Ultra Athlete Jason Dunn on Belief & Overcoming Adversity

Jason Dunn is an elite, ultra-endurance athlete, having completed more than 14 IRONMAN competitions, multiple ultra marathons, and placing second overall at the Athletics Australia 100k National Road Running Championships. It is through these sporting endeavors that he honed his mindset and resilience. 

Jason had a successful career in finance and wealth management. He is a Leader, Founder, CEO, high-performance mindset coach, keynote speaker entrepreneur, and elite ultra-endurance athlete. 

Jason now pursues his interests as an author. His first book UNLIMITED, self-published in late 2023, sold in print, ebook and audio, with sales of 3,500+ across all formats and 18 countries in 18 months. Trunnis Goggins II, a best-selling author and the brother of NYT best-selling author David Goggins, described Jason as “The refined David Goggins".

Deborah's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/what.ive.learnt/

Mind, Film and Publishing: https://www.mindfilmandpublishing.com/

Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/what-ive-learnt/id153556330

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3TQjCspxcrSi4yw2YugxBk

Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1365850

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:08

Ultra endurance athlete Jason Dunn has a new book called Greatness Doesn't Care. He challenges the belief that greatness is something that you're not necessarily born with, arguing instead that it has far less to do with talent or luck, and that actually it's about discipline and the decisions we make every day. He says we're never too old to try new things, and at 62, Jason is still competing in some of the world's toughest endurance events, having completed more than 14 Iron Man competitions and multiple ultra marathons, while building several successful businesses. Drawing on those experiences, he explores why so many people hold themselves back through self-doubt and fear of failure and what it really takes to create change when life gets uncomfortable. And as we all know, life does get uncomfortable for most people at some point. So I'm looking forward to having a chat to Jason. Welcome to the What I've Learned podcast. Can't wait to chat and hear your perspective on why discipline matters. So I'm thrilled to have Jason Dunn join me on the What I've Learned podcast. Welcome, Jason.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Thanks, Deborah. I'm thrilled myself. Thank you for having me on. Thank you for inviting me.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Pleasure. Well, your story is quite an interesting one. You ultra marathons are no joke, right? That's a pretty big commitment, and and that's really very much what you talk about. And it's, I suppose, the an example of the most extreme discipline mentally and physically. Where did you learn this? How did this come to be?

SPEAKER_00 2:00

62 years of learning and wisdom, which has greatly accelerated over the last uh few years, I'm delighted to say. I think look my life in a in a nutshell, if I can, you know, I um probably the context, I at the age of 15, I made a decision with my head and not my heart. I turned down my boyhood dream, the thing I pretty much dreamed of every day since I could remember to be a professional footballer in the UK. And you know, I made a very pragmatic decision, a very practical decision, which was based on my upbringing. And I I turned down an apprenticeship contract with a second division uh football team in the UK, in England. And I chose to pursue my school studies. You know, it was particularly onerous. I'd have to, you know, get on a train for two and a half hours a day. Sorry, two and a half hours one way, two and a half hours back.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Is this for school or for training?

SPEAKER_00 3:00

That that would that was that was if I need to fulfill uh take up this contract.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

So right, okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

It just you know, three or four times a week plus travel more traveling, it would have just been you know, it was just it was just too impractical. And so I made that decision and I regretted it for the next 20 years. I started uh drinking.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

That's huge. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

I would nick down the pub at lunchtime with my mate, and we'd go and play Space Invaders and have a couple of pints people night as day. Yeah, that was even while I was at school. That was lunchtime at school at at 16. So I lived without regret. You know, I worked pretty hard, but I made lots of decisions to take the simplest, easiest route, instant gratification. And my regret snowballed so much that I I knew I had to change. And so one day by I I really knew that I needed purpose in my life. And I I was searching for, I think I've probably been searching for a long time, but that required me to make some difficult and some tough decisions. And so I made the biggest one of all. And you don't always need to make big decisions, you know, they can be very small ones that are aligned to purpose. And I faced my greatest fear, which was which was drowning because I couldn't swim. I grew up in the UK.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Interesting. So you you couldn't swim, and here you were, you were living in Ox or the UK at this point.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

Uh at this point, uh at the age of 35, I was living in Australia, I was living on the Sunshine Coast. To give you some idea of the gravity of that fear, I could not sw I could not put my head underwater. That's really interesting.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

So it was a phobia, a deep seat, a deep-seated phobia. Do you know where that came from? Or was that something that did it have some history, or was it just a predisposition?

