Unearth the transformative power of an ancient Japanese ritual that's more than just a grueling trial; it's a metamorphosis of mind, body, and spirit. Together, we traverse the concept of Misogi with Harvard's own Marcus Elliott and discover how it challenges modern notions of what we're truly capable of. Picture yourself moving a boulder underwater, confronting nature’s raw challenge - it's this mental and physical odyssey that could redefine the boundaries of your resilience.
In the communal forge of adversity, we find unexpected joy and camaraderie. Let's regale you with tales from the intense GoRuck challenge, where the weight on your back is only surpassed by the weight of your will. Surprisingly, it's not the strain that stays with you, but the silent epiphanies and the bond formed with fellow participants that etch deepest into the psyche. Learn how these rigorous rites of passage, though steeped in tradition, have morphed into vehicles for self-discovery and community in our modern tapestry.
As laughter intermingles with vulnerability, we approach the precipice of the flow state, where life's harshest tests morph into sources of amusement and profound insight. We'll share how these challenges, from braving blizzards on birthdays to contemplating the ascent of Colorado's formidable Longs Peak, serve as defining moments in life's narrative. Let this episode be a siren call to embrace your own Misogi and, in doing so, uncover the strengths that lie dormant within your story.
Unearth the transformative power of an ancient Japanese ritual that's more than just a grueling trial; it's a metamorphosis of mind, body, and spirit. Together, we traverse the concept of Misogi with Harvard's own Marcus Elliott and discover how it challenges modern notions of what we're truly capable of. Picture yourself moving a boulder underwater, confronting nature’s raw challenge - it's this mental and physical odyssey that could redefine the boundaries of your resilience.
In the communal forge of adversity, we find unexpected joy and camaraderie. Let's regale you with tales from the intense GoRuck challenge, where the weight on your back is only surpassed by the weight of your will. Surprisingly, it's not the strain that stays with you, but the silent epiphanies and the bond formed with fellow participants that etch deepest into the psyche. Learn how these rigorous rites of passage, though steeped in tradition, have morphed into vehicles for self-discovery and community in our modern tapestry.
As laughter intermingles with vulnerability, we approach the precipice of the flow state, where life's harshest tests morph into sources of amusement and profound insight. We'll share how these challenges, from braving blizzards on birthdays to contemplating the ascent of Colorado's formidable Longs Peak, serve as defining moments in life's narrative. Let this episode be a siren call to embrace your own Misogi and, in doing so, uncover the strengths that lie dormant within your story.
Welcome to another episode of Terribly Unoblivious. On today's episode we talk about the ancient Japanese ritual of Masodi or, in our new Western culture, doing something so fucking hard on day one that it affects the other 364 days of your year. We talk about how Masodi comes into existence, how it affects your mind, body and spirit, why Dylan refuses to go into caves and what some lasting effects are of Masodi challenge. We hope you enjoy this episode of Terribly Unoblivious Yep.
Brad:I said it before and I'll say it again Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
Dylan:Welcome to another episode of my co-host of Blind Sides, me with a topic I don't know anything about.
Brad:That's not true.
Dylan:Oh sorry, you gave me the three minute synopsis right before this. This, let's just be clear, brad doesn't use the technology associated with the podcast to make sure that the other guy knows what's happening.
Brad:I wrote this tonight essentially, and your microphone.
Dylan:while I'm eating, your microphone label is upside down again.
Brad:Is it? Do you love it?
Dylan:Can you just? Rotate the base 180 degrees and then flip it to the other side. Please, I'm going to mute your mic.
Brad:I can't do it. I can, I have to unplug it.
Dylan:Do it now. It's unplugged. I muted you. Is that good? Yep, do you like that better? Yeah?
Brad:This is stupid.
Dylan:We don't even have a camera and I can't do it Every time I know, Every time I deal with this, I know. Yeah, you want to introduce the topic. Oh, we're going to talk about some Japanese stuff today.
Brad:Real things you got to be careful how you say that, but we're going to talk about some Japanese stuff today. Yeah, well, why?
Dylan:Is Tom Cruise on the episode no no, the last samurai.
Brad:Yeah, I don't know about that title. I don't know, I don't know if that was an appropriate title. It's a good movie though it's always a good movie when a white dude assimilates to an ancient and interesting culture.
Dylan:I think no appropriation whatsoever.
Brad:I wouldn't call it appropriation if you're actually living the lifestyle True.
Dylan:I guess when I went to Mexico City Anthropology Museum down there is beautiful, Amazing exhibit.
Brad:Just the history of the culture. Is that the store they sell candles in?
Dylan:Yeah, yeah, I think Lavender Mint was the newest hit one. While I was there they talked about. When the Spanish came they left certain divisions of guys along in Mexico and then certain people went back but they kind of created I guess that would be camps, forts, spearheads, if you will. One guy absolutely just was like no, I don't like Spain anymore. I think I like the indigenous people and actually Avatar is based on history.
Brad:Oh, really Like that.
Dylan:Yeah, it was fun, it was fascinating.
Brad:Yeah, Avatar is the.
Dylan:They said he was savage and bad. When the Spanish came back they went to war and he was like kill them all. These are my people, let's do it so anyway that's what you gotta, do you gotta do what you gotta do, we're not talking about killing today, though, damn it.
Brad:Yeah, this is a positive episode. Hmm, I think Positively boring.
Dylan:It should be boring. No, it's not going to be positive. Okay, not boring.
Brad:Yeah, masogi, there's going to be a lot of Japanese words, initially Okay, and then we're going to get over it. But I feel like it's my duty to bring you guys a little bit of education. I try to make sure that you learn something, even if the other 99% is not worthwhile. Crowd Some of the texts for today. Michael Easter's the Comfort Crisis. This is coming mostly from one particular chapter where he talks about Masogi, and we're going to get into what that is and how it comes about and how we can apply it to our lives, if we are indeed crazy enough to do so. Mm-hmm. So let's go in the way back machine 712 AD to the Kojiki. So this is from Japanese mythology, and so we're going to take a little story time here and we're going to end up at the Masogi. So I don't know Japanese mythology. Are you familiar with it? No, okay, no.
Dylan:There's a bunch.
Brad:There's a bunch of deities, a bunch of gods. Two of the last ones is a Nagi. They had deities. They had deities. I thought they were more.
Dylan:They're like Shinto gods, basically Spirit gods, yeah.
Brad:And they cover a range similar to the Greeks in terms of like this is the god of this and this is the god of this. It's a similar idea to that. Okay, so two of the last ones to come about that actually create, I guess, the or after the world creation. These were the two that were, I guess, credited. Yeah, yeah, okay, credited with the Japanese island. There is a lot of them.
Dylan:Yeah, seven lucky gods, anywho.
Brad:Okay, sorry, okay. So, like every time they would do something. There would be like a new island right, so they would cry or they would like sneeze or they would do you know whatever, and then all of these islands were made. So it's. It's an Nagi, a creator, deity of both creation and life. In Japanese mythology. He had a sister wife, which I don't exactly know how to explain, but it seems like it's both his sister and his partner.
Dylan:Maybe sister wife? Why is that? Why is that? Why is that hard to understand?
Brad:Well, because the Mormons use sister wife in a different way?
Dylan:because they're not related. See I'm saying but this is like the episode on Christianity, where people got mad that he didn't look like a white dude.
Brad:That's what you just did why.
