Hank Wise: Open ocean swimming world record holder

Hank, we are rolling my man. Awesome. Let's do this. I'll give you a little intro. We'll kick it off with that. Alright. Listener, I have a real treat today. Hank Wise is in the studio with me. He is a world-class, open sea swimmer. As the reigning king of the Catalina Channel swim, Hank holds the record for the fastest male swim ever from Catalina Island to the Southern California mainland at 7 hours, 55 minutes and 6 seconds. He has made that swim more times than any other human, including one time in rough seas in which he swam for over 10 straight hours at 46 years old, no less. Hank is a waterman, surfer and coach.

He hails from Long Beach, California, but he has swam and surf throughout Mexico, Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Fiji, Italy, Greece, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and Tahiti. He's won too many swimming accolades to list them all here, but to name a few, he has won at the Junior Olympics, the CIF, USA Swimming Junior National Championships, US Olympic Committee National Sports Festival and was a USA Swimming Olympics trials qualifier as well as a member of the NCA2A Championship winning Stanford swim team of 1986. Hank is the founder and head coach at Rocketfish Swimming and I can tell you from personal experience with my son that he is an insanely gifted coach and teacher.

He is filled with nuggets of wisdom and brings such good energy wherever he goes. Wow, you did do your homework. Thank you so much, Nick. It's great to be in your studio. This is a nice looking place to be. It's good, great temperature in here and thanks again for that well, overwhelmingly research to positive introduction right on. It's good to be here. Thank you. How you doing today? Good, man. I don't know if you noticed Nick, there was a full moon recently. I felt a lot of energy building up into the full moon. It was, I just celebrated my 55th birthday. I'm a Sagittarius. So I felt the full moon energy, the birthday energy.

It all coming up and then now we're in this relaxed phase a little bit more after all that build up and just starting out the week on a positive note here with you and just stoked to be here. Yeah, heading down to Mexico soon, I hear. That's true. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. That's an annual trip that my family and I take. It's funny because we just get into our, we get into our habit trail where we spend time at home cooking at the beach and then go into town, pick up some vegetables and whatnot and then go back home and cook a little bit more and go back to the beach. It's like, it's almost like a retreat in a way.

It's a decompress. I feel like around here in Southern California, it's a land of more, a land of busy job and family and sports and all that good stuff. And then love being busy and also love having that decompressed time in Mexico. So it's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Just live in life. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Be in humans, you know, strip back. Yeah. All right. Let's dive into it. Dive in. I want to know because I have no frame of reference. What is it like swimming for 10 straight hours or even just seven straight hours? Take me through that. First of all, you know, it's just how the guys climb tall mountains and do anything.

It's really one step at a time for the mountain guys and for a summer guys, it's one stroke at a time. I think it's kind of one of those things that, you know, you get acclimated to, you get acclimated as a kid. You do your first four laps in the pool and then you do a 400 in the pool, which is 16 laps, you know? Little by little, you build up to a mile, you know, in the pool and stuff like that. For me, I came out swimming from really an ocean first perspective, similar to one of my main mentors, Duke Kanamoku, just really I fell in love with the ocean first and I felt so at home in the ocean.

There's a fable about me where I was born as a dolphin and I kind of believe that fable. Just that was my first home, really, the ocean. And then I started swimming in a pool around age 11. A woman came and talked to us about the Catalina swim and I'm growing up until in California in Long Beach. I was just like, you swam to Catalina. I asked that like that lady, you know, her name was Penny Lee Dean. We became friends later and she's still a mentor to me to this day. I was like, you swam to Catalina Island? Of course, I'm looking out at that island growing up in Long Beach. Just we always see that you know, Catalina Island, right?

Have you visited Catalina? Oh yeah. Jumped on a boat, drove over there. The boat ride seems long. Right? Like the let alone swimming it. So yeah, I kept swimming in a pool and I always back to the ocean for surfing, back to the ocean for body surfing, swimming, playing, doing some ocean races like the annual Huntington Beach Pier swim, which is a 10 minute sprint basically. I saw you were a record holder for that as well when you were a young man. Man, you're not messing around with your research. Yeah, now that's right. Yeah, I held that record for 20 years or something. Yep. It was funny because right when I was about to become a father at age 43, I told my wife, I saw my wife growing out that belly.

Here's a baby brewing in there and I said, you know what? You've got a big project on your hands here, honey. I say we, but really it's her. You know, my wife, Kristin was about to give birth to our boy Fox. Not about to give birth, but she was in some stage of pregnancy and I respected what she was about to take on, which was like give birth to another human. Quite a challenge really when you think about it. And I said, you know what? I want to take on my own challenge. I know you're about to graduate yourself from a woman into becoming a mother. You know, you're going to take on that. I want to take something on.

I want to grip on something big and take on my own challenge. So I just revisited that moment when Penny Lee Dean came around and told us about her exploits in the channel. And I was like, I want to swim the Catalina channel and I want to do it before my son comes out. I want that to be my challenge. At the time, I only really knew one person that had done it. And I gave him a call, Steve Munatones. And I was like, Steve, what can you tell me about the Catalina channel? He's like, well, come on over. He introduced me to Jen Schumacher and then Jen and I had a 10 mile swim. And really that first 10 mile swim with Jen, just like, it was, I don't want to say easy, but it just flowed.

It just really flowed. And I was like, you know what? I got this. After my first 10 mile swim, I was like, I could do 20. I could do 20 miles. Like I can definitely do that. Yeah. And what's the distance from Catalina? It's 20. It's 20. When you go straight line from the shortest point, it's actually can turn out to be 19.9. Largely, it's about 20 on the dot. And then I just, I kind of like just trained up and just went out and got her done. You know. And how many times have you done it now? So over a period of 10 years, I've done it seven times. I've been tied for the most crossings, if anybody, to do that particular swim.

What's the training like in the months that lead up to one of those? It's just like the training is where the joy begins. It really, you have to see it that way. If you want to be a successful channel swimmer, you have to enjoy the process. It's really like you're kind of spoiling yourself in a way. You're a glutton of serving yourself at the buffet of swimming. I'll just take a few more hours here. I'll take a few more laps in the pool. I'll take a few more miles in the ocean. You're treating yourself to time in the ocean, the benefit of like getting in really good shape, dad, job, coaching, whatever it is, to remove yourself from all those responsibilities and get into your passion.

It's really a self-serving indulgence as an adult. There seems to be a key there. What might feel like work to a lot of other people is play to you. That makes it exponentially easier to prepare yourself for something so grueling because you're enjoying the training process, all that build up. So many people who excel in various areas express something similar to that. What's game day like? You slather this sheep's wool oil on your body and the water can't get in as much and hit you as much. So it kind of warms you up nicely. We get our feeds lined up, our feeds meaning like a high carbohydrate mix of fuel.

I experimented with a lot of different things and then I ended up with Carbopro which is a corn. It is a cornstarch element in which it's tasteless. It's not sweetened. There's no color. It's just wonderful stuff. It reacts well with my body. We drink that every half hour. You're allowed one speedo, a cap, a pair of goggles and that's it. A lot of people always ask like, oh, do you get to wear a wetsuit? Absolutely not. There's no wetsuit. Just the oil. Just the oil. Game day is just so frickin exciting because you're coming at it like, all right, this is going down today. I've shown up on days when it's been pretty blustery at night and I'm entering the water thinking to myself, you know what?

