S6E12 Luke Tyburski: 2000km Triathlon in 12days and the Dark Side of Elite Performance...

The ULTIMATE Triathlon: 2000km in 12 days! Swimming from Morocco to Spain, then cycling and running to Monaco in 12 days!

Luke Tyburski is one of the most elite ultra-endurance athletes alive! He was named by Forever Sports Magazine as one of the top 50 fittest athletes in the world in 2016.
He has completed the Marathon de Sables a 250km 7-day marathon through the Sahara desert, ran 660km from the bottom of Ireland to the top,  among many, many more.

But behind all the magazine articles, podcasts, and TV interviews, his mental health was plummeting out of control. He struggled with severe depression, binge eating 2-3tubs of ice cream a night, and even got to the point of standing on a bridge debating about taking his own life...

His story is a story of running from pain (literally), finding vulnerability, and the incredible power (positive and negative) of mental strength and resilience.


Website:
www.luketyburski.com
-You can get his book Chasing the Extreme here...
- Along with 5 Free ebooks on everything from building confidence to the attitude of success, self-reflection, and more!

All social media @luketyburski

Transcript

Luke Tyburski: 0:00

2015 before I did my 2000 kilometer in 12 day Ultimate Triathlon from Morocco to Monaco where I swam the Gibraltar strait between Spain and Africa, cycled the Southeast coast of Spain and then ran from the Spanish French border to Monaco in 12 days. I was a keynote speaker. I'd traveled around the world speaking about the big adventures I'd been on. I'd had countless magazines articles written about me. I had different brands who were sponsoring me. And my mental health was plummeting outta control I just felt like the world was falling on top of me. And I laid down in the sunshine on the concrete, in the back garden, on the path in the fetal position and cried.

Michael Bauman: 1:27

Welcome back to Success Engineering. I'm your host, Michael Bauman and I have Luke Tyburski on the show today. He's a keynote speaker. He's an event host. An ultra endurance athlete. And when, I mean ultra endurance, it's the Marathon de Sables, so a 250 kilometer seven day marathon through the Sahara desert, running 660 kilometers from the bottom of Ireland to the top, running down Everest, doing an ultimate triathlon. So 2000 kilometers from Morocco to Monaco in 12 days, Absolutely insane. And this is just something we could take the whole podcast, be just listening off the race stuff, but of the races he's done, but really excited to have you on this show. Pleasure to have you here.

Luke Tyburski: 2:02

Hm, Michael, it's an absolute pleasure. And thank you for having me on. I'm excited to dive into all things life, endurance sports, and what we can learn from them and why they are intertwined between living your best life and what I've learned from my ultra endurance challenges.

Michael Bauman: 2:19

Absolutely. And along those lines, the super serious lines. I wanted to start with the propeller cap. And I want to hear the story around your propeller cap.

Luke Tyburski: 2:28

I must admit. I've done quite a few podcasts over the years and interviews from different mediums and, it's not always, but every now and again, there's someone who just says like, first question, I need to know what's the deal with the propeller cap. So whenever I run in a race or a challenge or event, or even sometimes if I'm, so, as you mentioned, I'm an event host if it's an event to do with running, I'll even wear this. It's quite literally a multicolored cap with a propeller on top and the wind spins. It actually spins around and when I run, it actually spins as well. So yeah. Where did it come from? It was, I was doing a hundred mile running race many years ago and my, it was a big race. There was quite a few hundred people doing it and I thought, well, I'm gonna be at aid stations and there's gonna be a lot going on. So I thought, oh, I'll have to wear something. So my crew can spot me. And I thought, oh yeah, that's a good idea. And then I was just randomly in this like homeware store in London here where I live with a friend. And she just said, you should wear that hat for your hundred mile. And I was just like, joking, like yeah, sure. I went and grabbed it. And it's actually a kid's hat it's they're made for kids so I put it on and sort of adjusted the back with the Velcro and put it on she's like, that is awesome. And she took a photo and I'm like, actually it's pretty comfortable. and it was like two pounds. Right. So I thought, yeah, I'm just gonna buy it. Yeah. I'll wear it for my a hundred mile. So I thought, yeah, that's it. But, as a, as an experienced athlete, I know that you can't just wear something brand new on race day. You've gotta wear it in practice, in training. So here's the thing that really kept the propeller cap pun intended, spinning and using it when I'm running now. And this is like 2013. When I first started wearing it, I think, or 2014, when I wore it in training, I started to run past people and people constantly smiled at me. People started giving me thumbs up. People were like, dude, that's an awesome hat. I absolutely love it. And then there was this one instant when I was like six hours into like a seven hour training run or whatever it was for this a hundred mile race. And I was just tired. I'd had enough running. I just wanted to be home. And I knew I still had like an hour to go. And I came around this bend in this park where I was running in. There was a father and son. The son must have been about 12 and they both looked at me. Gave me this big smile and just gave me a thumbs up and like, mate, that is an awesome hat. And then it made me smile and it made me feel energized. It made me feel amazing. And I gave them a thumbs up and said, thanks guys. You're awesome. And I ran off and I had this huge amount of uplifting energy feeling inside of me because I saw them smile. I knew I made their day or that moment in the day, a little bit better because they saw this multicolor propeller cap spinning on a grown ass man who is running and then them smiling made me smile. And I smiled from the outside in, and it energized me. And that last hour flew by just cause I felt amazing. And from that training run on, I just thought, you know what? I've gotta wear this when I train. And when I run and I've done it pretty much ever since.

Michael Bauman: 5:58

And is that the main thing it symbolizes for you? Like just that bringing other people joy, but then also internally, like how that shifts sifts your state?

Luke Tyburski: 6:05

I think, yeah, like when you go a little bit deeper into it, but it's just fun. Cool. It's fun. And it shows us that you don't have to take yourself too serious in life. And here I am I'm a grown man. Sometimes I run down the main street of suburbs in London. I've worn it running through central London and people just love it. They think it's great because they expect like a seven year old kid to wear something like this, not a grown man running, and I just think it, it really sort of highlights part of my character. I'm very sort of happy go lucky and relaxed and sort of, I don't take myself too serious at all. Never have, but it also shows us that we can be playful in life and it's okay to not conform to. What you perceive others should look like, or you perceive you should fit into the society that, you live in. So it's just, yeah, it's just fun. It's playful. And it just shows that, it's okay to not take yourself too seriously and that, smiling is contagious.

Michael Bauman: 7:05

I love that. Cuz like you mentioned, it's very representative of you so love that. Thank you for that answer. Backtracking a little bit. I want to talk about your dreams as a kid of becoming a footballer, from a, rural country town in Australia and realizing those dreams, but then what happened after that as well.