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Just a predisposition because I hadn't learned to swim. So you know, that's uh a phobia or a fear that most people face that that that they can't swim. So I made this decision. I perchance a friend convinced me to do a corporate triathlon, a really short one, and I didn't know what a triathlon was. I thought I was just going to be doing the run bit, and I said, Yeah, fine, count me in. Until a couple of weeks later, when he I met and he said, you know, how are you going with the training? How's the swim training going? The bike, and I went, Well, I don't know, I haven't done any, I'm just doing the run. I know. He said, No, you are doing the whole thing.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

And who's he? Was this a corporate?

SPEAKER_00 5:27

I uh I a friend that I quiz at at a corporate. And so, but I recognized in that moment it just felt like this was this was my chance. This was, I couldn't walk away from this, I couldn't back down, I was gonna keep backing down from fears. And so I went, you know what, I've I've got to do this. And so I taught myself to ride a bike. I mean, I'd ridden a bike as a child, taught myself to swim barely. The first few times I would sit in the car for 20 minutes with the engine running, with my hands on the steering wheel, I'd have this conversation with myself, you know, that voice that says, Come on, it's easier, let's go home. You don't have to do this, life's all good, you know. Or you can come back another day. And of course, once you tell yourself that a couple of times or a few times, you won't come back. That's that that is who you are for that time. So I did it. I came out of the swim very last. Like I pushed underwater, I nearly drowned a couple of times.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

But you went and you did it.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

But I but I went and I did it. I caught a lot of people up on the on the bike and the run. I think I I was 150 out of 150 in the swim leg, and I think I ended up something like 10th. But with it came this incredible release, release, relief. You know, this incredible rush of endorphins. And for a few days I was just you know floating around. Until that, you know, often as those kind of highs go, and then you know Yeah, the adrenaline drops and adrenaline, and then you need adopter mean rush and you kind of go off searching. And I and I started searching. So and I was look I was looking for well, what could I channel this into? What more could I do? And because my regret it'd be based on missed opportunities, instant gratification, easier path, that I knew I had to find something else. And I did. One day I was sitting there watching TV, watching wide world of sports with this peculiar legendary event called the Hawaii Iron Man. And uh sitting there having a cigarette and a cup of coffee on my lounge back in those days. You sat, you know, you you smoked inside and I finished a put cigarette out, and I went, you know what, I'm gonna qualify for the Hawaii Iron Man World Championships. And I kept that within myself. And then the next thing, you know, I had to figure out how I was gonna not only finish a race that was, you know, 15 times each leg was 15 times longer, I'd have to qualify in my age group amongst the best in the world to get to Hawaii. And that's and the journey just went from there. And so my my purpose became to go and find out who I was, who I am, who I should be, and but more what I'm capable, you know, what would to go and push the boundaries and the limits and prove to myself that I am capable and that I have no regrets, and I just give life, everything in life, my best shot. And that's that's what I did.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

And that seems very much the mission of your book. I mean, really what you're saying is getting out of your comfort zone is actually critical to growth, which I actually agree with you. This this whole podcast is about what I've learned and how you use that to elevate and to grow and to feel like you're empowered by your the very fact you're uncomfortable is actually not a negative, it's actually a positive. And I mean, I always say this to my children as well like you have to get out of your comfort zone because that's really what I mean. Talk about getting out of your comfort zone, you've gone from not being able to put your head underwater to trying to do the Hawaiian ultra marathon is insane. And but it's also shows what the human brain and what physically we can do, but mentally, it shows extraordinary mentally, yep, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

The the mindset is your mindset is your you know, your path. Power tool.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

