[REPLAY] Running Through Hell - Ultrarunning and Mental Strength

Have you ever felt that you are not doing enough and not achieving enough? It may be easier to look at our current situation and feel sorry about ourselves but rest assured that everything is part of the process. Growth means doing things one step at a time and taking ownership of our situation and life.

In this episode, Geoffrey Woo interviews Lisa about her experiences with ultramarathons and the importance of mindset during these difficult races. Lisa also talks about how all her experiences created a character that never backed down, even when her mother almost died from an aneurysm. Developing strength meant that she needed to pick herself up from failures and disappointments time and time again.

If you want to know more about building strength and resilience, tune in to the podcast episode!

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For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.

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Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode:

1. Learn about the power of mindset when facing difficult situations.
2. How do ultramarathons build your resilience and mental strength?
3. Discover how compounding experiences can uncover your true potential.

Resources

• Check out Geoffrey Woo's podcast at H.V.M.N. Podcast, Apple Podcasts, and at Youtube.
• Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor
• The Oxygen Advantage: Simple, Scientifically Proven Breathing Techniques to Help You Become Healthier, Slimmer, Faster, and Fitter by Patrick McKeown
• Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall
• The Oxygen Revolution: Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy: The New Treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Traumatic Brain Injury, Stroke, Autism and More by Paul G. Harch M.D.
• The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science by Norman Doidge
• Concussion Rescue: A Comprehensive Program to Heal Traumatic Brain Injury by Kabran Chapek
• Register at Broken Brain to keep updated with Dr Mark Hyman's documentary series!

Episode Highlights [07:45] Lisa's Journey Into Ultramarathon Races

• Lisa has been doing ultramarathon racing for over 25 years.
• Her ultramarathon races have been mostly located at deserts.
• While she was not born with the genetic ability, Lisa owes these achievements to her strong mindset.

[09:49] How Lisa Faced Challenges

• Lisa used to be on track to become a national gymnast.
• Going through puberty changed her body and made her unfit for gymnastics. This led to her poor body image, self-loathing, and low self-esteem.
• In her early 20s, Lisa felt that she was never going to be good enough. This culminated when she crossed the Libyan Desert.
• Find out more about Lisa's harrowing experience, both physically and emotionally, at the Libyan Desert in the full episode!

[15:57] Surviving The Libyan Desert And The Aftermath

• In addition to the difficult and illegal crossing, Lisa also broke up with her then-boyfriend.
• Surviving the Libyan Desert meant focusing on just one step after another.
• The whole experience made Lisa physically and emotionally wrecked for two years.

[23:58] Lisa's First Encounter With Ultramarathon Races

• One day, Lisa saw a Moroccan race that only required 240 kilometres, 9 litres of water a day, with support from doctors, journalists, and helicopters.
• These paled in comparison to the Libyan Desert crossing, where Lisa's team had to travel 250 kilometres with 2 litres of water a day and 35-kilogram backpacks.
• This comparison led Lisa to join the ultramarathon and she loved the experience.
• She notes that the community in ultramarathons was so uplifting that she kept signing up for more.

[25:34] Developing Emotional And Cognitive Resilience

• Pushing your body's limits with ultramarathons can build your resilience.
• Failure is a part of pushing to the limits and you have to get over that.
• Resilience is not taught enough in our society.

[28:15] Building Resilience

• We don't have the benefit of hindsight when we're experiencing highs and lows, but trust in the process.
• Lisa talks about losing her son and how painful experiences can have moments of joy too.
• Listen to the full episode to hear how Lisa turned heartbreaking and difficult experiences into sources of strength and courage.

[38:27] Society's Disconnect With Nature

• People tend to live vicariously through others and not go through experiences themselves.
• We have become disconnected from nature that affects our health and well being.
• We cannot depend on anyone to save us. We have to make things happen ourselves.

[43:44] Compounding Experiences

• Create momentum with small successes.
• When you hit roadblocks and failures, deal with them as they happen.
• Know that there is no limitation on what you can do.
• There is a misconception that running is bad for the joints.
• You have to train for a marathon by building up strength and endurance.

