EXPLORING THE TOOLS THAT UNLEASH HUMAN POTENTIAL
Today I sit down for Round 2 with Darren Terry. We discuss his near drowning in the Blue Mesa Reservoir, healing from trauma, the speed record on the Manitou Incline, and some of the snares that can trap us as we strive to better ourselves.
Then we Continue Beyond, exploring how to better navigate doubt, fatigue, and discouragement as we engage in pursuits of meaning, learning to better love our wives and those close to us, and working to create value so that we may leave the world better than we found it.
Afterall, what good does an indomitable mindset and strong body provide if it is not employed in the service to something bigger than self?
See episode 049. Adversity is Just a Test for our first conversation where we learn about Darren’s journey from mental breakdown to winner of the 48 Hour Ultra Marathon in Tennessee, The Black Toe Run.
Also, check out Be Relentless: If the obstacle is the way, then we must be waymakers HERE.
Do you want to learn more? Check out:
The Book: Be Relentless: If the obstacle is the way, then we must be WayMakers.
The Podcast: “Be Relentless Podcast”
The Fuel: Sisu Stamina, Performance Evolved
Linktree: Here.
00;00;09;22 – 00;00;32;21
Jon Mayo
Today, I had the privilege of sitting down with my friend Darren Terry for the second time back on episode 49 when this whole experience is called The Grit Theory. We talked about his victory over the Black two run and his journey from a kid who wanted to kill himself in the middle of CVS at two in the morning to someone he could be proud of and even have the courage to share his journey with others.
00;00;34;15 – 00;01;04;14
Jon Mayo
That was then. Now we’re looking at things with many more dimensions to them. Yes, the continued pursuit of mental toughness and becoming more is a definitive, strong theme throughout our conversation. But even more so we dive into the inner dimensionality of human existence, what it means to love, to be, to pursue, and to do all these things. Despite significant trauma and obstacles that we face along the way that bring us back to the very core of who are.
00;01;04;14 – 00;01;04;22
Darren Terry
We.
00;01;05;03 – 00;01;24;24
Jon Mayo
And what are we going to do about it. Frankly, the conversation was incredible. We both had opportunities to be vulnerable, to share and explore, and to make something meaningful of our time together. Let’s jump on in.
00;01;27;17 – 00;01;29;26
Darren Terry
Cool, huh?
00;01;30;06 – 00;01;37;07
Jon Mayo
That’s more peaceful. Yeah. It’s all about calm, dude. So was it March that we sat down?
00;01;38;02 – 00;01;39;04
Darren Terry
It was March or April.
00;01;39;26 – 00;01;42;14
Jon Mayo
And captured your. Your journey up to that point?
00;01;42;16 – 00;01;44;00
Darren Terry
Yeah.
00;01;44;00 – 00;01;49;02
Jon Mayo
Yeah. I mean, it’s hard to believe that it’s been over half a year.
00;01;50;18 – 00;02;05;05
Darren Terry
It’s been. It feels like an eternity, actually. Mm hmm. We see each other all the time, but we never, like, engage in, like, conversation, like we did that day. So it feels like it’s been forever. Mm hmm.
00;02;06;03 – 00;02;21;25
Jon Mayo
Well, and that’s the thing that I feel like I say this every time I’m sitting down now. But what I love about this is it’s just such a powerful tool for intentional conversation, because you have, like, the ritual of getting into the seat and the distractions are gone.
00;02;21;29 – 00;02;38;13
Darren Terry
The isolation. Mm hmm. Yeah. Blocking it out like you would like a training. Yep. So it’s very intentional. Yes. And that’s why it’s powerful. And so it definitely feels good to be back in the forge. Yeah. Name change since I’ve been gone.
00;02;39;10 – 00;02;41;26
Jon Mayo
Yeah. You’re here for a great theory. Announce Relentless.
00;02;42;00 – 00;02;42;09
Darren Terry
Yeah.
00;02;42;15 – 00;02;45;11
Jon Mayo
Which I think is more in line with everything.
00;02;45;11 – 00;02;59;06
Darren Terry
I mean, I like the sound of grit theory, but whenever you do sit down and think about it, you’re absolutely right. What’s the theory here? Yeah, it’s been proven. It has. Grit can get you through a lot.
00;02;59;18 – 00;03;02;13
Jon Mayo
And by many people over many generations. Yeah.
00;03;02;13 – 00;03;05;19
Darren Terry
You know, all the high performers of life all have grit.
00;03;06;11 – 00;03;31;14
Jon Mayo
I like it also because. Relentless. What? Right. Relentless. Intentional, relentless pursuit. Exploration of ideas, of creating value, of bettering yourself. All of those things. Yeah. You know, so it just. It feels so much more natural to me and being relentless to carve off the excuses. All of that. Right. Just ties in in a way that I’m really happy with.
00;03;31;15 – 00;03;52;29
Darren Terry
I mean, that’s like a key vocab word in my dictionary I use all the time. So whenever I saw the name change, I was like, It’s so fitting. You really pick and choose who you have on these days, and all of them have relentless mindsets. Mm hmm. So it’s definitely an honor to be back on the mic again so soon.
00;03;52;29 – 00;03;58;25
Darren Terry
You know? Yeah, it’s definitely an honor. Yeah.
00;03;58;25 – 00;04;01;07
Jon Mayo
Beautiful day. And I feel the same. So thank you for being here.
00;04;01;14 – 00;04;15;25
Darren Terry
And it’s crazy. You always get that kind of thing, that twisting feeling in your gut whenever you’re about to do something that you know is going to be, like, powerful. Hmm. And it’s like walking up the steps to this. Mike. I started to sweat a little bit.
00;04;16;29 – 00;04;18;16
Jon Mayo
Where you started driving over this morning.
00;04;19;22 – 00;04;38;29
Darren Terry
No, no, I. I was even thinking about the mike. I was thinking about, like, how far I can go into these grapples that you guys have put me into. My goal of the day was to let you guys take me as deep as you wanted. And I just kind of wanted to live there.
00;04;40;05 – 00;04;41;00
Jon Mayo
Yeah, you did. Well.
00;04;42;04 – 00;04;50;08
Darren Terry
The last time, I couldn’t really live there too easily. It was such a new sensation. But this time I knew what I was in for.
00;04;51;05 – 00;04;54;27
Jon Mayo
He had seemed to me you found peace in some pretty atrocious positions for a while.
00;04;55;00 – 00;05;21;10
Darren Terry
Mm hmm. So that was fun. Which I’m sure I’m sure will get into some things, but it’s like, since we talked last, you know, I’ve been put in a few situations where my. My own, like, power gets stripped away from me. So I wanted to see how I would fare, you know, with you guys cutting off my air flow and stuff to see if it feels familiar and if I could live there comfortably.
00;05;21;20 – 00;05;25;00
Darren Terry
And a Yeah, pretty much until you cut off all my air flow.
00;05;26;15 – 00;05;28;17
Jon Mayo
While I kept raising my hand. Right.
00;05;28;17 – 00;05;30;06
Darren Terry
So, yeah, controlled death.
00;05;30;06 – 00;05;47;07
Jon Mayo
I was smothering you. And then I grabbed your mouth and I kept getting little bits of air. Yeah. Seep in because you told me you wanted to go really deep. You know, I was thinking as I was alternating between letting you breathe or not, and you just. I could tell you found that peace. So I was wondering. I didn’t want you to find so much peace that you went unconscious.
00;05;47;15 – 00;05;53;04
Jon Mayo
Yeah. Before. Before tapping. But I didn’t. I wanted to let you be there because that’s what you ask for.
00;05;53;15 – 00;05;53;24
Darren Terry
Right?
00;05;54;10 – 00;06;09;25
Jon Mayo
And one of the things that I was pondering as I was up there was how much it related to your experience in that lake, and what was that experience like for our listeners? Yeah.
00;06;10;15 – 00;06;36;12
Darren Terry
Yeah. So since the last time that we talked, I think we should like tell people straight up, like if you haven’t heard the last podcast that was on. Go and listen to it or else you won’t have much context for this one. And that was episode 49. But how we left off was what I’m currently working on, which is saying the speed record on the Manitou Incline in Colorado.
00;06;37;02 – 00;07;05;06
Darren Terry
And that’s been my pursuit this whole time, except for I have this great buddy Joe in Denver who challenged me to an Iron Man like a year and a half ago, and we started going down that rabbit hole together. We’ve done some insane stuff on the bike on our feet, but never in open water, which you do in a real Iron Man.
00;07;05;11 – 00;07;05;21
Darren Terry
Mm hmm.
00;07;07;26 – 00;07;46;08
Darren Terry
So we put that on our objective list, and we picked the biggest body of water in Colorado. It’s called the Blue Mesa Reservoir. Mm hmm. And we made a whole trip out of it. It was going to be, like, kind of like us this morning around that fire before doing jujitsu. We’re going to dissect our minds, see where we’re at, and then we’re going to go get really cold in this body of water and gain some real distance from some.
00;07;50;11 – 00;08;12;25
Jon Mayo
Yeah. How far out were you? Because when I heard about it, right. Because you mentioned it to me in the office, essentially, you guys got up there, you’re training. And what’s interesting about this story is it wasn’t just another it’s not just another step in the journey of self refinement. Right. You’re out there, you’re doing the swim and a full blown panic attack seizes you essentially in the middle of the reservoir.
00;08;13;00 – 00;08;13;14
Darren Terry
Yeah.
00;08;13;25 – 00;08;14;10
Jon Mayo
Like a mile.
00;08;14;10 – 00;08;49;14
Darren Terry
Out. Yes. So I believe it was maybe the end of 2019, 2020, whenever I started really working on my mind, through pushing it through like endurance feats. My wife, she took me to the YMCA and started to teach me how to swim because I never got swim lessons growing up. And I had already kind of come up with this dream of racing, this ultra distance triathlon called the Ultraman.
00;08;49;28 – 00;09;18;03
Darren Terry
And a big part of that is the 6.2 mile swim in open water. So in 2020, after she taught me how to swim at the YMCA, I just made a big challenge out of swimming in a pool and I wanted to see if I could swim for 6.2 miles in the pool. And I did it. But let’s think about it.
00;09;18;28 – 00;09;42;17
Darren Terry
I. I never learned how to swim. I just learned how to swim. Freestyle the standard stroke in the pool. Mm hmm. And I’m pretty good at pushing through pain. So even though I didn’t have good technique or whatever, I would just go through the motions and push through the pain. And if it ever got too bad and I needed a rest, the wall was always there at the end of every lap.
00;09;42;22 – 00;09;43;03
Darren Terry
Mm hmm.
00;09;44;05 – 00;09;44;28
Jon Mayo
You could just jump out.
00;09;45;10 – 00;10;12;27
Darren Terry
Yes. So what happened was I accomplished something that in my mind, I thought was great. I can swim 6.2 miles. I didn’t even think of the fact that she never taught me how to tread water or float on my back efficiently. Mm hmm. Because I didn’t need it. Because all I was thinking about was, you know, I can swim 6.2 miles.
00;10;13;08 – 00;10;35;03
Darren Terry
When would I ever break? Mm hmm. And that was my mentality as my body. Joe and I rushed into the blue massive reservoir to train for this Ironman. And something that it didn’t account for was we were sitting about 2000 feet higher in elevation than we do in Colorado Springs.
00;10;35;21 – 00;10;38;20
Jon Mayo
So that puts us at about, what, 8500?
00;10;38;20 – 00;11;00;14
Darren Terry
And I think it’s somewhere around there, even close to a thousand. I don’t know. Yeah, it’s much higher and it’s noticeable and he’s a better swimmer than I am. So my goal of the day, like the main goal, besides just getting the distance of the day, was I’m going to try and hold his pace with him. And I was pretty unsuccessful, but I was trying.
00;11;00;22 – 00;11;13;17
Darren Terry
Yeah. And we are decently far out there. From my viewpoint, from his viewpoint, not so much, but we’re out there beyond the safety net.
00;11;13;25 – 00;11;17;02
Jon Mayo
Much further by staying single length of the pool.
00;11;17;09 – 00;11;17;18
Darren Terry
Yeah.
00;11;17;24 – 00;11;24;16
Jon Mayo
And one thing also, if you can try to focus on also speaking into the mic, you started to look around it at me. Oh, I know. I’m pretty.
00;11;24;16 – 00;11;24;24
Darren Terry
Cool.
00;11;26;19 – 00;11;27;18
Jon Mayo
So you guys are out there.
00;11;29;08 – 00;11;30;19
Darren Terry
The podcast master.
00;11;31;11 – 00;11;34;18
Jon Mayo
I don’t know about that. And nowhere near.
00;11;34;18 – 00;11;59;09
Darren Terry
But yeah, so I tried keeping up with him and my heart rate just went through the roof. And so I did what I would always do in the pool, swimming distance. I would just slow down the pace over, rotate my body out of the water, get a big, deep, nourishing breath. But it wasn’t working out here. Also, it was open water with lots of boats.
00;11;59;09 – 00;12;26;27
Darren Terry
So this wasn’t like an official like swim zone. Speedboat waves, all that stuff were like working on us. So I was like, really, you know, raising the output. And it was gassing me like crazy. And I got to this point where I just I couldn’t get my heart rate down. And he was officially beating so hard that I could hear it in my head and feel it throbbing.
00;12;27;15 – 00;12;52;03
Darren Terry
I was just like, Oh, no, that that kind of sucks. I need to, you know, rest a little bit. That way I can continue on with our challenge. Mm hmm. I mean, we drove, like, 6 hours to do this, you know? And we always complete the task at hand. That’s just what we do. But in that moment, all of the realizations of.
00;12;52;15 – 00;13;14;13
Darren Terry
Oh, my God, I don’t even have the tools to survive, to be able to rest right now. I was realizing I don’t even know how to tread water. Hmm. And I tried there for a second, and I just kept kind of bobbing under a little bit in the waves would crash over my face. And then that’s when I looked to my right.
00;13;14;13 – 00;13;42;20
Darren Terry
And I see how far out I am. I was just. I was, like, caught in the moment of. Oh, no, your arrogance got you into this really tight spot right now. And at in that moment, I just freaked out and I started swimming to my right to the nearest beach. And the moment that I split off from Joe, you know, I didn’t even let him know.
00;13;42;20 – 00;14;00;09
Darren Terry
I just. My mind was in a swirl. Mm hmm. I just started sprinting towards that beach. But my heart rate was already redlined, and the sprint just made it worse. Mm hmm. And I was just. At this point, I’m fully freaked out. I’ve already bailed.
00;14;01;20 – 00;14;02;19
Jon Mayo
I’m. You’re in panic mode.
00;14;02;19 – 00;14;10;04
Darren Terry
I’m in full panic mode. Yeah. For anybody listening that’s ever had a panic attack, just imagine that being out in the middle of the water.
00;14;10;07 – 00;14;12;11
Jon Mayo
And the water’s not warm either. So that’s adding an element.
00;14;12;11 – 00;14;37;15
Darren Terry
It is. It really shocks the system. I can promise you. I was even thinking about water temp. The. But, yeah, I just. I went until I just couldn’t go anymore. I couldn’t sustain the heart rate. And I flip onto my back and I tried to exist there for a moment. I’m just like, at that point, you know, I don’t know how to tread water.
00;14;37;21 – 00;15;14;18
Darren Terry
Mm hmm. My. My lower half is pretty much a negative buoyant, so I’m just sinking. So it requires so much energy of me kicking my legs to keep my lower half up. And then the waves are crashing over me. I’m dipping down a little bit, and I see where I’m at in that shoreline ways away. And. And at that point, I’m it’s not it’s like my the smart part of my brain, the one that overcomes adversity and views the adversity is an opportunity.
00;15;14;28 – 00;15;39;08
Darren Terry
It was like that was nonexistent in that moment. Mm hmm. And it was like the lizard brain in action. Yeah. Fight or fight. And I tried flying away from the situation, and now I’m in this point where I must fight. But it was the lizard brain in action was just part of me. The human side of me was not even thinking about how can I, like, calm down in this situation?
00;15;39;08 – 00;15;46;11
Darren Terry
It was just thinking about I just see kind of the impending and.
00;15;46;27 – 00;15;48;05
Jon Mayo
Not wanting to drown. Yeah.
00;15;48;17 – 00;16;13;04
Darren Terry
It was like that primal feeling of you don’t want to fall, you don’t want to catch on fire. You don’t want to drowned. Mm hmm. And there’s nobody around other than Joe. But I was even thinking about him, to be honest, All I see is that I’m in, like, this monster of a body of water. And from my perspective, we’re pretty far out there, and I have nothing left, almost.
