172: 60 Days ALONE in Antarctica — What He Discovered Will Shock You – POE

In November 2024, Akshay Nanavati set out to do what no one had ever attempted before…

He wanted to complete the world’s first unsupported, solo, 2,750km coast-to-coast ski crossing of Antarctica without any dogs or kites. To do this, he would need to drag a sled with a starting weight of 420 pounds from start to finish. The goal? To explore the hidden treasures of the human soul—treasures that can only be found in the depths of solitude and suffering. He wanted to push the boundaries of what’s possible and share the wisdom found on the other side.

His attempt was ultimately cut short due to a life-threatening infection, but not before he covered 500 miles in 60 days. In this gripping episode of Beyond A Million, Akshay recounts the journey: the intense physical and mental preparation, raising $1.1 million, spending two months in complete isolation, and confronting the unrelenting monotony of Antarctica. We also dive into how his background as a Marine, a recovering addict, and author of Fearvana shaped the philosophy that fuels his relentless drive.

Tune in!

Inspiring Quotes

• “It wasn’t the suffering in and of itself that I sought. Suffering is the door. It’s the means, not the purpose. The purpose is transcendence, the spiritual journey that suffering gives you access to.” – Akshay Nanavati
• “Joining the Marines taught me the beauty of going to war with the self.” – Akshay Nanavati
• “I learned how to suffer not just for my own higher self, but for the good of the group.” – Akshay Nanavati
• “True peace is about avoiding resisting or clinging to either side, but embracing and actually exploring both edges as a path to your next evolution.” – Akshay Nanavati
• “We’re all trapped within our own constraints, within our own prison. We don’t even know what’s on the other side of those bars. We’re not even aware there are bars. To escape that prison, to free your mind into a new paradigm, go play somewhere where you’ve never played before.” – Akshay Nanavati
• “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.” – Akshay Nanavati

• 00:00:00 Intro
• 00:01:29 500-mile solo trek across Antarctica 
• 00:09:15 The power of endurance training
• 00:16:04 The impact of joining the Marines 
• 00:20:04 Substance abuse and endurance sports
• 00:22:49 The role of stillness and reflection in endurance sports
• 00:29:41 Business lessons in endurance sports 
• 00:31:13 Voluntary vs. involuntary suffering 
• 00:37:49 Establishing beliefs 
• 00:45:16 Magic and mysticism 
• 00:51:24 The most difficult thing Akshay has done in his life
• 00:55:18 Raising a million dollars 
• 01:05:44 Fearvana 
• 01:13:56 Outro

Brad Weimert 0:00
How do you poop in Antarctica?

Akshay Nanavati 0:02
Uncomfortably, I hit rock bottom from drinking heavily, battling PTSD depression. Was on the verge of suicide one morning, after five days of binge drinking, liters of vodka, woke up and I was about to slip my wrist.

Brad Weimert 0:14
You dragged a 400 pound sled across 500 miles of Antarctica.

Akshay Nanavati 0:18
I did. Not only has this never been done before. It’s never even been attempted before. So it was the first person in order to even attempt this journey. It’s the last remaining feed in Antarctica that hasn’t been done. I’ve lost two fingers to frostbite from my previous expedition Antarctica. So are those? Both your middle fingers? Those? No, this. It wasn’t the suffering, in and of itself that I was seeking. Suffering is the door. It’s the means. It’s not the purpose. The purpose is that transcendence, the spiritual journey that suffering gives you access to.

Brad Weimert 0:44
Congrats on getting beyond a million. What got you here won’t always get you there. This is a podcast for entrepreneurs who want to reach beyond their seven figure business and scale to eight, nine and even 10 figures. I’m Brad weimert, and as the founder of easy pay direct I have had the privilege to work with more than 30,000 businesses, allowing me to see the data behind what some of the most successful companies on the planet are doing differently. Join me each week as I dig in with experts in sales, marketing, operations, technology and wealth building, and you’ll learn some of the specific tools, tactics and strategies that are working today in those multi million eight, nine and 10 figure businesses, life can get exciting beyond a million. Akshay, nanabonti, thank you so much for showing up, man, thank you so much for having me, brother. Appreciate you. US Marine during Iraq, you’ve done some crazy ultra marathons. You’ve done these crazy pitch black retreats by yourself. Most recently, you dragged a 400 pound sled across about 500 miles of Antarctica. I have a lot of questions around this stuff and also your business. The first is, how do you poop in Antarctica?

Akshay Nanavati 1:51
Uncomfortably? Well, one of the things I had this expedition that I’d learned from a Poller a friend of mine, is a poop hole in my tent. So before I’ve been on other expeditions where it’s howling hurricane force winds and you have to go outside, and I clearly am one who embraces suffering, but that just sucked. That was not fun. So now what I’ve done is I have a poop hole on my tent where one side is is sewn in, the other three are velcroed. So when the wind is howling outside, I just open the flap, dig a hole in the snow and can poop away from all the wind, funnily enough, my that was my second date of my wife. I told her to come to the house, and I was like, Hey, you want to draw out a poop hole in my tent with me. She had never done that before, strangely, but pooping in a tent, especially when the wind was howling, and I would hear the tent, it sounds like a washing machine in there, I would just be smiling, like, this is awesome. I’m so glad I don’t have to go outside.

Brad Weimert 2:43
So because you had the experience of the shittiness before, exactly, it was actually delightful. It

Akshay Nanavati 2:50
was unbelievable to have not have to be outside in the wind. Do

Brad Weimert 2:53
you do you carry it out? No, just dig a hole there, leave the poop

Unknown Speaker 2:58
there. Yeah, that’s nice. So I

Brad Weimert 3:02
have a lot of questions about Antarctica in general. Yeah, let’s start with why you chose to do it. So the drivers for this stuff, I mean, I fundamentally think with a lot of people that are that go after sort of crazy endurance expeditions or just adventure expeditions, one, there’s probably something wrong with them

Unknown Speaker 3:20
mentally, 100%

Brad Weimert 3:24
a lot of the time, there seems to be this simplistic answer of like, I just wanted to see if I could do it. Did you have some deeper motivator to cross Antarctica or attempt to

Akshay Nanavati 3:32
I did the there was a for me, it was a very spiritual journey. So on a practical level, what I was attempting to do was to be the first person ever to do a coast to coast crossing of Antarctica with no dogs, no kites. Not only has this never been done before, it’s never even been attempted before. So I was the first person in order to even attempt this journey that is borderline impossible. And after doing it, at least starting from that end of Antarctica, I do believe it is impossible. So that was the practical reason was to do the coast to coast crossing. But more importantly for me, this journey is a very spiritual one. When you go into the depths of that kind of solitude, that kind of hardship and the most hostile, unforgiving land, no life is out there, except for penguins in one corner of Antarctica. But most of Antarctica has no life. You get to tap into the depths of the human soul in a way that you can’t in this world. It’s away from decadence, away from distractions, it sheds the mask, it reveals the human spirit and the limitless capacity of that human spirit to transcend and endure through unforgivable hardship and extreme situations. And I go out there to you know you you have to battle the biggest dragon to unearth the biggest treasure. And so I was looking for that biggest dragon I could find to see what treasures I would discover about humanity, about the soul, about the human experience.

Brad Weimert 4:47
Okay, so I want to ask about kind of that element of it. But before I do, you mentioned being the first person to attempt to cross coast to coast. And you said, No dogs, no sleds. First. Is that different from unaided, unsupported?

Akshay Nanavati 5:03
So unsupported means one you’re having no food drops, yep. So dragging all your I was dragging all my food, which is why my sled weight 420, pounds at the slot at the start, 115, days worth of food and fuel, as opposed to doing few food drops, cashes elsewhere. And the other part is not using any support in terms of, there’s one part of Antarctica that has what’s called a spot road, and it’s essentially a paved out, flattened surface on Antarctica. And so that would, that would be considered supported because it’s because it’s paved out. So when it’s not paved out, the terrain in Antarctica can be quite challenging. Sure, there’s these forces, there’s these phenomenon called sustrugi, which are wind swept formations of snow that can be quite challenging, to say the least, to navigate, not to mention you have to then deal with soft snow. There’s a lot of challenging on the elements of the terrain, if you’re not using any kind of external support. Yeah.

Brad Weimert 5:54
So I only know about this because Colin O’Brien is a friend of mine who’s been on the show, got it, who did a crossing? Yeah, fairly certain. He did access those roads, and he did use those roads through the path, and that might violate an Explorer’s definition of unsupported what is the difference from the attempt between what Colin did and what you were attempting to do? A few things.

