Breaking Ordinary with Andy Petranek

Robbie Ventura is a former American professional cyclist who rode most notably for United States Postal Service Cycling Team from 2001-2004. A pro for over 11 years, he got his start in bicycle racing near his home by developing his skill, strength, and speed while riding, racing and supporting teammates in velodrome racing (an oval, banked, indoor cycling track). A successful competitive athlete his entire life (he also played collegiate hockey), he found quickly after retiring from cycling that he had more to contribute to the world by way of coaching. He turned his sights toward the business he started in Chicago, Vision Quest Coaching, and never looked back.

[Note: For the complete set of show notes, links, and contact info, head to https://www.wholelifechallenge.com/podcast]

Thirteen years and thousands of clients later, he's one of the go-to people in the world for developing athletic skills as a cyclist. Whether you're working with him personally (all VQ clients start with a thorough 3-hour assessment with Robbie), or working with one of his coaches in person or online, he's developed a training methodology and system based on his years as a competitive athlete and top professional cyclist.

Anyone who has risen to the top of a competitive sport who has then transitioned, like Robbie has, to the world of coaching, has a ton of experience and advice to offer, whether you're a participant in his sport or not. Robbie's personal experience and years as a coach give him an incredibly valuable and unique perspective - there is a ton to learn from him that he shares during our conversation.

Highlights:

• How to test your fitness, passion, commitment, mental focus and strength through racing and competition.
• How to win without necessarily winning (or how the cost of winning (in sport or life) can be detrimental to your long-term health and goals.)
• How to develop your skill set for a sport.
• How the important part of the journey is in the struggle, not the result.
• How to determine the perfect training volume for your own development.
• Why single sport athletes (runners, cyclists, triathletes, swimmers, etc) need training outside of their sport for well-rounded functional capacity and life.
• Robbie's secret to keeping yourself motivated and on-track.
• How to set yourself up for a great night's sleep - the key elements for perfect sleep and recovery.
• How to set up your own testing protocol (in swimming, cycling, or running) for continued growth and performance.
• Why "paying attention" to when you feel great is the key to your own personal performance.

Enjoy!

You may remember Jack Osbourne from the hit TV show The Osbournes. He's the son of the heavy metal singer Ozzie Osbourne and is a regular member at CrossFit Los Angeles.

Jack has a thriving business producing travel and history shows alongside his dad (who's a closet history buff). He's also a husband and a father to two daughters.

But the reason I wanted to have him as a guest on the show was to talk about his experience with addiction and getting sober as a teenager, as well as his diagnosis with multiple sclerosis (MS).

Before the age of eighteen, Jack had become addicted to painkillers, recognized it, and then willingly went to rehab, kicking it without relapse — he's now fourteen years sober and counting.

Not long after kicking painkillers, he got the sort of news that any human being who's been to the doctor with strange symptoms dreads. He learned he has MS.

Jack didn't tuck his tail under and run. Quite the opposite. He's lives his life openly and honestly, sharing his trials and tribulations with the world in an effort to shed more light on this disease and to help others in need live with it.

Join me for this great conversation with Jack. Here are some of the things we speak about:

• The unexpected twists and turns of life as a teenager - and how he pulled through
• The adventure of a lifetime, climbing El Capitan - a 3,000 ft. sheer granite wall in Yosemite, CA
• How choosing adventures or events that inspire you can pull you toward your goals
• Getting "this chick" pregnant and getting married
• His first symptoms of MS - "de-nial" is not just a river in Africa
• His belief that, "Where you are at 30 is where you are with the rest of your life," and how that helped him
• Commitment to 3 days/week of training - start of changing life
• Getting his "life straight" through the Whole Life Challenge
• Catching Leptospirosis in the jungles of Borneo
• The process of detoxing to cleanse his body
• Process goals vs. outcome goals
• The importance of community in fitness and training
• Andy's discovery of CrossFit - the early days

You may have seen this week's guest on a random Saturday afternoon while watching the Olympics or an extreme sports show with guys hucking themselves off of 100-foot cliffs on mountain bikes. Sal Masekela has been hosting shows like this for NBC and Red Bull for many years, and is currently the persona of the Red Bull Signature Series. But I know Sal through his participation with our fitness community at CrossFit Los Angeles, of which he was a member for over 5 years, and subsequently, his journey as a four-time veteran of the Whole Life Challenge.

