Akshay Nanavati | How to Use Pain as a Tool for Transformation

Srini: Welcome back to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join.

Akshay Nanavati: Thank you brother. Thanks for having me, man.

Srini: It is my pleasure to have you back here. You have been up to all sorts of crazy shit that always makes me wonder you're gonna. And makes me worry that you're gonna die.

I just, for those of you who you know, don't know, actually, he came over to our house we watched this movie about Everest and everybody in the movie died and I was like, Actually, I'm never gonna climb Everest. That has never been on my bucket list. But now it's officially off the bucket list.

but before you know all that I wanted to start asking you religious or spiritual beliefs were you raised with and how did those end up impacting the choices that you've made with your life and your.

Akshay Nanavati: So I was raised in India. I'm originally from India. And I would say, my, my mom is a little bit more. Religious in the sense of practicing some of the Hindu rituals, but we were never very much devout in terms of those rituals. So very spiritual. My mom is more spiritual than religious like in the sense that yes, she does do some of those prayers, which I'm sure you're very familiar with.

The Indian holidays and all that as well, but much more spiritual than religious. If I had to strive myself to one label, the closest would be Buddhism for sure. In that, like I do not personally believe in a higher power God, I. That we all have an inter divinity like in Buddha, they say in Buddhism they say we have an inner Buddha that we can awaken within us.

That's my take on it. And the pursuits, I I push myself on that. I push my limits on. They are all a means to activate and awaken my inner buddhahood in one way of putting.

Srini: Yeah. So you mentioned you were raised in India like a until what age? What? Cuz obviously you don't have a bunch of an accident. Like what age did you come to States at?

Akshay Nanavati: I moved out of India at the age of eight, but I moved to Singapore for five years and then lived in Singapore. I moved to the US at 13. So actually when I first moved to the US I had a bit of a British accent. Cause I went to a British school in Singapore. So I but then I was like, because I moved around a lot, Like I lived in two different cities in India, Bombay, Banglore, s.

Austin, Texas when I moved here. So by the time I moved to the US I was, 13 years old. I'd lived in four different cities in three different countries, so I'd become very adaptable. It's still, to this day, one of my core strengths. And like any strength, there's a shadow to it, right? So the strength of adaptability comes with the shadow of impressionability, especially when you're young and you're not sure of who you are, which is what drove me into some dark paths when I first moved to the us.

But I moved here at.

Srini: Yeah. Okay you know the reason I ask that is I'm always curious one Forms of culture shock you experienced when you first got here to the United States? What did you notice that you thought was odd or unusual? then, from an educational standpoint, what did you see as the contrast between the way that you were educated in each of these different places?

Akshay Nanavati: Great question. I, the funny thing is back then, right there was no internet to, or not really an internet. When I moved to Singapore, we just started getting dial up. So you didn't really have a means to figure out what you're getting into. So I remember when I moved to the us, everybody in Singapore was like, You moved to, I was moving to Texas.

So the reputation of Texas, everybody's Dude, they're gonna hate you cuz you're brown. And people are gonna be running, riding around on horses and cowboy boots. I was super

nervous I thought

they're all gonna be like, Yeah, I thought it's gonna be this. Like people are just gonna hate me cuz I'm this little brown kid and I had no idea what to expect.

And as Austin is a very different vibe than the rest of Texas.

Srini: Austin has a massive Indian population too.

Akshay Nanavati: Ex the exactly there, So it was a, it was, I had no kind of expectations. A little nervous, of course, every move I was a little nervous cuz I had no idea what to expect. And every time you're starting a fresh building, building friends and all that kind of thing.

But having moved to three different places already I made friends pretty quickly. I adapted pretty quickly. I found, my, my tribe in a way. And again, not in the sense of with any sense of certainty of who I wanted to be and what my path was. Many young kids don't know, some do.

