Can Discomfort Be the Key to a Better Life? With Ken Rideout

Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Cerenty. In a world built for comfort and convenience, what happens when we choose the heart of path could disgump for itself be the key to building resilience confidence and a more meaningful life. On today's episode Ken Rideout, endurance athlete, investor and author joins Dr. Radha Modegill to discuss his book, "Everything You Want is on the other side of hard." And why, deliberately embracing challenge, can we shape how we think, act and live? Let's join our host Dr. Radha Modegill now with more. Hello and welcome to Intelligence Squared with me, Dr. Radha Modegill. Our guest today is Ken Rideout, the fastest marathoner in the world, over 50, and a former prison guard, Wall Street trader and opioid addict. His life story has been chronicled in such publications as New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and outside. Since getting sober more than a decade ago, he has won some of the world's toughest races, including at the age of 52, the Gobey March, 155 miles self-supported race across the sweltering Gobey Desert in Mongolia. And a few months later, the master's 50+ marathon world championships. His new book, which we'll be discussing a theme of today, is "Everything You Want is on the other side of hard." Ken, welcome to the podcast. It's an absolute thrill to have you here. Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure. Now, I'm really excited to meet you in person because obviously I've read the book, and it is a fantastic memoir. It's inspirational. There are so many life lessons learned in there, about how to overcome obstacles and challenges. So honestly, I cannot wait to ask you questions about your book and to meet you in person. First of all, I guess I always wonder about what makes someone write a book. So what made you want to write this book and tell your story? That's a great question. There's a part of me that feels a bit narcissistic talking about myself in this story, but I do think that there's a lot of valuable lessons. And if nothing else, I think people should take inspiration in the fact that I think if I can do these things, then anyone can do them. Because for 10 years, I was basically a mediocre drug addict, slipping through the cracks of life. And when I started taking extreme responsibility for myself, and holding myself accountable, my life improved exponentially to the point where I'm here talking to you now. Yeah, absolutely. It's an incredible story. You've been through so many different things, which we've got to unpack in the next half an hour or so. But again, one of my real questions when I read this book was, what drives you or what drives you through all of those obstacles? Was it fair control to excel? What was it, do you think that drives you? Definitely a lot of fear and insecurity. I had spent so much time, I had wasted so much time wallowing in my addiction that when I finally got sober, I decided I wasn't going to do anything with half effort. I was going to go all in on everything that I did. And when I started behaving accordingly, everything in my life improved. And it started with just running, showing up and giving a 110% effort. And it carried over into every area of my life. Yeah. Now the book starts obviously with your childhood. And the years when you were growing up, which we're really challenging weren't they? Tell us about what happened during your childhood and how those events influenced you and your kind of path and journey forwards. Yeah, I grew up in a very hostile environment around drug addicts, crime. And I don't know, for my youngest, for my earliest memory, I just didn't feel like I belonged where I was living. All I could focus on was creating a life of organization and control where things weren't so quite hectic and out of control and chaotic. And which is interesting to then find myself wallowing in addiction years later, which again, what led to the journey to writing this book, because I figured I would either commit suicide or find a way to win. And that's how desperate I was at the time in my addiction that I figured suicide might be a viable option just to give you an idea of how deep in the depths of this depression and addiction I was. Yeah. And I think one of the things that really struck me about your childhood years was not just obviously the challenges, but also the impact of the trauma, because I think what you just said then around trying to find some organization amongst the chaos. I think a lot of us can relate to that in terms of trying to feel emotionally safe, trying to find our place, trying to find where we feel like we're sort of almost secluded or away from things are outside of our control. What do you think? What do you think those events? Do you think it was a particular turning point in your childhood or a few moments maybe where you suddenly realise actually I just want some emotional safety. This is something that I'm looking for. And that kind of turns things for you, turns things around for you. I wish that I had an easy answer and that I had some mentors in role models that were demonstrating to me the life that I wanted, but I didn't I just knew that I didn't want the life that I had. And to then be struggling with addiction, I