Everyone has darkness inside of them, but not everyone has the courage to dance with it. This week on Acta Non Verba I’m continuing my conversation with Rick Alexander as he shares how his attention to the darkness within him allows him to overcome roadblocks and obstacles in his way. Listen in as Rick and I discuss how hardships are an indicator you’re on the right path, putting your ego aside, and what Rick learned about himself and the Universe while spitting up blood during a 200-mile race.
Rick Alexander is an author, speaker, and the CGO (Chief Growth Operator) for The Special Forces Experience. He crafts content and experiences to help lead people through ADVERSITY and into a life of meaning and fulfillment.
Connect with Rick via his website: https://rickalexander.com/
Episode Transcript:
00:32
In this episode of Acta Non Verba, we hear part two of my interview with Rick Alexander, author, speaker, and educator, who specializes in helping individuals and organizations understand themselves better so that they can increase performance. In part one, Rick talked about his new book,
01:03
including how we tend to divide and label things in life to help better understand them, but that many mystic religions and philosophies try to look at this as a flow experience. He also talked about modern consumerism and technology and how it can leave us less in tune with the world around us. He wraps up part one in talking about the need for recognizing darknesses that we carry with us. In part two, Rick continues his discussion on acknowledging your darkness and talks about learning to manage it rather than letting it manage you.
01:32
You can find out more about Rick as well as order your copies of his brand new book, Ambitious Heroes and Heartache, at rickalexander.com. Please join part two of my interview with Rick Alexander. You know, none of this stuff is obvious, right? I mean, you cope because you have to cope like you’re human. So all of your coping mechanisms, all of these things, it’s not that I think we need to like pull them away, but it’s like, we need to start engaging with the parts of ourselves, you know, I have a buddy and we were talking.
01:59
about, he was saying how like he has this darkness in him and it will ruin his entire life. Like he’ll cheat on his girlfriend or beat the shit out of someone in a bar or something like that. And I get it. I’ve got that same darkness. I feel it. And I was telling him, I’m like, you know, your whole life you’ve been denying it. And has it gone anywhere? And he was like, no, I’m like, actually, it’s gotten stronger, right? And you’ve got smaller because the things that we don’t face, they get bigger and we get smaller psychologically. That’s what happens.
02:27
I was like, and so now you’re in a place where this thing feels like a towering monster over you. Right. And so maybe instead of denying it, since that’s gotten you here, maybe actually you need to face the fact that this is you and there’s got to be some way that you can engage with it so that it does not take your life every time it wants to be expressed. And as you’ve said yourself, it will be expressed. You can’t, the psychic energy has to come out in some way. The way that I’ve been doing this in my own life and I haven’t found a great productive
02:56
to dance with my own darkness, but I am aware enough that if I don’t dance with it, it will ruin my life. It will take things I love, right? This is when people can’t figure out why they self-sabotage, this is often a reason. It’s like, you have this madness inside of you that you’ve got to learn to dance with. And if you don’t, it’ll just come out in ways that you’re not happy with. Unfortunately, that’s why I think in the Catholic church, they’ve been in pedophilic scandals forever because they have a shadow that they’ve denied. And so they don’t get control over it. The way I’ve been doing it though, is I’ve been writing.
03:25
darkness. Like I’ve been just writing from my shadow. And it’s funny because I was so afraid to even do that. I had it recommended to me by this psychologist and I was like so I was like, man I cannot face that part of me. And he was like, but it’s gonna keep coming either way. I was like, okay. So I started writing this stuff that would like I mean, it would just it’s crazy, right? It’s like saw on steroids and there’s some part of me that after I do it feels a little bit more whole like man, this thing didn’t take me this time. I went in there.
03:54
under my own terms. And actually, if you don’t mind a quick story, my girlfriend was telling me there’s this idea in Greek mythology that Psyche and Eros were in love with each other. And Eros’ mother wanted Eros all for herself, Aphrodite. And so what Aphrodite did is she said to Psyche, she gave him a bunch of tasks that you have to do in order to earn the love where you can never see Eros again. And one of these tasks is Psyche had to go to this, he had to go retrieve something. I can’t remember what it was.
