Transforming Fear into an Ally for Growth w/ Adam Hill EP 54

[00:00:00] Shanenn Bryant: I have with me, my new buddy, Adam Hill, nearly nine figure, CEO, world champion qualifying triathlete, speaker podcast host, bestselling author too, by the way, but it wasn't always that way for you, Adam, and we're going to dig into that. We're gonna talk about it, but welcome to the show.

[00:00:23] Adam Hill: Thank you. I'm honored to be here. I really appreciate you having me.

[00:00:26] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. Well, I've been excited to talk to you. I mean, what amazing accomplishments. I love to hear the story of someone..I mean, you completely changed your life. So tell us what you were doing before you became all of those things?

[00:00:43] Adam Hill: Yeah. Well, um, I, I like to think the train wreck started subtly I grew up with this kind of just under the surface level anxiety or just fear. It's like fear just seemed to dominate my life and all of my decisions. I know that there are a lot of people out there that can relate to that. As, you know, looking back on themselves as kids ,we were just talking about being in junior high, which was a pretty traumatic time for me. But, you know, there, there was always just this underlying fear that dominated every decision that I made.

[00:01:20] Adam Hill: And, uh, and at that time, you know, I grew up in the eighties and early nineties. We didn't talk a lot about the mental health. We didn't talk a lot about anxiety or, or stress or fear. We were more on the D.A.R.E bandwagon of like, you know, keep kids off drugs and all that kind of stuff. We didn't focus on the mental health part. And, uh, so as I got older and as I went into college, that anxiety started to become more dominant in my life. And a lot of the reason because was because I discovered alcohol early in college, like as many college kids do. You know, you go to a party, you drink for the first time and there was really no indication in my life that I would become a problem drinker or an alcoholic.

[00:02:02] Adam Hill: I didn't have it in my family. Nobody was, you know, there wasn't genetic with us. So we just never, I mean, my parents were the type that had two Coronas in the fridge. I mean, always

[00:02:13] Shanenn Bryant: Oh, those two in the fridge? Yeah.

[00:02:15] Adam Hill: and they stayed there forever. And it was just in case we had guests over that wanted booze. 

[00:02:20] Adam Hill: So it wasn't like an indication. So when I got to college and went to keg parties, it was like, oh, you know, there's this, there's this drink that everybody's drinking and I'll drink it too. And I just immediately found that it was like, oh my gosh, it's this elixir that it takes that fear and that anxiety, and all of a sudden I'm social and I could talk to people. I could talk to girls, I can talk to, you know, I can make friends. And in that environment, with constant good positive reinforcement from that, it led to progressively getting worse over time. I mean, at the beginning it was not that bad. Like it was just like, have a couple of beers go home, wake up without a hangover, and everything's okay. But over time it gets progressively worse. And you know, by the time I was, my third year in college, I was having severe panic attacks.

[00:03:10] Adam Hill: I didn't know what those were, but I was having them and, uh, and drinking myself into blackouts to just kind of, just to balance that out and avoid the, the pain of the fear that I was feeling.

[00:03:22] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. So you were the life of the party until you weren't Right?

[00:03:26] Adam Hill: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:03:26] Shanenn Bryant: Until you were the disaster of the party, I'm sure at some point, right?

[00:03:31] Adam Hill: That is a perfect description of it. Yes. Yeah, it was. Uh, I was, it, it was, as they say, fun. Then it was fun with problems. Then it was just problems. And by the time it was problems, it was too late. It was already a part of me. It was a part of who I was. Yeah.

[00:03:46] Shanenn Bryant: You said you grew up with this kind of constant fear, constant anxiety. what was that that was driving that?

[00:03:55] Adam Hill: One of the reasons I wanna share this message is because when I got to a point where I was struggling with this idea, this concept, that I was becoming a problem drinker, I grew up believing that an alcoholic was somebody way out there sleeping behind dumpsters, somebody who was, you know, really, really having problems; traumatic childhood. I didn't fit that criteria. How could I ever be an alcoholic? You know, one of those people. 

