What He Learned Climbing the World's Tallest Peaks

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Speaker 4 are either consciously or or I think more often subconsciously looking for a free lunch.

Speaker 3 Let's go.

Speaker 3 Yeah, make it look, make it look, make it look,

Speaker 3 stand up. The Ryan Hanley Show shares the original ideas, habits, and mindsets of world-class original thinkers you can use to produce extraordinary results in your life and business.
This is the way.

Speaker 3 Before we get going, everyone, I just want to let you know that I have messed this up five times now, this intro, and that is a new record.

Speaker 3 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the

Speaker 3 show.

Speaker 3 We have a tremendous conversation for you today with Matt Dawson, former

Speaker 3 Naval Academy graduate, graduated from the Wharton School as well, Division I football player, highly successful M ⁇ A investment banker, turned extreme sports enthusiast and philanthropist.

Speaker 3 Matt took on the challenge of climbing the tallest peak on each of the seven continents. He has skied to the South Pole as many as well as many other extreme challenges.

Speaker 3 And his foundation supports athletes that create the continuation of purpose in people's lives.

Speaker 3 Matt's an incredible guy with an extraordinary viewpoint on what high performance looks like, what it takes to get there.

Speaker 3 And we spend not our time in the tactics and strategies of high performance, but in the mentality of high performance. What did he have to go through?

Speaker 3 to be able to climb some of the tallest mountains in the world.

Speaker 3 What was going on in his head? How did he deal with the isolation? How did he deal with the pain?

Speaker 3 What was it that drove him through those moments where every particle in his body was screaming for him to stop? And then how can we bringing that all the way down to our day-to-day lives?

Speaker 3 How can we do that with the activities in our lives that we have to deal with? the challenges that come in our lives. How do we overcome those?

Speaker 3 Those small micro decisions that keep us from from becoming the best version of ourselves. It's an awesome conversation.
Matt is an incredible guy. You are going to love this.

Speaker 3 He has this quote that I'm going to share with you right now just because it just pulled on me. Our true selves are revealed in the margins.
I love that.

Speaker 3 My friends, I give you Matt Dawson. Matt, dude, incredibly excited to have you on the show and just appreciate you taking the time.

Speaker 4 Hey, thank you. I've been looking forward to this.
And I tell you, all my good friends, all the people that know me call me Dawson.

Speaker 3 So please you know call me dawson dawson it is and as you can see on my riverside those watching on youtube won't and certainly the listeners won't but uh most people end up calling me hanley so we can just go by last names

Speaker 3 um

Speaker 3 all right i want to start in what might be considered an odd place but it was one of the parts of your story that jumped out to me the most

Speaker 3 you are obviously a driven individual um

Speaker 3 Naval Academy, you're trying to become a pro football player.

Speaker 3 You're obviously having a successful career there, and then you get injured. And it's not just like a little injury that has a set timetable that you're going to be back from.

Speaker 3 This kind of takes you off the board for a while and forces you to have a long-term recovery and rehab.

Speaker 3 And that becomes an excuse for most people. A scenario like that,

Speaker 3 a life-changing injury to your current moment in time becomes an excuse for most people. The vast majority of the people would lean on that

Speaker 3 injury and say, this is why I can't get ahead. This is, you know, this is why I'm relegated to not achieving this initial dream that I had.
And you didn't do that, right?

Speaker 3 You, you, maybe not right away, and I'd love for you to explain that, but, but you have pushed through that and are now doing things physically that most people wouldn't even consider. I'm

Speaker 3 I'm just so interested in

Speaker 3 what it was, what your thought process was, how, what you had to go through, what demons you had to fight to say to yourself, this isn't going to be,

Speaker 3 this injury isn't going to define what I'm able to do as a person and the goals that I set for myself. And maybe you could talk through that a little bit.

Speaker 4 Yeah, no, it's certainly.

Speaker 4 It's interesting is that

Speaker 4 it's interesting to me

Speaker 4 that initial question.

Speaker 4 I appreciate that.

Speaker 4 It's just kind of taking it in a different direction. And, you know, I've had so many injuries.
It's tough to kind of figure it out.

Speaker 4 I think the one you're referring to is the bilateral compartmental syndrome, right?

Speaker 4 Have the surgery. And it's funny is that it played such an important role in my life and continues on literally on a daily basis, even decades later.

Speaker 4 But it's something that I don't get a chance to really talk that much about. So I love this topic.

Speaker 4 So when I started at, I started playing football at the U.S. Naval Academy, I was a quarterback.

Speaker 4 And then after my plebe year, which is freshman year, is I transferred to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, went to a strong safety. But

Speaker 4 between those two institutions is I had to have bilateral compartmental release surgery because I had compartmental syndrome in both my lower legs.

Speaker 4 And what that is, is around all our muscles, we have a connective protective tissue called fascia. It's basically a bag that supports your muscles.

Speaker 4 And in both of my lower legs, because of all the exercise I was doing, all the plyometrics, is the muscles essentially just got so big is that it created all this pressure to where where it would shut down my deep nerve and my foot would drop and I couldn't pick it up.

Speaker 4 Like literally, I literally, you know, now I'm out climbing mountains and doing all this kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 I literally could not walk up a flight of stairs without being bent over in pain, almost in tears. It hurts so bad.
And so between Navy and Penn is I had to have surgery.

Speaker 4 And they released all four compartments in both lower legs to where now this have two compartments instead of four. Long story short, is that I lost probably, you know, 30%, 40% of my speed and power.

Speaker 4 I mean, it was just gone. And as much as I, as much as my mind and body wanted to go, it was like, hey, explode here and pop there and do this and do that and jump and run.

Speaker 4 I physically just couldn't do it. And that led to a significant decline in performance.
So I went to UPenn.

Speaker 4 And, you know, after just a single season of playing there is I quit the team. And it was because, yeah, I was going through just some different, you know, mental, emotional stuff at the time.

Speaker 4 But then my inability to perform just, you know, just stacked on top of that. And I'm just like, I'm not the person I used to be.
I'm not the athlete I used to be.

Speaker 4 And it took literally years for me to come back from that. So I ended up only playing two years of college football and then trained on my own for

Speaker 4 three or four more years.

Speaker 4 in order to finally get my speed and power back.

Speaker 4 And it wasn't until like my early 20s, you know, 22, 23, when I was training training full-time in Dallas, you know, after college to play pro football that I eventually got that back.

Speaker 4 And it just, it taught me a level of just patience and perseverance, you know, that just

Speaker 4 that

Speaker 4 when I look back on, I'm grateful for now because it made me a better person. It expanded my understanding and appreciation of what this stuff can look like.