04:22
but it was guarded by these rams, these like goats that were like more like banshees. You think about demons that are just going nuts. And so they’re in this circle and in the middle of this circle is the thing that Psyche had to retrieve. And so he goes and he looks and he just sees all of these rams absolutely losing their mind and going nuts. And he is about to kill himself because he’s like, I can’t have the love that I want the most. I cannot go in there and get this thing. Like these things are gonna kill me. And Raze is about to kill himself. Some voice is like, no, don’t do it.
04:51
It’s like, wait until they’re asleep and then go get it. And so the idea would be when the parts of you that are raging, that’s not when you go in there, cause that’s when they own you. You’ve been feeding the dark wolf, you know, the bad wolf your whole life. And so it’s bigger than you are. So you’ve got to wait until you feel calm and you feel the rams are asleep. And then you go in there and take it. And so that’s the approach I’ve been taking. It’s like, when I feel this parts of myself that would love to ruin my life, I go for a walk. I don’t try to fight the ramp.
05:20
the banshees, you know, but then when I am feeling good, I’ll sit down and I’ll write from my shadow for an hour and a half. And it’s like pretty wild, but there’s some part of me that does feel a bit whole afterwards. So it’s worth considering for people that struggle with that. Well, that’s powerful. And it’s truly catharsis. And to your point, it’s very easy for us to believe that the way that we lost something, the emotion that we were in at that point is the same emotion that we have to evoke to get to it. But again, if we’ve lost something.
05:48
Again, people that attach chaos to love or attachment, clearly that’s unhealthy, but yet to them, if they’re in a healthy relationship, it seems boring because there’s no chaos, there’s no excitement. It’s like, actually, no, this is just your opportunity to take a look at the darker side, took a look at this other stuff that you’ve been trying to deny. And if you can do that and unpack those things, that’s when you can start to serve it and, and I can only imagine, but it’s like when a person gets writer’s block, you have to write about the emotion that you’re feeling.
06:17
in that writer’s block. That’s interesting. Because even within that, you will still work on your craft. You will still wordsmith, you will still create something. And I believe that if you go back and read the stuff, which you’ve already read, you’ll probably get some inspiration, some interesting analogies that you would have never gone to had you not been in the dark place. Yeah, interesting. I think there’s a big gift in that for you. Great. Yeah, yeah. I will use that in my own life, you know? Because I think, you know, there’s a lot of people that say writer’s block doesn’t exist. If you’re a professional, you just do it.
06:47
And I think that there’s probably something to that, but like, there’s still times where I’m blocked up. So I love the idea of just finding an alternative angle in, you just got to take a different path. Yeah. And the more analogies that you can use, it’s like, I feel like I’m in a, you know, being stifled in a room. I feel like I’m within the one I use in my book was like, because for me, I felt like I was within view of the shore and I was still drowning. Like I didn’t have what it took to get to that next place when I was trying to recover and walk. And then even when I got out and I recovered.
07:17
It’s like, I had this huge, you know, I went from 180 pounds to 230 pounds. Well, and I’m, I’m recovered. Yeah. Because my, everything was messed up. Right. And then when I got out, it’s like, okay, I’ve been given this huge wisdom by the universe. I’ve gone through this true hero’s journey, undeniable, and I don’t fucking know what to do with it. How do I package that? I don’t, I can’t write a book. That’s too, that’s way too much work. I don’t, I’m not that disciplined. And if I try to tell people the story, they’re.
07:46
they’re not going to believe it or I’m not going to be eloquent enough to give it the justice that it needs. So I’m going to just kind of go back to whatever was kind of certain me before that. And then I realized that a lot of those things, again, just like whether it be a CEO or a parent, there are certain skill sets that get us to that level through this certain part of our life. But they eventually become things that inhibit us. They eventually become things that are in their opposite.
08:13
And so now we have to look at that and be willing to see the darkness, see the shadow, admit that we’re wrong. Admit that it’s not okay. Admit that there’s something going on here and not deny it. And then once we actually start to look at that without fear, without judgment and just say, okay, here’s where I am. Works and all. Now what? And that’s kind of where I started to try to make sense of it. And like the thing I posted the other day is like,
08:43
There is no real path per se. It’s just what you create as you walk. So don’t hope that somebody’s gonna give you the answer. There will be pieces and there will be glimpses of it within the things that we read and the people that we speak to and the experiences that we have. But in the end, that hero’s journey is your own. And then even when you get through it, guess what? There’s another one. So hoping that you’re gonna be done with it actually is self-sabotage in my mind. If you just say that this is never gonna stop.