Akshay Nanavati 6:16
So one what he did is he traversed the land mass. So it wasn’t a full coast to coast crossing of Antarctica. It was just traversing the land mass, and again, not to take away, it’s still, it was still 150 spends any extended time in solo in Antarctica. It’s no small feat. It is extremely challenging. So that was one. It wasn’t a full crossing of Antarctica. Two, as you mentioned, about half the journey was on the spot road. So that is not an unsupported journey. It’s just a it’s a different kind because, and not only does the spot road flatten out, it also has flag markers every few 100 feet, so you don’t actually have to navigate. You can just follow the flag markers. That was, that was the second and the third one was the distance he had covered. Had been covered before. So Henry Worsley, Alexander Gamay, there was a few other adventures that had covered that had covered that distance, the distance I was attempting to cover had never been covered before, and it was the coast to coast crossing. So borghe Ausland, legendary Norwegian explorer. He was the first man ever to do a full coast to coast crossing of Antarctica. And when he did it, it had never been done before. So the goal was simply to do it. And he used a small kite for parts of the journey, because, again, it had never been done. What I was attempting to do was a style evolution off that like anything, right? The first man to reach the South Pole, the goal is just to get there, and then style evolutions happen after that. Feat has been pioneered. So I was very humbly following in Borges footsteps to attempt to full coast to coast, without that any without any wind power, without kites. But that was the those three elements were the distinction between what Colin did and what I was attempting

Brad Weimert 7:40
to do. Awesome. That’s helpful. Yeah, as a, you know, as a buddy of Collins, I, I was sort of saddened to see people shit talking his expedition, because it’s like it without question. I think it was 56 days alone, yeah, 954 miles, right? Pulling a 350 pound sled behind him, yeah? Which, like you said, no small feat. It’s no no, it’s definitely no small thing. And so I think that the catalyst, as you just pointed out, is the definition, but like, of how it was presented, or how it was marketed, yeah, against, you know, the critique of the people that are trying to do firsts, yeah?

Akshay Nanavati 8:18
That was, that was some issue with that in the polar

Brad Weimert 8:22
world, in the polar world, right, right, right, yeah, I can’t even, I can’t even imagine, how did, how do you train to pull a 420, pound sled?

Akshay Nanavati 8:32
The primary form of training force for polar expeditions is tire dragging. So I live in Arizona, and I would drag these very heavy truck tires sometimes in 125 degrees, because Arizona gets hot just around parks, and just do that for hours and hours and hours on end. My wife and I, two days after getting married, we also went to Alaska for three months, and one of my friends has a cabin right on a frozen lake up there. So we just spent three months training up there. And I got to a point I was dragging up to 530 pounds because I wanted to drag more than I would be dragging in Antarctica, and would just do that almost every day for three months in Alaska. And when I wasn’t in snow, it was tire dragging and doing hiking strength training on top of that as well. But you mentioned the darkness retreat, that was more for the mental training. Yeah, spending twice I did a darkness retreat, yeah, I want

Brad Weimert 9:15
to dig into that separately, because that there are there. There are a bunch of different elements to endurance. I think, to me, I think about three elements of endurance. It’s the mental game, yeah, the physical training, and then the food, right, the fuel, and how you handle those three things relative to the physical I think that, like there, there are a couple things that I find super valuable in life, in general. About endurance training that apply to lots of different things. One of them is sort of the cyclical nature of it, so you have to recover at some point after you do something really ridiculous, yeah. And, and you lose your base when you do that, yeah. And, so how do you ramp up to get there? Where was your base? When you started training for Antarctica, and how much were you pulling a tire around the park?

Akshay Nanavati 10:05
So I had been doing outdoor sports for decades, since joining the Marines, in 2004 got into every outdoor sports you can possibly think of, and in the 2012 I did a coast to coast crossing of Greenland. So it was dragging 190 pound sled for 350 miles across the world’s second largest heist gap. That was my first venture into a big polar expedition. It was one month out there, and I had some rocky moments after that. I hit rock bottom from drinking heavily, battling PTSD depression. Was on the verge of suicide. One morning, after five days of binge drinking liters of vodka, woke up and I was about to slip my wrists. That was my moment that began the climb out of the bit the abyss that got me back into endurance sports. So I got an ultra running started getting back into mountain climbing. But the thing that draws me to polar travel over all others is it. It is not as dangerous as others other outdoor sports like mountaineering or when I used to free solo up rock walls, nothing like Alex hon hole level, but still free soloing, you know, and not nearly as dangerous, but it is far more mental and physical suffering, far more and that’s what drew me back to polar travel, what is far more the polar expedition. The reason being is so when you’re on a mountain, as you’re going up and down the mountain, it’s different. It’s more dynamic. The terrain is different every day. The views are different. On a mountain, you can fall off the mountain. So that’s much more dangerous, like I’ve done some mountaineering, even when I was on Denali a few years ago. At 16,000 feet, there’s a thin ridge line, one foot in front of the other, and 1000 foot drop on each side. So your mind’s not wandering. Your mind’s right there in front of you. The environment pushes you into flow to a certain degree. Whereas in polar travel, especially in Antarctica or even Greenland, it’s flat, white nothingness. There were mountains for part of the journey, but most of it is flat white nothingness. So there’s no stimuli to engage you. It’s just flat. So obviously it’s not dangerous in that sense. I mean, even my expedition where I was at there was no crevasses, so there was not significant danger. It’s not nearly as dangerous as people think. Now again, it is hostile. I’ve lost two fingers to frostbite from a previous expedition Antarctica. So are those both your middle fingers? Those? No, this. This one is a funny one. Whenever I show that one exactly, but that’s what drew me back to it was that, and it wasn’t the suffering in and of itself that I was seeking. It’s suffering is the door. It’s the means. It’s not the purpose. The purpose is that transcendence, the spiritual journey that suffering gives you access to. So what drew me to this particular journey is it’s the last remaining feat in Antarctica that hasn’t been done, and that was appealing to see how far you could push the mind, push the spirit, on something that, like I said, not only hadn’t been done, had never even been attempted. And to raise, we had to raise $1.1 million from scratch for this. So it had there had never even been put together a logistical plan for an expedition of this magnitude. So even while we were raising money, there was a point we were told it’s going to be about 750 k. So we’re like, all right, 750 K is the target. We hit 690 7k so we’re on the home stretch, almost done. And then the quote went up to 1.1 million. And it’s not anybody’s fault. There’s a company called ale Antarctic logistics and expeditions. They’re the one that’s the ones that manage expeditions for adventurers in Antarctica, yeah. And so they had never put together a logistical plan. And so even they were kind of, oh, you know, figuring out that, oh, it’s going to cost a little bit more.

Brad Weimert 13:14
So Ale, yeah. I have a million questions. I’m just going to go all over the Yeah. So this stuff, to me, as you know, a lot of what I talk about on beyond a million is business focused. This stuff, to me, both the fundraising and the logistical side of it, is so relevant to building any company, any business, and then you throw in the additional elements of you have to be fucking training the whole time that was so you’re physically wrecked while you’re doing this the whole time. And the nature of going through the ramp and endurance is that you’re always pushing yourself a little bit past your baseline because you’re trying to elevate your baseline. Yeah, right. So routinely, you’re literally going past what you’re comfortable with, so that you are pushing it right, so you’re growing very much. So so I like talking about all this ale. How is that structured? Is ale a US organization, as a global organization? Because Antarctica’s got some weird dynamics around ownership, right?

Akshay Nanavati 14:09
So ale is you their primary, primary office is in Salt Lake City, and then they have another one in the UK, I believe. So they’re primarily American based, and I don’t know the ins and outs of how it works, because, to your point, Antarctica does have as an Antarctic Treaty, and so to get a permit for an adventurer to go there, I don’t know exactly how it works, because ale handles it. That’s part of the cost, beyond the logistical elements of managing expeditions in Antarctica. Part of it is they take care of the permits for adventurers to go there, so anybody can go. It just costs money. And if you had your own resources, theoretically, you could just land up in the coast of Antarctica. And there was one adventurer who did that, to some controversy, but he just took his boat, landed on the coast of Antarctica, ski to the other side, got picked up by spoke and went off.

Brad Weimert 14:53
I don’t even know how you do that, because I guess there are, there are places that you can get on the land mass by boat. Boat.