Luke Tyburski: 7:23

Yeah. You asked Luke at three or four years of age, you asked him at 10, you asked him at 12, 14, 16, what are you going to do or be when you get older and it was be professional soccer player. That was it. Now I didn't come from a city or a town or even a country where soccer was like the number one. And everyone wanted to do that. Like there's half a dozen sports in Australia that people want to play professionally before soccer. And my parents didn't play, but my uncle played and that's where my interest sort of lied. I wanted to be like my uncle. He was a cool uncle. And so I, yeah I wanted to play soccer, like my uncle Phil and I played ever since I was four years of age. And that was it. That's all I ever wanted to do now. Did I show any talent growing up that I was any good. No, no, it wasn't like, yeah, like I played from, I was four and by the time I was 12, I was like, killing or anything like that. No, I was last picked on my, and I say last picked because I played the least amount of minutes every year for our local, just our local town representative team never even made like the regional team wasn't even, looked at for that, or wasn't even looked at for like the state team or anything like that. It was the last one picked because some games I didn't even play, some seasons where the representative season might have been like, say 12 games. I might have played 10 minutes in three or four of those games. And that was it. Like, I wasn't very good. And our town wasn't very big so, yeah. And then. I just loved kicking a ball around. So I was, and it comes also, I think this will be a, something that we'll touch on at times throughout. But I look back now and realize that I had some significant mentors in my life as I was growing up, not just coaches or people or adults who I was affiliated with, but I had one coach from a very young age and he would encourage us to get a tennis ball and kick the ball up against the fence, or kick the ball up against a brick wall to practice at home and use a tennis ball, not a soccer ball because it's smaller. So you gotta be more precise. Now. I knew what I wanted to be when I got older. So I really harnessed this technique of doing repetitions day after day after day to get better. Now we can translate this to all walks of life. So, but this was installed with me. I'm talking six and seven. When my coach bill Casey's name was installed that into us, his son played on the team and he was just a dad helping out bunch of kids. But this was one of the things that he taught us. So then my work ethic from a young age was quite high because of, I was in, this was installed with me, Also my parents working class family. Very much, if you wanna, if you want to give yourself a chance to be successful, you've gotta put the work in bottom line and they really installed two things, a hard work ethic, but knowing at the same time, just because you work hard doesn't mean you will be success. And I think that's really important to get your head around because we think, well, if we work hard, we're gonna achieve success. As you get older, you realize life is not fair and it doesn't work like that. It gives you a chance to be successful. And the other thing my parents instilled into me was curiosity, if you wanna go and achieve that, okay, go and put the work in. Let's see what happens. But if you don't put the work in, you're definitely not gonna be successful, but you can achieve whatever you want, as long as you put the work in and it could give you a chance. So if you think you can do it, let's go and see. So these are the things that my parents installed to me from a very young age. And over the years of 12, 13, and 14, the work ethic, the curiosity that if I keep training as hard as I could, maybe I could become better. Maybe I could make the regional team. And that was like mind blowing. I wanted to get that for our region. It was green and red tracksuit. It was like, I want to get these tracksuit that says Western region on it. And I'm gonna be cool, like all the other cool kids. And that, that was that curiosity of like, can I make that team next year? Try it out. No, can I make that team next year? Try it out. No, if I keep training hard, can I make it the following year? So the reason why I tell you this story in this way is so the combination of hard work, but knowing if I work hard, I'm not necessarily gonna be successful, but it gives myself a chance. The curiosity of like, what if I can, what if I just set myself up for success and see what happens and give myself the best chance. And then it was this really supportive community of my family, of being curious. Just keep going for it every year. Just keep going for it, learn from the experience and then go again. All of that combined with the hours of kicking a ball up against a wall and juggling a soccer ball. And then I grew, I had a growth spurt and this sort of uncoordinated unathletic 13, 14 year old kid, all of a sudden, hit puberty, right in the middle of smack bang in the bull's eye, got some muscles grew a couple of inches, and then all of a sudden could actually run in a straight line So, which helps when you playing football yeah. And could control his body. Right. And he put those together. All of a sudden I went from the last kid, picked in the local team. To being picked for the state team and being looked at for the national under 17 squad. Wow. I'm getting phone calls from people. I didn't even know who they were, but they just told me their job title. And I'm like, okay, I know that job title. like, you're calling from Soccer Australia. Like what the hell's going on here? I haven't even made the west. I haven't even got my green and red Western region tracksuit yet. And you are already offering your chance to get a blue, new south Wales state tracksuit. I'm like, and even a green and gold Australian one, I'm like what's going on. So from 15 to 17, people would look at it as an overnight success. All of a sudden, I didn't get picked for anything. Luke got picked for the state team, went and played at the national championships, made the Australian like the watch squad for the under 17 team. At 15, 16 I play, I moved from my hometown. I moved three and a half hours away while I was still at high school to play for a professional club. The reserve team wasn't professional. So I was playing at 16 years of age against the best 20 year olds in the country, flying to games, having to leave school at lunchtime on a Friday, because we had a game on Saturday in another state and we had to fly there. It was so cool. I don't think you'd get away with it now, but yeah, so I, all of a sudden, no one knew who I was in the state in the country. And I was now this, like, this really good player that everyone was talking about to a small degree. So. I did get a little bit of well, where's he come from? Like, his overnight success. And I was like, well, no, but I've been working my backside off for the last 10 years. So it was that time where I really felt like, Hey, like I could really achieve this goal or being a professional soccer player. And then I played in Australia, I played in Sydney in the top leagues. For a few years, I was playing against grown men at the age of 18/19 some in the top league. And then without going on tangent, the top league in Australia folded because they were revamping the competition a bit like the MLS in the us years ago they got rid of the top league of soccer over there. And they started the MLS with eight teams. Australia did the same thing. The, A league started with eight teams flew professional first team of reserve team. There you go. But that league, wasn't gonna start for two years. So here I am. I'm 20 in Australia. Oh, wow. Without a top league. And it's like, well, I've gotta try and progress somehow. So I went to the states, finished off my exercise science degree that I was doing on the side while I was playing soccer and played out there in the lower professional leagues. And then I was like, right. It's time for me to go to Europe and throw my hat into the ring. And I had some short stints in England and then ended up going to Belgium and played out there in the lower leagues and then came back to the UK to try and play. And then I spent most of the next three years being injured, recovering, being injured, recovering, being injured, recover. Not really having a full-time contract. I was getting month deals, three month deals, things like this. And after three years, and at the ripe old age of 28, I decided to retire from football.

Michael Bauman: 16:35

So, I mean, you literally, like you said, I mean, you've had this dream when you're like three or four years old and you're living this dream, but in some ways it wasn't measuring up to the dream that you were thinking it would be, and things just started to break down both, physically and then also mentally as well. Can you talk about, when you decided to stop playing what that did to you and what that did to your identity in the period following that, that point?