00;16;13;27 – 00;16;36;19
Darren Terry
And I’m having a panic attack. I just can’t lower my heart rate in the water, keeps crashing over me and crashing over me. And then I feel a hand on my shoulder. And Joe’s like, Hey, why are we? Of course? And I just kind of say panic. Mm hmm. Panic. And then he was realizing that one of his best friends is having a full blown panic attack.
00;16;36;24 – 00;16;38;11
Jon Mayo
And then over your head. Yes.
00;16;39;23 – 00;17;17;03
Darren Terry
And what followed was a pure showcase of his water confidence. He had never opened water, swam before, but he was so relaxed. And I can’t even imagine being in his shoes, trying not to panic himself. But he just keeps repetitively saying the same things over and over to me, trying to help me to float better. Mm hmm. And I wasn’t hearing it, so he would just keep saying it, saying it.
00;17;17;27 – 00;17;33;14
Darren Terry
And then all of a sudden, I’m just, you know, lizard brain still in action. I’m just doing what I can on my reserve energy to stay up. And then my goggles fog over.
00;17;33;14 – 00;17;34;07
Jon Mayo
Since I can’t see.
00;17;34;14 – 00;17;56;23
Darren Terry
I can’t see. Also, it takes so much energy from me to pull my arms out of the water and clear them. I had never practiced that either. That’s something that Ironman do. Open water swimmers. You practice flipping on your back, cleaning your goggles because it’s going to happen. Mm hmm. I didn’t know how to do that efficiently. And I knew I was running on reserves.
00;17;57;23 – 00;18;18;29
Darren Terry
And for me to do that, I would basically need to go vertically and tread the water and fight a little harder to, like, bring my arms out of the water to clear my goggles. And I didn’t have it in me to do that. I was too scared to take the risk. And then Joe just kept repeating, Why don’t you go vertical?
00;18;19;15 – 00;18;44;18
Darren Terry
Why won’t you go vertical? It’s going to be okay. You’re buoyant. I just wasn’t hearing it. But eventually I trusted his confidence more than I believed in my own fear. And I did a Hail Mary, and I just did it. I just ripped off the Band-Aid. And miraculously, I can see again my hair. It’s through the rough still.
00;18;45;02 – 00;19;02;06
Darren Terry
And then he just puts me back on my back and we’re just floating there and he’s just like, we’re just going to exist here. We’re going to let the current pull us in. And it’s actually pulling us in to the beach. I don’t I did not see that from my perspective. It didn’t feel like we were going anywhere.
00;19;02;22 – 00;19;21;11
Darren Terry
So I just started, you know, kind of backward. The swimming you know, while floating on my back. Mm hmm. And my goggles fogged over again. I just keep losing vision. I’m so out of energy. It’s insane.
00;19;23;19 – 00;19;51;20
Darren Terry
And then I started asking, Where are we? Where are we? And then at one point, he said, You’re just doing circles around me. Oh, I was outputting all this energy, doing, like this backwards swim. And he’s telling me I’m just doing circles and I’m not making any ground. And it just went on and on and on like that until we got back to Shore Inch by inch.
00;19;52;00 – 00;20;11;10
Darren Terry
And I don’t even know exactly how long we were out there, but it was definitely over 30 minutes of a panic attack in the water. And, you know, we got out and it actually before we even got out, we got to the shallow part and it’s just like, Darren, I don’t want you the of the water right now.
00;20;12;25 – 00;20;35;23
Darren Terry
I want to build a positive thing around what just happened. But I still wasn’t hearing him. I, I hated him in that moment because I knew what he was asking. He was like asking for more out of me. That way I could reframe it already, and I respect the guy so much that I did it. And eventually it was just so cruel in my mind.
00;20;35;23 – 00;20;58;17
Darren Terry
I just I got back to the beach and I just flopped down. And then he flops down next to me. And we I was just writing the vibe of the situation. My brain automatically looked past the the doom that just happened. And it was just thinking about, you know, how am I going to turn this into an opportunity?
00;21;00;02 – 00;21;21;13
Darren Terry
Now, this Iron Man can mean something to me because, you know, I just had a really rough experience in the open water. And then he gets back in the water, he does some more training, and I’m just kind of sitting there thinking, and then we camp out that night. We’re just kind of dissecting the moment I’m writing the high of being with him.
00;21;22;21 – 00;21;41;24
Darren Terry
And whenever I drop him off and then I go back home to Colorado Springs and my wife comes home and she opens the door with a big smile on her face and she’s like, How was it? I immediately broke down crying. The high was over.
00;21;42;02 – 00;21;44;28
Jon Mayo
That’s good. Sounds like you found quite a limit in yourself.
00;21;45;10 – 00;22;20;13
Darren Terry
Yeah. And it I just I kept having flashbacks from that moment on for a while, and I tried to compose myself, you know, it’s. I know one thing for certain is that mood follows action. You must. I need to push into this feeling and keep moving forward towards the inclined goal if I’m going to overcome what just happened.
00;22;20;14 – 00;22;38;08
Darren Terry
Like whenever I got hit by a car, which anybody that did hear the first episode, they’ll know that chapter of my life. Mm hmm. It was like this almost immediate response of I got hit by this car normally in the ditch. I thought I was going to die. A nurse shows up, she tells me I’m probably going to die.
00;22;38;08 – 00;23;09;05
Darren Terry
And I just have broken bones. My mind immediately like flips. I flipped the script on the whole thing and I start thinking about if this were like a story, like, what could I do from here? This is like page one. Yep. My mind went there. And from that moment, there wasn’t, like, flashbacks. Like, I could think about the car impacting me, but it wasn’t enough to, like, kind of traumatize me into, like, fright and stop me in my tracks.
00;23;10;17 – 00;23;34;13
Darren Terry
And this one did. And I just kept having flashbacks and stuff. And I think it was because it was like, if I can remember back to getting hit by the car, there’s that immediate moment of fear. I see her keep driving. I’m in the middle of the cornfields. I’m acknowledging what happened to me and I’m seeing the circumstance like nobody around just like in the lake.
00;23;35;07 – 00;24;05;07
Darren Terry
So I just think of that moment, but expanded over the course of 30 minutes or more where you just think that you’re going to die. And I think it’s hard for that not to get into your hardwiring and traumatize you a little bit. I tried going back to work the next day and it was kind of weird. My my partner at work had to go home for whatever reason, mid-way through the day, and I was left there to finish our job.
00;24;07;02 – 00;24;29;18
Darren Terry
And then I was trying to think efficiently how I can get the day done solo. But my mind just kept going back to that moment of being in the water and seeing that shoreline and the freak out. I just started like sweating so much and I was like, Focus on the work again. And then another flashback would come back and I just couldn’t focus.
00;24;29;26 – 00;24;50;14
Darren Terry
And then I got done with the job. I was looking at my truck and it was the craziest thing. The customer walks out and she was actually trying to evangelize Christianity on me. But literally one of her questions was, Are you afraid to die? I was just like in my head. I was just like, Why would you ask me that today?
00;24;51;19 – 00;25;20;13
Darren Terry
And I forget what I even told her. It just sent me into like, this swirl even further. And it was like from her saying that on it was just chaos. The incline, which is this thing that literally before Bloom saw the reservoir with, like, wake me up. I would be so obsessed on that mission. It was like, now it holds no power.
00;25;21;21 – 00;25;29;18
Darren Terry
I know it’s something that I have to keep pushing towards, but for whatever reason, the fire has gone and then.
00;25;31;16 – 00;25;36;28
Jon Mayo
You still there. Murder is it does it still feel to you that the fire’s gone and you’re just pushing out of discipline?
00;25;37;13 – 00;25;37;24
Darren Terry
No.
00;25;38;13 – 00;26;01;05
Jon Mayo
So you’re able to overcome that. Because what’s really interesting to me about taking the time to go into this in this depth is a lot of people might. My read on you has been that you have continued to grapple with this to the point of overcoming it probably still somewhere in the middle step of truly navigating it. Right.
00;26;01;12 – 00;26;32;14
Jon Mayo
But you’re pressing in, you’re embracing that. The obstacles the way. Right. Yeah. And what’s interesting about that is interact situation here. When you have a life threatening traumatic experience or you are rendered entirely powerless in an experience, right. Which in this situation you are powerless to get up and get out. So you’re in that state of fighting for survival the entire time, but unable to just have it over.
00;26;32;18 – 00;26;36;13
Jon Mayo
Right. Yeah. And I think a lot of people go through those types of experiences in different ways.
00;26;36;15 – 00;26;39;04
Darren Terry
Absolutely.
00;26;40;06 – 00;27;20;11
Jon Mayo
Thinking from everything from situations in combat to sexual assault to like I really like what you said earlier. Your arrogance. KING Your arrogance got you into a pretty bad spot as far as over overconfidence in your swimming ability compared to application in open water and whatever it is. The mistake, I think, is when we determine to not embrace and press through that moment and learn how to navigate it and reincorporate ourselves with the lessons from it, even if it was cruel and completely out of our control.
00;27;21;00 – 00;27;30;06
Jon Mayo
There’s things that I think that we can take away about life that can make us stronger. Instead, we get stuck in that moment and don’t progress.
00;27;30;18 – 00;27;31;06
Darren Terry
Yeah, right.
00;27;32;22 – 00;27;45;29
Jon Mayo
Which is an important element of what we’re walking through right now. It’s the wrestling through because it’s not simple, but it’s the wrestling through. How does one incorporate something that has this much of an effect? Right.
00;27;46;03 – 00;27;46;11
Darren Terry
Yeah.
00;27;46;25 – 00;28;18;13
Jon Mayo
And there’s an entire line of thought that’s very old, based in stoicism. And I’ve realized in the last few months, stoic, stoic and stoicism have different meanings, different people. It’s not just to be emotionless. In fact, it’s to live embracing one’s emotions, but it is essentially identifying what do I have within my control in this situation? And what is outside of my control?
00;28;18;13 – 00;28;42;21
Jon Mayo
And if it’s outside of my control, then I’m going to choose not to worry about it. And if it’s within my control, that is where I will place my focus and I will do the best that I can to determine what I will respond to emotionally based on this thought process, this analysis of my situation right. And then over the centuries that the concept was given different words, but there was Memento Mori.
00;28;43;03 – 00;29;05;18
Jon Mayo
Memento Vicente, which Memento Mori is very old and it’s remember, you will die or remember you’re mortal, Right? And then Memento, Venti, and I’m probably pronouncing this wrong. I do not speak Latin, so forgive me, is why remember? Why don’t I speak it? Yeah. The return on investment is not there for me week. But the second ones remember?
00;29;05;18 – 00;29;26;09
Jon Mayo
You will live. Remember to live, right? So to remember you’re mortal on one hand and on the other hand remember to live, right? And that just ties in one to what we’re talking about, but also to the entire concept of relentless, the entire concept of this journey of living in the now and not pursuing a finish line. Right.
00;29;26;09 – 00;29;46;01
Jon Mayo
Because there is no finish line. There’s just goalpost moments to be experienced along the way that we work to that give us further perspectives as we continue working forward right. And one of the things that is very exciting to me to get to explore today as well, and we’ll get there naturally. But is the multifaceted pursuit of living right.
00;29;46;10 – 00;30;04;14
Jon Mayo
That goes so far beyond one any one element, whether it’s career, whether it’s physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, all these things combine into the human experience. And what’s so cool, from my perspective, watching you relive this and experience it.
00;30;04;28 – 00;30;05;19
Darren Terry
Is.
00;30;07;03 – 00;30;29;10
Jon Mayo
This is a bridge to the multifaceted portion of existence, because in the moment of facing one’s own morality, and I’m very grateful to have also gone through my own experiences, I’ve done that where now I’m not plagued by the thought of my morality. I’m I’ve forged a life that if I die, I’m content, that I’m doing everything I can and living to the best of my ability.
00;30;29;23 – 00;30;57;19
Jon Mayo
And that brings significant peace, right? Yes. To be able to accept one’s fate. And if and if I die, I’m at peace with that. And I don’t want to I want to continue. But when it happens, it happens. And I’m comfortable with that. And that’s a gift of what we’re working through here. But in facing one’s morality and facing one’s death in a situation like you’re defining, it opens the door wide open on how many dimensions this existence contains.
00;30;58;06 – 00;31;02;13
Jon Mayo
Right? You’re forgiven on how many.
00;31;03;09 – 00;31;07;18
Darren Terry
My phone just on. Is your group of jujitsu guys?
00;31;08;08 – 00;31;26;10
Jon Mayo
Yeah, I forgot to. It’s on me. I should have reminded us, too, to go quiet on that. But, you know, it’s like there’s all these facets, right? Because as you’re sitting there fighting off the feeling of drowning right? Like, I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m just focusing on moving in. Joe’s there.
00;31;26;18 – 00;31;51;17
Jon Mayo
He shows up and helps begin coaching you through the situation. Everything else in that moment there is probably not the flash. I don’t know all the things that went through your mind in the background creating noise and creating chaos right? But at what you’re beginning to describe and when you saw Miranda and it all crashed on you, the impact of it right?
00;31;51;17 – 00;32;05;18
Jon Mayo
And then the touch you’ve had over the last few months since that’s happened, I can tell that there’s a lot of wrestling still with implications that have not yet been given words, or at least that I’ve not heard you articulate. And it seems that that is part of what keeps drawing you back in.
00;32;06;06 – 00;32;38;03
Darren Terry
Yeah. So a lot of what I was, you know, thinking out there was just I, I wrestled with the the fact that my arrogance got me into that situation, that thing that you talked about, where you feel comfortable whenever you nobody wants to die prematurely, but you’re living a life that’s intentional, right? And if you do die, that’s what you’re remembered for.
00;32;38;18 – 00;33;10;26
Darren Terry
Your mindset, how you lived and you were in a good spot. Even though you aspire for more, you were on the path and that’s honorable. I feel the exact same way. I didn’t feel good about the fact that this wasn’t supposed to be a monumental moment for me. Hmm. It was never intended to be like, Oh, no. Like, you know, these guys that, like, climb Everest and stuff and death is a real possibility.
00;33;11;28 – 00;33;43;01
Darren Terry
That was never on my mind. I was just going to go swim like I have done in the pool a million times and we’re going to bang out some miles. But what I got was a hard dose of reality that I had no tools to just exist out there comfortably. And I was not comfortable with the idea of dying with proper preparation, without proper preparation.
00;33;43;01 – 00;34;06;09
Darren Terry
You know, if if I’m going to go into a dangerous situation and death were to be like a possible outcome, I’d feel a lot better about that. Knowing that going in, then just Miranda thought, you know, this was going to be casual. I thought it was going to be casual. Why didn’t Darren come home? And I thought about here for just a split second, to be honest.
00;34;06;09 – 00;34;27;02
Darren Terry
Like whenever the lizard brain goes, it just goes. And then your human side is not really thinking about that stuff anymore. But I did think of like, I don’t even know how I’m going to return to her, dude. I just my my niece and nephew were just born not too long ago, and it’s like, it’s not my time.
00;34;27;03 – 00;34;47;06
Darren Terry
That’s why I felt and it’s like, I just don’t want to go out as an arrogant guy, you know? Just got himself into a stupid situation, you know? Yeah, I. I like the fact that I’m not afraid to jump in and go for things that I’m not necessarily trained for. It’s gotten me to some great accomplishments, and that’s where I was out there.
00;34;47;11 – 00;35;09;29
Darren Terry
Yeah, but it got me into a real life situation. I always self-inflicted my own adversity. Mm hmm. For the moments that life does kick me. But it was like in the moment of me trying to inflict my own adversity, Life was just like, No, I got it from here. And it gave me a real dose of something that overcome.
00;35;09;29 – 00;35;30;11
Darren Terry
So that being said, I’m on the path that I need to be on and I’m comfortable dying on the path, but just how I was out there just didn’t feel right. I don’t want to die doing something that I didn’t think was going to be dangerous. You know, I don’t want to die in that kind of a way.
00;35;31;04 – 00;35;46;11
Jon Mayo
Let’s let’s explore that for a minute. I think it’d be fun because how much in that the difference, right, versus if you’re driving home and you have a near-miss collision is that you were stuck in that for about 30 minutes.
00;35;46;12 – 00;35;46;23
Darren Terry
Yeah.
00;35;46;27 – 00;36;17;00
Jon Mayo
What we’ll call it 30 minutes of just because you don’t know right? 30 minutes of suffering, doing the best you can to get out of the water. Right. To get back to shore. And let’s say you’re driving and you just miss. Yeah, some crazy collision, right? You know, insert your favorite expletive, recover control of the vehicle. The adrenal response happens and begins to fade because it was a flash.
