I first met Phil at a 100 mile run in San Diego and I was running this race as part of
a six person relay team with friends and he was running the entire race by himself.
And the run was unsupported, so you have to bring your own supplies.
So we had, you know, we overdid it a little bit.
We had a tent, and had masseuses and food.
I we ready for, like, in case we had stay there a week.
And he had a folding chair, a bottle of water, and a bag of crackers.
thought to myself like, who is this guy?
I'd seen anything like it.
And the race, I kept an eye on him.
And around mile 70, he weighed probably 260 pounds, which is quite large for an ultra runner.
He had broken all the small bones in both of his feet and had kidney damage, and he finished the race.
I googled him into a fascinating life story, and I decided literally the cold And I flew out and met with them.
And sitting with him for a couple of minutes,
I realized that I could learn so much from a guy like this and what makes him tick.
And buckets in my life would be so much better if a little bit of what he had rubbed off on me.
I asked him to come live with my family and I for a month.
So, at the time that I invited Seal to come live with us, I had an 18-month-old son.
I was married, still two more kids since.
And I had sold a couple of businesses.
I was in a great place professionally in my life, but I was also in a routine.
And routines are great, but they're great.
And I found that I just wasn't getting better.
I doing the same thing every day like so many of us Wake up go to work come home,
you have dinner repeat and I just wanted to get off autopilot And I thought that he would be a great way to get in good shape
But also to just mix up my routine and and get better the first day that's he'll get
He asked me to do he said how many pull-ups can you do and I'm not great at pull-ups.
I did about eight Just getting over the bar eight and it's alright take 30 seconds and do it again So 30 seconds later.
I got up on the bar I did six struggling and sit alright one more time we waited 30 seconds and I barely got
three or four and I was done I mean couldn't move my arms done and he said
all right we're not leaving here until you do a hundred more and I thought there's
no well we're gonna be here for quite a long time because there's no way that I could do a hundred.
I ended up doing it one at a time,
proved to me right there,
that there was so much more, we're all capable of so much more than we think we are, and it was just a great lesson.
It was actually the first thing that we did,
it was just a great lesson, and we had so much more in our reserve tank than we think we do.
One of the things that Seale said to me, and it's in the book, and one thing that people have said that really, really.
He would say that when your mind is telling you you're done, you're really only 40% done.
And he had a motto, if it doesn't suck, we don't do it.
And that was his way of every day forcing us to get uncomfortable,
to figure out what our baseline was and what our comfort level was and just turning it upside down.
But 40% rule, maybe it's give or take a little, but look at a marathon.
Most hit the wall at a marathon at mile, anywhere from 16 to 20, and% of the people in this country that run marathon.
And they all, predominantly all of them, go through this, hit the wall.
So where does that extra 50 or 60% or whatever the number has come from?
I it's their brain saying,
I'm done, I don't want to continue, but their will saying, you know what, let me get to the finish line.
So we all have that will.
It's just a matter of how do we apply it to not just the once a year marathon,
but to our daily lives and make it.
you know, apply to a variety of things.
