Diana Nyad // Fifth time's a charm - on failure, fearlessness and finding a way

along the way. Well, today's is a guest who I'd count as one of my favorite speakers of all time, who I was lucky enough to hear from on Sir Richard Branson's Necker Island during our incredible troupe with Business Chicks in twenty nineteen. I've been hoping to share this amazing woman's infectious enthusiasm, energetic storytelling, and mind blowing stories since that moment nearly two years ago now, and I'm so so excited to finally share her with you now.

Diana and Iad was probably always destined to be a legendary swimmer, with her surname meaning water nymph in Greek mythology, which I know because it was the name of one of my houses in high school. With many achievements in competitive swimming over her lifetime, it was an idea that hit her at nine years old to swim from Cuba

to Florida that never left her. Starting from twenty ten, Diana began the enormous quest to swim over fifty hours solo through freezing, shark and chellyfish infested waters, making not one, not two, but five attempts before successfully covering the one hundred and eighty kilometers and get this at sixty four years old, As Hillary Clinton puts it perfectly, when you're facing big challenges in your life, you can simply think about Diana and nearly anything else seems doable by comparison.

Before we jump in, I just wanted to throw a very big shout out to Emma Isaacs and the Business Chicks team again for continually creating invaluable, unfigettable experiences for so many of us and making some of the world's most fascinating and inspiring people like Diana accessible to its members. If you aren't already a member, I can't recommend anything more highly for seizing your yeas 'll pop a link in the show notes. I hope you are as invigorated and inspired by this one as I am and plays

excuse a little bit scratchy the audio than usual. The tech boys got us good, but in true Diana fashion, we pressed on. Oh Diana, it is so lovely to see you again.

this tomorrow, I could. I could live in one of those barracks. My wife could too. But what has really given me power with the money I have and the success I've had, is that I can call anybody in the world. If I call the Pope tomorrow, he will return my call. And that is what power is. If you can have influencers believe in what you believe in, and help you toward your making a better world. That's what I value, not all these beautiful, expensive things, you know.

And I was really impressed by that, and I really believe it.

what you need to be striving for. And I think it was good for us all to see that.

you have to get real. Seventy two is not thirty two, and I think that your goals broaden out to include other people and include the world at large. When you're younger, you you know, you could, you could be absurd and take it to an infant. You know what an infant's life is all about. You know what milk can I get? What hugs can I get? It's all about me, me, me, of course. And then as you get older, you start looking outside yourself, and I think maybe Richard has achieved that.

I know in my life I've been going that direction.

I took away was getting to hear you speak. It was something that It's funny you mentioned that you don't feel like you could compare yourself to Richard, I absolutely think that you could, particularly because for people like myself, you suspend the concept of age in a really beautiful way that you don't see very often in a society that often sees aging as a bad thing. You seem to have only kept getting more and more vital as time has gone on, which is why I'm so excited

to share your story. But I love to start every episode by asking people what the most down to earth thing and relatable thing is about them, because I do think we often put people in a pedestal or our media and perceived social media identities can be bit glossy, and particularly with successes like yours. Knowing also that one of the other recent podcasts you've been on was Hillary Clinton's Podcast of All Peoples, I definitely put you on

a pedestal. But what would you say is the most relatable thing about you?

of the diet. But I've been hearing, not that I even have put it out there far and wide, you know, in terms of Facebook and all that, but I've been hearing from you know, all my friends and family from FUM, far and wide, and they know what a what a dog's love, what an animal's love is, and it's you know, we're lucky. We have love of any sort. You have love of a spouse or you know, love of a parent or a child, but it's just different. It's not to compare, but that nonverbal loyal every day. And so

I've been looking for him. You know, it's only the second day and I'm looking, Teddy, where are you come back? Let me love you? Let me love you again? So, you know, talk about something that's not super superhuman. Millions of us feel it. I don't know if you ever heard the quote, but it goes the best defense of atheism is that if there were a god, our animals would live the same lifespan we do, instead of every twelve fourteen sixteen years going through the devastating depth of

a family member that's so cherished in your heart. But it's just not the case. I've gone through it before and that didn't make this time any easier. So, you know, talk about a relatable human experience, that's my latest one, and it's it's profound.

again and again it was gone the radio. That John Denver song came, which says, come let me love you, Come love me again, and I cried another rivera too. You know I could have said to you today, I'm just not up to it, but we need to. He's taught me. He's gone and I can cry, and I'm sure I will for many days to come. I'll miss him forever, but I need to. I need to live a life, and he was a great professor of every day.