00;36;18;01 – 00;36;55;18
Jon Mayo
And on you go about your day. Right. How much different is that, though? Truly in this life? Right. And that’s where I dwell on how easily I could be snuffed out at any moment. Pretty frequently, probably about once a day. The thought will cross my mind as I go through an intersection or I’m sitting working. It just hits at how precious life is and how precious it is to share time with friends like this, to be able.
00;36;55;18 – 00;36;56;03
Darren Terry
To.
00;36;56;21 – 00;37;19;22
Jon Mayo
Love on and be with my boys. My wife, right? And there’s no guarantee that any time I walk out the door, it’s not just my life that could be snuffed out. There’s no guarantee that I won’t come home to someone else that I love Some family, you know, one of my kids or my wife gone. You know, there’s no guarantees that when we’re done, I walk down and the whole family sat right there.
00;37;20;02 – 00;37;49;17
Jon Mayo
And there’s a point. You can go too far with this, obviously, like with anything, but there’s a point to reflecting on it, I think, as a fairly regular discipline to keep the sweetness of what we have really in front of us, because it’s so fleeting, it’s so fast. And to miss that would be the shame, right? And I agree, like I can fully respect that this is absolutely wrong because my overconfidence, my arrogance brought me here and I refuse to accept this.
00;37;49;17 – 00;38;10;08
Jon Mayo
Right. Like that part I very much so align with. There’s just so much to unpack from that and to take with us as we continue forward, though, on, you know, Miranda goes out to work, you don’t know she’s coming back. Same for you, same for me, for my family, for our friends. The fact that we get to do this eight months later is never guaranteed.
00;38;10;29 – 00;38;28;27
Jon Mayo
And yet we’re here and allowing the discomfort of a little bit of reflection, you know, not to go to the point where you’re idealizing it or obsessing about it or it’s beginning to distract, but allowing just that tiny inject of the pain of that.
00;38;30;07 – 00;38;31;10
Darren Terry
In a small dish.
00;38;31;28 – 00;38;41;10
Jon Mayo
For myself daily, especially if I’m starting to feel ungrateful or frustrated with the circumstances of those I’m around, really helps just to bring it back.
00;38;41;29 – 00;39;01;20
Darren Terry
Absolutely. I’ve I’ve done a lot of background work on myself since that water. And one of the big takeaways is that that was my second bring it up. Thanks me. There we go.
00;39;02;10 – 00;39;03;26
Jon Mayo
Yeah, that looks more comfortable because now you’re not.
00;39;04;02 – 00;39;06;09
Darren Terry
I love it. Okay. We’re good to go.
00;39;06;10 – 00;39;06;22
Jon Mayo
Thank you.
00;39;07;13 – 00;39;31;18
Darren Terry
But okay, so the last time that was on here, I talked about how I climb Pikes Peak with no shoes, and it pushed me beyond this physical feeling. It Almost felt like now I’m on, like, this weird spiritual journey to find myself by reaching the top because I was my feet felt like they were going to fall off like two miles into it.
00;39;32;05 – 00;39;55;25
Darren Terry
It was so much pain that eventually it was just it wasn’t even the lizard brain. It was like more of like a spiritual experience. And I just came out of it feeling like anything that I put in front of me, I can do. And that is a great tool to have in life. You’re never scared to get into a new situation that’s uncomfortable because.
00;39;55;25 – 00;40;32;19
Darren Terry
You’ve gone well above and beyond. But I think the fact that in the last four years, really more like three, I’ve had two of these really real near-death experiences and come out of them, what great tools to use every day. And I do use them every day. I don’t obsess over them, but it’s like whenever a situation, a riot arises and I need to check myself and put things into perspective, I think about how those moments came.
00;40;32;19 – 00;41;01;10
Darren Terry
And that’s what real fear is. The moment of thinking that you’re going to die. But then the power comes from how are you going to flip the script on the whole thing? Hmm. But yeah, I, I think if we go back in time here, you know, that lady just asked me if I was scared to die and just sent me into the spiral down the incline, lost all of its power.
00;41;01;10 – 00;41;03;05
Darren Terry
In my mind, it was like.
00;41;03;05 – 00;41;04;16
Jon Mayo
Specifically the incline goal.
00;41;04;19 – 00;41;05;04
Darren Terry
Yes.
00;41;05;10 – 00;41;10;18
Jon Mayo
Which I do want to make sure that you express what that is and the record, everything else. Just for context.
00;41;10;18 – 00;41;42;25
Darren Terry
Absolutely. Let’s go ahead and do it. Okay. There is a very iconic stairway that goes right up the face of a mountain here in Colorado Springs or really Manitou Springs. But you can see it from Colorado Springs. It dominates the landscape right in front of Pikes Peak. It’s just a scar that goes perfectly vertical up a mountain, and it draws many of the top athletes in the world that come into this part of the country to train on it because it’s such a fantastic challenge.
00;41;43;09 – 00;42;13;04
Darren Terry
It rises 2000 feet in point eight miles. So Olympic athletes love training on it because the higher that you get, the worse you feel. And also you’re getting the oxygen ripped from you, making it even harder. And every time it’s the worst experience of your life, because if you’re just casually doing it in your high performance, shame on you.
00;42;13;04 – 00;42;35;15
Darren Terry
Because what should happen is it should never feel easier. You just get faster every time. But I just came up with this idea after my last ultramarathon that blew out my knee of, okay, I can’t run right now because of my knee, but I found that I could do the Stairmaster and my mind immediately went to the incline.
00;42;35;17 – 00;42;57;15
Darren Terry
It wasn’t long before I started thinking, Well, let’s get uncomfortable here. Let’s see what my mindset can really do. And I kind of built myself for endurance. What if I go for the speed record on the incline, the fastest ascent up that staircase 2000 feet? That’s an incredible challenge.
00;42;58;07 – 00;43;10;23
Jon Mayo
In what? What does that look like then? As far as I know, there’s a record. I’ve even ran into the guy and what what the time of the record, how long is it stood? And then we can keep jumping on. But that way just kind of scope of the challenge.
00;43;10;23 – 00;43;37;25
Darren Terry
Okay. So the last time that we were on the mic, Joe Gray held the record. He’s a Team USA Mountain runner, considered one of the best mountain runners in the entire world. He’s won the Pikes Peak Marathon, which is like literally like the second hardest marathon in the world. And he did that like just days after setting the incline record of 17 minutes and 45 seconds.
00;43;38;24 – 00;44;15;00
Darren Terry
And that was like eight years ago. So whenever I started thinking about this, that was the guy in his time to beat, which was a powerful thing for me because if we look back to where I come from, which you can find on episode 49, I didn’t come from like sports or anything I like completely had the redesign myself and build a mindset that strong and it all led up to me winning this race that was like a life dream, a multi-year like journey.
00;44;16;09 – 00;44;57;13
Darren Terry
And now I’m in this position where I can confidently say, I can come after a record that’s held by a Team USA runner. And not too long ago I was training my my face to smile at this high school track. And that guy, Joseph Gray, he he had just run the Pikes Peak ascent. So just to the top of Pikes Peak, he got like fourth place, but he was coming back to his car and I just run into him and it was me and Miranda, my wife, and she actually engaged in that conversation.
00;44;57;13 – 00;45;07;02
Darren Terry
I’m just looking at his face. This is a guy, he’s not my enemy, but in a way he is his his record is my enemy.
00;45;07;05 – 00;45;08;14
Jon Mayo
Yeah. He’s your worthy rival, right?
00;45;08;14 – 00;45;31;11
Darren Terry
He is. I knew who she was talking to. I just stood there for a second. Kind of just kind of, like, not starstruck, but, like, I can’t believe that whatever forces of nature, like, put this in alignment for me. The reigns of the guy who I’ve been obsessing over his record, and I stopped Miranda from talking. I was just like, Do you know who this is?
00;45;32;04 – 00;45;49;13
Darren Terry
And then both of them look at me kind of weird. I’m like, This is Joe Gray, the Incline record holder. And Miranda started freaking out. And then to give him some context of why I’m like, in a way.
00;45;49;13 – 00;45;50;16
Jon Mayo
Connection over I’m making.
00;45;50;16 – 00;46;15;27
Darren Terry
Yeah I’m making a big deal of is because I told him straight up I’m coming for that record and this dude is like one of the best in the world. The current record holder, he knows exactly what it takes. And this is a UNsponsored. Nobody that’s telling him this. So you could just imagine as the expression, he was a super nice guy, by the way.
00;46;16;09 – 00;46;46;03
Darren Terry
But put yourself in his shoes. Somebody just said that they’re coming after your pretty precious record. You’re not going to look, I’m very serious. Yeah, and he did. But then he informed me that a few days ago, a guy from Switzerland just broke the record by, like, 20 seconds, which didn’t concern me at all because that that time is above what I was going for.
00;46;46;13 – 00;46;52;03
Darren Terry
So I’m still, like, on target and but yeah, that was interesting running into him.
00;46;52;09 – 00;46;58;26
Jon Mayo
Yeah. Cool. So eight your record just was broken by about 20 seconds. You’re you’re still hunting that.
00;46;58;26 – 00;47;01;19
Darren Terry
So so now the Switzerland guy is my new rival.
00;47;01;24 – 00;47;06;09
Jon Mayo
Yeah so so the fun thing there then and thanks for but that’s that.
00;47;06;09 – 00;47;09;20
Darren Terry
Should put it in the perspective of the kind of athletes it.
00;47;09;20 – 00;47;17;05
Jon Mayo
Draws. Yeah. And it and it says when you mentioned the incline and why that has relevance it’s because that’s what you’re pursuing so that’ll help everyone.
00;47;17;14 – 00;47;48;08
Darren Terry
Yeah. And for me specifically I’m just trying to furthermore blur the lines between what we perceive as like impossible and inevitable. Since we were last on the mike, my journey has become more public for those around me, more people that I interact with day to day know exactly who I am, what I strive for, where I’ve been, and it’s been pretty awesome.
00;47;48;08 – 00;48;12;22
Darren Terry
Like the stories I share hold a little bit of weight in people’s eyes, I think, from how they’ve expressed that to me. And that’s just the stories I tell, where I’ve been. Because over the last four years I put myself in the shadow to where I could reinvent myself without any distractions. No, no media presence, nothing like I don’t want people’s negativity or positivity.
00;48;12;22 – 00;48;45;06
Darren Terry
It holds. No, wait for me. I need to do this all in the shadow to, like, really make it mean something. But now it’s all in the open. And now I’m just like, The incline is a much more high profile challenge than anything that I’ve ever done. And I think by letting people in on it, those around me in these beginning stages, it’s going to be more powerful whenever I do it.
00;48;45;06 – 00;48;54;29
Darren Terry
And I’m just so thankful that I’m like at this level to where I can, like, realistically see myself doing it. So that’s why I’m doing it.
00;48;56;03 – 00;49;07;25
Jon Mayo
And in that I’m really feedback. I can’t remember first before after the podcast we were eating, I think it was before the podcast, we’re eating breakfast.
00;49;07;25 – 00;49;08;09
Darren Terry
On Monday.
00;49;09;27 – 00;49;15;14
Jon Mayo
And we start talking about the benefits of letting people in on that.
00;49;16;09 – 00;49;16;19
Darren Terry
Right?
00;49;18;10 – 00;49;42;08
Jon Mayo
And here we go. You’ve accomplished that goal. You’ve made comments. I can’t recall if we talked about it in the first the first time we sat down here or not, but about the soul crushing realization that the depression that followed that victory. When you writes, When am I going to the fall from your goal? That was an end mark to the deliberate steps to embrace life as a journey, right?
00;49;42;27 – 00;50;14;13
Jon Mayo
And what comes with that? And here we are now, and you’re grateful to be doing this. You’re grateful based on what you just said, to be sharing that this experience with others and publicizing it, you’re safeguarding against sharing it, being equated to doing it right, which is always the case when you share goals. And it’s very possible to slip up and allow oneself to gain satisfaction from sharing the goal as if they had accomplished already.
00;50;14;26 – 00;50;40;14
Jon Mayo
So I say that as a caveat, right? Obviously you’re being very deliberate not to have that be the case, but you’re here, you’re pursuing it. People are aware. You’re enjoying the entire dimensionality of getting to share that experience with others. Talk about it, kind of learn how it’s affecting others and in that how it’s affecting yourself and you’re continuing forward.
00;50;41;01 – 00;50;41;09
Darren Terry
Right.
00;50;41;28 – 00;51;04;26
Jon Mayo
You mentioned that you are you just earned a promotion in that you’re going to be going into a leadership role shortly. Right. And I asked you why you were interested in that and doing stuff like that at your work when you were so focused on your first goal and you further were talking about wanting to explore more than one dimension of growth, right?
00;51;05;05 – 00;51;35;00
Jon Mayo
At first it took everything to form the discipline and self-confidence and self perspective that gave you satisfaction, right? And you accomplish that. You earned respect in your community and there this is what my assessment has been over the last half year. You’ve been wrestling with all the different facets in wanting to explore in multiple areas, grow in multiple areas and expand that.
00;51;35;00 – 00;51;57;16
Jon Mayo
And I think it’s incredibly important to look at that because when we get hyper focused and disciplined on pushing inward to make ourselves something of value, right, Which is I think it’s the first step of any journey as far as what does human existence look like? Well, first, let’s make sure that our existence is something that’s valuable and brings value to others as well, Right?
00;51;57;23 – 00;52;14;14
Jon Mayo
If we’re not creating if we’re not living in such a way that is worth living, then why are we here? And if that existence isn’t benefiting others, once we’ve accomplished that first step, once again, why are we? And if that’s not rippling outward, what’s the point of all this?
00;52;14;14 – 00;52;15;01
Darren Terry
Exactly.
00;52;15;11 – 00;52;35;21
Jon Mayo
So in that pursuit, and I call it the first step is phase one, right? You have to go inward. You have to create something that you respect in yourself. You have to forge those things. Right. Check done in this in this instance. And then the further you go inward, it starts to go through your self into others.
00;52;36;16 – 00;52;37;10
Darren Terry
Right? Yes.
00;52;37;18 – 00;52;57;15
Jon Mayo
And at that point, it doesn’t turn around, but it transforms, evolves from the journey inward to make something that’s not just crap, that needs burned off into something that’s serving others and therefore going outward in service first to those whom you’re closest with and then into one’s community. And then the ripples continue.
00;52;58;01 – 00;53;02;22
Darren Terry
Yeah, and it’s a fair assessment.
00;53;02;28 – 00;53;12;21
Jon Mayo
It’s a curious thing, right? Because the danger is to get stuck in phase one. But the biggest danger is not to even start this.
00;53;13;09 – 00;53;13;24
Darren Terry
Yes.
00;53;14;13 – 00;53;46;08
Jon Mayo
But then those it started. It’s very dangerous to get stuck in phase one. And I’ve no idea much beyond the public story of Goggins, for example. Right. But a concern that could be levied without any further I say concern, not a criticism because I don’t have enough knowledge to make it a criticism. Right. But a concern with how he publicizes himself is that he may be he did not progressed beyond the phase one level of approach, right.
00;53;46;23 – 00;54;13;22
Jon Mayo
Of just pursue the next goal to make, not let that inner bitch win. Right. And I think that’s a critical element of existence. But if it doesn’t evolve beyond that, then the concern could be that you stagnate much the same way that you were before. But you feel better because instead of pursuing purpose, you’re in action. And the action lulls you into believing that you’re living purposeful in creating value and that could be a concern.
00;54;13;22 – 00;54;26;24
Jon Mayo
Someone could say towards that. And if it if it can be said towards that, then flip that mirror back on ourselves. How much more true of it is in ourselves? And that’s something that I myself am asking all the time with what I’m working to build.
00;54;27;07 – 00;54;27;12
Darren Terry
With.
00;54;27;12 – 00;54;36;20
Jon Mayo
The universe, right at the universal living approach. And this and CC stamina, which we are in fact fueled by right now. Right.
00;54;36;27 – 00;54;44;22
Darren Terry
It’s awesome. I have something right beside me. Another one. Good to go. Yeah. Shameless plug. Yep.
00;54;45;27 – 00;55;05;12
Jon Mayo
But why the heck build all this, right? Is this my life? This is one of the questions I ask myself pretty frequently. And yesterday, dude, I had this moment I took the day I spent some PTO to be able to work on some things and I came into this moment. Finish this transcript I’ve been working on for a while and I was all excited.