[52:53] Mindset During Difficult Times

• Lisa talks about how she used to have a prideful mindset of needing to prove that she can do something.
• Nowadays, her experiences with charity races developed a gratitude mindset.
• Lisa also thinks about how she would do anything for her loved ones.
• For more details on how a New Zealand race and her mother taught her how to break down a situation step by step, check out the full episode!

[1:00:51] Value Of Learning From Experiences

• It's hard to convey experience and until you've lived through it.
• When Lisa's mother had an aneurysm, Lisa went above and beyond to help her.
• Tune in to the episode for Lisa's extensive research into hyperbaric oxygen therapy, functional neurology, and the ketogenic diet to save her mother!

[1:16:27] Improving The Standard Of Care

• We can change the standard of care and improve the current medical system.
• With the current age of technology, information and research are more widely available.
• Take ownership of your health and do the research.
• No matter the age, people need to have goals and be challenged.
• We have to respect and care for our elders better for they have helped shape us to become who we are today.

7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode

"And so no matter what you're going through in life, try to think of it as well, this is going to be a part of something that I'm meant to be learning and I can turn this around."/

"When I decided I want something, I just do it until I get good at it, even if I'm hopeless at it at the start."

"None of us have to be limited anymore. Certainly not this day and age by one profession."

"It's all a matter of the motivation. It's how bad do you want this thing."

(My mother) "poured my focus back into the here and the now, instead of projecting into the future, which was overwhelming and terrifying. And that's how we broke it down step by step."

"If I hadn't had the belief that the human body and mind are capable of far more than what the average person thinks it is, then I would have listened to the naysayers and I would have given up."

"We've got to do better. And we've got to respect our elders. They're the ones who made us who we are."

About Geoffrey Woo

Geoffrey Woo is the Co-founder and Executive Chair of Health Via Modern Nutrition, or H.V.M.N. With the core mission of redefining human performance and longevity, the company offers quality nootropics to the market. The company is guided by rigorous research and development based on science, coupled with label transparency and evidence grading.

Geoffrey is also the host of the H.V.M.N. Podcast, where he regularly interviews experts on health, nutrition, biohacking, and entrepreneurship. With over 100 episodes, you are sure to learn about optimizing your health! Tune in to the podcast!

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To pushing the limits,

Lisa

Full Transcript

Intro: Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com.

Lisa Tamati: Well, hi everyone and welcome back to Pushing The Limits this week.

Now today I have something a little bit different than my usual format. I've actually used a interview that I did on the H.V.M.N. podcast with the amazing Geoffrey Wu. He has an incredible podcast and company that I'd love you to check out as well. I'll put all the links in the show notes. And he did this interview with me and I told my story and a little bit of my background. And particularly we went into the story behind the Libyan desert, which was an illegal crossing that I did across the Libyan desert, a long, long time ago, beginning of my career. And I thought it would be quite interesting to share this little backstory with you. And also, you know, we go into a deep discussion around high performance and being the best that you can be.

So I hope you enjoy this interview. something a little bit different than having my usual guests which will be back to next week. I do have coming up in the next few weeks, some fantastic guests. I have James Nestor who is the author of Breath, which is an incredible book, all about the art of breathing. And you would be amazed at the science behind optimizing your health and everything with breathing.

And then I also have Patrick McKeown who is also the author of The Oxygen Advantage, again, all about nasal breathing [0:01:43]and the particular breathing techniques and just absolutely incredible. Both New York Times bestselling books, top authors, top experts in this field. So, I hope you make sure you tune into that.

Also coming up on the show in the next few weeks. I have Dr. Brian Walsh, who is one of my teachers and incredible, incredible — a super brain of a man — who's going to be talking to us about detoxing. So those are a few episodes coming up in the next few weeks. So make sure you do stay tuned.

Now before I go over to the interview, I just want to remind you, now Christmas is coming up. If you haven't got your Christmas presents, check out my jewellery collection online, it's called The Fears Collection and it's all about inspiring and motivating people with while you're wearing some blink, while you're wearing something that's pretty cool. So sports jewellery, it's hardwearing, it's the sort of things you can dress down or dress up with. And I hope you enjoy that collection. You can find it in my shop on lisatamati.com.