see my dog through the twilight of his life. Instead of calling the dog sitter and hearing how his legs were failing or how he's doing, I observed him and cuddled him. And I do think it extended his life and equality not just a time frame. Listen, people died through COVID. They're still dying. People couldn't go to the hospital to say goodbye to their family and their friends. People lost their businesses, people crumbled financially. So I was lucky,

one of the lucky ones. You know. Nothing devastating happened to me. But I will say that it was a positive life experience COVID for me in that because of being home, I had some sort of what you might call everyday life values, eating dinner with Bonnie every night instead of eating in some airport and being my teddy every day and every night for the last year and aur so from one of the few, maybe you could say that I was grateful for the epidemic in a way.

Don't let me sound my selfish, little dog moment.

we love that are wonderful opportunities. But it does mean sometimes you're going so quickly your emotions don't have time to catch up with you that you just can't appreciate those.

of my life. The very first section is your way Ta, which is basically explaining and going through all of the different chapters from very young Diana to now, because I think people often walk into your life at this chapter knowing how clear of purpose you are and what you know, what your values are, and how much direction you have about everything you do. And assume that you arrived there one day and you just knew what you know, what

you were meant to do on this earth. But I don't think it happens that way, and it definitely doesn't happen in a straight line like most people assume. So take us back to very young Diana, what were you like as a kid? I mean, I feel like the fact that your surname is also a water nymph in Greek mythology is actually pretty damn cool.

we could do more as the older person. But you know, life is meant to be learned as you learn it. So I can't take you know, this supposed wisdom I have at seventy one, Almo, let's call it seventy two or just a month shy. And by the way, Americans, better than anyone in the world, hold on to our ages. I'm not seventy two. It's for twelve more out, don't go seventy two. I'm not seventy two. But anyway, I'm

almost seventy two, So let's just call it that. How in the world would that twenty year old have fifty years of heartache and growing up and and becoming a you know, having perspective on the rest of the world, I'll woutch you. How can I give that wisdom to that twenty year old? It's just it's just absurd. So I just want to throw that in first and say that, you know, I guess as a young person, and I like to think, Sarah, one of the privileges of my

life has been travel. I sometimes I can pick up the globe and I say, you know, it's not like I've lived everywhere, surely, but I've almost been everywhere. I've been to all the countries on the continent of Africa, same South America, all the cities in Western Europe, just about everywhere, Antarctica, et cetera. And one thing I find is that, yes, people have talents depending on what your

culture appreciates. People have luck depending on you know, your birthright and some circumstances, you know, as you move through life. But I do think that the seven billion people on the planet today, let's say a caveat almost half don't even have enough water to drink every day. But of the three and a half billion, like you and me, you and I, I should say you have some choices and have been you know, we could say fortunate in a lot of ways. I think that basically we're all

the same. We want to be part of a community that we help each other in. We want to live and love and dance and eat and drink. And you know, I don't care whether you're wearing a three thousand dollars pin striped suit or a you're in a hut, you know, in the Masai tribe in Kenya, those particular facets, the basics of human life are there. So I don't consider

myself special at all. I think I am one of three and a half billion or are lucky enough to make some choices and to have clean water every day. But one thing that might have been a little different for me as a child, and I really don't know where it came from. I didn't have a parent who sat me down with this, or I didn't read some book where I got this, or see some movie where

this was something that came to me. But most kids, of course, if you're under let's say age ten, they're not focused on, you know, when they're going to be eighteen. They can't even imagine being eleven, so they're very much just waking up and eating their cereal and running around and petting their dog and doing what they do. But for some reason, I had a pressure. I felt the pressure of the ticking clock when I was very young,

and I felt it every single day. I was in fifth grade, so I was ten years old, that's our grade system, and the teacher said we should write an essay about what you want to do for the rest of your life, and almost all the kids were, well, I want to be a firefighter, I want to be a doctor, I want to blah blah blah. And my essay was all about the desperate passage of time. I said, And I didn't get to know my grandparents, but I understand that they live to be into their early or

mid eighties, all of them. That means I only have seventy years don't live. I've got to get busy. I've already wasted the first ten. I gotta get busy. So something about me is driven to go to sleep every night where I've whether I've done something for myself or my dog or the world at large, with no regrets. I don't want to go through this life and look back and say, why didn't I. Why wasn't I, you know,