This is going to be pretty gnar tonight. Is there a team that we work with? It's not as if like you just go, ah, we'll do it. We'll do it next week. Like you either are all in or you're not in at all. Right. You know, and I mean, if it's just too crazy, then you just scrap it. Just out of my seven times, I've never started one and failed. I've shown up and got her done. On the roughest night, I just remember thinking, you know what? One stroke at a time. Here we go. Like keep your face in. Just go. It's all going to work out. You're going to get to the other side. That's it's going to be fine. Just stay calm, you know, and it's it's really it's really a satisfying feeling when you just kind of stick to your plan and just go forward.

Can we back up one second? Sure. You start at night. Right. The conventional wisdom on that is that basically the seas are roughest usually right around sunset. Like the wind in Southern California blows all afternoon. Sometimes it blows through the sunset. We have Bolsa Chica Beach right near us. How windy is it there, right? Yeah. It's so windy. It can blow all the way up until, you know, nine, ten, eleven, mid, you know, right there. Sometimes around between midnight and four a.m. It starts to calm and then it stays calm usually until about 10 a.m., 11 a.m. somewhere in there. What we do is we tend to leave around like midnight towards two a.m.

and then we arrive somewhere eight hours later. But yeah, this is even crazier that you're doing it at night. It's so funny. It's so funny. Yeah. Like, like once you get used to swimming at night, it actually becomes kind of a really cool environment because all the distractions of daytime are gone. Right? So, looking at anything, I call it the black velvet because you're just moving through this aqueous, soft water in the night. No distractions. Just you, the kayaker, the chase boat is somewhere over there and you're just kind of in your own environment. It's kind of amazing. Yeah. But you can't see anything.

It's just blackness. There's that bioluminescence, phosphorescence in the water. Some animals put out a little phosphorescent glow like jellyfish. I remember in my first swim, there's these like sort of about the size of the bottom of a 12 ounce can has that rim. You know, these jellyfish were like circles. You could actually see bioluminescence circles underneath me as I was swimming. And then when your hands end of the water, sometimes there's like sparks that fluff your hand. And then there were these jellyfish circles. So it's kind of a light show to be honest with you under water. Kind of unexpected.

I had seen things like that before, but just other things come up. Things happen out there that you don't expect and serendipitously arrive and you're like, wow, this is pretty cool. You know, that's wild. So you're in the black velvet and there's blue, greenish glowing elements around you and part of your body is glowing and in the zone. In the zone. There's my kayaker next to me. And I've had the benefit of having one of the best watermen that I know is named Sean Lipman. And for those of you that are considering a Catalina channel swim, it's really important to have a great kayaker and Sean is not for hire by the way.

But no, Sean, it's funny because I gave Sean the gift of swimming a long, long time ago. He was one of my students. As as you mentioned earlier, I have a team called rocket fish and Sean was one of my students now he's a commercial real estate guy. And he's also one of California's like best spear fishermen. So it's basically Sean next to me on my right side and he's got a foot pedal kayak and he's navigating us with using the iPhone and a compass. He's got two iPhones working and he's listening to music on his earbuds. He's keeping us on a straight line. The other boats in the background, the chase boat.

I've got glow sticks or lights on my goggles. I'm just in that 14 foot box next to the kayak, next to my old friend and navigator, very capable navigator draws perfectly straight lines. Complete trust between us, complete trust with the boat behind. I mean, those are very special days. Those are the days the game day you mentioned. Those are when it's kind of like me at the debutant ball. You know, like this is me on game day. Like in the zone, it's really special. And there's a lot of people that give up a lot of time in order to make this happen for me. And I'm super grateful. Darren Rosenberg accomplished sailor in his own right.

He and his father own a 1975 Santa Cruz 30 foot sailboat. And it's just like the greatest hits of the people that are involved. There's an observer. There's two observers on the boat hired by the Catalina Channel Swim Federation. One of them happens to be a good friend of mine, Chris Gere. Like if any of you listeners look up any of those names, like Dan Simonelli is one of the most accomplished observers in the Catalina Channel Swim. He's done the swim a bunch of times. I couldn't ask for a better team. And these guys, I mean, yeah, there's there's some money that changes hands, but it's definitely not about the money for those guys.

It's just mostly about just those guys coming out helping me and like I'm so grateful to have those guys involved. Right. Yeah. And they're in a sailboat. So it's just quiet out there. Exactly. Exactly. And there's a lot of people that do the Channel Swim without the benefit of a sailboat. Like they hire a fishing boat and it's diesel and there's a captain on board, knee smoking cigarettes and the diesel engine's gone. You know, and they're like swimming and the boats gigantic and the swimmers really small. It's just that whole big mess. But I have no part of any of that. Chris Gier and I made a decision a long time ago.

We're not doing any swims that aren't involving a sailboat. It's got to be a private boat. I'm a little spoiled that way, I guess, but it's like, you know, the private boat, the sailboat, the quiet, the peace. I mean, when the sun comes up and you've already been swimming for six hours and you're on track and you've got two more hours to go, it's like, that's the best feeling in the world. Yeah. Because I have done a lot of eight hour times, like, I guess three or four of my swims have been all in that eight hour range. Then my record was 7.55. So really four out of my seven swims were right in that eight hour range.

And it's like, it's awesome. What's it like when you get out, you just finished a swim of that magnitude. I mean, I haven't ever swam for two hours straight, let alone eight to ten. What's your body feel like at that moment? What's your mind feel like? And when I'm picturing myself just like collapsing, you're probably cracking jokes. Right. I'm just curious. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that it's like, it's different every time when I was struggling to find my feeds. Again, the feeds are a big deal because if you have something that settles well with your stomach, if you're taking in the right ratio of calories and mixed with water, like if you're hydrated and you're feeling good, then that's one thing.

But on the other hand, if like you're out there throwing up and the feeds are not agreeing with you and like combination of seawater in your guts, combination of food or feeds that aren't working for you, it can be, you know, you can feel quite sick. Like I've thrown up almost every time I've done this swim. Truth be told, usually when I finish those eight hour swims, I'm like rushing up on the rocks. I climb out. I feel fricking great. I've got a fist in the air. Like I'm fired up, you know, and especially like that first one, I remember that huge sense of relief to get that under my belt. I missed the male record by two minutes.

No big deal. That would have been bonus if I got it, but maybe I wouldn't have kept going. I probably would have. I just like it that much. And after I got the record, 755 on my seventh swim, I just too fiss in the air, hooting and hollering just fired up, you know. I'm picturing like the rocky Balboa theme music playing as you exit the water. I can't deny that it's dramatic. I mean, but here's the thing. Like the 10 hours and 56 minutes swim, it was also dramatic, not on the exit as much as like it was one of those trials of the spirit because on the 10 hour and 56 minutes when I'm like, I was throwing up a lot.

The feeds were not agreeing with me. The current was going against me. There were whales jumping in the background. The people on the boat were just fired up. There was the shark trailing me for a minute, you know, like you just, it was so much going on in that swim. And when I hit the beach, I was absolutely exhausted and I really was quite out of it on that experience. And it took me, it took me a minute to recover from that one, you know, like I was tired for a couple of days. But within three days, I was stoked when you overcome yourself, when you submit and you go through that challenge that takes you to almost like a trampoline where you're going down, down, down, and then you finish and then you go up, up, up, like you overcome all that kind of trouble, all that challenge.

And then you bounce out of it and you feel really strong in spirit, you know, so that's a thing. Yeah. When there's a shark trailing you in the ocean, I mean, is it the kayakers like letting you know what's going on or people try to keep an eye on it? How worried are you when you discover that? It's happened a couple times. It's happened in training swims. I look at it like they're just curious really. They're not out there to eat you. I don't look like a seal. I don't smell like a seal. I don't breathe like a seal. I don't have a wetsuit on. So I'm not the same color as a seal. Sharks just generally, I think like a lot of animals, they're curious.

