Chapter 1: How can you transform your life at any age?
Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. The person you're about to meet is living proof that it is never too late to transform your life. In fact, it can happen at any moment.
New York Times bestselling author Rich Roll is here and he is about to take you through the jaw-dropping twists and turns of what it's like to wake up and realize the life you're living needs to change. He's reinvented himself not once, not twice, but three different times. These are the lessons that he learned from overcoming a debilitating alcohol addiction.
He'll tell you the exact steps that he took to go from not being able to walk up a flight of stairs to becoming a world-class endurance athlete in his 40s. And he's also going to give you the secret to believing that there's something better. Rich is also a very close friend of mine, and I have been wanting to introduce you to this man for a long time.
He is here to prove to you that if he can change his life three times, you can change yours. So if you've ever asked yourself, is this all there is? Is this how my life is always going to feel? If you don't like where you are or where you're going, it is never too late to change. And my hope is that listening to this episode will actually be that moment for you to make the change.
Mr. Minister of Budget, what kind of signs do you see in the air at the moment? No signs at all. Instead, I see amazing signs on the streets, on the slopes, wherever and on the ground. What are you talking about? I'm not talking about anything, but about Budgesport's winter season. I mean, what? Whatever, all the signs are coming from there. We're offering the best signs with a 60% discount.
Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. It is always such an honor to be together and spend this time with you. And if you're a new listener or you're here because somebody shared this with you, I want to personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. Today, you're going to learn how to change your life at any age from someone who has done it three times.
Rich Roll is here. He's the host of the award-winning Rich Roll podcast. In his 40s and 50s, he has become a professional ultra-endurance athlete. Men's Health named him one of the fittest men on the planet, and they called him the world's fittest vegan alive.
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Chapter 2: What lessons did Rich Roll learn from his reinventions?
Now, I know that sounds impressive, and Rich is impressive, but he has not always been this way. He has transformed his life and he's going to show you how to do it yourself. So please help me welcome my friend Rich Roll to the Mel Robbins Podcast. Rich Roll in the house. I am so excited you're here.
I'm very excited to be here. This is a long time coming. We've known each other a long time. So it lined up. It's great. I'm here.
Let's do it. Thank you for jumping on a plane. I cannot wait for the person that's with us right now to get to experience the magic that is my friend Rich Roll.
So we're going to cover a lot in our conversation, but I would love if you could start by telling the person who's with us right now what they might experience in their life that could be different if they take everything to heart that you're about to share from your own life story and they apply it to their own life.
If you are struggling... If you are stuck, I can promise you that there is hope. That if you want to change, you can change. Because I believe that every single one of us is far more capable than we allow ourselves to believe. And that right underneath our feet is a vast reservoir of hope. of untapped potential, just yearning to be released.
And our job is to bring it forth, to release it into the world.
One of the reasons why I am so excited to have this conversation with you is because your life demonstrates that there is no age limit for when you can change, when you can achieve things. And in fact, I would love to have you read the posts that you put out that I think is so inspiring.
So this was six years ago. I didn't reach my athletic peak until I was 43. I didn't write my first book until I was 44. I didn't start my podcast until I was 45. At 30, I thought my life was over. At 52, I know it's just beginning. Keep running, never give up, and watch your kite soar.
What does that mean to you?
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Chapter 3: How do you recognize when you're stuck in the wrong life?
Well, and I cannot wait to get into your story and the lessons learned like me the hard way and the mistakes made and the wisdom that you gained from it. But before we do, I would love to have you talk directly to the person who's either listening or watching right now.
And it's so easy in life to get to this point where like, I blew it, 25, majored in the wrong thing, did the wrong thing, you know, missed the window, 30, 40. Like for somebody, whatever age they are saying it's too late, what do you want to tell them?
It's not too late. This is a story that we internalize and dilute ourselves into believing. But it's just that. It's a story. When you can step back and deconstruct it, you realize it's insane. It's a template that's been laid on top of you that I think is deranging our minds in a very violent way that makes us feel bad about ourselves. It's not too late.
There's always a possibility for you to move in a new direction or change the trajectory of your life wholesale, or even make those micro changes that are going to kind of just shift your trajectory just enough to lead you in a direction that is going to be, you know, kind of more personally fulfilling for you.
I love this, Rich. I absolutely love this. You have such an incredible story. You've been named one of the 25 fittest men in the world by Men's Fitness. You literally raised, if you weren't watching on YouTube, Rich put his arms out just a minute ago. Your wingspan is nuts. Like, I bet your arms went across the screen and disappeared across the YouTube screen here.
And so I didn't realize that your wing, I realized you were a swimmer, dude.
I don't even, I never even knew that.