Sal leads a pretty incredible life, traveling to all parts of the earth with some of the world's greatest extreme athletes (surf, skate, snowboard, ski, dirt bike, mountain bike, etc.) in order to bring their exploits and amazing performances alive for the rest of us via TV. He also gets a chance to hang out with these guys outside of competition. During the podcast, he shares both stories and profound learnings from the likes of Laird Hamilton, Gabby Reece, and Kelly Slater (who he hangs with regularly).

Though his life is glamorous, he struggles just like the rest of us with his personal health and fitness, challenged by the uniqueness of his schedule, lifestyle and habits. He's incredibly open about his life and shares with us many of his personal daily habits and how he makes sure to get them in each day.

Join me for a conversation about the journey and joy of life, and some profound learnings from the life and experiences of Sal Masekela.

What if I were to tell you that one of the 3 fittest women on the planet was (at the time she earned that title) 35 years old, a mother, wife, and school teacher who limits her training to 90 minutes per day? Would you believe me? If not, you'd be sorely mistaken.

In 2013, Val Voboril took 3rd at the CrossFit Games. It was the second time she placed 3rd, it would be one of four times that she's finished in the top 5, and at the time, she was 10 years older than most of her competitors. If you met Val on the street, you be taken by her bright eyes, incredible smile, sunny disposition, but not at all by her physical prowess - she appears normal as normal can be.Ordinarily, relating to an athlete like this is next to impossible. Their lives are simply too dissimilar to the ones that the rest of us lead. But not at all so for Val - she's got her priorities and a life that is very much like yours and mine. First and foremost, she's a mom and a wife, responsibilities she takes very seriously. And believe me, she knows the importance - she's been an elementary school teacher for over 14 years. These take priority over all else, and are why she puts such strict limits on her daily training volume in her preparation for competition (90 minutes in the world of elite CrossFitters tiny in comparison to others.

In order to keep all these things in balance, Val's had to adopt a training philosophy and strategy that allows her to do it all. It's one of the freshest and coolest strategies I know. And since she's 38, a mom, wife and full time teacher, she knows what it's like to juggle life's responsibilities with her daily training discipline.

There is so much to learn from Val's experience, attitude, daily practice, and how she keeps it all together. Enjoy!

Topics:

• Story of her most embarrassing moment with her mom and GSP (George St. Pierre)
• Story of her first "Fran" with 75-pound thrusters (Yikes!)
• Balancing her life as a teacher and mom with her athletic training
• Managing expectations, goal-setting and focus
• How she handles her desire to be perfect in every area of her life
• Fun and freedom - the keys to building an effective training program
• Her approach to the CrossFit Open workouts and the importance of FUN
• Her "spectacular" start (and finish) of her 2009 CrossFit Games
• On the verge of quitting in the 2015 CrossFit regionals, how she battled fear, doubt, judgment and finished with a smile on her face
• Community, teamwork and the power of fun, play, and shared experience (and misery)
• Finding your "Why?"
• Listener questions
• • Challenges with food, bread, and sugar
  • Tips for motivation to start workouts
  • Working through plateaus - their silver lining
• Using the starting time of a workout class to "force" you into starting your workout.
• What constitutes a recovery day?

Teacher, speaker, and psychotherapist, Megan Devine, has been stirring up our culture's ideas around grief and loss since 2009. That's the year she started down the path of personal wisdom and expertise because in that year, on a beautiful sunny day, she witnessed the accidental drowning of her beloved partner Matt. At that moment, all of her professional experience as a therapist became meaningless. What she found in processing her own grief, was that grief literature is loaded with well-intended advice that can actually worsen and extend someone's pain. "We just don't know how to handle loss in our culture."