Dylan:You're saying it's like well, it's on the same term as the white people's term.
Brad:What? It's just no, no, no, no, no, no no, no, no, no, no no no, no, no, no, no, no. But I think in the sense that they both came from a previous deity. So that's why the relation like that, I believe Zeus and Helena. Yeah, sure, let's, but let's wait, we'll skip over that part.
Brad:Let's just let's just slide right over that. Okay, the whole sister wife part. Okay, her name was Isanami, so we got Hera. It's not Helena, sorry, it's Hera. Isanagi is the dude. Okay, isanami is the girl I get. Why don't I bring Isador?
Dylan:Isadora, isador.
Brad:So these are the creators of the Japanese archipelago, and out of their many secretions come other, lesser deities as well, and one of the ways that they needed to create was to, or procreate, in a sort of sense, was to do this ritual. And it's not sex, you know, just don't no, don't ask about it. It was more than sex. No it was like no, they like walked around a pole and met each other. Okay. That's what it's described as Anyways, she talked first, which apparently is a no, no, walked around a pole.
Dylan:Walked around a pole.
Brad:They walked around a pole and then they met each other. I don't know, okay.
Dylan:We'll stop there.
Brad:I'm not trying to make sense of this, I'm just telling you the story. Okay, okay, and, and then they it didn't go well, and then they tried it again. And then they, they formed some more islands and they had babies of sorts. The babies are when they create things Sometimes they're islands, sometimes they're other gods. Okay, wow, the last time that this happened is Anami was badly injured and eventually she died after giving birth and she gave birth to a fire god, which kind of makes sense, like you would think that you know. That kind of makes sense that you're badly injured and then you die from giving birth to a fire god, maybe, okay, yeah.
Dylan:Was it a dachy?
Brad:I, I don't know. Okay, I, I, they don't, they don't give the details why, I don't know. Okay, maybe the Kojiki has it. I just I have not read that because I'm not fluent in Japanese at all.
Dylan:So I thought this. I thought this series was about growth, and you're not growing by learning Japanese.
Brad:You're really letting our listeners know I have a hard time reading symbols. True, okay, okay. So Isanami dies. Isanagi is heartbroken and again he's crying. He's creating islands with every tear right, just all over the place. This is awesome. And he decides that it's too much to be without his partner and so he goes down to Yomi, which is the land of the dead, like a hellscape essentially Okay, because that's where she descended into and he was going to go down there and was going to try to save her. So he's like too much, I want her back. I'm going to go get her.
Dylan:So he is like is this like Hercules and Hades and all that fun shit? Yes, okay, yeah, okay. This very much lines up with it.
Brad:It's amazing how it kind of gets recycled. Yeah, okay, okay, I'm following. It's not exactly the same, but the premises are there All right. So he finds the entrance and the last. Greek on earth and starring Itcherous.
Dylan:Suzuki, okay, he finds the entrance down to this hellish landscape and goes down there, he finds her somehow.
Brad:Okay, she had already eaten the food in hell. Which? So now we're Adam and Eve.
Dylan:This is fun. Which apparently means you cannot leave Forbidden fruit. Bro, you're done, this is fun.
Brad:So he went to rescue her and she's like okay, I'm going to go get her, All right. So he went to rescue her and she's like Sorry, she's too late, I already ate dinner. Okay, and then Isanagi did the unthinkable Pretty unpar for a woman, though.
Dylan:Let's be honest.
Brad:Pretty unthinkable. The hangry oh wait, it gets worse. Okay, I mean he starts a fire so that he can see her. Like, did he use his kid? No, that was good, very good. Wow, like that, okay yeah.
Dylan:The plot twist he had a zippo.
Brad:He just pulls a fire. Got out of his pocket, it's my kid and after he lights the fire, he sees that she is now a rotting corpse. Yeah, cause she ate the food, she ate the whole food. Not good Right? Isanagi did not like this. She felt very shameful because he saw her rotting corpse now. She didn't like it. It's like when your wife wakes up in the morning and Don't look at me, don't touch me, don't I gotta put my eyebrows on.
Dylan:That thing, yes, yes, yes.
Brad:And maybe some girls react this way she let loose a horde of hellish warriors to chase him down and keep him in hell. So, wow, isanagi makes a run for it. He's just running through hell, hell, yomi, and he barely makes it out.
Dylan:Why did she go to hell in the first place? That's where you go. Okay, there's no up above.
Brad:It could have been walking around the pole the wrong way. Okay, could have been. Yeah, okay, something in the ritual that didn't go according to the plan. According to the plan, the way that it was supposed to.
Dylan:Yeah.
Brad:So when she died, they were like you know, what you shouldn't have done, that.
Dylan:Okay.
Brad:And so Isanagi makes it out, rolls a big stone over the entrance so that nobody can get back in there.
Dylan:Okay.
Brad:They have this little tiff back and forth where she's like.
Brad:I'm going to take a thousand souls a day. And he's like, oh, I'm going to save them and you know all this kind of stuff. So when he gets out of Yomi, he's got the ics, he's not feeling very good, so he feels he's feeling contaminated by being in the underworld, and so, both physically and spiritually because it's obviously a spiritual place as well, it's not just a physical place in the sense With demons so he decides to purify himself by bathing in the cold waters of the river Takibana. So ice, cold water, get all this stuff out of me, get my mind right, okay, thus the idea of Musogi is born. So Musogi is defined traditionally as the Shinto practice of ritual purification by washing the entire body, and typically this is done in pretty cold waterfalls, especially so the idea that they stand underneath these waterfalls for an extended period of time, trying to cleanse both their body and their spiritual nature. So today, as we Westerners have done with a lot of things, we take ancient ideas and then transform them into podcast, podcast, yes, yeah, okay, I got it, yeah. Or maybe like a YouTube video or motivational speech. But today Musogi has been transformed into what we would call a Musogi challenge. So in the sense that standing under ice, cold water in a waterfall or doing an ice bath or something like that, that is what Musogi challenges is turning into now a little bit.
Brad:Masogi, in terms of Shinto warriors, is more of like a preparation to unlock physical, mental and spiritual what can be, if we can put it that way. Okay, so it's the beginning of a transformation, right? Okay, that's what the cleansing is about, so that you're able to receive some new type of things. So as we start talking about Masogi, keep that in mind. But the idea of this challenge is to push you to your limits, both physically, mentally, spiritually patella, kneecaps, depending on what the challenge is. Push your limits there and it forces you to Like rug burn on your knees. Okay, depends on what the challenge is. Okay, I don't know, we'll get into it. Okay, it forces you to confront doubts, fears and weaknesses about yourself. So, like I said, a lot of this comes from this chapter I think the chapter is called 5050 and Michael Easter's book the Comfort Crisis, which has a lot of good chapters in it, and it talks a lot about the general comforts that we as humans now enjoy, that we previously you know, even a hundred some years ago did not.
Dylan:So circling back, not necessarily coming full circle, but Don't bring up the fire, god, it's probably craps. This episode goes a little bit too. Maybe we're a little too comfortable and so maybe some things in our life we can push ourselves out of our comfort zone, not just in intellectual debate. We've spent a fair amount of this podcast and the episodes leading up to this about discourse and discussion with others, and now this is more of an internal growth movement, which is how do I grow within myself?
Brad:Yes.
Dylan:Okay.
Brad:And that actually becomes a fairly important part of this challenge.
