Jesse Itzler recounts his 100-mile race (now 5,000–6,000 annual participants) and a 15-day Russian Orthodox monastery stay with eight monks, where he lost 17 pounds on near-starvation meals while walking 120 miles daily. His extreme challenges—like a fruitarian diet post-race or 30 days with David Goggins—revealed underestimating his potential by 50x and reshaped his mindset on discipline, sacrifice, and time management. Itzler’s structured approach to life "buckets" (family, wellness, finances) stems from these brutal lessons, proving discomfort and struggle often unlock deeper fulfillment than comfort ever could. [Automatically generated summary]
Yeah, I think I was trying to figure out in my head how many do it a year and like how many races, 100 mile races there are there a month and then multiply it out.
I don't know what the fuck is going to miss America scrapping the swimsuit competition would no longer be judged on physical appearance It's literally a beauty contest.
I mean, I gotta think it's like when Playboy decided to not have people nude Right that like and but here's the thing but no longer judging them on their physical appearance Well, what does that mean?
Like what does that mean?
We are no longer a pageant, Gretchen Carlson says.
So I went and I said, okay, I'm going to meditate.
I'm here.
Let me start this journey with meditation.
I had taken a course in transcendental meditation.
I'm not a big meditation guy other than running.
So I set my timer for 20 minutes and I sat down in my chair and I started focusing on my mantra.
Immediately I'm bombarded with How is my wife?
How are the kids?
The Hawks?
The Atlanta Hawks.
I live in Atlanta.
Not your kind of Hawk.
Everything's coming at me.
And time is going by.
And I'm just getting bombarded with thought.
And I'm like, why is it my...
Timer buzzed like it's been I've been here forever so I was gonna look and reset my thing I'm like that would be cheating let me keep going and I'm going and all the times going by and finally I'm like fuck is going on with my timer you know so I open my eyes and I look to reset my timer it's three minutes and 27 seconds no and I said to my I really thought it was 20 minutes I thought it was like hours, man.
I mean like I never really sat in a room like with nothing going on and just closed my eyes alone and thought and time just stopped and I calculated how much time I have left like 15 days times 24 hours or 60 minutes and I said to myself like man I'm in trouble.
This isn't like like this isn't what I'm on Gilligan's Island.
This is a real like I can't get out of here and I had a really hard time with it.
So they live on this property, and there are these 11 German shepherds.
And at the end of the property, the only way off the property, were two mobile homes, unconnected to the monastery at the end of this road that leads up to the monastery.
And both of those homes had German shepherds as well that were a little territorial.
So there really was no way for me to escape.
I ran 120 miles up and down the driveway while I was there because I couldn't leave the property.
I mean, I'm not, like, instant love when they see me the way that they are with other people, you know?
But the monks were teaching me various lessons, almost like karate kid style, through the dogs.
So the first day I got there, every day I was signed a different role.
I would shadow one of the monks.
And there were eight, and they had different responsibilities around the monastery.
The first day I was in the training center with one of the monks that was training the dog.
And my job was to be the distractor.
So Rainbow, this dog, would walk around and I would fucking go at him and jump and run and like try to, you know, whatever, get him to break his goal of going.
They were kind of simulating a park scene or a city scene and making this dog not get distracted.
So I would go nuts with a pork chop and this and throw whatever.
The dog would just go unwavering from point A to point B. And the monk said to me at the end, he's like, it's just like life, man.
He's like, if you have a goal, Just like Rainbow's goal is to get from A to B, you can't be distracted in your goal.
This is like one breed where you're like, this is a dumb fucking breed.
I don't think of...
If you say a dumb dog, there's dumb individual dogs, but I don't ever think of like, oh, that...
There's some dogs that are like spastic, right?
Like Jack Russell Terriers are kind of spastic, but that's because they were raised to kill rats, and they just have a high kill drive, and they're super hyper.
But like, I can't think of a dog that's supposed to be stupid.
But German Shepherds are generally supposed to be smart.