was like, you know, I always tell people when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. And the addiction was basically digging the whole of trauma that I had that I was in from my childhood. It dug the whole deeper, but initially that's the thing about addiction is initially you think it's your salvation. And it's helping you cope with the trauma that you have unresolved. But really all it does is push the trauma down deeper and mask it in with this addiction. And now you also have an addiction issue to deal with on top of dealing with your unhealed trauma. Yeah. As you say, addiction is one of those things where it's also it's like a mechanism isn't it where we just try to almost escape from feeling things, come and know emotionally numb to what's been happening to us or having to deal with it because we haven't got the strategies maybe or we haven't had anyone around us to teach us these strategies to find healthier ways to manage our feelings. Did you did you find during obviously you broke out of that period in terms of those challenges during a childhood you found your way out? How did you do that? What happened next after after your childhood and growing up? How did you find your way out of that into a different phase if you like? Yeah. Well, when I was I met my wife and I was still struggling with addiction and she was kind of aware of but not not aware of the depths. And we decided that we were going to adopt a child. We were trying to have our own kids for three years. She went through seven rounds of in vitro fertilization, unsuccessful. She had three miscarriages. And the adoption just ended up becoming a coming before biological kids. And when we were matched with my daughter, I just said to myself, like, I cannot live like this with children in the house. Like, I haven't got to either fix this or I just can't go on living like this. And that was really the catalyst to get sober. I couldn't really do it for myself. I was having a hard time doing it for my wife, but as soon as the children came into the picture, I decided, okay, that's it. I've got to fix this right now. And essentially, I did. I went to an old patient detox facility in New York. They were giving me different medications to assist with the withdrawal symptoms. So they would give me riddle and to stay awake during the day. Xanax to go to sleep at night. I was just in a like on a drug cocktail trying to survive the week of withdrawals. And then once I got through a week of sobriety or withdrawal with off opioids, I could then get a shot of a drug called Dimitrol that was an opioid blocker. And that was basically like an insurance policy. You can't get high from those kind of drugs with. Vivitrol in your system. So once I had that and it was like a, like I said, an insurance policy, I then just started treating my mental and physical health as the top priority in my life, which it should be for everyone. Because without your, without your mental and physical health, you're really useless to everyone. So I literally just started running 10 miles every day, running and running. And I wasn't a very good runner. I would just, but I had incredible determination and willpower and discipline more than anything. The discipline of all the things that have been displayed in the course of my life is by far the most important element because, you know, if you have a life without discipline is makes you slave to your emotions like you wake up and you decide you don't feel like working out or you feel like eating terrible today or having a cheat day, that becomes a cheat week. And at least for me, one bad, one lapse in judgment can lead to like a few days of lapse. And then it becomes an addiction. And I just know that I have a very addictive personality. So I try to stay dialed in all the time. And then just my method and my lifestyle is for everyone. It's very intense. And it, but it works for me. I'm just trying to figure out, you know, a lot of times people will say to me, maybe you traded one addiction for the other. And I say, yeah, maybe that's true. But one addiction had me suicidal and one has me feeling proud of myself. >>ŵthude gwahan a phtwg i gwahanac >>ŵthude gwahan ac >>ŵthude theatre Cyrddo Jaycef, digio'r agioar regio'r ael unaetanaになi severeysig ni'n am phliel ei hygen o kittens Hello listedel yummy? – So, as the problem on how you talk to yourself is critically important. I always tell people, whatever you think about yourself, it's true. So if you have a higher opinion of yourself, that can be true by default. But the same time if you speak poorly to yourself with a lot of negative self-talk and have a negative self-view, they can be true too. You can control that. So I always tell people to focus on the positives, speak nicely to yourself, but give yourself a reason to talk nice, like be a disciplined person, that's free. Everything that I've accomplished in my life is free to anyone. You see, from reading the book, there's no secret formula. There's nothing like I did something so extraordinary that it's earth shattering, but what it did demonstrate was what discipline and hard work and determination can do for a very average person. I think you pick up on something really important there is the word discipline, because so often in my life, I'm passionate about understanding