Luke Tyburski: 17:00

Yeah. So leading up to, when I retired, as I said, I suffered many injuries when I was in the worst phase of this period, I had three surgeries on different body parts in 11 months. Wow. Now that is a lot of surgery. That is a lot of scans. That is a lot of, general anesthetic. So my body felt I got used to it feeling average at best. But it got to a point where I was just like, with all these different injuries that I was having, there was no sort of one big one. There was lots of them. I became depressed and I had depression. It sort of compounded from, and the way that I describe it was we all can get depressed when something doesn't go right. And we, and that's a feeling, right? It's a feeling, it's an emotion. We get depressed. My own personal definition of where I saw myself going from being depressed because I was injured, being depressed because my livelihood wasn't there. Like I wasn't making any money for periods of time. So I wasn't getting in the next contract where it went from being depressed to having depression was when I stopped living on a daily basis, I was withdrawing myself from society. I was altering how I thought and acted on a regular basis on consecutive days. So for an example, I was in a house share with a couple of friends and I, would wake up in the morning, super depressed and just like, I can't deal with the world. And I would just yell out to my housemates and say, Hey, like I'm heading out now. I'll see you guys later. They had nine to fives. I'll see you tonight when you get home from work. Yeah, no worries. Open the front door, close it quietly. Sneak back into my room and lay in bed all day. And then when I hear them all come home in the night, I would come out of my room, pretending I, got home just before they did. So I was with withdrawing myself from society and changing my actions on a daily basis. That's looking back on it now. I didn't realize at the time, that's when I really started to struggle with depression and this lasted four months before I decided to retire. And then I suppressed this feeling, this emotion, because when I retired, I had this huge loss of identity. As I said, you asked Luke at 3, 10, 12, 14, 16, even when he was playing and being paid. Sorry to talk about myself in the third person, but it'll make sense. Even when he was being paid to play, like, I didn't really make any money from soccer. I didn't have to work, but I didn't really, I didn't have any savings at the end of my career. Now who am I? I had no idea I had, no, I didn't wanna do anything else in life. So I had this huge loss of identity that I was battling with in the moment I was depressed, suffering with depression, and I thought this sucks. I dunno what to do. And then on a whim, because I didn't wanna sit in that moment and be present in that moment and feel the feelings I was having and assess the situation because it was too painful for me. Back then at 28 years of age, I'm now 39. I did what I thought was a great idea at the time. And that was to sign up to one of the toughest ultra-marathons in the world. 255 kilometers in seven days through the middle of the Sahara desert, carrying everything in your backpack, six marathons in seven days, self supported. And I'd never even ran more than 10 kilometers in one go in my entire life. And the race was in six months. I called them up and I paid my deposit to get a place for that race. And I did that on the same day that I retired while laying down in my bedroom, icing my calf. That was the last injury to sort of seal my retirement because I was like that tunnel to my left. So to speak retiring loss of identity depression, I ain't going down that right now. So I'm gonna go in a completely different way. And I went down the Marathon de Sables way.. I mean, you literally take, running from your brain and you Made it, and that was it. I was literally running away from my pain, running away from not knowing who I was. And I know this sounds really sort of like random. How did you come up to the Marathon De Sables? The reason why that race was because I had friends in Australia who were doing Ironman triathlons and marathons, and one of them started to do ultra-marathons. So running a race, anything longer than a marathon. And I'd only spoken to one of my mates, very Aussie now, nickname Baz must have been like a month before. And he on the phone that we chatted, like he was telling me about this crazy race in the Sahara desert, where you literally run six marathons in seven days and all that sort of stuff. And he was telling me about it. And I thought he was lying. Like, I didn't think it was a real race. I thought there's no one that can do that. And he is telling me about it and I thought, yeah, now you're just making up. This is ridiculous. People will die doing that. This was my mindset. This is what I thought about ultra endurance stuff. And then for whatever reason, it popped into my head when I was laying there in my bedroom, icing my calf. And I just thought, you know what? That is a complete opposite thing. And that is a way that I can distract myself from the pain that I was going through. And I can focus on that and I can distract everyone around me cuz they're like, well now you're retired. What are you gonna do? I'm doing the Marathon De Sables just in six months. I've gotta focus on that and train for that. They're not gonna ask me anymore questions about retiring from football. How do I feel now? What are you gonna do? Because I'm running six marathons through the middle of the Sahara desert in seven days in only six months time. I've gotta focus on that. So that was the whole transition.

Michael Bauman: 22:57

Yeah. And. Can you talk about, I mean, so you trained for this six months and, day one, 20 kilometers in things already start to go wrong.

Luke Tyburski: 23:07

So when you train for these big events and increasing the volume, you've gotta do it gradually. So I had six months to go from a broken down, injured footballer with a torn calf to run through the desert. So after my calf healed, I trained way too much, too early. I was doing way too much running. And over the coming months, I got what is called runner's knee, which is a IIB band ITB issue. So before I went out, I had a couple of cortisone injections, which are, they were never gonna work. It was just like, let's just do it to might give you some relief, but you know, it's not really gonna hold up for the whole week and went out there and ran along felt great. And then after about 20 kilometers, I just felt this sharp, hot stabbing pain on the outside of my knee. And that's what it is. It's it's inflamed irritated thick tissue flicking over every time you bend your knee, it flicks over the bone on your knee. So when you're running or walking, every time you take a step, if you bend your knee, it flicks, it's like a hot, sharp stabbing pain in the outside of your knee. That was after 20 Ks on the first day. So I was like, this is gonna be a long week. So crazy. yeah. So that was sort of the introduction to that. And I got blisters because, I didn't realize how badly my feet sweat in the heat. Like I, I went out to Australia over Christmas time and ran through the summer there. But, we were running in 45 to 50 degree temperature Celsius. One day it was 52 degrees Celsius and that was hot. But my feet sweat a lot. And what happened was my feet got so wet with sweat. As, if your skin stays in water too long, it gets really soft. And then if you imagine, if you're rubbing it together, like wet paper, it just pulls apart. So I degloved some of my toes, like literally, if you just grabbed your skin on your toe and just pulled it off, literally like a rubber glove finger. That's what my skin on my toe did. So then these got infected. I was on Penicillin on day three, like on antibiotics because of my toes were so infected. So I felt like I had, I was running on razor blades in my shoes with with the infected toes and the de glub toes and the saying blisters. Then my knee that my knee was the worst, like that hurt the most, the toes were gruesome. And like they were painful, but my knee was worse and I got a, I was severely dehydrated on day four on the double marathon day because I had a I got a stomach bug on, on day three. I had diarrhea and vomiting. So after 20 kilometers out of 80, on the long day, I was stopped at the aid station and they're like, You can't go on. You're too severely dehydrated. We either pull you outta the race now, or you have an intravenous drip. And in this race, one of the craziest things, right, is if you have an intravenous drip, which I'm gonna say this in full context, if you have an intravenous drip in the middle of the Sahara desert during this race to potentially save your life or minimize the risk of severe damage to your body, you get a time penalty. So, I didn't even care about that, but I got a two hour time penalty. I had this drip and they said, if you can pee afterwards, then we'll let you go. So I had this drip for about two hours. I paid and off, I went to complete the 60 kilometers for the rest of that day. That night I finished like three or four in the morning. So to say, I got my money's worth from the Marathon De Sables was an understatement I finished the race, I completed it and it took me seven or eight months before I started running again. After the race, my toes healed. I had minor surgery in Morocco, from the doctors there. And then back in London with the podiatrist I had here to cut out just infected flesh. That was never gonna heal properly. Circulation in my toes going on 10 years now, later, still not the same. wow. I still have they're still affected and they always will be from that. And yeah, then it was a case of like, okay, now we're back in London. Now I've recovered from this. People are starting to ask me, what are you gonna do now with the rest of your life, your 28. you've got your whole life ahead of you, so to speak what's next. And I just told everyone I'm gonna be an endurance adventurer, and I'm gonna do these big challenges all around the world. Write books about them, speak on stages, doing keynote talks about them. Write magazine articles, collaborate with other people and other brands. Have documentaries created about these challenges, that's gonna be my new life. And you can imagine, this is 2012, very different to today's world. You could imagine what people thought when I told them that was gonna be my new life. You're crazy.

