leading from
start to finish, all the way, complete control. That was amazing.
And then about a year later, I was invited to

(35:37):
be a part of a reality show called Dancing with
the Stars, and I ended up being on that show.
I won that show with my dance partner, Julianne Huff
and dude, this is when I thought my life was
different before. This is when my life really really changed
and I couldn't go anywhere. But I was no longer
the Olympic guy with long hair and a goateee. I
was now the Dancing with the Stars champion. The other

(36:00):
Olympic stuff was like no longer important. It was just
all about the dancing for a lot of dudies.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
But let me ask you something about that, because that
fucking fascinates me about you. Like when you first got
the offer, Hey, they want you to be on this show,
were you like, what do you mean they want.

Speaker 3 (36:11):
Me to dance?

Speaker 1 (36:12):
Like?

Speaker 3 (36:12):
What would you through your mind when you got offered
that show?

Speaker 1 (36:16):
I mean originally I was like this, this sounds ridiculous,
Like I don't want to do that. I don't want
to dance in front of like the guys in my
locker room. So it took my manager at the time.
His name was Lee Curness. He used to work over
there at Brillstein in Beverly Hills. And I remember Lee
calls me. He was this, you know, he's this New
York guy, this New York Jewish guy, and he's like, Apollo,

(36:39):
I got this amazing offer for you dancing with the Stars,
And I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? Like,
and so I had to watch the show. I was,
you know, they sent me some clips to the show
and I was like, Oh, EMMITTT. Smith did this show.
I love EMMITTT. Smith. He's like a badass. He made it.
He made like dancing so smooth and so cool. I
was like, if I can dance like Emmett, I'm gonna

(36:59):
win the damn thing. And I told Lea, I said,
all right, here's a deal. I'm going to do the show,
but I have to win. And he's like, well I can't.
I can't control if you win it. Well, that's up
to you. It's a reality show. And I, you know,
I attacked it with the same level of tenacity and
focused and I did not know how to dance beforehand.
And Julianne at the time was like an eighteen year

(37:21):
old bombshell from Salt Lake City, Utah who was a
professional dancer who just kicked my ass and taught me
a lot about the dance world, and together we had
great chemistry and we ended up winning the show and
literally my life had changed overnight after winning that show.

Speaker 3 (37:39):
What was that?

Speaker 1 (37:39):
Like?

Speaker 2 (37:39):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (37:40):
How did it change? Walk the audience through? How it changed.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
It changed because there was this entirely new millions and
millions of people who traditionally didn't really watch the Olympics,
but they are really into reality shows or this show
Dancing with the Stars. So the fan base had exploded
in popularity. It was this was like peak, I think,
or near peak was around this time for me. I

(38:06):
couldn't go anywhere without being recognized, and it was wild. However,
I knew that I wanted to go to one more
Olympic Games because the games were being held in Vancouver, BC. Vancouver,
BC is three and a half hours from where I
grew up in Seattle. Vancouver is also the place where
I learned how to speed skate from the Canadians. My
dad would drive me across the border. So to me,
in my head, I had already formulated and manifested this

(38:28):
full circle vision started here and I was coming back
to the Northwest at the end of my career. I
have to say, yes, these are all green lights, and
so I took that on and it became a huge
transformative project because at the end of my career, again,
I had been competing since nineteen eighty six, so this was,

(38:49):
you know, a good fourteen years end of my career.
I had to really reinvent myself. Speed skating is not
an old man's game. It's a young man's game, and
just it's kind of like gymnastics. You get the less
effective your technique and your power are on the ice,
and a new slew of athletes that have a new,
reinvented genetic ability that you didn't have growing up. So

(39:12):
we had to go through some radical changes on the
training side and some really brutal, vicious, savage workout consistently volume.
I probably mean one of my best friends, guy named
John Schaeffer out of Philadelphia, and John was my strength
coach and very unorthodox style of training, very different than