how we can make changes in our lives, how we can really turn things around if we want to, and what the secret to that is, how it's different for different people. For many years in my life, I was thinking, well, it's about belief, it's about believing yourself, but actually I'm coming to the conclusion more and more, and definitely from reading your book, that actually is about action and discipline and perseverance, is about those kind of doing words rather than just belief, because as you say, emotions and beliefs, they can come and go, they can fluctuate, they're not very solid. So I'm interested in that word discipline and action. For people listening or people who are about to read your book or have read your book, what would be your advice about how they can find more discipline or action to make something change in their life? What would you say to them? Yeah, well, I think that's a perfect segue into the title of the book, everything you want on the other side of hard, like you shouldn't expect discipline and all the things that I demonstrate in the book to be easy. None of it's easy, but if it was easy, every idiot would be doing it. This is hard for a reason. The fact that it's hard is what makes discipline so appealing, but again, it's readily available to anyone so you can either make excuses or you can find a way to win. And if I did this, anyone can do this. I spent 10 years as a daily drug user and I decided that I've had enough and I just, like I said, I wish there was an easy answer, but there's not. And again, that sort of makes these accomplishments appealing to others is the hard, but they're available to anyone. I think it's really overwhelming at the moment and people feeling really sort of strained, I think, in so many different ways. Knowing that, knowing that these are accessible, as you said before, three things, I think it's helpful because so much of that sometimes becomes intangible. I want to talk about your running now because obviously the very act of running and exercise, we know the science and the research behind it, we know why that works in terms of helping us feel better, all the kind of hormonal and chemical balance to that. And there's a different side to it as well, isn't there's the scientific sort of side of it and what's happening in our bodies. But I think it's also another layer which you talked about earlier, which is that sort of self trust that once you find something to do that helps you that makes you feel better, that you can focus on you almost, you almost kind of get this idea or this trust in yourself that no matter what life throws at you, you've got a strategy or you've got something to go to. And the control of that will help you feel better, is that how it was for you when you started running? Yeah, definitely. I mean, the running is, is, people ask me about a runner's eyes and I never feel so happy it's under run as when I'm finished. Getting that first win in the day, if nothing else happens today, I know that I've run 10 miles and I've been doing that for five years every single day, I've run about 4,000 miles a year, which is average 10.6 miles a day every day for five years with zero days missed. Usually I would miss it that I had a shoulder surgery, I missed a few days, they said enough to move it for four weeks, but after four days I was back to running 10 miles a day. Yeah, like I said earlier, the discipline will say three, like that's one last thing I think about is because I know I'm running no matter what, like I'm getting up and running and you know my wife, my children, there's a lot of people watching me, especially now with the book and social media. And I want the ability to demonstrate to people how to continue that again, if I can do this, anyone can do this, I have no special skills. And tell us about your incredible achievements as a runner and what some of those experiences were like. So, you know, I referenced in the introduction about you running the Goby March, what was that like and tell us mentally, I guess, how you would approach a challenge like that and how you sustained it because obviously that's an extreme, but I think for people listening, if they're facing a challenge in the world, and their own lives, some of those life lessons, I think, are really relatable and they could learn from. So tell us about that, tell us how you did that. Yeah, well, friend of mine told me he was doing the race about four or five weeks before it started, which isn't a lot of time to prepare. I mean, I had been running obviously every day, but it was incredibly challenging because I had never run with a backpack, I had never slept in a tent like I genuinely knew nothing about this sport. But, you know, it was an interesting challenge and I don't know why it spoke to me and challenged me, but it did and I started, I got all the gear that I needed. There was a ton of equipment to learn about and like anything else, I just jumped in with both feet, ordered the equipment that I thought I needed started experimenting with different packs running in Nashville and the school in the, you know, swaltering heat and I got up there completely unprepared. I arrived in wool on batar less than 24 hours before the race started, which was a huge mistake and I got smashed the first day. I came in like fourth and then