00;55;05;12 – 00;55;33;28
Jon Mayo
I was going to put it as this curated journey, right? Let’s journey together, walk through this content. There’s these question, this opportunity, some questions and reflection and stuff was like, All right, I’m going to use this e commerce platform to deliver this content right? It’s going to work. So I finish the transcript and I go and I’m looking at the software and I just realize because this question, my mind is how exactly will translate over has been kind of circulating the back burners.
00;55;34;17 – 00;55;49;10
Jon Mayo
And I’m looking at it. I’m like, it’s not the right, it’s not the right delivery system. It’s not the right thing. Yeah, I’d like to use this doesn’t make sense to me. And now that I’m looking at I can’t afford anymore like this is the next step. So I’m looking at it. I realize, okay, this isn’t going to work.
00;55;49;10 – 00;56;08;03
Jon Mayo
So I’m back to the drawing board of what did I just create? What is the point of creating it? The imposter syndrome. Sarah, of what is new here? Nothing, Right? There’s really nothing. It’s just packaging in a way that I hope reaches some people and that I think that’s the case for all of us. What’s really new? There’s not much right buy.
00;56;08;03 – 00;56;32;11
Jon Mayo
So I think I’ll serve others so I’m wrestling through. Okay, I need to figure out how to deliver it. So that’s one problem. Yeah. So that just happened to Google Jako because I was thinking through, I was looking at number of people. Tim Ferriss Draco and it’s just a bunch of guys so that I could gain an understanding of how are all these people delivering the this information in a way that’s valuable but also creates buy in so that people actually take it seriously enough to consider taking action for themselves.
00;56;32;28 – 00;57;09;09
Jon Mayo
Right? So I’m going down that route and I never just googled Jacob before, but I did. And there’s Draco dot com. No idea. Right? So I click on that and it’s essentially a landing page for everything he’s doing. And in that moment I realized just how much of a the word that came to mind was Idol, right? And like the prototype of the physical manifestation of so much of what I’ve envisioned and desire to build was just staring back at me in this page, not in his form, but in what I’m looking at.
00;57;09;09 – 00;57;53;17
Jon Mayo
I’m looking at this grid of like nine organizations, businesses, ventures that he’s created and has pulled a team together, community, to pursue this robust manner of living. Everything from a publishing company to multiple podcasts to in America, manufacturing to supplementation. You know, all this stuff is they’re looking at me and I just feel like this complete frickin loser imposter who just ran into this problem where this message that is in many ways me baring my soul to hopefully help others get on this journey right of living intentionally and learning how to lead, becoming empowered enough that they can lead a maximized life.
00;57;53;17 – 00;58;14;21
Jon Mayo
Right. This this whole thing is just look at me. I’m like, You’re just nothing. Right? And it was good. Like, I think I haven’t navigated what this all means yet, how the next steps will play out. I’m still figuring it out, but I was instantly pissed off as any human being would and grateful at the same time. And just the whole whirlwind of things.
00;58;15;09 – 00;58;36;19
Jon Mayo
Because I’m talking about dozens upon dozens of hours just on this one project that ran into the snag, not to mention the hundreds of hours on everything that I’m trying to be in my existence in. So much of it is in the suffering of the dark and the cold, right alone, trudging on it and just looking at it.
00;58;36;19 – 00;58;54;26
Jon Mayo
You’re like, What is the point? Right? When you see something that’s being done so well and like it’s not the same. Like I’m not replicating what he wants to do. There is blue sky, you know, there’s openings that are different. There’s things that I can reach a different group of people, right? I think we just passed 8 billion people.
00;58;55;02 – 00;59;18;18
Jon Mayo
There’s a lot of people. They’re receptive to different things. So in this in the pursuit of one living a life worth living and making it valuable and inspiring to my sons and my wife and my family, my friends, such that we create the self looking ice cream cone in a positive way. The cycle of reinforcement of this manner of being right, which I believe is better than not.
00;59;19;19 – 00;59;42;05
Jon Mayo
I can then continue to invest in hunt and pursue the hearts of those who may be attracted to the way that this manner of living is. And it may help them get into their own version of that and just keep duplicating it, even in the same way that in some ways he’s one of probably top five, you know, one of the five minds that helped me navigate to where I am, you know, and I’m doing my version and continuing.
00;59;42;06 – 01;00;10;14
Jon Mayo
And anyhow, it just was this moment of the futility of our existence, which is a different type of demon to face, right? Monster to face. There’s the our mortality is one monster that we have to face, I think, and learn to incorporate into our being so that we can navigate life more fully. But then the other one, and I think it’s I think the drums.
01;00;10;14 – 01;00;10;22
Darren Terry
Of.
01;00;11;20 – 01;00;31;06
Jon Mayo
War, right. This fight have been drumming up for a while, but another one is the futility of what we do. And a lot of the wisdom texts like the Bible talks about that. A lot of the wisdom texts across the world, stoicism, everything that it is well known that everything is like all that we do is essentially futile, right?
01;00;32;00 – 01;00;53;05
Jon Mayo
We’re dust in the wind. That doesn’t mean I don’t think the message there. So do nothing. It’s just understand it. And how does that affect your ways, your manner of being in a more positive thing? Because all you and I think it really comes back to just all you have is the present. Yeah. So make sure you’re maximizing it many ways just to share that struggle.
01;00;53;28 – 01;01;17;23
Jon Mayo
Just face that. I had to go get my attitude right again so I could be present and invest in my wife and children for the evening and have a good evening. And we did right. Well, I was thankfully able to switch the script, get out of the chaotic fight with myself and the existential questions of what the hell is the point?
01;01;17;27 – 01;01;36;00
Jon Mayo
Right When I saw that and now I. I’m moving beyond and. All right. Figuring out it’s going to make it better. Right? That’s a beautiful thing. Like seeing that last night running into this issue and accepting that instead of staying the course and butchering it by putting it on that course platform regardless. Right. I was like, Oh crap, well, I have to change course.
01;01;36;10 – 01;01;59;04
Jon Mayo
So that was good and painful and healthy all in the same time. And then seeing the example of what just I think is beautifully well done and I have the utmost respect for Wright and that empire that he’s built and the lives that he’s changing, mine being one of them. I was just so humbling and it just brought back to the question of am I getting stuck in some phase, right, to bring it back to why?
01;01;59;06 – 01;02;20;28
Jon Mayo
Why the hell are we talking about this? The first phase you can get stuck in is trying to make yourself something that is worth being around and worth existing in, depending on the perspective of if you’re looking up from your self as an individual or the perspective of those around you. Right? You want to be something of value.
01;02;20;28 – 01;02;38;29
Jon Mayo
Otherwise why? Otherwise you’re just a burden, right? So we can create that. That’s phase one. And you do that by creating the discipline. You do that by creating the the respect in yourself and the ability to trust your own word and all those things. And that there’s gold in that, there’s value in that. But then the second one is so that’s that phase one.
01;02;38;29 – 01;02;45;08
Jon Mayo
And then when you if you don’t get stuck there and repress beyond and we realize.
01;02;45;17 – 01;02;45;24
Darren Terry
Like.
01;02;46;03 – 01;03;06;14
Jon Mayo
Using your life as an analogy, right. Oh, there’s a lot of good that’s coming from me sharing this and being public and there’s distractions to guard against. There’s slippery slopes to guard against, but there’s also a lot of value and a lot of good that can be done. So now we’re progressed past phase one. What’s phase two and what are the tripping blocks there?
01;03;06;14 – 01;03;21;20
Jon Mayo
And that’s what I’m wrestling with and why I’m sharing this. It’s like, okay, I don’t believe it’s wasted, but let’s pretend it is wasteful to be working to build these things right. Just as a mental experiment for a second.
01;03;21;27 – 01;03;24;08
Darren Terry
Let’s do it. That was beautiful, by the way.
01;03;24;21 – 01;03;25;05
Jon Mayo
Was it?
01;03;25;08 – 01;03;26;20
Darren Terry
Yeah. What I think.
01;03;26;20 – 01;03;27;09
Jon Mayo
Stood out to you.
01;03;27;11 – 01;03;35;23
Darren Terry
You took it to a place where I think you were dancing around a few gems. I don’t want to get too far off topic, so we’ll go.
01;03;36;06 – 01;03;37;11
Jon Mayo
There’s no topic, so. That’s right.
01;03;37;11 – 01;04;05;14
Darren Terry
I brought a book of things that we could talk about, like powerful points that I’ve just encountered, and I wanted to get you like, your thoughts on. And one of them is intentionality. You are on a path of self-actualization. And so in I whenever you’re on that path, everything has to be genuine or else you don’t know who you are, right?
01;04;05;20 – 01;04;28;08
Darren Terry
You know who you are. I know who I am. Within the last four years, I’ve learned who I am. There is like, like one of the first things I did the, like, push my mind and take it to places I never been. Was doing this one mile rock climbing a day as a non rock climber just to see if I had what it took to endure and accept the pains and stuff.
01;04;28;15 – 01;04;59;10
Darren Terry
And I completed it and I had this overwhelming feeling that I had never experienced before. It like this feels like something that I had to do and it had so much power. It felt like I didn’t know what the term self-actualization was. But it’s basically you finding your path and it felt so genuine and just something that I could dig into.
01;04;59;21 – 01;05;40;16
Darren Terry
And it ended up being the truth because I believed it was in. It sent me down this crazy rabbit hole of finding more of myself. And I just always had this overwhelming feeling of this is my I don’t know what it’s going to turn into, but there is like this certain level of like very genuine, like vibe behind it, which was also, by the way, why I was in phase one for so long and didn’t want to come out because the experiences I felt in phase one gave me feelings beyond anything that money could give me or anybody else could feel or give me.
01;05;40;27 – 01;06;08;09
Darren Terry
This was like an inner feeling of extreme emotion and accomplishment, and I’m not doing this for anybody else. It’s all genuine. I know it’s going to bear some fruit. I don’t know if that’s going to be me sharing it to the world or me just keeping it for myself and like pushing my mind to these crazy levels that give me even a more euphoric experience.
01;06;08;09 – 01;06;37;24
Darren Terry
In the end, I just knew this is something that I’m following and what I see in you is like this genuine drive to always better yourself and you you go into so many areas and give it everything. But I see what the path is so you might have come across that whole jakku thing. You got kicked in the teeth, right?
01;06;39;15 – 01;07;08;25
Darren Terry
I would look past it and kill the imposter syndrome. It kills you because you are genuine about your path. And it felt like almost in a way, you getting ripped away from it. It feels like, Oh, maybe I’m not meant to do this or whatever now. It’s just that you want it so bad that whenever you saw something not go your way, it was hard to accept, I think, because you’re so intentional and ultimately that’s great for your path.
01;07;09;09 – 01;07;22;11
Darren Terry
Blue Mesa was great for my path. Like we didn’t even like expand on that is as it can go. But that’s just what I heard in your long thing right There you were.
01;07;22;11 – 01;07;23;11
Jon Mayo
I try to keep it shorter.
01;07;23;11 – 01;07;48;19
Darren Terry
No, don’t. No, it was great. Well, look, you’re just so genuine. And that’s the most powerful part of any journey. Jocko, if he’s genuine in that journey of putting all that stuff out to people and doing all of that for himself, it it is serves him, it serves others great. It’s been a tool for you. I’ve used him for my own good in the key word is good.
01;07;48;27 – 01;08;04;26
Darren Terry
Yeah, that’s the thing that I got from him. Like I have so many mantras that go through my head at different points of the day and different challenges. And one of my favorite things that he ever put out there was like, any time that something goes wrong, just say good.
01;08;05;09 – 01;08;09;28
Jon Mayo
I think we we both have heard the song that Akira the Dawn made.
01;08;10;10 – 01;08;13;12
Darren Terry
Yeah, do you remember that? But I first saw it in a YouTube video.
01;08;13;13 – 01;08;17;10
Jon Mayo
Yeah, maybe I’ll just check that out if you heard it now.
01;08;17;10 – 01;08;23;08
Darren Terry
She’s a guy that was following your path. You know, I’m sure you got kicked in the teeth a bunch, just like you did the other day.
01;08;23;10 – 01;08;23;24
Jon Mayo
Last night.
01;08;24;18 – 01;08;31;17
Darren Terry
Last night? Perfect. Yeah, it’s raw to become Jocko. You don’t come out of the womb as Jocko.
01;08;31;29 – 01;08;42;22
Jon Mayo
No. And and and to clarify one thing, because I agree with everything you’re saying, I just want to. We have this opportunity to explore it.
01;08;43;01 – 01;08;43;19
Darren Terry
Yeah, I.
01;08;43;19 – 01;09;08;01
Jon Mayo
Do believe it’s a good thing that happened. I do believe that 100 with fiber of my being that whatever the whatever is produced from this conversation, from that experience last night, from this conversation, we’re that where the path continues to go, where life continues to go and what I create will be better for this, right? So I’m not concerned at that level.
01;09;09;07 – 01;09;14;21
Jon Mayo
But there’s also an opportunity in it that I don’t want to waste and that opportunities to say, well, what if I’m pursuing the wrong thing entirely?
01;09;15;14 – 01;09;16;28
Darren Terry
Yes, I’ve seen that.
01;09;17;01 – 01;09;42;03
Jon Mayo
And let’s do that genuinely right here now, because I haven’t I’ve been wrestling with that question and maybe you the answering come here. But the authentic exposure of self, the vulnerable that comes in that can be powerful. And I’m I’m not afraid to do that with you here. So let’s do it right. The hypothetical what if game based upon the assumption that this is good regardless because of what we can produce from it?
01;09;42;09 – 01;09;44;11
Jon Mayo
Right. Fair enough.
01;09;44;19 – 01;09;46;29
Darren Terry
Okay.
01;09;46;29 – 01;10;13;01
Jon Mayo
What if I’m hunting up the entirely wrong tree with this entire proceeding? You know, if. If I believe that I will walk away from what I’ve built entirely and start over. I’ve done that with multiple careers and industries. The monetary and physical, emotional and spiritual investment into what I’m building now does not change for me the freedom from walking away from it.
01;10;13;01 – 01;10;25;26
Jon Mayo
The moment it’s realized it’s wrong. So whether it’s an adaptation, a complete abandonment, or a refining and reinvesting, doubling down into staying the exact damn course that I’m on.
01;10;26;25 – 01;10;27;11
Darren Terry
Is.
01;10;27;11 – 01;10;36;21
Jon Mayo
Irrelevant to me as long as it’s the right one option. Right. Okay. So with that kind of premise and kind of the chips on the table.
01;10;37;11 – 01;10;38;15
Darren Terry
I love it. I’m driven up.
01;10;39;17 – 01;10;50;06
Jon Mayo
You know what? Because the question does come. And you’re right. I think that if you have any humility within you, the imposter syndrome, that feeling of embarrassing imposter will be there.
01;10;50;12 – 01;11;20;00
Darren Terry
And it’s always going to be there. But it’s a healthy thing. You can quiet it, but it’s always going to exist in the background because the imposter goes by another name, the inner bitch. It cannot be killed. You can walk in the basement and forget about it as you climb and climb incline. But the moment that you let up, the moment that you lose focus, it found the key.
01;11;20;18 – 01;11;23;19
Darren Terry
You get out of the basement and it’s always going to come back.
01;11;24;11 – 01;11;25;19
Jon Mayo
And I see some value in it, though.
01;11;26;05 – 01;11;50;18
Darren Terry
It’s great. It like, keeps you in check. It Almost like if you’ve battled it enough, you can distinguish which voice is happening inside your head. Did the inner bitch come back because know for a fact I am the guy that can wake up at four in the morning and suffer and then go through a full workday and then come back and suffer some more.
01;11;50;18 – 01;11;54;06
Darren Terry
That’s me. But lately I haven’t been doing that.
01;11;54;15 – 01;11;55;03
Jon Mayo
Well, I’ve been doing.
01;11;55;04 – 01;12;19;00
Darren Terry
Because the cold, it feels a little more cold than usual. So the imposter syndrome. I just wanted to touch on that for a second. Yeah, it is the inner bitch. It will never go away. Because as long as you’re pushing the way that you should be, pushing into levels of the unknown, there’s always going to be that feeling of, I don’t know what’s on the other side always.
01;12;19;00 – 01;12;33;00
Darren Terry
And you can have a lot self-confidence. That voice can be quiet, very low tone or non-existent. But a lot of times the gold thing that you like, you’re pushing towards is worthy enough. It should scare you.
01;12;33;10 – 01;12;33;23
Jon Mayo
Yes.
