To be your best, get still. In this episode Onnit wellness company founder, Aubrey Marcus, explains why this is not a paradox. Nor, he says, is it contradictory to say that to optimize yourself and your mission you need to focus on others, or to overcome obstacles you need to seek them out. Marcus will guide you through the contrasts in life to ...…

Your life is a story, that means it can be re-written. A profound childhood loneliness prompted Jeff Gomez to seek solace in story which in turn connected him back to people and became his livelihood. His storytelling skills have been put to use by the media giants and even the US Government. His method of storytelling, inspired by anime, is tr ...…

10,752 is the number Jesse Itzler had at the time of this interview, and on each of these he challenges himself to hack his mind into living a more productive and meaningful life. How do you get the most out of each day? Challenge yourself. Itzler believes in immersing himself in new worlds, changing his frame of reference. He turned over his l ...…

Eleven seconds was all it took. Eleven seconds stopped cold a promising hockey career scarcely before it started - all on live television. Travis Roy was a promising 20-year-old hockey star, moments into his first collegiate game as a B.U. freshman, a freak accident cracked his fourth vertebra left him paralyzed from the neck down. One misdirec ...…

Wearing a pageant sash did not come naturally to Neely Fortune, that’s why she did it. Her challenges with social anxiety, especially in public speaking, were what spurred her into the pageant world in the first place. Then she used the platform to promote PTSD awareness, a cause close to her heart. Through a number of happy coincidences it lea ...…

He’s faced death more than once on his adventures, but ask him which was the toughest and he’ll always answer “the last one.” It’s always the freshest in his mind. Ray believes in the possible and started a foundation called Impossible to Possible. i2P brings his expeditions to classrooms, sharing his journeys and his lessons with kids in an in ...…

www.spartan.com/155 It all boils down to desire. Is it possible to tame your monkey mind ever distracted by desires and pleasures that only soothe you in the short term? Naval Ravikant, the founder of Angel List, says to reach a true sense of happiness, it is not only possible but necessary. Ravikant explains how to find your true calling and w ...…

http://spartan.com/154 A marketing genius, a renowned connector of the elite, carpet cleaning taught Joe Polish everything he needed to know about business. But there’s much more to the story. Joe is best known for his his Genius Network, a meeting of industry transformers. He is known as the master connector. In the interview he also discusses ...…

Will lessons learned behind the desk transfer to physical challenges? This week’s guest says yes! When you stop climbing corporate ladders, what do you climb next? For Vanessa O’Brien the answer is almost everything! The more difficult the better. She applied what she learned in the challenging environment of the Fortune 500 to the natural envi ...…

The founder of Bar beverage has 5 tenets for success: be audacious, authentic, tenacious, obsessive and inspire others to be great. No wonder he built a company that just sold for 1.8 billion. A company that uses the civet to represent the highest achieving employees, has to be a little different. Bai has bucked many beverage company trends and ...…

What’s the point? Is it money? Is it something more? Roman gathers today’s most influential icons and leaders to do what’s NBDB (Never Been Done Before.) How can we drive culture in a positive direction? Roman Tsunder thinks he’s found a way. In this episode, he explains his mission with PTTOW (Plan To Take On the World) and WORLDZ, and tells J ...…

Dan Pena is an F-ing maniac! He lives in a castle in Scotland, has run ultra-marathons, has made and lost fortunes, never uses a cell phone and his motto is just F-ing do it (obviously). He’s a living contradiction. He speaks at Oxford but you can still hear the echoes of his gritty upbringing on the streets of East L.A. in his voice. He can da ...…

“Love is the answer” is the conclusion you might expect from a new age guru not a successful internal medicine doctor and trauma center director as Dr. Erika Schwartz was. But she always went against the grain of conventional protocol. Only now are her views starting to be vindicated. She urges doctors to connect with their patients and for pat ...…

Is Paleo the best diet? The CrossFit pioneer who authored “The Paleo Solution” says maybe. Results may vary according to who you are. The point is you’ll need to experiment a little. Similarly when he started the first CrossFit gym. Rob Wolf didn’t have the franchise model or rule book, He had to write it himself. If you’re going to be successf ...…

Have you given up? Know someone who has? There’s an answer for everything and Peter Cohen thinks he has it. We live a life our ancestors may have envied, largely free of hardship, so why are so many unsatisfied? Why, Cohen asks bluntly, is the world so messed up? A lot of us, he says, have simply given up. It shouldn’t be this way. Cohen taps f ...…

People are kidnapped, run away to the circus, sell a business for 1.7 Billion, complete the explorer's grand slam, and just talk philosophy, grit, and resilience. Today the team previews the next batch of podcast episodes. We have guests that will change your frame of reference, give you tools to change your life, and teach you to rewrite your ...…