Yeah, my friend who trains them, It has a dog that's like he does police work and it's like a serious fucking dog and he'll attack like a thing if you're holding like a stick like on command and he jumps and one of the things he does he bites the stick and then two paws go right into your nuts and I don't think it's on purpose but damn it's an effective strategy like it's like bite and then nut stomp all in one maneuver right But those dogs are a
dog that's sort of bred and designed for protection work and police work and stuff.
So when they train them, are they just training them to make sure that they're obedient, you know, they just listen, watch the house, bark at strangers, that kind of shit?
They just said, we've got to keep the lights on here.
And they had a dog as a pet.
And fell in love with the dog and ultimately when the dog passed away, the dog got killed, they wanted another dog and they went to a breeder and they got two dogs and they realized that once they bred an amazing puppy, their first litter that and train these dogs that there was demand and they just scaled it like any other business you know and they learned along the way trial and error just like any entrepreneur
I mean these guys were like first of all they were monks and they're they're super spiritual they're religious they were Russian Orthodox they weren't they're not Buddhist and but they're amazing entrepreneurs I mean like they ran this thing super efficiently But the point would only be to make enough money to keep the lights on.
I think excess, you know, it's not like if they have excess money and revenue, it's not going to material things, but it's for the life and the extension of the monastery.
And, you know, periods of it—and I went up there with no expectation.
The only—like, I'd heard of monks.
I've seen monks in movies and read articles and blogs, but I never—I didn't know much about it, about the culture, certainly about Russian Orthodox and the different factions and this and that.
So I went up there with eyes wide open.
But I went up there really just to detach and get away from feeling overloaded and feeling distracted.
And man, I'm a father of four and I have a business and my wife has an entrepreneur, etc.
And I just wanted to see like, you know, this has kind of been my journey.
I learned best by diving into the unknown, just like I did with David and just as I've done in businesses and other things.
It's just like I learned best by going into the unknown.
So I didn't do a lot of research around them or how they made money or this or that.
There's something about this idea of checking out.
I had a buddy who did it.
For all I know, he still does it.
I lost touch with him 25 plus years ago.
But he was a Taekwondo guy.
And he started to meditate...
Because he was always very nervous about sparring and very nervous about competition.
So he was trying to figure out what was going on.
So he said, let me just take some meditation classes.
He took some meditation classes and really enjoyed it.
Got really, really into it.
And then one day decided to give up all the worldly possessions and all of the trappings of civilization and move into the monastery.
And I remember we met him for lunch one day.
He'd also become a vegetarian, so he only ate vegetables.
And we were all just hanging around, and he seemed oddly at peace.
And it was so confusing to me, because at the time, I was, like, probably 20. And I just didn't know what the fuck was going on in the world.
He was maybe 10 years older than me.
And this guy had just decided, I've had enough.
Which is weird to me, though.
He made me nervous.
Like, you know?
Like, he made me nervous that, like...
He was on to something.
It made me nervous that he was wiser than me.
It highlighted how fucked up I am, especially at 20. Life is so chaotic.
You have no idea what the future holds for you, if it's going to be success or failure, if you're going to slip on every fucking banana peel you run across.
But he seemed to have it figured out.
Sitting there eating vegetables, all calm and shit.
There's the thing about the sensory deprivation, you know what it is, right?
The thing that's most interesting about it is that in the absence of input, your brain is freer and you can make decisions better and think about things better because there's no input coming in.
You don't think about it, but as we're sitting here...
Just touching this table is input.
You and I look at each other across the lights.
All this is input.
And in that tank, there's no input.
And in the absence of input, it frees up more resources for your brain.
So, in a sense, what these monks you're saying are doing by having everything on a schedule, you don't have to think about anything, and there's nothing coming in.
The main things, like my relationship with time and certain things of, you know, who I want to spend it with and what I want to do and continuing to build what I call my life resume.
Doing these things that build up my, not my business resume, but my life resume.
That's things that I know I want to do more of and that will never go away.
So, you know, there's things that came out of it that will last forever.
It's kind of been in my life and out of my life, but I just made a pie chart of time.