Also, on that note with Christmas coming up, got to remind you to go and grab one of my books, either Running Hot, which was my first book, Running To Extremes, which was my second. Both of those chronicling all my adventures around the world. And my third book, which has just come out this year, Relentless, telling the story of bringing my mum back after her massive aneurysm and all the brain damage that she had and being told that there was no way forward. It's an empowering, inspiring story — a love story. And it's a story that is really — a book that it's actually, I'm getting feedback all the time from people telling me how much it's changed their lives, their approach to taking ownership over their own health and not just leaving it up to everyone else. So, I hope you enjoy it.

Now head over to the show in just a moment. But if you could also do a rating and review for the podcasts I really, really appreciate that. And I say it every week. But I do really appreciate getting any reviews. And if you've got any questions, please reach out to us. You can reach me on [email protected]. We're also taking on a few clients at the moment on a one-on-one which we don't usually do just because of the sheer volume of work that we have. But I am taking on a very few people. If you've got to have health journey that you want help with, you want someone to help navigate some tricky waters that you're going through, or challenge, or if you're setting yourself up for a mess of big sporting challenge, obviously, mindset or anything like that, then please reach out to me. I do enjoy working one on one with just a handful of people at a time because it does take a lot of resources. So, if you're interested in that reach out to me at [email protected].

And now over to the show with the interview with Geoffrey Wu.

Announcer: Coming up in this episode

Lisa: Our little boy Joseph suddenly came early and he only survived for two hours and he died. And this was like heartbreaking. Our last chance basically, to hold your baby and to watch him struggle and die and that was like the worst thing I've ever been through.

And even in this horrifying situation, if you like, there were moments of joy, moments of blessings and the blessings that our little boy brought to us. It took me a few weeks. when I now think on my little boy, I think, what he left behind, like the changes he created in me, the changes he created in my husband, our surrogate parents — were extremely close now — to our surrogate parent family, to their children. My husband is a firefighter, and he's now become an officer, which he wouldn't do before. Because he was like, "Ah, I'm too shy, and too, whatever." And now he's like, "No, my little boy didn't get to live, I'm [0:05:48]going to live full bore, I've suffered." So little Joseph bought blessings in a way that we couldn't see at the time. And I don't wish that on anyone. And I certainly don't want to go through that again. But it could either break you or you can try to find something in there that has meaning for you, and a reason for you.

And so, no matter what you're going through in life, try to think of it as "Well, this is going to be a part of something that I'm meant to be learning and I can turn this around." And that's I think your job when you're on this earth is to try and have these lessons and become stronger and better and not let it break you.

Announcer: Welcome to the H.V.M.N podcast, what we do with our bodies today becomes the foundation of who we are tomorrow. This is Health Via Modern Nutrition.

Geoffrey Wu: Hey, everyone, welcome to this week's episode of the H.V.M.N. podcast. And this is going to be an especially fun one because my guest today is Lisa Tamati. I had a wonderful conversation on her podcast. So, for today, we're going to flip the script, flip the table and have Lisa share her experience.

In a lot of my conversations over the last few years now, when you really talk to World Class specialists in one specific domain, they oftentimes touch and become generalist experts across a multitude of domains. I think that's just the world that we live in. To be really, truly world class. One can't just be in that one specific tunnel. One really gets the best practice from a number of domains. I think Lisa really encapsulates that for me. So Lisa, great to have on the H.V.M.N. podcast.

Lisa: I'm so stoked to be here. Geoffrey, it was wonderful to have you on my show. And yeah, now the flip-the-script is going to be exciting. I can't wait to do a deep dive.

Geoffrey: Yeah. One area that you have a tremendous amount of experience and I have a little bit of a taste of is ultramarathons, long distance running. I think that seems to be your initial entry point into high performance, human physiology. Love to hear your background story of how you got into it, competing Badwater, some of the most prestigious well-known ultramarathon races. What was your journey into this specific field?

Lisa: Yeah, thanks, Geoff. So I've been doing ultramarathons now for over 25 years, and I've had, in that time, the chance to sort of run and compete and train over 70,000 Ks in that time. So that's three times around the equator, if you add it all up.