Dylan:Not only we learn how to talk politics with our crazy family, we're going to learn how to do some cool shit.
Brad:Okay, so we're going to separate these two things, though, right, because some of these are going to Like that's a, that is a mental, emotional, familial challenge, however you want to put it, or what the situation is. Replace cold water fall with a bottle of Jack Daniels. And also, we've talked about exercising and how that's good for your mind and body, and all that kind of stuff as well. And you can push yourself in many ways in that shape. That's a challenge as well. Okay, masogi is an epic challenge.
Dylan:Something that's you got to dedicate a whole host of.
Brad:Way outside your comfort zone, right. So you're at the gym or you're on, like you were just on the bike downstairs for a little bit.
Dylan:Don't talk about my part.
Brad:Don't talk about Peloton, what I'm just gonna. I didn't say it was no, you said it was Shit. You're right, I wasn't gonna name it, okay. And you're getting to the end and you're like I got pushed through this incline and then you get into that discomfort zone, right, and you go a little bit farther. Masogi goes way into your discomfort zone, like so far that it stops being a physical challenge and it becomes all mental. So that's where we're going with it, and somebody's idea of Masogi is do something so hard one day a year that it profoundly impacts the other 364 days. That's the kind of challenge that you're looking for.
Dylan:Like, for the following 179 days you're like, oh my God, I'm so glad that's over. And then, when you get past the halfway point, you're like, oh shit, every day I'm getting closer to it again.
Brad:No God, maybe I think that's how you think about it. Yeah, I mean there's definitely. If you're planning something big enough, the anxiety should definitely be there. I believe so in this particular chapter called 50-50,. It's called 50-50 for a reason which we'll get to in a minute. He's doing an interview with a Harvard PhD doctor like an actual medical doctor named Marcus Elliott, and if anyone wants to look him up, we'll do a real brief bio. But super interesting guy that's doing super interesting things, I see you have two first names. Marcus.
Brad:Elliott I don't like it. Elliott's a pretty good last name, ts.
Dylan:Elliott. Is he TS Elliott? No, no, no, okay.
Brad:Is he from ET phone home?
Dylan:ET Elliott, I'm bored now, continue, okay.
Brad:He's the owner of P3, which I pulled up somewhere. I don't remember the three P's, but there are three of them. That's why it's called P3. And he is really good at optimizing professional athletes for both performance and, let's say, health, longevity, to decrease injuries. So they analyze individual athletes and then tailor training regimens to them. But he is the one that has really taken hold of this Musogi challenge.
Brad:He's the peak performance project. Peak performance project. Okay, sick website, nice, good, let's steal it, okay, okay. And so he uses this Musogi challenge to up the level of what people think is possible of themselves, and in doing so, sometimes he brings professional athletes with him. Okay, one of the ones he talks about in this chapter is they moved a I think it was a 80 pound rock underwater for five kilometers. So it was off the coast of California, and there was three of them that did this, so him and two other athletes, and they would dive seven to 10 feet, pick up this rock, walk along the bottom of the ocean as long as they could, and then come up in surface, and then the next person would dive down, pick up the rock, carry it as long as they could, which is usually like 10 yards or something, and they did that for five kilometers. So three 3.1 miles. So that was the. That was the Musogi challenge for them that year. How long did it take?
Dylan:I don't know you came to this podcast. Are you prepared?
Brad:Uh well, you will find that time is not really of the essence. Okay, In this.
Dylan:Okay.
Brad:So, uh, elliot says of the challenge, take on challenges that radically expand your sense of what's possible. There are just two rules. You have a 50% chance of success at best and it doesn't kill you. So those are his two rules for when you're trying to plan a Musogi is that's where the 50, 50 comes from for the chapter title. You got a 50% chance of success, okay. So let's break that down into what may or may not qualify as a Musogi, right? So, uh, you are, let's say, in pretty good running shape, right, you run a couple miles a couple times a week is. And then you're, you're training, so you're doing some long runs. You get up to like 15 miles.
Brad:Yeah you're in good shape, you run 15 miles. Now stop and you say well, my missokis gonna be a marathon, not a missokie it's not gonna qualify. Is it a challenge? Yeah, sure it's a challenge. Is it going to change the way you think about yourself if you complete it? Probably not, if you've already been running 15 miles nonstop.
Dylan:Mm-hmm.
Brad:Okay. So there, you got to be creative and it is what is basically what he gets at. Okay, and he has. So those are the two rules 50% chance, completion, don't die. Okay, don't die parts also really important, because otherwise you can't do it again, obviously. But did he die? But did he die? Yeah, if somebody's asking you, that could be a missokie.
Dylan:I feel like that was my childhood, but did he die like how many brushes of debt that you have as a kid?
Brad:That I was aware of.
Dylan:Yeah but if you look, I think the ones that are more fun are the ones that you weren't aware of, and then you look back and go oh my god, so.
Brad:Oh, I want to talk about different episodes way off topic, but but get the sense that somebody's looking down on you without you Knowing they're looking down on you and then the potential that they may have just been there to like a petafile Maybe kill you.
Dylan:Oh yeah, like a petafile Maybe, yeah, yeah, okay, you talked about this one time.
Brad:Yeah, it wasn't. That wasn't the specific case, it was probably something else. But okay, yeah, okay, that could have been a close call, it wasn't a close call at all.
Dylan:I think I read that book the lovely bones, oh, oh, oh.
Brad:Stanley tucci too I didn't like him as a villain. No, he's not a villain.
Dylan:I love Stanley tucci. He's got another show. He's doing another Italian cooking show yeah. I can't wait he's great Stanley to actually that should First celebrity. We're not doing celebrities until we get Stanley tucci. We're just gonna blanket no celebrities on the podcast until Stanley tucci says yes so what happens when it's like that's?
Brad:our misogi it that's not challenging in Trying to get no. No, it's impossible, Exactly yeah, but it's not like physically and mentally challenging.
Dylan:It's mentally challenging because we got a, we got a, we got to keep writing.
Brad:You know what? Well, we could just yeah.
Dylan:I could build a spanbot.
Brad:Well, no, no, he's not gonna like now You're right, no, that's not his style. Okay, so make it hard, 50, 50, don't die. So if you are doing something where you could die, maybe put some stuff in place. So like when they did the underwater rock carry, they had some divers out there with them, okay, so okay, something went terribly wrong. Yep somebody's there, right? They did another one where it was like a stand-up paddle board across like an entire bay.
Dylan:Don't like that.
Brad:They had a layered Hamilton did that, he did the Laird Hamilton does misogies, probably on the daily I was he's bananas.
Dylan:He did all the islands, either swimming or paddle boarding or no. He had a bike on between them. Yeah, no, he did all the Hawaiian Islands and he biked. That's what. He had a bike on every island and he had a paddle board and he would paddle to the next island, get on a bike Right across the island and then paddle board.
Brad:I got he's, that's, it's bananas that guy. I'm there to Hamilton like if, if you don't know who Laird Hamilton and he's a professional surfer Mary do a supermodel Married to well, she's a Gabby.
Dylan:Gabby was volleyball player. Oh right, hey we should probably both, but I thought she also do like a ton of modeling?
Brad:Oh, probably yeah. So oh, let me guess Super tall sand volleyball player? Yeah, probably does some modeling.
Dylan:Yeah, makes sense he's also just. Yeah, they did the pedal and paddle for autism. He's a fitness, that's you rule.