Akshay Nanavati 15:00
You get a sailboat, and there are, I mean, there are parts where there’s a monster ice shelf, right? But I guess you’d have to find a place that has relatively easy access to kind of hop off onto the land at the right time of year too, because if you go in Antarctic winter, there’s going to be sea ice all all around the continent, which is horrifically dangerous. Exactly. Yeah. Familiar that Shackleton, of course. Yeah. So the

Brad Weimert 15:24
book is endurance for Ernest Shackleton, for those that have not read it’s a story. It is an epic story, like it is. It’s an unbelievable read, even if you don’t read like listen to it something there really should be a movie. I

Akshay Nanavati 15:36
completely agree. And even even if you’re not into adventure in the Marines, we actually read it as a testament to Epic leadership. Oh, yeah, every man, he brought every man back alive to do that in the most unforgiving environment on Earth. And he had to endure an Antarctic winter. And ridiculous. No

Brad Weimert 15:50
Gore Tex, no synthetic material. They’re in a fucking rolling leather, you know. And they were there for, I think they were there for two years. It

Akshay Nanavati 15:58
was, yeah, yeah. Well, it was unreal, insane, how he brought everybody back alive. And it’s just such

Brad Weimert 16:04
a great story eating seals and so awesome. Okay, so Antarctica, let’s, let’s talk about that chapter, and then I want to go back and talk about, kind of, some of the structural wise. Because sure, you went into this with the intention of the endurance feat, but the mental side of it, and sort of the serenity that you would find through it, or the, you know, deepening that you would get through it, actually, before we get to the Antarctica thing, when did that part of it start because it there had to be some moment in life, or some divergent path that led you to seek, you know, a deepening understanding of yourself, or wanting that meditative experience. Did you start with endurance stuff, just pushing yourself because you had to or wanted to? Or was it the Marine Corps that started

Akshay Nanavati 16:52
it? It was first joining the Marines that taught me the beauty of going to war with the self, to find, to see what you’d find when you do that, because before joining the Marines in high school, here in Austin, actually, I struggled with a lot of drugs, did a lot of drugs, alcohol, lost two friends to addiction, very self destructive. You can still see these scars on my arm from cutting myself, burning myself, and was heading down a path of self destruction. Lost two friends to addiction, but the movie Black Hawk Down. Have you seen that movie? That movie was a trigger that changed my life, specifically watching that scene when Gary Gordon and Randy sugar, they volunteered to go on the ground, not knowing when reinforcements that arrive, and they died protecting Michael Durant, and they received the Medal of Honor posthumously for what they did, knowing that, you know that they could die. The odds were pretty high, but they volunteered to protect their man, but he’s alive because of what they did. And that just touched my soul. Touched my soul, the level of courage to do that, and almost overnight, stopped doing drugs, decided to join the Marines, and that was when I first tasted real hardship and real suffering. I grew up in a middle class upbringing, no real suffering. My parents are great. Parents couldn’t have been blessed with a really a better life. Born in India, moved around good life, but Marines, I learned how to suffer. I learned how to suffer for not just your own Higher Self, but for the good of the group and the Marines. Nobody cares about your well being. It’s about the good of the men and the mission. The men and the mission matter more than you do. And to experience all of that, that’s when I got into outdoor sports after joining the Marines, and then it slowly ramped up. Living here in Austin, I got into rock climbing, mountain biking, which led to ice climbing, a mountaineering and kind of every outdoor sport you can think

Brad Weimert 18:26
of. Yeah, that makes sense. Um, so the Greenland crossing, 2011 2012 12 was that the first one where you were after sort of this mental solitude and pressure through endurance.

Akshay Nanavati 18:40
When I did the Greenland crossing. I wasn’t aware of this at the time, but now I know I was doing it to escape my demons. I had come back from the war in oh eight I went to get my Masters in Journalism because I wanted to go back to war as a combat journalist. I just wanted to go back to the intensity of that raw experience where all the masks are shed suffering. Does that it war, for example, it reveals humanity at its absolute worst. People do horrific things to each other, but it also reveals humanity at its best, people like Michael Durant, people like Gary Gordon, Randy sugar at sacrifice in their lives for another. And so when you’re in these very intense experiences, it sheds the mass that we put on in civilization. And so I wanted to go back when that didn’t happen. Ice Greenland was an experience, to go back to the intensity of such a raw experience. And so today, I still do these things, but it’s from a very different level of consciousness. But that’s why I went in, not for spiritual seeking, just to run away. And when I came back from Greenland, and there was no other means to run away, not the finance, financial means to go back on expeditions, not going back to war, no external structure imposed upon me. That’s when my demon started to rise, and one day of drinking would lead to two to three to four to five, until I hit that rock bottom moment, and then after that is when I started getting back into endurance sports, but as a means of seeking that spiritual. Enlightenment, those spiritual awakenings, as opposed to running away. I

Brad Weimert 20:04
think what I heard was endurance was a replacement for drugs. Absolutely. Do you believe that you have an addiction to endurance now? Now

Akshay Nanavati 20:15
I do it with a much higher level of consciousness, and it’s balanced out. See, back then, I used to do just one hard thing after the next, after the next, after the next. Today, one of my core mantras is stretch and reflect. So after playing on an edge, I come back and pause and I reflect on it. I be with it. I experience it fully. It’s also led to a fundamental realization that I believe to be the deepest spiritual truth. And this is not something I created. Buddhism talks about non dualism, but the concept I term is called a paradox of oneness. And what this is is the realization that the human experience is filled with opposites, life and death, light and dark, pain and pleasure, ego, humility, masculine, feminine, so on and so forth. And the paradox of oneness is the realization that they are not truly separate, but they are two expressions of the same whole. And it’s the conceptual mind that creates division and that creates unnecessary suffering to create true freedom, true peace is about avoiding resisting or clinging to either side, but embracing and actually exploring both edges as a path to your next evolution. So why I say that is it’s no longer an addiction, because I balance it out when I play on one edge, I’m always looking at any point in my life for an edge that causes me friction, and I’ll go play on the other edge of it, so I don’t leap off into the abyss. And it’s that same addictive tendencies driving me as a very concrete example, I shared this story recently. It was many years ago when I first got into running, and I was running really, really hard. I was running once, and I saw this sign that said 5k Fun Run, and I had visceral disgust at the idea of a fun run. You shouldn’t run for fun. Every run has to be an exercise in suffering. And if you’re not suffering, you’re fucking wrong, you know. And but that wasn’t a healthy way to live. I was bringing suffering in all areas of my life, because I got so comfortable with playing on the edge of suffering. And so this concept started to develop. It’s actually what led to my book fearvana. That’s what this represents. It’s fear and Nirvana, two seemingly contradictory ideas that are, in fact, complimentary, and that fear is not an antithesis to Nirvana. It’s an access point to Nirvana. So I started playing on the edge of joy, doing light, playful things, and not only did it up level my life and feel more bliss in the day to day content of this human experience. It also gave me better tools and weapons to fight my way through pain when I put myself in pain voluntarily. So that’s how I know today. It is not an addiction. It’s seeking from a place of peace, from Curiosity, seeking that next moment of Satori, which in Buddhism, is the awakening, a moment of pure oneness, which I have experienced on the darkness in Antarctica, pure oneness with all that is, and that’s what I seek. I don’t

Brad Weimert 22:49
think I’m alone in this sentiment, but I am afraid when I am pushing really hard and driving, I am afraid that if I let up, I won’t be able to get back there again. How do you reconcile that idea, and how do you with with high level performance? And how do you jump all the way out to play and, you know, light experience, and then dive immediately back into

Akshay Nanavati 23:19
that intensity? Great question for me, the play that I’m doing, to be clear, also, on one thing, it’s not that I’m doing this for months on end of just fucking off, you know, it’s a light experience. Like, for example, I went to retreat once, and during every break, they would do light, playful things like dancing and hula hoops. I would be more comfortable doing 100 burpees in the corner than that shit, you know. But by going on that edge doing it, yeah, you can, you seem like a person who can relate. But you do when you do it from a level of consciousness that you know, it’s only going to make you better at your craft. Because all of us, you me, anybody else, we don’t know what we don’t know. And if you stay within your lens of reality, you’re only going to keep getting a more of what you’ve gotten. And the fact of the matter is, what got you here, won’t get you there. We’re all seeking an up level of, a new level of evolution, spiritually, mentally, financially, in business, whatever it may be. And so even on business right, to get from zero to 1 million, as you know better than I do, is different than getting from one to 10 and so on and so forth. So to up level, to look for gaps of what you no longer know, that’s why you play. So I’m not doing it as a means to escape the craft, escape the path. I’m doing it as a purpose to evolve at that craft. And from that lens, it becomes very different. Even stillness. There’s often, to your point of somebody who is a high achiever thinks, I don’t want to be still, but stillness is very is not the same as doing nothing. No, it is very, very different. And when you seek stillness. I was just speaking with a very successful entrepreneur last weekend who is unbelievable. His ability to produce output in in a very small period of time is unreal, but he’s so scared of stillness. And what I was encouraging is it’s the duality play on the other edge. If you go and look, you don’t have to go spend 10 days in darkness. Us that’s admittedly an extreme way to seek out stillness, but it will up level you at a way that you cannot possibly fathom from this paradigm of your reality. We’re all trapped within our own constraints, within our old prison. We don’t even know what’s on the other side of those bars. We’re not even there aware that there’s bars, right? We’re fish and water. And so to escape that prison, to free your mind into a new paradigm. Go play somewhere where you’ve never played before.

Brad Weimert 25:23
I like, I mean, I like that approach. I think that one of the constructs that I have fought in my life is this notion of balance. And I don’t like the idea of balance. I completely agree. I feel like, when I am not doing the thing that I want to be doing, and I’m driving towards I’m abandoning it, yeah, to do something else for the sake of balance. And I think that the word I like to use is alignment. I love it. And your words just now were, if you approach it from a different lens and look at fun and play in a way that is aligned with your outcome or objective that you’re already after. It can aid you in it, but it also makes you feel better about doing it exactly.