Oh, you went like this. I'm like, is he about to take flight? This man is like, he's like, I don't know what a big bird is, but he's like, I mean, unbelievable. And you say, though, as a kid that you were shy, insecure, and bullied. So tell me about that.
Yeah, I was a very scared and afraid young person who was bullied considerably through elementary school and junior high school and high school.
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Chapter 4: What mindset shifts are crucial for personal transformation?
So how did you compete if you got headgear on? Like, how did you discover swimming?
Swimming was the only thing that I'd stumbled across as a young person that I felt like I had any aptitude for whatsoever. And I enjoyed it. More than that, the experience of being underwater felt almost womb-like, like a safe place away from... the bullying, away from, you know, the name calling.
And I learned very quickly in the pool, having joined a team in which there were a lot of swimmers who were much more talented and accomplished than I was. I'm talking about around the time I was 12, 13 years old, that I could bridge that talent deficit gap by just working harder than everybody else.
And so that's where the relationship with suffering and just being the hardest worker in the room was born because I was quickly rewarded for that. And that started to spill into every aspect of my life, including academics, to my benefit.
Well, all that effort that you put in paid off because by the time you were in your early 20s, you not only had gone to Stanford, but you were also in law school. You had a fancy job after law school. On the outside, everything seemed like it was working out, but it really wasn't. So put us at the scene of kind of the first thing that started to spiral out of control in your life.
Yeah, well, first I would say that this affinity for extremes is definitely a strength, if not a superpower, but ultimately also my greatest weakness and Achilles' heel. What serves us also harms us when it's out of balance, and that's my experience. And I think... Yes, like, all of that focus and discipline paid off in a very real, material way.
But that came at a cost, which is that I had blinders on. And, you know, I was being funneled into a certain track, and I figured out how to play that game.
What was that track?
And I was playing, like, high achievement. Like, get the good grades, get into the... I mean, I got into... All eight colleges that I applied to, including Harvard, Princeton, like you name it, I got into all the schools. Wow. Rich Hall, go off. And then I was one of the top-ranked high school swimmers in the country.
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Chapter 5: Why are patience and self-compassion essential for reinvention?
Well, that gaze in the mirror in the morning where you have to get yourself up to just get dressed to go to the job. I think this is common to most people who are on a certain career path that is less fulfilling than maybe it could be. The fact that you have to psych yourself up just to get to work. And simple tasks feel daunting.
And then you look around the office and the people who got the promotion that you've told yourself that you want don't look very happy and are compensating for it by spending too much money on things they can't afford. But you don't quite register that. And you convince yourself that nonetheless, you want that promotion without really reflecting on like, is this what I want? And why do I want it?
And so I think the universe is like trying to get your attention. Like, hey, look over there, see what's happening. And you ignore it and it starts to knock louder and it knocks louder, it knocks louder until it derails your life to an extent to which you're willing to listen and kind of take accountability for your life.
Well, you mentioned alcohol. You've been very open about your relationship with alcohol, addiction, the role that it played in your life, and this kind of life-changing breakdown that you had. How did... it all begin.
Yeah. I mean, first of all, I never got in trouble in high school. Like I was a goody goody. I was waking up at 4.30 every morning and going to some practice for an hour and a half and then going to school and then going to back to the pool for two more hours and then studying and then lights out at nine. I didn't go to parties. I wasn't invited to the parties anyway.
And so my career with alcohol didn't start until a little bit later than it does for a lot of people. Around the time I was 2021 and when i got my first buzz i suddenly felt comfortable in my own skin for the very first time like that low-grade dissonance or discomfort that you've had your whole life that you don't even know that it could feel any different than that, like evaporated.
And it just felt like I was being wrapped in a warm blanket and being told that everything was okay. And all I remember about that is just that I wanted to feel that way all the time. And I thought that I had found the solution for my life. But alcohol, getting drunk was really fun and it solved a lot of my social anxiety.
And it taught me how to be a social creature and talk to a girl and go to a party and crack a joke and look somebody in the eye. I felt like it was an education in how to be a social animal. But as any alcoholic will tell you, it's not long before the veneer cracks and your life starts to get progressively more chaotic and more unmanageable.
One of the things that I also love about the way that you talk about addiction is that it's way beyond alcohol. People can become addicted to lots of different things, whether it's to busyness, to drugs, to video games, to toxic relationships, to chaos in their lives. Can you talk a little bit more about that just to widen the spectrum?
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Chapter 6: What steps can you take to support someone struggling with change?