Since then, Megan has dedicated herself to helping people find a new way to deal with loss that honors their experience without trying to "solve" grief. Much of her work involves processing through writing and journaling, our lifestyle practice in the Whole Life Challenge this week, which is why I originally invited her onto the podcast

She's the author of the book, It's OK That You're Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand, and is known for her practical, no-nonsense approach to grief, and for her ability to guide people inside some of the most devastating experiences of life and love. She's an outspoken advocate of emotional intelligence, and the skills needed to love each other better – no matter what life brings.

I know this isn't an easy topic, but it's one that holds so much value for us in that we've all, in some way shape or form dealt with, or will have to deal with the loss of someone or something we love.

There is so much value in Megan's work, I don't know where to begin. Can't recommend this one enough. Here are some of the topics from our conversation:

• Grief - an access point to our authentic self
• The uncomfortableness of being around someone else who's grieving, and how to do it
• Using writing to access your authentic thoughts and feelings
• Journaling and writing as a place to tell the truth - because for all of us, the truth needs to be spoken, (though maybe not out loud.)
• The benefit of not labeling yourself "a writer", or expecting yourself to be good at it
• The use of a timer and a specific, pre-defined length of time to assist your efforts
• Writing prompts that work to access your right brain and creative mind.
• How to get through your resistance to writing.
• Grief is not a blessing, but it delivers a path straight to your heart and can be beautiful.
• Gratitude as a companion to grief, not as a replacement.
• Managing your own sense of helplessness when around others in pain.
• If you really want to be of service to someone in pain, show up and be uncomfortable.
• Journaling each day for checking in with yourself.

For the full write up with resources, links and contact info, please visit www.wholelifechallenge.com/podcast.

I've often wondered how a song becomes a song. The process seems mysterious and, frankly, impossible for a "normal" person like myself. What comes first — the title, tune, chords, or words? How do you put them together? How do you write the lyrics? And what about the structure? It's all overwhelming to me and completely outside my comfort zone.

And then I read Peter Himmelman's book, Let Me Out: Unlock Your Creative Mind and Bring Your Ideas to Life. Peter is my guest this week on the podcast, and my intention in having him on was to talk about creativity, since he's mastered it in his life and has written a book full of exercises to help others learn to foster it in theirs.

The final exercise in Peter's book is a simplified step-by-step guide for writing a song. According to the book, the process takes less than fifteen minutes. I'm going to let you in on a little secret now: I hardly ever do exercise like this in a book, but this time I felt compelled to give it a shot. Why?

I've always had a secret desire to write a song.

I've been playing the guitar for about ten years. I've achieved a certain level of facility in strumming and playing chords that I'm comfortable with. But one area I've always had a secret desire to pursue is songwriting.

When I was putting together this episode, it suddenly occurred to me that I could record a song and share it with you. And in spite of my trepidation, fear, and self-judgment, I decided there really couldn't be a better way to demonstrate the effect of putting action together with creativity, fun, and a healthy dose of fear.

At the time of my conversation with Peter, I hadn't yet read his book. Between then and now, I did — and as a result, I wrote a song.

Yes, I wrote a song.

In about fifteen minutes, I had in my hands twelve lines of lyrics that constituted the first three verses of my first and very own song. Since then, I added a verse and wrote a chorus.

So not only is this podcast a conversation with Peter, it's also the world premier broadcast of my first and only song, Riding My One-Wheeled Bike! You can listen to it at the end of the podcast — at 1:22:00.