(39:33):
what anybody else on the Olympic Training Center program was training.
And I hired him full time to come into my
house and live with me in Utah, Mean Utah at
the time to train, and he revamped two additional workouts
on top of the two national team Olympic Team training
program workouts per day, so we would train like three
to four times a day on average, and I had

(39:54):
the whole gym setup in my basement. We ate the
same things every single day within five minutes of each other.
It was extremely size. It was a cyclical keto diet
which seemed to work the best for what I was
trying to accomplish, which was I was trying to strip
away and lean down and rid of all the excess
muscle mass up top that I had built for so
many years and instead become the very precise sports specific

(40:18):
speed skater that had these really skinny arms and weighed like,
you know, one hundred and forty two pounds eventually, but
when I started my career was one seventy. So you
can imagine I had to strip away all this excess
muscle mass to where I look like a mountain cyclist
of the tour in France. But I could still generate
a tremendous amount of power, and a lot of that
came through you know, self induced catabolic fuel, meaning like

(40:42):
we just basically starved myself right to eat away at
that excess muscle while still having the neuromuscular recruitment of
retetting the firepower in the quads and the lower body dominance.
And so that was really tough, and it did something
psychologically where we just went beyond what people in the
sport thought was possible from a training and consistency and

(41:05):
volume perspective and intensity just day in and day out,
and nothing else mattered. Man, it was a really beautiful
time in my life where the responsibilities were all relegated
to if it doesn't make me faster, if it doesn't
make me recover, it's doesn't fit in my life in
any way. So it became a very simple, but kind

(41:25):
of like when a boxer goes off to boxing camp
before a big fight, when they would fight camp and
they have like between eight weeks and sometimes sixteen or
thirty weeks in preparation where they just live away from
society in its train and they build this killer instinct
in this moment and there's no distractions. You're just a
distractions intentional And that's what we built. And it was, man,

(41:49):
it was powerful. It was really powerful. I completely and
radically transformed my physical body. My mind was perhaps the
greatest and the worst, you know, fighter that I had,
because I would fight against myself. But on the great
days it was it was a beautiful, invincible mindset that
there was no options but to continue, and a lot

(42:12):
of fears of failure that drove me and kept me consistent.
I think the paranoia that someone else was training harder
and more and better, that had better genetic ability, that
technically was more gifted. I had been battling some equipment problems,
and so I felt like, no matter what, I was
always at eighty to ninety percent of my one hundred
percent maximum. So I felt like I needed to overcompensate

(42:34):
for that through the training and regime, which made me
a little bit angry walking into the training center sometimes
into the program, which my teammates probably would say that
I was a little bit quiet and reserved because I
was battling my own stuff. I went to those my
final with the Games. I ended up winning eight total
medals after all three and I retired in twenty ten,

(42:55):
fifteen years ago. Man, it's so crazy, And what I
thought and I didn't realize was the battle was just beginning, right.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
Yeah, Because you talk about depression setting in and so
many athletes and why you guys made that great documentary.
You were able to pivot and do other things that
we'll get into a lot of people don't have that
benefit in that blessing.

Speaker 3 (43:17):
Correct Can you talk about that.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
I think that everyone struggles with identity loss at some
point in their life, and it's usually from a career change.
And just like athletes, athletes and Olympic athletes specifically when
Olympic athletes were tires. You know, today is different because
there's a tremendous amount of social media and sponship dollars
are so big, But there wasn't even just ten years ago.