But I think most people on this spectrum, whether it's some kind of errant behavior, like they keep getting involved with the wrong person in a romantic relationship, and
are confused why it's always ending up in a terrible result or the person who can't put down their phone or is compulsively online shopping or comparing themselves to, you know, beautiful men and women on social media all the way to the person who can't pull the needle out of their arm, having a severe case of addiction really is a gift because you you're going to have to face it, right?
Whereas if you have a low-grade version of it, you could live out the remainder of your life never getting bad enough that you're compelled to look at it.
You know, you were saying that it got absolutely disastrous. And at the height of your addiction, you write about how your parents stopped talking to you. I would love to just have you explain like what a day in your life looked like and how bad it got. Because I think when you look at you now and you're like, yeah, I got really bad and thankful.
Like I don't, unless you've ever experienced it yourself or you have somebody that you love, it's hard to even imagine what that actually looks like.
Yeah. I mean, I would say that my drunk-a-log is not sexy. It's not rock and roll. It's pretty boilerplate and banal. I was sleeping on a bare mattress in an unfurnished bedroom, unfurnished apartment, uh, drinking around the clock. I would wake up hungover, having hallucinations and bedspins and night sweats.
And the only way I could make that go away was to make myself a vodka tonic and drink it in the shower in the morning. And then I would feel better. Not like drunk, just normal. get dressed, get in the car with a tall boy between my legs and drive across Los Angeles And I would literally go to work as a lawyer.
And then at lunchtime, I would go sneak out to some restaurant or bar where I could like drink, get a couple more drinks in me to make it through the end of the day. Like there's no way that was gonna last, right? And it didn't last.
And then as soon as I could escape from work, having done the least amount possible, I would stop at the liquor store on the way home and I would get drunk by myself in my apartment. And then I would go out to some bar by myself. There was nothing social about it. You know, it was by myself. Just sad, lonely, pathetic.
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Chapter 7: How does Rich Roll define his journey of self-discovery?
Probably not. I'm glad you said that because I want to know what to say. Like, I know that it must have been the hardest thing in the world for your parents to stop talking to you.
The hardest, most painful thing that they had to endure.
Since you've been on this side of it, Is there anything anybody can say?
As you know, you can't get somebody to change who doesn't want to change. You cannot will willingness upon them, which is very difficult, particularly in the context of like a parent who's watching their child suffer from an addiction. The addicted person is powerless over that behavior, but also the parents are powerless to change that.
Every instinct is to rush in and solve the problem, to save this person, to prevent them from doing this thing that so clearly is wrecking their life. The problem is that that instinct doesn't always play out with positive results. So I think what you have to do is love the individual, not love the behavior, and create boundaries around yourself and that behavior. Like, I love you.
You're clearly suffering. What you're doing, I'm not down with. Here's why. And until you're ready to do something about that, I'm unavailable to you, which is essentially what my parents said to me. I'm not saying that this is an easy thing to do, and I'm not saying that it's an appropriate strategy in all circumstances.
I can only say that in my case, it was an important piece that led me towards sobriety eventually because... I could no longer look to them to solve my problem or to be codependent in my behavior. They were no longer available, which meant the mirror flipped and suddenly I had to take responsibility for myself. And it was up to me to decide whether I wanted to keep doing this or not.
Did they leave the door open?
Yes. When you're ready for help, we're available. And they were. They were.
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Chapter 8: What is the most important action to take when feeling stuck?
What is, based on your experience, just the recommendation for how you approach those situations?
Yeah, it's very difficult, again, to give like general advice. Yeah, if like somebody is in a life-threatening situation. So I'm reluctant to like give blanket advice on this. But I think in general, the message is like, I love you. Your life is spiraling out of control. I can no longer stand idly by and just witness this.
But if and when you're ready to make a change, I will be the first one here. But in the meantime, I'm not going to loan you money. I'm not going to co-sign your bullshit. I'm not available for that. But there is hope. There is help. And I'm here for you 100%. I just want you to know that.
I love that. And there's something in saying that, that also in a weird way communicates, I actually believe in your ability to figure this out.
And that's a key piece as well. I can see the real you beneath all of this. And my wife says this all the time, like, I'm holding a vision for that. I am holding you in that higher space. I'm claiming it for you because you can't right now. And I believe in that version of you. And I'm not going anywhere.
But I'm not going to do these things that I historically maybe have done or which you are going to be very upset with me because I'm no longer available for.
Let's give props to your wife, Julie.
Oh, she's the one.
Well, I just, as a parent and as a friend, feel like even if you have somebody that's spiraling in self-doubt over something that you know they're capable of, that's a beautiful way to say to somebody, I am holding a vision of who I know you to be and what you're capable of, and I'm not going to participate in a conversation where you're engaging in this much self-criticism and self-doubt.
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