Michael Bauman: 28:05

Well, do it, the ultras just a general is special type to do that, but yeah. So I'm curious on that. And this can apply to all the things that you do as well. Like what, what kept you going when you like 20 kilometers in you have excruciating pain doing pretty much any running or up and down the sand dunes, like what kept you going, what was the mindset that you actually had to be able to be able to accomplish that?

Luke Tyburski: 28:29

So there's two answers to this. There's the superficial answer. And then there's the deep answer and they're both relevant. So the superficial answer is this when I. And this is why I always give a little bit more detail to my story as a teenager, when I went through that growth spur. And when I started to make those big representative teams growing up in the nineties in Australia was a as a blessing as an athlete because we had the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and the country and have the country has always, but the country was pumping a lot of money into sport because we had the Olympics and it filtered across all the sports to a degree. So think about this in 1997/98 I'm like 14, 15 year old kids. And we're away at these camps with these representative teams and we are doing yoga. We're doing mindfulness practices. We're doing breathing exercises. We're doing meditation. We're doing relaxation techniques, all the stuff that is cool today. Yeah. We were being taught this as teenage boys in the mid nineties in Australia. Wow. So like to be exposed to that at young age is one thing, but to actually buy into it was another now I'm pretty sure I was probably the only one on the team that did buy into it because all my friends, like you can imagine you're laying there on your back doing breathing exercises, eyes closed in this candle lit room with incense burning 14 year old, 15 year old boys, the amount of people that were punching each other in the nuts and stuff like that was ridiculous, but I got into it and since then I've continued. And also when we're at training camps and even at tournaments, We would have like a 20 minute session with a sports psychologist at the end of each training session at the end of each game, that would travel with us. So, wow. Not because there's anything wrong with it from a mental perspective, but how can we become better from a mental strength perspective during training and games? How can we work on the mental side of being an athlete? So I got exposed to that from a very young age, and as I said, I bought into it. So the tools that I was taught as a 14, 15 year old, 16 year old as well was in the same system then. And then I got curious and bought some books, getting sports, nutrition, books, and sports psychology books as a 14, 15, 16 year old kid was just weird, especially back then. But it was like a learning process for me. The superficial answer of as the question that you asked about you, how what's the mindset of when your 20 K's down, the week's gonna be long, cuz your knee's gone. It was a case of using all these sports psychology or performance, psychology tools, mindfulness practices, meditation, meditative practices that I've been exposed to and been practicing at that stage for 14 years. Wow. To help me push through and not focus on my knee, focus on the things I can control. When the pain is really bad, just focus on my breathing and take some big, deeper breaths, do some box breathing to, to stay focused in the moment, all these things that I'm talking through. Do different distraction exercises at times, but also at the same time, go and do that checklist, head to toe checklist, all these things that were taught back then. That's how I wasn't able to push myself physically because I've been training my mind and I stay on a daily basis. And these techniques that I was taught as a young kid, and then dove into psychology myself still to this day, I'm 39, so I've been doing it for a long time, 25 years, ish. Wow. So I've been training my mind to optimize my performance and use the performance as a global term. So that's a superficial answer of, and I mean it, from the true meaning of the word, just on the surface, that's my answer for them. The real deep answer to how I was able to push myself when I was going through all these really difficult physical moments during these ultra-marathons and ultra triathlons was the pain that I was feeling deep down. I like I was struggling with depression. The only time I felt alive and I felt myself and I felt, like I had energy and power was when I was out running or over the years as they progressed swimming and cycling. When I was training, when I was pushing myself, that's when I felt alive. As soon as I stopped, I plummeted into depression because I didn't know who I was. I still had this loss of identity. I had no idea what I was gonna do with my life. Even though I forecast I was gonna be this endurance adventure and do all these big challenges, but I had no idea how I was gonna figure that out. And then I was dealing with being depressed and then as time moved on that depression led on to other things that I'm sure we'll get onto in, in a moment from binge eating to insomnia, to not wanting to live anymore and take my life standing on top of bridges. So that deep rooted pain. Was the thing that was really pushing me when things got tough, difficult, because it was a case of I can stop doing this stuff and to make the pain go away, open up, and speak about the pain that I was going through. Or I can use that pain to fuel me and quite literally, and figuratively run away from it. I can use that to fuel my fire, to shoot me off in the opposite direction of actually stopping and facing what I'm feeling and what I'm going through. Yeah, I appreciate you. I appreciate you giving both of those answers. I mean, there's a couple of questions that I have on that one. And this applies to a lot of high performers. Like they have things that they're struggling with in their past or whatever. And they use that just like you said, they use that. I mean, we develop as in childhood and as kids these protective mechanisms that keep us alive and we leverage'em to accomplish incredible things. But at the same time, one I'm curious is when did that start to shift for you? And when did you start to go like, I'm gonna actually work through this and let this go. And two. How did you work through the fear of like, if I let this go, the thing that's driving me to achieve all these things, will I like, what will I be without that? Or will I still be able to achieve these, feats these accomplishments? I'll answer that question first. Cause it's a simple answer. I always knew I had enough drive mental strength, grit internal motivation is probably the best way to describe it. I have limitless as we all do, but I know I have limitless internal motivation. I know if I set myself up to what is it that I want to do? Why do I want to do it? And what is it gonna take for me to have a chance to achieve it? Then I have limit this internal motivation. So that was a case of. It sounds really odd, but I almost looked at that as an external motivator. The pain I was feeling inside because I knew that it could go away. I knew I could get rid of it, but I wasn't ready. I wasn't strong enough to share that part of what I was going through. So in terms of, oh if I try and remove this pain, if I try and speak about this pain, if I try and get rid of it, where does that lead me in terms of how being able to push myself and accomplish these things? I didn't even cross my mind because deep down, I've always known that the amount of internal motivation and I know it is limitless. And when, you have that power and you have a structure of, to sort of like an oil wells so to speak, like you have the structure down into the ground, and soon as you've hit that that oil is like, okay, is this gonna come up whenever I want, but you've gotta build that structure, very bad, not a great analogy, but I think it gets the points. Yeah. Yeah. First thing that came to mind, never used that again. But so there was never that, but the other side to that, the other question you asked was where, like, when did it happen to sort of start opening up? There's two parts to it. It's almost like I open the gate slightly and then I shut it