[00:04:20] Adam Hill: But it, it came to be that it was just like finally over enough time and enough damage and, you know, and, and, and just that self-reflection that it was, that I came to realize, yeah, that is me. I am that. And really more people than we know struggle with that. And, so I think it's important that people understand that if we think, even if we think we're the, we're, we have a normal or a good or a positive experience, uh, we can still have our own internal turmoil and we have to respect that about ourselves.

[00:04:58] Adam Hill: If we can't, then we're going to feel ashamed, and that shame is gonna enter into our, into our being. That's only gonna make things worse. So just, you know, there's something that happens amidst a lot of people who have trauma and there's this trauma comparison. You know, like, well, I never went to war why should I have PTSD? You know, but that's, that's not a fair comparison because we experience those things in our own way. We're going to war in our own heads regardless of the trauma we've experienced. We have to address it.

[00:05:28] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. It does look very different for everyone, and we do tend to compare trauma because of a way of saying, oh, well I don't, I don't have any right to feel like this. I don't have any right to seek help for this because there are so many other people that are way worse than me.

[00:05:50] Shanenn Bryant: And so that word shame, certainly the person listening to this podcast is very familiar with the word shame. When we're jealous, when we're insecure and we have that fear, we're constantly feeling shameful for our actions, for the way that we're thinking, for the way that we feel.

[00:06:12] Adam Hill: Yeah, that that was my flavor of choice of suffering was the shame always. And you know, the way I dealt with it was through alcohol suppressing it just, you know, and just living in that and of course didn't work.

[00:06:26] Shanenn Bryant: Well, yeah. Uh, yeah. I'm sure there were events of more shame I know how that works. How long sober?

[00:06:33] Adam Hill: So I've been 11 years sober. My last drink happened right before a DUI accident that basically showed me in my own life, speaking of shame, what I'm capable of when I'm an active alcoholic and you know, that I'm putting other people's lives at risk.

[00:06:50] Adam Hill: That was a really, uh, difficult time because. in that moment, I mean, I always in intuitively knew that I'm not a bad person. Like I never thought I'm a bad person, but here I was, that just did a terrible thing. One of the most terrible things, you know, a person can do. And, the shame that I was going through was, led me to going through the, the own, uh, uh, decision tree in my head of, well, should I end my life because I'm a danger to others or should I, you know, get help? And that was really, those were the two directions my mind was taking as I sat in the jail cell. You know, fortunately I leaned into the idea of help and went to Alcoholics Anonymous and just gave myself fully to it. 

[00:07:34] Shanenn Bryant: Well, thank goodness. Yeah. It's not a easy road getting help and so I commend you for going through that and for having the courage and the, the willpower and the strength.

[00:07:46] Shanenn Bryant: I know, um, how much that takes 

[00:07:47] Shanenn Bryant: so thank you, for choosing you.

[00:07:52] Adam Hill: Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. And you're right, it wasn't easy. I mean, in those moments, and I think we have to acknowledge this too, there's, there's moments in our lives, and I think this happens with all of us, where we feel absolutely hopeless. Like there's nothing that could change this feeling that we're in, we're just in this pit of despair.

[00:08:10] Adam Hill: Uh, not to steal a Princess Bride reference, I guess, but you know, . But we're just in this absolute despair that feels hopeless, and I want to make sure that everybody knows that there's hope beyond hopeless. There always is. I mean, there's always something. There's if, if we can grasp onto it, if we could just take that one step or that one step in the right direction and get the help that we need. 

[00:08:34] Shanenn Bryant: Other than deciding I'm going to go get help, what was the first step for you to then completely change your life and accomplish all of these goals that you've been able to do since then?

[00:08:45] Adam Hill: When I look back, I realized that fear was dominating my life in those, in the first three decades of my life. It was just, you know, and that's what I was doing, was I was fighting against it. I was, I was just going to battle with it every day by suppressing it, you know, drinking it away and, and trying to avoid the things that made me afraid. But when I got sober and when I went through that process, and I guess to answer your question about the first step was I gave myself over to community completely. It was just completely complete surrender. It's like I have no control over my life. Steps one and two, you know, I admitted I was powerless

[00:09:18] Adam Hill: uh, I had no control over my life. And, went in and just surrendered fully to this program. And that was really the first step that got me there, and that was the step of healing. And it's a step that I, I now look back on and I realize that when we rise up from fighting fear, when we, when we finally had enough with fighting it.