the second day I came in second, but I fell down out like towards the end of the stage and broke my elbow open, ripped the backpacks wrap off. It was a catastrophe and after the third day, a woman who dropped out gave me her pack. So at least I had a bag to finish the race. And it's incredible. It's all of those practical things alongside the mental challenge of it. There are a lot of themes in this book and one of them that struck me, I think, was, was again about love, but also about leadership and about how I felt you was such a role model to your family. Tell us a bit more about how you see leadership and I guess who inspires you in terms of being a good, a good lead and how important is it? Yeah, I wish I had a spiritual leader or advisor or guru. I didn't really have any role models growing up. I just knew I needed to I wanted to be different. And you know, now with wife and children, especially my children are 10, 12, 14, and 15, like they watch everything that I do. I always tell people your kids will hear some of what you tell them, but they'll see everything you show them. And it's just a little bit more interesting to them daily discipline and being a leader to me, the same thing I say about the children, I say about everything is like just demonstrate with through your own behavior, how things should be done and you'll be shocked at how many people will follow you and believing you. It's not winning, no one wants to come and celebrate with you. It's like chicken in the egg. So yeah, we all want to be celebrated and recognize, but you have to go out and like, oil and darkness and anonymity on your own for a long time before anyone cares outside of your family. But really important mantra, I think is when or die trying in the book. Were you always like a highly competitive person, or are you competing with yourself? Always competing with myself. I mean, I'm highly competitive with others too, but not like I am with myself. And in terms of, I mean, that's an incredible thing to have in terms of like always competing with myself. I've always wanted to improve, always wanted to get better. But what happens then when things don't go so well when you fail? And there are times in this book when you have failed when things haven't gone so well. How do you deal with failure? And what's the role of failure? I think, you know, how do we deal with that in life? And the first time I qualified for the Iron Man in Hawaii, I got there and I had spent so much time trying to qualify to get into the race that I forgot that I actually had to show up in good shape and finish the race. And I got out on the run and I quit for no reason other than it was this come it was uncomfortable. And I walked back to get my bike feeling like a complete failure and a loser. And I was a little bit more comfortable to myself that I would never give up on myself again and I would never feel like this again because I would almost rather be dead than feel the way I did. And I'm that definitely fueled a lot of the wins that I've had since then. But without going through those failures and having losses and setbacks, it's hard to learn very much about yourself. Yeah. And you have been through the book. You've gone through many, many difficult times, many challenges and obstacles. There's someone quite extreme. In terms of your addiction, there's quite a number of references to you relapsing and then recovering again. There's a long journey, which I appreciated because I think sometimes when we talk about addiction, it sometimes dealt with in a quite superficial way. And people think it's a linear course. But you really, I think, explore that in your book, that the realistic journey of addiction, how important is that to get out there for people who might need that advice or support, or not to feel so alone, potentially with relaps. Yeah. Listen, most people go through relapses when you're that deep in addiction. It's hard to just like very few people have a perfect story where they're like, I quit using drugs on this date. And now I've been sober for, you know, 18 months. Like it's great when they do. And I love it. And I wish I could do it. But it just isn't that easy of what I would caution anyone is like in hearing these stories, your the overriding theme should be like, don't get started in the first place. This is the loser's journey. Like this is not fun. And I wouldn't wish this on anyone. But you also have to show yourself some grace, but you also have to give me discipline and honest with yourself. Like there's no real excuses. You either doing it or you're not doing it. And what would you say to people who potentially are struggling with addiction? He might be listening. What would be your kind of top bit of advice for them? Listen, I again, I wish that I could tell you everything you want to hear. But like if you're suffering with a physical addiction like opioid, you should know like you're going through a week or two weeks of life very difficult to today's and dark days. But there's only one way out of the flames and that's through them. And like I said, I wish that I could tell you things were going to be easy and there won't be a challenge. But that would be naive. It strikes me that your part of your recovery was the people around you, your family and friends and people who were there