Brad:That's it in a lot of different ways, yeah he's interesting character. My first introduction to him was writing Giants, the movie. If you haven't seen it, oh that's wild, check it out. 2004. Writing Giants it's a bit of a what is this? Multi-generational insiders look at the origins of surfing and then Laird comes around and it just changes everything about it. And he hasn't really stopped doing that. So he's for sure got some. So he's under his belt. I would say so. Those are the two rules.
Dylan:Then there's two guidelines and they did it over. Sorry, one, two, three, four, five. Seven days they did a week pedal Island of Hawaii paddle channel to Maui. So they paddled from the channel to like those are not close. No, it's, it's, it's a big deal.
Brad:It's a lot of, it's a lot of distance. Yeah, so anyway, sorry, based on my Mm-hmm super special knowledge of the Hawaiian Islands.
Brad:Mm-hmm two guidelines. Quirky, creative, far out uncommon is number one. So the more quirky the misogi, the less chance you can compare it to anything else. So it's, this is not a I'm competing with somebody else type thing, so this is not well. Dylan ran a 330 marathon. I'm gonna run a 325 marathon. That's not that, mm-hmm, okay. Number two you don't get to advertise it like you can talk about. You can talk about it with friends, family.
Brad:It is not a Thing that you would post about or Take video of the entire time you're doing it or turn it to a documentary, most likely On your own Doing, I guess. And what this does is it invites a Level of self-reflection. So the idea of misogi is inward-facing. And can you confront all of the things within you to accomplish a task that's really hard? And can you do it while no one else is watching you? So I didn't quit because no one's watching me, but I'm watching me, so I didn't quit. Did you really do the right thing when you were the only person watching? Essentially, hmm, is the question. So those are the the two little things. It's also not a Like a televised, you know, like so why is this important?
Brad:Why is it important? Why?
Dylan:is it important?
Brad:Oh Cuz I said Okay, we'll just go. Yeah, that's what we're going with. Cool, jacko, thanks. Well, since you bring that up, you know how a lot of people have like anxiety and depression and and all of these things in our today world.
Dylan:Yeah.
Brad:There is a strong belief that our evolutionary biology prepares us for a Life that we no longer live.
Dylan:So we have an abundance of adrenaline and other fight-or-flight. Yes, we have fight-or-flight instincts that aren't being met because we don't have that. We don't have those triggers anymore. So that builds up and it creates yeah, kind of false.
Brad:Well, so Even 150 years ago, you had to do hard things to survive, and those varied Based on how far back you want to go or what kind of landscape you were living in. Sometimes that was traveling between seasons. Sometimes it is Fighting your natural predators, of which there were many. Now we only have Karens, got a lot of Karens, the natural predator of target. But if you were, if you're up north well, actually, if you're still up north, you know you got, you have bears, you have wolves and you're in the elements and you have to contend with those kind of things you have to. If you're hunting for food, you might have to pack out a Large amount of meat over some really bad terrain for a long time. That's otherwise you'd die because you'd starve. There's all kinds of ways in which humans have had to constantly be Challenged and overcome those challenges just in order for them to survive.
Dylan:Hmm.
Brad:And so, yes, maybe it wasn't a daily activity, depending on the type of society that you lived in. Sometimes, like I said for if you're look at, let's look at Native Americans maybe it was more seasonal, right. So like, ooh, we're here right now and at summertime and things are pretty good. Now we got to pack up and we have to heave all this stuff around, so a lot of weight over a long distance so that we can get to a next camp so that we can survive the winter, so anything like that.
Brad:And now we just we don't, we don't have to do any of that.
Dylan:So Dr Brad saying we have an abundance of energy that gets sometimes channeled the wrong way because we don't have outlets that properly channel that energy.
Brad:That's part of it. But they're also saying that doing really hard shit is fundamentally human.
Dylan:Yeah, it really is.
Brad:That's a part of it, and so what he says I think this is Elliott says that by not challenging ourselves, we forget something truly important about what it is to be human. So there is a sense that and I'll get to this in a little bit but that we long for something more, and a lot of times that something more is something that is really fucking hard to do, so that we get that sense of overcoming and surviving in a sense. Now do we have to manufacture it today? Yeah, we do a little bit, unless you're really on the outskirts of civilization. Hey, man, I mean, you could do that.
Dylan:I had to forage my oat milk from my latte. So fuck you, that's fine. I don't know where to get oat milk.
Brad:Do you squeeze Quakers? I don't know actually Quakers don't like to be squeezed. They're very strict people.
Dylan:Cool hats though.
Brad:I guess, if you want to do that. So this made me think about a quote that I really liked in high school, and I don't think it was really attributed to anybody.
Dylan:Is this where I'm supposed to?
Brad:remind you, this is no, not yet.
Dylan:Okay.
Brad:No, maybe later. No, this will be a different episode.
Dylan:Okay.
Brad:And it's. I've seen it in a lot of different ways and this is the way I remember it, so I wrote it down this way Only those who risk going too far can know what is truly possible. It's a lot different, so it's kind of about pushing the boundaries and seeing what is you know what we're really capable of.
Brad:So at some point in the Sahara, like somebody had to fight a lion, and up to that point everyone was like you can't kill a lion. And then the guy was like, yeah, fucking watch this, hold my beer. Yeah, actually used to be a rite of passage. Yeah, a lot, of, a lot of young males.
Dylan:Didn't make it back, didn't make it back. Lion dinner and the ones that did normally became chief.
Brad:If you, if you've seen the movie 300, the Spartan one, there's a little clip in there where they send the probably teenage, they send a Scottish man to become a Greek God. Okay, I'm just yes, they do that too. Why does he have a Scottish accent?
Dylan:Why are they speaking English? Does Jared Butler know how to do anything else?
Brad:Oh, he doesn't, he is. They send a young teen, so, after they've gone through their training and adolescence and they think that he's ready, they send them into the mountains and he's got to fight, apparently, a 600 pound wolf or something along those lines. But throughout, I don't know, since society has existed in different, in different ways, there have been different ways to test people in terms of how do you become a part of of this community and for what's the hard shit? Yeah, and, and it can be both ways, right. So sometimes there's no discrepancy between male, female, sometimes there was. Sometimes they'd have to do different things. Another thing that stretch your neck, another thing that we're still terrified of public speaking can go back to being ousted from the community, and so sometimes the challenge for women would be you know, don't do this wrong thing, otherwise you get kicked out. If you get kicked out of the community, you're probably gonna fucking die. You're probably gonna fucking die Because, scarlet letter man, it's a rough world out there.
Dylan:So yeah, there was safety. It is interesting because we've, you know, high loan, some braving the wilderness, We've talked a lot about that. But there was safety and community because the world, it. We used to truly live in a wilderness and it was dangerous. So you needed you needed a community to keep you safe from physical danger, and now that's kind of evolved to where we're at, where we need community even though you're not so dangerous on the outside.
Brad:Yeah.
Dylan:It's interesting.
Brad:You do for different purposes. Well, maybe less purposes. Yeah, you know, I think they still needed community for that as well the mental, social, all that kind of stuff. But they also needed it for very physical reason as well. So so that leads me into what Dylan has done. That's really hard in his lifetime. Not a lot what you didn't tell me you were gonna talk about me.
Dylan:I don't like this.