(43:40):
Ten years ago, you retire a year later, you have
a normal job, or you're going back to school. We're
trying to figure out who you are and what you
want to do, and going in circles wearing spandex is
not exactly inducive. Now, there's a lot of analogies and
things that you can draw from that, but the physicality
of like me having really strong quads doesn't exactly mean

(44:02):
I make great decision in the wardroom. Right. It probably
has maybe some correlation between like being healthy and like
good cognitive processing, but outside of that, I don't think
this is really so there had to be a big shift,
and most athletes suffer from that. And at the time,
I don't blame the USOPC or the governing bodies because
I think they just didn't know. There wasn't There was

(44:24):
just no funding for a mental health being transitional components
associated with your career, so like what's next? How do
you prepare for those things? And most athletes live their life.
It's changed today, but most athletes back then live their
life with this like example, like jumping out of the
airplane with no parachute and if you land on the bullseye,

(44:47):
you're safe. If you don't, you die. That's like how
they live their whole training career because we know that
we are not going to last forever, and I can't
train for the next thirty years of my sport and
be competitive. Like there's an entire world in life that
exists outside of sport and I just met I just
didn't get it. I didn't care. That's actually probably what
it was more about was I just didn't I didn't
care enough because it didn't feel like it was real

(45:09):
and I didn't feel like it was going to affect me.
I thought back then that man, if I have some
kind of mental apps, I'm just weak and that's unacceptable.
And that was really the kind of mantra that I
think most athletes, especially on the male side, really lived in.
It was like, just show no weakness. You just got
to show up. Stop being so weak and just get

(45:30):
your shit together, right, That's all fine. I think that's
the falsity exists of the male experience until you're quiet
and you're alone, and you're going through the comparison game
and you're comparing against your friends and those are who
are successful, and you start making mistakes in your life,
or your marriage fails, or your partnership fails, or your

(45:51):
family fails, or your health fails or and then these
cracks in your table, the legs that are the sturdy part,
they start to a little bit wobbly. And that's when
it gets tricky for athletes, is when they start to
question their worth and you start to wonder, and maybe
I'm not here for any of it. Maybe the universe
put me just here to go and fucking circles my

(46:13):
whole life. Maybe that's what I was the only skill
set and value I have on this planet, which is
not true, Which is not true at all. But you
start to listen to that voice, right, You got those
two voice.

Speaker 3 (46:24):
Getting louder louder.

Speaker 1 (46:25):
Every day, it's getting louder, and the more you listen,
the more the more effective the voice is to derailing
you from the most important thing, which is to stay
on course and the course isn't working, Pivot and go
in another direction right away. Don't keep thinking and you know,
sulking and brewing in that thought. The more that you
contemplate getting up and going for a run, you're just

(46:48):
wasting time. Just go do it. Just just stop thinking
about it.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
Right.

Speaker 1 (46:51):
So a lot of time is in this contemplation mode
and a lot of this, honestly is you know, just
comes because people just don't know. Like, we athletes are
incredibly co proachable people, but we need mentors outside of sport,
we need coaches and they got to find it person
board directors. Right So if you could find that, like
the thing that I wish I would have done when
I retired, And what I tell athletes today is if

(47:11):
you're young and you retire, here's what I want you
to do. I want you to find somebody who is
a successful business person and I want you to shadow
them for one year nominal pay genius.

Speaker 3 (47:22):
Right on.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
Every day that you live is dedicated to being the sponge.
You want to be the fly on the wall. It
doesn't matter if you're getting coffee, if you're shuffling paper,
it doesn't matter. It's all about the twelve months of
experience that will teach you this is what is required
of you in this setting outside of sport, and that's
where the new mechanisms of your brain start to learn.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
All right, let me ask you this, brother, Paul. Let's
say you've given that recommendation to what fifty athletes.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
May be ah, probably more.

Speaker 3 (47:53):
Okay, let's just say I have fifty. Let's call it
more of the fifty. How many actually did it?