It is it is your power tool. And you know, so if I can context it, that you know my second book, Greatness Doesn't Care, which I wrote because I believed I could do much better than my first attempt, you know, as a uh as a new author, and to to to try and create a blueprint, a pathway that, because I believe every single human on this planet is stuck or stalled or trying to master one of the 14 steps to greatness. And my purpose was for anybody to be able to go, yep, that's that's the one that that's the one that's holding me back, you know, is a courage because of fear, and so on. So there's a whole bunch of steps, and they all built, you know, you can you can kind of interject at any point and go, right, well, that's the thing. You know, actually, my next greatest level of growth is vulnerability, and vulnerability for me has been my biggest learning and my you know biggest you know, growth in wisdom over the last three or four years. So it doesn't matter what stage of life you're at, what age you are, you know, that and there's not a it's not a you've got to follow step one, two, three, four.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

Yeah, you might go diagonally, you might go. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, a lot of what I'm understanding, what you're saying, is not only come out of your comfort zone, but also if you apply a particular lens, but also discipline, and that you don't have to be the most talented person in the room at that thing, whatever that is, which I also have been reading. I think that's a really good point. But do you think, and we can tap on there's the female culture, but the male culture in particular, there's a lot enormous pressure on, first of all, I think a lot of young men, you talk about regret when you were young, making a decision. Do you think that this is a particularly complex story for young men who are often, you know, surrounded by expectation and pressure to go on a certain path and therefore tapping their own vision or mission, sometimes they're not, you know, to they're 25 or 26 before that actually clarifies.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

I look, I I think that, you know, what my my observations are that happens to people, you know, that they have that epiphany or that self-reflection at some stage in their life, might be 25, might be 45, might be 50, and regardless of you know, with whatever your gender is, that there are expectations. Yeah. And, you know, and and we are, you know, we're molded by our upbringing. And of course, you know, our our home life and our upbringing are different for everyone. So I I believe that every one of the 14 steps will make you better and will it will make you more, it will, you know, each one of them will actually bring you more meaning. And people don't, life is so busy that, you know, well, let me go back. Sorry, it must start with purpose because purpose is the antidote to everything. Purpose is the antidote to fear, purpose. And very few, you know, it is a all all of this is a is a process. You know, you it is actually a process, and we're human, we're emotional, um, but it is a process. So the steps are the I believe the first, you know, four or five, six steps are the you know, the essential ones, and they all are almost sequential. So you have to have a purpose because purpose will get you through struggle, adversity, and and which are inevitable. And if we can talk about those in a moment and how you implement discipline, why discipline's so important. I'd like to talk about the stoic philosophy of of discipline as well. But you know, the your mind can help you overcome everything anything and everything. I mean, I've I've been hospitalized 35 times, I've broken 45 bones, I've had 35 times.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Oh my goodness. Is that from doing marathons, or what was that from?

SPEAKER_00 13:21

The first one. And maybe I can actually, this probably so my my life, perhaps less than other people's lives, is people that have more adversity and struggle than me. There's not a competition.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

That's pretty intense, though. 45 broken bones.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

45 broken bones. So the first one was when I was 17 and a drunk driver out of nowhere. And I always talk about you know things that happen out of the blue on a Tuesday afternoon at four o'clock, or in this case, it was a Friday afternoon at four o'clock, and I was going to pick my grandmother up, and a drunk driver just drove out and I hit him at 60. No seat belts back in those days. And I woke up in the ambulance. I can I can't I can't recount exactly how I felt, but I can remember feeling my face and my head very broken. And I put my hand up to my chin, and I could feel my teeth coming through my chin. I could I could feel my jawbone coming through there. I'd fracture my skull in three places, I'd fractured my jawbone in 16 places. I'd knocked a third of my, you know, a third of my teeth were knocked out or out. Well, about 40% were either knocked out or broken.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