But I, so yeah I came here with zero expectations that I don't know what to expect. And as far as the education, like one thing in the US even now to this day, I noticed versus India. In India, as I'm sure you can relate to too, it's very rote memory learning, right? You just have to memorize stuff in the US for all its fault in its education system, which there are many of.

But it teaches you how to think a little bit more. Not that by any means was I a star student in when my younger days when I did move to Austin, soon after moving here, I got very heavily into drugs and alcohol. So by no means was I a star student, but It did teach you a little bit more how to think as opposed to just what to think if that makes.

Srini: Yeah. It's funny because I, this is, something that has just become very apparent to me. funny that you say that because I think that is actually lacking in our education system to a large degree, even in the United States, cuz. You have this experience where, you can get through high school, and get straight A's.

My roommate, Matt would be like, Oh, you're straight A student in high school. It's Yeah, of course I wasn't Indian. My parents would've disowned

me if I didn't

get straight school. I said, Matt, getting straight A's in high school doesn't mean you're smart. It means you're discipline more.

I can get straight A's in high school. and the thing that I wonder about, it comes to that. A couple things. I definitely want to get into sort of, how this whole drug and alcohol thing started, but for your parents, what was the just general narrative around your household about the role and importance of education in, both your life and your career?

Akshay Nanavati: To your point, being Indian parents, it was everything, right? Like they put me in the best schools. My dad was rising up. Now he's, they've done very well and he's very successful. But at the time, lower middle class kind of thing, we were just rising up the ranks in his career and did everything they could to put me in the best schools.

Education was vital. And despite my, despite being a fuck up with drugs and this, that thing I did what I had to do to be a b plus to a minus student, right? I, to your point, it wasn't that hard to make that happen because in, in especially Indian parents, that was like the thing that was the most prized was your education.

Now my mom was a little more in athletics as well, so in Singapore we did get into I was into running ESP even in Bangalore when I, when, you know, before, when I was eight years old

into

fitness as well. My mom was a basketball coach in the school, so education was highly prized and they did everything they Put me in the best possible school like you. I went to Westlake High School in Austin, which is, from what I understand still one of the best, considered one of the best schools. And as it happens also one of the higher drug problems, . But but so yeah, it was everything for them, to make sure I get the good education.

Srini: . now you know, you, I think, let's talk about the drugs and alcohol. How in the world did that start? Because, especially in an Indian family that's just, one of those things where it is so frowned up on, it's wait, what? My parents would've lost their shit.

If they found out, even though I think I tried weed in high school for the first time I even got my parents stone once. That didn't go well.

That's a, we will save that story for another.

Akshay Nanavati: Getting into it, when I moved here, I moved at the age of 13 and soon after, like around 15 or 16, I think when I first started, I, again, as I said, I was like very adaptable and very impressionable. So I don't blame anybody else. Like I take responsibility for my behavior, but as a young child, I didn't know what I wanted.

So like I always, my parents have asked me to this day, what could they have done differently? I had great parents, didn't have a traumatized child or anything like that. Like my parents were outstanding. Parents couldn't have asked for a better life. Like I said, they put me the best schools, they wanted the best for.

But I got into a group of friends where that was the path we were going. Had I gotten into a group of friends where, let's say they were mountain climbers or rock climbers, I would've gotten into that early and I would've gone a ham into that. Like I was to this day, the same person in some ways that I was looking to push the line and the line that I was pushing was in the arena of drugs.

For example, like me and one of my friends, we were the first two to grow, start going from alcohol and marijuana to harder. That guy ended up ing on heroin and died, and that would've very easily been me cuz I was the one kept wanting to push the line and drugs was just the arena that I was playing in.

So it was To your point about the parents freaking out. I got caught smoking weed in school and for my parents, especially Indian parents, marijuana, might as well have been heroin, right? Like drugs were drugs. It was all the same umbrella. There was no distinction between the differences and they didn't know anything about the distinction between weed and any other drug, right?