And I'm not really tripping on the shark thing. There's been one where it was kind of like curious, but coming from the front side, like kind of coming in a diagonal towards me. And this was, this was a juvenile shark, you know, you can tell they're juveniles because the fin's a little smaller. I had the benefit of a very experienced paddler that was on the main boat, Tom Gallagher, who's a chiropractor in Long Beach, who's a very accomplished paddler. Actually he saw this shark being a little curious and Tom got right in the water and sort of paddled his paddleboard between me and the shark and cut the shark off as he was coming towards me.

Sometimes they tell me about things. Sometimes they don't. They usually don't tell me because no point in disturbing the swimmer. I'm just trying to wrap my head around it. It's many hours of swimming in the dark of night. And you've got sharks and whales and all kinds of stuff coming at you. Are you in your puking mid-stroke on the time it all went wrong? That's a lot going on. Hey, you know, I mean, I think a lot of distance athletes have experienced similar things. There's things that come up and it's really, it's not the problem. It's how you deal with it. It's just stay calm. Keep going. Keep training.

Go back to your experience. There's things that you can really prep up for such as you get your feeds nailed such as lubrication, I mean, a lot of times you know, in training swims you're going to get, you're going to get chafe, right? Well, get some coconut oil on yourself. Through your training swims, you die in the dojo, you know, if you go out and you train and you train appropriately, then you pretty much squared yourself away. And like I say, there's a part of it that's total self-indulgence. There's a part of it that's suffering. There's a part of it that's staying in a natural element for a long time.

So you come ashore and you're a little spaced out because one, you're really tired too. You've just, you're a little cold. And sometimes when you're a little cold, you can get kind of spacey. Three, you've just been in a place of quiet, meditative swimming for that long. Things faded away and you went inside, you know, ceasing of other sensation. You know, yeah, you're just in the moment. Yeah, you're in that moment. You know, so it's like really otherworldly, but you feel different. You see the ocean in a different way. You connect to nature in a different way. I'm doing a big dad phase right now.

My child, my one and only child, his name is Fox. We're doing a lot of mom, dad, Fox time. And I love that. Don't get me wrong. But I'm not pursuing the channel swimming as much right this minute. And that's okay. Because I made my mark. I swim in the ocean like twice a week, but it's like, this is time to really buckle down and be a dad and be a kind of, I'm doing my work. I'm doing my dad stuff. He's got five years until he gets a car. Right. Right. And then after they get a car, well, he's going to be going places with his friends. He's going to be swimming and surfing and he's going to be living that elder teenage life, getting ready for college.

He's going to be branching out. You know, and so I've got like five years where I can really connect and really mentor my son and really be a good dad and make those impressions, those life lessons, the all that while he's still driving in my car and going to the beach with me and going to the pool with me and under my direct supervision and guidance, you know, so so that's five good years. I'm not going to spend them necessarily right now, like face down in the black velvet. Does that make sense? Oh, it does. It so does. I spend a lot of time right now, right? Coaching soccer. And it means a lot to me because I get to spend that time with one or both of my children.

And just like you said, there is a point. There is a last time for all of this stuff. And there is a point in their lives where they really start to become their truly in their own independent person. They're off on their own most of the time. And it comes a lot sooner. The most of us think it will. I'm with you 100% right. Be in the moment with them while you have this time with them because the time to connect with your kid is when they're a kid. And there's a whole different relationship when they're an adult and you're an adult. And that's all wonderful too. But you can't ever get these years back.

You cannot. When they're really being formed as a person. And I think it's one of the biggest joys of being a parent is when you can really find the time and energy to be involved with your son, your daughter. I mean, we know what five years looks like. We know we we've done a few five years stints in our life, right? Like different things. And it's precious, man. You know, like not to be taken lightly. I think moms get that a little younger on and they get it as they get older. But dads kind of the dad time of like big dad connection happens just, you know, a little later, like let's say age eight, nine onward to a certain age down the track, you know, and then even there's other mentors that come into your kid's life, right?

Like there's teachers, there's other coaches, there's older adults, there's uncles or whatever, you know, that come in and teach them through mentorship and just moments. Even it could just be as simple as a teacher in school, giving your kid a one phrase, one phrase that they repeat all school year long. I like to watch others and learn from others. I tried and surround myself with great people. I mentioned Steve Munatone as his name a while ago, just a flash on Steve again. He runs a for those of you that are interested in open water swimming. Openwaterpedia.com, Nick, I don't know if you've used that.

Not frequently. Well, no, but I did end up on it today. Backgrounding. Yeah. So I figured you might have because Steve's done a marvelous job. Steve, Steve Munatone is a resource in many ways. And he's also a personal friend of mine. Um, but what I want to mention is that Steve has four kids. Uh, his youngest two kids are twins. Now they are attending UCSD in water polo. The reason I bring them up is because when those two, when the twin girls were graduating, uh, high school, right there at the graduation time, right before that, he started to really dive back into open water swimming. And as a mentor to me, I was watching him and I was like, huh, Steve's going deep again, Steve, Steve's going big.

And he started doing like many, many hours in the pool, many hours in the ocean. And I was like, Steve, what's going on here? You know, he goes, well, you know, the kids are graduating. He's a, he doesn't speak a lot. So I'm kind of paraphrasing, but the message was like the kids are graduating and I am becoming an empty nester. And so therefore I can spend more time doing my passion and I can spend more time doing my sport. I've done my job. Yeah. The, the, the work is in. Right. And now they're going off to college. I was like, I note taken like there will be a time when I can dig back in and and do my thing, you know, and I'm looking forward to that.

I'm, I'm actually digging this little mini break. I've dedicated like better part of 12 plus years, right? My, my son Fox is 11. My first swim was when he was in the womb, you know? Yeah. So like here, he's 11. This is my first year not attempting a swim in a while. There's times to go big. There's times to go big with your family. There was something else you mentioned, this idea of you can't have too many good adults in your kids life in addition to being an involved parent. I'm aware that's a coach, a teacher, somebody that helps you score higher on the SAT or helps you swim faster in a pool, whatever that might be.

Right. Last year, my son, he had this third grade teacher, Miss McClellan and Maga Elementary, a little shout out to her. Yeah. And the entire year was a magical educational experience. But on the very first day, she has this big poster on the wall about the word oodomonia, which is this Greek phrase. It's this big concept in this one word, especially for third graders, but it's about hard work and talent and passion all coming together to experience this feeling of oodomonia where everything feels right. And it's all clicking. I thought it was a concept you would like. I really pushed my buttons.

It's right in line with the flow research. He still uses that phrase to this day. He'll say, I feel like soccer gives me a lot of oodomonia in my life. And then it's so incredible to see him connect those dots and to have this other wonderful adult that brought that idea in there and then just be present for when those moments are happening for him. And I go home from this recording thinking oodomonia, you know, like, right? So like for your listeners to just know, like, like, uh, ud, what are we looking at here? What's the word looking like? Let's see. How do we spell that? Ooh, we may need to Google that spelling.

I know it starts with an Eud. Oh, Eud. Nice. I'm sure everybody is just dying to know how to spell that word. In case you want to look it up. Let's do it. It is Eudai. M-O-N-I-A. The Greek word literally translating to the state or condition of good spirit. Nice. Yeah. Send that to me. Would you? I will. Yeah. Yeah. Read the full Wikipedia on it. Just for just for me and your listeners, Eudai. Yep. Eudai. I am. Oh, N-I-A. Nice. Oodomonia. Oodomonia. You know, we all suffered through the pandemic in some way or some of us didn't suffer as much. I, there was things about the pandemic that were just kind of nice.