It's 24 hours in a day.
We all have the same pie chart.
It starts the same.
And I said, alright, I sleep seven hours.
I mean, sometimes I'm out of balance if I'm Doing something big.
But right now, six or seven hours.
I take three for myself and it's cumulative.
So like, I'll take, could be, I'm gonna go for an hour run.
I'm gonna sit in the sauna for 20 minutes.
I'm gonna do fucking nothing.
But when I'm in my time, I'm not mad that I'm not with my kids or my wife or I'm not mad that I'm not at my office.
Like, that's my time.
And when I'm with my kids, I'm not mad that I'm not at work or whatever.
Because I don't want to resent everything.
My wife or my boss or anybody for taking away the shit that I love to do.
Like if they said, you can't run.
You can't go in the sauna.
I'd be really pissed off.
I'd be pissed at my wife.
I'd be pissed at everybody.
So I take three hours for myself.
The average American works 40 hours a week.
That's eight hours a day.
You still have six hours left in the day.
Now, of course, you have to eat.
You have to commute.
You got family and this and that.
But my point is, even take 24 hours is a long day.
I learned that running.
You can get a lot of shit done if you keep moving for 24 hours.
Even if you take three hours for yourself, if you get rid of the stuff that doesn't move the needle in the buckets that are most important to you, you can get a lot done.
So I take three hours for myself.
And I'm not mad about it.
I'm not guilty about it at all.
I feel like I'm way out of balance.
And then the second thing actually...
It didn't come from the monastery, but it was kind of an offshoot of the monastery.
I was mentioning to you that I climbed Mount Washington.
Mount Washington, in the winter, is one of the ten most dangerous mountains, I think, to climb.
Certainly in the States, there's the highest death rate.
Because the winds go up to about anywhere from, on any given day, 50 to 100 miles an hour.
And I actually came home after that attempt, which was a year ago, and I was talking to my wife about it, and I posted it on Facebook, so everybody was blasting, did you make it?
You know, Mount Washington's only about five miles to the top, 4.6 miles, just the elements and the weather that make it so hard.
And I said to my wife, I failed.
You know, like, I didn't make it.
I feel like an ass.
I'm so disappointed.
You know, I want to go back.
And she said, well, get a tour guide.
Break in your boots.
Properly train for this and go back next winter and check it off your list.
And I was like, next winter?
unidentified
I'm going back on Saturday.
Next winter.
Who knows if I'm going to be healthy enough next winter?
He goes, every year, I go on one trip a year with my college roommates.
I've been doing this since I'm 21. And then once every two months, I take a weekend and I do something.
I go camping, I run a marathon, I go hiking, I go to whatever, with my family or friends.
And I said to myself, if I can't, going back to your question about time, if I can't take a weekend, Every eight weeks, once every two months, if I can't carve out a day or two to take some kind of adventure to put on my life resume or to collect a moment for me, then my life is out of balance.
I call it the Kevin rule.
And I said, if I live 30 more years, if I live to 80, And I do that, you know, for 30 years.
That's 150 or 100, basically 150 more fucking amazing memories that I'm going to create.
And that became another one of these time-related, monastery-related, urgency moments.
So I just, again, it just became a real big clarity around like, man, I want to live with urgency and I want to do as much shit as I can and put as much on my plate of the stuff I love to do with the people I love in my life and have it on my resume.
And a lot of times I don't, but in certain times I do.
And I realized that I was, this is kind of, might be a little bit more specific, but I realized I love football.
I watch a lot of football, man.
I realized that I was watching two games, the college game on Saturday, fantasy football Sunday, I'm locked in, Sunday night game, Monday night, Thursday night, and I realized that if, at this point, if I live to be 85, 80, whatever, That would be 36,000 hours of football.
36,000 hours of football that I'd be watching.
I'd throw in some of the fights, throw in some of the other stuff.
It's like I just took the plug out and I freed up these 36,000 hours.
My wife said, what do you mean you're going to go live in the monastery?