Speaker 1 (48:00):
Well? The ones that are the ones I've give the
advice to you today, they're pretty young, so a lot
of them are still competing. The different day, I think
is that athletes know about these stories. The documentary exists.
So the conversation, we've already broached the subject. We've broken
the seal to say, hey, there's issue here. You have

(48:23):
to prepare for what your life will be after sport.
It doesn't really matter what it is. It's probably going
to change multiple times, but you need to prepare and
realize and recognize and feel that there is a whole
new world waiting for you after now. What we're also seeing,
interestingly in our sports is that the really great athletes,
in my opinion, still have no plan they go to

(48:44):
school and they're kind of doing their thing, but a
lot of them are now stopping before they reach their
potential in sport, and so they're actually like, there was
an athlete not so long ago who quit speed skating early.
We thought he could go to two more of the
games and actually potentially medal, and he's like, I'm just
gonna go back to school. I'm out, I'm done. So
this is becoming more of a common question. The athletes

(49:07):
ask themselves where, And I don't blame them. They're saying,
if I don't have a chance to medal, but if
I can make the Olympic team, great, I'll make one
Olympic team. Will I go to a second Olympic team.
I don't know if I want to. I'm just gonna
go back to school and do something else. So the
talent pool is getting thinner because athletes are kind of
spiking early but not going to the full peak. They're

(49:29):
just kind of going here and then going away. So
it is changing. But your question about how many people
really follow us advice, it's it's going to be less
than five percent, right.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
And the reason I bring that up probably because one
is you are insanely curious, but you know the importance
of I got to do something different.

Speaker 3 (49:50):
It's got to be uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 (49:52):
And very few people want to do that these days, man,
because they it's like, what the f I'm an expert
is something? But I'm not an expert. You know, you
put yourself right in there and have the patience to learn,
which you've done right, all right, So you're trying to
figure it out. You're trying to figure next steps, You're
trying to figure.

Speaker 3 (50:11):
Out who the fuck is Apollo? What happens?

Speaker 1 (50:16):
Oh, here comes the lifetime of saying yes to everything,
because I had spent half my life at that time
saying no to everything for the thing that I really wanted. Now,
I think this was actually a good part of the
decision making process, was saying yes to anything and everything,
taking risks and just trying to go explore the world

(50:36):
with the intention that I needed to just learn because
I didn't know what I wanted to do and it
would change with the wind. So there was I mean,
I've done like international cross border transactions and metals, mining industry,
nutraceutical manufacturing, textiles, real estate, and I've done venture, I've

(51:01):
done health and wellness, longevity, investing, executive coaching, speaking engagements,
author hosting TV shows, trying to be an actor. I've
tried a lot of stuff, and I think the reality
is I like all of them, right, I like all
of them. The things that probably pull me in the
most are the things that increase health span and increase lifespan.

(51:26):
Those are the two things that I find to be
the most tangible out of all the things that I've touched.
There's many of the things. You can go and have
a great living and make a lot of money, and
everyone has their own reasons for doing those. But the
things that I felt that is the most I guess
on brand and also the things I care about the
most are how do I create some sort of like
really positive impact on either the community that I'm speaking to,

(51:48):
engaging with workshop, transformational retreat or just inspirational speech podcast
to remind people of the inner power that is contained
within the human spirit. One two helping them create a
plan of action of trying to do those hard pivots
in life and realizing recognizing that you've got to embrace
the change. Uh, you got to find some kind of purpose,

(52:10):
whether it's your family, your faith, your sport, your work,
your kids, like your loved ones, and yourself, Like there's
got to be something else that's tangible so that your
existence doesn't feel so minute in this world. You know,
and and and stop the number one thing I just
I just want people to feel and recognize, like, stop

(52:32):
living as if you live like you're going to live forever. Uh.
And it's easy, easy to fall into that, right, it's
we live in a very finite world. And not to
be morbid, But the intentionality behind that exercise is just
to remind us, like, really take the time that you
have and just do the stuff man that do even

(52:52):
if you're doing something you just despise and hate, it's
a part of the it's a part of your process
and it could be temporary, and just do it. Go
through that, feel it viscerally, because at some point in
your life you look back on that and kind of
wish that you had those times again because they will
never be replaced ever again. And when you yeah, when
you turn seventy five years old, and if you're worth
seventy five billion dollars, you will give seventy five billion

(53:16):
dollars back to be forty years old again with zero
like you will get all back to be where we
are at right now, no matter how hard. I think
these exercises are really good for us to go through
because they help us.