[00:09:39] Adam Hill: We surrender, we don't give up on life. But we surrender and we turn around and we say, I'm done running. And you look at the fear, you face fear, and you just, and facing fear doesn't mean you fight it anymore. It's not like you're fighting it. It's, but it is an act of courage because you're facing it and you're saying, I see you, I acknowledge that you're there.

[00:09:57] Adam Hill: You exist in my life. I'm not going to ignore you anymore. What are you trying to tell me? What is, what is the message here? And, and how can we heal through this? And that was really the first step. So that step of healing, in my opinion, really required those, these three really important conditions was an absolute willingness.

[00:10:17] Adam Hill: I had to want it more than anything else. We have to want that healing more than anything else. Uh, more than our families, more than our jobs. It sounds scary, but that's what we need because we can't be there for them if we don't have that. And then it also requires a vulnerability and honesty that we can share with ourselves.

[00:10:35] Adam Hill: We need to be vulnerable and honest with ourselves about, about, you know, what we, what we've gone through, what we represent; our, role in where we exist in this. And then the third thing is the trusted community. And, you know, that community of support, the people where two or more are gathered among us, they're, you know, that healing exists in that presence.

[00:10:57] Adam Hill: I know I'm kind of, you know, created a new one there, but Yeah.

[00:11:01] Adam Hill: We need to be willing to immerse ourselves in it. We need to be able to engage and be active in it. But it's also the very thing that, you know, I realized that over that time, 'cause I'd tried to do everything on my own before that.

[00:11:12] Adam Hill: Like, I didn't like being around people. I didn't wanna, I didn't want to, really, it's because I'm a people pleaser. I didn't want to, I didn't wanna up, I didn't wanna get into conflict. So avoiding people altogether was the way to do that. But then immersing myself in a community was like, oh my gosh, this, this works.

[00:11:27] Adam Hill: After going through that, immersing myself in other communities, you know, we're part of a community, you know, and, and those communities help us to grow and develop. It doesn't just work in healing. It works in whatever personal development space that we're working on growing for ourselves. 

[00:11:41] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. Did you feel like, oh, this is fear. I like I had fear in me and that was the problem. At what point did you start to understand that?

[00:11:54] Adam Hill: Yeah, I, I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder finally when I was in college. Probably, you know, by that I think about around my third year of college. So I was already immersed in alcohol. They tried to prescribe me medication and they, they tried to convince me to go to therapy, but I did the math on that and realized that going to therapy at that time would mean that they would just look at me and say, oh, you're drinking a lot. Why don't you stop that? And maybe that'll help,

[00:12:20] Shanenn Bryant: Mm.

[00:12:21] Adam Hill: Probably would have, but I wasn't willing at that point. right. 

[00:12:25] Adam Hill: So, uh, yeah, so, so I, I was diagnosed with that fear and so I, that was the first indication that I had some level of problem with anxiety.

[00:12:32] Adam Hill: And later I, you know, put more of the pieces together because even through that healing process. I realized that the fear didn't go away, but I changed my relationship with it, which was incredibly powerful and it was incredible realization for me.

[00:12:45] Adam Hill: It's like, oh, courage or doing things in life and, and living life and, and actually participating in this world doesn't come because we're absent of fear. It comes because we build a relationship with it and we're able to rise above it and we can, we can move beyond it. And it was, it was after that that I started to, started to approach my fears in a different way and look at them more as, as a signal for opportunity and I think when we experience fear, we certainly experience fear as danger. Like, you know, there if, if we are in between a bear and its cubs or whatever, we we're in danger. We need to get out of there. And so it's an important signal. So it's a good thing if we're, if we're experiencing fear in danger. And then there's this other experience we have with fear, the experience where we're not in danger, but the fear is still there.