It was just a drug. So they flipped out, understandably, , and I, back then I was lying about everything. So now they all know the truth. But I lied about what I was doing, how much I was doing drugs. They never really found out till many years. When I told him the truth, cause it didn't matter anymore, but it was it was just, I think that I got into a group of friends where this was my avenue to explore my edges and that's what I was doing.

And like I said, I could have, it could have ended very badly. I mean it, a lot of dumb shit in that day. That should have killed me and possibly could have heard a lot of other people. And thankfully, I don't know by what miracle it did not, and so like the only reason I got out and didn't go down that same road that two of my friends, like one, one guy mentioned another friend OD'ed as well.

He, the two, two friends died, was that I saw the movie Black Hawk Down and that movie was the trigger that changed my life forever.

Srini: Yeah. It's funny because I, we'll talk about the fact that you chose to go military, which is so unusual for Indians. I think it's

just the, this, ability to push the line and, push limits of what you're capable of. It just reminds me of a conversation I had with Matt and Tim.

And we're talking about exp, exploration, experimentation and, I still remember to this day, I was having this conversation with them and. I was, we're talking about limits. And I was like, I have limits. They're like, Yeah, we've never seen them . I wonder where does that come from? Like that sort of desire to push limits? Is that inherent, is that something that you think has just evolved over time or grown over time? Because every time you come, and tell us about your next thing. I was like, Yeah, outta your fucking mind.

like, here's my friend. Actually, he's out of his mind, but I.

Akshay Nanavati: Yeah. I think there's, it's a bit of the nature nurture thing, right? Like to some degree when I look back on my life, cuz I've thought about this a lot, my parents have thought about it. Cuz they're worried about the things they do today. And we always wonder where it came from. Like when I look back, even when I was a kid in Bangalore and we play rugby.

And I would get cut up and I loved my scars. Like my scars were these battle scars that I had earned. When I'd got cut playing rugby beyond dirt and rocky grounds, and so there was some part of me that I think always loved that. Even in Singapore, I remember running barefoot on rocks just to see if I could just to build that strength just to test.

And I just, I think I didn't know. Cause I guess, and again, I don't blame circumstances at all. I take responsibility. But at the time, looking back as a child, you don't, I, I didn't have the level awareness. I do. I didn't have an avenue to channel that in a positive way. I didn't have, I didn't know where I wanted to go with that.

So I was just bouncing around, testing myself in all kinds of different ways. Like I said, from getting cut up in rugby playing, I was I was in a hundred meters, I was really fast running a hundred meters when I was a kid in India, running in rocks in Singapore. And so just looking to push myself and then moving Austin, it became the drugs.

So I think to a certain degree, there must have been something about me. Was striving for this. Even at a young age, my, I don't remember this, but my parents have told me when I was a kid, like I would like my, in, in India, you know how it is. Sometimes you have people who like work in your house and stuff.

So we'd go to, some family member's house and they'd be somebody working there and my cousins or whatever would, instead of tying their own shoelaces, they would have somebody else do it. Mom, can you do it? I would always be like, even if it take me like 10, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, I'll be like, I'll do it myself.

That's what I've been told. I don't remember these stories, but my mom told me this, so I think some part of me was, Nature, it was innate, but I think life experience over, over the years has taught me that this is, this, like continuing to push that edge is where I find the most peace, where I find the most fulfillment.

It's what brings bliss and the amplification of life experience. The intensity of this human, human experie. To its highest when you're pushing that edge. And so certain degree it was, part of me. And then as I kept pushing, I realized that there's nowhere else I'd rather be than playing on those edges because that's where you really find out what it means to be alive.

Srini: Yeah, we'll come back to that when we start getting into, all the bat shit, crazy things that

you do For with your time, but talk to me about your experience in the military, particularly as an Indian American in the military. I feel like I've talked to maybe two people who are Indian.

I think it was Kamal, Robbie Comp was the other. What is it like to be an Indian person in the military? Is it any different than its for anybody else? You just are people like, what the hell you're doing here? And then, what is the perception that you get from the community?

You?