When a leader changes his life, the implications can be great. With fifty pounds shed in five years, Ric Urrutia now sets an example for his 550 employees and for his family. His company, Taos Mountain Software, has been growing for twenty-five years and his clients include all the biggest names in Silicon Valley. What makes for a successful em ...…

Knowing your opponent wins championships. For Olympic fencer Jose Luis Abajo this has been paramount to his success. Self-knowledge too, knowing what will bring out the best in himself. It's what's in the mind that wins the match. This has meant being prepared for the unexpected, for just about anything that comes his way. How do you get ready ...…

Paradigms are made to be broken. Question everything. But do it in such a way that is data driven and informed by the best possible research. That means question the gut instincts, question what you’ve “always done,” and question the ideas you see on social media. This is the way Jack Easdale has maintained the prominence of a billion dollar bu ...…

Kombucha, heard of it? If you have, GT Dave is the reason. He says Kombucha, and restores an essential balance to your body. The Kombucha King dropped out of high school to spread his love of this drink after seeing it’s positive effect on his mother’s recovery from cancer. In the process he created a $600 million category--one that he still do ...…

This mountain warfare instructor accepts no excuses; just learn and do. He speaks with the same force of confidence that he hopes to instill in others. First growing up gaining woodsman skills in Maine and then later through a 36 year tenure in the military, Smith always sought and found strong role models from who to learn. That learning soon ...…

What is a “Not to do” list and why would you need one? Dean Graziosi found business success at a young age. It was a way to gain control in his own life in what felt like an out of control world. He has been doling out, through books and television, the techniques and wisdom that worked for him for nearly twenty years. It’s the mindset, he says ...…

When feeling stuck, what do you do to get back in the game? What’s the one thing you can do right now? Mordechai Winer discovered a series of simple steps that changed his life. A self-made success in business, he had been unable to control his eating or his weight. What he discovered was that it wasn’t about restrictions, shame, and punitive m ...…

One of the most successful women in the venture capital field and dedicated runner, Elizabeth took her cue from her mother. Come hell or high water her mother would be out the door at 4 am to swim or run, and in her 70s she’s still at it. Similarly, Weil never stops driving toward success. Within her hectic schedule of career, and raising twins ...…

Olympic marathoner Rod Dixon believes in the transformative power of physical activity so much that he started the Kids Marathon program. He won the New York Marathon in 1983 and an Olympic Bronze, now his program trains kids to run as soon as they enter school. The schools are realizing that keeping kids active brings test scores up, improves ...…

Is it possible to develop a surfing culture without an ocean? What would that mean? Keno Knieriem left the navy and to developing surf parks on man made lakes that simulate Hawaiian waves with his company Honokea. It is either the best thing or worst thing to happen to surfing. Will it nurture a whole new generation of surfers who would not exp ...…

You excel in ANY situation. Director of Counseling and Psychological Services at Cornell University Dr. Greg Eells explains how. In this interview describes how Viktor Frankl created meaning out of senseless and horrific circumstances. Frankl was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp and not only maintained his wits but retained the wherewith ...…

His doctor forbade world champion power lifter Robert Herbst to lift anything when he was a child with scoliosis. Eighteen world championships and twenty one consecutive national championships later, what compelled him to rebel? Herbst believes in managing risk but errs on the side of throwing caution to the wind. It’s paid off spectacularly. H ...…

Demali Elliott mentors young women in challenging situations through creative and introspective activities to redirect their stories onto a positive trajectory with her program Petals-N-Belles. It is a rigorous program designed to help those ready to receive that help, sixty- eight young women at last count. The organization, largely staffed by ...…

Musical prodigy Ray Ushikubo emulated what he saw on television and, contrary to what you might fear, discovered his passion. At five years old and with the help of supportive parents he his calling. Are there days he doesn’t want to practice? Or course. But he practices without fail and is fast approaching the theoretical 10,000 hours of study ...…

Marcello (an author and physics professor at Dartmouth College) and Kari (with a Ph.D focussed on trauma and PTSD,)decided to build an obstacle course in their backyard. What’s the connection? Marcelo, the physicist, sees OCR and physics as a way to go beyond the known boundaries. Kari, the psychologist, sees it as a way to get out of our heads ...…

Son of pioneering Hawaiian surfer “Buffalo” and a living legend in his own right, Brian Keaulana had two mentors. The first was his father who taught him to share the ocean’s bounty. The second was the ocean itself which served as a playground, school and church. Before he and his siblings could walk their father would toss them into the surf. ...…

Starting Health Warrior, a business borne out of a passion for health and fitness, moved Daniel Gluck away from Wall Street. He seized the opportunity to fill a niche in a food industry dominated by overly processed and high sugar offerings with healthful chia based alternatives. He was inspired by the legendary Tarahumara Indians who, fueled w ...…