Speaker 2 (53:32):
Out all right now, talk to us about fopo popo.
Oh yeah, so I love that acronym in your book. Yeah,
I've never heard that before, by the way.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
Yeah, so I first heard about faupo through a really
good friend of mine, Michael Gervais. He sees also down
there in southern California.

Speaker 3 (53:48):
He's in a Marina, incredible sports psychologist.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
Yeah, Jervey's great. I've been on Jerva's podcast a couple
of times, and I remember a couple of times we
were talking about fomo right, which drives markets as we know,
and also faupo, which is like this fear of other
people's opinions, which I feel like you've done a really
good job up by the way, like you kind of
live this this radically authentic life, and so I describe

(54:11):
this in my book. Around we all have that friend
or that uncle or that family member who just can't
help but being themselves, whether they're just like rough, like
bull in a china shop, whatever it might be, but
we we always have that one person who is just
They can't lie about who they are. They just them
in their entire existence. There's something very endearing about that

(54:34):
because we, I think, individually put on our own masks
of whatever it is, our stuff, and we look at
that we're like, man, there's like a lot of truth
in austy in that, like I want to live my
life even if it's like clumsy and I'm stumbling through,
it's kind of beautiful, just like being and just like
not giving a shit. Right, So most people, because of
the societal constraints and expectations, this is way you should

(54:56):
look like, that's what you should have. This is where
you should be. The comparison to Joneses, we fupo is like,
you know, you living in the state of perpetual fear
of what people will think about you. And and it's
a very human, you know, thing to go through. And
I think the more that you can either harness that

(55:16):
to propel you in a positive directions, great, But most
of the time it's very It keeps you paralyzed, and
it keeps you from taking action. It stops you from
taking the chance, it stops you from launching a new company.
That that presentation whatever talking to that person for the
first time, right, Like, the fear of what will happen
is oftentimes paralyzing. And what I've seen through all my

(55:39):
friends is the ones who are the most persistent, who
throw that out the window, seem to get stuff done
a lot faster.

Speaker 3 (55:49):
Yes, sir, m hmm, all right, you write in the
book too. I'm make sure I got it right.

Speaker 2 (55:54):
Don't just think it inc it. Yeah, talk about that.
That's so good man.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
I mean, I'm so old school man, I still have
stuff like this, right, I.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
Got all my Yeah, exactly, me too, brother, I got
all those around here.

Speaker 1 (56:07):
So I have this thesis, right, Like, I love digital notes.
I think they're great, but there's something just the tactile
nature and I have. It's probably because we grew up
physically writing stuff down, so that's how we learned. And
maybe this next generation doesn't learn that way. But there's
something beautiful around your artistic, creative handwriting of taking a

(56:29):
note and reminding yourself. I believe subconsciously is more powerful
than a digital note. This is my personal belief, and
I could be totally wrong, and because I believe it,
it's probably true for me. Right, because of mind so powerful.
But I just think that if you think it, don't
just think it. Write it down. So no problem. You
don't want to tell people about your goals, you don't
want to tell them about your dreams. You want to

(56:49):
keep it containing here. Write it down. You have an
amazing experience, you have a horrific traumatic experience. Write it down,
get it out of your head onto paper. And it does.
There's a couple of things. One thing, it helps you
articulate and teaches you how to write better about explaining
and expanding upon the texture and the context of what

(57:11):
it is that's inside of your mind outside of a
one sentence thing. Right, So when you put it on paper,
to me, it's much more meaningful. And I have like
you can't see it, but over here, I've got like
a ton of like these little notepads of like journals
and stuff. And in those journals, I go back and
I read like the notes that I was making, the
things that I was talking about the ideas that I had,

(57:32):
And man, it's pretty wild to go back. I even
have some stuff from like fifteen years ago, and I
had thought, I give you an example in the book,
I talked about this eighty six four hundred eighty six thousand,
four in er seconds per day. So you know, I
had thought that I had been introduced to this thing
in twenty twenty one until a friend of mine sent