Akshay Nanavati 26:06
And to me, there’s also two ways, two ways to approach balance. One way is the more conventional work life balance, and it’s the middle path, and that is not for the obsessives. It’s just not like you said, I with you. The other ways to go play extremely hard on every edge. Because if you think of it like a scale, right, imagine a scale two sides. They’re even if you put, let’s say, 10 pounds on each scale, there’s now even the other way to approach balance is put 10 pounds on this side, zero on here. And over time you put 10 pounds on this side, but over time they equal out. So you go play as hard as humanly possible on the other edge. And in that you find, like you said, more alignment, I would say harmony. I too, don’t like the word balance, and it gives you better tools at your craft. That’s why I think, in my experience, you know, I’ve spoken at stages all over the world, and the number one thing people are scared of is stillness. Carl Jung said, people will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own soul and sometimes even the positive things we do, like working, like working out, or, in my case, at the time, going to Greenland, that was very positive. People invited me to speak. It was a beautiful thing, better than drinking, of course, right? But I was doing it simply to escape until I sat still with myself, found greater peace, became better at my craft, at pursuing an edge, whatever that edge may be, but also found more joy in the human experience. And that’s why I think stillness is is an avenue. It’s opening a door that you might not have opened before, and it’ll allow you to go deeper into the soul and find something that will make not only life more fulfilling, but make you better at your craft.

Brad Weimert 27:36
I think a lot of the time. I mean, I certainly know lots of people, myself included, at times where or who hear things around stillness or meditation or spirituality, and they immediately go into the clouds and they’re like, Yeah, that’s fucking Woo. Woo bullshit. Like, yeah, whatever, yeah. But the pragmatic approach to how it can be applied to the rest of life in business, I think, is super relevant. I heard you quote Carl young, actually, this morning in prep for this around self reflection. And do you remember the quote that I’m thinking, one of

Akshay Nanavati 28:09
my favorites, that I’ve probably said a lot, is, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate. Yes, and that’s the value of stillness. Is making the unconscious, conscious, yes, that was otherwise, we’re all slaves to a past that we didn’t control. Yeah.

Brad Weimert 28:24
And I think that for anybody that is, you know, thinks this is woo, woo bullshit, I think that that that is a great bridge into the Yeah, the realization that if you’re not aware of it, and you don’t actually take the time to reflect on that, you’re just going to miss things, and you’re going to be pulled in some direction unconsciously, yeah? And that’s horribly problematic, yeah, for people that think that they’re being objective and assessing life and driving themselves, because you’re not driving yourself unless you have self awareness Exactly,

Akshay Nanavati 28:53
yeah. And ultimately, you know, look, you do? You everybody, there’s no sort of right way. It’s it’s about doing it from a place of true freedom and giving you greater peace. And I’m all about going obsessive into a craft now that I’m back from Antarctica, going ham into the business, and I’ll build it into something monstrous. I have zero doubt about that, because I love the pursuit, I love the obsession, I love the struggle, I love the grind. But that’s the value in stillness, is you’re doing it from a place of greater freedom, and you’re also opening doors. You’re finding the gaps that you weren’t even aware you’re there. That’s why I love that quote. I’ve said that said that a lot. I think it really summarizes the value in a practical way, to your point of doing that work, as opposed to something Woo and and arbitrary that ultimately doesn’t I’m not saying go do 100 Ayahuasca journeys in the next week, right? Right. Go do something and then apply it and take action and suffer Well, suffer better for your craft. What

Brad Weimert 29:41
do you think is a direct lesson you’ve gotten from endurance that applies to business? It’s

Akshay Nanavati 29:49
one, the ability to suffer immensely for the result you’re seeking, that’s for sure. But bringing it back into the now, you know, in business, there’s multiple complex problems, and that’s a different. Challenge than in running ultra marathon, where it’s really just putting the one step in front of the other, but the principle of bringing it back into the now. So being very systematic about problem solving. You know, in business, there’ll be multiple but All right, one problem at a time. Ultimately, all growth is two things, and this was a learning from endurance sports. It’s find what’s working and do more of it. Find the problem, fix the problem. And that’s the same lesson I’ve applied in business, right? One problem at a time, I’m going to be very systematic about finding it, fixing it, moving on to the next one, moving on to the next one, and focusing on the presence. So even whether it be in business or endorsing sport, I have a target. I have a mission. But once I’m in the arena, once I’m moving forward, that mission doesn’t live on the front of my mind because it can’t in Antarctica, it would have broken my soul if I on day one, I was like, fuck, I got to do 100 more days of this shit. You know? It was incredibly hard, unforgivingly hard. And it’s the same thing in business when you’re suffering, when you’re going through those low moments, and it’s not working out, the result doesn’t play off the way you want. What do you do? You bring it back into the now, what’s that one problem? And that’s the essence of spirituality, too, right? Pure presence and that I learned through endurance sports that has given me the ability to apply, not just in business, but in my relationship in life, of being very clear and systematic about solving one problem at a time.

Brad Weimert 31:13
Yeah, recently, I heard somebody say that the difference between camping and being homeless is choice, but functionally it’s the same. Yeah, right, yeah. So what do you think you learn from voluntary suffering, suffering that you don’t learn from involuntary suffering,

Akshay Nanavati 31:34
tremendous gratitude it gives you, because when you are voluntary suffering, it there’s a realization, or at least, if not, there should be a realization that you get to do this, it is a luxury to get to choose your own suffering. I’ve been to war. I’ve volunteered in post conflict zones. I’ve worked with survivors of sex trafficking, former child soldiers, seen people in the darkest corners of hell. They don’t have the ability to choose their own suffering. They’re forced into it, thrust into it. And I’ve experienced a bit of that myself through through life, but the gratitude you feel when you’re thrust into voluntary suffering that you pushed yourself into remembering that I got to do this. I get to do this. I chose to do this. That is an opportunity, that is a luxury, and it builds that muscle. In Latin, there’s a phrase called amor Fauci, which is love fate, and it trains you to handle suffering that life will throw on you when you didn’t seek it. That’s the key. It’s training. It’s mental weapons, mental tools. You know, I’ve developed tools over years and decades of playing on the edge to navigate the pain cave. You can actually, anybody listening can get it for free on fearvana.com, 25 different weapons to mental navigate the pain cave. And I don’t just mean physical pain, but mental, emotional that I’ve developed. That have developed, and those tools have been developed as a result of seeking out voluntary suffering that have now trained me to handle involuntary suffering as well. And one of the stronger ones is gratitude. Can you love fate when things are not going your way? Talk about doing that in business, when things you know this better than I do right things don’t always go your way in business and in life. And can you love fate even when it’s not? And if you do that, you’re building yourself into an into an indestructible warrior. It’s indestructible if you can laugh at everything, if you can smile at everything, if you can be grateful for even when life is punching you in the face, you become indestructible.

Brad Weimert 33:14
Are you smiling and laughing while you’re doing endurance stuff at times?

Akshay Nanavati 33:19
Not always, but it’s not definitely, not always. There’s sometimes. There was a day in Antarctica, it was so fucking hard where every few steps, the sled, two sleds I had, would sink into the snow, because I got, I got cursed with tremendous amount of soft snow, a lot more than normal. In fact, every other adventure they were attempting other records in Antarctica, everybody failed. We all did. We didn’t hit the records we were attempting. And a lot of other adventurers took a way longer than normal, because it was an unbelievable amount of soft snow. And on this one day, the two sleds would sink into the soft snow, I would have to wrestle it out. And every three steps, this would happen, and this would go on for nine to 10 hours a day. That day, I was not smiling. One moment. I sat on my sled, I looked up and I said, Come on, give me a fucking break, yeah, but other times, the even act of choosing to smile, yeah? Because the body shapes the mind as much as the mind shapes the body, right? They feed into each other, yeah, so choosing to smile can bring some joy when you’re deep in the pain cave,

Brad Weimert 34:15
yeah? I mean, I can vividly picture this, for those that can’t if you’ve ever walked across, you know, a snowy yard that has two feet of snow, yeah, and there are no footsteps in it and you’re doing it. Imagine doing that but pulling a 400 pound sled behind

Akshay Nanavati 34:32
you. It was unforgiving. It’s given me great perspective. Now, coming back as I build my business, and sitting on my computer working, I’m like, Yeah, you know. So there’s hard moments sometimes, as I’m writing, writing writing my next book, nothing comes out. I’m like, this is still way better than that, so at least I’m comfortable. Temperature regulated, yeah. So it gives you good perspective to handle a different kind of suffering. I

Brad Weimert 34:52
find, I think you articulated this very well, but I find the endurance. Stuff easy in some respects, because it’s one foot in front of the other. Just keep doing this shit. Yeah? And I find, and that’s partly why I like the physical stuff, because I can just do it, yeah? And I can push. And it also prompts a mental change of state, right? You said physical to mental, or mental to physical, right? And if you push your body, you are going to change your state, like just it’s going to happen, yeah, but sitting at a desk can be horribly monotonous and hard to just focus. Do you find any Have you learned any tricks from the endurance stuff that allow you to focus more while you’re at work, being present? Yeah?