Battling addiction late in the Vietnam era, the US Army’s Deputy Chief of Chaplains Brigadier General Thomas Solhjem found redemption through his faith and other’s mentorship. As he realizes now, isolation, though a common strategy, is the worst way to deal with adversity. Reaching out to others and sharing your experiences is an admission of s ...…

Running across the Sahara, all 4600 miles, 50 miles a day for 111 consecutive days. That’s what Ultrarunner Charlie Engle did to raise 6 million dollars for H20 Africa (now Water.org). In doing so he took his passion and did good with it. Engle overcame addiction and an unexpected jail sentence, but instead of running away from adversity, he em ...…

Behavioral scientist & expert on adventure, Jon Levy knows what makes Spartans tick. He wrote a book about it, The 2AM Principle: Discover the Science of Adventure. A big reason why people undertake challenges outside their comfort zone is to reach flow state, a zen like sense of timelessness, total absorption in an activity, and sense of maste ...…

Not wanting to spend his life on the sidelines, blind athlete Pete Cossaboon started participating in Spartan events. He sought out and found a way to achieve this seemingly impossible goal. Nelson Diaz has dedicated himself to facilitating the implausible achievements of adaptive athletes through compassion and action. The events only have mea ...…

Trauma care is a creative process for Dr, Jeffrey Upperman. He mentors young surgeons by throwing them in a room together with very little to work with and let their ingenuity and communication skills come to the fore to solve a problem under duress. He points out that these skills are becoming a lost art in the age of texting and tweeting but ...…

Cal Fussman, author as well as a writer for Esquire, went on a ten year worldwide journey with little money to his name. He subsisted on the good will of others, most often on those he met on the bus ride to his next destination. It was the perfect way to satisfy his insatiable curiosity and hone his interviewing skills. In this episode Fussman ...…

When your business is in trouble, this is the guy you need. Tim Gentry develops people to motivate his own success. As an Ironman competitor he exemplifies strengthening the body as a way to maintain a powerful mind, something he believes many business people neglect to their detriment. His suggestion: keep it simple and do just one thing every ...…

Mortgage officer and part of a Vermont family maple sugaring business, Ray Morvan found extreme multi day racing at random, after a battle with alcohol and opiate addiction. By helping him find community and a way to exert and build mental resilience it’s exactly what the doctor ordered . He went on to compete in nine Peak Death Races which is ...…

Damion Hahn came a hair’s breadth away from making the Olympics and advises those not achieving there goals “be mad about it, then turn your attention to tomorrow.” He channels that drive training a team that has been near dynasty for the last quarter century of Ivy League wrestling. They got there by honing raw talent. The best persist, the re ...…

This week’s podcast features two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Christian Johnson and Chad Grills, disrupting the world of business. Johnson started Fotition a platform to unite brands people and charities to create a positive social outcome. He arrived at this idea by following his lifelong mantra, “creativity will save the world,” which lead h ...…

Nini Meyer created Positive Tracks as a way to get kids moving and involved with a cause through athletics. She has witnessed it not only helping the causes, but connecting the youth with each other and teaching them to manage risk, take on challenges and get active. Since not every child enters the program with the same resources, it also teac ...…

Helping runners move faster and injury free is the mission of Nathan Helming. A former Ironman qualifier, Nathan Helming runs programming for San Francisco Crossfit with a focus on helping runners and triathletes become better rounded athletes. He’s taking this passion into a startup called The Run Experience which guides athletes through stren ...…

The founder of Charity Water, Scott Harrison was a successful nightclub promoter living a life of decadence many might envy. He found himself hobnobbing with the beautiful people on a daily basis, but he had an epiphany on the beaches of Uruguay. Though he didn’t lack materially he was morally, spiritually and emotionally bereft. He sold everyt ...…

With a military career spanning 26 years, retired Col. Fellinger has become a model of resilience and fitness. He asks that you bring him the hardest problems you have because he lives to overcome them. As he explains, it’s a process and one that can be practiced but not necessarily mastered. After all, if you’re not at least a little off balan ...…

The “man whisperer” Mammarella-D'Cruz runs men’s groups that set them on a course to fulfillment. Clients, even billionaires, find they need help understanding how to achieve happiness. His ability was honed by the dire circumstances of his own childhood. After his family was placed on the death list in Uganda, Mammarella-D'Cruz spent a signifi ...…

Adaptive athlete Amy Winters, is so resilient she was chosen to help struggling athletes complete the brutal 60+ hour Spartan endurance event Agoge. If you ask her, she won’t credit rugged individualism for her perseverance. She relies on the strength of others to buoy her up as she does the same for them. It may be that the wellspring of grit ...…