Why couldn't I? You know? And it's true, like I said, I can't make my twenty year old self know what I know now. But I bet you I was doing the best I could with whatever skills I had at the age of twenty, whatever mentors I didn't have at the age of twenty. And I try to go to bed every night just like that ten year old me did, saying wow, I just couldn't have done any more, or with that day, Let's get a little sleep and get up and do it again. You know, I think that

really sums up I can tell you. Oh I started swimming man, and I was living by the ocean, and that's why I'm sort of involved with it all that. There are all those details, but I think the basic, you know, sort of life value that I got somehow, don't know how early, don't waste it, don't look back at any of it with any regrets.

what will come. But again I think you do. You have to learn all those things going forward, which means that at any one chapter in my life, even if I didn't go on and do all of those things forever, like my legal career didn't stay in that forever, I never think of it as a waste because it got me the knowledge that I needed to get to the

next step. And I think what the way we perceive success today does is makes things look linear, like here is where I am now, there is where I want to be, There is success, happiness, I'll be happy when I get there, which means no one's ever actually happy and fulfilled because they're never there. That yardstick just keeps moving out and out and out, rather than just finding little chapters along the way that are your exact fulfillment in that moment, Which is what I love about you.

Because even in the water which you did jump in, I think you started swimming seriously at seven and then have been in the water ever since. There have been different versions of that. There was an Olympic attempt, then there was marathon swimming, then there was a hiatus completely after thirty where you stop professional swimming, and even within one career or life path, there's been so many different iterations of what that looks like, which again I don't

think people give themselves permission to do. They think we've got to find out purpose and stick with it forever. But it's evolving all the time. So can you talk us through that current.

it's not always easy. It's not always like, you know, there's some clear, well defined world record or you know, the book that you've got to write, whatever it is. But what I say to people is, and you know, people have said it in more politic ways that I'll come up with, but Gertez said it is there's a there's a magic in beginning things. And I truly believe

that you don't need to finish everything you begin. You don't want to quit quickly, you know, you don't want to just give a little try and if it doesn't work for you, you know, you don't get up and get knocked down again and try again. But if it really isn't your dream, if you're just if you're suffering from you know, not being able to take a step in any direction, take a step in some direction, just say, you know, I think I think I'll pursue a degree

in that in philosophy. I've always been interested. I don't know what I'm gonna do with it. What am I going to do make a living? That's a philosopher, you know, But at least you know it interests it stirs me.

And then you go, because you said, sick of sitting around doing nothing, hoping that a white night is going to ride through your horse and grab you up and show you the way to you know where you should go, you take a step toward that degree and you find out maybe after a year you say it wasn't a waste of time, it was worthwhile. Reading Nietzschee and Cure

of Guard but it's not the real need. But while I was taking that step, I had a vision and other things came to me, And in reading Cure of Guard, I decided, you know, what I really want to do is sail around the world. That's what I really want to do. I want to be in a sailboat and be poor and catch fish every day, and I want to sail around the world and see the whole world by the ocean. I'm making all this up and I'm just saying, take a step somewhere, and there's no shame

in not finishing that avenue. Now, if it's really a dream of yours and it's deep in your soul and heart, and you're on your way and you've taken the steps, but you've gotten knocked down and you can't get there. Now, I say, you don't give up, You get back up, you take the more steps, you get knocked down again, And if you really have it in your resolve, deep in your soul, but that's where you want to go, that's what you want to do. Now, you don't give up.

That wasn't just a well I don't know what to do. I'll take a couple of steps this way. If it doesn't work out, I'll take a couple of steps that way. I started a PhD in my twenties in comparative literature. Really my book that I was reading French and German novels all day and discussing them. My mother would say, well, that's great. How are you going to make a living, you know, reading French novels. But I was in this pursuit and I swam around Manhattan Island in the middle

of that degree. It became a big deal, and all of a sudden, I had a different vision and wanted to go for Cuba and wanted to be a sports announcer, and so I let that degree behind me. Has that bothered me my whole life. I've been saying, I've got to finish that PhD in compareative literature. I can't be unsuccessful. No, I don't care about it. But it was worthwhile. It's worth a few steps I took toward that PhD and I left it behind and something else bubbled up that

was more the real me. So you know, there are sort of two factions I'm talking about. If you don't know what to do and you don't have a dream in mind, do something don't just sit around hoping it'll come to you. But if you have a big dream and you want to have a child, you know something, really that's going to take all your life to dedicate

yourself to. Now you stick with it, you go and that child becomes your priority and you live it and no matter how tough it is, you get to the other side with that child.