And extraordinary trauma.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Then I went back out again. And I, after an eight-hour sort of emergency operation, I woke up and for a number of hours, I just felt sorry for myself. As you kind of do, you know, here I'm 17. I'm thinking, my whole life's ahead of me. Why me? Why did this happen to me? You know, my the whole head is completely bandaged up. I've got no idea what my face is going to feel like. I know I've had teeth coming out and jawbone and so on. And I you know, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself, uh, as you do. And then I just vividly recall watching people going past, and you know, this young boy, you know, and you know, he had no hair, and it was pretty obvious, you know, back in those days it was pretty aggressive chemo. It just occurred to me that for the first time in my life, I felt this absolute wash of gratitude. I went from one extreme to the other, and I went, you know what, you know, that that young boy, you know, he's worse off than me. He may not be coming home, he's so young. And I looked at everyone else and I went, There's people in here that may not go home, or they, you know, their circumstances are far worse. You know, so I was probably going to walk out of there, and I just had this immense sense of gratitude. And to to that day I bottled that, and no matter what's happened to me in my life, and there have been lots of accidents, obviously. Clearly, it sounds quite I've I've I felt gratitude because I, you know, I just thought I could have died. I didn't die. And so here I am alive, I have a day, I've got to make the most out of this day. And so every time that's happened to me, or every other you know, piece of adversity I've faced, gratitude is one of the key 14 steps to happiness and a great life and and psychological mental perspective.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

And do you think so so really you know you're saying purpose is critical, gratitude is another pivotal and critical step, which I think we're all very much aware of, especially in the context of this podcast. Most people come on having had some sort of, as you say, epiphany or pivotal moment, as you've just described, quite an extreme one. And that can go either way. You can either sink into the hole or you can use it as your your moment to transform.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

Do you think obviously that informs your story a lot because it clearly means that you've had to rise up a number of times. Clearly, 45 broken bones is no mean feat, but that's a physical challenge, but it sounds like you've used it as a motive for an emotional transformation.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

Yeah, I look, I try to learn every day. You know, we wisdom, you know, wisdom is uh a very powerful tool. And so again, context, it's in the moment. It's it's actually it's not allowing yourself, you know, well, you do you can, you know, you need to feel grief and you need to feel pain, you need to feel all those things. We have a what we have a choice with everything, and and so I I try to bring to life the techniques of remarkable humans in history or the Stoics. And I love the Stoics because you know, if you think about ancient Stoic philosophy and you you think about the brutal absolute incomprehensible brutality of living during that time where you know, disease, plague, you know, abject poverty, yeah, war, you know, you can die on any given day, you can die of starvation, you know, you're you know for for a vast majority of people during that time, the greatest challenge was staying alive, you know, and getting some food and getting some water. It was just literally survival. So to have philosophers that people that live through that time that you know that have you know such stoic philosophy in a way of looking at life, I just you know, I've just always found remarkable. And you know, they this life isn't you know, they talk about self-mastery. None of us ever achieve self-mastery of ourselves, but it is that uh inward reflection and and being still, you know, stillness is one of the, you know, one of the stillness and presence are two of the 14 steps also. And people are very rarely still, they might be still physically, but being still watching television is not stillness.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

That's not being still, because you're being fed, your brain's being saturated. I often say this to people it's just being fed and saturated. I mean, you talk about uh, you know, just coming back to the actual ultramarathons and the extraordinary physical challenges you've onboarded. There's something also in Verticoma Stoic about putting yourself in somewhat danger in a sense, because what you do with an ultramarathon is pretty extreme. And so you get the adrenaline and you get all the dopamine and you get all of those physiological responses. And you talk about why talent's overrated and discipline is the real predictor of success in verticomas.

SPEAKER_02 19:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

Because success is personal, and whether you win the marathon or not is probably not your main mission. It's more like that you can do it and get to the end.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

And well, it it's it's yeah, I know greatness. So if I can context this, I mean, greatness doesn't care, is the great, you know, you look around you and you look at history. Greatness does not care who you are, where you've been, how old you are, color of your hair, you know, your gender, your sexual preferences. It just doesn't care. It doesn't care what you've been through, it just cares you find purpose and you and you go after it. And discipline is one of those key steps. If I can context discipline then, you know, and and my life, you know, I had a corporate life. I became a CEO of uh of a company, a national company. I was on planes all the time, you know, I have a family. And I there wasn't unless I was in hospital, I did not miss one of the 11,000 training sessions that I did over 22 years. I did not allow myself corporate training or or physical training? No, no, this is physical training. Oh, right, I did not allow myself to choose not to do a single one unless I was physically incapable. And there have been plenty of times where you'd argue actually you're physically incapable, but it it's what you allow yourself to accept in terms of reasons or excuses. That's who you'd become. So discipline the stoics, and this context, some of the other 14 steps, discipline to the Stoics is the alignment of wisdom and action. Wisdom and action. So you can be disciplined doing a whole, you know, doing things kind of religiously, but they may not be all the right things. Yeah. So the wisdom is you have a purpose. It it's what it's your, you know, it's your North Star, you know, it's your it's your guiding light. And it that will enable you in struggle and adversity and challenge and all those other things that will happen in your life regardless. And the more, the more you push yourself to become better. When I say better, that doesn't mean better than anybody else, just better.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