Speaker 4 And sometimes it can turn, you know, into long term. But, you know, it's still something I struggle with on a daily basis is I still have, you know, pitting edema in my my legs where

Speaker 4 the fluid retention in both lower legs is still pretty bad. I've had multiple surgical procedures to cauterize veins and move things around and flush things out.
But I'm out there

Speaker 4 running

Speaker 4 whatever, 100 miles a week and climbing all these mountains and this and that. But I'm still having to deal with this stuff on a daily basis.

Speaker 4 It just reminds me is that... you know, sometimes you can work on something and you get it, you know, handled and you get it behind you.
And sometimes it becomes part of your life.

Speaker 4 And you just have to make that decision of, am I going to allow this to negate my ability to perform or am I going to find some way to work around it or to work with it and still perform to the best of my capabilities?

Speaker 3 Is there

Speaker 3 a life philosophy?

Speaker 3 It could be religion, relationship with God. It could be stoicism.
It could be just a philosophy that you developed on your own. Because

Speaker 3 I'm intrigued by people that don't let the obstacles that the universe throws at them stop them from achieving whatever the thing is that they want to do.

Speaker 3 Be it physical, be it something in work, something you know, they're creative, whatever. Like,

Speaker 3 I played college baseball, Division III, but had plenty of friends play in different levels, and so many of them have injuries. It's the nature of sports, right?

Speaker 3 And just staying in the sports and physical frame for a sec,

Speaker 3 very few who incurred injuries to the level that you did that would cost you years of a career in sports.

Speaker 3 So few of them come back from that.

Speaker 3 Most of them are now dad-bod, great guys, just dad-bod, kind of overweight, making the same excuses that most people make for just kind of trying to get through life.

Speaker 3 And they never reclaim that physicality or even a portion of the physicality they had.

Speaker 3 And for, you know, having done this show for as long as I have and talked to amazing people like yourself, there's usually something behind it. And for everyone, it's different.

Speaker 3 And I'm just interested in what is that,

Speaker 3 was there a quote you held on to, a philosophy? Was there a mentor that you could lean on or someone that helped you work through that? Because left on our own, oftentimes we can become,

Speaker 3 with no

Speaker 3 anchor point.

Speaker 3 to grab onto in the storm, we often get blown away.

Speaker 3 And I'm interested in what that was for you.

Speaker 4 Man, I think that's a great question. It just, it brings up so many different angles.

Speaker 4 You know, it's just, I mean, I think that's a question we could spend hours and hours just talking about that single question alone. And what I really find interesting about that.

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Speaker 4 It's drawing in other people or other influences, which I think is critical to understand because none of us do this stuff alone.

Speaker 4 And even when I'm out saying I'm doing something solo and unsupported, I'm really not unsupported.

Speaker 4 It's because there's so many people that have come together to create the opportunity that I now have to pursue.

Speaker 4 So whether it's that or what you're talking about is we don't do any of this stuff alone. And I think the way that I look at it is I

Speaker 4 examine my life not in quantity or not in longevity of I'm not looking to be around for 80 years or 100 years or whatever just to have

Speaker 4 that time under my belt is I look at it more of quality and performance. So I'm much more interested is I'd rather be around a short.

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Speaker 4 A shorter time and a higher performance and a longer time and a lower performance. And I don't mean just physical.

Speaker 4 I mean, you know, physical, emotional, psychological, you know, thing, everything kind of tied together.

Speaker 4 If I had to think about, and I'm also very big on quotes, is I love when people can just really take things down and make them succinct and just make them resonate with you.

Speaker 4 I think that's a very special, it's a special thing.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 one that I've got that actually my parents gave to me when I was 16 years old, they gave me a plaque.

Speaker 4 It's actually here in my office, is it says that bullshit is only skinned deep, or beauty is only skin deep, but bullshit goes clear to the bone.

Speaker 4 And it just, it's just, it's a very simple thing.

Speaker 4 It's kind of crude, I admit, but it's, it just reminds me is that we have the decision at every single point whether we're gonna kind of just kind of you know

Speaker 4 skip across the surface of something and just maybe get it done and maybe it looks good or it sounds good or it presents well or it's good enough but we all know deep down if we gave it our true earnest honest effort and that's just I've looked at this thing literally every single day almost since I was 16 years old and that's something I'm constantly asking myself I'm like am I just being beautiful here

Speaker 4 in a theoretical sense? Or am I

Speaker 4 BSing myself right now in this performance? And it's just, I try to set that standard of

Speaker 4 whatever it is,

Speaker 4 however I perform, it's just in that honest effort where I'm satisfied, where the outcome is not as important to me, but it's the quality of the input

Speaker 4 that I'm putting into it.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 so i have two uh young boys uh 10 and 8 and both play sports and do different things at school and you know that that message that you just related to me i think is one that seemingly feels like it's being lost today especially in youth sports um

Speaker 3 you know i i bang them over the head with Outcome doesn't matter, it's attitude and effort.

Speaker 3 Outcome is a derivative of your attitude and effort.

Speaker 3 Like, you have to be there, you have to be present and work as hard as you can and be proud of your performance You know, I you know I say them all the time I'm your dad I'm gonna be proud of you regardless.

Speaker 3 You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 I'm gonna love you regardless, but you got to walk off that field proud or you're gonna have something inside you that feels a little off right it's attitude and effort attitude and effort and we've become so outcome driven that you know that's where you get like these Instagram channels where people are renting sports cars and doing all the cliche nonsensical things to show a life that doesn't actually exist because that's what they think that outcome is what they really want to present not what it actually takes to get to that place.

Speaker 3 And it's why I like, especially with individuals like you who've done incredible things, and we're going to talk about those incredible things in a minute, but

Speaker 3 like

Speaker 3 so few people do the shit that you do, right? And I'm, and I love trying to dig into like that, that idea of what, what do you hold on to?

Speaker 3 And, and, and I guess my question coming out of what you just said is

Speaker 3 even high achievers have moments where they find themselves in that, you know, that bullshit spot, right? I'm, you know,

Speaker 3 I let a tough day with a lot of stress lead into maybe

Speaker 3 a few drinks on a Tuesday night and I wake up and now I'm hungover on a Wednesday. I know I shouldn't have done that.
It's not who I am, but you know, I had a,

Speaker 3 now I'm losing a Wednesday because of bad decisions made on a Tuesday.

Speaker 3 And again, going back to kind of kind of same crux as my original question, some people will either not be aware that that decision was bad, some people will just plow through it and go, ah, you know, it's just one day, and then that leads to more of those bad days.

Speaker 3 And other people correct themselves and go, you know what? That was a bad decision. I'm okay.
I'm going to move forward.

Speaker 3 How do you

Speaker 3 talk to me a little bit about your awareness of...

Speaker 3 of your actions and their impact on you and how you self-correct when you realize maybe you've allowed a bad habit or a a negative habit to leak into your life that isn't putting you on the path to the goals that you want to be there?