I'm like, it's 15 days, sweetie.
I just freed up 36,000 hours.
You get the benefit of that.
I'm going for 15 days.
So I freed up the time by eliminating stuff that fucking didn't move the needle.
Yeah, I mean, I think, look, you gotta be happy and do the things you like to do.
But, you know, again, for me, I look at it very simply.
I got three or four buckets.
I got my family, my wellness, my finances, and causes that are important to me.
And if it's not moving the needle in those four buckets, it's really just a distraction.
Honestly.
Now, that doesn't mean I'm not going to go to a movie.
That's family.
That's part of my wellness.
Relaxing is part of my wellness.
You want to go...
But, you know, those are kind of – everything else kind of gets a no.
Like going to lunch to look at someone else's idea in a category I don't really know much about because they want to maybe get to me or they want my wife.
When I was starting out as an entrepreneur, when I was 20 years old, you know, and I was cleaning kiddie pools and in the music business, I was doing all this stuff, I'd laugh at a lot of jokes that weren't funny.
I mean, I feel like I've been living my life like this even before the monastery.
It just reinforced a lot of things.
I think combined with the fact that for some reason, you know, I'm turning 50, it's fucking with me in a way that I didn't think it would.
And I don't know how you, how old are you?
50. Yeah, so I don't know if it's had the same impact on you, but like, you know, there's not a day that goes by where I don't say to myself, man, in 30 years you're turning 80. That's a way to look at it.
You want to live with urgency.
My enemy is the clock.
I feel like my enemy is the clock.
There's a lot of stuff I want to do in my life, and my enemy is the clock.
Like, if you're constantly worrying about, damn, 20 years, I'm going to be 70. 30 years, I'm going to be 80. If you keep doing that, like, there are people that look ahead too much and don't just...
I've talked to people that are 20. Like, fuck, I can't believe I'm 20. I'm like, listen, motherfucker, you just turned 20, dude.
And I just realized that there's an opportunity to write theme songs for all these professional sports teams, but I don't have a penny to go in the studio to do the demos to shop them to the team.
So I need money.
So I go to this music guy and he says, I'll give you $10,000 to go and do these songs for 10% of everything you make for the rest of your life.
And now they don't have the leverage, but they still figure out a way to pull it off.
It's really weird, because who the fuck is buying albums now?
No one.
No one.
But yet these record companies are still figuring out how to cling on to you like a lamprey and suck blood out.
They're still staying alive and their fat fingers driving their fat Mercedes Benz.
They know how to do it.
They just figure out a way to grab people that are just, just getting popping, you know, and just signing, and then figured out a way to get in with these fucking streaming companies.
Now, when you're done with this book, and you get back from this monk thing, and you realize that this has made some sort of a fundamental shift in the way you live your life, and you put this book out, is there a real sense that people who read this book are going to get that from you?
Are you aware that you're probably going to change the way a lot of people live their lives?
Yeah, I think there's things like that sort of highlight that urgency that if you just live your life like at the same steady static pace Maybe sometimes you don't feel it as much.
I'm sure after you did your 100-mile run, when it was over, it probably felt so good to relax.
And when you did get done with that in the wheelchair for four days, how long did it take before your body felt normal, like your joints normalized and your hips and your knees?
I did this when I was speaking at an event for 500 Wall Street people recently, and it was fascinating.
I'll take you through it.
You can tell me if you're comfortable with it.
But if you take all the areas of your life and put them in a blender...
Okay?
So take where you live, your relationships, your finances, your health, everything.
Everything.
Put it in one fucking big blender and blend it up.
And on a scale of one to ten, with a ten being the Dalai Lama of happiness, and a one being a guy that's at zero, being someone that's at rock bottom, what's your happiness number?
Because I feel like you're making something – you're turning like a constant state of thinking and expression and consideration.
You're turning it into a number.
And I just – I don't like that idea.
I don't like that idea.
Because I think it's a management issue.
I think a lot of what happiness is is a management issue.
