Are you stuck in the muck, wondering how you can come back to life for a healthy wellness lifestyle that you can't even seem to imagine right now? Maybe you wonder how adult-onset athletes seem to accomplish amazing feats that you only see on TV.

Today, we bring on guest, Dean Hall, motivational speaker, author, and therapist. He's also a two-time cancer survivor, world record extreme distance swimmer/world record holder, and AAGG. We'll see if you can guess what that is, and by the end of this podcast, we will reveal the answer.

Dean and his wife Bobbi are really great at helping people who feel stuck get unstuck. Whether you are somebody who feels stuck by health, wellness, and big life obstacles, or if you are just going through the motions climbing a corporate ladder, I hope that Dean's comeback story offers some pearls that help you get unstuck too.

Meredith: As I was scouring your website and Instagram, one of the first things that stood out to me was that you were the first person to swim the entire length of the River Shannon in Ireland. What was that like?

Dean: It was horrendously way beyond anything I ever expected. I had to take a step back. The reason I swam the River Shannon was that in 2014 became the first person to swim the longest river, the Willamette River (184 miles) in my home state, Oregon. I did so as an active cancer patient. At the time, I had leukemia and lymphoma, and I swam 10-12 miles/day in 40 degree water for 22 days to become the first person to swim the Willamette.

My first purpose was to have a reason to live; I'd lost my first wife a couple years earlier. It was 15 days before our 30th anniversary, and the grief of that was so horrendous that I kind of lost my will to live. That felt entirely selfish because I had this beautiful daughter, who was 21, and I knew I had to do my best to get excited about life again. I just couldn't, but I had this crazy dream of going out swinging instead of dying on a couch. I decided to do something that no one in the world has ever done. That got me so excited that I was able to accomplish it. I'd never read anything about cold water immersion, and being hypothermic 10-12 hours a day for 22 days healed my leukemia. The first blood test I took after the Willamette, my leukemia was gone. The best my oncologist thought was that my immune system got so super charged, plus I was oxygenating my body by swimming so long, that it just burned out the leukemia.

I had partnered with the lymphoma/leukemia society to do some fundraising and inspire other cancer patients. After that, they wanted me to take my message internationally, so I found a river outside of this country. My great grandmother was from Ireland. To me, Ireland has always been the stuff of dreams. Not only leprechauns and rainbows, but beautiful and green. I'd never been there. I thought, "this would be fantastic." In order to do a swim like this, you have to have a guide boater. My swim on the Willamette had been so wonderful and so healing that I wanted this for my daughter. I got my daughter excited about her and had her be my guide boater, thinking that this would heal her.

When we got there, it was so hard. I hadn't realized that it is a series of 200 miles of lakes, so there was no current or flow. The other thing we couldn't have predicted is that only 2 out of the 25 days I swam didn't have a 10 mile hour headwind or more. When you get 10-15 mph of headwind, it pushes the first several feet of water back, so it's like running on a treadmill. I did that for 150 miles. Even though I was an active cancer patient when I swam the Willamette, it made that look like some kindergarten exercise. The Shannon was so much harder. It took all of my resolve and will. Thankfully, I did it in Ireland, and the Irish are so friendly and generous. We had 100s of Irish people find out and volunteer and do whatever they could to help me make this a success. If it wasn't for their generosity, I would have just been this sad middle age American guy showing my daughter and new wife, Bobbi, that I was a big fat failure. It turned out well, but it was tough.

Meredith: Wow. I can't even imagine. I've seen some of the website pictures, but I can't even imagine what it was like to be in the water there. You said it took all your will to keep going. What is it that really brought you the drive to say, "I will not give up?"

Dean: I've always been stubborn. That's the one thing that people who love me say is the hardest to deal with, but losing my first wife, Mary, and having cancer twice broke me and softened me to the point that now I'm able to use what's always been a detriment and obstacle for my good. I'm not the most talented. I've never been on a swim team. I've never won a swim race. It's so agonizingly difficult to swim. I was averaging 3-5 swim marathons a day for 25 days. After a couple days it's just not fun anymore. Nobody's watching. Nobody cares. That's when a lot of other extreme distance swimmers have their will break, and they quit.

Having been through what I've been through; it's easy not to quit. I think, "I'm alive. I chose to do this thing. I'm not dying in a hospital bed, or watching someone that I love die. Let's just do this." Plus, one of my favorite quotes is from the guy that started Patagonia. He says, "it's not an adventure until something goes wrong." So every adventure, I go in realizing it's going to be long; it's going to be hard. I'll probably be cold and tired; it won't be fun, and I may even be swimming injured. The Olympians use imagery to see themselves doing it perfectly. For me, I see everything going wrong. Rather than it depress me, or discourage me, I see myself able to overcome those obstacles and just accept them. It's kind of a form of radical acceptance combined with sports imagery. It really works well for me.

Meredith: I like how you share this. While I'm in sports medicine in Minnesota, we often share with our patients that they need to imagine that the situation is perfect and we feel our muscles acting perfectly, but that's where we stop our conversation. I really appreciated how you've added other elements that could help a lot of athletes stay the course instead of dropping out.