Akshay Nanavati: I never experienced, any sort of racism at all. Not even one bit. It was jokingly, like we in the military, we joke on every stereotype of every culture. We play on that all the time. So like in bootcamp, I was called a Hodge. In Iraq they had a, there's a, when we found IEDs and wires, they.

Dude, not a body. Get a picture of you pretending to make an id cuz I was the terrorist. So all that kind of stuff was was a part of it, but it was never like

,

serious. We did that to everybody. It was just part of the beauty of being in the military and embracing the differences to, to find our similarities through that.

So it was never race. In fact, it was actually a badge of honor in many ways and many, In the military and outside. Praise me. I remember in bootcamp. In bootcamp, it's very rare to get a compliment. Bootcamp is like the initiation, right? Like you just suffer and they just treat you like shit.

You're not even a human being. But I remember once in bootcamp, a senior drill instructor from another platoon. Actually complimented me. He was like, most, and I'm not trying to talk shit about anybody else, but this was just what he said. He was like, Most people don't even, mostly Americans aren't serving in their own country.

This was post nine 11. So it was almost certain I would go to war and inevitably I did. And he was like, Here you are, you're not, I wasn't even a US citizen at the time. I was a green card holder, so I wasn't even a fully American. And they were like, Here you are not even American, fighting for the country when many Americans don't.

So it was actually. Praised as a badge of honor. At the same time in bootcamp, they also talked a lot of shit. One day I was just standing around, literally not doing a damn thing wrong, and the drill instructor comes up and be like, Oh, you're you're one of those rich ass Indians, right? I'm like And he's Yeah, let me show you what you do to you.

And it was not like genuinely racism was just one more excuse to fuck you up because that's what they did it. They did that all the time for whatever bullshit reason they could find. And that's part of the beauty that is bootcamp. But more, most, mostly it was. Actually lauded as a as, as a sign of honor that here I was not even American choosing to serve in the US military, knowing that you would go to war and I was infantry, so I chose to be Marine Corps infantry, which was, you're going on the front line.

Srini: Yeah. Okay, so to me about what it's like to be on the front lines in terms of, what we see through the video versus what you experience as reality and the between the two. What do we not see? Because think there's often this perception for, people like me and a lot of other people who tend to pre.

On the liberal side, it's just like, why do we spend so much damn money? Defen, on, on defense. And I remember asking a high ranking military official. This I, I got to go speak to some retired special forces guys. He was like, Look, you gotta realize, he was like, military is just following orders of politicians.

everything we do is for political risk or political game. But for you, as somebody on the front lines, what do you think the media doesn't portray about the reality of what you guys experience when you're.

Akshay Nanavati: I think we don't, we often don't tell, like in the war, in Iraq especially, Yes, we shouldn't have gone. And I was, it was a history major in undergrad, so I wrote a thesis on the war, studied it, and lived it. Of course, yes, we shouldn't have gone and there were a lot of lies that went in, but on the ground when we were there, we were genuinely trying to go do good for those people.

And they had been through hell most than most of us, more than most of us can fathom. And what we didn't see was all the good that was happening. We all know about the Abu Graves and the horrors that. That happened in war, but like I remember we opened a train station for the first time in four years.

There was no media for that. You don't see like I remember there was an incident, I think it was either when I was there when I came back where somebody had shot somebody on post and the media made the big thing about it. I think it was like some government person from Italy or something that got shot and they were like, these marines are shooting person people on post.

It's horrific. And I was like, Dude, none. Nobody has any idea what it's like to be on a post. Every single vehicle, every single person that comes through could be the person that kills you and your buddies, and the nature of counter uncertainty war is so challenging in that you just never know. No. Like most of us did not want to kill an innocent human being.

Nobody wants to do that. But you're in a place where imagine just walking around a town, like walking around Austin and you don't know if that person next to you is just a normal person living their life, or the person who wants to kill you. Like for example, with women, like women would wear the buras, right?