Brad:Oh well I was just wondering if you had any examples. No, no, okay, let's talk about what. What they're not. This is a short clip in the New Yorker Charles Bethea. This is his little description of it. So we're gonna. It's gonna clarify some of the guidelines. Masogi is a physical trial that you don't practice or prepare for, no marathons, you don't perform before a crowd, no CrossFit style competitions, and you don't brag or pay to enter tough motors. Thinking outside the box is important too, so the other thing that those three have in common is that you're doing them with a lot of people.
Dylan:There's a huge community aspect.
Brad:Even if you're there by yourself, you're not, you're not really right Because you're, you're, you're taking on all of that extra stuff. So my example in some sense and we'll go a little bit against what Charles just said so my example would be the Go Ruck, and this happened almost 12 years ago now that I had done the Go Ruck challenge. So, for anyone unfamiliar, go Ruck is a is a backpack company, a Ruck company and it's. It started out special forces guy that decided he was going to make a backpack that was military grade quality.
Dylan:That I have a lot of them. I love them. I love your compliments on them all the time.
Brad:Yeah, I did. I did too. It's great. Actually, the other day somebody was like were you in the military? And I was like no, and he's like. We came all backpack and I was like I already have a black one.
Dylan:That's a gray camo black, you know it's fine.
Brad:So he comes up with a, a very rugged military style, but more stylish, modern, civilian minded pack and the way originally that they decided they were going to test this pack out was they put out a call for any idiot that wanted to come do some green bit bray selection style training. So, like you know, like a 12 hour training be fine.
Brad:We're going to load it up. It's going to get dirty and wet and nasty and we're going to drag it around and throw it around and and see what happens after 12 hours. And what they they didn't realize is that there's I mean, if this doesn't cry out for a sponsorship for Misogi, I don't know what does. But all these these people show up. It was a lot of their friends initially in the first ones. They show up, they do this challenge. You know, 12 hours later and and they're like yeah, yeah, when are we going to do this again? And Jason, the founder of Go Rook, was like huh, what you guys like this, like yeah, it was fucking fun, great, I'll do it again, 100%.
Brad:So the, the company started to sell backpacks and now part of the foundation is these challenges. So there's there's different levels way back when it was just the, the Go Rook tough challenge. Now there's some, some baby ones and some harder ones. But the, the challenge the original is a 10 to 12 hour event covering 15 to 20 miles. It does have a high completion rate because it is a team building type of challenge. So and then you're required to carry 30 plus pounds typically and you you do a bunch of crazy shit. Essentially, you start off getting burned for an hour or two with PT style exercises, until they call that section the welcome party, welcome party.
Brad:Yeah, so you're just doing exercises as a group until you want to fucking kill yourself. And then we're ready to go. And then you're. You're going to go walk 15 to 20 miles with a pack bow and, by the way, we're going to make objectives along the way, which also require you to do more exercises, carry heavy, heavy weights like tree trunks, telephone poles, boulders, whatever your natural surroundings happen to provide for you. You're going to love it, trust us. There are rules, as there are in any military operations, things that you should not do, and if you do them, you die. And if you die, your team gets to carry you. So, along with carrying all kinds of shit that you find along the way, you're bound to have some fucking idiots that don't follow the rules and die, and they get to carry them too. So, yeah, there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of hardships that endure over that.
Dylan:So you're going to talk about yours.
Brad:Yes, but I do. I do think that falls a little bit into what he's talking about, where there's there's still a community there, right? Because the idea is, you start to work as a team and if you falter, another teammate is going to pick up your slack, and that way everybody completes the thing. Right, and the, the cadre that are there, they don't. They don't actively try to make people quit, right, they're there to make it hard, to make it challenging, to be not nice or pretend to not be nice, and they're very effective at that also. But by and large, you, the idea is to complete it as a team. Now, if you're to Take all of the challenges and put them side by side, are they all?
Brad:Do they all look exactly the same? Fuck, no, like If you have a class and it's just they're fucking bonkers, and then you have another class and and they're they're not really ready for this, right, those two challenges are probably gonna look a lot different. Are they gonna be really hard for both groups? Yeah, they will be, but you can't. You can't take this one. That's. That's an experienced and and not as. Maybe they're not in as good a shape, or maybe they're just more sane than this group is, or maybe they don't hate themselves as much as this group does, you know whatever, the self doubt is strong, whatever whatever the case, I could smell it
Brad:self-loathing can get you through a lot of shit.
Brad:So it's hard on both sense, but in either sense you have a team and then you have the, the ultimate challenge of go-rock, which is called selection, and this is a truly individual event where you sign up it's a 48 plus hour event and you have, instead of 20 people in one cadre, it gets down to like three people and more like 20 cadre, and the idea is they they don't want you to quit per se there's a standard to uphold, though.
Brad:Yes, they have a standard that you have to meet for whatever you're doing. You do not know what that standard is all the time, and, mentally, when they keep telling you that you are not upholding the standard, you, the self-doubt is is really high. So that Leans a lot more into misogy, I think. Except you are your own cadre in that sense, right, so you You've set up a. So Marcus Elliott, the guy we talked about from p3, a one of his. He's like he's failed his last couple when, when Easter was talking to him, one of them was like a rim to rim to rim of the Grand Canyon, yeah, and he's trying to do it three times.
Dylan:So you start at the south, you go to the north and come back to rim.
Brad:Okay, so rim to rim is just one way. Yeah and he's going both ways. I think that's right.
Dylan:Yeah, yeah.
Brad:Yeah, yeah, the rim to rim. Yeah, that's not.
Dylan:Not easy.
Brad:The one the one-way trip is is pretty taxing for most people.
Dylan:Yeah, it's a grad. People don't realize the amount of Elevation, elevation.
Brad:Yeah, water is a real issue, all those kind of things. And he just, you know he wasn't, he thought he was, he was good to go and and Just mentally was like, yeah, I, I just wasn't, I would, just wasn't there. And I knew that mentally there's that that don't die part going in you. And he's like I knew if I continued on after He'd made it to the north rim, I think he's like if I go back down there, like they're gonna have to come get me and helicopter rescues are not cheap Usually, so whoopsie.
Brad:So you get it. You want to get into that zone where your mind starts going is Is this a good idea? If you're there, you're in a misogy. So yeah, so go rough. For me I felt like was, and I think it accomplished what a misogy is supposed to do, which is to unlock New potentials for you, both physically and mentally. Would you unlock you? You don't understand Quite what you're capable of when you just quit, if you keep going and then you keep going and then you keep going. At the end of it You're like, oh, remember, in minute, 10 out of 12 hours when I wanted to quit and then I didn't quit and then I went another 11 hours. That's pretty cool. And so you, you realize that it's not really your body that's saying I can't do this, it's your brain.
Dylan:It's, it's the ignoring the abort mission at all costs bell going off in your head. Yes, it's being able to. It's being able to take that and ignore it and move on and it.
Brad:It's kind of weird because in one sense, like we don't, we're not good with failure. Humans we don't want to put ourselves in situations where we'll fail. So when you put yourself in that situation it gets real uncomfortable, real fast, because both your body and mind initially are like we're fucked, we're gonna fail, yep, for sure Yep. And it's kind of up to that other side of your brain to be like alright, let's hold on, let's, let's see what we can do here. Maybe this isn't everything Right and Maybe there's a tea break.
Dylan:Maybe there's crumpets, may cucumber sandwich, I don't know you.