A change of pace. You saw things like grit, perseverance, overcoming challenges, and all those things were brought to the forefront. You maybe even more so than in our day to day. And then Oodomonia, like is now there. Maybe that third grade teacher brought that because she wanted to help the kids recover or get their best. One term that I really like is a coach and as an athlete, and you mentioned flow in the research with flow. It's hard to pronounce that guy's last name, the author of Flow. Chex sent me high. Yeah. Yeah. That. We go, there you go. The Chex sent me high. Right. So self efficacy comes up a lot with flow, right?

I wanted to write my master's thesis on flow. As it was, I flow became just a piece of my master's thesis. And listener, if I could just interject for a moment, Mr. Hank Wise has a master's degree in leisure studies, which I think is the coolest degree. And yes, did research on flow while he was writing this master's thesis. And it was one of my favorite parts of getting the master's degree is just diving down into the literature of what's the best way to have leisure. If you're having a flow experience, generally you're involved in a topic that really interests you. You are challenged by that topic to the tune of 85% is already pre-knowledge or pre-experience, but then there's that 15% that is pushing you beyond your previous experience.

So like you're in your zone and you are being pushed beyond your zone by that extra 15%. You're using all your attention, your focus at the end of all that. What do you end up with is self-efficacy. And that's a combination of competence, check, confidence, check. There might be some little achievement that comes out of you. You're not doing it for the achievement. You're doing it for the activity itself. But if it all comes together, you can have a flow experience, you know. So I worked for Mike Chucksant, me, high for six years at the quality of life research center where I was a research associate for him.

And one of the things I kept a hold of, it was a little nugget from him, just working with him day to day because I was such a fan of his books and his work. And then a little tip for all those young people out there, I just sent him an email and he said, Hey, man, I'm about to graduate college. I don't know what I want to do with myself. Right. I'd like to learn more about what you do. And he was at the University of Chicago at the time and I was going to go out there. I said, I'll just intern for you for free. Wow. I just want to be around and soak some stuff from you. We started a little email conversation that went on for maybe six months.

He shot an email back one day that just said, Hey, random turn of events. I know you're planning to come out here. I just decided to open this research center in Claremont, California. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. And I said, I don't know how this didn't come up before, but that's where I'm at right now. I'm at Pitzer College, one of the Claremont colleges. It really felt that it was just meant to be at that point. We were discussing one day, we were talking about hiring and I would pick his brain on any, any chance I got, right? By the way, amazing story right there. Like I had no idea that you were down with him.

And I mean, I think maybe you and I touched on it like briefly, but wow, what a neat bunch of events that came together for you. And that's why I ended up doing an MBA was because the business school was a huge contributor to the research that was going on there. And so he said, Hey, once I interned for free at the beginning, which is another little pro tip, great way to just get in somewhere and show them what you can contribute. Right. A lot easier for somebody to take you on for free, right? Especially when you don't have experience. Then he said, Hey, I want to hire you now. Right. If you go to graduate school here and do an MBA, I can pay you more and the MBA will be mostly free and then you can shoot for some other scholarships.

I mean, he had it all worked out. He said, if you can hit this score on the GMAT, your educational basically be for free and you can continue to work here. I was like, Hey, let's do this. Yeah. And working there while in graduate school, I felt like my real education was every day at work in the research center. And it was interesting because I was taking all these business classes, but I was going through that MBA really slowly because I was working full time. And the day to day was much more like a PhD in education and social psychology, which was the stuff I was just as excited about. So back to the hiring, I said, what do you look for when you're hiring somebody?

And he said, it's hard to figure it out in an interview. He almost can't. He said, but what I really want to know about somebody is what do they do with their free time? And he said, it's fine if somebody likes to just get high or drunk and watch reality TV, no judgments. That's their thing. But if you tell me that you do these long ocean swims, because you're just passionate about it, or you like to read on a certain subject, or whatever that might be, but have some passion on the side that you just devote time and energy into because you love it. And it takes you to a place of flow or oudomonia.

He said, that's the type of person I'm looking for. I find those people the most interesting to just have around. And whatever it is, they are passionate and excited about it tends to just bring energy and ideas to whatever he was working on at that time. And I, that was, that was a nugget that really stuck with me. I love it. I love that we're sharing this moment because flow has been a big topic for me. There's a lot out there on flow these days, like athletes are trying to find flow. What's a flow hack? How can I get to flow quickly? It comes and goes. And if you can set up the right circumstances to get you to flow as in right equipment, right situation, right challenge.

It can't be too hard. It can't be too easy. Right compadres or no compadres. Who are you with? You're like, you know, are they at your level? Are they below your level? Are you by yourself? And to get this deeper knowledge on you, Nick, that you had your time with, with me, with us, hold on. Check, check me getting high. What was it again? Check sent me high. Check sent me high. When you were telling some of your stories, trials and tribulations in the ocean, I had a flashback to recently telling some of these 10 year old boys to play on a club soccer team for me about an experience I had in the game.

I think I was 14 years old at the time. We showed up to a game, short handed. Then we have somebody thrown out of the game because it starts to get really rough. There's a rough tackle. This player in our team gets thrown out. We're down to seven players. If we lose another player, we will have to forfeit. We go ahead one zero. I take a really rough challenge from behind, fall awkwardly and break one of the bones in my forearm. Super painful, right? And I go over to the coach and I said, I'm pretty sure my arms broken. I could move my fingers, but every time I moved a finger, my hand at all, like everything hurt along my arm.

Right. He said, Hey, if you need to come off, it's okay. Yeah. I said, but then the game's over and he said, yeah, but we got to worry about your safety first. Right. And I looked at him and I said, it's not broken. I'm fine. And he didn't need to tell me. It had already been instilled in me through that team. You die in the dojo. Yeah. Right. You prepare for these moments and you talked about how to get into a flow state. It's all about that training and loving the training. And then these moments come, these challenges come. Right. And I felt like it was such a pivotal moment for me. I still share the story with these kids today where it was like I went back out on that field.

I held my left arm with my right arm for the remainder of the game. Really difficult to run like that. Wow. But stayed on the field and we held on and we won this game. It was a formative, important moment. And man, is that light these kids up when you tell them a story like that and then they see it for themselves. What's possible and they're able to rise to another level when they meet challenges. I love seeing that in young kids when they aspire to do better and can go places they didn't think they could go. And so I wanted to ask you stories you share, tales you tell to your kids that are under your purview and your swimming coaching that helped them do the same thing.

Our team is largely a development team. We structure it around two main goals, character development and swim development, character development because we are making great people first and we're making great swimmers also. If that's our, if those are guiding lights, then certain swimmers are going to swim faster than others. And that's great. But everyone can be a great person. I want them to fall in love with the sport. So, so like falling in love with the sport is stuff like inclusivity, grit, overcoming challenges. It's also the way that they act, teamwork and understanding that people are coming from different backgrounds and different experiences and so on.

So it's really a positive environment. I'm working primarily with ages like five through 12. The experience that you had was at age 14. I'm really trying to have them sniff at what it's like to be on a team that's really supportive. Feel what it's like to be a part of it. Like a goal oriented character first environment in that mix. We do give them sets that challenge them that push them. But does it push them like middle of the night? Open water swimming with sharks chasing you. Not quite all the way there, you know, right? My own son is 11, right? So he's coming into those years right now and he's got a cohort with him.