[00:13:38] Adam Hill: We're still experiencing that, that unease, that anxiety, whatever it may be. I've found that when that happens, we're usually subjected to one of three root causes of fear. We're either uncertain, we're overwhelmed, or we doubt ourselves in some way. And when those happen, we're, we're either uncertain, we're overwhelmed, or we're doubting ourselves.

[00:13:58] Adam Hill: We start to feel that fear. And we typically retreat from that, But if we look at those as signals that say, Hey, this is just a signal that you're pushing up against the edge of your comfort zone. Then if you can look at it that way, you can start to get curious about it and start asking questions.

[00:14:13] Adam Hill: Well, okay. instead of reacting in fear and just listening to what your brain says, it's like, okay, well what is this? What is this fear really saying? Like, am I really in danger? I. No. Okay, so what, what am I hearing here? I'm overwhelmed or I'm, I'm uncertain. Okay. Well, it's okay to be uncertain.

[00:14:30] Adam Hill: You're going against something new. How can I approach this in a different way? And ultimately that's how I learned that, you know, that signal for us, that that fear is a signal can show us when we have an opportunity to grow. Um, that's what I've used it for ever since.

[00:14:46] Shanenn Bryant: If we continue to run from it, then it just prolongs that time of like, okay, eventually I've gotta figure this out. I have to be able to face this. 

[00:14:58] Shanenn Bryant: so how do we know if it's fear?

[00:15:04] Shanenn Bryant: That's like, if there's fear that's holding us back, how are we able to distinguish that like, oh, this is something that, you know, it's, 

[00:15:12] Adam Hill: Yeah. 

[00:15:13] Shanenn Bryant: fear-based.

[00:15:14] Adam Hill: Yeah. It's, I mean, it takes a lot of, a lot of practice, but I think that fear tends to be one of our biggest obstacles. I think really the question is how do we distinguish between danger, fear, which is the fear we wanna get away from? Opportunity fear, which is the fear that we might wanna like start digging into. And the way that I've looked at that is, is well what, what are the differences? And when you have those moments where you are really excited about something, where you know, something hits you, like you, an idea might hit you like a ton of bricks or you, you just, you have this like pull this draw to do something and this excitement rises up in you and you have this moment of like, oh my gosh.

[00:15:54] Adam Hill: That sounds incredible. And then at that very same moment, fear rises up and meets it like at the same moment. And I call it the oh crap method. Like I call it something else, but I don't wanna say it on your show, but I call, that's what I call it, that, because when, when those two things happen at once, your brain like, just, just instinctively, reflexively says, oh crap.

[00:16:16] Adam Hill: It's, it's like your heart and your brain are, are simultaneously screaming at you; eureka and no. When that happens, that's when, um, I believe that, you know, a lot of times our our brain scream louder than our hearts and we just say, no, I don't wanna do that because it's, I'm afraid. 

[00:16:33] Adam Hill: But if we can at least acknowledge that moment and say, you know what, there's a fear and an excitement here. Maybe I should look at that as an opportunity or something that, that I dig a little deeper.

[00:16:43] Shanenn Bryant: Mm-Hmm. . I like that... fear as a opportunity. I love that. So what are some ways that, you know, fear can get in our way? Like where does this typically show up for someone?

[00:16:58] Adam Hill: So I'll say from my, my personal experience, it, it showed up in a, in, in a number of ways, but one of the ways that distinctly, I remember, it happened when I was still, there were two times when I thought about the Ironman triathlon and, uh, for people that might not know, I'm an iron, I'm former Ironman triathlete.

[00:17:16] Adam Hill: I used to compete up until about a couple years ago and, and, uh, and did that, uh, pretty extensively. I didn't start doing that until after I got sober, about a year of sobriety. And when I first saw the Ironman triathlon on television was . When I was still an active alcoholic, when I was still living in my fear.

[00:17:33] Adam Hill: I remember seeing it on television for the first time, and I wasn't a swimmer. I'd never like really swam more than the distance of a pool. Never owned a road bike. And, uh, and I, and, and the idea of like actually doing those distance was crazy, to me. But I saw this on television. I was, I was watching these amazing athletes doing these amazing distances.