09:13
it’s never going to get easier. That acceptance actually kind of makes it easier. That that’s why I’m not always say the diversities and it is an inevitability. It’s not going to go away. Like you said, like the shadows, so I can just learn that, okay, I see this. I see you, I see this hardship, but it’s not going to stop me from doing whatever it is I need to do. In fact, in a lot of ways, that’s an indication that I may be on the right path in the first place. Yeah.
09:38
And I love that you use that example because there’s probably a lot of people, like you’re like, I can’t write a book, you know, and it’s like, now you’ve, what you’ve built your whole career off the back of that book, really, right? And the direction of it anyway. And I think that there’s a lot of people that are sitting around right now, you know, pandemic comes through. And one of the incredible things about adversity is it does strip away all of the things that you thought mattered. And so.
10:02
Now we’re in a chance where we get to rebuild our lives and we’re having to ask ourselves, do we rebuild it the same? That doesn’t really, that feels like friction. So what else might we be open for? And there’s a lot of people I think that just like you were saying, I can’t write a book. There’s a lot of people right now that are saying, I can’t. What you realize, what you figured out is can’t means won’t. You can, you won’t though, you didn’t. So you just need to like live your way into this new way of being. You can’t think about it. There’s this weird.
10:28
not weird, but there’s this common saying, like, if you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you’ve always gotten. And like, you know, I think that that’s so profound. You can’t see the profundity in it because it’s like, well, no shit. And it’s like, well, then why are you still at the roadblock? You know what I mean? That’s the thing. It’s like, that’s what I was thinking of. I’m like, all the times I’ve met roadblocks in my writing. And then you say, oh man, you could write about that roadblock and what you’re experiencing. And it’s like.
10:55
damn, that’s what I’m talking about. So it’s like, yeah, if you can do it, if you can find a new way, you can get a new result. But it’s so hard for us to do that because we’re so patterned. We’re such patterned people that we’ve, however old you are, 30, 40, 50 years old, that’s how long you’ve been patterning these patterns. And so if you want something new, that’s a new decision in every new moment. Every new moment’s a new lifetime. And just like people that wanna get in better shape, like you said, if you had 35 years of…
11:24
horrible diet, horrible physical activity, just on those two levels, of course, it’s gonna take you a while to kind of deprogram that. And then there’s all the other things that are attached to that, you know, the psychology, the emotion that goes into that, the physiology, the neurology. So again, those pathways are very, very deep. And we understand, I mean, we understand that it’s because as creatures we want to be efficient in the hunter gatherer sense of, I’ve already figured out this answer, so I don’t want to try to have to.
11:54
go to another place. But again, that idea of flipping writer’s block on his head, you know, seeing the gift in that adversity, if you will, that’s where it is. And then it’s like, well, where else am I? Like you said, where else am I not looking at that? Right. And so many people that I don’t want this has come off bad, but there was one person that was telling me about, well, how can you finally get to the adversity in a person who’s like being abused? And it’s like, there’s really no gift in that. But hopefully that action.
12:24
is conditioning that person to try to get out of that. If they find themselves in a relationship, after a relationship where they’re being abused in some way, shape or form, maybe that’s what you need to be looking at. Maybe that’s your adversity, the fact that you’re willfully choosing this when they don’t even feel like they’re choosing it. Because again, it’s that default setting. It’s what they just naturally go to because it’s the path that leads resistance and they just kind of go along to get along. And if you do that at 25 and you live to 75 with the same decisions,
12:53
you’re really wasting a lot of opportunity, not only for your own development, but for the development of others around you. Yeah, one of the things that the Buddha figured out in his enlightenment is that every new moment presents a new opportunity and a new choice for humans. But we are so attached to our preconceived notions and our ideas of what should be that we can’t see it as a new opportunity. And I would say that that’s definitely true, right? And part of that is because you’ve conditioned these thoughts, like we’ve said, you’ve conditioned these patterns. But that doesn’t make it less true.