Brad:You find yourself Hoping initially. The hope is what kills you no, that's a Ted Lasso saying. But you do find yourself hoping, like I hope this Stupid exercise that we're doing right now ends. I hope we don't have to do fucking a hundred more burpees and I hope we don't have to bear crawl downhill with a 40 pound pack on my neck again and then At some point that changes to One burpee at a time, five feet at a time.
Dylan:And Andy, and Andy stump talks about this and he said Going through buds. Your job as a student, going through buds is to keep your world as small as possible. And that is to your point. Next burpee Get to the neck, he goes. They have to feed us every Four to six hours. It's like get to the next meal. I mean quit. You can quit when you get to the next meal, right. I mean when you get to the next. They're like no, I don't want to quit. Yeah, and he goes.
Dylan:And then your job as an instructor is to try to make their world as big as possible. And he's like I've seen really good, how are you gonna do four more weeks of this? Yeah, and he's like I've. He's like I've caught students in weak moments where I made their world so big and I he goes. I've had post exit interviews with them and they're like oh my god, you caught me at the wrong time and I'm I regret it the rest of my life. And he goes. But that's what this selection is about, because you're not a lot of weak moment. Yeah, we go out there. Yeah, so he goes.
Brad:Your job is to be able to keep your world as small as possible, no matter what's happening and so With like, when we talk about go-ruck selection and the cadre talked about this extensively, 48 hours is not the fucking green Bray selection process, right? So their, their goal is to have a really high standard and Bring a lot of aspects of that selection process to an area that both civilians and former military or current whatever Whatever you're at in life you can get a piece of of that kind of style of of what that process is and Pretty much all the cadre that are there. When asked, they're like would you sign up to do this? And like, fuck, no.
Dylan:To do this terrible but they they are all you can't do three weeks. They are. It's not a real.
Brad:They're all elite forces To some in different branches, so like they've, they've all kind of done it. They're like I wouldn't fucking sign up for this for fun, you know. Like I wanted to do a job. That's why I went through it and and did it. But Then they talk about participants that Make it through some of the harder, like the really high dropout rates. So the the welcome party in Selection is like six hours long, where it's just constant PT up, down, up down.
Dylan:Yeah get in the water, get out of the water. Get in the water, get out of the water.
Brad:Give me burpees, give me push-ups, it's just non-stop movement for what seems like for fucking ever. And then after that you get to do some more fucking terrible shit and Eventually they start hitting you with the standard. Some people are performing better than you're performing and and you're only 25% way through this. You know 12 hours can really feel like a long time and and they make it seem like the next. You know 36 are gonna be Just unbearable. And so they quit. And you know, I like hey, take it back off right now and go sit over there. You, peanut butter and jelly sandwich. There's fire over there, it's nice, warm. And they go sit down. And then, five minutes later they they look at the cadre and they're like I don't know why, I quit, I'm fucking fine. Their brain is just so Scrambled, so scrambled, that it's like get out of here, get out of here, get out of here, get out of here right now.
Dylan:Jacked eject, eject. Yeah, it's being able to hear eject and ignore it.
Brad:And so, in terms of misogy, how do you? The creative process is trying to create situations where you get some of that introduced to your brain, where you, you have these unknowns right. So, like in the selection process, you know you're gonna be moving shit around, you know you're gonna be walking for ungodly amounts of time, you're not gonna get much rest or food, and so you know those things. But in the moment it's different and you start having all these doubts and fears and questions. And then what, what does your brain do? Right? So maybe you, maybe you fail your first one.
Brad:You fail your first misogy, and Kind of like those guys five minutes after you quit, like fucking I Could have kept going, you, okay. So next year, you know, like, right, first chance I get to quit, not gonna quit, I'm gonna keep going, right. And then you start building those pathways and you transfer those skills to once you quit. Every year it's then it's too hard. You got to hit that 50-50 rule. If you're failing 100% of the time, that's not 50-50 24 hours in a waffle house.
Dylan:Done you wow.
Brad:Um depends on which waffle house one waffle an hour 24 hours. Oh no, I meant just like staying in one yeah that's what I'm saying too. Oh yeah, yeah, some of it might really force you out, mm-hmm.
Dylan:They're 24 seven. I've seen some fights. Oh well, that's your miss over the bar.
Brad:Fight waffle house, fight waffle house fight, so throw a mug. I I'll read this real quick if you don't care no go for it.
Dylan:So this I was not.
Brad:I was not writing Extensively, and this is one of the few journal entries I made at the time that wasn't so just full sunk depression mode.
Dylan:So it wasn't like every other day.
Brad:No, yeah, it was for like a month and then I wouldn't write until the next year. Moody Grootie yeah, pretty much so. Broody, moody. So, like I said, this is about 12 years ago and it was at the time. It felt like something Substantial, substantial, and it it still does, because I can't think of too many things harder than I've done Since then. Live with Shannon. Hi Shane, good luck with that. You got a couple weeks. Good, yeah, you can figure it out.
Brad:I Recently completed the go-rock challenge and it felt compelled to write about it. Obviously, the challenge is a 10 plus hour challenge endurance, military style series of team challenges covering 12 plus miles, 40 plus pounds on your back, lots of rucking, which is just carrying weight on your back and backpack, carrying formed objects, carrying people, carrying trees, etc. And lots of military style PT. I signed up knowing this was going to be one of the hardest things I had done to date, and the event did not disappoint.
Brad:20 minutes into our welcome party, I was having serious doubts as to whether or not this was the kind of workload that I could handle. Push-ups, burpees, elephant walks, crab walks, bear crawls, flutter kicks and on it goes. Just make it through this exercise, I had to tell myself there will be an end. So many thoughts and lessons happened in the next 12 hours and they happened with little to no talking or explanation. My first thought initially was to quit. That was followed quickly by just making it to the end of the set of whatever exercise we were on by morning. So what did we?
Brad:we started this at like 10 pm, I think okay so sometime around sunrise, I was ready to deal with the task at hand. Didn't matter the length of, or the time, or the distance or the weight. It was getting done, and the only expectation I had was that after my task was accomplished, I would be dealt a new one, and so it went. I Learned that my initial instincts are weak. I learned that strength comes from the mind and not from the body. I learned that depending on other people makes you more, not less, capable. I learned that overthinking can kill motivation and capability. I learned that working with people is easier and more effective than working against them. I learned how to figure it out and how to get shit done.
Brad:These things can all be applied to everyday life, and I need to be more diligent about doing so. Consistent work ethic is something I am overly capable of but all too often fail to employ. I Just need to figure it out and get shit done. Which, side note, at the time Didn't know I had ADHD for a little, a good period of my life. It's a plot twist for most of us, and it was. It was always like wow, I don't understand why you just can't fucking do it. Just go fucking do it, that's.
Dylan:And so favorite words in the whole world.
Brad:Yeah, and so it's just you know, raymond, that square key into the the circle nails on a chalkboard, mm-hmm. The other thing I quickly learned was that things can always be worse. Learn to embrace. Embrace shitty situations, because they won make you appreciate the good and I quotation mark the good, as if I knew Jocko would be coming into my life in about four years, because I was worried about that.
Dylan:That was like eight years ago. And so did you like pick up one of, like the Japanese deities, that like the, the deity of sight, picked up on the, on the mind reader and the future forecaster.
Brad:Maybe, maybe I did, maybe I unlocked that potential in me that night.