And we wouldn't, out of obviously respect, we wouldn't physically search them, but men, sometimes we would physically pat down to make sure there's no sort of vest or anything. So what the insert started doing, They would the males in inserts would wear the, would wear the beca and have a suicide vest, and you'd just never know.

So when you see a woman, we would look at their feet to see, do they have manly looking feet? So here you are walking and around a town with 99.99% of people here, just normal people trying to live their lives, take care of their family is just doing and what the rest of the world wants, what we all want.

But you never know who that one person is that could kill you and your buddies and the nature of that. It's demanding, to say the least. It's arduous. It's highly stressful. We had many instances where I could have pulled a, pulled a trigger and it would've been legally justified to ju it would've been justified to do so legally as well as in the nature of that scenario.

But I didn't and thankfully I didn't, we didn't kill an innocent, innocent and innocent person. But let's say I made the wrong call and that person killed me and my. That's a, that's something I would've to live with, right? So I don't think they, that it doesn't, you don't, not only do you not see the good side of what we were doing out there, but nobody can really fathom the challenges of what counter insurance warfare really is for those on the ground and how demanding it is.

So we only see, oh, here's somebody that fucked up and look, I'm not justifying the atrocities for, they're horrific and no doubt that shit should not happen. But you don't really understand when a person shoots somebody on post what that person was going through. And I don't. We do a good enough job of like really stepping into the shoes.

Like I had a g, I had a ju, I had a couple of junior Marines who killed himself when they came back from the war, man. And shit breaks my heart. I was on the verge of suicide myself, and there's a lot of things that happen out there that stay with you, and I don't think we. talk about when in, in terms of the experience of war, like how demanding it really is.

We break it down into the simplest nature. Oh, we just did this bad shit like Abu rape, but there was a lot of good shit and there's a lot of complexities to counter terms warfare that you can't really fathom and understand.

Srini: Yeah talk to me about this whole idea of coming back, being on the verge of suicide, because I imagine the level of PTSD that comes from seeing just the kinds of atrocities that most of us will never witness up front must be significant.

Akshay Nanavati: When I I didn't I to be first. I didn't go into the the the hardcore, like I wasn't in the crazy shit all the time. We had rounds go off all the time. We, but I wasn't in the thick of firefights regularly because when I went to war, our biggest threat was IEDs.

We did have a vehicle in our company got hit an ied. My vehicle actually drove over an I active ied and for some god knows what reason it didn't explode. And we had pop shots go off around us all the time, like they shot a rocket across our base. So little things like that were happening, but we weren't in the thick of like firefights on a regular basis.

Cuz by the time. By the time I went in 2007, the like the insurances knew that if they fuck with us, where like Marines are not only insane, but our fire power is vastly superior. So that's why IEDs were our biggest threat. So point is to say, yeah, we saw some fucked up shit. Like it was a guy who got shot right across our base.

But I came back almost feeling guilty that not almost for sure, feeling guilty that I hadn't suffered enough. I hadn't experienced war in the way that I. Wanted to like. And again, a lot of this was very naive at the time. Like when you see a war movie, when you see Saving Private Ryan, when you see Black Hawk Down, which was the movie that got me in, I didn't go through a lot of that shit.

And to this day, there's like a part of me that feels like I didn't suffer enough to earn my place on this planet. So a big part of struggling was with that too. Just the guilt of not having done enough. The guilt of, I lost a friend in the war and I felt guilty that why do I get to come back alive?

Why do I didn't get shot? I didn't lose any limb. , I didn't, I wasn't certainly no hero or anything like that. I didn't do shit out there to earn my place to to justify my existence. So it was a lot of that guilt. And yes, you do struggle with the things of like loud noises. I was definitely a lot more hypervigilant because you're spending, again, seven months in a counter uncertainty warfare, right?

Like loud noises could mean death, crowds could mean death. So I was very hypervigilant of crowds very hypervigilant of loud noises, very jumpy, all those kind of things. But I think the biggest thing was just guilt. Guilt that I came back alive, guilt that I didn't suffer enough. And so when I came back, I wanted to go back to war.