13:22
just means that you can’t see it. And so I think that like, that would be one of the concepts, for example, that I would say, you can memorize a whole bunch of stuff and you can read a million books. But if you understand that concept to your bones, like to the root of who you are, that will change your life. It absolutely will. There’s a million different directions we could go with this. And I love the conversation. I want to talk a little bit about your book and I want to talk about, so when you’re running an ultra marathon and it’s difficult.
13:52
Do you tap into your shadow? What keeps you going when you’re kind of in that place? I definitely have. I think I’ve lived through seasons in my life where I’ve used the shadow for motivation and the chip on my shoulder, and that works for a really long time, but then it kind of feels limited after a while. For me, I really do believe this idea that the path we can’t find has the answer we need if we’re stuck in some way. And so when I get in these situations from ultra running or whatever it is.
14:22
I’m looking for the angle I’ve not yet found. Like, for example, on your podcast, the last one I told that story of when I got high altitude pulmonary edema, right? And so I started looking for ways that that could be beneficial for me. That’s not very easy to do. It’s actually really, really difficult when you’re spinning up blood. Can you expand on what that really is so that people understand all of it, how profound it is? Because when you can’t breathe, when you’re spinning up blood and you know that they see you doing that, they’re going to pull you. Yeah. It takes a whole other level of not only resolve, but like you said.
14:53
The way that you were able to get through that was incredible. Yeah. Like the one minute version is essentially that I was running this 205 mile run in Tahoe with 80,000 feet of elevation change. And I could only train for it in Virginia beach, which was completely flat. And so we had one 65 foot hill. And because I was in the military, I actually couldn’t travel that much to train either. So I was like pretty much stuck. And so I would just set my watch, you know, for six hours and go up and down this damn hill. And so you can train a good amount of the mental portion.
15:21
But like altitude is something that you just adjust to or don’t. Right. And so I lived my life at sea level. And so when I got in this race or on mile 80, I got high altitude pulmonary edema, and so I was like spitting up blood. Basically it just feels like someone sitting on your chest. Like you just can’t expand your lungs. And when you talk, you can kind of hear like, it’s like you’re gargling. Like you can hear the fluid and then eventually that turns, that fluid turns to blood and then you start spitting up blood. Um, and so I was in this position where.
15:49
I was like only 80 something miles into this race and I was, and it felt like it was ending. I mean, this, lots of people get pulled for high altitude pulmonary edema. Right. And so I knew for sure like, okay, if I talk to the medics, they’re going to pull me. And I had written on a card, why is this happening for you, not to you? And I pulled it out and that it sounds like such personal development drivel bullshit, but maybe there’s wisdom there, you know? And so I sat there.
16:16
feeling super defeated down on a rock. I couldn’t, it’s interesting when you’re so active and you get that taken away, when you can’t run, it’s like anything more than a wattle was just terrible. And so I could not run at a pace that was considered running essentially. And I started, I realized, okay, well if I could really, why would this be happening for me? And I just realized in this moment that
16:42
It was slowing me down to a pace that I could actually get through 200 miles because in all my previous races, I came out way too hard. I blew up around mile hundred or if I blew up around mile hundred in this, I’d never make it because in a 200 mile run, you don’t even get a ticket to the show until mile 140. So, so like that doesn’t race, doesn’t even start yet. And so I realized all of a sudden that this was slowing me down and that maybe at this pace, I could probably get through 200 miles if I could just put my ego in the back seat and I ended up doing.
17:11
You know, I had a respectable time, but that wasn’t really the point. The point is that I didn’t get pulled from the race and I didn’t quit. And I think that there’s a lot of places where you might say, well, maybe you should have gotten pulled and maybe that’s true. But the thing that I found out in that moment is that this mentality doing work in philosophy, it’s not about looking at the world through rose colored glasses. It’s about looking for opportunity to work. It’s all looking at this, the situation, the obstacle, the adversity, the
17:41
thing that’s in your face telling you you can’t go forward and it’s looking for a position or a place where you can. And it’s not easy. The thing with rose-colored glasses is like, oh, you’re just overlooking your problems. It’s like, no, you’re looking directly at your problems and you’re asking it for answers. And what was interesting is as I got into a rhythm of this half run, half walk thing, I felt this lightness as if…
18:07
the universe had conspired to get me through this 200-miler. That’s what it felt to me, because I had wanted to, I had a talk coming up and I had a book coming out, my first book, Burn Your Couch, and I just, the idea of doing this 200-miler and not making it was just like weighing heavy on me. I was like, man, I really wanna get through this thing. And all of a sudden it felt like I had done the right amount of work in my mentality that then the universe like.