and then the whole fence fell down and I'll explain this in second. I opened it up to sort of, okay, let's let this out now. And it sort of was good for a second, but it was just the gate just lets the door a little bit and then I closed it and then everything just collapsed around it. So I didn't even choose to actually process it. And this happened 2015 before I did my 2000 kilometer in 12 day, ultimate triathlon from Morocco to Monaco where I swam the Gibraltar strait between Spain and Africa. cycled the Southeast coast of Spain and then ran from the Spanish French border to Monaco in 12 days. the months leading up to this. That year 20 15 was the big year I was gonna do my big challenge. It was gonna put me on the map and for context, I was a keynote speaker. I'd traveled around the world. Speaking about the big adventures I'd been on. I'd been on some of the world's biggest podcasts back then as well. I went to the states and did a bunch of big podcasts out there. I'd had, countless magazines articles written about me. I had different brands who were sponsoring me. So my big ultra endurance adventurer dream was starting to become a reality and people could actually start to see, wow, like what he was talking about, like three, four years ago. Now we can see how this is actually potentially working 2015, hit me and my mental health was plummeting outta control and where I knew I needed to pull the rip cord, open that gate a little bit, whatever analogy metaphor you want to call. It was one day sunny day in the summer. I was out in my back garden and I just felt like the world was falling on top of me. And I laid down in the sunshine on the concrete, in the back garden, on the path in the fetal position and cried I can't make it sound cool. I can't make it sound eloquent and I'm not trying to, but I just laid down on this path and cried in the fetal position. And because I was so depressed because I was so unhappy because the pain was so strong. I had nothing left to give. And then I booked in to see a therapist for the first time. Cause I was battling for years by myself, like talking about when it, I first realized that I was suffering with depression when my life started to alter, as I said was about 2010. This is middle of 2015 that I was battling alone, not talking about it with anyone and my girlfriend at the time. Now wife, I saw a therapist for a couple of times. Every week started to sort of talk to him. And I just remember sat on the couch she's in healthcare. She's an osteopath. So she sees the world in a very holistic view and she works with patients from various different things and she knew something was going on, but she also knew me well enough at the time to know that. You don't press me. You just create a space. And I will, when I feel the right time is I'll do my thing. And we sat on the couch and I just started to, this is maybe like three or four weeks after I had this laying down in the back garden. And I just said, look, I gotta talk to you. And she's like, yeah. And I just like, I'm struggling. I just can't do this. And we had a really open chat and felt really supported for the first time. And that was my choice to not feel supported. And now it was my choice to allow people in, to help support me and she did that. And I spoke to my parents now, when I say I opened up. I'll say 60% of what I was going through and what I was feeling I opened up about. I basically told them that I was struggling with depression and I would hide myself away a few times from the world and I would have cries here and there and feel like I couldn't function. I feel like I couldn't get outta bed and all this other things, but that was about it. Didn't tell them about the insomnia. Didn't tell'em about the binge eating or standing on tops of bridges, the previous couple of years. So then the ultimate triathlon was in like a couple of months so it was like, well, what do we do? And I kept going to therapy and I soldiered it on. And I started that event, 2000 kilometers in 12 days, on zero from an energy perspective from a physiological, psychological Element. I was just done. I was just empty. So then I went and did 2000 kilometers in 12 days. and what's below empty yeah, exactly. Which then, and this is what I tell people. You wanna see how mentally strong I am go and watch the ultimate triathlon documentary on Amazon. After knowing with context, what was going on in my life or the, like the six, seven years prior, I went into that empty. You wanna see what mental strength looks like and what it looks like when you train your mind for the last 20 odd years? That documentary. I completed that challenge on nothing, but the previous 20 years of mental strength training, call it whatever you want, but training my mind to override what my body was doing. And it shows it in the film time after time again, when my body's trying to shut down and my mind's like, Nope, not doing it because I train my mind to be stronger than my body. Very dangerous, which you'll see in the documentary, but when used and understood and respected, very powerful as well. So to finish that answer, very long-winded answer to your question was I finished the ultimate triathlon, my mental health plummeted again and about three months, no, about four or five months after I finished the ultimate triathlon, I went to start training again and then all of a sudden it was just like someone took my legs out from underneath. I had headaches for about the first six hours. When I was a week, I was sleeping 12 to 14 hours a day, even though I'd set my alarm to get up and I'd, just no good the day, the days I didn't have any appointments or bookings on or anything else had on, I would just stay in bed. But pretty much every day, first six hours, I had headaches. I was exhausted. I had stomach issues. I had aches and pains. I could barely walk the mile from my house into the, sort of the shopping area of where I live. And whenever I stopped, I'd just sleep. So I went to see a neurologist. He was like, yeah, when you are a light bulb flickering and you just turn it a little bit and it stays on, there was a part of my brain that there was electric signal, not quite getting through quite right. So I had some medication to fix that, to fix the headaches that I was having. Then I went to see a sports doctor. Who's also a a naturopath sort of doctor as well. So you've got traditional medicine plus sort of like new medicine, so to speak had a battery of tests and basically my endocrine system was shutting down. So your hormonal system, and for one example of what that means is that my D H E a my basically human grown growth hormone, which is a precursor to testosterone was pretty much zero. So my body was so depleted. It was just shutting down. And my endocrine system was like, Nope, I was always sick. I had colds in the middle of the summer. And it took me about 18 months with a lot of different types of therapies, traditional non-traditional different medications, mainly sort of more natural stuff. But there was some sort of more sort of pharmaceutical things as well. Just sort of gimme a bit of a kickstart 18 months before I felt like myself going through therapy as well, and just really taking care of my body. And in that 18 months at when I wasn't training where I wasn't doing any of this physical stuff where this pain wasn't fuel me anymore, I was able to heal from the inside out from a physiological perspective and an emotional perspective and psychological perspective as well to then be able to see me as. Not a footballer, not an ultra endurance athlete, but as Luke the human and really understand what that meant. And also how I fit in the world where I was right then 2017 on that day. And then what it means to live life and be able to move forward into the future without always having this big target to aim for.

Michael Bauman: 45:51

Yeah. First off, I mean, again, thank you. Thank you for sharing. I'm curious what. What that process looked like for you or what were a couple different ways you could potentially approach this question, what that process looked like for you, or if it's easier to answer, like, what were the biggest takeaways or the biggest like pivotal moments in that process or how you would advise other people that are potentially struggling with a similar thing?