But I love the caveat that if it turns out not to be what you want, there is no shame in not finishing something that doesn't serve you anymore. Because finding out that you don't like something, I think is just as valuable as finding out what you do like. Because it's still a step closer to the thing that you do want to do. So given that you did have this big calling to do this gigantic, enormous swim and passion enough to get you through five attempts of

what is, I can only imagine how. I can't even imagine how grueling it must have been. And I've already heard the story, but it gives me goosebumps every time, knowing that that was your goal.

which I did. It was called endocarditis. It's not the end of the world, but I was three months in strict lay down bed rest, and that was in the middle of my sprint swimming teenage career, and so yes, I lost some muscle, I lost some speed. But the truth is I wasn't one of the best swimmers in the world. I wasn't one of the top sprinters in the United States. I didn't know as a teenager that my talent was swimming powerful miles over the curvature of

the earth. I thought swimming was swimming in a fifty meter pool, fast as you could from end to end. You know. So I can't ever say it's been written about me that I would have maybe could have made the sixtieth Olympic team. It's not true. I wasn't in that elite category. No, I wasn't. But I found out after, you know, high school ended and sprint swimming ended. I did my best to try to make it to the trials, not the team, just to the trials of the sixty Olympics.

Didn't make it there, and I didn't know about marathon swimming. I went on to life. I was going to college, and then I went to graduate school and a friend of mine said, you know, you know, there's this sport called marathon swimming. I've seen you. I was just swimming labs for exercise in the Columbia University pool and he said, my god, you got this beautiful gliding perfect. So you

know that the Earth is four fifth water? Do you know that people all over the world stand on shores and a gun goes off and they raise each other did the other side of the lake or the ocean or the river? And why don't you do that? It's a sport. Why aren't you in that sport? And so I joined that sport. But it wasn't a big dream of my little Now I will say that the Cuba swim was a big dream of mine. I was nine

years old living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. If those of you from you know, from down under, don't know, it's very close to Miami. And in nineteen fifty nine the Cuban Revolution happened. Fidel Castro came in to you know, some people say, to save Cuba and turn it from a third world country into a second world country so that people could have medicine and education. There are a whole bunch of other Cubans who will say he came in to be a despot and took over. So that's

for all you to decide. But nevertheless, thousands of Cubans had twenty four hours to leave if they didn't want to live under the Fidel Castro regime. They came to my home town and overnight all my friends were Cuban. We were eating Cuban food, we were dancing salsa, and we were flying the Cuban flag. And I became, like many people, obsessed with the mystique of this forbidden island right off our shores. And one day I was on the beach. I was nine years old with my French mother,

who spoke with a very thick accent. My father also spoke with a thick accent. So that's right there. That's a lot of fun at home when you can't understand either of your parents. And I said to my mom, Mom, I was already a little swimmer, you know, I said, Mom, I know Cuba's out there. Where is it? I can't see it? And she lived up Jones. She said, well is this way? No, no, no, it's well this way over there.

EU's oceans. To a swimmer. There are a lot of great swims, you know in Tasmania and you know off Cairns and the English Channel and all over, but the Cuba swim has been called the Mount Everest of the earthsoceans. So that always, even before I became a marathon swimmer in my twenties, was always kind of somehow fluttering around back here.

take down a little bit of fuel and stuff. But you are in the water and moving for that entire fifty two hours fifty four minutes. But my team knows that that's the tip of the iceberg. Not only did we have four previous attempts, each one about as long as that one, fifty one hours this time, forty eight hours, another time, you know, going in the wrong direction, Sharks and jellyfish bothering us, and I never gave up. But mother nature was too big on the other four times.

And as soon as we knew we couldn't make it, the navigator, Bonnie, my head handler and head of the expedition, the shark divers, all of the main crew, I come and tread water now near the boat. They tell me that we were far far off course, that the storm that went through blew us to the east and we

couldn't make land. Well, then just like if you are on Mount Everest and one hundred mile an hour wind comes up, you don't You're not in a position of well, my will will overcome one hundred mile an hour wind. You save your life and you start going down and you say, it just wasn't our day. We're going to

have to come back another day. So that's what happened on the four previous attempts, one way back in the seventies when I was young, in my twenties, and the other three attempts were later in my sixties when I went back to chase his dream again. But really even more, that's what our team knows. That's where Bonnie lived with me and John Bartlett and Navigator, all of the core team.