[00:17:52] Adam Hill: 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run. 

[00:17:57] Adam Hill: As I watched it, that's when that, oh crap moment happened for me. Like this, this excitement that came up to me. I was like, what if I could do something like that? And as that happened, that fear rose up and it, uh, it, it, it basically told me, you can't do that.

[00:18:12] Adam Hill: You're an alcoholic. You smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. You're unhealthy. you're not an iron man. Are you kidding me? Knock it off. Go back to drinking beer, feeling sorry for yourself. Right.

[00:18:22] Shanenn Bryant: Right. 

[00:18:23] Adam Hill: So I listened to my brain at that moment and, uh, I, the dream died before it ever had a chance to see the light of day.

[00:18:31] Adam Hill: That was one instance where that fear got in the way it came in, it got in the way because of self-doubt. It got in the way because it, I, there was this uncertainty that was like. I could never do that because my points of reference tell me that I never have. And then it, it was uh, uh, it was overwhelming because it was just like, yeah, it's just too much, too big for me.

[00:18:52] Adam Hill: I can't do that. So that self-doubt really showed up for me a lot growing up. 

[00:18:57] Shanenn Bryant: I think a lot of people do that of... I could never do that type of thing. I could never be that because of where I have been. And realizing that point of it doesn't matter where you have been, like that should not be a limitation for you. It's.

[00:19:18] Shanenn Bryant: Look what, where you could go. But I think, like you said, it's almost like that's where that fear draws the line and goes, uh, you know, no, because of all this stuff behind you and all of these things in your past, whether it's the way you were raised or what you were doing, or, you know, things that you feel, feel guilty of or ashamed of in your case

[00:19:39] Shanenn Bryant: because I'm sure when you saw that and you mentioned like, there's no way I could do, there's no way I could do that. 

[00:19:46] Adam Hill: Right.

[00:19:48] Shanenn Bryant: What does it feel like to actually, 'cause that's, I mean, that is significant change in your life. I know it didn't come overnight.

[00:19:56] Shanenn Bryant: Talk to me about that process like . how did you go from drinking and smoking to now, like running miles and miles and biking and swimming and all the things.

[00:20:07] Adam Hill: Through that process of sobriety, I mean, that was just like doing the work, leaning into community, going through that healing process, right? So that was, that was really step one, transformation. There were really two major transformations that happened in my life. That first transformation was going from fighting it.

[00:20:23] Adam Hill: To facing fear and uh, and that facing fear is the healing part. And the second transformation was where I went from facing fear to embracing it. Changing my entire relationship with and realizing that that fear is a signal. And I had about a year of sobriety when that second transformation happened because I was always told throughout my, uh, my first year of sobriety, and, the old timers tell you, don't make any major life changes in your first year of recovery because you don't want to get distracted.

[00:20:54] Adam Hill: And that's important advice. And I followed it to the t. But I also heard that as at a year of sobriety, I needed to make a major life change , because that was like the big, you know, because that was a big milestone. And so when I hit that year of sobriety, I was laying in bed, I was recovering from a shoulder surgery at the time.

[00:21:13] Adam Hill: And I, I was thinking of the major life change that I had to make and I, and I realized at that moment I. That the, the change I had changed my, uh, psychological wellbeing. You know, I'd gone through all of this psychological healing.

[00:21:27] Adam Hill: I'd gone through spiritual healing, but my physical wellbeing was still not great. So that was the one thing that I wanted to work on, and I was thinking, well, what can I do that is, you know, that that would make a difference? And, that's when it was just like kind of this serendipitous.

[00:21:43] Adam Hill: That environment led to me thinking about the Ironman triathlon again, like that moment that I watched it, and I remembered actually watching it many years prior when I was still in that disease. And this time I had a more empowered mindset though. 'cause when I thought about it, those same thoughts came into my head.