I kept volunteering to go back every chance I could. I was like, Send me to Afghanistan, send me to Iraq. And then when I, when wars were dying down, cuz 2008 the wars were dying down, I went to go get my master's in journalism cuz I wanted to go back to war as a combat journalist. So I, in my mind, I needed to go back into hell to justify my place on this.

Srini: So how did you get out of the darker parts of this? Because as far as I'm concerned, you're pretty much going through hell to justify your place on a planet every time you tell me about one of your adventures. So online, that all sounds pretty hellish to me, but talk to me about how you got to the darker parts and then we'll start talking about your most recent crazy idea, which was across Antarctica.

Akshay Nanavati: Yeah, like I do. I. Continue to venture into hell, but with a very different level of consciousness than I did back then. So as far as how I got in, got over it, it's some, some things in life like the losing people you love losing a buddy in war, losing a brother in war, and a lot of the horrors that human beings.

experience. The darkest of human, the human condition. I don't believe you truly get over. You just learn to work with it and learn to use it. When I came back from the war and I didn't get my chance to go back to war, went to journalism school, didn't get a chance, but then I, that path changed because I met the woman who's now my ex-wife, but met my wife at the time and And so that path changed in terms of going to war, but I was now seeking hell in other contexts.

So I went to do a one month ski crossing of Greenland, dragging 190 pound sled for 350 miles in temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees, like brutal conditions. The following year after my crossing, a British Explorer was killed on there in the storms, the kind of storms we experienced. So you go back into different kind of hell, but I wanted to play on those edges cuz I found a strange kind of piece by being in war.

There is a very strange kind of piece you find in war. I, all of this hit, eventually hit a breaking point where, I was at a point dude drinking like a bottle of vodka a day I would drink until I threw. Pick up the bottle right after throwing up, pick up the bottle and drink again, then I would pass out.

As soon as I woke up, I would drive straight to the liquor store to pick up another bottle. Cause I couldn't face the chaos of my consciousness. And this would go on for days on end. And one morning after five days of this, I woke up and was, I just couldn't take it And I remember standing there looking at a knife about to pick up the knife and slip my own wrist.

And just the fact that thought even entered my head was, it was jarring to say the least. And so that was the rock bottom where I started to climb out of the abyss. But what, how I got out of it was recognizing that, look, this, some of this shit, the goal here is not to make it go away, not to recognize that it's not, You don't See, when I came back, like I was labeled with ptsd, I was diagnosed with ptsd, post traumatic stress disorder.

But the fact of the matter is I had symptoms of post-traumatic stress, but post-traumatic stress is not indicative of posttraumatic stress disorder. Those are two different things. Like I was jumpy with loud noises. I struggled with survivor's guilt. I didn't like, Those were normal human responses to war.

My brain spent seven months in an environment where loud noises could equal death. Inevitably, I was more hypervigilant. It's not a disorder. It's posttraumatic stress. But if you accept it for what it is and choose to use it, instead of identifying with it as a disorder, you can turn that posttraumatic stress into posttraumatic growth.

For example, with my survivor's guilt, for a long time, what I did was I put a picture of my friend that I lost in the war up on my wall, and it said, This should have been, you earned this. And to honor my friend, to honor this life that I've been gifted. As I said, my vehicle drove over an active bomb.

I don't know why the hell my, that IED didn't explode. Why do I get to live? I didn't have the answers to those questions, but I think what. What one, what helped was turning that darkness into fuel. Like using my guilt to honor his life to honor this life that I've been gifted, to honor the privilege of still being alive and not wasted being a fuck up, drinking alcohol, drinking bottles of vodka a day was one part of it.

And the second part of it was finally I spent set what really helped was when I did a seven day darkness retreat where I went into seven days of complete darkness silence. And I. Can't see your hand in front of you. Darkness. And a lot of shit came up in there when I was in the darkness about the guilt and constantly feeling guilty about this life that I get to live.