Wasn't really those attempts because once you're on the attempt, you're adrenaline going, You're you're in the you're in the big dance. So there isn't a problem with your resolution and with your you know, your ability to overtake pain. But what about the training? And isn't this true of all athletes, I should say, of everybody you know. You see when Roger Federer has gone to the grass and Wimbledon and cried when he's won, and I'm so afraid we may never see him win again or at that

stage of his career. But what an elegant, beautiful champion. But when he's gone to his knees on the grass of Wimbledon and cried, it isn't because of that match. It's because nobody knows, like him and his team, what he's gone through, how many hundreds of thousands of backhands down the line of you know, long grueling, you know practices well, marathons, swimming. I respect all sports. I'm not sure there's a more grueling sport in terms of lonely hours.

You know, just you've got a tight cap on, you've got bogged over goggles. You don't hear anything, you don't see anything. So I would go out early in the season. If I were going to be doing the swim in the summer, i'd go out in November December, and in the Caribbean swim ten hours one day. I'm not in shape for that yet, I'm that night, I'm in the feeble position and the shower floor. I can't even get

up for dinner. But the next day I get up and I do eleven hours and the next day, I get up and I do twelve hours and by the by the end of the training swim before heading to Key West and getting ready to sequester to get over to Cuba. When the weather looks right, we're doing sixteen, eighteen and twenty four hours swims. I mean, just you know, in even in the world of a marathon swimming, it's extreme.

So that's honestly. When I reached that shore finally, of course there was a relief, there was a joy in the victory and to share it with my team. But honestly, Sarah, more than anything, what I was filled with was I never slept in if it was two am and we were doing a fourteen hour swim and I had to get up to start eating and stretching and get ready, I never said not today, I don't feel like it, you know. I never said, just give me one more hour sleep, let's let's start a little bit later. I

got up at two am every single time. And that's what I remember. When I had that beach, I said, you did it. You refused to do it in any way less than what it would take to get across this ocean. So that was that was the fuel of it and the fire of it.

you know, people always laugh about. I had Samantha Whill's on the podcast recently, who made it from you know, a Bondai market making bead a jewelry on her dining table to on the Sex and the City Cars j LO. Like her jewelry was everywhere from this little Australian business. She's like, yeah, it took me twelve years to become an overnight success, Like that's what it got referred to as. And she's like, no, no, there is no overnight success.

Just the narrative that gets pushed out there later is only the achievement, not what it took to get there.

gratification just a little bit ago. There are young people now and you know, everything is quick by the Internet and social media and whatnot. Who say I'm going to be that jeweler, I'm going to make millions of dollars. I'm doing jewelry in my own own But they don't know what the discipline and the vision and the teamwork and you know, and the failures that are that are going to take to get there. And you know they're going to be disappointed when they find out that it

does not come quickly. I can't think of any success story that truly was overnight. I can't think of one.

the thing that they've waited for their whole life. Is that like, my relationship to failure has changed a lot as well, because I think you once would see it as a stop sign, but it's just a speed bump on the way to refining and tweaking to trying again.

And everything we do you know, it's not worthwhile unless we reach the final destination, or are we engaged in the journey and we are thirsty for all the life living and the life lessons that come of traveling that journey. And that's what all those you know, Greek stories were about. So yes, I was okay with people saying, oh, the

third attempt and she failed. Oh the fourth attempt she failed again, because you know, if you want to just put it in kind of black and white terms, I didn't make it to the shore of Florida where I said I was aiming to go to. But the life experience of those four attempts when we didn't make it that were, so to speak, failures, were rich, rich journeys that all of us on that team we were involved

with with deep friendship and trust in each other. We were on a steep learning curve each time every expedition on Mother Earth comes home, you know, with new scientific data and new tech elements to learn with new ways to tap into the human spirit and to work together as a team. So we were growing and we were adventuring. And there wasn't one person on that team who I don't think wouldn't have gone back for a sixth and a seventh. Not one of them ever paid a dime,

no money. They were giving time off, taking time away from their families, their businesses, but they were involved in history. They were involved in the grandest adventure of their lives, you know, Sarah. I went to a school in New York City when it was over, the fifth successful one, and it was a great thing. There were eight hundred kids in the school and they decided to take their entire school year. The teachers did and using the Cuba