to support you who actually helped you maintain that journey. Would that be right? Yeah, well, I've always like suffered in silence and darkness. So I didn't really confide in many people about my addiction until it was like behind me. But I, yeah, I mean, like in life, the only person you can absolutely count on is yourself. But if you can't get sober for yourself, it's going to be very hard to do it for someone else. So you really have to like have a come to Jesus moment of understanding like there's only one, there's one person got me into this jam and there's only person that's getting one only one person getting me out of this jam and that's me. Through the book, something which really struck me was how very self-aware you are of what's happening. Maybe that's something that's come now. Afters of many years of kind of reflection, I don't know if it was present at the time. But also that how, how aware you are of your own coping mechanisms and how you deal with that. My one question I guess to you is, you've come overcome so many different challenges. Have you got any obstacles still left to overcome? Yeah, I would say being a good husband and a good dad is not something that is I think easy. I wish it was. But it definitely takes a lot of work because you know, one thing I tell my wife all the time is like, we're, we each have our own life. We didn't sign up to like give our existence away to our children to each other. So it's important that we have our own individual things in life running happens to be mine, but that she has her own things. But at the end of the day that we're all to work until it's a common goal and lifting each other up and yeah, trying to be a good husband and a good dad. It is an easier times, you know, like life's happening. The kids are leaving stuff all over the house and they're 10, 12, 14, 15 and I'm like, who will have this milk out? Get all you have to stuff. You know, my wife will be like, you know, when I'm yelling that the kids are like, hey, you know he's five, right? So that's something that I'm definitely working on as being a better dad and a better husband. I'm sure you're already a fantastic one and I'm sure the role model in you're giving your children, especially through this book, have your children read the book? Yeah, they've all read it. Yeah, and what's their feedback then? They had lots of questions about drugs, but it was good because I said, look, this hopefully this paints a picture of how ugly drugs really are and scares you from doing them. They love it though, like that's the greatest gift in the world is watching my children feel proud of me amongst their friends, you know, like for a long time, my daughter, especially, would be like, you guys can drop me right here. I said, you don't want your friends to see us drop you off. Are you crazy? We're the coolest parents in town and she's like, yeah, stop. You know, it's just it's funny because you do you have children? In that know, not yet. No. Okay, because when you have children, you always think like, oh, that my kids are going to be like this like that. You think you're going to get what you get and you don't get upset. They're like, it is a mystery. My kids are so different. They're all kind and a lot nicer little kids, but they are so wildly different academically, socially. It's crazy. Yeah, like a chocolate box. You don't know what you're going to get. It's going to be good. Exactly. Exactly. Yes, you hope. Absolutely. Absolutely. You you you you end the book really powerfully, actually. And I think this is probably one of the most important things that I took away from the book was that you sort of reflected on the all kind of obstacles and challenges that you've been through, but really powerfully you right then to, but you come back to you as a little boy. And you say that you'd like to have given that little boy everything that they needed at the time and you'd like to say to them, actually, it's not going to be easy, but there is, you know, that once you come over these obstacles, there is something else on the other side. How important you think it is for us to still think of ourselves, even though we're adults, sometimes as that kind of inner child and to kind of talk to ourselves and give ourselves what we need or perhaps what we didn't have or we weren't given when we were little. I think it's important, especially if you had some success in your life and you've overcome some obstacles to acknowledge those things, if they're important to celebrate your wins, show yourself some grace and be kind to yourself because, you know, a lot of times we talk to ourselves in ways we would never talk to our friends or enemies, you know, we have very harsh on ourselves and and I still am, but I also try to make time to recognize like, wow, I did this like with the book. I've been working on it so long that when I see it, I'm like, there's my book, but I, the truth is I need to like look at it and like, holy shit, I did this. Wow, look at it. It's like, this is real. But that I do that with a lot of things. If I win a marathon or I win a big race, my first instinct and I hate that this is it, but I always think like, oh, I wasn't very competitive. The best runner is born here and that's just not nice. So often, I think we are our own worst enemies, aren't we? We're