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's

Speaker 4 this is something that I think about a lot. And I have

Speaker 4 literally the same conversation with a lot of people that I trust and respect and in my network that I admire about what they're doing.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 I think today is,

Speaker 4 look, it's very important to show ourselves grace.

Speaker 4 But at the same time,

Speaker 4 I think today we're losing kind of setting a standard for ourselves and maintaining that standard. And people now are either consciously or I think more often subconsciously looking for a free lunch.

Speaker 4 And all I can say is that one of the biggest things I've learned in my life is nothing is free. is that everything has a cost.
Everything. I don't care.
Success has a cost, failure has a cost.

Speaker 4 And what I try to do is to set a standard in my life. And I meet that standard, or I attempt to meet that standard.
And I don't care about anything else. In the sense that it's, yeah, it hurts.

Speaker 4 It's supposed to hurt. I'm setting a standard because I want it to hurt because that hurt, that hurt and that pain is going to help me connect with myself and understand myself, you know, and to grow.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 I think that's what it is where

Speaker 4 most people are just kind of,

Speaker 4 and look, I fail all the time is I'll set a standard and I'm like, I want to do this day or I want to be this person or I want to hit this time or whatever.

Speaker 4 And I'm telling you, is I fail on a daily basis. But it's just as long as I know that I'm putting everything that I can into this thing.

Speaker 4 But if I do get a little sidetracked is having that ability to kind of step back. and to and to not allow myself to repeat that same

Speaker 4 habit or that same action over and over and over again.

Speaker 4 Something like that.

Speaker 4 And I think it's a combination of understanding is that we are going to fail every single day, allowing ourselves to have that grace because we have to understand what our ultimate goal is. And

Speaker 4 are our actions and thoughts taking us toward that goal or away from that goal?

Speaker 4 So if you fail to meet some standard or fail to perform in some way, and you just start beating the shit out of yourself and driving yourself down into this shame hole is that going to help you achieve what you're looking to achieve and the answer is no and it you know sometimes we need to you know punish or adjust ourselves in a certain way but to do it in a sense ultimately that's going to help us achieve our goals so i think it's kind of walking that that narrow line of you know how you bring yourself back out of it so it's just you know showing yourself grace but at the same time not giving yourself too much leniency because because I think, you know, today people are a little bit probably too easy on themselves in a lot of regards.

Speaker 4 And it's it's finding that line because you know, like you mentioned, you go on Instagram or you go on social media or you watch a commercial and it's like, oh, it's okay.

Speaker 4 It's okay to do this or it's okay not to do this. It's okay to this and just you know, buy my product, buy my service, buy my this, you'll feel better.

Speaker 4 And it's, you know, it's, it's kind of getting us a little too far afield from where we need to be.

Speaker 3 You know, it's funny. I had a conversation with one of the parents.
I coached my older son's baseball team. And

Speaker 3 I was, there there was a kid on the team who's very talented.

Speaker 3 He's a good kid, but

Speaker 3 he's completely willing to take entire half a game off because he missed a grounder or struck out. And he'll just literally just give away three innings, head down,

Speaker 3 you know, standing wherever he is, and we'll just give it away. And, and, and I ride him on that particular aspect.
I try to be constructive with it.

Speaker 3 You know, I'm not like yelling at him because they don't listen to you when you yell. But, you know, know, I'm on him.
I'm on him about it. I'm reminding him.
I'm on him.

Speaker 3 And his mom pulls me aside after one of the games and she's like, why don't you like my kid? You know, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Speaker 3 The reason that I am on your kid about this particular aspect of his game is because I like him.

Speaker 3 Like, because I want him to be successful, because I think he's a good ball player, because I think he's a good kid.

Speaker 3 That's why I'm on him about this particular aspect of his game, of his personality that is keeping him from being as good as he wants,

Speaker 3 as I know he wants to be. If I was just letting him do it, that would be me not liking him.
And it's like, it was an eye-opening experience for me.

Speaker 3 It happened just this last summer because it's to your point, like, like

Speaker 3 we've, we've, I remember being coached and like my coaches in football, I played high school football, would like, I mean, they would be spitting on you through your face mask.

Speaker 3 They'd be so raging mad.

Speaker 3 And my thought, and this is the big difference, right? My thought, and

Speaker 3 I'm sure you was like, oh, you know, I deserve to get yelled at. I did, you know, miss that tackle.
I did,

Speaker 3 I did, you know, I did play the wrong assignment. You know what I mean? Like, yeah,

Speaker 3 I deserve to be yelled at. Today, it's, well, why are you yelling at me? Why are you yelling at my son?

Speaker 3 I'm yelling at your kid because he struck out, put his hand, put his head down while he was in the field and let a grounder go right by him because he wasn't paying attention because he was so, you know, so in a, like you said, a shame spiral about this one thing that happened that happens multiple times, dozens of times throughout the course of a season.

Speaker 3 You know what I mean? Like it, it, it is a shift. And before, before we really, I want to really get into the meat and potatoes of the stuff you have going on.

Speaker 4 But hey, I'm sorry,

Speaker 4 if I can just jump in for one second for you. Yeah, yeah, please.

Speaker 4 I'm just laughing because I'm just, I'm thinking back to, you know, high school, football, college, and, you know, and even after college, where I've, I mean, I've had coaches, you know, damn near rip my head off, like literally, yeah, grab my face mask and be in here and spitting on me and everything else.

Speaker 4 But it's uh, it's, I just, I haven't thought about that in a while. Is one thing I think that that's very important to

Speaker 4 understand the distinction of is when we talk about, say, performance, and you know, talk about that kid, you know, striking out, then putting his head down, missing grounders, and this and that

Speaker 4 is that

Speaker 4 is not to tie

Speaker 4 our self-worth and self-love to performance.

Speaker 4 And this is what I found when I was coming up through, is I inadvertently and subconsciously

Speaker 4 tied my sense of self-worth and my worth, my feeling of deserving love and of being worthy to my performance.

Speaker 4 So it's like I, you know, I sought to achieve in order to prove that I was worthy of being loved or that I was important or that I mattered.

Speaker 4 And it took me literally literally almost four decades to figure out what I was doing and why that was wrong and how that was hurting me

Speaker 4 in many ways and hindering me in many ways. And what I came to understand was it's not a matter of earning self-love and self-worth.
It's a matter of demonstrating

Speaker 4 self-love and self-worth. And that's a huge, huge distinction.
And that helps to alleviate or, you know, us of shame and guilt when we fail to perform. And that's what

Speaker 4 these kids need to understand is, is, you know, you keep your head up and you keep pushing and you keep trying because you're showing yourself, hey, I'm worth this effort. We're all worth this effort.