I've done mostly desert so I've done a couple of thousand kilometres in the Sahara Desert from the Moroccan Sahara, a couple of times to the Tunisian, Arabian Desert, the Libyan desert, Niger, Jordan, also the Gobi desert in China, Death Valley in the USA, a couple of times, in different parts of the outback of Australia, which is closer to home. And I've also at one stage ran right through New Zealand, doing 52 marathons in 42 days, raising money for charity. So that was another a really amazing mission.

But the funny thing about my story is that I'm a so what from average, as far as talent goes. I don't have any special genetic abilities. No Dean Karnazes or David Goggins, or anything like that, as far as ability and speed go. But what I did have was really, really super strong mindset. And when I decide I want something, I just do it until I get good at it, even if I'm hopeless at it at the start. And certainly, I was asthmatic as a child, so I was in and out of hospital, I had a very poor lung capacity. Very poor v02 max. So I wasn't really made or built for this type of thing, but I never let that stop me doing anything, really.

Geoffrey: Yeah, so what kicked it off? When I talked to a lot of folks that end up being, just long careers in endurance sport, oftentimes, it's realizing that in middle school that they were really get the 5k compared to the other middle schoolers?

Did you have a story like that where you ended up running and you realize, "Hey, I'm pretty good at this. Everyone else is tired, I'm pretty good."

Lisa: That was absolutely bloody, hopeless setup. To be honest, Geoff. What happened is I was really into sport, I was a gymnast as a kid. I was good at gymnastics. And so, I did that from the ages of 5 up to about 15. And I was on sort of track to be a national sort of gymnast.

But then when I went through puberty, I grew up too tall, and I grew up very muscular and athletically built. And I just didn't have it. Once I went through puberty, I knew I just wasn't going to make it.

And so that was a real blow to me because that was all I'd done. And I've grown up in a family, where the expectations were really, really high. And I was expected to represent my country and I was expected to be the best at everything that I did. I had amazingly loving, amazing mum and dad, but my dad was also very hard on us. And that, I think having that early childhood — being pushed into that really strict discipline that gymnastics requires, was, in some ways, a really good learning curve and other ways it was quite damaging.

So as a young woman — so from 13 to 15, before I started, stopped, gymnastic — I really struggled with my body image. And I was the heaviest, biggest girl in the group, if you like and, and was always constantly ridiculed for that. And so they that started a path of self-loathing, and very low self-esteem.

And when I failed at gymnastics, I thought, "Well, that said, I'm never going to represent New Zealand." But I sort of had that dream in back of my mind the whole time. And then in my early 20s, I met an Austrian guy who was cycling through our country here and had an accident on our mountain, got hit by an avalanche. And my mum, being the sort of mum she was, she always picking up strays and bringing them home and looking after them, as mums do. And she bought this young gentleman home, and we fell in love and doing lots of adventure stuff around the world. So we cycled around 25 different countries, climb mountains, quiet, did all that sort of adventurous stuff. And that sort of opened my eyes to the world of travel because I've never been outside my country prior to that — into the world of adventure and to what I was capable of. But it was also at the same time, a very abusive relationship. And once again, I was never good enough. I was never what I was supposed to be. It was it could never live up to the expectations. I wasn't fast enough, strong enough, good enough. I was accused of having bad genes.

And this sort of culminated. I did a crossing of the Libyan desert, an expedition with a partner and two other guys, this was a really extreme illegal crossing of the Libyan desert. And we only had like two litres of water a day because that's all we could carry on our backs with this distance of 250 kilometres that we had planned. And no one had been through — no Europeans have been through this part of the desert at this stage. There were no maps. We managed to get some pilot maps of US military don't ask how. And we started off on this crossing and two litres of water a day, and 40 plus degree temperatures with 35 kilo backpacks. It was a recipe for extremely on the limits.

Geoffrey: That's a serious rock. Yeah, that's a serious rock. Wow.

Lisa: Yeah, especially when I was like 58, 59 kilos at the time. So, it was more than like, now, nearly two thirds of my body weight. And this ended up being not only physically really demanding, but the boyfriend ended up leaving me in the middle of the desert on day four.