swim as the basis for their studies. So whether it was biology or writing, or music or art, it was all about the Cuba swim. So I was so honored. And they had a big assembly and there was one kid from each grade, first grade through eighth grade who had been chosen to come up to take the microphone and asked me a question. The third grader was named Joaquin, and he was adorable. He had his shirt buttoned up

like this and his hair was parted perfectly. And he came up and he said, well, miss nad my question is if you didn't make it on the fifth time, would you have tried again? And I said, Waki, do you know what the word moot means? Moot? And he said no. So an eighth grade girl came up and she gave the definition of moot is that that question is just it's not pertinent anymore because you did make it, so it's hard to imagine that you didn't make it.

And so I explained to him what went and he said, okay, well, but still would you have tried again make it? I said, Joaqui, let's say yes. Let's say I would have tried to the end of my life to try to make that swim because I had it so deep, you know, in my I saw to make it.

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And I think it's quite an adjustment for a lot of people when they do achieve a milestone that was for so long such a big part of their life, because then you sort of have to readjust well, like now what I'm here?

nominated four times for Best Astress Oscar. So wouldn't it be a little bit of magic fairy dust if she went on her fifth time the way I made it on my fifth time? So this is this is one great actress when you look at her body of work and she's really engaged and engrossed in my life and in the part. And they're casting Bonnie's part. Now it's a very big actress also, but we're not supposed to say who because the deal hasn't been made yet and so if it falls through, it's not right to mention her.

But it's a big actress, and you know, it's not often as a matter of fact, I don't know the history of cinema. You don't see two women as the heroic leads. You know, women are always involved in what like Film and Louise, which is way before your time. But it was a big two actresses, you know, and it was a terrific movie. It was entertaining, but it was really about two women who men had done them wrong and this was their movie to get back at them.

It was all about, you know, their relationship with the men. And in this movie, it's not a lesbian movie. Bonnie and I are you know, not in that relationship or

not playing that role in this movie. It's just two women who happen to be doing something very strong and very you know, undeniable in terms of strength, and the men on our team so so strong themselves and knowledgeable, just fell right in with us, like we were the two leaders and we respected everybody, but the men, you know, we're listening to us and following what we wanted to do and the way we wanted to do it. And I think it's a It's an important message and one

that isn't out there often. Well.

These directors, Jimmy and Chai are smart. They're engrossed there and they're in love with nature and the majesty of the ocean is going to be one of the characters. And so yes, this is their first film working with actors, but they're super smart. They know what they're doing, and they actually they're in big demand right now for all kinds of feature films, but ours will be there first. So we've got a terrific team, the producers, the directors, and you know, I'll tell you a funny story. Is

that a friend of mine in the movie business. I said, Gail, you know I'm something of an actor. I performed in an off Broadway show. I've been standing on stage for forty years singing.

people go to movies for, to see movies stars. So naive of me the thing that I would be the star in this movie, I'd happily watching that.

But there was that feeling I mentioned before, swimming over the curvature of the earth and walking, you know, the human being was meant to walk. You know, it's only been recently one hundred years ago, with the advent of the car, that we stopped being the big planet walkers that we were meant to be. And a lot of people think that a lot of our immune diseases and whatnot have come about because we're not walkers anymore. We

they say, sitting is the new smoking. So yes, there are people clearly who are extreme and they're out playing rugby and they're running ultra marathons. Well that's a whole different small group, and pay for them. But the average person, you know, every day could get out and walk a lousy little mile. Just walk. So Bonnie and I started this initiative called Everwalk, and we mean ever by every day, every every day for the rest of your life. Everybody,

children up to old old people. Just get out and walk. Get to know your neighbors, give a wave, get to know your you know the plants and the trees and the lending libraries in your neighborhood. Go walk and get your newspaper instead of getting in your car and driving everywhere. So you know, it's a pretty big goal to take America a car culture and turn it into a walking culture. But that's our goal is to get as many people as we can, not just here. We have Aussies walking

with us at everwalk dot com, an app Everwalk. Well, Ousi's are starting to join us. We have a nature club and a photography club and a book club and all that. And under Everwalk there's a new initiative called oceans Commit and thank you for leading that for me, Oceanscommit dot com. And it's because of my immersion, my my falling in love with this blue planet. I became an awe of it. And look at what's happened, look at the plastic pollution of our magnificent seas, and we

can do something about it. You don't have to be an activist and end your life for it, but you could reduce single use plastic. Every one of us could. It's been two years now since I used a little small plastic water model. I can put water in a in some other kind of you know, container and never use that plast So am I completely dedicating my life to no plastic at all? No, it's not easy to do. I have garbage bags still that I put out on the street once a week from my own garbage butt.