Speaker 4 And when I get out there and I'm training for, you know, a thousand hours a year alone in the mountains and, you know, on the roads and in the gym and I'm bleeding and hurting and

Speaker 4 on expedition or whatever, is I'm telling myself, you know, sometimes I'm like, why the hell am I doing this? Like, this is tough. I don't want to be here.

Speaker 4 I want to be doing, I want to eat, you know, eat Cheetos and sit on the couch right now. And I'm like, listen, man, you're out here because I love you and you're worth the effort.

Speaker 4 And that's why we're doing this. And I think when people look at it in that way, it helps to, you know, maybe approach it in a different way.
And for me, it's been a much more beneficial way.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I love that. And I think you just made a great point too.

Speaker 3 There's like this, there's this, I think, misunderstanding by the vast majority of people that

Speaker 3 someone who achieves at a high level, they they don't struggle with the same

Speaker 3 desire for comfort or crappy food or

Speaker 3 a beer or something like they do, right? Like, it's every high achiever I've ever spent time with in my own moments of my highest achievement.

Speaker 3 There's always that part of your brain that's like, you know, it would be great right now to pop a beer and watch the football game and just veg out for five hours. You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 Like, I would love that. But, you know,

Speaker 3 like everyone fights with these battles and it's, and it's a choice. And I love your feedback and just where you would take this.
But like that,

Speaker 3 it's like, it's like, it's like people who haven't gotten there yet.

Speaker 3 And I believe everyone's capable. They haven't gotten there.
They've never really been at their peak achievement level. They feel like, well,

Speaker 3 I'm just not driven like that. Or, you know, I really like to relax.
Or, you know, they feel like somehow they have this.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they have this draw to comfort that someone like you who's climbing you know the highest mountains in the entire world on on every count you don't have that draw right you just you were blessed with you know some lack of desire for comfort and fun stuff and that you're that's you're just like predisposed to do this crazy shit and i've never found that to be the case right like you know world-class athletes you know, entrepreneurs who've run incredible companies, like they're making a decision every day, Cheetos on the couch or go get this shit done that I told myself I wanted to get done.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 one, do you agree with that? And two, like,

Speaker 3 how do you, when that desire hits you, right? So you're, you're, you're, you wake up in the morning and you're like, okay, I'm going to go for a big run today. I got a time I want to hit.

Speaker 3 I got to go for a big run. And then your brain, because we all have this inside of us, right? We're, we're our soul, not our body or our brain.
Our brain, well, at least that's what I believe.

Speaker 3 Our, our brain says to us, you know what, Matt? Just, hey, you haven't relaxed in a while.

Speaker 3 Just pour yourself a cup of coffee, turn on Sports Center, chill out. You don't need to go for the run.
You went for a long run yesterday. You don't need to do it today.

Speaker 3 In that moment, right, where you really get a strong pull, right? Some days you wake up, you're ready to go. And those days when you get that pull to just, man, that couch is calling my name.

Speaker 3 How do you get past that?

Speaker 3 How do you, what's your process for, for, for making sure that you, you stay committed to the task that you've set yourself to.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I love that. And it was funny.
I was actually thinking about this on Tuesday because I had a big leg workout on Tuesday. And

Speaker 4 I call it the bargaining. Is that,

Speaker 4 well, first of all, let me tell you this, is that every single day I face this question because there's certain parts of every single day where I'm like, I know I need to be doing this, but...

Speaker 4 but this over here looks a little more you know easier or interesting or whatever but when I talk about the bargaining, is there's always a part in everything we do that's demanding where there's going to be some piece of you that's trying to get you to do something easier.

Speaker 4 Or it's like, you know, maybe my glute is just a little tweaked today, or maybe my heart rate's a little low. So maybe I didn't sleep quite as well.

Speaker 4 Maybe I'm a little bit tired so I can take, you know, a couple of heart rate off this run, or maybe I'll stop it 20 minutes earlier. Maybe I'll stop the set three reps sooner.
And

Speaker 4 I just laugh at it. I call it the bargaining.
And it's like, I've been doing this long enough that I look for it because I know it's coming.

Speaker 4 And I still, again, I still do it on a daily basis, you know. And it's like when I was going through this leg workout the other day, you know, this thing was 750 reps per leg.

Speaker 4 So you're talking 1,500 total reps.

Speaker 4 And when I, you know, I was walking in there, I'm like, oh, I'm going to tear this thing a new asshole. And I'm ready to go and I'm motivated.

Speaker 4 And about halfway in it, I'm like, you know, maybe my glutes are a little tweaked. Maybe I can stop this set.

Speaker 4 So it's like, I even face it. But what I, what I think about

Speaker 4 is

Speaker 4 that my life is not just about me.

Speaker 4 Is more importantly, it's the role that I play in this, in the world, and it's the role that I play in the lives of others.

Speaker 4 And this ties back to what we were talking about earlier is about setting a standard.

Speaker 4 And I know that if I set a standard and I fail to meet that standard, I'm not only letting myself down, but more importantly, I'm letting others down that are depending on me.

Speaker 4 And these are people that may be just, you know, in my direct everyday lives, or these may be people that never meet me, but because I honestly believe that everything we do will eventually impact everybody else, I feel like I'm letting them down as well.

Speaker 4 And what I think about is when I'm telling people that are close to me, hey, I love you and I'm here for you and I will help you in any way that I can, it's like, what What person is standing behind that pledge?

Speaker 4 You know, what capabilities does that person have? and it's like if if i'm you know

Speaker 4 if i'm you know with a bunch of friends on christmas morning opening up presents what person is sitting there is that person the one that that fought through all those days to be the best version of themselves for everyone or did that person give up every single day and now i'm sitting there a shell of the person i could possibly be for them And I know that that's kind of, you know, gets a little heady and gets a little intense, but honestly, that's how I think about it, is when I understand that this is, I'm not just doing this for me.

Speaker 4 I'm doing this for everyone. And that helps to kind of increase my perspective and,

Speaker 4 you know, get thrill out of it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, there's, there's a lot in there. And dude, go heady as much as you want because I think the surface level shit doesn't matter, right?

Speaker 3 This, this, this underlying stuff is what really, in my mind, and why I do this show. I do this show not for tactics, trip, tricks, and strategies because we can chat GPT that shit today, right?

Speaker 3 I want to know, like, how, how, you know, it's the deeper questions that keep us there.

Speaker 3 I have this TEDx talk that I'm working on that

Speaker 3 right now is scheduled for the spring of 2025 that is all about the idea of status, right? So

Speaker 3 you're climbing mountains and skiing to the South Pole. And,

Speaker 3 you know, you played football at a high level. You've been

Speaker 3 an M ⁇ A investment banker. You've done incredible things that some of which

Speaker 3 individually would be a life's achievement, and you've done multiple of them. And that sets you apart as a different kind of person than most people we bump into in our lives.
And

Speaker 3 I have a philosophy or a theory, we'll put it as a theory, and this is where I want your feedback, that

Speaker 3 there is a large pull on people. not to achieve their highest goal because of the change in status that they will will experience in achieving that thing, right?