Luke Tyburski: 46:20

Yeah. There were so many things that went on during that period of time. It wasn't like, okay, take this supplements to help with this physical thing, do this three times a day. It was not that it was this whole mash of things that sort of came together. But I think the taking a 10,000 foot view and looking back at those 18 months, I was very lucky in that. What was masking my pain and the facade. And that was quite literally what the facade I was putting up, was, had been taken away from me. That was sport. Endurance sport. Swimming, cycling, and running. That was the thing that was inhibiting me to move forward in life, to understand the pain I was going through to figure out what my, who I was and my identity. So the first thing is if any of the listeners are going through this. This rollercoaster, not rollercoaster ride, but this roundabout round and round of circles of, I wanna get off this ride, so to speak, because I know I'm in pain and that pain can be whatever it is to you. And I know I want to change, but I can't get myself off it. We all have like a crutch. We all have something that we lean onto or into whether that's exercise, whether that's substances. And I don't just mean substance abuse, but I just mean substances or it's, what you eat or who you talk to. That could be another thing is we all have these crutches that we rely on to just sort of make us feel better for a minute. But in reality, it just sort of moves us past that tough moment. And then keep going. And when the pain's bad enough, you will stop and assess it. But until it's until the pain is deep enough and painful enough, then nothing's gonna change. Pain will create change once the pain becomes too much. So it's understanding what you are suppressing that pain with is the first thing. And for me, it was exercised. And because that was taken away from me, that was a blessing in disguise. The other thing that I would say is what is it that you value in life? And this can be a very deep question, but I don't want you to think, I don't want anyone to overthink it. It's just, what do you value in life? And to give you an example is when I was doing this exercise, it was a case of all all I've ever wanted to do was play soccer. Now I'm not doing that. And then I dove into all I wanna do is the biggest and craziest challenges I can do. Okay. Well, I can't do that because my body's not allowing me and I there's just physically, there's no way I can push myself mentally as strong as I am to do that in the ultimate triathlon. Like I just wasn't able to, my body was literally shutting down from the inside out. So it was a case of like, okay, well, if I'm not a soccer player, I'm not a footballer and I'm not an ultra endurance athlete and I'd scraped it right back to, I'm not an athlete cuz that's what I've always identified as, and to this day I still identify myself as an athlete, but I'd like to think in a healthy way because I look at it as a positive. I look at that as I am an athlete because I train every day and that's a positive way of looking at it. In the past, it was detrimental, but now I'm in this place that I am in my life that I'm quite happy to call myself an athlete. And I don't have any sort of negative attachment to that because if someone said, oh, I want you to go away and work for a whole month and do a seminar for a whole month and you can't train, you just have to focus on delivering talks and stuff. I would be okay to do that. I know this. I don't have to train every day. I choose to train every day. Cause it makes me feel good, but I don't have to, I don't feel like I need to, I do it because I want to, and I enjoy it. So it's really understanding what your values are. And for me back then, it was a case of connection. I wanted to have the connections because all of a sudden I was taken away from this team sport world where you're in a team the whole time. And then I was out by myself and then I was like, well, I'm doing these ventures and meeting all these cool people. That's great. But now I'm not training. I'm not gonna meet up with people. I live in a big city and like anyone that's lived in a big city. Yeah. You can have a lot of friends, but at the same time, it can be really, really. Solitary at the same time. So I was like this person who was unwell and couldn't really go out and, travel anywhere. So no one was really seeing me, so I felt isolated. And it was like this human connection. And I, another value I had then was honesty. I wanted to be honest with my story, I wanted to be honest with what I was going through. And I felt like that could be a really good way of healing through the process. So as I said, you don't have to sort of go down these really Allison Wonderland rabbit hole of what are my values in life. It can be like things simple as that, but you really gotta think about it and what your values are. And that was really helpful too. And the final thing that I want to give that people can use, and this is something that I heard on a podcast from an NFL coach coach, Pete Carroll from the Seattle Seahawks, who has won a super bowl and is sort of known for his slightly different coaching style. He's friends and mates with all these players. And it's very fun environment. He used to be at USC coaching college and he made it a party on the sidelines. One game or a couple of games he ever had Snoop dog on the sidelines to make like a party atmosphere like the rapper. So I've heard him on a few podcasts and he said this thing of a called it a personal philosophy. And he's like, what is your personal philosophy? Like I do this for all my players. And I ask him in preseason, can you get it down to 20 words? And his description of the personal philosophy is what are phrases or some sentences or some words that are gonna be your guiding light that are gonna be the things that you live by every single day. Okay, what am I gonna do today? I'm gonna do this does it align with my personal philosophy? So I was like 20 words or less. Yeah, that's easy. I just worked on some values. I'm gonna do this three pages later. I'm like, damn coach Carol. Like this is hard. And over time and thinking about it more, I got it down to back then it was build relationships, learn daily and teach others what life has taught me. So if you think about it, everything that I do on a daily basis, whether and the way that I describe it now is if I have a decision to make, that's gonna cost me my time, some of my limited energy and my limited money, because 99.9% of us in the world have limited money. We all have limited energy and we all have limited time. So if there's a decision to be made, that's going to use up one of these limited resources. Is it gonna help me build relationships? Can I learn from it? Or is it an opportunity to share what life has taught me with others and I call it my life philosophy. So that is my life philosophy that I worked on over periods of time after hearing that podcast with coach Carroll. So those are some things that I worked on in those 18 months to help me get through the other side and then give me a really strong platform to then, okay, now let's go and apply this to my daily life because the other thing where I feel people can get stuck in is reading all these. And I use this in a positive way. Reading these self-help books, these self-development books, and like, don't get me wrong. Some of them are amazing. Some of'em are a bit like, eh, but when you get one that's really powerful for you. There's some great little nuggets in there and listening to podcasts and learning about yourself and doing this self internal work. It's great. But just like the serial student, if all you do is learn, all you're doing is absorbing. And are you really living? You've gotta test those out in the real world because I guarantee you not everything that you learn and you understand, and you can articulate to someone else when you try and apply it in your life. It doesn't always work because life is not in a book. Books are written in a way for people to absorb the information and to then give you an opportunity to use it. It doesn't make you use it. So when you apply these things, you've gotta try and figure out what fits. So it would be a case of to do these exercises, understand what your life lost for years, understand what your values are, and also what it is that you are using as a crutch to suppress or keep that pain inside and then figure that out and then start applying them each and every day.

Michael Bauman: 55:21

Yeah. That's I mean, that, that sums it up right there. but as you mentioned, that's years and years of running from it, literally, and that 18 months of everything shutting down to be like, you need to turn around and actually deal with this. But you're absolutely right. Doing that work is really amazing. I want to ask, and I know this is a really important aspect and it's something that's really challenging, right? So you are this ultra-marathon, you studied exercise science, you have nutrition background, but then that's the face of it. And then behind that we have the binge eating. We have the depression we have, like, I just don't, standing on bridges. I don't feel like I can live anymore. The vulnerability aspect of that, of going, like, I wanna share this can be so scary. What are your insights? I don't even say what are insights? Like, how do people go from just being so scared to starting to share? Just starting to open up?

