TRANSFORM Your Life At Any Moment: Alcoholic Lawyer That Became "Fittest Man On The Planet"Rich Roll

How much pain are you willing to tolerate before you're willing to course correct? A California lawyer turned himself into one of the fittest men on the planet. Rich Roll. Globally recognized ultra-endurance athlete. New York Times best-seller. And host of one of the biggest podcasts on the planet.

You sat down with 800 of the world's smartest people. Is there one overall takeaway?

This theme of transformation. So my story, I graduated top of my class, a world-ranked swimmer, and then I was working as a lawyer. So on the outside, it looked like I was doing pretty well. Inside, I was dying. My first escape was through drugs and alcohol. My family didn't want anything to do with me, a marriage that ended on the honeymoon, went to jail, could barely make it up a simple flight of stairs without being winded, and that was a harsh dose of reality. I needed to overhaul my life. I needed to do something that was gonna be hard and uncomfortable. You can't be a phoenix if you don't burn in the flames first. We all wanna be this idealized version of ourself, and yet we still don't do it. We are in a culture that prioritizes comfort, and luxury, and the impatience that we all have. And we overestimate what we can accomplish in a year, and completely underestimate what we could do in a decade. We don't have to suffer. We don't have to be in pain. It's our emotional lives that hold us back from accessing that potential.

So how do people in that situation take that first step in transformation?

What worked for me after trying many different things was ... (music stops)

Why should you listen to this episode? All in all, this conversation is fundamentally about transformation, how you transform yourself from where you are now to where you wanna be. And Rich's life is the personification of human transformation. This guy has been down and out. He suffered with addiction, failure, and turmoil that most of us will thankfully never have to endure. But he says in this episode, and he'll prove to you, that pressure, that discomfort can be and should be your privilege. And if you lean into that, if you understand that pressure is your privilege and discomfort is the pathway to all the good things that you want in your life, then and only then can you reach your potential. And one of the r- things I really got from this conversation is this idea that all of us are much more capable than we believe we are. We have more potential than we l- allow ourselves to believe. And also, one of the big things Rich will leave you with in this conversation, which blew my mind, if I'm honest, is this idea that addiction is on a spectrum. We tend to think of addiction as, as he says, junkies or people that are ingesting or taking drugs. But if you think about it, we're all addicted. We're addicted to distraction, whether that's our phones, whether it's pornography, whether it's food, whether it's alcohol, as is the case in Rich's case, whether it's our work. How do we l- alleviate ourselves of that addiction to distraction? That's what you'll find out in this conversation. And most importantly of all, Rich has sat down with 800 of the world's smartest, wisest, and most successful people, and from doing that, he has learnt a lot. This is one of the episodes that you honestly should not miss. Enjoy. (instrumental music plays) Rich, this is a, a broad question, but it's intentionally broad. Who are you, and what mission are you on?