And they're going to be going through that prism of change together. They're going to be going through the grit cycle, right, taking on bigger and bigger challenges. And when I say that, I it's both in the pool, in the ocean with surfing, with waves, swim fins on their feet. And here comes the outside set, you know, and I want to take them there and I want to do it safely and in the right moment in the right time with the sun shining. And then I also want to take it to them when the sun's not shining. And it's the waters a little colder and everything at the right time, right place, right energy, you and I are sitting right now with the ocean about a quarter mile away.

So that arena of the ocean is always open for business. It reminds me of Wim Hof with the cold plunging. Sure. And he loves to say the cold is the teacher. It is. And what I'm hearing from you right now is the ocean is the teacher. Whereas if you go spend time out there, things are going to happen. You will end up in situations that will push you and stretch you. Yeah. You got that right. Can we take a little break? Yes. OK, perfect. Thank you. This episode is brought to you by Test Prep Guru's Test Prep Guru's help students raise their ACT and SAT scores so they can achieve their goals for college and beyond.

ACT and SAT scores are optional at many colleges. However, submitting a strong score can often double a student's chances of admission. ACT and SAT scores are strongly recommended or required for many college scholarships, including $30,000 per year at USC, $25,000 per year at Notre Dame or Texas Christian universities, $57,000 scholarship among many others. Visit www prepgurus.com to take a free ACT or SAT exam and learn more about how your son or daughter can boost their chances of admission to selective colleges by raising his or her standardized test scores. And now back to the show. Check sent me high.

The author of Flow. I can't believe what a benefit to your life being spending the better part of what used to be say six years. Yep. Mean, come on. That's a master class with a master operator. Well, lean lean on in. It's amazing, Nick. It's amazing that you had that opportunity to spend with him. It enriched my life in so many ways that it's hard to quantify it. To be able to tell the difference between good scientific work and biased or fake science might not stand for anything less than the gold standard. He taught me three things in this area. One, how to conduct legitimate research. Two, how to read the math behind research papers to determine who is doing solid science and who isn't.

Three, just because someone has PhD after their name does not mean that you can automatically trust their work. You have to analyze the research for yourself. This is a critical skill in today's world where everyone is constantly faced with a barrage of information. It often feels like we're drinking out of a fire hose. To make matters worse, all of us are inundated on social media with good looking charismatic people who claim that their opinions are backed up with real science. The problem is that most of those opinions are just that. Opinions. I'll give you an example. Cold plunging. On the one hand, it seems crazy to jump into freezing 45 degree water.

But as it turns out, there is real science back in the practice for sure. It reduces inflammation improves recovery, increases stress resilience. And surprisingly, improves sexual satisfaction. Now, if a stranger came out to me and told me that I'd be extremely skeptical to say the least. But I've read the studies and the benefits are real. I will always be grateful to Mike Chicks sent me high for teaching me the skills to tell the difference. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Hey, I wanted to ask you in terms of your philosophy about coaching and swimming. I know you have a system. I would love to hear more about that.

One of the things that I developed for myself when I was growing up, and I'm not sure where it really came from, but my coach back in the day, my swim coach back in the day, and I were all about setting goals. And I was, I guess, a cerebral approach would be the best way to describe it. The mind is sort of the navigator of the body. What I saw was, well, when I'm on track in school. And I'm on track with my sport. And I'm getting enough rest. Like I'm taking care of myself and I'm good with my friends and my family. And I'm having a lot of positive self talk. These things all matter, right? And if one of them isn't quite there, then sometimes I feel unbalanced.

And so like I wanted to perform, you know, like you gave my bio a while ago. And I mean, one of my bio pieces was this like achievement, CIF achievements, junior national achievements. When I was a when I was a young man, I was like right into the competitive swimming thing and I took it all the way to Olympic trials. Wasn't anywhere close to making it to the Olympics, although that was a goal of mine. I swam for Stanford, you know, like I like I was a decent swimmer. How did I get there? I got there through trying to balance my life and get myself so balanced in my different categories that I was able to achieve as an athlete.

And I was also able to achieve as a student. The goals that I started to set as a young man were like, OK, as a student, as a sports person. So I came up with this little format school, sports, spirit, social, and self, which I started to call the five S's, you know, and the five S's became a big part of who I was as an athlete. And it's also become kind of a big part of my coaching today. When I when I talked to my my youth about it, I'm like, you guys were only referring to things in positive ways. And that's spirit, right? So you've got to have a positive spirit. I've actually been refining it as I go because I used to think of things in terms of achievement, like I used to put achievement first.

And that is a that's a mistake. I'll be honest with you. That is a mistake. And any time you put the sort of the results ahead of the effort, you're becoming Machiavellian in your approach. You cannot put as we as teachers, you know, and I'm curious to hear your stance on this is in your career as a obviously you want to raise people's test scores, right? Sure. That's what yeah, that's what test prep gurus is all about. So listeners, if you're a first time listener, just know that Nick runs a business called test prep gurus. And and that's what he does is his day job as a swim coach. I want to see kids swim fast, but not at the expense of other things.

Effort matters. Process matters. All right. It's like now a lot of my a lot of what I talk about to my athletes and my youth, it has to deal a lot more with effort. So just to break down the five S's one more time, school, sports, spirit, social self, I think of it as like spokes on a wheel. If you look at a wheel, right, it has those spokes that come out and they need those spokes need to be really strong. And and if one of those spokes is broken or not quite right, that wheel's going to have a liability that wheel is going to break under pressure, you know, and I find that when my for myself, for my athletes, just people, we all need to have all five of those things happening simultaneously.

And yeah, we can become unbalanced a little bit temporarily, maybe going big in sports, going big in academics. But over time, if we don't have that balance of like the social life and in our social system or social support network, if our spirit is waning, if we're becoming less positive, if we're becoming a little bit like, the things are getting kind of grindy on me here, you know, like, and you're and you're letting that affect you. Something's going to break, you know, if you're not getting enough sleep and I put that sleep in the in the self category, I'm a big proponent of sleep. What's ironic about that is that as as an adult athlete, and even as a high school athlete, and junior high also, I mean, I've been swimming morning workouts for as long as I can remember, it's like sleep becomes a commodity because the workouts are coming early, you know, like 430 is my wake up time in order to get to the pool and in the water by 530.

Does that make sense? Yeah. What's our effort level in those five S is school, sports, spirit, social and self. And I know adult listeners might be kind of like, school, what are what is he talking about here? I'm done with school. Well, you're never done learning, right? What are we as adults doing to further our education? Is it language? Is it like other cultures? Is it philosophy? Recently, I've been introduced to stoicism like in the last year, stoicism has become a big topic for me. Ryan Holiday, good writer. There's podcasts out there, Bill Irvine, Google stoicism, and you'll find a lot of information while I'm absorbing that information, taking that in.

That's part of my continuing education as an adult to like further myself. That's my quote unquote school category. It could also double under spirit category, a balanced life in the five S's. It just keeps paying dividends. You and I've talked a little bit about the five S's. I like it as a system because it's almost like a Venn diagram where they bleed into each other. Right. Like you said, the school and spirit bleed into each other a little bit. And that makes sense to me because the core tenant that you're talking about is balanced between those five things. And when you neglect one, the other ones actually suffer as well, which also ties into you saying initially you placed achievement at the top of the list and everything kind of came under that.