Luke Tyburski: 56:20

I don't think there is a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 step answer for this question, because I think it's very individual my process to go through. It will be very different to what might work for someone else and even the way that I, so I opened up to my very close friends and family over time. After the initial, speaking about my depress. I started to talk to people about my addiction to endurance sports and I don't say that lightly to people who struggle with other addictions, but I use it in the same light it's because I was addicted to endurance sports. And that was my high. I felt so low when I wasn't swimming, cycling or running. I had to then find other ways to score a high. And that came through binge eating initially. And I would, I didn't talk about this with anyone. And then I wouldn't eat for 24 36 hours and I would go into a five hour run. I was struggling with insomnia because my body was all messed up. And so it's three o'clock in the morning. I hadn't been to bed and I'm like, I'm gonna go and run into central London and back. And there's a marathon for you. And I would get home at seven in the morning and my housemates were just waking up and like, oh, did you go for a run? Yeah. I just went for a little 5k jog this morning. Ah, yeah. I thought I heard you leave about half an hour ago. Yeah. I just run a marathon and spent four hours running. So then I would have a shower and wouldn't eat and carry on with my day. So my process to actually come out about, and then it got so bad that there were times where I just didn't want to feel the pain anymore. I wanted to end the pain and that's when I went and stood on bridges at two separate times, about four or five months apart and just not wanting to live. And I was quite. Thankful that I was able to talk myself down. And I mentioned this on a diff on a podcast several years ago. That was the moment where I was the most mentally tough, strong, whatever you want to call it. Where my mental strength training really helped me because my self-talk was so loud that when I stood on top of the bridge, it caught my attention that this self-talk was there. And I'm like, well, actually, like, and the short story is the pain I feel right now. I knew that my parents and my sister and my family in Australia, the pain I would cause them, if I stepped off the bridge would be more than I'm feeling right now. And I was able to catch myself and have that internal conversation. It could have lasted a minute. It could have lasted half an hour. I have no idea how long I was standing on top of that bridge. Like it was like nothing else existed except that internal conversation. So that is how I was able to talk myself down. Now. I didn't reveal any of this, the standing on top of a bridge, the binge eating the insomnia, the depression, and the severity of the depression. I opened up and started to talk about it with friends and family. And then I started to add some of that into my keynote talks to say, I battle with depression. I battle with insomnia. That was the extent of it. Then I started to write my book, my autobiography called Chasing Extreme. Well after the Ultimate Triathlon good friend of mine, who's also a writer. She said to me, You should write a book about the ultimate triathlon. And I was like, funny, you say that I've actually already started a book two and a half years ago about the Sahara desert living out in Nepal for like six weeks and all this stuff. And then I had a very messy and debilitating breakup that I talk about in the book. And I didn't write for two years, my friend's like, you need to write a book about the ultimate triathlon. I'll coach you, it's all good. Sent her the manuscript that I'd already wrote, like 30,000 words. And she's like, you can write. Right. Let's get you going. So I started to write about the ultimate triathlon and she's like, yeah, but there's a two year gap, which is this period of time that we talked about where my mental health was in its worst state. So I still remember sitting on my couch going, do I lie or just not tell the whole story or, you know what, this could be an opportunity to go all in and tell my true story, like all of it, Warts and all. 100%. And share with people exactly what I was going through to show that, Hey, on the outside, I'm running up and down mountains, I'm traveling all over the world. I've got sponsors, I'm doing keynote talks around the world. I'm in magazines, I'm on these massive podcasts, but at the same time after I did this, I, went to a grocery store and bought a whole packet of nuts and a tub of ice cream and gorged on that in the car park. After I just did a massive podcast, like stuff like that. It's an opportunity to be vulnerable, to show people that, Hey, what we perceive on the outside isn't necessarily what's going on the inside. And at the same time I realized, Hey, like I'm a young white guy. Who has come from a very loving family and has had a privileged life. I acknowledge this. Wouldn't it be really cool to show that no matter what color you are, where you come from or how good it looks on the, outside that from a human level, we can all be going through some really nasty stuff. So let's try and create a space where we can be open. So I said to my friend, you're gonna read some stuff that you didn't know that no one knows, and it's gonna shock you, but just know whatever I send you goes in the book. Don't delete it. No matter what I say, she's like, okay, fine. I started to write and sent it to her. She was in Australia. She called me from Australia and said, are you okay? Cause she just read some of the stuff I wrote and I'm like, I'm okay. I'm here. I'm good. I'm okay. The reason I tell you this story, as you can tell, I love telling stories and the sound of my own voice. However, the reason I tell you this story is that I felt an opportunity with the very tiny and minuscule public profile that I have because I'd done a lot of stuff and had done a lot of interviews. I had this opportunity that I could make a difference in the world. Now, I'm not saying everyone needs to go out and try and make a difference in their world, but you know what? You can make a difference in the community that you live in, whether that's just your family, your immediate family, or your extended family, or even just community groups that you're involved in, you can make a difference to other people's lives. Cause you don't know what they are going through, even though they're your family members. Because when I handed my parents who I'm extremely close with, when I handed my sister who I'm also very close with and my now wife, the first draft. Of Chasing Extreme my sister was angry because I didn't tell her what I was going through. That's more about her than about me. My wife, well now wife, girlfriend at the time just said, I knew you were in pain, but I didn't realize you were in this much pain. And my parents just said, this is the hardest thing I've ever had to go through in life. But at the same time, I know you're okay because I was writing about years before. So my way of opening up and sharing was to. It's not for everyone but write, put it in a book and publish it and throw it to the world and then do multiple podcasts all around the world and interviews and talk about it and have a big book launch with, over a hundred people in the Lululemon European flagship store on Reg Street, central London. So, however, to get there it comes down to this. You have two options, two choices to make. If you are dealing with pain and you are ready and the pain has become so strong that it's had a shift inside of you to do something about it. You tell someone. Who knows you. Who loves you. Who you love. Who you have a deep connection with. You feel comfortable with. You open up to them. Option B because you are not in a place where you feel comfortable talking to the people who are supportive and love and care for you. You're tell a stranger, a therapist, a professional psychologist, whoever, but a professional. And then, and this is what I did. And this is my process because I always felt I was in control. I could tell them as much, or as little as I wanted on any given day I went, they could ask me questions and I could say, well, in my head, I should tell'em this and this, these three things, but I'm gonna tell'em two, cause I'm not ready to tell'em that third thing yet over time. If you have the right fit with the right therapist, you will start to open up fully talking about the pain that you are going through is in my experience the best way to take the first step of healing, that pain. However, in order to do that, the pain has to be strong enough, powerful enough, painful enough for you to acknowledge it's time to do something about it. And from my experience, you've got those two options. You talk to someone who you care about, they care about you. You love them. They love you. They're supportive and you can have a safe space with them. Or if you're not willing to share it with someone who knows you and you know them, you go and share as much, or as little as you want with the professional who doesn't know you from a bar of soap. And from then, you be open and honest and vulnerable with yourself. And then with the people who you're working with and show up daily, show up weekly, do the work, whatever you need. And over time you share that pain will not necessarily go away. But what will happen is you will build internal strength to help you understand the pain and either shift it or remove it or live with it. Be able to live with it and allow you to move forward in life.