I'm doing my little part. And Oceans Commit. We just want people to go on there and commit to reducing single use plastic in your lives, and we will do walking events that promote, you know, the reduction of single use plastic. So ever, Walk and Oceans Commit are tethered together.

can find it on everwalk dot com and oceans. Commit to join us virtually from wherever you are.

Intermali for Australians to go in there. So we've missed it every time we've done Turkey, Jordan, Israel like all so close around the region and have never made it four times four times, so maybe the lucky fifth.

or pleasure or joy that isn't productive. That's the waste of time that you allow yourself to indulge in. That's just for pure joy. Because I think even if you love your job, you never want to get to the end of your life and think, Wow, I worked and I died and I really wish that I had less fun. I don't think anyone has wished that they had a

less good time while that were here. So outside of work and speaking gigs and podcasts and writing and speaking, you know, what are the things you do just for your joy?

are a source of inspiration and peace and joy. So sometimes at midnight, of course Teddy's no longer with me, but sometimes at midnight Bonnie and I have taken our dogs down to the ocean. Yes, it's part to get them exercise, but it's mostly for us to hear that sound of the waves rolling in. To look out at the horizon. I think it's important not to just be

looking at a screen that's right up against you. As part of whatever walk is to get out, look up at the blue sky, look at the beautiful trees around you. Even if you don't see the ocean, and you can really see to all the way to the horizon, you can look farther than the walls of your home. So I think that one of the joys that I get is every day I'm either out walking or I get to the ocean and I have a vision that's farther than the computer screen and the walls of my home.

You know, it sort of expands. It's a horizon that expands my horizons.

much colder and much less smooth than this. I will never you say you're not special, but I refuse to believe that.

for that final time with no regrets. Well, people have said in different ways, tempest, future, you know all that stuff. But I was in Rwanda. Bonnie and I went to get a chance to climb with the gorillas a few years ago, and we had a wonderful young man who was a guide. He was a teenager. He's nineteen years old, but he was super smart and caring and he had all perspective about life, and he was so curious about our lives and what life was like outside of Rwanda.

We said to him, what do you want to do? You know, if you weren't a guide here, if you're going to do this for the next sixty years, and do this for all your life or are there other things you want to do? What do you want to do in the future? And he said no, no, no, no, no, tomorrow is not ours. And I thought, same thing as saying seize the day or seize the age, the same thing, but it was such a beautiful twist on English words.

Tomorrow is not ours. So it's fine a dream. We need to look forward and to plan and to envision what we've got. But the truth is that tomorrow isn't yours. Today is yours. Today is the day you're living and you'll never get to live it again. So don't waste your time spending too much time thinking about yesterday, even though you need to break it down a little bit, figure out your mistakes, or remember your teddy dog so

that the memories are with you, you know. Spend a little time in the future so you're sort of excited you, but really live today, seize the day, seize the ya, and say to yourself, tomorrow it is not ours. So I just I love that expression.

like reverse happiness culture shock. I went in thinking, oh, I'm first, well, like, how am I going to, you know, beat this delicate situation? And I saw, instead of feeling intense gratitude for what we have, which of course is one level of thing, the opposite that they were far happier, with very little, unburdened joy, breaking into song, children playing with a leaf for twelve hours, then us back home having all these things and just wanting more and being

consumed by more. And it just was the first time I'd separated success and happiness. I was like, they're not the same, they don't equal each other. They're totally different pursuits. But I've been conflating them as one, and then wondering why I've got this deep seated anxiety, wondering what I'm doing and what my purpose is making other people wealthy and having no legacy. It was and it was in Rwanda.

successful life. And a lot of people of great success I know are absolutely miserable. They haven't known love, they don't know much laughter, even though they won all the awards and got all the money. And I've seen plenty of that, and I've seen poor people like you have all around the world. There are people, many actually tribes people in Kenya, in both the Kakuu and the Masai tribe, who get educated. They go to Nairobi, they go to London afterwards and they study, they go back to live

the tribal life. Partly to help that tribe with medicine and other things, but partly because they enjoy life more living like that rather than in the penthouse in London. There are stories that way, you.