Speaker 3 If you want to go climb even one of the highest peaks in the world, you have to dedicate yourself.

Speaker 3 You have to put months, if not years, of work in training, equipment, time away from family, time away from friends, right?

Speaker 3 You can't go get a beer and, you know, or 10 beers on a Friday with your buddies watching college basketball if you're trying to get to this next level physical goal, which starts to change your status in a community.

Speaker 3 All of a sudden, you're not one of the beer drinking buddies. You're like this fitness guy.

Speaker 3 And it's these status changes, I believe, status changes up actually restrain us more than the potential for a status change down.

Speaker 3 We're like, we could, we can explain away or excuse away or justify away a status change down, and people will come around us and you're okay, and we're here for you.

Speaker 3 But it's the status change up, I think, that creates the most fear because it takes you out of a community that you know really well and puts you into that you become someone different.

Speaker 3 And one, do you agree with that? And two, in your own life, had you, have you had to deal with that and how have you?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think that's a fantastic point. And I haven't thought about it in that context, but you know, just kind of thinking about it as you're speaking through it.

Speaker 4 I think it was, I think it's very well said. I think you've got a great basis there for that talk.
And I'd love to hear that once it finally kicks off.

Speaker 4 But it's, and that, that is something that I have,

Speaker 4 I was going to say struggled with, but I don't want to say that it's something that I have dealt with.

Speaker 4 And I think it's even my closest friends here in LA, and I've been very fortunate to build a great network of people that love me tremendously, and they're there for me, and I'm there for them.

Speaker 4 And I'm very fortunate in that regard. But when I started making a lot of these friends is back when I was in my party days, when I was going out four or five nights a week.
And I wasn't training.

Speaker 4 I mean, I was out, you know, getting drunk, doing drugs,

Speaker 4 partying and traveling and, you know, all this kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 And, you know,

Speaker 4 when I moved away from that and I finally found a sense of purpose in my life for the first time, I found a better sense of direction. I started moving to that is I was naturally,

Speaker 4 you know, starting to disconnect more and more from those people. And

Speaker 4 it was a challenging time. It was a confusing time.

Speaker 4 And what I found that worked for me was, is I wasn't asking them what they thought about it or what they thought about me me or about any of that kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 It's I simply determined the direction that I felt was the most authentic in my life at that time that was going to create the best version of myself.

Speaker 4 And then just I knew once you kind of start to get on that path, you can just, you can feel it.

Speaker 4 And I'm not saying you're going to have total clarity, but you can, you feel a greater sense of just of understanding and connection and ease.

Speaker 4 And once I had that, it's that felt so good to me and it felt so right to me that I was willing to risk anything and everything in order to start to move in that direction. And to that point,

Speaker 4 I stopped seeing people that I saw, that I would see once a week. Now I see them once a year, literally, you know, stuff like that.

Speaker 4 And it's just like we were talking about earlier, is every single thing in life has a cost. You can't do everything all the time.

Speaker 4 So you just have to understand, you know, what is most important to you in that,

Speaker 4 you know, I've lost certain people out of my life, but now I've also gained certain people in my life.

Speaker 4 And maybe I have a little bit less of total elements in my life, but the things I have now are more substantive and they mean more to me.

Speaker 4 So it's a little more austere of a lifestyle, but I enjoy it so much more. And it makes me a better person.

Speaker 4 And I think it's just, you know, you just have to understand that, you know, things have costs.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 There's a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson that has been, since the first time I read it, it has been a driving principle. And at some point, I'll have it tattooed on my arm.

Speaker 3 I'm working on a sleeve on my left arm and

Speaker 3 it's God will not make manifest the work of cowards.

Speaker 3 And for some reason that quote just like the first time I read those words, it just like imprinted on my brain this idea that

Speaker 3 we know the cowardly decision. And a lot of people don't like that word because it feels very harsh.
I don't necessarily care. I think we need that type of language in our lives.

Speaker 3 But we know we can feel it, right? And we're choosing a lesser version of ourselves every time we make those decisions. We all make them, and that's why we give grace.

Speaker 3 But that idea that the cowardly decision does not lead you to

Speaker 3 that promised land, to whatever that is for you. It could be, I want to be an incredible dad, right? That could be your goal.
I want to be there for my kids and be the most awesome.

Speaker 3 So don't do the things that take you away. That could be scrolling on your phone.

Speaker 3 It could be taking a work phone call at dinner you know what i mean like it doesn't all have to be high achievement that gets you national recognition i feel like we misconstrue what living in your terms an authentic life is right like everyone's authentic you know, dialed-in, peak version of themselves doesn't have to be something that the national news media wants to cover or that monster wants to sponsor, right?

Speaker 3 It doesn't have to be that. It can be whatever that thing is.
I want to be, you know, the best accountant in my town. I want, you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 Or I want to be able to work on this type of deal, or I want to be an incredible spouse or partner or whatever. Like

Speaker 3 these goals,

Speaker 3 the achievement of a goal doesn't have to accrue you recognition to be worthy of the pursuit. And I think that's such an important thing to talk about.

Speaker 3 And I just, as you're talking, that's like, I just love your mindset. So, okay, so I want to transition into some of the things that

Speaker 3 You probably expected me to ask you when you logged in today and we were starting to talk about. But you had an experience.

Speaker 3 I want to take first a quick stop in 2016 and then I want to fast forward to 2021 and the things you've done past there. So 2016, you have two kind of major negative impacts in your life.

Speaker 3 You lose your mom, you have a hard breakup, and then you go on and start doing solo training.

Speaker 3 And, you know, correct me if I have some of the timeline wrong, but very interested in this idea of solo training. And

Speaker 3 I'll give you my experience to why I found this so intriguing, then I really want you to expand on it uh i made the very simple decision i do ruck walks right i have the i actually have the 511 ruck vest i do 40 pound ruck walks almost every day um

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 i i used to wear earpods and listen to podcasts and stuff and then one day i just walked out of the house by accident i was thinking about a couple different things put my vest on boom out the house i went i got 10 minutes into my walk and realized i didn't have the earpods in and you're i had all these people

Speaker 3 yeah yeah and and all of a sudden i'm like well i'm not going back back now, right? So I did the hour-long, I do hour, so I go out, you know, whatever, 30 minutes out, 30 minutes back.

Speaker 3 And I came back, and I was like,

Speaker 3 the, the, the, the ideas that crept into my mind, the, the good, the bad, you know, I started, you know, hey, hey, you got a, you haven't followed up with this person, or, you know, you're slacking on this.