Michael Bauman: 1:07:08

Yeah, I think that's really important. Just taking that step to share it with somebody close to you or a stranger. And I liked how you gave those two options, cuz it works differently for different people. Yeah, I really appreciate your story because again, like you said, like there's so much on the outside, you can see one thing and then behind it, and this is unfortunately across the board and a lot of peak performance things. I sacrifice so many parts of themselves, so many parts of life to get to a certain thing and then realize, wow, I feel super empty and there's nothing here. And to have somebody like yourself, be willing to share that is so powerful. I know you've impacted, thousands and thousands of people. Is there anything that you'd like to leave? The audience before we wrap up here, besides all the incredible things you just left.

Luke Tyburski: 1:07:55

if you are struggling with problems obstacles or setbacks in your life, drop me a DM. And you can tell me as little or as much as you want and if I can help in any way I will. But yeah, that, I think that's where I'll go reach out to me, to someone else. But yeah if you are struggling with a setback or an obstacle in life yeah, feel free to drop me a DM and also know that the pain that you're going through, it doesn't have to be there forever. And you have the power to shift it, even though it may feel. Even though the pain might get worse before it gets better.

Michael Bauman: 1:08:38

Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for that. There, there is one thing too, that I actually use on a daily basis as well. It's is a it's called an it's an app called Be a Looper. And what's neat about it is essentially you can choose a group of close friends, wherever you trust. And at the end of the day or around like four o'clock, it prompts you on a scale of one to 10, how was your day? And you can just put, like I'm a seven and I'm a, four, but if it's a three or below, it'll automatically send a message to those people. Just prompting them, Hey, like reach out. And it, I find it super beneficial just to have those people close and sometimes putting a number out there can be easier than, saying like, this is what I'm feeling. This is what I'm going through. You're just like, I'm a three out of 10. And that can just be easier to do so, check that out. I'll put the link to that in the show notes, but again, it's called be a Looper. Love it. I think it's awesome. Yeah, it was be developed by somebody from Australia, Amanda Johnstone. And I use it every day. It's really simple, but really powerful to break that silent barrier.

Luke Tyburski: 1:09:41

Yeah. I think it's fantastic and it's a great step to being vulnerable. And I think being vulnerable in every day, life is a great thing to, to be able to do. And I think that's a great step because of also being vulnerable when you're feeling good. And you're positive. Like if you've had a great day, you've ticked all your boxes and it's just been an amazing day. And someone asks you, how are you? Like, don't say good or great, like. Say how you feel. I feel absolutely amazing. I do that all the time in the UK. It's not really sort of people look at you like, well, not so much. what's you are weird, your life's going on. And I've literally had people say, well, you can't really feel that good. I'm like, yeah, I do. And I'm like, well, why do you feel absolutely amazing? Well, I had a great training session. I had a couple of coaching clients. I propel hat. Yeah. I got a standing ovation and then I got another piece of work and I had these really cool messages sent to me to say, I made a difference in their life, whatever I'm like, yeah. Like, this is what I do. This is what I love doing. And I feel absolutely amazing. So I think it's great to be able to be vulnerable when we are feeling good or in a positive light. And I say that because I think in this day and age, when you say being vulnerable or vulnerability, and this is just my own experience, I feel like a lot of the times there's a negative shade that goes over being vulnerable and vulnerability, but you can practice being vulnerable as simply saying how you feel like when you are feeling good or when something good happens or when you wanna give someone praise, but maybe you don't know them. And you're like, well, that might be a bit weird. No, be you've vulnerable and go, Hey, really? That was amazing. What you did then. Fantastic. Great. Even if it's like a busker on the street, maybe you don't have any money or change, but just sort of stop and give the thumbs up and say, Hey, you sound really good. That is practice and being vulnerable with a positive light. And I feel like the more that we can do that on a daily basis, and this comes back around to my point is if we practice being vulnerable in a positive light, on a regular basis, then it helps us from my experience. Be vulnerable when we do feel vulnerable when we don't feel like in a safe place. So if you are having a really bad day because your cat died, you got fired from work and you lost your wallet. And someone says, how you doing in the UK? Most people will say, I'm okay, I'm fine. I'd tell you what if that was my day, I would feel really crappy. So if that happened to me and someone said, how do you feel? I'd be like, I feel really rubbish. I feel crap. And if people really care about you and really actually wanna know how, like, how you're doing, they'll say, oh, why what happened? Well, I got fired. My cat died and I lost my wallet. That's why I feel crap. And then wherever the conversation goes, it goes, but that is you practicing, being vulnerable. I think being vulnerable is a skill. The more you practice it, you better become at it. I think that app Be a Looper is amazing because it's giving you a really powerful tool to be vulnerable, even though it, you might think, oh, it's just with a couple of my closest friends or just my family members. But Hey, like how often do we lie to our family members about how we actually feel or what we've got going on? So if every day you feel like a 2 or three out of 10 and you can hit that number on your phone and say, yeah, today's been really crap because I'll use the same example I got fired and my cat died and I lost my wallet. Yeah. That's a zero out of 10. That's practicing being vulnerable. And I really do believe that being vulnerable is a skill that we all can practice and become better at it. And the more we are vulnerable when there's a negative shade to what's happened, but also a positive light that's been shown on it, then we can live a more. True and authentic self life to ourself. And I think if we can all be more vulnerable with our truth, then that'll allow us to enjoy daily life on a more regular basis.

Michael Bauman: 1:14:04

I think that's, I think that's really, profound and that's essentially, the arc of your story, like finding that connection, basically being willing to be vulnerable with yourself on a deep level first, and then you leverage that to be vulnerable with, the audience and stuff that you are privileged to have. And that's just profound. Like you, you start with yourself, you do the deep work to actually uncover it and to sit with the pain and then you have the opportunity to change other people's lives that have been through that. And I just really appreciate your story. I do really appreciate your vulnerability and thank you for being willing to share it.

Luke Tyburski: 1:14:44

That's been my pleasure and thanks for having me on absolutely.

Michael Bauman: 1:14:48

Before you go, I would love it. If you actually just shared this episode with a friend, I'm sure. While you were listening, you know, someone just popped into your head and you're like, oh, they would probably like this as well. So it's really easy. You just click the share button on either the website or whatever podcast platform you're on and send it over to them. And chances are, they'll probably like it, too until next time, keep engineering your success.