[00:21:58] Adam Hill: The same fears, the same everything. Like the excitement, the fear rising up in equal measure, same thing. The only difference was my mindset was different. And so when it hit me, . I, I looked at the fear. I looked at the, the negative self-talk that I was saying all that, you've never done it. You can't ride a road bike.

[00:22:15] Adam Hill: You can't walk up the stairs without wheezing and exhaustion. But I looked at it and I said like, well, but, but what if I could work toward that? And that was kind of that second transformational moment where I realized, you know, maybe I can, and so, . At that time, I just, I, I basically signed up for an Ironman about a year, uh oh, that was gonna be about a year out, and decided I would build the parachute on the way down.

[00:22:38] Adam Hill: I'd figure it out. And, um, and that's what I did. And, and I just did a, a series of shorter races leading up to it. And in that process, in that, in that process of learning how to be a triathlete and, and just following it obsessively, I learned a lot about. How to be self-disciplined, how to achieve your dreams, and how to turn fear into an ally so that we can actually look towards the things that we sometimes think are impossible, and actually go after them step by step and learn to achieve them.

[00:23:12] Shanenn Bryant: You know, a year from now, sometimes that seems so far away when you're really in the depths of things. 

[00:23:20] Shanenn Bryant: And I think it's important for people to understand, like, yes, a year might seem like a long time, but now looking back 11 years later, I'm sure you're like, that was such a, just a little drop in the bucket.

[00:23:36] Shanenn Bryant: Man, that year was worth this completely different life that you have now. And like those baby steps then just snowball into massive transformation.

[00:23:51] Adam Hill: Well, you know, when you look back on your life and, and in the midst of whatever you might be going through at any given time, it may seem like it's just, it's, it's hard or it's challenging, but you look back on it from where you're at today and you realize, wow, that was one of the best times of my life.

[00:24:07] Adam Hill: And I look back at that first year sobriety, I had so much peace. I was going, I mean, I was still going through so much legal trouble and so much like all of the, all of the fallout for the damage that I did. 

[00:24:21] Adam Hill: But because I had, that was like the first moment that I started taking the right path, and I realized that there was a hope, there was a path forward.

[00:24:30] Adam Hill: I look back on that now, I'm like, wow. That was one of the best times in my life because I transformed myself and I started to build a community and I started to do all these great things. It was just, everything changed. And it, looking back, for as painful as it was, it was so, so beautiful and there was so much grace in that period of time too.

[00:24:51] Shanenn Bryant: Okay, so you, now you're in it, you have this different relationship with fear. What do you think it is that keeps people from accomplishing their goals? 

[00:25:04] Adam Hill: The first step is acknowledging where we're being lied to or where we're being misled. We are as a, as a society are, are kind of headed in the wrong direction in a lot of ways, is that when we are told that we wanna pursue something big, we think we need to give everything we have all of the time.

[00:25:25] Adam Hill: People confuse this idea of all out effort for endurance. And most of what we do in life when we're pursuing big dreams, big goals. Is those are endurance feats, and yet we apply massive like sprint effort to it because we're told in the media that that is the way to go. And, and I, and I'm, and I understand why we're told that's the way to go because it's the sexy way to go.

[00:25:50] Adam Hill: Telling people to take their time or take one step at a time or take the, um, you know, that's not, it's, it doesn't sell. So,

[00:25:59] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. Not as flashy 

[00:26:01] Adam Hill: Yeah. It's not, but it is really simple. So I have this, I have this philosophy that, that a, you're pursuing something, obviously you have to have a real passion for it.

[00:26:09] Adam Hill: You have to put meaning behind it. And, you know, therein lies one of the greatest books of, of all time, uh, Viktor Frankl's Man's Search For Meaning that, you know, that idea that applying a meaning to something that may be difficult is a very valuable tool, but then it comes in, well now how do I apply the effort?

[00:26:28] Adam Hill: And when people start, a lot of times when we start a big thing or when we get excited about something, a lot of times we push too hard and too fast. We decide like, I'm really excited about like starting this podcast, so I'm gonna buy all this stuff. I'm gonna do five days a week. I'm gonna do all this stuff.