Akshay Nanavati 35:36
This has been a beautiful learning from these expeditions, specifically this one in Antarctica, monotony only exists if there is a past and a future. If there is no past and future, there is no monotony. And so the lesson there is bringing into the presence operating not as if every day is your last, because I think that paradigm is a little flawed. If every day is my last, I’m not going to do a lot of the hardship that I do. Right? It’s more that this, in this operating from the lens that this day is my entire life, and it also reframes how you view consistency. Because if I’m doing something hard today, and I have to think about whether it be business or an endurance, I got to do this shit every day, over and over and over again. That can be mentally daunting. But when you bring yourself here into the now, there’s only this day, this day is my whole life. And I would say this mantra to myself regularly in Antarctica, and I do it now up when you wake up, when I wake up in the morning, today is my entire lifetime. It’s my entire lifetime. There is no tomorrow. The past doesn’t exist. It’s not real anymore. And this is a big you’ll see this very clearly. A distinction between people who operate at a high level and those who don’t is the degree to which they live in their past. People who operate a very high level, they forget the past instantly. Even the other day, somebody asked me, What’s your favorite adventure? My answer was the next one. The next one the past once it’s gone, even one hour ago, it’s completely gone. It also led to this mantra that I had developed over doing endurance sports, called Die alive. So when I think about it this way, every moment this version of me is dying. The version of me that existed one hour ago is dead, never exists anymore in that moment of time, it is gone. So if every moment I am dying, a version of me is dying, I want to die alive. And I’m not saying I’m perfect at this. I’m a human I get into the thick of things in the day to day life. But when I operate from this paradigm that I learned in endurance sports, that I bring to work, it not only amplifies how you feel in this moment, it reshapes the way you operate through the lens of monotony and consistency. Being consistent, all I got to do is this one day that’s my entire life, because consistency can feel daunting, right? Doing it for 10 years, for five years, that I have to do this same thing, that’s extremely hard. But can I do it one day? Fuck it. Anybody can, anybody can, and your whole life is that one day.

Brad Weimert 37:49
That’s an interesting lens. So one of the things that I have a hard time with is establishing belief there are lots of things in life that I know would make my life easier if I believed them? Yeah, sure. I think that very not smart people that are incredibly convicted in a religion of any kind have a simpler, easier life, because they have a path that guides them through everything. I like the idea of believing in some grand plan that guides my whole life. I just don’t know how to believe that. Yeah. Do you have any path towards establishing beliefs?

Akshay Nanavati 38:32
Great question. So one of the the way to do that is to first recognize that the manner in which we approach reality is not inherently real. So we don’t engage with reality as it is. We engage with the lens of reality, and that lens has been shaped by everything that built us into who we are today, our parents, our life before. It so very concrete example. When I look at this wood table, I look at it and I see, this is a wooden table. How do I know that’s a wooden table? I’ve been taught at a young age. This thing I’m seeing is wood this this feature here is a table. And to when you start seeing that, you start recognizing that our entire lens of reality is a construct. So when I first went down this path, I would, even while I was driving, I would always repeat this mantra, I’m awakened to the truth that all of my reality is an illusion. I would see a red car. That’s a red car because I’ve been taught that’s a red car. And so step one is to start recognizing that the entire sense of reality that we have around us is a construct. It’s not inherently real, even our beliefs, right? When I first started running, I didn’t know ultra marathons were a thing, and when I told my family that in a 24 hour run, they had no idea that was possible in their world, a marathon was a long run, right? But why is it a long run? Right? That’s a construct, right? Everything about how we view the reality is a construct. When you start recognizing this, you can start reshaping the constructs that shape your reality. I’m not saying it happens overnight, but the first step is to start recognizing that it’s all a construct. And many people are trapped in that this is not the lens of reality. This is. Reality, if you, if you operate from that paradigm, you’re, you’re you’re done for to begin with, you’re going to fail before you even start. So the first step is recognizing, then you can start reshaping. All right, this construct doesn’t serve me. So even training for Antarctica, I went very deep into studying method acting. Are you familiar? So method acting is great actors like Daniel Day Lewis is the greatest method actor of all time. And great actors, they actually start dreaming and thinking as their character. Daniel Day Lewis, will live as the character even when the cameras are not rolling. And if you study when I went obsessively studying them, they’re able to completely shed their old sense of identity, their old constructs around their identity, and step into this character so fully. One director said of Daniel Day Lewis, I’ve never seen come some anybody come as close to complete obliteration of the self, complete obliteration of the self. So that’s that’s the start, if I actually went so deep into it, I have a whole training that I created on the website, fear of honor.com on method acting and how to apply it to reshape your identity. That’s actually why I went to the darkness The second time was I want to build the kind of person that can ski across Antarctica. And even while I was out there, I had a paradigm that I’m going to end this journey feeling just as good as I did on the start. Does it matter if it’s true? No, because it’s a delusion. And delusional is valuable. Building something epic as you build you have to be slightly delusional, right? Rationality is going to trap us in the prison of what we think is possible. To strive for the impossible, you have to be delusional, and so stepping into that paradigm allows you to then create new beliefs on reality. So at first it’s conscious, but when you then embody it, that’s why method actors, one of the core things they do is they will physically embody the character. Daniel Day Lewis preparing for a Last of the Mohicans. He went and lived in the wood for weeks on end. So that physicality starts shaping your mentality. We talked about physical and mental, right? So I would do this while I was tired dragging stepping into this stepping into this persona, and become that person to the point that I can choose how I want to operate from the world. I can choose the reality that becomes my own. And when you start seeing how malleable our sense of identity is, you can start building into whoever the fuck you want to be. So

Brad Weimert 42:00
I have a and I want to kind of put the rubber on the road here, because I like that. The I have a general construct that if you have no data points, it’s harder to believe something, and the more data points you have, the easier it is to believe something. So once you’ve done something a bunch of times, for example, then you have proof that you can do it. Yeah. But the I think the pragmatic starting point that I just heard is that if you have no data points, the beginning is to realize that it’s completely irrelevant whether you have data points or not, and you just need to start something as if you are that person, yeah. And one step at a time, you will build the data points, and if you live in the space of through the Mecca method acting lens, if you live in the space of pretending to be that person and entrenching yourself and how those people think, eat, sleep, believe, then it allows you to take the first couple steps, which starts to build the data points as you go.

Akshay Nanavati 42:54
Yeah. So first step is the clarity on Who do you want to be? Right? How does this person think? What? How does this person operate? But for someone like you and me about the data points, you can also gather data points to build the identity. So as an example, my book fearvana, everything is backed by research every point I did, read hundreds of books, I was the kind of person who everything had to be pragmatic, practical. I needed research to prove not only to others, but to myself on XYZ point and when I started embracing, coming back to that concept of the paradox of the paradox of oneness, the duality of practical and mystical. After my first time in the darkness when I when I did the seven days in darkness, the first time, the brightest white light I’ve ever seen in my entire life was in the dark, blindingly bright. I was literally going like this. It was blinding me. I couldn’t, you know, was so, so strong, and that opened a door to the mysticism of the universe, but somebody who needed evidence to justify it. Here’s what I did to your point, and this, I think, will be helpful in Resham being an identity, I started to get a glimpse into the door. And once you get that glimpse, you can’t go back, right? When a child sees where recognizes that Santa is no longer real, no matter how many times every Christmas sees those presents, you can’t go back to believing Santa is now real, right? So I got in a door into this oneness, into something that transcends the practical, but it’s not fully there yet. So what I started doing was every time in life, I experienced a moment where it just feels one of those moments where, how the hell did that happen? What are the odds that this, this strange series of events came together, that this mystical thing seemed to happen? I would literally write it down in a book. And so what I was doing was I was building a stack of evidence for a mind and a person that needed evidence to justify the mystic, the mysticism of the universe, to prove that there’s magic and mysticism in the universe. There’s that quote from Joseph Campbell, uh, follow your bliss, and the universe will open doors for you where there were none. Now, I didn’t believe that, and that’s nonsense. You know, the universe is not magically opening doors for you, right? But when I started to get evidence for mysticism and practice more surrender, it became a paradigm that became more real and that was a valuable place to operate from, right? But the thing is, I chose to step in there. I chose to seek that out, to believe it until it became. Real. And now I value the mysticism. There’s things that one cannot explain, that transcend rational mind, transcend science, and I think there’s beauty in that, you know, but it got built up as a result of using the practical to create evidence for the mystical. If that makes sense, well,

Brad Weimert 45:16
you’re gonna pull people off a cliff here with your use of the word mysticism. So some of them. So how do you rationalize magic and mysticism? What is the, what is the what is a possible logical explanation for that? If there is one, how do you look