This podcast with Peter Himmelman, my friend, songwriting muse and teacher, singer, songwriter, composer, painter, and author of Let Me Out, is a conversation about creativity, gratitude, and living a happy and meaningful life. Whether or not you consider yourself an "artist," there is something in this podcast for you:

• A daily happiness hack to boost your mood and increase productivity
• Focusing on what you have rather than what you need
• Using a timer for brainstorming
• Starting the process of writing a book with the title
• The three categories of action-taking — every action fits into one of these
• The difference intentionality makes in taking action
• Intentionality in the conception of a child
• Sharing the results of your creative actions with others
• What comes first — the lyrics or the music?
• Songs are to an album as chapters are to a book
• Finding the joy and beauty and sharing with the world
• Building your personal board of directors

Enjoy!

For complete show notes for every show including links, guest contact info, and more, go to www.wholelifechallenge.com/podcast.

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Dr. Steve Orma is a clinical psychologist and happiness expert specializing in the treatment of insomnia, anxiety, and stress. If you've ever had a hard time falling asleep, or getting back to sleep after waking up, you've had first-hand experience with the way anxiety (or your worry about things in the future) can sabotage your efforts. That is why I thought Dr. Orma would make a perfect guest for this week's Whole Life Podcast on sleep and the establishment of a bedtime ritual.

Dr. Orma has extensive clinical experience helping individuals of all backgrounds from PTSD war vets to students, moms, young professionals, entrepreneurs, and more. He personally suffered from (and overcame) insomnia, making him first-hand aware of how sleep can negatively impact your energy, health, and well-being. As a result of that experience, he wrote a book on the topic, "Stop Worrying and Go to Sleep: How to Put Insomnia to Bed for Good". He is also widely quoted in the national media for his mental health expertise including ABC News, MSNBC, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Women's Health, Shape, Men's Journal, and more.

Topics discussed during the podcast:

• The psychology behind bedtime rituals
• Specific ideas for bedtime rituals to assist in falling asleep
• Why you shouldn't keep your todo list right next to your bed
• What to do when you're in bed and can't fall asleep or can't get back to sleep
• Why you shouldn't have a television in your bedroom
• Anxiety and insomnia - expecting the worst and worrying about it doesn't help
• Using exposure and flooding (techniques) for addressing the core beliefs that are causing your anxiety.
• Taking action - how it increases confidence and lowers anxiety.

I asked Traver Boehm back as a guest on the podcast this week specifically to talk about the impact he's felt from disconnecting from electronic media over the course of the past year. He's had personal experience - taking multiple month-long breaks from any sort of online interaction as well as recurring short breaks over the course of his daily routine.

This have been part of his Year To Live Project - something he started at the beginning of 2016 in an attempt to answer the question for himself, "What would you do if you knew you only had a year to live?"

One of the things he took on was a month in the wilderness with only a knife and compass (and the clothes on his back). It was particularly gnarly. He describes it as 28-days of shivering, dealing with extreme hunger, cold, and sleep deprivation. Fascinating as well was how he had to deal with the "not-knowingness" of what would happen tomorrow - or, as he called it, breaking his addiction to future knowledge.

Later in the year, he studied at the Esalen Institute, working on his spiritual practice while cleaning toilets (that paid his room and board). The rule there at meal times - no electronics, enforced by a complete shut-off of the wi-fi system (and there's no cell service option either).

If you missed his first appearance as a guest on the show, it's an episode not to be missed. Check it out here.

Here are some of the highlights of the podcast:

• How speaking at TEDx is like an MMA fight
• Learning how to survive for 28 days in the wilderness with nothing but a knife, water, first aid kit, a compass, the clothes on his back, and a five-foot-square sheet
• Dealing with extreme hunger and cold
• 28 days of shivering and sleep deprivation
• Gratitude in the face of misery — and how things could always be worse
• Surrendering to life the way it is without giving up
• Taking personal responsibility
• Breaking the addiction to future knowledge and living in the moment
• Translating ancient yogic philosophy into current-day leadership
• Moment-to-moment choices and consciousness
• Tips for disconnecting from the constant stream of information and communication
• Seeing family patterns and behaviors that you despise and thought weren't in you and waking up to the fact they are

I got so much value from hearing about Traver's experiences — living and learning through him. I know you'll love it too.