[00:26:44] Adam Hill: And we start doing it. And what happens two weeks later, we burn out. We, we just, we, we dry out. We dont plan the effort. So, uh, one of the, one of, when I started doing Ironman triathlon, one of the great blessings that I had was an injured shoulder so I couldn't push a hundred percent, 110% at that time.

[00:27:05] Adam Hill: So I had to research and ask Google the stupidest question that you could ever ask into Google, which was how to train easy for an Ironman and. Really, to my surprise, that was where, that was, uh, the best question I could have asked because I learned about something called the Maffetone Method. Um, and generally speaking that in endurance sports, if you want to train to, to race for a hundred miles, a hundred and

[00:27:33] Adam Hill: 50 miles, whatever it may be. You have to train at a percentage of your maximum effort, a small percentage. And that percentage is usually to build endurance. It's about 80%. So the heart rate, maffetone tone method, that used heart rate for training that I was using, uh, advocated, that you would train at your heart rate that was about 80% of your maximum effort.

[00:27:53] Adam Hill: And so when I did that, I found out initially that effort is. Ridiculously slow. Ridiculously easy. So painfully slow. It's the opposite end, uh, spec, end of the pain spectrum. It's ridiculously slow. and I was doing like 15 minute miles and I was thinking, how am I ever gonna do anything with this? But over time, what I found was under that 80%, I got faster.

[00:28:17] Adam Hill: Faster over time with consistency, and I was able to stay consistent because I wasn't putting out 110% effort. A lot of times we, we quit because we're burned out. We can't stay consistent. But that's the piece that a lot of people miss or forget about discipline. Everybody intuitively knows the discipline piece. You gotta be consistent. Everybody knows that. 

[00:28:39] Adam Hill: What people miss is the fact that we have to slow down first to be disciplined, and over time we will speed up under that same effort. We'll get faster or we'll get better, we'll get, we'll get we'll, we'll have the same level of, of grace or whatever we need to do while we're under that effort.

[00:28:56] Adam Hill: And then over time, you know, our 80% will be everyone else's 110%. 

Uh, so amazing. thank you for sharing that. If you're wondering it's Maffetone method. If you like what Adam's talking about, I love it. 

[00:29:15] Shanenn Bryant: I talk a lot about practicing not mastering, because I think it's so important, like you have to get in the habit of practice, if that makes sense.

[00:29:26] Shanenn Bryant: Like just start practicing. Don't worry about like what day am I gonna feel like I'm over this insecurity thing? What day am I gonna feel like I've accomplished this? When is this gonna happen? Focus on..Let's practice the tools and techniques and the things that I need to do and, and facing that fear practice doing that.

[00:29:49] Shanenn Bryant: So I love it. I love that. 

[00:29:52] Shanenn Bryant: 

[00:29:52] Adam Hill: Yeah. You basically take 180, you subtract your age and that's the maximum heart rate that you should be doing all of your endurance training under. And, um, and yeah, it's, it's great because it, I mean, the philosophy really taught me that like if we're giving 110% all the time, we don't have the capacity anymore. When things get hard to maintain that capacity, we're practicing willpower, not discipline, and willpower fades. Willpower only lasts as long as our force of will, and we're all human, so nobody is going to be able to maintain willpower for, not even David Goggins. But, uh, you know, we, we, but people can, um, you know, maintain discipline and with discipline with slowing down, um, then you can, you can continue to do that and, and I realized through that process that like, over time, that wow, with that amount of discipline, with giving 80%, I'm actually finding that I'm in flow.

[00:30:48] Adam Hill: My philosophy is that flow over fear is, I believe that, that the opposite of fear is not fearlessness. It's actually flow. Because when we are experiencing flow, when you think of a river, when you think of a, of, of a river that is full of obstacles, full of rocks, full of down trees, all these kinds of things, it's the rapids are strong.

[00:31:11] Adam Hill: It's, you know, it's, it's just, it's, it's a rough, rapid kind of thing. And when you remove those obstacles, it flows. Fear is our biggest obstacle to achieving things because it gets in the way of us continuing to do it. So when we can experience flow, when we can put ourselves in an environment of looking at fear as an ally, which is really, we can't get rid of it.