And decisions that you're making right now, like you could be in a shit state of mind right now, but you could make some decisions to adjust that, and over the next couple hours, you'll get to a much better place.
And these constant management decisions, they waver in and out of your life on a daily basis.
Like this idea that you could have a good mindset, then all of a sudden you'll be happy.
That's horseshit.
It's like the tide.
It comes in and it comes out.
There's going to be days where you're just not feeling so good physically.
And that's going to affect the way your happiness level is.
For anyone listening that wants to do it, raise your hand if you're seven or below.
I don't want to put anyone on the spot.
And the majority of the room stood up.
Being a seven and thinking seven's a pretty happy number.
But a seven...
If my son comes home with a 70 on a test...
It's a C-.
And all I'm saying is, what's interesting about the test, though, if you do actually go through the process, for those that go through and get a number in their head or whatever, or do want to give themselves a grade, your brain automatically goes to a 10 and then subtracts the two or three things pop in that bring your happiness down.
It's a great way to identify What's making you unhappy?
You know what I mean?
You start at a 10, you're like, oh fuck, my relationship, this or that.
Usually it triggers an automatic, this is what's fucked up in my life response.
It helps you identify.
But it's interesting, we have benchmarks.
In so many things in our life.
You have an IQ test.
You have tax brackets to measure your wealth or financial statements.
Yeah, but this is something I've cultivated for a long time and avoided things that make me unhappy and figured out what those things are and been very rigid about eliminating them from my life.
And one of the big ones is eliminating interactions with people that are negative.
That is gigantic.
Because I've realized that I'm not really as independent as I used to like to think I was.
I used to like to think that my thought process was independent and that I don't give a fuck what anybody thinks.
That's nonsense.
People say that because they absolutely care what people think and it bothers them.
So they say, I don't give a fuck.
But that I don't give a fuck stuff is almost entirely nonsense.
You do care.
And you care in both ways.
You care if people are critical of you.
You care if people are positive of you.
But you also care if people are living positive lives.
And they're motivating you.
That's a big one.
People are fuel.
And other people...
It's one of the reasons why I like talking to people.
One of the reasons why I like to do podcasts.
Because I get a lot out of just talking to you about your time in the monastery.
Or your push to get to that hundred miles.
You get...
Energy out of people like that.
And you think about this energy and you think about this inspiration when you're doing other things.
And it also sets in your mind that when you meet these exceptional people that move you, what are the qualities that they have?
What are the characteristics that they possess?
And those things become significant and important to you.
Whereas if you live around a bunch of people that are complaining and bitching about everything, and they see the negative in everything, and they're always whining, those people are the opposite of that.
They're the opposite of inspiration, and they're mud.
It's like you're up to your ankles in mud.
You try to trudge through life.
It's difficult.
You're not light.
It's not pushing you.
There's not a wind at your back.
The wind's in your face, and it's rough.
Over time, I've learned that these people, you're not going to fix them.
I used to want to fix them when I was young.
I used to want to go, hey, man, I see what you're doing.
Like, dude, don't do that anymore.
Listen, just do this and stop doing that and start doing this.
And if you just work towards this, you could be successful.
And then a week later, the guy's doing the same shit.
You're like, okay, I'm wasting a significant amount of my energy on someone who doesn't want to waste any of their energy on themselves.
Managing the community and the tribe that you're in, making sure that you're a good member of that tribe, that you're doing your part.
There's a lot of cynicism in these days about inspiration and about motivation because there's a lot of fake shit.
You can go on Instagram and you see a million of these Inspirational quote pages and they're run by people that are probably depressed You know you see a lot of people that are you know talking about how to get ahead in life But they're not really doing anything themselves.
So there's a lot of cynicism involved in that but There's also sincerity in it and you can get if you just look at it with a pure heart and a pure mind you can get a lot of energy out of that and When you're around happy, inspirational people that are successful, it makes you feel better and you get inspired.
And if you act on that inspiration, your life will be more fulfilled.
And it's not just inspirational in terms of financial success, but in terms of doing difficult things, whether it's running 100 miles, it doesn't pay you a goddamn thing other than the wealth of the knowledge that you can push yourself to such an extreme.