Dylan:You cried a little. Even though you cried a little bit, you created an island.
Brad:Yeah, maybe Think about how many island you have out there think about how I didn't ship myself, which is a real accomplishment. Yeah yeah, krone's is a bitch. I don't know if I could do that now and to, because it can always get shittier. I Sometimes dwell on the negative, especially when going through my depressive states. When does that happen? And this is when I most need to focus on the good in the situation, even if the good is only knowing, is only the knowledge, that it could be worse. So we you go from I want to quit, I don't quit. I don't want to quit right now, but I want to quit soon, maybe 10 minutes, maybe the next 10 minutes, and then you just eventually get to.
Brad:I remember the very ending. We had done some fucking horrendous like everybody died, like half the team died, so the other half of the team is carrying the other half of the team, and Everybody's bigger than me, you know, and you don't have to just carry them, they're also carrying weight on them. So it's worse. And then you stop because you fucked up so bad. And then you got to do some other PT and you're supposed to be going to an endpoint so that you can close this thing off. And you get to the endpoint and then they're like Miss, your ex Phil. Now we got to go the next place and you're just like and Everybody was just like- Okay okay, here we go.
Brad:And then he's like, oh fuck, with you we're done. But you get into that mindset. We're like, yeah, we're just on to the next and we're just going to the next thing. And it was an interesting take into what you're capable of, how that mindset changes the the more fun version of this that I thought of that I wrote down was hash house Harriers. Yeah, where it's a, it's a different kind of challenge. We're like you know what, I'm already fucking hammered, but the next stop, gonna do it again.
Brad:Mm-hmm next stop gonna do it again.
Dylan:I'm point two miles, five more beers in point two miles, five more beers.
Brad:So there, there have been some other, I Would say, challenging aspects, some things that we've done, but this is. I used to do a birthday challenge. Do you remember these?
Dylan:Mm-hmm. Yeah but for the audience I'll act like I don't know.
Brad:Jack Lillani Lillain. He was an old fitness guru and he started this thing called the.
Dylan:Richard Simmons.
Brad:No, it's not Richard Simmons.
Dylan:Okay, Paulie, Sure no okay, I know different, different Okay.
Brad:Yeah, he started this thing when he was older called the birthday challenge, and every year he would. He would just come up with Some event like something crazy to do, and it was different. All the time I was like I'm gonna pull a Fucking tugboat across a giant lake using this rope, and then he would just and that kind of looks like, it kind of feels like that fits in the die category. No cuz he's on land. Oh he's just. He's not swimming, he's just pulling. Oh, he wasn't like pulling swimming.
Dylan:That seems like it would not go on Dye category.
Brad:I mean they could break in the rules, right now, right, yeah, so he would do that, and it was. It was something different, and I Someone else had picked it up along the way and started making up. This was when blogs were coming out, like blogger, yeah, okay, and so somebody had the hot take, we're gonna have a blog what, what? No or not? Okay, no blogs already have one, oh cool. Let me tell you what it is Brad's blog.
Dylan:Fuck you. You don't get to know, okay.
Brad:I do have one somewhere though out in the ether. What is it called Zanga? What's that? No, I don't think so, so I came up. I came across this the birthday challenge website, whatever, and and people would essentially post like their misogies on this on this website. I was like I'm, and one of them was a lady that I follow to this day, who was a recovering addict, had gotten a Gambler name it no drugs and not as fun, no, nothing.
Brad:And that had become an endurance runner and at the time she was, I think, in her 40s and and she was going to run her age in hours. Oh wow, I was like oh fuck. And so.
Dylan:I so much easier when I'm younger right, and so I had.
Brad:I had done several in a row and it sucked because my birthday's in December and so I don't think it snowed on my birthday since I stopped doing these challenges, damn it. But I'd be like I'm gonna run 26 miles, a bike 26 miles, and I'll do you know Something else, and so I would just come 26 miles like that.
Dylan:That's me going to the bar. That's pretty easy To what for biking?
Brad:I know, but I don't bike and, as it happens, snow yeah, I got a fight back in the. I don't, I don't, I don't have that. Okay, I was on a ten speed road bike.
Dylan:That's dangerous, that's dangerous a foot of snow.
Brad:That's dangerous, right? How would you?
Dylan:do that.
Brad:Because I, because I rode it on the block, I had to do it.
Dylan:That doesn't fit in the do not die category.
Brad:There's not. There wasn't a lot of cars on the road.
Dylan:Then there's too much snow, it's lip fall hit your head as wearing a helmet. Oh I could. I'm sure it was totally legit yeah okay, let's move on, let's pull leather. I'm over this conversation. I like it. No, okay, pig skin, pig skin, yeah, mmm, no this was real leather, Ah yeah okay, killed a cow for this one, not, not Gator.
Brad:Was not Gator skin bummer, so that's kind of those were some things I did. You know what?
Dylan:can people hope to gain by doing, by implementing a misogy in their life? How can they start thinking about it? How can you test your limits without putting yourself in the dead category?
Brad:you have to know Start, start out by when are you at right now, right? So the way the Elliott describes it is a marathon could be your misogy, right? So if you've, if you've just ran like a 5k and you you think you could Maybe run 15 miles, like you're, like, I think, I think I could put 15 miles together, marathon might be a misogy, you know. Okay, you could do that.
Brad:Yeah but it's also can you get outside of. So if you are just starting some of those kind of standard type, you know, physical type things, those count, you can do those okay but they have to be. It's not like I've been training for a marathon for a year and then I'm gonna go do it. It's like no cuz you should fucking do it.
Dylan:Okay, you Got you guys you're not gonna be able to prepare for the misogy.
Brad:Not to the extent where you're almost guaranteed success. No, I see what you're saying, right, okay, so that doesn't mean you you can't run, you have to sit on the couch, and you know. It just means that, like you've never tested whether you can do 15 miles, I the farthest you've ever run. A seven miles, right, seems like a lot, is it? There's a lot. Yeah, I did seven miles. Okay, can you do like three and a half times more? Yeah, I don't know about that.
Dylan:What about 15?
Brad:Can you do it all like without walking? Can you do it on a trail? Can you do it underwater? I don't know about the underwater part. I know what your meso. You could be what.
Dylan:Cave exploration Nope, hard down. Yep, nope, you can do it, not after seeing that it's really good mental preparation for you, not after seeing that.
Brad:What if it was like a thoroughly explored cave that you knew, like, like?
Dylan:you knew that I've gone cave Like you knew there would be some sketchy parts, but not like I'm out. No, you don't. Okay, I don't need that. That's not growth. It could be how, mentally Okay, suddenly Dylan's over this fucking idea all together, this is dumb.
Brad:One of them for me, one I'm thinking of is I've always wanted to do long speak the hike. That's something where it's.
Dylan:I thought you were going to talk for a long time. It's like that's what the podcast is called Longs Peak. You said long speak, longs Peak, long speak yes.
Brad:Okay, long speak, but that's something that maybe 15 years ago I was a little bit more confident.
Dylan:What is it? What are you talking about?
Brad:Long speak is just one of the 14,000 foot peaks in Colorado Just one of them, just one of them.
Dylan:Okay, anything more treacherous about it than anything else.