Coby Kozlowski is a modern-day meditation and consciousness guru (though she would never describe herself that way). Ever humble, she's amassed a lifetime of experience through working with teachers in the yogic, meditative, and consciousness realms over the past 25 years. Now a teacher of teachers, she has appeared on the cover of Yoga Journal and Mantra Magazine, and was named as "one of the 7 yoga teachers who has changed the practice [of yoga]".

Known as a vibrant, well-spoken, relatable, and funny inspirational speaker, workshop leader, and storyteller, she has energy that draws you in and offers tangible nuggets of wisdom that leave you inspired and ready to jump start your life without punishing yourself along the way.

I went into this conversation with a list of questions. As it turns out, I only needed one, "What is meditation?". Coby's answer was so engaging, thorough, and thought-provoking, that it took up almost our entire time together.

Her approach to meditation is so refreshingly different than what I've both learned through practice and read in books and articles, that it left me inspired to want to practice. Normally I think about meditation as something I need to do, I have to do because it's so good for me, and that I should do more of because of its value to my life. But it's never really been something I want to do, think I have time for, or look forward to doing. This conversation changed that completely.

Some of the topics we discussed:

• Traditional meditation - a practice originally designed for monks
• A new context of meditation - choosing your path, no wrong making
• The default mode of your brain - focusing on Maslow's hierarchy of needs and why that is important to know in your meditation practice.
• "No internal spanking." You'll have to listen to understand :-)
• Meditation as a "massage for your soul", tending to a part of you as you would tend your garden
• How to get started and what to do in your meditative experience.

This was truly a transformative conversation for me - shifting my almost 20-year old belief of the definition and requirements for meditation. Whether you're an experienced meditator or are giving it a shot for the first time, I guarantee that there is something for you in this conversation. Enjoy!

Have a comment, thought, or question? I'd love to hear from you! Shoot me an email at [email protected] and I'll do my best (no guarantees) to address your question on the podcast.

"Beast-Mode" is a phrase to describe someone that athletically "gets after it" every time they get the ball in a practice or a game. Well, there's no one I know that epitomizes that more than my son's soccer coach, Sasha Andrews. She's played world-class level soccer globally for over 15 years, and by the forces of luck and nature for me, my son, and the other kids she coaches, has settled here in Los Angeles. When you see a photograph of her on or off the field, you also immediately know why the phrase Beauty and the Beast couldn't be more apropos.

A member of the Canadian national soccer team for over thirteen years, Sasha has as much experience in world-class women's soccer — between national games, the World Cup, and the Olympics — as almost anyone else in the world. She's been a defender her entire career and is nicknamed the "Gentle Giant."

Sasha was the middle child of seven, and her siblings were all brothers. She quickly learned to play hard just to keep up. It's no wonder she eventually became a dominating professional athlete. In her own words, "I didn't even know I was a girl for the longest time."

As a teenager, she ranked nationally in both basketball and soccer, eventually having to make a choice between the two — a tough decision for a teenager. At nineteen, she made her debut for the Canadian National Team.

She continues to play professionally today for the Santa Clarita Blue Heat, but most of her time is spent working with kids. She coaches a boys U10 and U12 club team, and teaches elementary and middle school PE.

In this episode we talk about:

• Growing up as an athlete - family, pressures, time, schedule, homework, brothers
• The devastating loss of one of her brothers at age 34
• Life as a professional athlete
• Competing for a spot and staying on the Canadian National Team for thirteen years
• The 24 hours before a big game - physical and mental preparation
• What it's like to collide full-on with Abby Wambach
• "Legs up" the day before a game
• Superstitions and habits
• Providing feedback and supporting teammates - on and off the field
• Friendships, relationships, and connection with others

Enjoy!