Or anything else, whether it's someone who becomes really good at playing chess, or someone who's really good at martial arts, or whatever it is.
There's a great feeling in overcoming these difficult things, because life is never this just constant state of, I'm at a 9 all day, and when I'm with my wife, I hit 10. Yay!
And I stay like that.
That's not real.
What's real is...
Like, you saying that you went to this monastery and felt all this angst about meditating and being alone and not having your phone and not having the input, but then when it comes out of it, then you have this reward.
So you push through this, and you had these uncomfortable feelings, and you came out of those uncomfortable feelings with this newfound appreciation for time and this respect for...
Your own existence in your own space and carving out three hours for yourself a day.
That's where it all comes from.
It all comes from life lessons and the lessons are learned through struggle.
And I think that there's a lot of people out there that think somehow or another you're going to get to some place where you're living in silk sheets and you're getting your toes done while someone's dropping grapes into your mouth.
I don't want that.
I've never wanted that.
That guy's not gonna be happy.
He's gonna be bored an hour into the grapes.
He's gonna get those fucking grapes away from me.
Stop painting my toes.
What am I doing in this bed?
I got to do something.
I'm not stimulated.
The human organism, the animal that we are, needs constant stimulation because it evolved trying to find food and escape enemies.
And find shelter, escape nature, escape the elements, try to survive.
And this is the great joy that you have in taking care of your children, that you can protect your children from the elements and the enemies and feed them.
And it's also the great sadness that you see in losers.
When I see a loser, I see some guy who's 43 years old, lives in his parents' basement, and he fucking hates the world.
I'm like, that was a baby.
Man, this is a baby that somebody just gave shitty nutrients to, whether it's nutrients in the forms of food or in the form of...
Thoughts and ideas and examples and this kid developed these horrible self-defeating patterns of behavior that have led them to this point where they're this middle-aged person with no future and no idea of how to get out of this rut and probably never will escape it and might just wind up sucking on a gun.
This is the world that we live in today, and I think part of that world is because we have been fed this line of horseshit that you're supposed to seek comfort, and I don't think you are.
I think you're supposed to seek lessons, and you're supposed to seek difficult tasks and accomplishments, and through those things, and through doing things, Things that are hard to do, even if it's just a fucking 90-minute hot yoga class.
I do a 90-minute yoga class, man.
Those last 20 minutes, I do not want to be there, man.
And I definitely don't want to give 100%.
And I can cheat.
I can kind of half-ass it.
But if I don't...
And I get through it.
When that time is up and the lady says namaste and everybody gets up, I'm like, fuck, man.
I made it.
You know, I lost 15 pounds.
My fucking yoga mat is drenched to the point where I could literally wring it out and fill a jug up with water.
But...
Through that struggle, I will now have a better day.
And I better fucking do it again tomorrow.
Or do something else.
Because if I just think, well, tomorrow I'm just gonna coast and eat Twinkies and watch TV. Oh, hello, sadness, my old friend.
Hello, depression.
Because when you're not doing anything, you feel like shit.
And that's just a part of being a human being.
And we can pretend that we're something other than what we really are.
And we can pretend, nah, me, man, I'm just cool, just chilling, doing nothing.
Bullshit!
You're a fucking human.
You're a human being.
You evolved from the fucking hundreds of thousands of years of hunters and gatherers and people that were struggling.
Those human reward systems are carved deeply into your DNA. And if you don't respect that, if you don't respect the mechanism of happiness and fulfillment and what you really need to do in order to feel satisfied in life...
Camaraderie, love, family, friendship, struggle, testing yourself, learning, all those things are imperative.
And I feel like, you know, as I'm listening to you talk about that, I'm literally going through like the last 10 years of my life, you know, and when I lived with David, when I went on The Modest, all these things, they're all about getting an edge and doing what you, you know, and it is, I think it's like part of being human.
And that stuff makes me feel the most alive too, you know, like...