Brad:Yeah, it's kind of. It's an all day affair. Okay, you have to pull into the parking lot in the AMs early in the AMs, like eight, no, no, no, like what. Like five would be a good start time Probably. I'm out already. It's a trek up and anytime you're doing mountains you don't want to be there past lunch. Typically Bears, no Lions, maybe bears. They get hungry around noon. Okay, sometimes no Lightning storms.
Dylan:Storms roll in often in the afternoons.
Brad:Yes, so you go up early Big alpinist. Well, the other thing is if you go up late like you're, good luck because you're going to be scrambling on rocks at 14,000 feet in the dark otherwise, so better get some nods. It's a chunk of mileage and then you have to do some scrambling, some route, finding a couple of exposed places. It's definitely not the gnarliest thing to do, but I haven't been on rocks for a while, you look shaky at best.
Dylan:I don't give you props on that at all.
Brad:And I don't do well at altitude. Yeah, I get the headaches in the nausea.
Dylan:That's not good.
Brad:I've already got you at less than 50%. We're in Illinois, iowa, not a lot of mountains, so you can't like. You can train but you can't properly train for it. You're not hiking mountains at 11,000 feet to prepare for it. So something like that I feel like would be a good get out and do it, kind of thing. But yeah, you gain a new perspective on what you're capable of and how to overcome adversity.
Dylan:Yeah, so that's what people hope to gain out of this. What is the payoff?
Brad:The payoff is mostly mental. You get that little extra boost.
Dylan:You get to that next level.
Brad:Every time that little voice in the back of your head says I don't think you can do that. Quick aside, I hate the term level up.
Dylan:Okay, do you like that term?
Brad:I don't use that term.
Dylan:But you know how people are. Like I leveled up.
Brad:No, I've never heard of that. No, I think somebody gets smacked for saying that. Thank, you.
Dylan:It's like saying you have a case of the Monday, so I found you. Fuck off yeah.
Brad:I didn't know, I don't know. Shit no so it's a lot of that. It's about realizing what your weaknesses are. I mean, it's dealing with fear. I don't know why you don't want to get in the cave. You got to deal with it. What applicable what is applicable to dealing with the fear, is applicable. Nothing about the cave, unless you're played on. You want to talk about the allegory? It's a different topic. But being able to be like I'm terrified to do this thing.
Dylan:I did it. I did it in Vietnam, but not why do I need to do it again? Because it clearly didn't work.
Brad:Okay, I don't think it works. Jesus, you need to do it again. This is so dumb. So the mental fortitude that you can do, and then it's one of those it's just like when you do something hard, physically as well, everything else. It's like when you get up and you work out. In the morning you had a fucking hard workout and the day seems so nice. Yeah, and everything else is fucking easy. You're like breakfast is.
Dylan:It just falls into place. Breakfast is awesome.
Brad:They're like I had a bad day and they're like I don't fucking care about your bad day, I just sweated my nuts off this morning.
Dylan:Life falls into place. That's amazing, and perspective.
Brad:So it's that on steroids. That's that's what you're looking at. So it's a cold bath, yeah, which is it's really interesting. That's that's popular again, because part of the cold bath obviously there's a lot of biological stuff, but part of that is that it's not fun, it's fucking terrible. And part of that is that mental capacity to be like you know what I'm going to do this. I don't know if I have that in me.
Dylan:This podcast a little bit of misogy. For me it's super uncomfortable. Okay, I know it seems like like just in general every time. I'm like, obviously, you and I talk a lot and we're buds, and like I'm pretty open with you about how I feel and how I am, but you don't like sharing. I don't like sharing with people.
Dylan:And so this is very vulnerable for me and then also, it's hard in the sense where I have a very I'm very busy in my professional life and being able to carve time out to do this and like, try to hit deadlines and go okay, we do have Monday episodes, we have Friday episodes. We committed to this we. We have to like now it's like this episode will come out next Monday. It's allegedly it's, it's holding yourself when you're going. I should be doing something else professionally right now because I'm trying to look. I almost use the term goddamn, I almost use the term level up.
Dylan:I'm gonna go shoot myself. Please don't do that. I should be doing something professionally to ensure the continuity over there and it's like well, no, I got to take an hour here to make sure this gets out, because we've made a commitment and then I can go to it. So it's extended my life a little bit and I've, I've, I've sacrificed a little bit on the personal side because these are extra hours.
Brad:I enjoy the hell out of it, don't get me wrong. But it is also every time in episode.
Dylan:I haven't listened to one, by the way. I mean, I listened to it when I edited it.
Brad:I have not listened to one full and it's I still haven't.
Dylan:I haven't committed to my, I haven't posted on social media about it. I know and I've broken my promise to you. So I think, I'll probably have to post on Monday.
Brad:I'm taking. I'm taking this as the part of the misogy where you're not doing it for anybody else and you're the only one that's watching, and that's why I keep showing up here. I'll take anybody else's listening.
Dylan:I don't really think so either, but it's fun though it is.
Brad:I think maybe stressful, but it's fun, maybe someday, maybe someday.
Dylan:I don't know, it's cool, yeah, but physically, like physically, this sucks. Physically I kind of. I don't know. I'm not a specimen by any stretch of the imagination, but I hear about you saying that, peak, I'm like I can go do that and it's going to be okay. I usually walk away from physical activity, normally, okay.
Brad:Yes.
Dylan:I'd get fucked up by Leadville, though I would absolutely get fucked up by Leadville. Yeah, that's how I got into running. I was going to go run Leadville.
Brad:Yeah.
Dylan:And then I didn't get in. And there's a, and now I was running all the time and I still didn't do it.
Brad:And that's what it's about. It's about like finding out If you're, if you're like me how many rounds of golf can I play in a day?
Dylan:That's a good one.
Brad:And shoot, oh yeah, and hold yourself to a standard.
Dylan:Yes, how many beers do we have to drink around?
Brad:I'd not have no beers. Okay, I see, I'm not doing this.
Dylan:Oh, you have to play five rounds.
Brad:No, you have to play five rounds Sub 82. Like it's not impossible for and you can't quit you can't quit until you play five rounds.
Dylan:No, okay, this is fun. I like this game.
Brad:It's not supposed to be fun. Why? That's certain yeah.
Dylan:I mean it should be.
Brad:You could enjoy it at some point, I don't know, to your to when it's done.
Dylan:You kind of touch on this with the go rock. At some point it becomes fun. You're like this sucks when your mindset changes and that and it gets there eventually.
Brad:And.
Dylan:I'm not saying I've done a lot of hard things in my life and we kind of skipped a point.
Brad:You just giggle, You're like I'm here, we skipped over the whole thing, which, when that happens, that is flow, state, flow state's a real thing. Yeah, so that's essentially when your brain's like, all right, we're in this, we're in the spot, we're here and we're just staying here.
Dylan:We're here.
Brad:Yeah, so that's. That's something else. Major, major benefit is maybe you can figure out how to get into that state more often doing other things, which is a big deal. It is so anyway all right.
Dylan:Well, I hope, I hope, but I hope you guys can cry islands, I hope you can cry islands.
Brad:I hope nobody dies giving birth to fire. It's weird that he's perfectly logical that he started a fire but it wasn't with this kid.
Dylan:I just feel like they were throwing shit at the wall and they had a big opportunity and missed out. They did. There are so much that there are so much they can circle back on. He should have drug them down there with him as any good dad would have must purify ourselves. All right, everyone Time to cleanse, you're still here.
Brad:It's over.
Dylan:Go home.
Brad:Go.