(57:55):
me an email that I had sent them with a
paragraph that I had wrote to them about not wasting life,
and I was talking. I actually said the eighty six thousand,
four hundred and seconds per day. Choose how you want
to live in love that man, But we forget this stuff.
That's that's what I'm trying to say. We forget about
the power and the knowledge that we have from a

(58:15):
decade ago. So writing it down, I think is really
really powerful. And I also think it's a part of
the manifesting process. Right. The more that you write these
things down, the more strict that you have in terms
of reminding yourself. And if you can't see this stuff
every day, you're going to forget it. Because when your
mind or your spirits start to wane or become desensitized

(58:36):
to the excitement. For example, when you have a big
exciting goal, the first couple of weeks are really hot. Man,
It's like sexy. It's like it's like you get into
a first relationship. Things or moving things are amazing. You
couldn't be better. Let's talk again in four years before
the Olympics. Is the excitement still there? Does the motivation exist?

(58:56):
For most people? It doesn't and that's normal. So we
need these things is to remind us of the original
path and task and idea that we had, because this
doesn't fail us. This is like, hey, this is what
you set down. This is the idea that you have.
Your emotional state will change that because we're human constantly,
but the structures in the system, those are rigid to

(59:17):
keep you on the path. When you start to question the.

Speaker 2 (59:20):
Path, Oh that's beautiful, let me ask you this, brother
frauds when the world is loud and scary for you. Okay,
what technique do you do to get out of and
shift consciousness?

Speaker 1 (59:32):
Oh? Great question, I would say my mourning nature grounding,
meaning like and I'm lucky because I live on the beach,
but if I lived in the mountains or wherever. People
who live in New York City, I think you got
to find This is what works for me is being
in nature seems to slow time down and put things

(59:55):
into perspective. So when the world starts to feel dark
and uncertain and people are failing me, or I just
I'm starting to lose hope, or I'm conceding, I'm starting
to lay down and just call it. Being in those
really beautiful moments like the morning sun rises are critical. Now.

(01:00:16):
I want to say this because I think this is
really important when you start to have these emotional states.
I really encourage people to look at to zoom out
for a second and look at the four pillars of
foundational health, which in the most simplistic forms are how
are you sleeping, how are you eating, how are you moving?

(01:00:36):
And how are you thinking? Not just by yourself but
about your social community, right, your social climate. When you
don't sleep well consistently, man your thoughts, they suck, right,
your confidence goes down. And even if you're a grinder,
you don't eat well, Eventually that's going to take a toll. Right,
Your brain needs good quality fuel. If you don't move

(01:00:59):
the body, the human body is designed to move, and
you need That's part of the toxification process, it's a
part of BDNF, it's part of all these really powerful
things and science that you just you live better and
the way you think. Right, So, if you're mentally in
this rut or if you're in a dark place, man,
you got to find something or someone or a community

(01:01:19):
to help you break free from that. And a lot
of times it comes to the form of giving, right,
giving your time. That's how you receive gratitude about the
most simplistic things in the world. When you're really, really sick,
you actually don't want to feel amazing. You just want
to feel normal. You want to feel not sick anymore. Right,
So you know in Buddhism, right, the root of all
suffering is desire, they say, right when you want more? Right,

(01:01:43):
the America capitalistic psychology of wanting more, becoming more, it's
never enough. This like insatiable thirst, which is beautiful in
the progressive mindset, but at some point you've got to
get off that damn treadmill and like just look around
for a second and realize that this is a finite existence.
And so to me, being in nature keeps me rooted

(01:02:04):
and grounded and present, and it just gives me perspective. Man,
it just makes me feel like, God, this is such
a beautiful, beautiful world. It's beautiful in so many ways.
But you have to peel back those layers because the
world is not peaches and cream. It's rough, man, It's hard,
and it takes effort sometimes to really break through that stuff.

(01:02:29):
So that that's what works for me, Right.