18:34
gifted me with this way to get through it all. And that’s why I think the advantage of all this is, what was your original question? What was I going for with that? Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
18:47
Man, you crushed the question. I just ask that you tap into your darkness and- Sometimes that was the point. It’s a tool. Sometimes I tap in a light, and that’s what I found in that time. Well, that’s what it was because you were not afraid to let go of that familiarity of darkness, that anger. Because again, that’s ego, right? And so if we can let go of that ego, it’s almost like we’re holding all these things. And if I’m holding onto this really heavy, laborious-
19:14
unbalanced thing like my ego and I’m trying to adapt to it. There’s no way I can pick up this wisdom or have myself open to these other things that are conspiring to help me if I am willing to put my ego aside and just say, okay, you know, what am I missing here? And again, you talked about the physicality. Me as a soldier that was doing more than I ever thought I could do at 40 years old, you know, 25 mile ruck marches and all this crazy stuff, and then having that physicality taken from me.
19:41
again, that knocks you back down to the most brass tacks of your emotions. It truly gets down to the pit of those things. And for me, that’s what forced me to have four months to unpack every bad relationship from my parents’ divorce, what effect that had on me, how that affected every decision I made from there. How, like you said, how is that not serving me? Why would I continually choose that? And then where did it lead me in my life? So
20:08
as opposed to playing a victim in that place, just like you, you look for the opportunity, you say, well, what’s the gift in this? Where can I learn this? And you started breathing through your nose to basically circumvent the mouth breathing or the breathing out of it, which allows you to continue through. So the blood was coming through your nose. And then again, you slow the pace, which is not easy. Why do you think you trained it? I luckily had been training it. I don’t know, it seems like maybe this is the moment you’ve been preparing for, you know, that’s.
20:36
So I was telling my buddies that was going through all this, I’m like, maybe this is exactly where you’re supposed to be. Maybe you’ve been preparing for this your entire life. And it’s discomfort. The Phoenix burns before it’s reborn. And so that sucks. But maybe you have what you need to actually get through it. So I did that talk to Bell the other day about resilience. And I told him, I’m like, listen, when I talk about running 200-milers or something like that, it’s easy for you to think, oh, that’s him, not me. Let’s avoid myself from those. And the thing I was telling him was,
21:05
I’m not going to be a pro athlete and neither are you. So why would I do these? It’s like, well, because two things really, one is it’s not really about the thing itself, it’s about what you learn that can be applied to every other thing that you do in your life, right? And then the second part of that is having an arena to battle test the philosophies that you were living out in the world can be immensely beneficial. So it doesn’t have to be running. It could be writing, writing is another arena for me where I’m going up against things that are.
21:35
psychologically, you know, resistance, that’s one of them. And so really like what I’m saying is we live in a world kind of to make, bring it back to the beginning where everybody is really keen to repost memes and platitudes. And it’s like, well, have you lived by that in some sort of arena to know whether it’s bullshit or not? And I think that, I think that’s why Socrates said that the unexamined life isn’t worth living.
22:00
think because you’ve got to find some sort of arena where you can examine the things that you’re living out in the world to find out if they’re getting you a place that you actually want to be. That way you don’t wake up in 10 years and realize that you hate your life. You know, you have the courage to get off of the train before it goes down the tracks. It’s so important and that becomes part of your belief system. It becomes part of your default setting. Again, if you’ve made the wrong decisions, then every decision you make from there on out is going to be incorrect. And differential diagnosis in medicine, right?
22:28
If I misdiagnosed that patient initially, and I think that they’re type two diabetic when they’re actually X, Y, and Z, everything that I do from there are now it’s going to be wrong because of the way that I prescribe for that’s going to be wrong. And in chiropractic school, that’s what it was. It was like they would give you 10 questions. They were all diagnoses. But if you couldn’t find the right thing, even though you can’t get the medication, it’s about recognizing and using logic to figure those things out. So if you don’t have the courage to burn your couch, if you don’t have the courage to face those things that we feel are faults in us.