Akshay Nanavati 45:33
at that? It’s hard to say, you know, I mean, I like as an example. This is, this is also what something that I struggle with that helped me embrace the unknown and the answers that we don’t have in in human experience. When I was in Iraq, my vehicle drove over an active bomb, an active IED, for some reason, didn’t explode. I’m still here. My friend’s vehicle drove over an active bomb, it exploded and he died. Why? Sometimes I would share this, people would say, Oh, God was looking out for you. But then I was like, what God said my friend? Right, right? And I don’t, I refuse to accept that answer, yeah, but that was a question not worth asking. I realized there is no why, and I don’t know why. Maybe there is, maybe there’s not, I don’t know, maybe I was death or something i But I refuse to accept that, because my friend was a better man than I was, and he didn’t deserve to die. So the point is that experience that was one that really came through in the darkness, and then going through these moments of oneness of of seeing light. I mean, the brightest light in darkness. There are questions that I don’t know the answer to. I don’t know why certain things happen the way they do. I mean, take you and me sitting here, right? I happened to meet up with Hal, who introduced us, and one could get into how these things happen, even meeting how like, there’s weird coincidences that happen. But I also don’t fully believe that everything happens for a reason. I think everything happens there is a chaos, and you choose to find reason to it, right? That’s how I believe. There’s others who don’t. So find a belief that serves you in the now and improves your ability to create a better future. But not knowing has helped me move through hard times and accept the hard times and create a better version of the now for myself, for people around me, and do more work to help others improve their now as well. If that makes sense, it

Brad Weimert 47:15
does, and you’re and it sounds like there’s a I mean, the endurance thing is a huge part of diving into that and figuring that out. Adventurers that I know tend to argue about the point of adventure, and I often hear people talk about the experience versus the story. Is the experience of the adventure more or less important than having the story to tell after the fact. I

Akshay Nanavati 47:45
think it’s a bit of both. I think it’s the duality. I mean, ultimately, life is this moment. If you’re not living this fully, feeling alive, what is the point? And this doesn’t mean you enjoy every moment, far from it, whether it’s building a business or adventure, many moments really suck, but that’s where the story matters, the it’s the it’s the horrific moments that create a more epic story. Yeah, the bigger the dragon you find you fight, the greater the treasure. So I think it is a combination of the two. I love the experience, the isness of each moment when I’m out there, even when that sucks. Otherwise I wouldn’t keep going back. But what a story. I mean, in my 40 years, I’ve been blessed to have lived epic life, multiple lifetimes worth of experiences. So I think operating from that paradigm, does this create a more epic story, is also a good paradigm to operate from. You know that whenever you’re at a crossroads, choose the path that’s going to create a more legendary life, a more legendary story. You know, I’ve lived a life that’s movie worthy and and not that I’ve always consciously done this, but certainly now I’m looking for the more legendary path, the more epic path, and that creates a better now, as well as a better story. So

Brad Weimert 48:49
it’s clear, you know, the experience side of things. It’s clear that what you get from that to, I think, a lot of people and but you’ve also articulated it fairly well from a story perspective. Is the story valuable? More valuable to you as an individual or to the other people that you impact?

Akshay Nanavati 49:06
Your story, I believe, is not just your own. There’s other people whose stories have touched my soul and changed the very foundation of how I live my life, like Victor Frankel Man’s Search for Meaning. I never met the man I don’t know the man. He died before. I think I was born, I believe, but that story has impacted me. So his story is not just his, it’s mine. It’s in every other life he’s touched, and anybody who’s benefiting from my story, my story is their story. So I think we’re our story transcends just us. Obviously, I’m doing it for because it’s I love my life as well, and the stories that I seek out. But remembering that your story is not your own. It gives it something greater, a greater meaning to your story. You know, and the highest need in the Maslow’s hierarchy, it needs is the self actualization. But what’s not as well known is that self transcendence was higher than self actualization. He just it wasn’t as publicized. But Viktor Frankl even puts it more beautifully when he says self actualization is. Side effect of self transcendence. So if this thing we’re all ultimately seeking, whether consciously or not, is self actualization, self transcendence is how you get there, and that’s where that’s one, one mode of operating from that lens of self transcendence is that your story is not just your own, and that gives story more meaning.

Brad Weimert 50:19
Yeah. I mean, I am anytime I hear somebody’s story of something, and honestly, sometimes it’s little, small things they’ve done in their life, yeah, but I hear a story, and it touches me and it motivates me. It inspires me. It changes my thought process. It directs me in a new way. It causes me to make a new choice, right? Leads me down a new path. Yeah, whether it’s something small or it’s something big, it reminds me of where I should be living and the place I should be living in. When I get to tell a story to somebody about an adventure of mine, an experience of mine, it both has that potential ripple with them, but it also allows me to relive and reflect on the experience that I went through. Yeah, and often it’s not just the experience, it’s all of the prep that led up to the experience, right? The experience itself can be really significant, but the fucking training to get there

Akshay Nanavati 51:18
that was harder raising $1.1 million while training like an animal was hard, almost harder than Antarctica. Let’s

Brad Weimert 51:24
talk about that. So actually, before we talk about that, drug addiction, live combat 10 days in the dark, crossing Antarctica, pulling a 400 pound sled. What’s the most difficult thing you’ve done in your life?

Akshay Nanavati 51:40
Sobering up ranks up there, I broke my sobriety a lot when I didn’t just it wasn’t for me a instant moment that was, that was a hard thing, and I would say preparing and everything leading up to Antarctica. I mean, I pushed my body literally to the brink of death. What I got, what, what ended my journey 60 days in was I got diverticulitis, which is inflammation and infection in the colon. And if left untreated, it will burst, go into your bloodstream, get septic, and you die. Diverticulitis left leads to peridonitis, which, eight years ago, killed an adventurer, legendary adventurer named Henry Worsley. And knowing that, that’s part of the reason why we had to get evacuated so literally pushed my body to the brink of death and preparing for it. For four years, I was training directly for Antarctica training, raising money, going on multiple expeditions, lost two fingers, one of which I cut off. It was actually a good finger. It recovered fully, but I cut I chose to have it cut off preemptively, because once you get frostbite for the rest of your life, you that finger will be more prone to frostbite. So it was a liability. It cut it off, and obviously I had had local anesthesia, but it hurt like hell, the pain of all of that, of doing it and getting to Antarctica, that ranks up there as one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my entire life, everything to your point of not just the deed, but preparation of the deed, the sobering up in that and also joining the Marines, because at the time, I was not accustomed to hardship when I first joined the Marines, so it was battling the biggest dragon I had ever faced at the time. Now, the dragons keep getting bigger because I seek out bigger dragons, but I’m also way stronger. I have better weapons than I had when I first joined the Marines. So those are three or three up there.

Brad Weimert 53:16
I think it’s much more difficult for somebody to get off the couch and run their first mile or the first two than it is for somebody to go from, you know, 30 to 40 miles degree or 100 to 150 Yeah, right, because you have that, yeah, you’ve got that ammunition, right? You have all of these data points you’re familiar with. The pain exactly. I refer to it as the inevitable suck. Yeah, yeah. And I think you use, use the term pain cave, yeah? And I heard it the same way, yeah, which was like, You’re just getting, you’re gonna be in this place where it’s gonna fly and you’re waiting for it. You’re like, you hope it doesn’t happen right away, yeah? But, you know, I’ve had, I’ve had runs where, like, it comes on at mile eight, and I’ve had runs where I get through 30 and I’m okay, yeah. And my my longest run was, has been 44 and I know you’ve done, like, significantly longer runs than that, but that’s still

Unknown Speaker 54:12
awesome. That’s epic, and no small fee, brother, well, I

Brad Weimert 54:14
appreciate that, but I, but I look at it the same way, which is like, keep to keep pushing along that journey. Once you know what the what that struggle is like, and that pain is like, and you realize that you can live in that pain for a long time. Yeah, it’s easier than just the beginning, right? The beginning is the fucking bitch. Like you said, you’ve

Akshay Nanavati 54:32
got the weapons at that point, when you’re just starting, you don’t have the tools, and then it just really fucking sucks, yeah, but that’s how you build the weapons. You know? This is one big mistake I see people make is, is that you cannot be confident to take action. Confidence is a result of action, not the fuel for action. And people think you have to believe in yourself. Fuck believing in yourself. Go to war with yourself. Belief is built on the battlefield. You have to leap. You have to leap off the edge. Be a bull in a china shop. Get fucking hurt, hurt yourself, mentally, physically. I’ve gone for. Crossbite, I’ve gotten hypothermia, I’ve gotten heat exhaustion. Go play on that edge, and then you build a self belief to put to keep pushing the line further and further and further. But when you’re first starting out, when you’re going from that couch to the 5k you do not have to believe in yourself, you do not have to be confident. You just have to go to war with yourself. And you will build that belief in the arena.

Brad Weimert 55:18
I love that well, one of the things you had not done before leading up to Antarctica, aside from pulling a fucking for Antarctica, but you had done endurance stuff, and you had done Greenland, right? What you had not done is raised a million dollars, yeah, or 1.1 Yeah. How did you approach the raise, and how was that different for you and difficulty than the endurance stuff.