[00:31:34] Adam Hill: So how do we make friends with it? And when we can see it as, as an ally, when we can start to take the steps to, uh, uh, to dance with it instead of trying to push it away. We can find that flow and I like the idea of flow because flow is something that we can't always be experiencing at all times.

[00:31:54] Adam Hill: Right? It's, it's an event that isn't a constant, but it is something that we can, we can try to get ourselves into more often. We also realized that according to Stephen Kotler's work, he's, uh, the executive director of the Flow Research Collective. And, uh, Mihi, , Mihai, don't, don't ask me to spell that. Um, they, he was, he was one of the early researchers of Flow, uh, you know, found that there was there is that step that's prior to finding flow is struggle. You struggle before you find flow, meaning you have to like go through this struggle. And that struggle is where you experience the fears, the anxieties, the overwhelm and all this kind of stuff.

[00:32:33] Adam Hill: And if you take a step back and you relax into it and, and that's really the second phase of flow is you relax and you just kind of take that breath, go out for a walk or do what you need to do, then you come back to it and you can get yourself into flow and. My feeling on that, this is the second part of my 80% 5% rule, is the 5%, which is, you know, the 80% we just talked about, which is the amount of effort you wanna put in.

[00:32:58] Adam Hill: 5% is the amount past your comfort zone. You wanna continuously strive to push. Because a lot of those flow researchers find that when you're trying to get better at something, when you're trying to find that flow, the idea of of that sweet spot where the challenge and skills, uh, mixes is right on.

[00:33:16] Adam Hill: That's where you want to try to put yourself, and that's usually just 5% beyond your comfort zone. Not like a hundred percent, not a thousand percent, 

[00:33:24] Shanenn Bryant: Right. Don't go try, like shooting for the stars, trying to do something completely different than you know you've ever done before, or that you, um, feel comfortable doing.

[00:33:35] Adam Hill: Yeah. Yeah. And, and you just, you just want to take that, so for me, it was like I had to, I, I started doing a sport that I had to start, I had to learn to swim 2.4 miles in, uh, in the open ocean with hundreds of athletes kicking and punching each other. I didn't know how to swim. I, I mean, I played in pools and stuff like that, but I never swam the length of a pool.

[00:33:56] Adam Hill: So the first step, I had to take that 5% step. That first step, 5% beyond my comfort zone was just learning to float in a pool. That's what I did first. And then I graduated the next 5% and so on. So that, and that's how, that's, that's really how you do it. That's how you maintain the flow. That's how you grow.

[00:34:13] Adam Hill: That's how you, how you begin to achieve your dreams with discipline. 80%, 5% at a time.

[00:34:20] Shanenn Bryant: Okay, so you mentioned, Flow over Fear, which is the name of your podcast. So tell us a little bit about it.

[00:34:29] Adam Hill: So I, I started this podcast about a year and a half ago and, uh, or actually no, it's just only about a year ago now. So anyway, uh, but, um, But yeah, I interview, uh, high performing people, but I don't talk about how, you know, how they got there necessarily. I want to dig into the fear part of it and find out where they experienced fear, how they built a relationship with it and how they ultimately learn to achieve their true potential. This is the human side of high performance, and on this show, I talk to people that are just like any of us who have, who have gone through the same, very same human emotions as we all do that, uh, uh, that have gone on to just achieve some amazing things despite that who, who have been great contributors or having a unique perspective on fear, but, uh, ultimately that leads us to, to defining that. And, and I also do some solo cast episodes where I share some of my own frameworks, my own experiences and my own philosophies on how we can find high performance above and beyond the fear that we experience.

[00:35:31] Shanenn Bryant: Well, I know people will want to go check out that podcast, so make sure you, go subscribe to Adam's podcast, Flow Over Fear. I appreciate you being here on Top Self. Thank you so much, Adam. Yeah.

[00:35:46] Adam Hill: Thank you. This was a pleasure. Thank you, Shanenn.

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