Yeah. So that you can imagine you have your relationship breakups. We've all been there and done that, but to do that in the middle of the Libyan desert, in the middle of this crossing. And the reason was, we were all suffering and very irritable, as you can imagine, when you can't, you got no water. And so, timbers were short, and he wanted to move faster. And we were doing a book on the expedition. So, photographing it, and he was a perfectionist, and wanted to set up all these photos and wanted me to help.

And the leader of the expedition said, "Look, we got to keep moving. So, you can take your pictures, but you got to keep up with us." And so he wanted me to help with that. And I physically was just unable to run around, do anything extra other than put one foot in front of the other. And so that went down like a ton of bricks. And after a couple of days of frosty temperatures in between us, he said, "That's it, I'm leaving, I'm heading off over the sand dunes. And you can stay with the other two guys." And that's it, the relationship's over.

So that was a real deep turning point. And it sounds quite funny now, but it wasn't at the time, I can assure you, and we're in desperate straits by this time. The dehydration is so, so bad. I don't know where the heat is going to survive, whether we're going to survive, what's going to happen. And in that moment, I really learned I had to compartmentalize things in my brain. So I had to be able to function despite the emotional turmoil that I was going through. And that was a really good lesson to learn so that you can actually still function and do what you have to do to survive to get out and not fall to pieces. And of course, I owed it to the other two guys, too, who are like, "Oh, my God, we've got a hysterical woman here. Now, what do we do now?"

Geoffrey: This story deserves more attention. I mean, just from the emotional capacity, obviously, a breakup with a long-term partners of emotion is a massive emotional turmoil. And then it sounds like there was questions of even surviving. So-

Lisa: Yes, there was.

Geoffrey: – at the time, did you think that everyone could have died? How serious? I mean, it sounds like it was pretty serious. But did you have regrets or thoughts racing through your mind? Were you like, "Hey, like, why did I do this? Am I going to die in the desert? I'm stupid." Can you walk us through that kind of a thought process there?

Lisa: The thirst was just unbelievable, like the suffering that goes on when you don't have enough water is really, really horrific. So your mouth swells, your lung, your tongue swells, you just got no saliva, so you can't eat, obviously. And we were covering around 45 kilometres a day, or we were trying to so that we would have enough to get out. So we had a schedule that we had to keep. And we were trying to avoid going in the very hot hours of the day, but there was often no shade, so you just like sort of put your backpack up and try and hide under it.

So it was extreme, as far as would we survive, and it was a military bad area as well. So leaving the Oasis was really dangerous and getting out from outside the military camp and then disappearing into the desert without being followed. And by the same token getting back. And so you had all that sort of stuff going on as well. If you've been caught in this area, you would have been in deep, deep trouble, shall we say?

So, there was there was all sort of elements to it. And then, when the partner left, I had to just stop thinking about whether he would survive or not. I knew that he was extremely strong and strongly fed, but all it takes is one twisted ankle. And you're gone, there was no there's no one to come and rescue you. There's no one to help. There was no outside help at all. And there was no water on route. So there wasn't much chance of survival of anything went wrong. Now as with the other two guys, and the leader of the expedition was a survival expert from Yugoslavia and he was amazing. All I had to do was really follow him and do what he said. And that's what we did.

On day five. I had real we had a sand storm hit and just as the evening broke, and it came in so suddenly. Because I was doing most of my drinking the water in the night-time and because that's when your cells could take it up. If you if you drank during the day, it would just evaporate out of your body really quickly. So, we were trying to drink the bulk of our supply for the day in the evening. And I'd also been squirreling away part of that two litres a day. So I was actually only getting a litre and a half and because I was so scared of running out so that I had more left in the backpack than I was meant to have and on this particular night, the same storm came in, and I didn't get to drink my water because it we just got an hour sleeping bags and just hunkered down and we basically got buried by the same storm. You couldn't do anything for the next five or six hours while this pass through.

And then at about three in the morning, we got up again and we got going really quickly and I only had a small drink and then I got underway. And finally, by now I was not really feeling the thirst anymore and was walking in the early hours of this morning and I just kept passing out and my body was starting to shut down. But Elvis was on such a mission to get to the certain point that we he'd see on the map. So, then he would know where we were exactly and that we would survive that he was just on a mission, he wouldn't stop to let me get water out of the backpack. And they keep pulling me back on my feet. I'd go along for another 20 minutes, and then I pass out again, they'd put me back up again, I'd walk along again, the pass out again. This happened like five or six times, until we got to this place where we could see this — it's called the barbecue depression.