01;12;33;28 – 01;12;35;27
Darren Terry
And the imposter will come in.
01;12;35;27 – 01;12;54;11
Jon Mayo
I think you just blew open the fact that that voice so many different means of attack, right? So I was like, Why don’t you let’s call it the until we think of something better. That’s called the distractor. Perfect. Right? They to derail it right. There’s this force, this idea within our minds that wants to pull us.
01;12;54;11 – 01;12;54;20
Darren Terry
Off.
01;12;55;09 – 01;13;20;04
Jon Mayo
The course of fighting, striving, living for more right. Whether that’s the stay in sleep in which doesn’t happen. Still waking up at 340 every day, whether it’s the avoid the discomfort of waking up or training or what have you, or it’s instead the imposter piece of who the hell am I to do this podcast, right? That to me is like the significance.
01;13;20;04 – 01;13;31;02
Jon Mayo
When I saw that last night, I was like, Who the hell am I to be trying to build these things? I’m nothing good, right? Good. I’m nothing. So just make sure you’re building something that’s true. Make sure you’re building something that’s authentic.
01;13;31;05 – 01;13;49;22
Darren Terry
That’s what it comes down to. You know? And you touched on like we played that. What a thing. And I was revving up because you were like, Well, what if this is the wrong thing? Okay, I just gave you, like, that whole rundown on the the rock climb. Mm hmm. Try and rip me away from that path. Yeah, try.
01;13;51;11 – 01;14;14;00
Darren Terry
You will be unsuccessful because this is a false path. It pulls at me. It’s in my mind the moment I wake up. It goes beyond money. It goes beyond work to an extent, you know, It’s just the thing that drives me through life. Try ripping that away from me. That’s how I know that I found my path. Wherever it takes me, it takes me.
01;14;14;00 – 01;14;47;24
Darren Terry
It’s been great so far. It takes me down so many avenues. If you feel like sees you, doesn’t serve you, it doesn’t serve others and it just doesn’t resonate with your soul in a way. Kill it at any point. Yeah. This podcast, I don’t even think that I need to say how it’s had an impact on my life and opening me up and taking me past stage one.
01;14;47;24 – 01;15;08;09
Darren Terry
This is powerful stuff. And if you feel like this is genuine and I just can’t discourage you man, you’ll know if something should be shut down or, you know, dived into it a little deeper. It’s this overwhelming feeling of genuineness.
01;15;08;21 – 01;15;35;11
Jon Mayo
Yeah. And I do think that there’s well, first of all, thank you. Because some of the things you said, they’re very honoring and cool and I take very seriously and appreciate So thank you. But what’s interesting is even if you’ve spent like even if the collective you even if I spend so much time trying to better myself right as I grow the bad gross to everything grows.
01;15;35;11 – 01;15;47;10
Jon Mayo
So you still have to cultivate it, you know. And then I was thinking like, well, I think the realization is there are things, even if their hopes in what I’m working on here and all these projects.
01;15;48;05 – 01;15;48;17
Darren Terry
That.
01;15;48;17 – 01;15;48;25
Jon Mayo
Are.
01;15;48;25 – 01;15;49;14
Darren Terry
Deadwood.
01;15;50;08 – 01;15;51;09
Jon Mayo
Wrongly aimed.
01;15;51;22 – 01;15;52;08
Darren Terry
Or.
01;15;52;27 – 01;16;27;03
Jon Mayo
Wrongly conceived in need corrected so that what is good and is genuine and is authentic can continue forward. So just even a quick analysis of it, right? Mm hmm. CC Stamina performance evolved the supplement, right? Shameless plug, but that is a genuine it’s great. Yeah. Thank you. It is a genuine, authentic, wholehearted attempt to quit people with something that makes them healthier and stronger, while also giving them a boost to perform better over the long haul.
01;16;27;03 – 01;16;48;07
Jon Mayo
Not just for today. Right. So that’s real. So I’m not worried about that. This podcast and how it’s evolved from great theory to relentless to only sitting down in these specific situations. Right. With people that I think will help further hone the experience or share a perspective that’s unique. And let’s pause on that real quick because think of a unique perspective.
01;16;48;07 – 01;17;13;28
Jon Mayo
You went straight into the physical to evolve yourself. Mm hmm. Right. I went very philosophical, which then led into the physical, which then led into the building in mind. Right. And the reason I just say that is because these journeys aren’t just copy paste for every person. The manner in which we engage and wrestle with these components are sequenced differently.
01;17;13;28 – 01;17;18;27
Jon Mayo
They’re experienced differently, they’re aimed at different things. But the thing that I think is true at the core of it.
01;17;19;24 – 01;17;20;15
Darren Terry
Is.
01;17;20;23 – 01;17;41;08
Jon Mayo
I or at least my belief is I don’t know how to better love and serve those whom I care for, who make my life worth living. If I’m not improving myself in the only way I can improve their circumstances definitively that I can trust in is if I’m improving myself. So it all comes back to if I’m not improving myself, then I’m not improving the circumstances for this.
01;17;41;08 – 01;18;04;17
Jon Mayo
I love my community or anything else, and if I’m not improving myself, then I am failing and falling backwards. You know, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Sure as hell didn’t fall apart today either. So it’s either progression or digression. And the only way that I can stave off that regression is by focusing on improving myself in the pursuit of serving others whom I love so that this whole existence is better, right?
01;18;04;27 – 01;18;26;01
Jon Mayo
Yeah. And in that pursuit. Right. Relentless. Now check feels fine, right? Passes the sniff test of no stay the course CC stamina passes the sniff test of stay the course. I think the whole academy thing, at least for this phase of life. Right. The building, all these courses, everything else was born of good intentions of a business idea that made sense when I had that partner, when we had that material.
01;18;26;22 – 01;18;45;11
Jon Mayo
But then to try and reform. Re When that change and I incorporate all these businesses to try to make that fit into this story I want to tell was a misstep and the hope of what would be created in doing that was a misstep. As I think about what my hopes were in doing that right is a misstep.
01;18;45;27 – 01;19;06;04
Jon Mayo
So what I’ve spent the time writing is still good. I still believe that that needs shared or that there’s value in sharing and is a better way of saying it right. So I will. But to do it and going down the path that I started to go down, I’m realizing was off. It was degree by degree off course.
01;19;06;04 – 01;19;40;00
Jon Mayo
And I get to fix that now and I get to reintegrate everything into and this opportunity, this conversation right now in the fruit, the value that’s going to come from it is. However, I ultimately integrate that back in. I’m going to cut off and burn out every aspect of this pursuit that is a distraction or off target so that whatever the manifestation of it is, which, you know, for this leg of the journey, because this is going to happen a thousand more times.
01;19;40;00 – 01;19;46;22
Jon Mayo
But for that at this point, whatever the manifestation in the way forward is coming out of this over the next few days.
01;19;47;29 – 01;19;48;09
Darren Terry
Will.
01;19;49;20 – 01;20;00;22
Jon Mayo
Help to kill off those voices of discouragement, because I’ll know that at least as true to being as I can be, if I’m honest with myself, this will be authentic and good, right?
01;20;01;00 – 01;20;02;07
Darren Terry
That always wins.
01;20;02;07 – 01;20;03;01
Jon Mayo
And then continue.
01;20;04;05 – 01;20;12;09
Darren Terry
Fake. Gets weeded out. Yeah. Like eat you knowing your your heart if something’s not real.
01;20;12;21 – 01;20;14;27
Jon Mayo
Yeah.
01;20;14;27 – 01;20;37;06
Darren Terry
You know, back in the day, whenever I was just trying to fit into the mold of society, you know, I just wanted to be a success and everybody size. So I started building websites, taught myself how to do that and all this stuff. And, you know, I got some money here and there, but guess what? It never felt genuine.
01;20;38;25 – 01;21;14;25
Darren Terry
It felt like, I guess by like society standards, like I was doing like what a a good entrepreneur does. I guess you branch out and do something for yourself and. I failed horribly. No part of it was a part of my true path that I was supposed to go on. But it also wasn’t bad that I went on that path because eventually it led up to this moment of reckoning, which forced me onto the right path because I was open to it.
01;21;15;04 – 01;21;22;17
Darren Terry
Mm hmm. So it’s like that moment yesterday, like, man, what a gift. It’s just a peace. The journey. It is like a fork.
01;21;22;17 – 01;21;22;25
Jon Mayo
In the road.
01;21;22;25 – 01;21;42;21
Darren Terry
It can be a an eye opener for you to be like, what’s genuine? What’s maybe not so much. And it’s like, you know, an analogy that you like using or metaphor. I don’t know which one it is. Is the forge. Mm hmm. You can always heat back up the forge and burn off the crap. It’s never too late.
01;21;42;26 – 01;22;05;23
Darren Terry
Yep. And it’s always a beautiful thing. Whenever you do burn off the crap, it is like this weight that’s off your shoulders. And you’re just left with the genuine shit. It makes you feel so good. That’s what I mean. Like, there’s that feeling inside. You know what it is? Whenever you just feel like everything’s perfect. So I feel like yesterday was almost like one of those moments for you.
01;22;05;29 – 01;22;10;26
Jon Mayo
Yeah, it’s a fork in the road, and I’m still navigating it, right? Still working through it.
01;22;10;26 – 01;22;11;16
Darren Terry
Perfect.
01;22;11;16 – 01;22;39;09
Jon Mayo
And but. But it is, it is good. It is powerful because and to put it in context, this is a big deal for me as an individual because so much of what I do surrounds what I’m building. Right and so much of who I am surrounds what I’m building because it is a tool and vehicle to ensure that I’m the type of person that I am aspiring to be.
01;22;40;17 – 01;22;54;12
Jon Mayo
But this is a what we’re discussing isn’t just like, oh, cement and like a minor twist in words delivery. In my mind, it’s a complete restructure of the entire organization that I’m building. Yeah, because I’m talking about killing one third of it.
01;22;55;15 – 01;22;56;18
Darren Terry
Off the cusp.
01;22;56;29 – 01;23;23;25
Jon Mayo
And just completely letting it burn and getting rid of it immediately so that I can continue forward more cleanly and more accurately. And I don’t see any way around that. Right. It’s like that to me seems to be the correct path at this point, and I’ll continue to work through that. But I think I’m going to because the time that it was true has passed in the circumstances that made it true are no longer a reality.
01;23;24;09 – 01;23;48;12
Jon Mayo
So it’s like, all right, great opportunity to realize that you’re out of work, to realize that I’m going to forget the road to do an azimuth track, a very deliberate assessment of what’s real, what’s true and what should have died with some of the circumstances changing and moving forward. Right. And that’s some of the results that get to come from last night and today’s expiration.
01;23;48;12 – 01;23;54;19
Jon Mayo
And this is just a snapshot. What I love about this, because I didn’t necessarily buy content. I’m talking about this. I just was ready to sit down, have a good talk.
01;23;54;24 – 01;23;55;03
Darren Terry
Yeah.
01;23;55;14 – 01;24;17;14
Jon Mayo
And what’s so cool about it, though, is taking a step back. What a genuine. I was talking to the side of Mike. What a genuine shame on you. I know, especially after being coaching you this whole time. What a loser. But what a genuine snapshot of this whole thing in action. Right? Like we’re talking about. Well, you know, when you get to these things, you have to assess it.
01;24;17;14 – 01;24;39;07
Jon Mayo
Oh, when we do this, we have to do this. And we’re exploring all those ideas. Well, right now we’re just talking about two instances so far in the time of shutdown of significant differing levels of significance and implications, but significant moments of awareness that we had to recognize and then determined to do something about what we recognized in those moments.
01;24;39;24 – 01;24;48;12
Jon Mayo
And those are having trajectory shifting focus it like those are changing our direction of travel.
01;24;48;12 – 01;24;48;23
Darren Terry
Yes.
01;24;49;05 – 01;25;12;08
Jon Mayo
You know, you’re like, how cool is that? And we get to talk about that here today and evolve and journey together in that like right now we’re helping each other navigate that so that as we continue forward, we’re both better for our exploration of this and we’re hopefully more true to who we want to be. And the path that we’re on in doing this is just a cool thing to do.
01;25;12;08 – 01;25;13;13
Jon Mayo
Yeah, just appreciating it.
01;25;13;26 – 01;25;56;03
Darren Terry
Absolutely. And what a fun journey. Yeah, I think the coolest thing that you could ever do is work on yourself and burn off the crap. It’s such an engaging experience and it if it if it feels right, burn off the crap. Because what you’re left with is a truer path. Mm hmm. I’ve used this one before. It’s like you’re not stopping the journey If you come to the fork, you’re just picking a a path and trusting in it because it feels right.
01;25;56;13 – 01;26;32;06
Darren Terry
If the other one felt right, you would have went there, Right? It’s a very clear cut off that path. Mm hmm. Dude, whenever I started changing myself from a piece of crap into the guy that I am now, which I am pretty proud, it was literally my goal was to set a Guinness World record for pull ups. Just some random thought that I knew would push me to burn off my the parts of myself I didn’t like right.
01;26;32;06 – 01;27;00;03
Darren Terry
That led to my Blue Mesa Reservoir experience something way off base. But the path felt right the entire time I’ve so many twists and turns which has led to these growth moments. Mm hmm. But the path, you know, if the path ever felt non-genuine, I would stop and feel like I was going to make a point there.
01;27;01;20 – 01;27;02;21
Jon Mayo
Let’s see if it comes back.
01;27;02;28 – 01;27;03;17
Darren Terry
Okay, perfect.
01;27;03;21 – 01;27;27;27
Jon Mayo
Because something that you just touched on is super cool. I’m restructuring the entire organization that I’m building and dropping a third of it. And whatever I create there, however I integrate it, it will be better for it, right? I’m letting that go. And it reminds me, because you mentioned there’s a parallel here. I remember when I was during the military, the idea of someday getting out and starting a ranch.
01;27;28;02 – 01;27;55;19
Jon Mayo
I wanted to do either bison or goat ranch. Right. Just it seemed idealistic to me. It seemed like something to do that would be fulfilling in that goal. In part did, in fact, give me a little bit of courage when I did Determined to leave the military of something to look forward towards working toward to write. I have zero interest now in being a rancher, but having that goal was still worthwhile.
01;27;55;23 – 01;28;12;26
Jon Mayo
Yeah, because it provided me the drive and motivation to go through some hard times and make some hard decisions because it gave me hope and inspiration and areas of darkness, right? Yeah. And in the same. But when the important things.
01;28;13;21 – 01;28;13;27
Darren Terry
Like.
01;28;13;27 – 01;28;35;10
Jon Mayo
We can agree on that but there’s something really implicit there that or really it’s there but I want to make it I want to bring it into the light. Right. And that is it’s only worth pursuing something as as it draws us towards that true version of selves and better this as soon as it doesn’t. And it’s tested.
01;28;35;10 – 01;28;52;01
Jon Mayo
That’s not just lack of discipline or drive, but it’s genuine something now that there is now something better that causes forward more beautifully and more fully into being who were meant to be at the moment that that happens. Foolish to continue hunting the first goal.
01;28;52;16 – 01;28;52;25
Darren Terry
At.
01;28;52;25 – 01;29;16;01
Jon Mayo
Cost of the new goal that is better suited to your evolution right. And of course, there’s the caveat of be careful. Well, I know I don’t even know if it is a caveat, because if you’re pursuing a way in that gets you down the road, however far and then as you get closer to here, you realize, okay, goal B is way more accurate to how I see things now.
01;29;16;01 – 01;29;37;20
Jon Mayo
So screw go away. Thank you. Goodbye. I’m dropping you. I’m pursuing Colby, and that gets you further down the road. And then let’s say that happens again. See D and E, right? And you just keep pursuing these goals, get you to different vantage points, different vistas, where you see something that is more in line with the holistic manifestation of who you want to be.
01;29;37;26 – 01;29;39;22
Jon Mayo
So you pursue that, right?
01;29;40;01 – 01;29;40;12
Darren Terry
Yeah.
01;29;41;01 – 01;29;58;25
Jon Mayo
And you’re like, Oh, that’s beautiful. I’m so grateful for this goal because it got me to the point to be able to even see or understand or articulate that there’s this, this thing to pursue. You know, and it’s interesting because it kind of goes against the finish that a at all costs mentality.
01;29;58;25 – 01;29;59;27
Darren Terry
But it’s that.
01;30;00;07 – 01;30;26;02
Jon Mayo
There’s some shades of gray here that I think there’s immense value for us to explore because on the other hand, what if pursuing a is now costing you, pursuing something that’s ten times more impactful and powerful than A Because now our grit is working against us, our discipline is working against us and blinding us from the direction changes we need to make to be more true to where we’re supposed to go, you know?