Akshay Nanavati 55:41
It was very, very hard asking for money, yeah, and a thing that they’re really not getting anything back. Unlike investing in a business, there’s a sort of ROI, yeah, here, there is none, you know, that was very, very, very hard when we started. It was almost like raising money for a business first, let’s go to friends and family around kind of thing, right? So friends and family everywhere asking, and it’s that’s that seat of the tip jar, so to speak. So the pot got started now you’re not starting from zero. That helps a tremendous amount. So when you’re going to people, you’re not starting from zero. The other thing is the ability to effectively articulate a compelling why people came on board because they believed in the why that transcended me. It’s not just some clown dragging a sled in the snow, right, although there’s a part of that, but there’s a deeper why. I mean, I met one woman who, after speaking to me for 45 minutes, donated $100,000 to the mission. Wow, $100,000 spoke to spoke on stages that led to 50,000 200,000 because they believed in the why and the authenticity of sharing the struggles you’ve endured to get here and why this journey matters more than just me. You know, it Trans talking about transcendence. It transcends me and so but doing everything possible. I mean, we stuck so many darts on the wall. You know, we raised a committed a crowdfunding campaign. I have a friend who’s a brilliant marketer, who designed the whole crowdfunding campaign for me, designed the page, a brilliant copywriter, one of the few eight figure copywriters in the world, wrote the copy for me. So enrolling an army of people in the vision that was huge, like not trying to do it ourselves. When you’re driven, it’s very easy to get consumed. And I can do fucking everything, but fuck that. I know my skill sets, right? I know where I’m good at I’m good at connecting people. I’m good at doing the hard thing and during the suck. I’m not a copywriter. I can’t this is not my skill set. So bringing in an army of people who believe in the vision was foundational to key to making this happen, and then doing everything possible, systematically solving one problem that led to people’s sponsorships, small donors. The crowdfunding campaign, we created a series of different rewards at different tiers, so people donated as low as $9 to up to 200,000 plus dollars, and ranging from that, but that was very hard is, is the following up? You know, talk a business skill, following up relentlessly, the amount of times had to follow up. Sometimes it took a year to get, to get the the money from somebody who had said they do it, and it’s not because they weren’t wanting to. People are busy. People with a lot of money are very busy. Yeah, they have a lot going on. So gently, learning how to gently follow up without being a persistent asshole or annoying, right? But doing that gently over and over and over again, communicating that this is about something bigger, recognizing that, look, this is impossible. It’s never been done before. It’s borderline, you know, I don’t know how to play out, but yet, people chose to be a part of it, and I believe that was a result of being able to effectively articulate a compelling why,

Brad Weimert 58:34
awesome. So let’s dig in a little deeper. So the first, first part of that was figuring out how to articulate the why? Well, and I think you know this, ultimately, this is a sales pitch, right 100% and the challenge with this particular sales pitch, as you mentioned, is that they’re not getting anything out of it is said a different way. They’re not getting an

Akshay Nanavati 58:53
ROI, tangible, ROI, exactly, financial, ROI, exactly, uh, two. You mentioned

Brad Weimert 58:56
these tiers for fundraising. I think that this is super important for people, because as you look at kind of creating a product set, yeah, in your own business, you have to cluster the values right of different products and associate it to different tiers or different financial amounts, right? How did you structure those different tiers? What did people get? Or what did you promise? The different tiers

Akshay Nanavati 59:18
we promised? So at the lower tiers, it was all digital, so there was no upfront cost to us different digital trainings had created my friend Joe Polish, yeah, familiar with Yeah. Joe had me on Genius Network, so we did a really great deep dive into mental mastery that we gave away at the $9 tier. He was very kind to share that people pay up to 25,000 100,000, to be in that room, right? And so we gave that away for $9 I gave away different digital trainings, like some of the ones I mentioned about 25 about 25 weapons to navigate the pain cave. So until we got to higher tiers, higher tiers, we started giving away signed copies of my book. Got other people with with products to donate things for for the tiers, because, to your point, they weren’t getting a tangible ROI. But everybody loves being a part of something bigger than themselves. You know, comparing it to the moon landing, comparing to a historical feat, comparing to Shackleton be a part of history. And yes, the crossing wasn’t made. But in some sense, history was, this was the first ever attempt of an impossible feat ever, ever right to do that. And that was a result of an army of people coming together who believed in something bigger. So just finding things that give away, that would be aligned with the mission, I think, is key. So we’re not giving something completely arbitrary that absolutely makes no sense, you know. Okay, how did I? How did I train for this? The mental mastery of training for an Antarctic Expedition and doing an expedition applies to anybody. Everybody’s got their own Antarctica across, in business, in life, in relationships, everywhere, the tools are the same. You know, everybody has to figure like the the highways in the journey are the same, but the back roads and the are, the nuances are different. It’s like fitness, movement is the universal principle, but there’s multiple, hundreds of expressions of it, right? So it’s the same thing, that this is the, this is the the the general principle that you can then apply in your unique expression of it. So finding alignment in the mission, giving away to giving away different trainings meant physical or digital products, was the key to getting people on board. But I do think, from assessing it, a lot of people donated, not only because they wanted something. I think there were, I’m sure a few. We got a lot of crowdfunding campaign raised a lot as well. It really added up. But I think the larger donors, that wasn’t what they were interested they just wanted. They believed in me. They believed in the mission. All the larger donors only came from having met me. You’re not going to get somebody donated $20,000 if they don’t know you. It’s not just some somebody random on social media, right? Those were the small donations up to even, I think the largest one we got from a stranger was about 6000 so not nothing, but anything larger than that, they had either known me, heard me speak. So being in front of strange stages was a big one. Was huge. To actually be in front of people get the message out exactly, and then I would promise I’d come speak at your company after the journey is done, you know. So that was the higher tiers. Become an investor in the documentary. On the highest here we were filming a documentary about the story, and telling the documentary so finding things that are aligned, that people would want and to want to be a part of something greater.

Brad Weimert 1:02:09
Yeah, for from a business perspective, I think that there are very few businesses in the world that have a truly authentic, larger purpose that they’re driving after. And I think it’s clear that, if you can find that it has a lot of power, yeah, I also think that the people that try to contrive that, oh, yeah, it usually doesn’t land.

Akshay Nanavati 1:02:34
Well, yeah, it’s evidenced. I think it’s very clear when somebody’s contriving that,

Brad Weimert 1:02:38
right? And so the question or the challenge, I think, when you’re trying to create an overarching narrative that is going to be powerful is how to make something, how to get the best of what you have. But don’t stretch past that, if it’s not true to the message, yeah, right? Because not everybody has a first, right? Yeah, something that’s never been done before. In fact, almost nobody

Unknown Speaker 1:02:57
does. It’s very rare, right? It’s very rare. Yeah,

Brad Weimert 1:03:01
the other thing that I got from that was sort of the sales process here, which you mentioned, follow up, right? And the importance of follow up and not being irritating as hell with the follow up. Yeah. And I think one huge takeaway from a sales perspective is, and you mentioned this, is people are busy, and they’re stuck in their own world, and somebody not responding, not giving you time in the moment. Pushing it off isn’t a no. They didn’t tell you no. And so driving to a yes or a no and being aware that if you haven’t gotten a no, you need to keep pushing for that is a really good lesson for any sales people or any anybody running an organization. The other part of that is how you ask. So how did you gracefully pursue somebody for a year for a $20,000 donation?

Akshay Nanavati 1:03:46
The to your point is, is recognizing that they are busy people, and stepping into their shoes and then acknowledging that upfront was big. So hey, I recognize, I know you’re super busy. So just wanted to bump this up your radar. And you know, at the time, when we first started out, we didn’t necessarily need it instantly, so just wanted to bump this up. Instantly, so just wanted to bump the separator. Let me know if you have any questions about the journey, about anything happy to hop on the phone. Didn’t hear back, and as we would get closer, I’d be like, just a heads up, we’re approaching a deadline, and I so appreciate that was a big one. Also is, is expressing an absurdly large amount of gratitude, and it wasn’t fake, like I genuinely was grateful I couldn’t done this without all the people. But when you do that, when you step into their shoes, hey, every time I would acknowledge I know you’re really busy. I know you’re doing X, Y, Z, especially if you know what the thing is, acknowledging that stepping their shoes so they feel seen, felt heard, almost always, I recognize, most human beings, whether they’re making $0 or a billion dollars, are not very seen, felt and heard. They’re not acknowledged, they’re not appreciated, they’re not seen. So when you do that to a human being, I don’t care where they are in their journey, how much money they have, it’s appreciated. Yeah, you know when you say, Hey, I see you, not in so many words, but you know what I mean, right? I recognize I see you, I hear you, I feel you. And doing that and then saying, I can’t thank you enough for the fact that you’ve even chosen to support it really means the world to me. This mission would. Not be possible without you. So acknowledging gratitude and recognizing that that they are vital to this. Once again, somebody who’s making $0 or a billion dollars, everybody loves feeling that they are special. Yeah, that’s the thing most people care about. Is, look, you can say ego is bad or whatever, but we all have our ego, and it’s not inherently bad. So we all have our ego when you can stroke that ego. And again, it’s not doing it in a in a dishonest or a manipulative way. I’m genuinely grateful to them. So that really, really made a difference saying, hey, this wouldn’t be possible without you. Thank you. Yeah, and that makes people want to come on board, recognizing that they are a part of this. They feel felt, they feel important, and doing that for for them was, was essential.