Right. I find it interesting that now you've got your own school teaching kids how to compete and become human beings. And what you've prioritized in that school is the human aspect and becoming a good person, not just a faster swimmer. I connect with that a lot because you asked my thoughts on that with test prep gurus where it's an industry that is very cutthroat. Absolutely. There's a score every 10 points on the SAT may matter. It has a long and storied history of people teaching in ways that I would consider to have negative long term results in order to achieve a short term result. And when the company first began, I wanted to come at it from the exact opposite approach where it was, OK, we've got this necessary evil in life, which is this standardized test that people have to take in order to get into college.

And now yes, we're in this test optional environment, but it's still very much necessary if you want to go compete at the very selective colleges. Or sure. So it really hasn't changed that much. And it didn't sit right with me that you'd engage in all this stuff for short term game that probably had a long term hindrance and was like, could we flip that around? I didn't believe in the quality of the test. I don't think it's any sort of accurate portrayal of intelligence or capacity in the future, but there could be value in the experience of preparing for it, like a trial by fire, where we're going to set goals and we're going to work hard at something and try to achieve that goal to go do things in life that you want to do, to get into a school that's going to help you become the person you want to become to propel your life forward, because in any pursuit in life, whatever that might be, there are aspects of it that aren't fun.

We talked earlier about wanting to enjoy the training, find joy in the struggle. Well, this is similar in that there are parts of it that are really not fun at all. But if you can find meaning in that and tie it to bigger goals in your life, you get to use those lessons again and again and again for the rest of your days, because if whether you want to go design video games, become a Catalina channel, swimmer, start a business, write a book, whatever it might be, most of it is hard work. And finding a way to enjoy that is really valuable to take it back to Mike Chek sent me high one more time. He had this incredible project on creativity.

But what he did were these exhaustive interviews with all these people that had achieved huge in their fields. And he was defining creativity very broadly, whether they were scientists or artists or athletes, because he said, you know, there's a real creative aspect in figuring out what the double helix was that helped us understand DNA. He wanted to interview those people. How'd you have those creative insights in these fields that are not considered quote unquote creative? And I had the pleasure of going through those interviews and pulling clips out and helping him to use them in his classes.

And I remember this sculptor. She was a I'm blanking on her name, but she was a world class sculptor. And people said, wow, it must be really great to just get to make money doing that, doing what you love and follow your passion. And and she said, yeah, she said, I mean, there's there's the tiny little percent of it that is that those moments of inspiration and oh, they feel great. And when something's done, it feels great. You see, but the other 98% of what I do, it's mostly like being a carpenter. Right. I am in there just grinding away on a project most days. And it's actually hard work. And she said that the trick was learning to love that part of it and not just the sexy insight moments showing up daily, showing up, you know, and I mean, I can imagine a sculptor.

My wife is as an artist too. And she's done her share of sculpting. I mean, it's showing up. It's putting the time in. And if you can enjoy that process, that's where the beauty happens. Why? Because you show up day after day and you get something done. And that's how you build anything, right? Absolutely. Yeah. One story that comes to mind along this placing achievement above other things. And then that essentially collapsing. Right. The wheel of the five S's. I can remember a one of our teachers coming to me and said, Hey, such and such. This kid, a very high performing student in school on these exams, nearing a perfect score.

We're all excited. And the teacher says, Hey, I discovered that this kid left behind a pill bottle and it's at a roll. And she said, I know he's not prescribed to this. Right. He's taking it as a performing, enhancing drug. Right. And we were in a challenging position there. If we had just been a hundred percent achievement oriented, we would have made the wrong decision and just said, well, great pills are helping. Clearly it's working. Let's keep rolling with this and just pretend we never saw them. Right. We had a chat with the kid, actually came in and said, Hey, let's just us sit down with the kid first and ask him questions about it.

And he did say that he was taking the pills to help him stay up, stay up at night and study to focus for hours and hours on end. And it was interesting that a simple question, which is why do you feel like you have to do that? And the kid broke down right there in front of us. He starts tearing up, tells us about the immense pressure he's under from his parents and feels like he's about to break. I think he said something along the lines. It feels like he's just going to fly apart all the time. And this helps him to just stay on track and do what he needs to do to be a good kid. It was pretty heartbreaking conversation.

And I thought, man, this is going to be tough with these parents because he's saying all the pressure is coming from these parents. They might not receive this well. But I asked the kid, I said, Hey, can we have a conversation with your parents next? Because I think in your long-term best interest, we need to address this issue. Parents come in in a subsequent meeting. We all sit down. We talk about it. The parents could not have handled it any better than they did. They were emotionally distraught over it. They didn't realize he felt that they were putting this pressure on him. And it actually wasn't all coming from the parents.

They weren't really the bad guys. They wanted the best for him. It just the communication wasn't quite there. It hadn't quite come across, right? They were super successful people themselves. Right. Didn't have quite enough time in the day to adequately communicate with him and express what they really wanted for him. It was just this beautiful moment for their family. What a healing for that family. I mean, you guys played a major role in taking it down a notch. I mean, you you you you you provided a bridge of communication, which is huge. Right. Right. Yeah. And the kid ends up stop he stops using the pills.

Right. He still does incredibly well on the exam, because of course he already had that in him. It wasn't the magic pills and stops doing that harm to himself. Oh, sure. And they were able to just kind of take it down a notch with the schooling, which is where a lot of the pressure was actually coming from. And to your point on the big philosophical system, it's really important to outline that stuff, right, to figure it out. Because then when you have the tough decisions, you've got a guiding light to push you in the right direction for sure and help you make good decisions that five S's I think that's a really wonderful frame.

And I'm just a friend of mine talked to me about, I like your five S's thing, but I think there's too much of an emphasis on achievement. He's like, listen, not everybody's going to be a 4.0. Right. You know, so in the old days, I mean, I went to Stanford, right? Like I was in a 4.0, but I was 3.8 and I was going for A's and I got my A's and I did it, you know, but it's like not everybody's going to be that 4.0 student. Not everybody's going to be the fastest kid in the pool, you know, not everybody's going to have a perfect social like parent, like two parents thing, you know, but like everybody can have effort in those same regards.

Like everybody can, I'm going to study and I'm going to do my homework and I'm going to like form study groups and I'm going to be the best student that I can be. And that's effort, you know, I'm going to pay it like swimming. I'm going to pay attention to my coach and I'm going to like watch other swimmers. I'm going to watch YouTube videos. I'm going to do my stroke drills appropriately. I'm going to learn how to bilateral breathe and do all the stroke work that I can do. I'm going to do all the speed work I'm going to put in the gritty effort and just see where that takes me. And once you come at it from this place of effort, then the whole results thing will happen.

So here's, here's another one I love that's on the same note. So Michael Jordan, great, arguably the greatest basketball player of all time. They're like, you'll get no argument for me. The last dance movie and so on, you know, the interviewers like Michael Jordan, you know, hey, so the shot clock is coming down. You're the guy with the ball. Like what kind of pressure do you put on yourself to make that last hoop? You know, how do you take all that pressure on your shoulders and still perform? He goes, you know, I don't feel any pressure in that moment. He's like, I just make sure my feet are under me.

My knees are bent. I make sure I've got the my hips over my feet and my shoulders are square and my arm is up and my elbows bent and I'm in my, I'm in my stance and I've got my, the ball right where I want it. I'm standing on the court in, in a place where I feel comfortable. He's like, I do all the little things right. So that when I finally released the ball that, that I am in my zone, I have rehearsed this move so many times that if that ball doesn't go in, that's kind of okay because I, I put everything together in such a way that I'm giving it my best effort. Yeah. You know, right. And so it's like, if the ball goes in, like that's ideal.