01;30;26;09 – 01;30;32;16
Jon Mayo
And that’s where it’s like, Hey, I’ll burn the whole damn thing down if it’s wrong. Why? Because I don’t want to pursue the wrong thing. Life’s too short.
01;30;32;28 – 01;30;33;06
Darren Terry
Yeah.
01;30;33;12 – 01;30;37;08
Jon Mayo
You know, So it’s like, All right, what’s that? Third of it’s probably gone.
01;30;37;08 – 01;30;37;19
Darren Terry
Cool.
01;30;37;28 – 01;30;43;21
Jon Mayo
Oh, my goodness. How many opportunities do I have now with all that energy, with all the investment of time and resources.
01;30;44;12 – 01;30;44;25
Darren Terry
To.
01;30;45;07 – 01;30;53;24
Jon Mayo
Better this other two or see something that’s I’ve been missing this whole time because of this distraction that I was clinging to, they just got to lop off and burn off.
01;30;53;25 – 01;30;54;06
Darren Terry
Yeah.
01;30;54;15 – 01;30;55;18
Jon Mayo
You know, it’s like, okay.
01;30;55;26 – 01;31;35;14
Darren Terry
I mean, that mindset is so far the opposite of the traditional, like, entrepreneur, you know, mindset, like what you just said. It’s like it be detrimental because succeed at all cost. Giving up makes you a failure. Like you’re a loser. The people that are on top, they never give up, Right? I think being able to like shut down that mentality comes with a little bit of experience maybe, or listening to some real world experience, because that used to be my mentality.
01;31;35;23 – 01;32;02;16
Darren Terry
You know, back in the day it was just all about money in my head. Hmm, whatever it takes. So buy into like the whole, you know, in that entrepreneurship mindset, it wasn’t a strong mindset. It was like fake driven around money. And I was buying into all the mantras, you know, don’t give up. You’ll never make some of yourself if you give up.
01;32;02;16 – 01;32;25;21
Darren Terry
And like, if you’re just getting into that journey, you almost want to believe it because you’ve never seen the other side and you don’t want to fail. When I think that can get you stuck in a rut. Yeah, in the mud. Then one day, if you truly give it an honest try and you live that, eventually your eyes get opened for you.
01;32;26;28 – 01;32;56;08
Darren Terry
With this reality of time has passed me by. I still haven’t gone anywhere. So you’re you’re officially hit in the face with the timeline and that never lies. Hmm. You’ve made nothing of yourself with these mantras and stuff, and then that’s when you move on. Hopefully now, hopefully you rise from there. And then you go from there. If you.
01;32;56;10 – 01;33;22;06
Darren Terry
You find the genuine path. And if it if it’s a true, genuine path, it will feel much different than the last time that you tried to make a completely different feeling of, Wow, some people are meant to play basketball, some people are meant to rock climb, some people are meant to do I’m doing now and I’m one of them.
01;33;22;16 – 01;33;46;26
Darren Terry
It just feels so right. And then whenever that path meets something that doesn’t feel genuine, it feels like that old guy that started it doesn’t feel so right, genuine. It doesn’t feel like it’s ever going to work. You don’t believe in yourself at that point. You know, from experience, I can cut that piece of crap off right now.
01;33;47;02 – 01;33;47;23
Jon Mayo
And I think and I’m.
01;33;47;23 – 01;33;49;02
Darren Terry
Left with the genuine shit.
01;33;49;08 – 01;33;51;07
Jon Mayo
Yeah, you’re absolutely spot on. And I think the.
01;33;51;07 – 01;33;52;20
Darren Terry
Feared I got stuck in that.
01;33;53;03 – 01;33;54;20
Jon Mayo
Yeah, well, so did I, right?
01;33;54;22 – 01;33;56;10
Darren Terry
Yeah. It’s just real world experience.
01;33;56;19 – 01;34;06;08
Jon Mayo
And what sucks is you don’t even realize sometimes when you’re stuck in it, like night. Right now, I’m realizing I’m so grateful that we’re doing this because I’m so grateful for what happened last night.
01;34;07;00 – 01;34;12;12
Darren Terry
I like how you opened all this with the swim. By the way. Yeah, it’s great, man. Well, the expanding.
01;34;12;12 – 01;34;25;24
Jon Mayo
We are exploring. Yeah, right. So it’s like I didn’t have a master plan. I can take credit for that. But we’re 100% locked into each other. But I think we probably have over 80% eye contact rate in this conversation.
01;34;25;24 – 01;34;26;07
Darren Terry
I think so.
01;34;26;10 – 01;34;28;28
Jon Mayo
Which if someone else tries that, if they’re not used to it, I’m looking.
01;34;28;28 – 01;34;29;22
Darren Terry
At that nice beard.
01;34;29;22 – 01;34;54;15
Jon Mayo
Too. I think you just. But you’re not going down that rabbit hole too much. This is what happens when you authentically, genuinely put us in to a conversation with another human being. Right? We are just we are actively listening to each other, not just formulating our next stop and then building upon each other in that. And it’s creating something pretty cool.
01;34;54;16 – 01;35;14;10
Jon Mayo
This experience that we get to share right now and one of the reasons I think it can be so scary to let go of a goal right when we’re on the path is because especially early on, if it if it’s not been done a few times, it feels like one failure in two. Well, it feels like an outright failure.
01;35;14;19 – 01;35;30;13
Jon Mayo
That means that we’re giving up on everything. But that’s the lie. We’re just letting go of something that doesn’t serve us as well as what we’re supposed to be doing. And how could we have known what we were supposed to be doing when we’re so blind and so far back that we couldn’t see what we can see now, right?
01;35;30;16 – 01;35;39;29
Jon Mayo
Yeah. So it’s like, yeah, I can’t see what’s three turns ahead from here, but three turns ahead from now. I’m going to have real world data that’s going to tell me if what I’m doing is accurate or not, Right?
01;35;40;05 – 01;35;40;14
Darren Terry
Yeah.
01;35;40;24 – 01;36;00;15
Jon Mayo
And that’s what we’re discussing right now. And that’s what’s so powerful about this, because I’ve even struggled with keeping like the name of the company, the universal learning approach, because it started so differently, right? It started so differently. That name, that experience with all the connotations I have with it, I frankly have some bad blood about it. I have some hurt feelings about it.
01;36;01;05 – 01;36;22;00
Jon Mayo
There’s aspects of it that make me want to just change the name entirely. But I’m like, Is that the right? Maybe. And if it is, I will later. Right? But right now I think it’s more the fact that I’m holding onto manifestations of what we’re created that are wrong and I get to burn that off. And that only makes me who I am and who I’m becoming and what I’m building better.
01;36;22;21 – 01;36;36;07
Jon Mayo
And that’s the difference, right? If you were still pursuing the pull of challenge solely, you would have accomplished it by now. Maybe, maybe. But you would have missed. You were willing to let go in the pursuit of these better goals that made.
01;36;36;07 – 01;36;38;07
Darren Terry
You more fully.
01;36;39;10 – 01;36;54;12
Jon Mayo
Human and not just human that’s existing, but someone who’s working to live each moment with intentionality. Yeah, And that intentionality, that relentless questioning of motivation and.
01;36;54;25 – 01;36;55;11
Darren Terry
Being.
01;36;57;02 – 01;37;32;29
Jon Mayo
Makes these opportunities and makes life richer. And I think that the thing that you never quit on, ever the thing that cannot be tolerated, is that pressing in and pressing forward. As long as we’re hunting the better version of ourselves, and in so doing, the means of bettering life as we know it and those we share it with right then, whatever trappings, you know, whatever crap you want to put on it, whatever serves purpose to that end, great.
01;37;33;05 – 01;37;35;25
Jon Mayo
But the second it doesn’t, cleave it off and continue forward.
01;37;36;11 – 01;37;36;22
Darren Terry
Yep.
01;37;36;29 – 01;37;38;08
Jon Mayo
And there’s a powerful thing in that.
01;37;39;06 – 01;38;04;13
Darren Terry
I mean it. I even have some, like, current experience with all of this. You know, after my my day of reckoning at CVS whenever I was just like, I’m tired of living my life for everybody else. I’m tired of like waking up and not being proud of myself and all this. And I decided right then and there to go down this different path.
01;38;06;03 – 01;38;33;18
Darren Terry
Just like you talk about, Jocko has helped form you in ways it’s up for me in ways. There have been other key figures in my my life that I followed that gave me tools. Same that I never had. And I put them in the use and I saw that they were true. And those tools helped me accomplish things that I use as like benchmarks for like what I can do.
01;38;34;04 – 01;39;06;11
Darren Terry
And in a way, now that my stuff is more open, people have found to be like really awesome. Whenever you get that kind of feedback from yourself and other people, you almost don’t even want to walk away from that mindset whenever it’s time because it’s been so validated. Mm hmm. The last time that we were on here, you know, I talked about so much how like Goggins, that guy for me and that mentality got me far.
01;39;06;19 – 01;39;33;23
Darren Terry
Whenever you could break your foot and look at it and be like, I barely need you. As long as you’re still attached to my lower leg, I’m going to make you work for this and see the finish line. That’s so valuable. It can get you so far. But you know what? I’ve a push to these levels that it goes so far beyond the Goggins mindset that can get me really far.
01;39;34;12 – 01;40;02;25
Darren Terry
An example would be Pikes Peak whenever I do it with no shoes, wearing the tough face and telling myself to suck it up and be so of heat exposure and all this. That side of me I got from Goggins and Cameron Haynes and some others, and I use their tools to build myself up to being able to get to that point on that mountain that reached this other level where stuff didn’t really serve me.
01;40;03;21 – 01;40;32;08
Darren Terry
It wasn’t going to get me any higher. That was just beyond suffering. And it took on more of like this open minded, like spiritual aspect of it just feels like my life led up to this moment and I started just writing that kind of energy of I don’t need their tools at this point. I’ve almost found my own through.
01;40;33;13 – 01;40;51;20
Darren Terry
I’m trying the like famous properly. I’ve just moved past those mindsets in a way to where the point where I’m on such a genuine path that the genuine, genuine nature of it like carries me up the mountain. And I believe in it so much that I will never stop moving.
01;40;51;20 – 01;40;58;27
Jon Mayo
Well, I would I would. The thought that came to words that just drummed into my mind is, did you move past him or are you continuing beyond them.
01;40;59;11 – 01;41;00;22
Darren Terry
Beyond. It’s there’s a.
01;41;00;22 – 01;41;01;10
Jon Mayo
Difference, right?
01;41;01;16 – 01;41;30;28
Darren Terry
Those are valid, valuable tools. Valuable. They can get you so much. But if you want to keep climbing, sometimes you got to look beyond. But you know, in 2019, 2020, if you were to got me on this Mike, you would have heard a more aggressive version of me coming at you, maybe pinpointing some things that I see as, like weak points in your character, maybe whatever.
01;41;30;28 – 01;41;37;25
Darren Terry
And I would be more vocal about them, kind of like Goggins would be like.
01;41;37;25 – 01;41;38;22
Jon Mayo
When I eat that cheeseburger.
01;41;38;29 – 01;41;58;11
Darren Terry
Yeah, Yeah. And, you know, I’ll let that creep in sometimes, but it’s like you’re so genuine. But those were the tools that were serving me at the time. That was the mindset that was serving me. I had to learn through trial and error and not to impose my mindset too highly on others because it actually doesn’t get well received if you’re giving it to somebody one on one.
01;41;59;17 – 01;42;09;19
Darren Terry
But anyway, I was married to that mindset. Mm hmm. I’ve learned to not marry myself to a mindset anymore. I divorce myself from a mindset.
01;42;10;03 – 01;42;15;26
Jon Mayo
But we can’t be. We can’t allow ourselves to be held back, pigeonholed by one thing.
01;42;15;26 – 01;42;16;07
Darren Terry
Yeah.
01;42;16;29 – 01;42;36;19
Jon Mayo
There’s this really incredible book called A More Beautiful Question in it that the underlying premise in your myth, I think it’s a book worth reading. The underlying premise is can you always be pursuing a more beautiful question, right? And it really did help me to change how I even see goals because it’s like, well, what if I can find a better goal and better serves?
01;42;37;13 – 01;42;43;09
Jon Mayo
And I think that it’s important to be a hard motherfucker like you have to develop in yourself. You want to be. It’s a.
01;42;43;09 – 01;42;44;11
Darren Terry
Foundation. It’s a.
01;42;44;11 – 01;42;52;14
Jon Mayo
Foundation. It is. You also want to be dangerous. Yeah, because you’re not strong. If you’re not dangerous.
01;42;53;01 – 01;42;54;07
Darren Terry
You’re weak, you’re helpless.
01;42;54;18 – 01;43;17;29
Jon Mayo
But If you have the capacity to be dangerous, then you have the capacity to protect. And if you have the capacity to protect and be dangerous and choose to restrain it unless it is absolutely necessary, then you have strength because. Well, there. Well, where does the strength come from in that scenario? It comes from having the capacity to do something and opting not to unless necessary.
01;43;18;28 – 01;43;43;20
Darren Terry
Exactly. And that’s that goes to my point. I think that better gets me to my point where I was saying a couple years ago, if you had me on this, Mike, I would come at you with a different voice. Mm hmm. I, I, I achieved a lot with it. I know that inside me. So why do I get to wear that face?
01;43;43;20 – 01;44;09;23
Darren Terry
Why can’t I lighten up a little bit in the way that I come across? Because wearing that face at the time helped me. You know, if you can stare adversity in the eyes and verbally tell it to fuck off, you know you’re going to get through it. But now it’s just a piece of my mindset. I don’t need to just wear the the Cameron Hanes Goggins face.
01;44;09;23 – 01;44;30;00
Darren Terry
I love those guys, by the way. Yeah, but for me it’s like that’s been my great struggle. It’s like that mindset is given me so much, that attitude’s given me so much. It doesn’t like serve me too much. I get across easier the people if I lighten up a little bit, but I’m still dangerous in my head. I know what I can do.
01;44;30;01 – 01;44;30;16
Darren Terry
You know, it’s.
01;44;30;16 – 01;44;52;12
Jon Mayo
Part of the evolution in asking. It’s all this. It all fits so beautifully into the concept of it. Life is a journey, and we’re constantly correcting course in refining the direction of travel and improving the tools to do it right and pursuing better questions. This all makes a lot of sense if we have to be one thing and not be one dimensional, then it doesn’t make sense.
01;44;52;12 – 01;45;18;14
Jon Mayo
Exactly. But in this context it’s like, okay, same thing served me very well, right? Running and enduring the Colorado climate all last year. Right was necessary. Not like whenever I did it and I can’t remember it, not this matter, but doing that just constant. You’re doing it because you right was necessary. You had I had to develop that what we’re talking about here it’s all necessary.
01;45;18;14 – 01;45;47;09
Jon Mayo
It’s all valuable and all produces a a core element of ourselves that makes it so that when the going gets rough, we laugh, you know? Yeah, we continue forward. Yeah, that’s critical. But it to your point, well, it doesn’t it serves in that function. But what serves in you better loving Miranda me better loving Lindsay and us helping them live fulfilled lives that they’re thrilled to be part of what helps us raise up the quality of living for other people we.
01;45;47;09 – 01;45;48;24
Darren Terry
Love exactly.
01;45;49;05 – 01;45;55;10
Jon Mayo
What helps make it worth it. Why be strong? Why be able to endure if it’s not for something?
01;45;55;10 – 01;46;16;23
Darren Terry
Yeah, and that’s kind of what I like. Ran into you, man. It was like that stuff is always going to be my foundation, but it goes back to the genuine path. And I’m not Jocko, I’m not. Goggins I’m not Cameron Haines It used to be like so much like I felt like I had to emulate that because it was the right thing.
01;46;16;23 – 01;46;39;24
Darren Terry
I got so much validation and stuff and but you know what? I did the things that I did, but now I’m just seeing I’m not the guy that wants to wear that face. A more truer version of myself is coming out. That stuff’s at my foundation, and that stuff’s always going to get me to my goals and dreams.
01;46;41;01 – 01;46;54;10
Darren Terry
But me opening up and moving past what was already awesome into something brand new that’s almost like self formed, that’s going to get me so much further because it just feels more genuine.