So you were up on this table top, landscape, and then you're looking down. And so, then he knew where we were. And by now I was hallucinating. So, the, the rocks were becoming monsters. And I didn't even know to ask for a break. If that makes sense. All I was doing was functioning by putting one foot in front of the other, and I couldn't think straight, my vision was closing in, hallucinations, and so on.

Geoffrey: What kept you going? I mean, it sounds like — was it just reptilian survival instinct, just one foot after another? Was there something higher? Or like, "I'm not going to die today?" Where were you in this state? It just sounds like you are so —

Lisa: So close

Geoffrey: — baseline functioning, right? It was just like you're essentially just baseline survival function at this point?

Lisa: Yeah, at this point, there was no higher thinking at all. There was just, I'd been doing this for days, just following the footsteps of the guy in front of me. And that was what I was mesmerised on, this little white flicker of his shoes in front of my eyes. And that's all I focused on doing because just could not think any higher thoughts. When you run out of glucose and when you run out of water, your brain function is it's like being completely out of it.

So I was just doing everything I could just to stay upright and keep moving forward and not thinking and not being intelligent. You're unable in this case to make clear decisions or anything like that or to say, "Look, hey, I need to stop and get some water guys." And you're on the sort of mission, and you're just going, and it's just pure survival that keeps you putting one foot in front of the other. And then once we got to this place, he helped me down these cliffs and we got to the bottom and he said, "Right, I want you to get out your water and you're going to drink and we're going to sit here for the extra hours. And you're going to slowly drink your whole day supply because your body's starting to shut down. And he said to me, "Look, he'd been in the desert a lot." He said "I've known of people who have died in the desert with 20 litres of water and next to them because they've been squirreling it away for so long." He said it's better in your tummy than in the backpack. In other words, I hadn't been having enough just to keep surviving and you can actually die next to a whole big ton of water because you're squirreling it away for too long. And then your body shuts down, and then you're gone, can't go too far.

So the upshot of this adventure was anyway, we did get out, we did survive, obviously. I had some major kidney damage and health problems after this. The boyfriend also got out and there was a lot of undoing of misty relationship stuff, as you can imagine, in the aftermath. But that was a time in my life where I went and never again, when I let myself be controlled by anybody else. Never again, am I not controlling my own destiny.

And it took me two years to do anything again because my body was just wrecked and emotionally, I was wrecked. But then one day I was reading this magazine. And it was about the Marathon des Sables, which is a very famous ultramarathon in Morocco. And I was reading the statistics and comparing it to what I've been through the Libyan desert. So we've done 250 Ks, we'd had 35 kilo backpacks, two litres of water a day, right? And Marathon des Sables is touted as, that time, as the toughest race on Earth — 240 kilometres, 9 litres of water a day, doctors, journalists, airplanes, helicopters support—

Geoffrey: You're like, "This sounds easy. This sounds like a luxury clamp glamping."

Lisa: [laughs] Luxury cruise.

Geoffrey: Yeah.

Lisa: Yeah. So, you had to carry everything in your back, as far as the food goes, but that was like, between 9 and 12 kilos. And I thought, "Hang on a minute. I reckon I could do this." And so, I hadn't even run a marathon but I signed up for this 240 k event. And that was the first time I'd done something on my own. As girl on her own now, it was really important to me to prove to myself that I wasn't useless.

And I went and I did this race, and I just absolutely loved it. I did really, really well. I didn't win anything but I was in the top 10 woman and I just had an absolute ball. I was surrounded by people who were positive and encouraging and empowering, and there was 700 people in this race and the whole camp moves every day. It was like a huge military operation. It was just mind blowing.