If it doesn't, I look back on that moment and I, and I gave it everything I have because I put a hundred percent focus into it and I line myself up for success as best I could because he feels good about the process he put in rather than just determining successful or not based on the result. It's like, no, this, the process was successful. If I couldn't have improved on that, then whatever happens in terms of result is what happens. Right. But you've already succeeded before you're there in that moment. Exactly. And, and so, you know, as a swim coach, like what I want to avoid is this binary equation of I hit a time standard, I didn't hit the time standard success failure.

That's, that's so not it for me. You know, it ain't all about all the wins. It's about the pool, the beach and my friends, you know, it's about aquatics as a lifestyle. It's about the things that make me smile like swimming, surfing, hang with my team. You know, we're the rocket fish with tight routines, love and respect as we go. We got a low-house spirit and we let it flow. But if you want to race and don't hesitate, step up to the blocks and watch us devastate. We smile and we style and we swim free styling. You know, that's the kind of the way that I like to flow with my kids. I just try and put them on the right track and keep it all in balance and just let it let the chips fall where they may, you know?

I love that, whether it's test prep or coaching when the focus becomes the process, you're also able to enjoy the process, right? If it's all focused on the achievement or the results or that binary thing, I've hit a time, not a time. Well, then it's all just pressure-filled training and you don't know if you can't enjoy it or not because it's all dependent on that result. And when you flip that to focusing on the process, you can enjoy all of that. And the success is happening in each moment that builds to that last thing. When it comes to a business, athletic environment, whatever it might be, climbing a tall mountain, free soloing the face of El Capitan in Yosemite.

Right. Yeah. Right. You put in the time. You train yourself in the right way. Right. It's something that you receive some joy from so it feels like play. The success is really just a matter of time. At that point, the results, it's a matter of time. They're going to come one way or another. Exactly. And it's actually a little easier to achieve them when the pressure is taken off. Oh, yeah. That binary win or lose equation. So I'm I'm interested in my son being able to surf, right? Like I'm a Southern California surfer. I want my son to enjoy everything that I've enjoyed along the way in terms of riding waves.

How do you make that happen? You know, so it's like it's it's a dance. I want to tell you it's a dance and like I want my son to be a fast swimmer. I want him to have the same opportunities that I had. Right. So there's the goal, but we're not coming at it from that final thing. Oh, look, my son surfing, you know, surfing the wedge or, you know, my son's like paddling out a pipeline. Right. Like that's not going to happen. So so how do I approach it? Well, and and again, this has come from a long time of asking the same question. My son's 11 years old. I'm working hard to answer this question day by day, week by week.

So here goes, keeping my son happy while swimming. Well, okay. All right. Start there. All right. How do you do that? Well, free time, free time at the beach, open up the doors of the van and pull out any piece of beach equipment that you want, including a frisbee, including a shovel, including a boogie board, including a pair of swam fins, including a soft surfboard. My van is the beach house. And then he just enjoys it, but I'll take it a step further here. I am the beach house. All right. So it's like I opened my heart to all these experiences that he can enjoy as a youth. I'm not just like, all right, you better paddle out.

You better catch five waves. No, it's, let's go out and do what's fun for us today. Let's show up at the beach. If it's a glassy calm day, then let's go and enjoy the surf in that capacity. If it's a blustery, like a, you know, victory at sea kind of day, well, then let's hunker down and build a sand castle and drink some hot cocoa and stay covered up. Those are two extremes, right? But then there comes everything in between like during that Mexico time. It's like clear water, warm water, swimming on the reef, looking down at the fish, baby sea turtles, watching whales jump, body surfing, enjoying that, you know, eventually like you mound up enough experiences in and around the water, then surfing becomes just a piece of the package.

It's not like the whole piece. It's just one piece. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, so then then surfing becomes like, all right, it's a natural progression. Like we've done our sand castles. We've done our frisbee. We've done our boogie boarding. We've done our body surfing. We've done our looking at sea turtles. We've done it, you know, and now we're going to paddle out on the surfboard. The surfing isn't better or worse than any other piece of it. It's just a piece of it. And so then naturally the kid ends up surfing, you know, sure being open to that kids particular interests and what they want to do and what makes them happy.

Cause it is also possible, Hey, I love surfing and my kid is not into it. He really wants to a dance or climb mountains, study engineering. Whatever that might be. Right. And another piece of that good parenting, at least for me, is being really open to that and then going, okay, well, I don't know anything about engineering or climbing around. Let's get excited about that. Exactly. Let's teach this process of just getting excited and having fun with something right that can become a passion and then running with it. Cause that's where the oodomonia hides. Right. It's just this acceptance. It's this totally wide open heart of like, do what you love.

I'm here for you. I support you no matter what it is that you love. And I think as a parent, it's just like, if we can provide that platform of like, go out and enjoy life, we'll, we'll get behind you. Like once kids feel that, they're on the launch pad, dude. You know, they're on the launch pad of their own yummy journey. Yes. You know, it's not about the achievement goals. The achievement goals will be there, but it's about kind of setting behaviors in these five S's. Let's just take it with sleep. Right. It's easy. We want to get a certain amount of sleep per night. That's the end goal. Well, how do we provide for that?

Well, that means that after dinner, there's a certain amount of relax in whatever way that comes, whether it's going to the studio, my wife's an artist, like I mentioned, go into the studio, making some art, whether it's watching the Lakers game, you know, like that's one of my big jams, but it's, it's about keeping an eye on the clock so that you go, okay, it's eight o'clock. I'm going to be up at four 30 in the morning. That means my bedtime in order to get eight hours needs to be eight 30. Okay. How dedicated to the eight 30 bedtime am I going to be? Am I going to wave to my family? Hey, hey guys, it's eight 15.

All right. Um, I've got 15 more minutes in a vertical state here before I go at a horizontal state, right? Like, like that. And so it's setting forth the norms in the family or in the network. Here's my behavioral norm. And I'd like you guys to help me achieve that. Let's take social. How do you put norms in there? They're going to help develop that. S. So social, first of all, there's people that build you up. And then there's people that don't build you up. If you surround yourself with turkeys, then, you know, you fly like a turkey, you surround yourself with a red tail Hawks, then you're going to be diving down hard and going for that goal pretty hard.

Right. So it's, it's a lot about who builds you up and who tears you down. Who do you surround yourself with? Um, who's on your support team? Who are you spending time with? As an adult, I find that I'm built up by my fellow athletes. Like I am so fortunate to have these different teams around me. I have my youth team. I have an adult team. We have a beach camp and we have swim lessons. Those are the four offerings that as a part of our nonprofit dedicated to aquatics, my adult swim team, it's called swim long beach. And it's swim long beach. We just have this great culture that builds us up as adult athletes.

And we're really behind each other. I'm as close to my 65 year old friends on the team as I'm close to my 25 year old friends on the team. Like we're just in a constant state of community, of balance, of talking, support through texting, through onsite, through game day, through you name it. But largely it comes at practice talking to each other, cheering for one another in a way. Does that make sense? It does so much of who we are in the world is determined by the information we take in and carefully choosing what kind of information we're going to take in and the people we surround ourselves with because we are social creatures and we are heavily influenced by the people in our sphere.

Right. When you have people that are excited about learning more about challenging themselves, about pushing themselves, well, then suddenly that starts to rub off. And the next thing, you know, that crazy guy down the street who has a cold plunge in his backyard that's 40 degrees, you see that and you go, man, that's really working. Right. OK, I'm going to try that. Yeah. It's been such a bonus in my life since I've discovered that. I mean, man, I hit that cold plunge every morning and wake up alert and ready to tackle the day in a way that otherwise isn't quite there. And that's because I was spending time with somebody who sought that sort of thing out.