Dean: Right. For me, that's where I see a lot of swimmers that have tried to do what I've done drop out. They're a lot better than me, and a lot younger. But what I know that they may not is that the mind loves habit. If you just prepare and create the habit of things going perfectly, when it doesn't, then the mind doesn't know what to do. It just goes into a state of overwhelm and exhaustion. I do it the exact opposite; I imaging things going really difficult, and me relaxing and finding a way around it.

Meredith: I love that concept; I hadn't thought of that before. That is such an amazing concept to entertain and practice. You got going; you stayed going; you had this inner fire and learned to pull it up through hardship. So many times I hear that the hardest thing to do is to take the first step. You'd lost your wife; you'd had cancer twice. How did you get up each time and take the first step after each major life stumbling block?

Dean: If you look at it and compress it, I did a wonderful job, but the reality was very different. I was miserable. Even though I'm a therapist, and you'd think that would make me a real softy, I was raised as a baby boomer; big boys don't cry. Before my wife died; I'd never really cried. After she did, I couldn't discuss the weather without crying. I also had moved. I grew up here in Portland, Oregon; I was the son of two mountain climbers. I went out to a small college to play soccer on a lark, where I met this cute farm girl. I put myself in exile for love and lived in a small little Kansas town for 30 years because I loved her, not knowing that my whole adult identity was being wrapped up in being Mary's husband. Even after she died, even after I had taught there and was a therapist there for 30 years, people there didn't call me by name. They called me Mary's husband. It's a midwest small town thing, I think. That was my identity. Once Mary was gone, I realized, "oh my gosh, I really don't know who I am as an adult." Quite honestly, I struggled; I was angry. I made a bunch of stupid mistakes, that, as a therapist, were very embarrassing. I'm the guy that helps other people know what to do, right? I knew I was doing dumb stuff, but I didn't care. I'd lost my will to live.

What really brought me back though was August of 2013. Leukemia had whittled me down to 159 lbs. I looked totally emaciated. The biggest thing on me were my lymph nodes. They'd swollen in my neck to the point that I thought I was disfigured; I couldn't really turn my neck. What turned me around was the love for my daughter. She deserved me to come back. One of the things I tell parents is that it really doesn't matter what you say to your kids (unless you're being mean); they're really only going to be influenced by your actions. I constantly, for 20 years, told parents "it's one thing to be a perfect parent, but there's something better than perfect." If you fail or have hardship and somehow overcome it, you show your kids how to do that. Someday when they encounter hardship, they will automatically assume they can overcome it because you did. My daughter's name is Bre, and I thought, I've just got to come back to live and overcome this thing to show her that, number one, she's not left alone at 21, and number two, that that's what you do in life. That was really the turning point and impetus for me.

Meredith: When you decided on swimming, and that that was going to be your next step when you had cancer, how did your medical team react to this thought?

Dean: My medical team, friends, and family were aghast. I'd never heard my doctor cuss before. He said a few choice words. He thought I was suicidal. He gave me the seven question test for suicidal ideation. I'm like, "hey doc. I know what you're doing. I'm a therapist. I'm not suicidal; I was, and you didn't ask. I'm not now though." He said "you realize if you get in a public pool, it could kill you." I said, "well, this is killing me, and doing nothing is going to kill me even faster. What do you want me to do? Sit on a couch and die watching Wheel of Fortune? I'm not going to go out that way." He responded, "It's my responsibility to tell you that your immune system is so compromised that getting in a pool might be the worst thing that you could do."

Looking back on it, I really didn't even give it a second thought. I was in what I call the sweet spot; you know you're going in the right direction if it's equally terrifying and thrilling or exciting.

At first, I was only going to swim the English Channel and be the first active cancer patient to do that. That excited me so much that the terror was manageable.

Meredith: I love how you knew you were in the right place. That is so hard for people to trust themselves.

Dean: Yeah, and I've been there most of my life, but I was at a point where I felt like I'd lost everything. I had nothing to lose. All the things that excited me before . . . . I'd helped many people though Viktor Frankl's book, "Man's Search for Meaning;" he shows that the search for purpose is the one thing that can make your life meaningful and give you the power to overcome. In his case, even Auschwitz. I knew purpose was something that I had to have, but all the typical things like building a therapy practice, or speaking, or writing, or writing another book . . . all those things that had filled my life with meaning . . . when I'd think of them, it would just time me out to even think of them. When I thought about swimming the English Channel, it was like my whole body came alive. It was like, "that's stupid, but wonderful."

Meredith: So you found that purpose through a physical activity. You've done so many things. You've overcome so much. What is your purpose? When I look at your whole background, I could pick out 50. What is that guiding purpose now?

Dean: I think my overwhelming guiding purpose is to offer hope, and there are many avenues in which I get the opportunity to that. Without hope, I think it's impossible to have any kind of faith in anything. Without hope, it's really impossible to love completely. I believe faith, hope, and love are the big three. I think my whole purpose in life now is to offer hope. That takes many avenues and has many little arms.

Meredith: You're message right now, resonates on so many levels. I know many people lose hope; they just go through the motions, or they are so sidelined by medical or family, and amazing life events that are hard to describe in words. I know that your message is going to help people reframe and think about how they could maybe take a step forward or find a purpose.