Speaker 3 (01:02:30):
Great, I love that. Let's close with this, But you know,
every time I'm with you.

Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
One, I always stand up a little bit taller because
your energy is so amazing. I always feel like I'm
a little faster for some reason in your energy. And
the one thing I love about you is you're always
in a fucking high state of gratitude.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
I don't know if I am, but that's been my experience,
I you know, And sometimes maybe it's like these reminders, right,
So like when we do things like this where we
can talk about life experiences and such, and then the
intentionality is to perhaps leave some semblance of value to
someone who's watching this that perhaps is looking for a
little bit more life in their years, so to speak,

(01:03:11):
or needs a hard pivot, or needs a shakeup, or
is in a dark place. I think the intentionality is
just like, you know, while I may not have walked
through the trenches of whatever that person is has gone through,
I've had my own battles demons, and you can, you know,
we can we can get through this stuff. So gratitude

(01:03:32):
is amazing, man. My dad is My dad has been
really really good at becoming a great example of the
simplicity of a good life. Meaning my dad's not driven
by money, good care less. He just he uses it
merely as a means or a tool to buy back
his freedom to live in a healthy way and appreciate

(01:03:54):
the most basic, simple thing. Like the other day, he
sent me this beautiful video of downtown Seattle's car was
par the snow is falling, and he's like, look how
beautiful this is? Right, And I know he probably just
stood there for like ten minutes just soaking up like
this moment. And we live in a society now where
all these algorithms, all these tools, whether it's Amazon, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, whatever,

(01:04:20):
it's changing the behavioral structures of our society because we
are now being fueled by this instantaneous gratification and signaling
that we're receiving. We didn't have that twenty years ago.
We had to wait to get things to feel really good.
It took the long road to get things now, and

(01:04:41):
now we have them at this we see someone sell
their company overnight, We see a guy become a superstar
in a matter of weeks, right, all these things and
we want it too. So I think gratitude puts things
in a perspective. Nature seems to do that because to me,
nature is bigger than all of this. It's just so
big and vast, and it's so destructive as we have

(01:05:02):
we've seen and it can be very peoful at the
same time. So I think my love of being in
nature and the awe. Man, if you look at my
phone history right of the photos in my phone, it's
like ninety percent the sunrise right now. I think the
same every morning because I'm just it looks so different

(01:05:23):
to me every morning. So that's that's where I come from.
Is like the rest of my day could be garbage. Man,
those ten minutes in the morning are pretty freaking awesome
and I and that's like, dude, it feels good.

Speaker 3 (01:05:32):
It feels really, it feels really good. All right? Brother,
final thoughts? Anything else you want to say to everybody?

Speaker 1 (01:05:38):
This People have heard this before, but I'll say it
again because I think it should be on billboards all
across the United States. And it's directed towards men, but
it's not a male or woman. You know, it's not
sex related. It is a man has two lives, the
second one when the second one begins, when he realizes
he only has one, right. I think that that. You know,

(01:06:01):
we live in a finite world, and typically as we
get older and we start losing people, is when that
stuff starts to feel more tangible and real. But if
you're in your twenties and thirties, you obviously don't feel that,
and that's okay, it's part of the process. But if
you are in your thirties or in your forties, it's
never too late to make a hard pivot. You can
make any change that you want and just stop worrying

(01:06:24):
about people. Got to say, Man, I'm telling you like
it just doesn't matter. Do the stuff feel is right?
Keep your spiritual transparency clean.

Speaker 2 (01:06:35):
Hm.

Speaker 1 (01:06:37):
You know, the world is infinite and possibility, so let's
get after it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
The Sales Show is a production of iHeart Podcasts, hosted
by me Cina McFarlane, produced by pod People in twenty eighth.

Speaker 3 (01:06:51):
Av Our lead producer is Keith Carlik. Our executive producer
is Lindsay Hoffman. Marketing lead is Ashley Weaver. Thank you
so much for listening. We'll see next week.