Speaker 3 Like,

Speaker 3 sorry, apologize to everyone.

Speaker 3 Decided to

Speaker 3 take in a

Speaker 3 sorry. So,

Speaker 3 um,

Speaker 3 what is it about solo training in particular? And as you state

Speaker 3 in a lot of your work, distraction-free solo training that you found to be so captivating and that became such a part of your life?

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's so 100% to this point is 100% of my daily training is I do alone. And for me, it's been a critical element to my success.
And it's

Speaker 4 because I look at, you know, why am I doing what I'm doing? And I'm doing it for a variety of reasons.

Speaker 4 Because obviously I'm going out there on a physical front to increase my physical capabilities, to increase my technical skills,

Speaker 4 all that kind of stuff. But more importantly,

Speaker 4 this training and this physical exertion is I see it as a tool of

Speaker 4 introspection and self-reflection. It's simply a tool.
And that's why I choose to train alone.

Speaker 4 Number one, is to make sure that I'm not being motivated by some exterior force or presence, because you never know when you're going to be alone.

Speaker 4 You never know when you're going to have someone there.

Speaker 4 And I can tell you in a lot of your hardest moments in life, whether it be actually on a mountain or sitting alone in your bedroom or in the car and you need to make a decision or you need to do something, is you're going to be alone.

Speaker 4 And so I think in those times, it's critically important to me to prove to myself that I have the ability to perform and I don't need some sense of exterior motivation to do so.

Speaker 4 But also it's, when I say that it's a, it's a tool and allows me to connect with myself and reflect on certain elements about myself.

Speaker 4 Is when you get out there and you get in these stressful situations and you don't have that external stimuli, so I'm not hearing the theme track to Rocky in my head, or I'm not hearing some motivational speaker telling me how I can adapt and overcome and push through the suck and all this stuff.

Speaker 4 Is

Speaker 4 you'll feel that when the more you get towards your limits, the more uncomfortable discomfort that we experience is our minds tend to speed up and they tend to get noisier and the more you push the harder you go the more they speed up and the noisier they get and it's almost like you're moving through an hourglass is kind of how i like to think about it so in the beginning there's all this room no there's no pressure it's nice and easy but as you kind of get down to that that final funnel point and your mind is just is absolutely screaming and it's wanting you to stop and it's wanting just to come up with every excuse to get out of it if you can just push through just in that moment, recognize what's going on, force yourself to get quiet, to get comfortable in it, to release into it, not to be scared of it.

Speaker 4 And if you can just hang on for sometimes, it's literally just a few seconds. And I mean that, literally a few seconds.

Speaker 4 Sometimes it's hours, sometimes it's days, but you can get through to what I call the other side. And I'm telling you, things just open up.
Your life opens up. Your mind opens up.

Speaker 4 Your understanding opens up.

Speaker 4 Everything you can possibly imagine just opens up to this deeter, this deeper, greater understanding. And I've experienced that time and time and time again.

Speaker 4 When I finally break my personal gravitational field and I get through to the other side and my awareness opens up, my capabilities opens up. It's just, not to sound cheesy, it's a magical feeling.

Speaker 4 And it's something that you just become

Speaker 4 aware of and almost addicted to where I know where I'm trying to get. And that training alone enables enables me to get to that point more effectively yeah

Speaker 3 um i was listening to stephen cottler who's a flow researcher and he he different words similar he said the you know one of the things he said is that you have to go through what you just described that sped up noisy you know your your body's screaming you know i'm gonna fall apart your mind's screaming fear and doubt and all these things and like you said if you can get to the other side that's where flow lives yeah and like you've heard every major athlete, and I'm sure you've experienced this as well, where like when you can get through that moment, it's like the world slows down, like the doves come out, and you're just like, it's like you can see and predict and move and do things that you didn't even know you were capable of doing.

Speaker 3 But it is, it's like, and to your exact point, like there's a cost to getting to flow, right? Like people try to do it with drugs. People try to do it with all these different techniques.

Speaker 3 And at the end of the day, you just have to paddle through the tumult to get to the ease. It's just to get there.
Like it's just, it's impossible. And

Speaker 3 when your mind is filled with music or someone else's words,

Speaker 3 what you're not going to get is the tumult, right? Those are like keeping you from getting to all that stuff because it's keeping your brain occupied on

Speaker 3 less than 100% on the full task. Yeah.
And

Speaker 3 yeah.

Speaker 4 Now, you said that very well. And just in just one point I think is important to understand the distinction is that it doesn't have to necessarily be physical.

Speaker 4 You know, this can be just psychological, emotional stuff, or maybe you're going to have a conversation with

Speaker 4 your partner, your husband, your wife, your business partner, you know, whatever it is. Or maybe you're going to have, you know, there's something that you've been putting off

Speaker 4 something internal that you need to deal with that you've been putting off. So it's like, it doesn't just have to be physical.

Speaker 4 We can find these moments in a lot of different challenges that we face in life.

Speaker 4 But the key is, is just to, and this, you know, just ties into the, you know, the book and a lot of the concepts I talk about of strength and surrender, is this ties into surrender.

Speaker 4 And what I mean by surrender is not giving up and giving in and going along, but

Speaker 4 it's moving towards your greatest fears and trepidations and challenges.

Speaker 4 and allowing yourself to experience them to the absolute fullest and not running from them, you know, because to and not fighting them. Because when you fight them, is you feed them.

Speaker 4 But allowing yourself to feel the magnitude of whatever challenge it is you're facing, that is the only true way to effectively surrender.

Speaker 4 And in my opinion, the only real way to get to that other side, you know, fully and authentically as you possibly can.

Speaker 3 Yeah, right? It's, it's, we've heard the quote a thousand times, but the only way out is through. Um,

Speaker 3 okay, fast forward to 2021.

Speaker 3 Um,

Speaker 3 you decide that you're going to start

Speaker 3 actually putting

Speaker 3 real legitimate fear of death into your life. You're going to start doing some extreme activities.

Speaker 3 Talk to me about, maybe just explain for the audiences

Speaker 3 some of these things that you have done, the challenge that you set for yourself, and then let's get into why you actually decided to take this on.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so just a quick overview, and I apologize because there's a lot of detail here, so I'll do my best to scale it down.

Speaker 4 But it's so in 2018, a very good friend of mine, Jay Jablonski, and I started Dawson's Peak Foundation, which is a 501c3 that we have.

Speaker 4 It's that our mission is to inspire the discovery and pursuit of individual purpose, to get people to understand that we're all capable of living greater lives, not only for ourselves, but for others, the benefit of others, to move from self-centered to service-centered.

Speaker 4 And the way that we do that is we create large-scale global expeditions.