And then after that experience, I started to get my self-confidence back that had been on the ground for the last two years. And I became addicted to that experience if you like because I was like, "Ugh. Give me more of this, this is awesome." And I was good at something for change. I was told I was doing really well, and the other people were so uplifting, that then I became like addicted to ultramarathon. So, then I just signed up for every race I could possibly find, interested in one after the other, and sort of worked it out as I went. And so long story short, that's how I got into ultramarathon running.

Geoffrey: Now I understand why he put mindset as first year as well, the ultramarathon. I mean, it sounds like almost from your perspective, your mindset and that emotional and cognitive resilience to go through when you were 13 and 15. As an adolescent, athlete towards some of these survival trips. Would you say that's accurate? You almost see yourself like a mental ninja or a mental resilience expert ahead of being an endurance athlete at this point?

Lisa: Yes. Yeah, definitely. Certainly, it's become that over the even the last 20 years, especially. Whereas like I've said, I never hadn't had a lot of talent. But I realized I had I did have really good mental strength when it came to certain areas, especially in sport, I had a mindset that I could just go and I would go to the point of killing myself, nearly, which also became a problem on occasion, because you just wouldn't pull out when you should pull out. And now I'm a lot wiser and don't advise people to do that. And now we coached, you know, hundreds of athletes around the world, and we try to get them to pull out way before that point.

You know what the greatest benefit of doing all these ultramarathons and pushing your body to the limits like this is that it teaches you mental toughness, it teaches you resilience, it teaches you that failure is a part of the game as well. That if we only go through life being scared of failure, we're never going to take risks, we're never going to push the envelope, we're never going to find out what we truly capable of. And if there's one thing I've learned through this whole journey, it's that failure is a part of pushing to the limits. When you're going to that sort of level, even in business or in whatever it is in life, you are going to have failures and that is part of it. And you have to get over that and you have to learn resilience.

And I think resilience is a word that is totally underutilized in our society. And something we should be teaching all our kids about the resilience to be able to get up when you're knocked down. The resilience to be able to believe that you can still achieve them when things are stacked against you or when people are telling you no and it's impossible. That's the thing that has helped me most, running from A to B and some artificial human made race, if you like, or climbing a mountain or doing any of these things, it's a conduit to learning who the hell you are.

Geoffrey: Yeah, it's an artificial construct. It's like a game to actually bring out that resilience at that person, that character, that integrity. This is something I've been thinking a lot about, I'm glad you're bringing this up. For the specific resilience, where do you think that resilience came from? Do you believe — I mean, this might be like a nature versus nurture question — do you think that there's some sort of genetic disposition that predisposes certain people towards having this kind of emotional and cognitive resilience? But also part of that is that sounds like through your childhood, through your environment, through your upbringing, you had pretty early, shall I say, traumatic or formational experiences as you're competing that probably gave you some sort of either a trauma that you healed really well from, or gave you a lot of experience that people never actually face with like a happy normal childhood or whatever you want to call it. Do you think those were powerful formational experiences that led you down that path?

How do you think about it, when you coaching clients coaching different folks? Obviously, you realize that some people just seem tougher than others, right? Like you hear like, yeah, I think your story is reminds me a lot of David Goggins's story who was a former Navy SEAL, ultra-endurance athlete, had a lot of trauma through his childhood. How do you synthesize your personal experience as well as the experiences that you've called and pulled through your coaching and your journeys around the world?

Lisa: Yeah, that's a really good question in and yes, like David's stories are incredible and his childhood — terrible, obviously. And it's what who made him who he is, a lot of it.

I actually think there's a combination of nature and nurture. So I'm right into epi genetics and we use a system called Ph360, which is looking at different types of people and different health types. And I am what they call a crusader, which is someone who's always going to be dopamine driven and on a mission, tendency towards addictive behaviour, whether that's running stupid distances or eating too much chocolate. Same sort of thing. And so this, I think — and my brothers often say to me, "Why are you always on a mission? Why are you trying to conquer the world all the time in everything that you do? Why can't you just sit back and relax and have a day at the beach like we do?" And I say, "It's like asking a table not to be flat, this is who I am, this is my makeup, this is the way I made, and I can't do anything much about that."

So I do think that a big part of the drive and the determination is genetically predisposition. Like mum said, even as a three-year-old, I would be off, diving into the pool when I couldn't swim, or I just had no fear, I would be doing stupid stuff. As a kid without any sort of idea of what the heck I'm doing. And that is always been characteristic of my nature to just jump into things and work it out on the way.