01;46;54;10 – 01;47;14;05
Jon Mayo
Well, frankly, dude, that the reason I kind of fell in love with you early on was one at a very initial just face value. I heard that there are someone exacting hard things from themselves and I was like, Oh man, someone is disciplined. I want that in my life. I need more of that in my life, right? Just other human beings who are pursuing hard things, right?
01;47;14;14 – 01;47;32;14
Jon Mayo
So that was like a hundred feet before we even met. I was like, Where is he? I’m meeting him two day. And then we did. But as we talked, what was important to me was what I saw in you, the thing that I wanted to pursue in getting to know you was not the Goggins mentality you’re exhibiting, but.
01;47;32;14 – 01;47;33;09
Jon Mayo
Darren Terry.
01;47;33;27 – 01;47;34;06
Darren Terry
Yeah.
01;47;34;16 – 01;47;59;13
Jon Mayo
I wanted to get to understand you and journey through life in whatever capacity made sense as you became more of who you are as Darren became better at being Darren, Not it being someone else, right? And in the same context for myself. And why? Because that helps me better become John. It helps me better become a higher version of myself.
01;47;59;13 – 01;48;29;20
Jon Mayo
These tools are exactly that. They’re tools. They’re not who we are. And the more we can become who we’re meant, who we are in the pursuit of, who were meant to be the better. And that’s why well, and that’s why I think it’s so important that we dare to experience emotion fully, to experience life fully. I think it’s important to do that and to be in if it’s uncomfortable to press into, expressing and communicating through that.
01;48;30;02 – 01;48;30;15
Jon Mayo
Right?
01;48;30;22 – 01;48;31;01
Darren Terry
Yeah.
01;48;31;10 – 01;48;57;12
Jon Mayo
Because if we don’t, we risk one of those pitfalls of becoming the tools, being stunted by them instead of utilizing them effectively in the journey, right. In the pursuit. And here we are, I think having a fairly frank, candid, vulnerable, exploratory conversation saying screw all the implications. What actually makes sense here? Who do we want to be? What are we doing about it?
01;48;57;20 – 01;49;20;23
Jon Mayo
What’s working and what’s not? Yeah, right. And it’s like, well, we are meant to be interdimensional creatures that have all these different elements, that aspects of ourselves. And the more that we can embody in a healthy, balanced, cohesive manner, all of these aspects of ourselves, the better we are going to be. Holistically.
01;49;20;23 – 01;49;21;03
Darren Terry
Yeah.
01;49;21;13 – 01;49;39;04
Jon Mayo
Right. Okay. You mentioned earlier that when we were fighting there, I don’t. You may be joking. Let’s pretend you weren’t. When we’re fighting, there’s like a dark energy to how I was right. And then when we were coming before we came up here, you saw me at the kids, and then we came up here and you go, This is, don’t you?
01;49;39;04 – 01;49;54;27
Jon Mayo
I know more right? There’s elements in your welcome to comment on that. But if we just take it at face value, as I said it, those different elements serve different purposes at different. But they all they must all be there for me to be me.
01;49;55;04 – 01;50;23;04
Darren Terry
Yeah. And that all comes. Pass the stage. Once you get through that shadow phase of working on your initial foundation and then you open yourself up and you can, you can kind of you never morph into something that you’re not, but you just cater to the situation with who you’re interacting with. And if you’re in your element out there like we were, I was in my element just solely from the fact that, you know, I was about to get crushed.
01;50;23;04 – 01;50;47;05
Darren Terry
And I like I’m I am a masochist not because I enjoy pain, but I like to use the feeling that comes from enduring it. The after effect. Agreed. So I am a masochist, so that’s why I was comfortable out there. But you were really in your element because you are that too. But this is your practice. Mm hmm.
01;50;47;25 – 01;51;24;00
Darren Terry
I liked seeing it is like not a dark energy. It’s a very focused, driven version of yourself, like very honed in to what you’re pursuing out there. It’s the same thing of me whenever I take on a challenge that physically can make me sick because it might scare me because it’s so big. Whenever I’m out there, I just come alive and recently, you know, I went up Pikes Peak.
01;51;24;00 – 01;51;51;08
Darren Terry
I decided to run it for my first time, felt like I was just using the restroom before actually going up the mountain. And I was just like, and based on the things that I’ve done, I know I’m going to make it to the top and back and it’s going to be great. It’s win accomplishment. How do I push it to this level that like draws out the real version of me, the really strong version?
01;51;51;29 – 01;52;16;20
Darren Terry
I need to make it a real experience and make it slightly dangerous. And it’s like we’re barely, barely into winter right now, but up in the mountains it’s winter and so that was already an element of danger because nobody was on the trail that day. So I’m up there. There’s no safety net in a way, barely any signal with my cell service.
01;52;16;20 – 01;52;39;01
Darren Terry
But I decided not to do it. Water or food. And, you know, this is one of the hardest marathon courses in the world. And it pushed me to this place where I was so dehydrated at the top. And I started getting altitude sickness because I hadn’t been up that high in a long time. And it felt like my heart was going to explode.
01;52;40;22 – 01;52;59;06
Darren Terry
But it was like the danger was so high that I was like so instinctual with how I was handling it. And you would see me in a version of myself that’s not the same one that’s sitting right here right now. I was like, That was you out there in that garage?
01;53;00;20 – 01;53;01;07
Jon Mayo
You know exactly.
01;53;01;07 – 01;53;22;00
Darren Terry
What you’re talking about. Yeah, it was. I was. I was out there trying to, like, replicate. Like what it feels like at mile 100 over on. You are dehydrated beyond belief and all this stuff. It’s dangerous. People get like brain aneurysms and all kinds of stuff whenever you push that far. I wanted to feel it again. And that was the first time I felt that since Blue Mesa.
01;53;23;00 – 01;53;23;29
Jon Mayo
Going to Pike’s.
01;53;23;29 – 01;53;30;02
Darren Terry
Yeah, Yeah. With no supplies, no safety net, it was so engaging.
01;53;30;16 – 01;53;31;13
Jon Mayo
It’s intoxicating.
01;53;31;21 – 01;53;37;02
Darren Terry
It was intentional, and it just brought me to life.
01;53;37;16 – 01;53;42;00
Jon Mayo
One funny note on that, because you text me when you got to the top and yeah.
01;53;42;00 – 01;53;43;27
Darren Terry
That was that day and it was hilarious.
01;53;43;27 – 01;54;02;17
Jon Mayo
You’re like, Hey, I hope you’re not resting down there, bitch. I’m up here dehydrated when Chapman’s in. Slightly delirious. Yeah, it was an epic message and. I love those moments because it’s like hope you’re not just a, you know, wasting your existence down there, not pursuing something meaningful. That’s what I read in your message.
01;54;02;17 – 01;54;02;26
Darren Terry
Yeah.
01;54;03;21 – 01;54;06;18
Jon Mayo
Like I hope you’re not daring to waste today.
01;54;06;26 – 01;54;23;22
Darren Terry
And, you know, I was talking like that, but at the time, like, I was up there, like I was really, like, altitude sick. I felt like ass whenever I knew that. But it was a genuine text, man. It wasn’t. You can’t send stuff like that to everybody now and get a good response.
01;54;23;22 – 01;54;40;03
Jon Mayo
The one in the thing that’s beautiful about it too, is what you said is, I hope you’re not being a bitch today and you’re doing something to get after it, right? What I heard when I read it, when I laughed because it was hilarious too. I was like, Well, I hope he has some the ability to get back safe.
01;54;40;22 – 01;55;03;01
Jon Mayo
But at that point I was like, he’s texting me, not worried about his survival, so he’s probably good or he’d be messaging something different. But the fear is like really what we’re doing because we volley these things off at each other all the time. It’s part of our how we play right is fun. But what we remind each other is, Hey, I hope you’re spending your time pursuing something that’s worth pursuing.
01;55;03;01 – 01;55;05;07
Jon Mayo
You’re not wasting it. That’s what we’re doing.
01;55;05;09 – 01;55;05;19
Darren Terry
Yeah.
01;55;06;00 – 01;55;20;08
Jon Mayo
In the end. The other thing too, that I’m thinking about because for me building Ebola and and pursuing conflict on the mat right or both are my primary most beloved.
01;55;21;04 – 01;55;23;19
Darren Terry
Means of.
01;55;24;08 – 01;55;47;12
Jon Mayo
Going into that space of pressing beyond comfort zones and becoming more right. And it’s kind of the very journey aspect things in your case, it’s literally going up the mountain, but let’s pretend there’s fire or gold on top of the like when we’re going out and pressing into these things, right? These things that are highly valuable and necessary for life here in the day to day.
01;55;48;07 – 01;56;10;27
Jon Mayo
The question that came to mind is that I think we’re exploring anyways, but just to give a face to it is how do we bring the fire back? How do we bring the value back and apply it with our lives, with our friends, with our coworkers, in our community, in our living between these moments that we so desperately that we so fully enjoy right?
01;56;10;27 – 01;56;35;25
Jon Mayo
Because what I love about the building or rolling and being genuinely concerned about protecting my neck from being broken because I’m fighting Grizz, right? Yeah. And just the amount of tension, what I love about that is for that time, I’m so purely in that pursuit that nothing else exists in that. So it’s intoxicating. It’s it’s to be, it’s to feel fully.
01;56;35;25 – 01;56;36;08
Darren Terry
Alive.
01;56;37;00 – 01;56;37;25
Jon Mayo
And plugged in.
01;56;38;14 – 01;56;45;20
Darren Terry
Man, That’s What I was trying to say about that whole Pikes Peak journey with no supplies, I felt so alive.
01;56;45;23 – 01;56;46;08
Jon Mayo
Yes.
01;56;46;15 – 01;57;14;05
Darren Terry
It’s life is so noisy. Even if you are on the right path. Mm. Yeah. Other people, negative outside influences, even other people’s positive paths, like they just merge with yours. Yep. In that moment, you’re just working on yourself. I think you have to have that and. It’s not something that you just visit and say, I accomplished something and then walk away.
01;57;14;28 – 01;57;30;27
Darren Terry
You can lose your mentality pretty easily. But yeah, in those moments you just feel so alive and if you’re constantly doing that, you can bring it into other areas of your life and it benefits everything.
01;57;30;28 – 01;57;31;12
Jon Mayo
Yes.
01;57;31;29 – 01;57;57;03
Darren Terry
Everything. And that’s what I didn’t get in the beginning of my journey. I was just in the shadow keeping it all for myself, just riding the highs of accomplishment and like I’m making something of myself for myself. I never thought I could do this. I never wanted to. Yeah, but here I am, the same guy that, you know, had the childhood that I had.
01;57;57;28 – 01;58;31;03
Darren Terry
Not a mounting anything. I’m still that guy. Yeah, but I’m this. That’s a piece of me is not necessarily who I am. These. But it was all forged through getting very intentional with a practice. There must be self inflicted suffering for real growth I think, in this life. And I think that’s just the great the best avenue to bring in to every aspect of your life out there.
01;58;31;03 – 01;58;43;12
Darren Terry
If you can make something of yourself whenever you encounter something real in a relationship or with life, you know where your pain tolerances are, your ability to deal with stress, fear.
01;58;44;08 – 01;58;55;24
Jon Mayo
Whatever one the different faces of that, right? We can’t live in that moment eternally, like our entire existence can’t be in that clime.
01;58;55;25 – 01;58;58;08
Darren Terry
Exactly. It’s worthless if you never bring it out.
01;58;59;22 – 01;59;36;29
Jon Mayo
And I think one of the things we’ve been discussing is the fact that the danger is trying to live in it fully and have that be our lives. Instead of this cycle of going there and coming back and working to bring them into greater shared value. Yeah, right. Because like, I’ll go and do these, I’ll build or fight in that moment of genuinely, fully in that moment, I bring back in, I assess what existing is like there compared to that moment.
01;59;37;14 – 01;59;46;23
Jon Mayo
And I work to make existing outside of that moment, feel more like that moment. And the only way to do that is by improving myself in the circumstances of those around me.
01;59;47;01 – 01;59;47;09
Darren Terry
Yeah.
01;59;47;29 – 01;59;59;21
Jon Mayo
And I keep going back to get a taste and remember what it’s like so that when I come back, Avery, I can continue to bring those two worlds together in a way that makes everything better.
02;00;00;01 – 02;00;00;11
Darren Terry
Yeah.
02;00;00;11 – 02;00;25;16
Jon Mayo
Versus sacrificing the one world to live in the other one. Yeah, right. Because what is and I think that’s the big distinction here, I don’t want to sacrifice the blessing and joy of being married to Lindsey or being a father to those boys, or getting to be your friend or getting to go through any of these things with the community and experience life.
02;00;25;17 – 02;00;27;20
Darren Terry
Because you’re locked in the dungeon focused.
02;00;27;20 – 02;00;28;16
Jon Mayo
Because I’m doing that.
02;00;28;23 – 02;00;54;27
Darren Terry
Learning a lot. I mean, whenever you start getting tools that you never had, it’s intoxicating. It’s very intoxicating because it’s like those situations like elevate your consciousness and how you go through your day. It’s like you want more of it, but if you don’t bring it on to the real world, you’re not living. And it’s like you have on your path with podcast and it’s aligned right now.
02;00;54;27 – 02;01;22;27
Darren Terry
I’m like kind of merged with my True path. And you were a key force in taking me to the next stage out of the Shadow, right? And I think that’s how this all started anyway, getting to that next step and then opening up and that if I can draw it back to Bloom as I feel like I left that really open ended.
02;01;22;27 – 02;01;52;12
Darren Terry
That’s where I was. Whenever I got into that situation, I had given a speech at work that was the first time that publicly I brought out to those around me who I am, you know, the value of chasing intentional dreams, living for yourself for first of all, and not so much for like worldly things because there’s so much power in it.
02;01;52;26 – 02;02;24;03
Darren Terry
And and then I did your podcast, and then at that point, those in my community knew more about me. My message, some people reached out to me. Kudos to them because I would have never done that in the past. On Forged, you know, reached out to me and I went on some side quests where I helped kind of give up some of the tools that had been given to me and what is special thing.
02;02;24;06 – 02;02;57;24
Darren Terry
And so many people have shared so much about what they’ve gotten from our last podcast. And so I really established who I am at that point. I’m very open and I’m not in the shadow anymore. I know who I am. I know the tools that are getting me to the next level and all of this and then boom, as it happens and I’m left with this spiral that won’t stop my tools.
02;02;58;04 – 02;03;15;23
Darren Terry
One thing I know for a fact is that the mood follows the action. So I kept implementing my tools. I took days off from work after that first day of, you know, trying to go back to work. I took off a couple of days, but it wasn’t so I can go home and take like an anti-anxiety pill or something like that.
02;03;16;02 – 02;03;46;05
Darren Terry
It was hell. Like literally I could not function, but I went to the incline, I went to the gym. I floated in the pool that soon after the trauma with my head racing, the incline had no value to it almost, but I knew just going back to it was the right thing to do. So I knew at one point just the mood would follow the action, but it wasn’t happening.
02;03;47;29 – 02;04;13;28
Darren Terry
And I’m this guy that openly talks about how adversity is an opportunity to make a great story for your life. Like a strong chapter, you should always embrace it. But here I am. It feels like none of my tools are working. I don’t want to go back to the open water, but I’m in this spiral and I feel like it’s never going to stop.
02;04;13;28 – 02;04;46;06
Darren Terry
I’ve been so open with my who I am and my mentality and now it feels like I’m not that guy. I’m an imposter. I know that I’ve done those things, but why isn’t it serving me now? I just felt like I was losing it. And then I talked to our mutual friend Brandon one day and he was just telling me how because I was starting to express like stuff would go wrong at work.
02;04;46;06 – 02;05;13;00
Darren Terry
And usually I’m just kind of like, Good. Hmm. I would get heated in my head. Just certain things in my life were just making me heated. I had no control almost. It was like I was like in the passenger seat and I was just like, I was so antsy and anxious and flashbacks and all kinds of stuff. And I had a few conversations with you in that period of time, right?
02;05;13;00 – 02;05;46;13
Darren Terry
Kind of expressed how I was kind of messed up and he was just like he basically, you know, told me all of that probably because I was really proud of who I was. And then I opened it up to everybody and everybody’s proud of who I am. And I know that everybody else thinks of me a certain way and now I don’t feel like that anymore.
02;05;48;06 – 02;06;31;12
Darren Terry
And it feels like I’m just going day by day, not living who I am. And it’s probably because I haven’t pushed into the trauma hard enough. I backed off and then the very next day I reconvened with my buddy Joe and we went to a new lake when this like borderline about frozen solid. But I got a wetsuit and we pushed into it and we actually did there a couple of times, but it was like after the time that this last time that I did it with him, we went not far out, but enough to where my heart was racing.