Better yourself.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

The more those those more those things will happen. So if you have a purpose, you must have a plan because planning is wisdom. Planning is where you sit with stillness. What for any element or aspect of your life? You work, you know, you work through your purpose and say, well, for me to achieve my purpose, and it may not be a finishing line, it may not be something next year. Purpose should pervade your life forever. Purpose is the way you live. Then you must have a plan, and you've got to have a strategic long-term plan, business, personal, fitness, whatever it is. And you've got to have a tactical plan. And the tactical plan guides you every day in the things you just need to get up and do. That is the wisdom. And I find with many people that even when people kind of set you know big, big goals, is the goal might be five five years away. The goal is so huge that their minds cannot process and calibrate how they're actually going to get there. So if you're three months in and you've got something really significant in five years, and the world's going bad today and stuff's happening, you know, shit's happening. Can I say that shit's happening?

SPEAKER_01 23:14

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Thanks. Thanks, Debbie. You'll cut it out anyway if I can't. Or maybe all that maybe not all those random things are happening, you know, you've got to know what it is important, what what's important to get up and do rather than just doing. And the discipline is, regardless of what's happening in the world around you, you know, how you're feeling mentally or emotionally, is you do it. You show up and you do it. And discipline becomes a habit at the point that you don't allow yourself excuses unless there's something really significant, your family, or whatever. And that that literally becomes your identity and you just do it. And I set goals as part of my purpose five and ten years away regularly. And why I man was something I said a five-year goal from not being able to swim to Yeah, well, that's a perfect example. That's a per so I had that, so I I just literally boiled that down with a 90-day high performance plan, and I just knew every day what I needed to get up and do. So the the disconnection between that massive, almost mentally debilitating goal was if I just get up and do this, then each day, then by the time this comes, I will be there. And belief, belief is another key step. So there is an element of confidence in belief, but belief is not hope. You you can have hope. I don't believe I believe that people should have hope, but you're talking about manifesting.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

You're saying manifesting, like belief that if you have that conviction that you can manifest something to a degree.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

Well, you you can because you un my first book was called Unlimited, which is about how do you unjunit your mindset. You know, how do you context fear, how do you find a a lot of courage or a small amount of courage? Because once you and courage is the second step, by the way, once you find courage, and you find courage, your plan tells you what what you're going to do, your purpose is your compass, then you will find, especially if there's small small steps of courage, that the experience then is, oh, that wasn't as bad as I thought, or actually I could do that, or yeah. And so the belief becomes the belief becomes this is my experience. So for me, when the whole world was falling apart, and it's that's happened in business, it's happened in my personal life, it's happened in my sporting life, when that falls apart, it's belief that brings you back because you to yourself talk is you know what, I did that before and I did that and I did that. I can do this, I believe I can do this, and you restore it as quickly as possible and you keep going. And struggle, adversity, and failure are inevitable. I've failed on the epic epic failures on world stages. And each time I've stood back, I've learned from that, and that's actually that's empowered me and also motivated me. But I go, what did I do? Yeah, what could I done differently? What did I do wrong? Was it the conditions? Was it, you know, and so you analyze it and and and then you move on.

SPEAKER_01 26:29

And that's the wisdom.