the obstacle to ourselves, ironically. But once we tap into that and we see that, we can start changing it like you've been talking about, like you write back in your book and that is so powerful, that's the answer to everything. And it's funny isn't it? In the world, we live in people concentrate on mastering this and mastering that, but they don't necessarily focus so much on mastering ourselves when that is the basis of everything and every good thing that comes from life. And I think your book illustrates that so so beautifully. Do you ever think back to that teenager or that little boy, all that person who was addicted and think, God, I don't recognise that person. Sometimes there are phases in our life when we almost feel like, was that me or was that another person? Um, yeah, it's, when I reflect back on my life, I'm like, a lot of this stuff is just so surreal. Like, I just can't believe that I've created the life that I've, that I've dreamed of and it hasn't, it hasn't always been easy, but in a lot of ways, it's a survival story, right? I'm like moving from one chapter to the other and I'm just trying to figure it out as I go. And I know that when, when I look at things as a whole, it looks impressive as an entire journey. But it's like, when I started running, I didn't think I was going to win marathons. I thought, if I can just run every day this week, that will be, I can't get high and run. So let me focus all my energy on running. And it was like the universe rewarded me by making me a good runner. And it was like the hotter I worked, the luckier I got with the running. And you know, that's what I, I hope that people when they, when they read the book, recognize that all the good things that you want in your life are going to come with the struggle. Like it's not easy to be a doctor. It's not easy to start a podcast like anyone can do it. And there's a million of them. How do you break through all the noise? Like it's going to be hard. But it's, it sounds cliche, but everything that you want is going to be hard. If it wasn't hard, you probably wouldn't waste your time wanting or desiring it. That's true. And so true. And you find out so much about yourself through that difficulty, don't you? You really find out who you are, who around you is there for you when you need them. And I think that, again, that brings me back to kind of my final point. I think the really, really powerful thing about your book is the level of authenticity, truthfulness, how candid you are, because I know my job as a doctor and talking to people who are going through struggles, the most powerful thing that we can do is to support someone to not feel alone. And your authenticity that comes out so beautifully in this book really makes you, when you're reading it, really makes you feel like you are not on your own, like you understand. And it's very, people sharing more and more these days of their lives, but your book really, really, is so authentic. You can feel the feelings that you're describing. You can almost visualize the situations you're in. And I think that really strikes through for me as the reader. So thank you for that. It was absolutely beautiful to read. My last question for you is probably when you get asked a lot, but I'm still going to ask it, because I think it's a helpful question. What is the one lesson or the one thing that you want people to take away from your book? Why-- I asked you at the beginning, why you wrote this book. Now I'm going to ask you what you want people to take away from it. I hope that people take away from this that discipliners the answer to everything. Discipline is what really sets you free. Live in the life of discipline, take any stream responsibility for your own mental and physical health. Your mental and physical health is your number one responsibility. No one is going to come tell you what to eat, whether you should exercise. Do you know what to do? Stop making excuses and just do the work, because there's no shortcuts in life. The easy road never pays well. The difficult road is where all the magic happens. And while the stairway to heaven can feel like hell, and the stairway to hell can feel like heaven until you reach your destination, so it's everything you want is the things that you are worth work for are very hard. But you should condition your mind to be comfortably uncomfortable and be comfortable with challenges and be comfortable with discomfort. And you'll never know freedom like a disciplined person because it all starts and ends with discipline. That's so beautiful. I love that. Thank you so much. Ken has been out. See, fantastic to talk to you. I want to thank you for a fascinating conversation. The book again is everything you want is on the other side of hard. And it's available now at your local bookshop. I'm Dr. Roderard Mudgill, and you've been listening to Intelligent Squared. Thanks for listening to Intelligent Squared. This episode was produced by Connor Boyle, and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full editor recordings, become a member at IntelligentSquared.com/membership. And to join us at future live events, you can find our full events program and buy tickets over at IntelligentSquared.com/attend. You've been listening to Intelligent Squared. Thanks for joining us. [MUSIC PLAYING]