02;06;31;12 – 02;06;48;29
Darren Terry
And, you know, I gave him push back and he would just be like, Come on, let’s go. And I trusted him so much. And I knew what he was saying was the right thing to do. And I just went out there and then he wanted to go back in and I was just like, I think I’m just going to lay here.
02;06;48;29 – 02;07;25;09
Darren Terry
And I just floated and I came back in and ultimately I didn’t see myself as fit to do the Ironman because I hadn’t pushed into that trauma quite enough to feel confident bumping into people, getting my face kicked in the water and stuff. I wanted to overcome this fully solo, so I backed out of the Iron Man and don’t back out of anything usually, but it just felt like the genuine path for me to take because I want to I want to push into it further solo.
02;07;25;09 – 02;07;57;17
Darren Terry
But anyway, I came back after seeing the water with a new set of eyes and I saw the hope for Ultraman again. Hmm. This thing that I’ve been padding my resume for years for like the swim, like such a crucial thing. And it was just like I saw the sliver of hope for. I just went out there and laid in the water and was comfortable.
02;07;57;17 – 02;08;27;18
Darren Terry
I’m coming back now with it. The real clear opportunity. I’m not scared of that shit. And since, you know, the lakes aren’t frozen anymore, I’m going to get back out there and conquer it. But what I came back to was, Holy shit, the incline has meaning again. I have control. I’m back on the climb and I’m realizing why.
02;08;27;24 – 02;08;56;04
Darren Terry
I came to the realization that the mental master doesn’t always just rebound. He’s got to have everything almost ripped away from him, and the person that is showing mental mastery almost is like the guy who like, accepts it. Nothing’s going right, but he keeps showing up. Yeah. And then eventually the mood follows the action. And now I’ve learned a crucial thing of like I was I got traumatized out there.
02;08;57;10 – 02;09;25;08
Darren Terry
A lot more traumatized than the time I got hit by the car. It just took a longer rebound. But I don’t think that you should shy away. Like whenever you’re getting the flashbacks and you’re so traumatized was like, keep going. Do the things that you know are good for you. And eventually you’re going get there. And it was just like Brandon told me, you know, I think you got to, like, face the water for everything else to fall into alignment so you can not get heated and all this stuff.
02;09;25;21 – 02;09;38;15
Darren Terry
And sure enough, whenever I saw that opening of opportunity and I wasn’t scared of the trauma, I was just like, All right, here we go, back on the climb.
02;09;39;12 – 02;09;39;22
Jon Mayo
Well.
02;09;40;02 – 02;09;42;26
Darren Terry
Nothing gets under my skin anymore because I’m back in the driver’s seat.
02;09;43;14 – 02;09;47;00
Jon Mayo
He became un scared of the trauma by, accepting it.
02;09;47;11 – 02;09;47;21
Darren Terry
Right.
02;09;48;07 – 02;10;05;14
Jon Mayo
Because you mentioned right after Blue Mesa when it was all fresh. And you’re still navigating that portion of this journey. You were feeling very much so, like a fraud, like everything that you had been was stripped away in that moment. And now what.
02;10;05;24 – 02;10;07;12
Darren Terry
Right. Is that not holding value now?
02;10;07;19 – 02;10;30;03
Jon Mayo
Exactly. And what’s there’s a couple of elements that just stand out. So crystal clear in my mind as having the most important in that is that obstacle was the way which I remember us talking about, right? Yes. Re-embrace in the water was the correct path, but look at what you gave up to do that in a way that was more genuine and authentic to what your needs were.
02;10;30;03 – 02;10;39;26
Jon Mayo
You chose to back out of a race so that you could do the more true thing, which I believe is always the harder thing.
02;10;40;22 – 02;10;41;10
Darren Terry
To.
02;10;42;24 – 02;11;02;22
Jon Mayo
Be as accurate and precise in the manner of living in the pursuit of those schools that are needed, as you possibly could in at that moment. This is where I believe that who you are spoke the most loudly. You’ve rejected the concern implicit in not doing the race.
02;11;03;10 – 02;11;03;19
Darren Terry
Of.
02;11;03;19 – 02;11;13;17
Jon Mayo
What others should think in the pursuit of what you knew would produce the most value and meaning for yourself so that you could be more strong in peer in that pursuit.
02;11;13;19 – 02;11;38;26
Darren Terry
It’s almost really hard to. I was only upset about letting one person down. Hmm. This guy who’s been by my side when he saw the pre version of who I am now, he saw me going through all the fake business stuff. You know, fake mentality. He saw me in there. I saw him in his own. We both have risen out.
02;11;39;14 – 02;12;04;09
Darren Terry
I’ve helped him a little bit on his journey. And now helping me overcome the water and all this stuff. And it just feels like ever since we became friends, like our our paths have been like going towards this one special moment. And I think we both viewed it as, we’re going to do this race together and it’s going to be amazing.
02;12;05;05 – 02;12;37;10
Darren Terry
And the idea of backing out of that was really hard to process. But he always tells me the same thing. He just wants me to give it everything. And I did. And I, I didn’t want to go back to the water so soon. But Joe, out of respect for what he requested, I went back and then with Brandon’s words that helped me get me back out there, too.
02;12;37;27 – 02;13;04;12
Darren Terry
And, you know, ultimately I found the opportunity from my, you know, what I can do to overcome the trauma and stuff. But it just didn’t feel right going into the Ironman. And it was really hard to back out on Joe because of, you know, our path convergence I was just talking about. It felt like I was destroying this thing that we were working on.
02;13;04;12 – 02;13;15;15
Darren Terry
But he sees it clearly. I see it clearly now that maybe that was something that had to happen and we have something greater in the future.
02;13;16;21 – 02;13;17;18
Jon Mayo
I would agree we’re.
02;13;17;18 – 02;13;22;23
Darren Terry
Just constantly working on ourselves and it’s like whenever we do converge, it’s going to be spectacular and I.
02;13;22;23 – 02;13;23;28
Jon Mayo
Would say it has happened.
02;13;24;05 – 02;13;24;24
Darren Terry
It definitely.
02;13;24;24 – 02;13;31;16
Jon Mayo
Has, because what I’m hearing and what you’re saying is you have the blessing and gift.
02;13;32;03 – 02;13;32;10
Darren Terry
Of.
02;13;32;10 – 02;13;32;28
Jon Mayo
A friend.
02;13;35;27 – 02;13;36;10
Darren Terry
That.
02;13;36;19 – 02;13;48;02
Jon Mayo
Your guys’s existence pushes you both forward. That is the convergence the, the the race is metaphorical.
02;13;48;02 – 02;13;48;29
Darren Terry
It is. Yeah.
02;13;49;01 – 02;14;14;16
Jon Mayo
And that doesn’t mean they’re not worth pursuing in their physical manifestations. Right. But the pursuit of better and more from each other and having the strength to help each other when the other’s weak or when you’re both weak laughing and pressing having that relationship is the gift and the ability to accept that no matter what the costs or the circumstances, we will pursue the purest form of that path and support each other.
02;14;14;16 – 02;14;20;05
Jon Mayo
And that is the, in my mind, looking in a manner of interpreting that convergence.
02;14;20;20 – 02;14;20;29
Darren Terry
Yeah.
02;14;21;07 – 02;14;23;24
Jon Mayo
And the rest of it is fun.
02;14;23;24 – 02;14;54;18
Darren Terry
It is. And yeah. And it’s like he’s, he’s seen me train to a level to where I could accomplish some crazy things and I’ve seen him do the same. He’s seen me what I interpreted as my very best and then now he’s seeing me freak out just trying to get back into the water. He’s seeing such a weak version, vicious, the nature of our relationship of like we are like growth factors for each other.
02;14;54;18 – 02;15;22;00
Darren Terry
And he was pulling me up relentlessly. And it’s like ultimately, whenever I did make that call, he just like he responded in a way that it was just, I love the guy because he didn’t harp on it. He accepted that I was now in his and I was glad to be, even if I wasn’t in the race with them.
02;15;22;22 – 02;15;54;05
Darren Terry
And it’s upward and onward from there. My that’s kind of where I’m at now. Get me, you know, push him back into it that much and realizing no matter how traumatic it was to be on my truth, most genuine path, I couldn’t ignore the trauma. I couldn’t just ignore the thing that literally almost ripped everything from me. Literally, the the arrogance almost got me killed.
02;15;54;17 – 02;16;23;15
Darren Terry
It’s so it’s it’s a lot harder than just here’s your comeback story. It was I was not prepared. I almost paid the price a very real price. I know what it feels like to get traumatized really strongly now. I’m not just going to treat that willy nilly right. So going back into the water was always a big deal, like hyperventilating, all kinds of stuff.
02;16;23;15 – 02;16;57;01
Darren Terry
But man, I did it and I still got more work to do. But just going out there and living in the situation that not even half a year ago almost stripped everything from me like that was such a powerful feeling. I came back and it’s just like everything has meaning now. Everything. And my only takeaway is one always, always view these things as an opportunity matter how much they fuck you up.
02;16;57;06 – 02;17;14;18
Darren Terry
Yeah, always. Because, man, that that seemed like the worst moment of my life. Almost. And now, like, I have a richer story moving on from there now that I’ve pushed into it and got to a place where I just see light all around.
02;17;16;21 – 02;17;23;03
Jon Mayo
And imagine what will be created from that richness, you know.
02;17;23;03 – 02;17;24;04
Darren Terry
Like that. And that’s what’s.
02;17;24;04 – 02;17;42;04
Jon Mayo
So exciting about it all. Not only is it living richer, but all of that increases, enhances and makes more potent and effective. Everything You’re doing absolutely do.
02;17;42;06 – 02;18;09;25
Darren Terry
I tried to be. And even whenever I go back to the water, I would try to share some of it with. My community because they all know the highs that I’ve hit now, thanks to you, you know, and some others for encouraging me. So they got to see me at this high. Now I want them to see like me out of low because I know where it’s going to lead to.
02;18;09;25 – 02;18;13;02
Darren Terry
And it’s just a pure example of like, you know, just keep showing up.
02;18;14;02 – 02;18;14;25
Jon Mayo
On in that.
02;18;14;25 – 02;18;17;12
Darren Terry
In trusting in your tools and this mindset.
02;18;17;28 – 02;18;19;17
Jon Mayo
The success is what attracts people.
02;18;20;00 – 02;18;21;01
Darren Terry
Right? Always.
02;18;21;01 – 02;18;39;27
Jon Mayo
And I think all of us need to be very guarded against robbing the victories of others, pillaging them and taking them for own. And like when I hear your when I don’t take any self-satisfaction from it, I take encouragement. I take fuel.
02;18;40;17 – 02;18;40;25
Darren Terry
To.
02;18;40;25 – 02;18;51;23
Jon Mayo
Be utilized in my pursuit. But I don’t allow for myself to feel satisfied personally in hearing your story. Yeah, but I think so many.
02;18;51;23 – 02;18;52;08
Darren Terry
Do.
02;18;53;13 – 02;19;01;00
Jon Mayo
And there’s so much danger in that. And that’s where the authentic sharing of the downs, as well as the ups wine make it.
02;19;02;00 – 02;19;02;16
Darren Terry
More.
02;19;03;23 – 02;19;28;19
Jon Mayo
Inviting, opening realistic so that others who may have written off this stuff living can see that they are capable of doing it because it’s not all just cherry blossoms and victories. Right? So there’s that value. But also the thing that kind of being stumbling around on it. On the one hand, it’s just a simple. Yes, right. That is precise.
02;19;28;25 – 02;20;00;12
Jon Mayo
Like this is precisely the way to live and to perform and to share the ups and the downs and to not put a frickin filter on it and to be genuine, authentic and real in that pursuit to improve everything that we can. Right. Invested in that is so much. And one of the things is don’t dare allow yourself, you know, the collective you here to rob someone else’s struggle and triumph as a means of pacifying or excusing your own inaction.
02;20;01;08 – 02;20;02;00
Darren Terry
Right? Yeah.
02;20;02;13 – 02;20;10;01
Jon Mayo
And I just think they’re both standing so clear in what we’re talking about that they both needed that name.
02;20;10;23 – 02;20;11;07
Darren Terry
Of.
02;20;12;18 – 02;20;15;15
Jon Mayo
Appreciate and learn from. But don’t dare call it your own.
02;20;16;00 – 02;20;16;06
Darren Terry
Yeah.
02;20;16;08 – 02;20;25;27
Jon Mayo
Because in doing that you are wasting so much. And that’s the shame. It’s that you’re wasting the opportunity to create how much.
02;20;25;27 – 02;20;26;13
Darren Terry
Value.
02;20;27;17 – 02;20;33;00
Jon Mayo
For yourself and those you love. If you take that counterfeit of accepting someone else’s when.
02;20;33;16 – 02;20;34;10
Darren Terry
You know, you know.
02;20;35;12 – 02;20;38;22
Jon Mayo
When they can be an encouragement.
02;20;38;22 – 02;21;01;22
Darren Terry
Yeah. You know, I think that goes back to another point. It’s just like in 2020 you probably wouldn’t even heard about the lows. Like you kind of had this genuine path and it works out for you in a lot of my mindset back then was just like, Look at the strong part of my mind. Mm hmm. And see where it goes.
02;21;02;14 – 02;21;26;24
Darren Terry
I didn’t harp on, like, the ups and downs and. This was an extreme down. And I’m just in this point now where I’m just like, I’m already so open. Why don’t I just share where I’m at? And because we talked about inevitability the last time I was on here. It’s like, I know what I’m pushing towards is inevitable because.
02;21;26;24 – 02;21;43;00
Darren Terry
It feels so right. I know I’m going to be back up. So I’m I’m bringing it guys into the trenches with me. And it’s like, that’s why I’m able to talk openly about it, like right here too. And I’ve analyzed it more today than I have probably.
02;21;43;29 – 02;22;05;25
Jon Mayo
Well, the other part of it, too, is at first, when doing this, it takes all the strength we have to muster to earn those wins. And there’s nothing else left so early on. That’s all we can dare to speak about because it took everything to get those. But then as the strength continues to compound upon itself and is earned, it goes beyond that to the point.
02;22;05;25 – 02;22;06;26
Darren Terry
Where.
02;22;06;26 – 02;22;15;19
Jon Mayo
Yes, I can share the wins, but I am strong enough now to also share the losses and the pain and a.
02;22;15;19 – 02;22;16;13
Darren Terry
Lifetime.
02;22;16;25 – 02;22;38;08
Jon Mayo
Yeah, everything just continues beyond right? Everything. It still holds its value because what when everything stripped away, those tools that forged you to get to the point where you could begin sharing and serving and loving others. Right. You had to go back to the basics of relying on that foundation to just face the frickin trauma and the obstacle and press into it until you were at home in it, right?
02;22;38;14 – 02;23;03;10
Jon Mayo
Yeah. And that’s why it’s always valuable to have that, because when everything else was stripped away and you can even derive meaning from it, you trusted the process. And as you’ve kept saying, you allowed your mood to follow the actions that you could trust because they had led you so far. Yeah that’s the foundation. But then you go beyond that when you aren’t stripped to the basics, right?
02;23;03;25 – 02;23;06;08
Jon Mayo
And to build upon it and to demonstrate.
02;23;08;17 – 02;23;08;24
Darren Terry
All.
02;23;08;25 – 02;23;41;24
Jon Mayo
The other areas of being human in living that we’re exploring today of love, fear of loss, of gain, of of caring deeply and of pursuing all the things that we’re talking about in and working to be in this way. This a in my mind, this is so much more so much stronger, realer and better than we were just talking about, hammering ourselves into something a little bit more physically and mentally tough.
02;23;42;04 – 02;23;44;19
Darren Terry
Yeah, because that has its place.
02;23;44;19 – 02;23;54;28
Jon Mayo
But it has its place and we definitely enjoy and drink from that. Well, but what it just kind of goes, what purpose does that serve if it doesn’t serve everything else we’re talking about today?
02;23;54;28 – 02;23;55;19
Darren Terry
Yeah, it’s.
02;23;55;19 – 02;24;06;24
Jon Mayo
Priceless in context of how it’s serving all of this and it’s robbing. If it’s the only thing that is. And that is a interesting concept.
02;24;07;19 – 02;24;11;28
Darren Terry
Yeah. Period. Yeah.
02;24;11;29 – 02;24;12;14
Jon Mayo
I think for Dan.
02;24;12;29 – 02;24;23;25
Darren Terry
I think so. That was awesome.