22:58
then the decisions that we make, the marriages that we have, the relationships, the professional ideas, all those things are going to come back and bite us in the ass. And I think that that hero’s journey again, it’s so important because we’re all going through the hero’s journey and we’re going through it repeatedly. And when you said, you know, people see you running a 205 mile ultra marathon, it’s easy to put you on a pedestal, but that is actually very irresponsible.
23:26
That means that I’m trying to say, well, he’s done it. That means I can’t do it. What they should be saying is he’s done it. Why can’t I do it? He’s a human. He’s not a professional athlete. As he says, he’s this person that’s trying to do this to learn about himself. So the body is what allows us to get to the mind, to get to the psyche, to get what’s really going on. And that hero’s journey never ends. And you’re not the fucking exception guys. That’s the big thing. When I was lying in that bed and I couldn’t move and I had like all these philosophical, all this like.
23:55
everything that you’re saying coming back to me in my mind. Yeah. It just sounds like flowery bullshit. Yeah. Right. It’s like, I don’t need to read the hallmark card right now. I’m going through the worst part of my life. And that’s when you need philosophy. That’s when you need belief. That’s when you need these ethos the most. Because when you’re stripped away from everything, again, when you said about adversity hacking away everything that we don’t need, it doesn’t build us. It shows us what we really are in the first place. It gets to that metal. And that’s when you can actually do the work.
24:24
but it’s not easy and everybody wants to be the exception. It’s easy to be philosophical about someone else’s headache, right? Right, right. But when it’s us, it’s like, oh, well, it’s different. It’s like, no, it’s not. It’s never different. It’s the human condition. And the minute that you accept that and quit crying, quit waiting for somebody else to make it easier or give you an answer that you probably still won’t even put into play if I gave you the answer anyway, because we’re trying to give you the answer right now. And yet after you’re done with this podcast, listen to yourself, listen to yourself talk, listen to how much you push back against it.
24:56
and then try to allow that to push you back into that hardship. The answer that we all are looking for right now is hidden in the adversity that we are trying to avoid. And that’s it. So that thing you’re trying to avoid where there’d be a relationship, sales in your business, even personal development, lean into that darkness, lean into that shadow. You don’t have to live there, but if you don’t look at it, if you don’t examine it, again, if you don’t read the shadow, the shadow is going to kind of read into you.
25:24
And as you say, it’s going to continue to get bigger and it will absolutely consume us if we allow it to. Yeah. And we talked about the idea of courage to get through the adversity. I would say too, it’s like, like maybe what you need is the courage to be more than the diagnosis that you have. Maybe you have to have the courage to be more than the angry guy, you know, whatever it is for you, whatever area in life that you’re sort of up against right now, like oftentimes the courage is like, really it’s about not doing what you’ve always done. Yeah.
25:54
And you know, to your point about going through hell too, Carl Young had that quote, like, no tree can reach to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell, you know, something like that. I think that is accurate. I think it applies to our psychological journeys. It applies to our physical journeys out in the world, but we have a culture that’s learned to avoid hell, you know, because that’s what we think healing is. We think it’s getting better. We think it’s kissing the boo boo, but sometimes it is, but maybe sometimes it’s not. Maybe sometimes it’s,
26:23
allowing the dead wood to burn. We have to have the courage and we have to have that forethought before. If we wait until the heat of battle to try to figure it out, we never make the right decision. And I do understand that we can out train our anxiety or out train, you know, certain things that we know is going to be inevitable, but life is about inevitability. Life is about the thing you didn’t plan for. Again, just like you said, with the breathing through the nose, I’m trying to start running now and taking that deep sip of breath through the nose and then out.
26:53
And then I thought about in preparation for this conversation, I remember you talking about breathing through your nose. And as you know, I just went to Colorado and got engaged not too long ago. And I went for like a 15 minute run and it was just like, oh my God, there’s like an elephant on my chest. And I was doing all the nose through the mouth type thing. So I can only imagine how courageous because every breath you were having to decide. Like every breath, inhale and exhale, you’re like,
27:22
I’ve got to be present to all this. I’ve got to choose to do this again and again. And again, when I’m running, there’s times when I catch myself mouth breathing if I’m trying to go at a faster pace or at a shorter time. And I had to come back to again that presence. So it’s almost like a meditation, but that physicality is the thing that really attaches us to the present, but also allows us to be in touch with what’s going on with ourselves emotionally and spiritually.