For people that are stuck in life's muck without a purpose, do you have any words of wisdom on how they can start finding a purpose?

Dean: Absolutely. First, really take a look at me. I always wanted to be a big shot, or a champion, or talented, or smart, or the top of the class, or standing on an Olympic podium. None of that; I've never had any of that! I am all too ordinary. Right after the swim, I got a lot of speaking gigs, mostly here in the Pacific Northwest, and my dad's one of my best friends; he's run most of the major marathons and climbed all of the peaks on the west coast; he's kind of a man's man. He's become a trusted friend and mentor. In the question and answer time after these gigs, invariably, people would stand up and say, "Dean, I though you'd be bigger. Dean, I thought you'd be stronger. Dean, I thought you'd look more athletic." It was starting to hurt my feelings. So I called him up, and he said, "Dean; this is exactly what you want. They're saying, 'wow Dean, if you can do that, so can we.'" Oh, that's perfect; that is exactly what they are saying, "you look pretty ordinary Dean." That's just fine with me. So for people watching this, inspect my life, and even give me a call. They'll find out pretty quickly that they are probably a lot further ahead, a lot smarter, and a lot stronger than I am. I'm just an ordinary guy. If I can do it, anyone can do it. Literally.

The second thing, and this is something very few people know . . . tap into how your brain works. The brain, by its nature, has to answer every question you ask. It has to. The problem is, a lot of us ask really awful questions; that's what kept me stuck. I was in the poor pitiful me genre of questions. "Why did this have to happen to me? Why did I lose her just as 30 years of hard work was starting to pay off? What am I going to do now? Why does my life suck?" Not only will your brain give you one answer, but it will flip through your subconscious files and give you as many answers as practical, which could be in the thousands; that will just be a tidal wave of being overwhelmed. In the same way that all of us have had this experience, especially if we've watched Jeopardy . . .. We'll think of somebody's name or concentrate on a trivial fact and think I don't know; we'll let it go, and then a minute or day later, we're brushing our teeth and the answer pops to mind. What a lot of people don't know is that the brain will do that with the most significant questions of your life. For two or three weeks before I came across swimming the English Channel, I was asking, even prayerfully, "what if this is my last act on earth? What would be a good way to go out? What's my purpose?" I'd concentrate on it with all my might, and I'd let it go. I knew that within an hour, a day, a week . . . something would come to me. It took a couple weeks, and there it was. My whole body just lit up, so I knew. Use the power of questions in a way that will crack open that muck or gunk.

Meredith: So powerful there. Everybody can use that in some way, shape, or form in their lives at any time. Thank you so much for your generosity and willingness to share your story. Your willingness to be vulnerable and share is going to help so many people at such a profound level. I'm really excited to see where people take this and how they interpret it, and how does it really help at the level of hope. A lot of people need that starting point; they need hope right now.

As we close, is there anything else you'd want to add and share with the audience today?

Dean: Yeah, when I look at any kind of lifestyle, the biggest mistake I see people make is swinging from perfection to not doing it at all. The extremes. Somewhere in my early 40s, I got very serious about life; I was doing a ton and I wanted my life to be healthy, so I started finding what I call "Dean's way." I started looking at not how everybody else does things, but what works for me. I developed what I call the theory of 3 to 5. I will juice 3-5 x/week. I will exercise 3-5 x/week. I'll do my spiritual practices 3-5 x/week. I won't allow myself to do anything 7 days a week. Even when I'm doing these gigantic swims, I take Sunday off as a reminder that I can even accomplish a world record without being perfect. Just totally eliminate the need to do anything everyday, or even perfectly. Find what you can tailor make to your lifestyle so it is sustainable and something you can be doing when you are 80.

Meredith: Love the 3 to 5. I'm taking notes and will share that with people beyond this podcast. I'm going to share it with all of my patients as well. I see kids who are only 12 dancing 50 hours a week and think we need something different. It could apply to so many situations. You have shared so many wonderful things, and at the beginning of the podcast we included a credential, AAGG. The more I talk with you, the more I definitely agree with what that is, but we haven't shared what that is with the audience. Do you want to share what the AAGG is?

Dean: {Laughing} It sands for all around great guy.

Meredith: Thank you so much. If people want to reach out to you, whether it's about your story, what you offer in life, your books, your speaking, anything . . . what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Dean: Just give me a DM on Instagram (SwimmingInMiracles). I get to those everyday or definitely the next day. Instagram has been fun; it has been collegial; I've met so many great folks around the world all trying to do good. Right now I am running a fall into winter price package for my coaching for Comeback Coaching. Most of us, when we are stuck, we need to make a great comeback, but we don't know how. Because I've been forced to in life, I can not only give you that, but I've also been a therapist for 30 years. I've counted each hour I've seen people face-to-face and just passed 53 thousand face-to-face hours. More importantly, real life practical applications on how to get yourself out of that gunk and make a wonderful comeback. I'm doing that kind of coaching via Skype or phone with folks around the world. I'm also having a really good time going around and sharing my story as an inspirational speaker to different schools and events as well.