You know, and also like little improvements over things.
That's why doing difficult things is good, whether it's running.
So like if you're running and you run, you could run two miles and then one day you get it up to three.
It's like, fuck, I remember when I struggled with two.
Now I can do four.
Little improvements.
You know, and you really see that in yoga class in particular for me because I'm not good at it.
You know, so when I do a yoga class and I can hold a pose until the next, you know, you're holding these poses for a minute.
If you could stand on one foot grabbing your other foot lifting it above your head and keep your arm out straight and you're balancing your foots on fire and your core is engaged but if you can get to the point where they say stop You feel like, wow, I didn't used to be able to do that.
I used to be able to hold it for 10 seconds and then I would fall down.
And then I'd have to start all over again and start from scratch.
There's little improvements where you feel yourself getting a little better at something, whether it's jujitsu or anything else.
Little improvements, I think, are what life is all about.
And I think also they're a tool to feed the mind.
Because I really believe the mind needs these little lessons.
The mind needs these little...
These little tasks.
And if your brain doesn't get that, I think it atrophies and it gets depressed.
I think that's half of what a lot of people's sadness is.
Is this lack of stimulation and reward.
Lack of these peaks and valleys.
And again, this bullshit idea that we're constantly fed that you should be comfortable.
Probably seven or ten, and I was like, man, Goggins, that's impossible.
And he said, you know, I already know what your biggest problem is.
And he's like, the limitations you're putting on yourself are self-imposed.
Get the fuck back on the bar.
And, you know, roger that, man.
And I got up on the bar, and over the course of an hour or two, I did them.
And that started our journey of like, you're about to go in a place where you've never been, motherfucker.
I remember one day I was sitting on the couch in Connecticut where I was living at the time, and on the ticker on the TV, the emergency broadcast system came up.
Stay inside.
Freezing rain.
Icy conditions.
High winds.
Stay inside.
It was like beeping, stay inside.
And Goggins was like, this is amazing, man.
Let's go for a run.
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And I'm like, they're telling us the exact opposite, man.
They're broadcasting to the whole community to stay inside.
So we go for a 10-mile run in the blizzard and we come home and I lived on a lake and kids are playing hockey on the lake.
So we go down and he takes his hand and he moves all the snow off the ice.
It gets a boulder.
And he breaks the ice, a little hole in the ice with the boulder and then he takes his hand and he makes the hole a little bit bigger and then he jumps in.
And then he points at me and he takes his finger and he signals for me to jump in.
I'm not going in the fucking freezing cold water because my mother told me as a kid in Long Island, don't go anywhere near the frozen water.
If you fall in, you have like a minute, you know?
He's bathing in it.
So, of course, I go in and he looks at me.
He's like, man, you got about two to four minutes.
You're going to get hypothermia.
We just went on a run.
We got to get you out of the lake.
And I go to get out.
He goes, you can't get out.
He goes, if your skin touches the ice, it's going to stick to the ice like the kid in Christmas Story, his tongue that sticks to the pole, you know?
So he puts my shoes back on my hands and picks my ass up and I put my socks on or whatever.
And I bear crawl out of the ice and I run up and I see my wife looking out the window as I'm running into the house.
And we come in and she says to Goggins, you know, like, what's the medical benefit of jumping in a frozen lake?
And he said to her, there's no medical benefit.
She's like, this is what your husband signed up for.
You know, he's like, I want to see how far he's willing to go to get to his goals.
And I was like, fuck, this is going to be some 30 days, man.
I remember asking him to come and I remember him saying to me, if you're crazy enough to ask a guy like me to come live with you, motherfucker, I'm crazy enough to come.
He'd be like, I want to see how many burpees you can do in 10 minutes.
I'd be like, burpee test?
And I was like, in the middle of work, I would like get down, take off my, you know, whatever I was wearing.
I'd get like my boxers or whatever, like just to get, and I would do as many burpees as I could in 10 minutes and be soaking wet and I'd walk into my next meeting.
And everybody knew he was, you know, like he was, that was part of the thing.