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Yeah, the physiological benefits of nasal breathing, I think that there, you know, there’s not a ton of study on it, but it seems like they’re coming out as pretty positive, but I would say that the mental benefits are worth the effort in themselves. I think the reason I started training nasal breathing is I heard of this guy, you know, Brian Mackenzie is the CrossFit endurance guy. Yeah. So I had him on my, my old podcast and we were talking, he said one of the things he has his clients do is athletes that he coaches for the games is tape their mouth and do 60 minutes on the air.
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for max calories. And I went out and did it like the next day and I, it was brutal. It was so brutal. And I did like, you know, 300 calories or something, like not even worth talking about. Because I just couldn’t, every time I’d start going hard, you know, I’d fall. And so that was a stupid one to start with. But that’s what started me down this path of realizing like, wow, that was a physiological battle, but it was a mental battle. And maybe there’s something we can learn from engaging in these mental battles before life pushes us into them.
28:46
I absolutely agree. And you’re speaking on resilience is brilliant because you helped delineate between just the military idea of push, push, push, and break yourself and being able to have the wherewithal and the skill set to recognize that you said earlier, where is this not serving me? How is this not serving me? How can we acquire that sort of skill set? And when do we need to learn how to back off? I know that that’s…
29:14
very open question, but for the people that are listening to us, I want them to have something that they can kind of apply and see what’s this litmus test, you know, where am I rubbing myself to the bone unnecessarily and where should I be pushing harder? Well, I think that I’ve done a great deal of studying on sort of psychological principles, trying to understand my own madness, right? And one of the things that I began to figure out is how really we have evolved to lie to ourselves about litmus of things, whether we’re happy or not.
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We have all these reasons because our subconscious, you might say, or unconscious motivation is to live, it’s to survive. And so if you are comfortable, then a lot of your biological processes are gonna try to keep you in that place, essentially is what’s happening. Yeah, homeostasis, yeah. Yeah, homeostasis. So what I would say is a necessary step, one is to commit to asking yourself very honest questions, like to be honest with yourself. For example, maybe you aren’t showing up as the partner you wanna be for your…
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girlfriend or boyfriend or partner, and you ask what kind of person they deserve. Now, you have to be honest with yourself about whether you’re willing to try to step up to be that person. That doesn’t mean you always make it. You might fall short of the mark, but are you willing to actually do what that requires? A lot of people want to be the CEO, but they don’t want to crunch numbers all day and make hard decisions about firing people. There’s this idea that I think it’s, again, our consumeristic belief system that we really
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the title we want, that having the, you know, we think that having a relationship for a long time is what makes it successful, even if we were miserable throughout the entire thing. And so I think the first step is being honest with yourself about what part of creation, what part of this world is worth your effort in time, because you have a very limited amount of effort in time. You have a very limited capacity. And so the things that you decide to give your effort in time to.
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have the courage to give all of who you are and have the courage to ask yourself the tough questions about whether or not those things, you’re willing to give those things your time and effort. Right? Because maybe the most courageous thing you could do is to let your partner go because you know that you’re not willing to step up to be the person that they actually deserve. Right? But we hold onto safety. And that’s kind of what I was getting at. Like as our minds have evolved to keep us safe. And so we will stay in situations that aren’t serving us like you talked about this.
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idea that lukewarm is just terrible for the soul. It’s like we’ll stay in situations that aren’t serving us for years and years and years because we don’t have, I don’t even know that it’s courage, but we just don’t have the inner wherewithal to ask ourselves the tough questions about what’s worth our time, attention, and effort. And right now we’re in a place where, we’ve talked about this a while, I’m trying to put an essay together on it, but we’re in a place right now where consensus reality is breaking down everywhere we look, right? And so,
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from a philosophical standpoint, what we consider to be reality is when two or more people agree on something, right? So this is definitely a microphone and a podcast because we both agree that this is a microphone and this is a podcast, right? But if I took a psychedelic and I saw the microphone and you didn’t, that wouldn’t be considered reality, okay? So that’s how we judge reality. Even though it’s gonna feel real to me, if you’ve ever done psychedelics, you know how real that shit feels, but it’s not considered reality. So now we have a position in life where what’s considered reality is break.