SPEAKER_00 26:32

And that is the wisdom. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

And I think, yeah, well, that's that's the premise really of it's it's that classic. I mean, every single story from Siddhartha through to, you know, every story that you read, as you say, the Stoics is one another example. But historically, it really is, or you, you know, any film, any movie, any book is about the arch, which is exactly what you're talking about, where you climb the mountain and when you start to slide down it, you get back up. And so it's very much that whole notion, and often we say here what I've learned, you know, rivers crossed, mountains climbed, lessons learned, that's sort of our little motto. And it's very much absolutely very much how I think that if we all live. I think the interesting thing is also, I think when you look at the next generation, there is also, we talk about the Stoics as like an example of discipline and structure and and if you like, a somewhat linear approach, which has worked in many ways and does work. But what I'm seeing with the next generation is they're also saying, listen, I want to be disciplined, but I also want to make sure that I don't lose myself in the structure and the discipline of work, for example, which is a huge factor for all of us, right? How do you, how do they so they're going, well, we saw how you guys worked in the 80s and right through your entire lives, and then you turn 60 and then you're actually exhausted, burnout, and you need to go and recover, right? I'm just giving you an example. So I think there's an element of, you know, sort of trying to adapt that structure, that discipline to ensure that there is also different ways to do things and ensuring that one stays connected to oneself.

SPEAKER_00 28:10

Yeah. Well, the one great leveler, one of the great levelers in life, and in some places in the world, obviously your the hours in your day are spent just trying to survive. But every human that that that that day they're alive gets 24 hours, what you do with it is your choice. Discipline isn't rigidity. Discipline, well, at is actually freedom. Discipline is freedom. That's interesting. Discipline is freedom. And, you know, I don't believe that many people do understand what previous generations have had to do. So one of the things I've always tried to do is have an appreciation of what my parents went through and my grandparents. That always makes me feel grateful. But you know, like, and and sometimes it goes over people's heads, but you know, the that from 17 to 18 for the first year of my life, you know, I worked every single day by Christmas Day. So 364 days, apart from the time that times that I was in hospital, I worked 70 hours a week.

unknown 29:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

And I was like, that was normal. Yeah. So we all did get it.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

And you know, and and uh when I in in corporate life, uh, you know, I flew around the country, I was everywhere. You know, I would I would discipline would for me would mean, you know, if I was flying to Melbourne, you know, uh and back on the same day, you know, I'd get a super early and train. But then I would plan when I got back to the airport. If I had a if I had a run run session, I would get to the airport, I'd change out of my suit into my running gear and I just run home. And I would do that after events as well, because I need to entertain.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

Yeah, it's a release. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

Yeah. Well, it's just I need to do this because this is what I need to do today, because this is part of the plan, because my purpose, my purpose defines me, and I will get to here, but I need to I need to find a way to do what I need to do today.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

And I think and I think that there are a lot of next gen and you know, gen X, etc., who are trying to navigate that new way of working, living. So that, you know, and I do think we're dealing with a new era, and it's one that needs to be still disciplined, and they're all pretty disciplined, but they're also saying, listen, I'm working from home two days a week because I need to know that I can go to the beach and I can take off some time and meditate or whatever it is, and then I'll get back to what I need to do. So I think it's just a really interesting discussion around the the way that the world has changed a lot in the last really five years. And I think there's some positives from what I'm hearing and observing. The question is how we ensure that those disciplines, whatever that personal purpose is, but let's just talk in the workspace, for example, expectation of oneself in the workplace has changed for a lot of these younger people, which I really understand. They're like, Are you serious? I'm gonna spend 12 hours a day inside, you know, at my computer, which if you're in certain industries, as you know, in the corporate sector, that's a no not an option. You have to do that. So I think there's a lot of discussion around how we ensure that the discipline is still applicable and it's important to get where you need to go, right? But we also need to look at what we can learn from them as well, which I'm learning a lot too.

