The Greatest Climber Alive: I Shouldn't Have Attempted That Climb!

It drives me crazy that nobody else thinks about risk in this way. People look at my life and they're like, Well, you're crazy, you're such a risk taker. Well, at least I'm taking the risks that I'm choosing. Because think of all the people that like go out partying every weekend and they get buzzed and they drive home and even sedentary people who are like, Well I don't take risk, I stay home and I play video games. No, you're at a much higher risk of heart disease. Like they're taking all kinds of risk that they're not actually choosing to take, and you're still gonna freaking die either way. So you might as well take smart calculated risks and do all the things that you wanna do, and at least die happy when you go. He's done it! Miss Honnold has made history again, scaling one of the world's tallest skyscrapers. But the conclusion that a lot of people have arrived at is that you don't experience fear because when they look at these two brain scans, your amygdala's lighting up less when you were shown scary images. I I actually hate all the brain stuff because people always put me in this box of like, well, you're different. And I'm like, well, not really, like I'm a middle class suburban kid. Nobody in My family is athletic. It just after twenty years of climbing five days a week and being really freaking scared, I respond differently than an average person. And there's tons of emotional turmoil throughout it. Periods where you're just like, I'm trying so hard and I'm just like not as good as I wanna be. You know, I was like living in a car, I had like a couple hundred bucks a month for ten years. Like that's challenging. But you just can't master a craft overnight.

I guess that's what people don't see. And so how do you create the conditions to out persist other people? And then in all your career, when is the moment where you were most scared? On an expedition to Antarctica. I kept hoping that it's gonna get better and it just kept getting worse. Like I could die. Do you have a conversation with your partner before you go and do something like this? Because she wrote a letter. Oh gosh. Obviously this is your worst nightmare, she said. But we all have to do scary things sometimes, Alex. Guys, I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins. Sixty-nine percent of you that listen to the show frequently haven't yet hit the follow button. And that follow button is very smart because it means you won't miss the best episodes. The algorithm, if you follow a show, will deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed. So when we have our best episodes on this show. The most shared episodes, the most rated episodes. I would love you to know. And the simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button. Thank you so, so, so much. Uh

Alex. From everything. thing I've learnt about you from the research I've done from Speaking to your wife.

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