Brad Weimert 1:05:44
Yeah, I think, I mean, it’s very clear that you live from a place of gratitude for a lot of reasons. One of them you mentioned was the involuntary suffering leads you to a place of gratitude because you have also lived in a place of, I’m sorry, voluntary suffering has led you to that because you have also lived in a place of involuntary suffering, so you have gratitude for, hey, I’m doing this as a choice. Yeah, a lot of people don’t live in a place of gratitude, and it’s not authentic for them to do it. And you can build that muscle. And I think it is a muscle to consciously be grateful for the things that you have in your life. Absent that, I also think that you said a lot of things that are still really good tools if you don’t find yourself authentically being grateful, and you feel like that’s going to come off as contrived. One of the things that I have gotten in the habit of saying, and it is a habit at this point, is, I can only imagine, is in fill in the blank from there, right? I can only imagine how busy you are, yeah, I can only imagine how much you have going on. I can only imagine how difficult your current situation is, yeah, because I don’t fucking know, right, but what I can do is imagine that this is a thing you’ve got going on right now. Yeah, and the intention for me with that is to have that person feel seen and relate in some capacity. But you’re right in that the the time it takes to express that sentiment is almost always noticed, no matter who the person is, 100% or felt. Yeah, that’s great. Okay, so you wrote a book, girovana, and you have a company, fiervana. Tell me the the fundamentals of that and who you work with. Oh, actually, let me say this too. The book has a quote from the Dalai Lama on the top of the book. That’s fucking crazy. What is your emotional connection to the fact that the Dalai Lama is endorsing your book?

Akshay Nanavati 1:07:38
So humbling, such a huge honor. It was, it was unreal to get I mean, when I started writing this book, I had zero blend, 00, brand, zero platform. Knew nothing about online marketing, anything. And this is a very spiritual concept. So I thought to myself, who’s the leading world person in the spiritual world who could validate this book, validate this idea, and the Dalai Lama. But at first I was like, who am I? The usual stuff in our head, right? No way. It’s a rational thought, exactly, exactly so. But the thing is, you know, you can, you can have those thoughts, but you don’t have to be defined by those thoughts. You can act in the face of them. Coming back to what I said earlier, you can act in the face of disbelief, not believing in yourself. So I reached out to His holiness, His office, and got nowhere. Did a ton of research, found a name and a point of contact an actual human being, not just a random form on the internet, shot a video for him. This is coming back to the personal connection. Shooting a personal video game changer in strategy of connecting with people. It’s so much more meaningful than words on words in an email. Right they see you. They connect with you. Shot a personal video. This monk connected me to three other monks. Finally got to the right. One said, hey, you know, we got your stuff. We’ll review it. Five, six months of following up this whole time, I’m constantly they hate my book. They think I’m useless. They don’t who am I? There’s no way this is going to happen, but I’m going to follow up anyway, gently, you know, sir, I completely understand have a lot going on. Just wanted to check in. You know, have you had a chance to review it? I hope this is valuable. Please let me know if there’s any questions. There’s any questions things like that. After five, six months, this monk in the monastery there wrote me back saying, considering everything you’ve been through and your genuine desire to serve, I will press your case, those exact words he used. And soon after that, we got I only asked for a one liner, sort of an endorsement, but we got a letter in the mail from the Dalai Lama with His Holiness, a seal and signature, and he wrote the forward for the book. Oh my dude, what an honor, what an honor. So humbled, so grateful for me personally. It means a lot for marketing a book that on a brand that nobody had ever heard of. It made a difference to say the least. Yeah,

Brad Weimert 1:09:35
man, that’s, uh, that’s unbelievable. I also, I don’t really know how monks work. I mean, do they have cell phones? Like, what are we doing here?

Akshay Nanavati 1:09:42
Apparently they have emails, and these days, wow,

Brad Weimert 1:09:45
that’s a trip. So tell me so you wrote the book. Where did that lead you from a business perspective with fear of honor So, and actually, let me tee this up, because I know people that do dope shit solely so they have the story to go out and speak. On stages. And in fact, I know people that have done one cool thing, climbed a mountain, and then their entire life from there as being a public speaker, to do that and just talk about that one experience. Did you go into any of the experiences that you’ve done with the intention of writing fiervana and creating a platform? Or did you decide to do firovana after the fact and figure out how to monetize your life.

Akshay Nanavati 1:10:22
I did not initially go into it for a platform for public speaking, any of that. I went into it for the pursuit fearvana was birthed after I came out of that abyss when I was on the verge of taking my own life because I had learned how to reframe my own relationship to suffering, to fear, to trauma, and I wanted to share the lessons with others who were suffering. I’ve lost friends to suicide to addiction, and a lot of people across the world are suffering. And so this was birthed simply as a result of my own learnings. I had spent years researching neuroscience, psychology, my own life experience, interviewing other amazing people to share. I mean, that’s the whole essence of the book. Is fear and Nirvana are not opposites, that fear is not the antithesis of Nirvana, it’s an access point to it. So that was what led to that. And then I started, initially doing more one on one coaching, which have since stopped. I started selling digital products that got me into the world of online marketing, sort of the quote, unquote, influencer space. I really enjoyed public speaking, so I got better and better at that, and started public speaking more, and the business was sidelined for the last about year and a half before Antarctica. I was essentially my kind of joke that my job title was explorer and sugar baby, because my now wife was taking care of our life. She had her own business and social media marketing was doing very well and was funding our entire life. Anything I was making, I was putting towards a crossing fund. So the business got completely sidelined in the pursuit of this grand adventure in Antarctica, and now coming back to it, so now building a whole series of products and services under this vertical, under this ethos of your Vana, to guide people to transform their relationship to suffering in order to find live and love what I call your worthy struggle, which is your path in life. And it could be skiing across Antarctica. It could be building a business. Could be playing a guitar. A guitar. Anything worthwhile is going to be freaking hard, and that’s why I call it your worthy struggle, right? Passion is developed. It’s not, you don’t start from passion. It’s created. It’s built as a result of getting in the arena, in the battlefield, and that is your worthy struggle. So now we’re we’re building products around that. We have some digital products, some trainings, a whole series of resources on fearvana.com my wife and I are co authoring a book together as well. I’m writing my next book about this. This book is more about training people on how to develop the muscle of courage. That’s what fear of honor is really. At its core is how do you build that muscle of courage? And from the scientific element of it, the neuroscience of it as well, the next book is a more into the granular of how to keep doing hard things to get the results you want. It’ll be tentatively titled, step into the storm. And my wife and I are co authoring a book. She’ll be the lead on that, on on how do high performers build a thriving relationship without sacrificing your ambition? That seems, that seems to be a theme we’ve noticed a lot with high performers. They’re pursuing their craft, their ambition, at the cost of a relationship, and that creates misery. I mean, research has shown, all the research has shown that there’s two paths to a fulfilling, peaceful, whatever word you want to use, life, fulfilling, or whatever it may be, whatever word you want to call it. And one is purpose, finding your meaning, your ikigai, your reason, your why you’re here. And the other is connection, relationships, the people around you, the people you love. And one doesn’t have to be at the cost of the other, and we’re living proof of that. Two months into getting together, we got engaged, five and a half months getting married, and the first year together we I was training for Antarctica full time. It was soul crushingly exhausting, yeah, but we built, built something thriving as a result, and I was gone for four months of the first year of our marriage on various training expeditions in Antarctica. So that’s currently what we’re working on. She’s kind of leading the relationship arm, building products around that I’m leading the mindset arm, and we’re going to help guide people to ultimately, a more peaceful, fulfilling life and however way we can. I love that

Brad Weimert 1:13:56
actually not avanti. Where should people find you? Where do you want to point them? You can find

Akshay Nanavati 1:13:59
find [email protected] I mentioned there’s a lot of resources on there, Instagram at fearvana. Love

Brad Weimert 1:14:05
it, man. I appreciate the conversation. I could talk to you about this stuff for a long time. Really

Akshay Nanavati 1:14:10
appreciate the conversation too, brother, and hopefully it’ll continue. Thank you. Thank

Brad Weimert 1:14:13
you for having me. Thank you. That’s a wrap for today’s episode. Please subscribe and most importantly, leave us a review. It takes like 30 seconds, and it makes such a big impact, it helps other people find us. Also. You might not know this, you can watch over 100 episodes of beyond a million with guests like Grant Cardone, Wes Watson and Neil Patel at beyond a million.com.