Speaker 4 We sponsor athletes where viewers could draw parallels between themselves and the athletes and to say, you know, if this person is doing X, Y, and Z, I can find something comparable in my life, whether it be a physical pursuit or an emotional pursuit, professional pursuit, whatever it is, and I can try to achieve that.

Speaker 4 So in a nutshell, that's kind of who we are and what we do. And the current project we have is called Seven for Soldiers, where I'm essentially the guinea pig, you know, for it.

Speaker 4 And the original intent was to set seven world records in 12 months.

Speaker 4 So from May 2021 to May 2022, where I would climb, I'd complete the Explorer's Grand Slam, which is climbing the highest peak on each continent, and then skiing to the North Pole and the South Pole.

Speaker 4 I was attempting to be the fifth person to ever do that in a single year.

Speaker 4 And then trekking solo unsupported across the Mojave Desert and Death Valley and rowing a boat across the Atlantic Ocean and then finally flying a plane around the world.

Speaker 4 And we were able to accomplish everything that we set out to within those 12 months, except for the North Pole, which got closed down for the fourth or fifth year in a row, this time because Russia invaded Ukraine and that shut that region down.

Speaker 4 And also, the flight, unfortunately, got postponed because the costs associated with renting aircraft and logistics and fuel because of COVID in Russia-Ukraine went up four or five-fold.

Speaker 4 So we decided to postpone that until it was a little bit more of a manageable cost for us. But like I said, within those first 12 months, we're able to achieve everything else we set out to.

Speaker 3 Which of those not necessarily was the most challenging, but which brought you the most joy and sense of accomplishment and fulfillment of maybe the individual treks or expeditions?

Speaker 4 I like that question because I haven't, I don't think I've gotten that question. Normally, it's what was the most, you know, what was the most challenging?

Speaker 4 Like, where was the most painful part and all this kind of stuff? So, I love you're coming at it from a slightly different angle.

Speaker 4 I think the one that brought me the most satisfaction or sense of contentment was Aconcagua, which is the highest peak in South America.

Speaker 4 And the reason being is that that was actually my second attempt on that mountain.

Speaker 4 I tried to climb it back in 2017

Speaker 4 before the concept of Dawson's Peak Foundation was even around, before we started anything.

Speaker 4 And at that point, I just learned about big mountain climbing and I was just, you know, trying to go around and figure out what I liked and didn't like and things like that. And

Speaker 4 at that time, is I failed to summit with my entire team because the weather was so bad that everybody got turned around and no one could summit. But that was my

Speaker 4 first failure on a mountain. And I mean, granted, I was just getting started, but I'm not used to failing a lot in my life.

Speaker 4 I mean, look, I fail all the time, but I try to, like we said, hold myself to a standard.

Speaker 4 And when I failed to summit in 17, it lit something inside of me that was just, it was just this inferno that just continued to grow to where later it might be on a random tuesday at three in the morning i'd wake up just thinking about not summiting like it it bothered me and i use that as a fuel in my training where you know i might want to cut a set you know rep shorter i might not want to go that extra mile or climb that extra 500 feet and i was just tapped back to to failing on oconcagua and When I finally got the chance to climb it again in 20, early 22, I had just been down in Antarctica for an entire month, so I was no longer acclimatized.

Speaker 4 COVID was rampant on the mountains, so I had to take a helicopter into base camp. So, I mean, I went from sea level to nearly 23,000 feet in three days.

Speaker 4 And that, that, the final 500, 600 feet of that climb, I was in rough, rough shape. I was experiencing, you know, high, high-altitude cerebral edema.
My vision was going in and out.

Speaker 4 I had really bad diarrhea, really bad dehydration. Like arms and legs are going numb.
Like, I mean, I was just, I was on the verge of really falling to pieces.

Speaker 4 And it took something special, you know, to find something special in myself to get that done where I was literally finding, you know,

Speaker 4 a rock in the snow or, you know, whatever it was that was maybe 10 feet away. I might just make it that 10 feet, then we'll figure it out.

Speaker 4 And I did that for hour after hour after hour and finally got to the top. And as I was joking with my climbing partner, I was like, this is probably the best and worst I've ever felt in my life.

Speaker 4 You know, it just that that meant so much to me because where I thought my limits were, it just showed me again that there's so much further out there or farther out there, you know, that than we think that they are.

Speaker 4 And look, I'm nothing special in that regard. Is we look in the distance and we're like, okay, there's my limit.
If I can just get there.

Speaker 4 But when we get there, it's like we can put our hand through the cloud. It looks like a cement wall, but it's just a cloud.
And he's like, Well, maybe it's not here. Okay, it's over there.

Speaker 4 And then you get there and you're like, you continue to understand these limits are not real things for the most part. And that was just a good example of it for me.

Speaker 3 Yeah, isn't it interesting that

Speaker 3 your most joyful moment was accompanied by your most painful moment? Oh, yeah. Seems like exactly the way that it should be, right?

Speaker 3 That sense of achievement

Speaker 3 in that grind.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 I have to ask about Antarctica.

Speaker 3 I'm very intrigued by that mass that's down there.

Speaker 3 What is that like?

Speaker 3 What is Antarctica? I think people just think,

Speaker 3 you know, you see the penguins and they're near the shore, and I think that's probably most people's exposure to what Antarctica is. But it's an enormous, it's an enormous mass.
And like,

Speaker 3 what is that environment like? What is...

Speaker 3 What did it take to get to the actual South Pole? What is that experience like? Because I think it's probably, you know, people can imagine they've seen high mountains.

Speaker 3 You've seen people climb on that, that they've been there, but they can maybe picture themselves in that place. I think Antarctic seems like

Speaker 3 another planet, I think. And we know, you know, I think as a regular people, we get so little information.

Speaker 3 What is that environment like? And what are the unique challenges of, say, skiing something like Antarctica versus a climb? Obviously, you have altitude, but what are those?

Speaker 3 How do you mash skill sets from a climb to a ski and managing those different environments?

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's Antarctica is a very interesting place, and I've heard it described by different people in different ways, all the way back, you know, to the early 1900s, where it's, you know, some people call it the great white everywhere or the great white everything.

Speaker 4 Is that when you get down there,

Speaker 4 you know, especially when you when you're say, you know, because there are there are mountain ranges in Antarctica and Mount Vincent, the highest peak there is something I had the opportunity to climb.

Speaker 4 And to your point is

Speaker 4 there's life around the the edges. But once you get into the interior part of the continent,

Speaker 4 up on the plateau, I mean,

Speaker 4 there's nothing. When you talk about no life, I don't mean, I mean,

Speaker 4 there may be some fungi or

Speaker 4 some round worm or a ringworm or something like that.

Speaker 4 But other than that, there is, I mean, nothing for hundreds or possibly thousands of miles, you know, except for the station that's at the South Pole.