Lately, I've put a big emphasis on connecting with old friends. And I think we as busy dads, adults, worker bees, you're so busy and you're so like self occupied with all your passions and your job and your family that sometimes you find yourself a little bit tiny bit isolated. Like, who are my male friends? What do I need to do to get a little more like vested with my male friends? You know, you and I are part of a podcast group where we listen to podcasts and express our feelings and education on those different podcasts. But one group that I haven't put high enough in my in my sphere has been my old male friends group.

So that's like, I'm going to talk about like college guys, post college guys, surf buddies. One of the guys that I'm thinking of is lives in Chicago. You know, another guy that I'm thinking of lives in Portland. You know, so it's like a phone call. It's a zoom. It's like communicating with those guys. I also look really like in person and I've had the benefit of connecting with high school friends and post college friends that I'm so close with that like spending an hour with them feels like we almost never even spent time apart, you know, because we grew up that close. We spent our 12 years together and in our formative youth.

And then that's who we are for life. Like we're close friends for life. So like right around my birthday, I've sort of just gave myself a birthday present of just connecting with four or five or six, like good friends. I've had some lunches out. And not only my male friends, you know, like I had a lunch with a female friend of mine in my local community, a little bit different circles and I don't see her that much. But we sat down. We had a great lunch together. And I found that to just feed my soul, Nick. You know what I'm saying? Like really I told my wife this morning, thanks to connecting with my old friends.

I really feel like my cup is full right now. My heart is so full because I've been loading up on all this old friend connection. You know, so one for the listener who's wondering what the podcast group is is a book club. Right. It's just the instead of books, their podcast, one member hosts each month and they pick out the podcast, everybody listens to it and then we bring our thoughts about it and have a little meeting and discuss the podcast. And it has been an awesome addition to all of our lives. Really cool because most of the members, I did not know well going into it, yourself included. It has been really great way to build new male friendships, which goes by the wayside, the older you get.

If it's not somehow related to the family or to work, it just becomes harder and harder to do that. But in every community, whoever you are, wherever you are, there are interesting people around you and near you and finding a way to connect and interact with them will enrich your life. Speaking of which, I had such a good time last week when we didn't have enough people that host the podcast group, but went out and just got dinner together for guys and absolutely made the night of the bartender in the empty restaurant who was sitting there just sort of bored and bummed. And I thought you especially, I mean, you just lit up her night by just cracking a few jokes, interacting, learning Greek.

We were at a Greek restaurant. She speaks Greek. Yeah. Let's go. You know, you're just bringing good energy to the world. Thank you. Thank you. No, that's just who I am. I take it. I take an interest in people. I probably got that from my mom. And my mom was Gregarius and a people first person. She just she wanted to know more. I know it kind of sounds maybe a little trite or whatever, but everybody's really got something to offer. Yeah. And that woman, I could just tell the depth of her character. I could tell she just she spoke with an accent. I wanted to know more. She was like white haired, a little older.

Yeah. I mean, she has a lot of wisdom. I take a big interest in people and try to draw them out. Like, what's up with you? You know, absolutely. Tell us a little bit more about the last one we haven't touched on spirit. OK. A whole lot. What does that mean to you in this context? You know, it starts with being positive. It starts with like just a baseline of positivity, right? But then, you know, another baseline is observation of self. Like once you can step outside of your moods and step outside of your emotions, then you can observe yourself. And then you can like name it, tame it. You can name.

Oh, I'm feeling I'm feeling this emotion and it can be a great emotion or it can be a some emotion that maybe isn't so great. But like you can name it. And then little by little, you can try to tame it and name it, tame it is a good one for me. We have a little song around our house. It's not the problem. It's how you deal with it. It's not the problem. It's how you deal with it, you know, and it's like, it's basically like we're all going to experience peaks and valleys. And like where we want to end up is a positive place. But we also want to end up in a place of acceptance of self. We want to observe our emotions.

We're all under stress. And sometimes I'll just be repeating to myself because I'm running out of time on something. I'll be like, you got this? You got this? Like here I go. I picture myself as a if I'm on the keyboard. I picture myself as like a liberaci of the keyboard. The words are going to come to me right now. And here I go. I'm on my keyboard. I'm going to send this email. I'm going to be productive. Yeah. What other songs do you like to sing around the house? I really enjoy that. You know, I mean, we have songs on our swim team and I don't know. A little embarrassed. That was our second one.

I just felt like we needed a third to just, I mean, okay, let's see. Like it goes back to swimming, right? Okay. It's like arms above the head. I'm going to ask you to do this, Nick. Come on. Oh, yeah, let's do it. Arms up. Stream line. I lost my mind. I got caught up on the lane line, but it was all fine because I got my best time coming up with this sappy little rum about swimming and swimming real fast because I want to have a blast. So check it. That's a little swim song. I love it. I love it. So good. So good stuff. Yeah. So school sports, spirit, social self, maybe those of you out there that are listening, draw a star.

Okay. Put little hands on your upper two points of the star on the very tip top of the star. Put a head. Okay. Maybe draw a little Pac-Man mouth on it. The feet have a little shoes on them. The bottom two points of the star. So now you've got a star person drawing. Can you picture that, Nick? With the arms wide open, embrace of life kind of feeling the Vitruvian man drawn by Da Vinci off the top. That's your head. And that one there is your spirit school is I see that as a foundation. That's in your foot. I see yourself also as a foundation. That's also in your foot. One foot grounded in an education.

One foot grounded in taking care of yourself. Then as far as sports go, that's like throwing a ball or putting a pair of goggles on. Maybe throwing a frisbee. Thank you. So physical or just getting physical and that's your hand. Right. And then the last one is your other hand and that's social. That's you giving somebody a wave, a high five. So school, sports, spirit, social and self. These are just a few of the wonderful influences your kids will get when they go through the rocket fish program. You're getting a heck of a lot more than just learning how to swim. Heck of a lot more. Well, Nick, it's really been great to be here.

What we're offering here today is just coming from the heart. It's just great that we could drop a pebble into the water and just let the concentric rings of education and positive vibes spread out. Maybe some of your listeners will pass on a couple of our little pearls today and we'll see where this goes, you know? Love it. Yeah. If anyone wants to find you online, where's the best place to find you? I'm an Instagrammer. I was bored as a dolphin. So my Instagram is dolphin underscore boy. So that's on Instagram, that's at dolphin underscore boy. What you'll see there is a whole lot of stuff about cooking.

I'm a plant based, I'm a recovering meat addict. I'll be, I'll admit to that. I was raised by a World War II pilot and a conventional mom. I meet every night, you know, and it tasted good. I'll be honest with you. As I got older and stuff, I started to realize that like, wow, I need to scale this back a lot. So I became more of a plant based eater. On my Instagram, you'll see a lot of plant based type stuff. So if you're wondering, is this even the same guy, why isn't he talking about swimming? It's because I feel like offering people a healthier way to live is my passion project. Anyway, you will have the right guy dolphin underscore boy on Instagram.

Thank you so much for coming. It was a pleasure as always Hank. I'm gonna see you soon, buddy. Yeah, buddy. All right. Got it. Got it. Thanks a lot. Oh, there we go. The next nappers. Right on Nick. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Nick Standlea podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, like and comment. The best way to support this podcast is to visit our sponsors in the description. Have an excellent day.