SPEAKER_00 31:28

Well, we always learn, and occasionally someone else said to me, you know, you're like a teenager, and I actually take that as that's the greatest compliment someone can actually give me. But Deborah, sacrifice is another of the 14 steps, and you know, there is no great life that is built without giving something up. There is no great life. And so the qu the decision is yours. It doesn't mean to say because you need to be the best, because if you want to be the best and you want to be the world champion at something, there's 8.239 billion people on this planet, so only one can be. So 8.239 billion minus one will essentially in society's eyes not be great, maybe a loser or whatever. And so comparison is is the thief of joy. But you must you must give something up. Everything in life is a trade. You could so again, that will that will depend on your purpose. Everything in life is a trade. Another step in greatness and finding your own greatness is resilience. And resilience is born of experience. Some people see resilience as me overcoming this massive, terrible disaster. And you know what? I've had those. And the resilience I've gradually built are the only things that got me through uh those enormous events. But resilience can be again small uh parts of resilience that are built through small actions of courage. And resilience, I like to it's I like to like bring things to life in a very simple form so that people in the moment can actually associate with them. So resilience is not surviving. Resilience is actually how quickly you can thrive. And what I say to people is, or what I share with people is think about resilience in the moment or whatever is going on in your life. Do you see a wall or do you see a door?

SPEAKER_01 33:32

Yeah, I think that's so true. I always say, look through the window. I agree with you. Like it's it's a it's a lot about perception. And so it sounds like the ultra marathons, which you've done many of and you continue to do even at this inaugural stage of life. Do you in a in a nutshell, what have they taught you?

SPEAKER_00 33:52

That you can you can achieve absolutely you know everything. And if I could just maybe if I could just give an example, you know, so I moved on from racing, I made trifle on, I moved to Sydney. I had so many terrible bike accidents that it was just impractical living in the middle of Sydney. So I thought, you know what, I'm gonna see what I'm capable of just running, because running was you know probably my thing as as a child. And when I was 45, I I was so grateful. I managed to get into probably the most legendary and iconic hundred-mile trail race. So there's there's hundreds of hundred-mile trail races around the world. Typically, they're about 40% harder than if you did the distance on the road. And and I got into the legendary Western states, and I went, I went to, you know, you start at 6,000 feet above sea level, so your heart's going 30% faster. And in the first six miles, so the first 10 kilometers, you run four and a half thousand feet vertical to snow. That's the start of the race. And I got there, and the film crew interviewed me because I was a bit of a curiosity. I don't know why, maybe it's just because I'm Australian. And and and they said, you know, what are the hundred miles have you done during this interview? And I said, Well, I haven't. I said, I actually have never done a trail race. And they laughed. They laughed at me. And I left that and I went and sat outside and I looked up to the top of this mountain at 11,000 feet in altitude. And for a few minutes I just sat there and went, Should I be here? Am I questioning, you know, I'm it's that kind of imposter syndrome? And then I sat there for a while and went, you know what, you should. Because you have belief. You have been running two, you know, 250 kilometers a week. You have been running a marathon half marathon in the morning before work to get to work, a half marathon after. You've been running 70Ks on a Sunday, and every three weeks you go for a hundred K run after work and you run all night, and then you just go back to work again. You can do this. I had a terrible injury which was undiagnosed for many years. I had a severe tear of my medial meniscus, which lodged itself between the bone, and I had all this pain that I'd been having going up to this race. And I got to the top of the mountain, I started to run downhill, and I was six miles into a hundred-mile race, and my knee was just excruciating. I just felt like it wanted to blow up. And so I had some pretty significant questions of myself.

unknown 36:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:21

It was 40,000 feet of vertical elevation change, running through rivers and whatever else. I had to recalibrate and go, you know what, you know, you're not going to probably not gonna get back here. What is it you've got to do? Focus on, and I just focused on the short-term things and went, you know what, just get to here, just do this. You've heard like life, really, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 36:40

It's quite it is, it's quite um allegorical in some forms. And I think they are the they are the lessons that you I mean, what you're talking about, that story in particular, but uh it sounds like that's very much what has driven you, but also allowed you to reach such heights. And I thank you very much for your time, for your words of wisdom. And I wish you luck with the next chapter.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

Great. Thanks very much, Deborah. Bye everyone.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

Bye, thank you. Well, thank you for joining us on the What I've Learned podcast. I hope you enjoyed that interview because we are so privileged to have a wonderful platform where guests come on and share lessons learned, rivers crossed, mountains climbed. We love our shared humanity, and we are so grateful to have such a beautiful community. So remember to stay curious, kind, and connected, and we'll see you next time at the What If Lord Podcast.