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Should we wear masks or should we not? Seems like nobody can agree on that. So it’s hard to consider it reality, right? Should we be in schools or should we be going to school via Zoom right now? Well, nobody can really agree on that. So it’s hard to consider reality. So what’s happening is all of these structures that most of us have relied on our entire lives to give us the answers are breaking down and now the conscious adult is being invited forward. Now we have to actually decide what does success mean to you? What is worth your time and attention? And actually,
33:09
Be honest with yourselves about whether you’re willing to do what it takes to get success. Right. And honestly, being honest with yourselves about not pursuing success in areas that don’t mean shit to you. You know, like I want to pursue, I want to build my Instagram following because that makes me feel like more people accept and validate me, but I’m going to be honest. I don’t give a shit about that. Not really. Like it doesn’t affect my life. It doesn’t change anything. So I have to have the courage to admit that to myself and to live my life and prioritize my life in a way.
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that doesn’t see me as the servant to all of these gods that I don’t give a shit about. And I think that the first step of that is being honest with who you are and what you want. Yeah. Rick Alexander, I could talk to you forever, man. Tell our listeners about the new book. When it comes out, tell us where we can learn more about you, about your podcast, and about everything you’ve got going because I want to be respectful of your time, but this has been just a…
34:06
incredible conversation. I’ve learned a lot in the process. So thank you so much. Yeah, likewise. I appreciate it. So the book is called Ambitious Heroes and Heartache. And that will be out, I’m really hoping by mid-November. It’s going to editing today. If you look, there’s already one that’s out, the audiobook of it’s out and stuff. But I’m putting out a revised edition. So I would say, if you’re interested in these thoughts and ideas, just wait for the revised edition. And a lot of this is in this book. And RickAlexander.com is where I keep most of my stuff.
34:34
Absolutely and Instagram Rick Alexander all the socials. Yeah Rick Alexander underscore on Instagram. It’s only social that I have I don’t use any other one. So yeah, I like that Rick is there anything that we didn’t get to touch on is there anything that you want to leave with our listeners the parting kind Of gift. I I think we covered so much incredible stuff if you’re listening Go back Listen to more of it again. Listen to it over and over there’s gonna be parts This conversation is like a book where you read it when you’re 30
35:04
And you’re like, yeah. And then you read it when you’re 35, you’re like, holy shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you read it when you’re 40, and you’re like, wow, there’s even deeper stuff. And then by the time you’re 50, you can actually truly appreciate the depth of what’s being shared in the conversation. Yeah, here’s what I would leave people with. We make a lot of decisions for the validation of the world, for belonging for the world around us. The average amount of people that attend a funeral is between 10 and 15 people. And the number one.
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determinant of whether more or less people go to your funeral, the average funeral, is the weather that day. It’s whether it’s raining or not. Now that sucks to hear, right? But you might let that inconvenience push you into a deeper experience. You might realize that everybody around you is so caught up in their own world that you’re actually pretty free to make this thing whatever you want it to be. But you are living for people that won’t go to your funeral if it’s raining, right? And so…
36:04
Understand that nobody else has to get to the end of their life end of your life and look back and be pleased on what? It looked like so I would meditate on that if you find yourself Outsourcing your empowerment. I think that’s a great place to stop. I know that I’m gonna meditate on that for sure It’s one of those questions that really makes you like you said you see what’s important in my TEDx talk I ask people, you know, if you woke up tomorrow paralyzed, would you wish you would have accomplished with your life? because it gives you immediate perspective it strips everything else away and
36:34
Yeah, I hadn’t thought about my funeral like that before. So I think that’s something great to end on. Right. Thank you so much, my friend. I look forward to many more conversations and multiple capacities, whether it be on podcast or next time I come out to Colorado or whatever the case may be. And I cannot wait for this book to come out because I’m going to be waiting with bated breath to get my grubby little hands on it and consume it. Likewise. Thank you, buddy.
36:59
Thank you for listening to this episode of Acta Non Verba.