So I think there is a big portion of genetics. And by the same token, I think the combination of that with some very harsh experiences. And these are experiences, too like, don't get me wrong, the self-esteem, the lack of confidence in after that relationship, there were massive depression, suicide attempts. There's a lot of staff that are not going into the details have to come out the other end, if you know what I mean.

So it wasn't like you're just like, wow, the super resilient person who just gets back up again. It certainly wasn't in that young years, when I didn't have the toolkit, either to be able to cope with the emotions that I'm feeling. And when you're younger, you've got a whole lot of hormones and stuff going around, and very dramatic, as you know, with all teenagers are all dramatic. I was probably super dramatic.

So, there was a lot of stuff and this is a process. And I'm old now, it's very easy for me now look back at the journey. I'm 51 going on 18, I still think I'm a teenager. Looking back over that time and going, actually, I can see the progression, I can see how I developed I can see the highs and the lows, and it all makes sort of a sense now, if you like. And we don't always have that benefit of hindsight when you're in the middle of it, all you know is that you're depressed and you don't want to be here anymore.

But if you can actually look at things from a longer term perspective and go, "This might be a part of making me who I am." And now every situation that I get into that really blows me to pieces or is really hard or tragic, and I've been through quite a lot in my life, I now look at it and the first thing I try to think is where is the learning here? Where is the silver lining? What is it that I'm meant to be learning from this experience? And how can I turn this into a positive?

And it doesn't always come to me quickly. I mean, last year, we had a situation with my husband and I've been trying to have a baby for four years. We've lost one when I was 46 in a miscarriage. And then I had a surrogate mum, and we were over the moon, we thought we were finally going to have a baby. And six months into it. Our little boy, Joseph, suddenly came early, and he only survived for two hours and he died. And this was like, heartbreaking. Our last chance, basically, to hold your baby and to watch him struggle and die. And it was it was it was like the worst thing I've ever been through.

And even in this horrifying situation, if you like there were there were moments of joy, moments of blessings and the blessings that a little boy brought to us. It took me a few weeks. But when I when I now think on my little boy, I think what he left behind, like the changes he created in me, the changes he created in my husband, our surrogate parents — we're extremely close now to our surrogate parent family, to their children. My husband is a firefighter and he's now become an officer which he wouldn't do before because he was like "Ah too shy and too whatever." And now he's like, "No, my little boy didn't get to live, I'm [0:35:06] going to live full bore, I've suffered.

So little Joseph bought blessings in a way that we couldn't see at the time. And I don't wish that on anyone. And I certainly don't want to go through that again. But it could either break you or you can try to find something in there that has meaning for you and a reason for you. And so no matter what you're going through in life, try to think of it as "Well, this is going to be a part of something that I'm meant to be learning and I can turn this around." And that's I think your job, when you're on this earth is to try and have these lessons and become stronger and better and not let it break you.

Geoffrey: Yeah, well, I think that's an incredible framework that you've really, I think, internalized and really test it to the limits, right? How do you turn every single injection, eruption, happenstance that occurs in one's life? And how do you take the positive from that, and it sounds like you've been able to really internalize it so well, that you're really testing the bounds of, of human experience there.

Lisa: I think, and also, I mean, we've gone pretty deep, and it's pretty emotional in this topic. To lighten things up a little bit. I mean, I've had the most crazy adventures and most fun, running things like Death Valley in the US, which is a really well known race that you probably know about. And our friend, David Goggins has done Dean Karnazes and in doing those events, where it's just been absolute highlights of my life to have those achievements.

So by the same token that you have these horrible things such happened to you, and you have to get through them, then you have these amazing experiences that were obviously challenging and hard and the discipline and all that sort of stuff that you learn along the way. But these are also life changing moments where you've achieved something, like Death Valley was a dream for 15 years of mine before I actually got there and got a slot in that race and had enough money to go.

And the boyfriend that left me in the Libyan desert, he'd cycled through Death Valley in the middle of summer. And so, he was always like, "A year, I cycled through Death Valley." And so