Speaker 4 And when you get in that environment, you know, when people talk about, say, colonizing Mars and people get excited about this, that I'm like, you don't understand when you say there's a deprivation and absence of life.

Speaker 4 And down there, you start to understand what that really means.

Speaker 4 And the best way I can think to describe it is, you know, yeah, I was skiing for, you know, 12, 13 hours a day, you know, trying to get to the to the South Pole. And just think about being on,

Speaker 4 take a big treadmill.

Speaker 4 put it in a freezer that's 30 or 40 below and put it in front of a white wall and just stare at that, you know, put your face a couple inches from that wall and do that for 12, 13 hours a day while pulling a sled.

Speaker 4 And that's essentially what it's like to ski down there. I mean, there's just, it's just sensory deprivation in so many regards that it

Speaker 4 forces you, if you're going to deal with it effectively, it just forces you to kind of go to

Speaker 4 a special place or to a deeper place.

Speaker 4 And, you know, a lot of people take, you know, like we were talking about earlier, you know, music for podcasts or listening, you know, they want to listen to something.

Speaker 4 And I didn't didn't take anything because I wanted that, I wanted that additional challenge of being so alone with myself.

Speaker 4 And it was just, it was a very special place, and it was, it was a tremendous experience. But it's, it's just, it's, it can be lonely and isolating if you're not careful.

Speaker 4 And it can be, you know, kind of like a lot of things, it can be destructive if you're not careful.

Speaker 4 But if you can use it in a conscientious way, it just helps you to have a more full and enriching experience because it enables you to connect with yourself on a deeper level.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah, there's so many movies that have been created around the concept of deprivation, of loneliness, you know, isolation, and the impact that it has on people. You know,

Speaker 3 it feels to me like it would be very easy to spin off the planet in that moment.

Speaker 3 Maybe a couple, I don't know, you know, how many days in, how many hours in, you look around and you're like, am I ever going to get back? Will I ever, you know, have another?

Speaker 3 You know, I mean, just the stuff that seeps into your mind as it's saying, we shouldn't be here. You know, what are you doing? Why did you take us to this place? Right.
Is there,

Speaker 3 you know, how did you deal with that

Speaker 3 sense of

Speaker 3 isolation and come out of it in a productive way and not let it start to eat at you?

Speaker 3 And as you said, start to make excuses or, hey, today I can go for, I'm just going to go for 10 hours today and we'll take a few more days of camp because

Speaker 3 I deserve it or whatever.

Speaker 3 How do you fight through those nudges when you don't have

Speaker 3 a podcast or motivation in your ear telling you to keep going?

Speaker 4 I think a lot of it, and this ties into a lot of things that we've been talking about with life, is it's a matter of perspective.

Speaker 4 And, you know, too often when we face challenging times, whether it be on a daily basis or, you know, psychological or professional or even physical, is our work, we have a tendency to make our worlds just very small.

Speaker 4 And sometimes it's an important, and it's actually a critical tool to make our world small.

Speaker 4 But we can simultaneously have our world small, but our perspective enlarge our perspective in a greater sense.

Speaker 4 So, when I was going down there, as I had the chance before I went, and even when I was down there preparing, to read a lot of stories about people that had faced those same challenges, but even to a harsher degree.

Speaker 4 Like Amundsen, when he was the first to get to the South Pole,

Speaker 4 Scott, Shackleton,

Speaker 4 Maori from Australia.

Speaker 4 And I read about what these men faced when they were out there for weeks on end or months on end, or they would have to winter over. And just all these things that they faced.

Speaker 4 When I was out there, it literally took me a week to ski 70 miles, the last degree. And I was just thinking about.

Speaker 4 I'm out here for a week. It's a very challenging environment.
It can be very dangerous and life-threatening, certainly, and things can change in a moment's notice.

Speaker 4 But when I thought about in a greater context of what these men had been through, what they were capable of, is it showed me what I was capable of as well.

Speaker 4 Because I felt like if these guys can do it, I can do it. If they can go through that level of challenge, I can do the same.

Speaker 4 So it helped me to have a better sense of perspective of what I was facing might be extremely difficult in the moment, but that I was capable of so much more that I just need to find a way to get quiet, to figure this thing out, to push through it.

Speaker 4 And then I was more than, you know, that I was able to do it.

Speaker 3 Matt Dawson, my friends, absolutely incredible. If people want to get more from you, dive deeper into your world, follow with your journey.

Speaker 3 What are the places that they should go? And guys,

Speaker 3 wherever Matt wants us to go, we'll have them linked up in the show notes as well so that you can find it very easily. But where are those places that they can get more from you?

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think that the biggest thing is

Speaker 4 my first book is coming out. I'm very excited about it.

Speaker 4 It will be released January 7th, 2025. It's called Strength and Surrender.
I actually just got one of the copies here. So

Speaker 4 we're just proofing it out right now.

Speaker 4 But it'll be available for pre-order

Speaker 4 before that time, but it'll be the audio book, paperback, and the e-book. And that literally...
everything that we've talked about is in there and just so much more.

Speaker 4 So whether someone's interested in just reading about the mountains and all the training and it was this tall and the pack weighed this much and it was 100 degrees and all that like all that's in there but more importantly it's it's about the story of of the human experience about you know my personal redemption from from being lost to a place of feeling better from from you know going from having a life of self-centered to service centered all the things that i've learned like the biggest things i've learned from strength and surrender and it's just i wanted to create a visceral experience that people it's not just a book but just an experience where people could take it on a different way So that's coming out.

Speaker 4 And then Instagram is just at Dawson's Peak, P-E-A-K. And then finally, the website is just dawsonspeak.com.
And that's my personal website. It links to our foundation.

Speaker 4 And the last thing I'll say is, is I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but Project 7 for Soldiers is 100% of our net proceeds that we raise.

Speaker 4 are benefiting our charity or veteran partners on this, which is Hope for the Warriors and Gary Sinise Foundation. So I'm not making a dime on anything that gets donated.
So please get involved.

Speaker 4 100% of the net proceeds are going to those two groups.

Speaker 3 Yeah, we have a big,

Speaker 3 this audience is big supporters of our military and things like that. So guys, head over, wonderful organizations.

Speaker 3 Appreciate the hell out of you, the work you do, and certainly the time that you spend with us today, Matt. Thank you so much.

Speaker 4 No, it's listen, I really appreciate it. I've truly enjoyed this.
I love that you came at it from a different angle. You asked some interesting questions, and also I appreciate your insights.

Speaker 4 So thank you very much for having me on.

Speaker 3 Let's go.

Speaker 3 Yeah, make it look, make it look, make it look games. Hey, stand up.
Thank you for listening to the Ryan Hanley show.

Speaker 3 Be sure to subscribe and leave us a comment or review wherever you listen to podcasts.

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