Dude, I, like I said, I've born to great parents. I remember I, right before going to the Darkness, I did this 167 mile run across Liberia, talking about more the crazy shit that I've done. It was about a marathon a day for a week. We were raising funds to build a school out there, and the first day of the run, these two kids started running beside me and one. Blessing and Emanuel were the names. One kid wanted to go to med school, the other wanted to go to vocational training school, and they were living in a tiny village in Liberia. One of the kids lost his his mother in the war. His father left. He was staying with the other one in a village, and the odds of them actually getting what they wanted were damn near zero.

And the only difference in

,

me, in that kid was I was born where I was born to good parents in India. As a result, I automatically had a million times more opportunities than they did. I didn't do shit to fucking earn that. So I, in the darkness I just, As simple as it may sound, but as profound as it was for me was, look, I will never know the answers to that question.

Like I was the kind of person when bad things happen. Sometimes people, when bad things happen, we go, Why me? I was the kind of person when good things happen, I would go, Why me? Like why do I get that? And so I just realized that look, there is so much beyond my understanding. Call it. I don't know what it is, God, the divine experience, like why things happen the way they do.

Maybe it's just coincidence. Maybe it's God, I have no idea. That I really stopped asking that question of why me, of why do I get this? What have I done to deserve it? And really just let me just honor this life that I've been gifted and make the most of it, and do something meaningful with it to be of service to humanity and to my human family, and there's still stuff I wrestle with that it still shows up. I still believe I have to earn my life, but I don't view it as something negative. I believe that I have to earn, the life that I've been gifted, it's now a responsibility to. And the crucible of suffering that I seek is in my mind, one vehicle to earn it, but now it's in a very healthy way versus what it was, which was just running away from my demons.

Now I've brought those demons to the surface and I work with them. I align with them. They haven't gone away. They've just become part of.

Srini: . I think that there's one other thing that really strikes me about this is that I always feel like some sort of for people who make a change that they want to make. And it's always some sort of crisis, whether it be a crisis of identity, a crisis of health, a of, spirituality.

A crisis of just living life. Do you think it is that people. Who don't have crisis gets so stuck in their comfort zones without wanting to change. And this is something with so many people, it's Okay, can you bring about the change without the crisis? And so often it just seems so until you have this wake up call that comes from something either traumatic, something crazy.

do you think that is?

Akshay Nanavati: Pain is the greatest driver of change. It is the most profound, most valuable, most effective driver of change. But to your point, some people will get very comfortable in, even in a kind of discomfort, right? People will stay in abusive relationships. They'll stay drinking, they'll stay in their own darkness, in their own hell, because it's like that saying says like the devil you know is greater than the devil.

You don't, So I'll stay in this version of hell because I don't know what's out there. The unknown is so much more scary until this hell becomes so hellish that I will do something differently. So it's like a kid putting his e evolution, speaking, right? If I'd. I, if I avoid the sunset, the beautiful sunset.

If I don't look at it no big deal I'll live I'll, I'll still survive. I'll be there the next day. But if I don't pay attention to that tiger, the SAB two tiger around the corner, I'm dead. So we're wired to pay more attention to danger. We're wired to pay more attention to pain. It was just like, again, like I was saying, like a kid putting his hand on a hot stove that's immediately going to drive it off.

Pain is going to create an instinctual change. And so I think that's why we need to leverage. That's why you want to look at pain as a valuable tool, not as an enemy. Like the whole essence of what I do with fear of Anna and the ethos of my entire work is combating the very demonization of fear, stress, anxiety, pain, suffering, adversity, all these words that have a very negative relationship.

But I believe you want to go into the place of pain and use it as a vehicle for change. So if nothing's not, How can I amplify the pain of this thing? And you can do that. Cuz everything we view in life is a construct on how we relate to our experience of reality. So we can create any kind of construct, right?

Like we can create our own reality through our own lens. So if something isn't working, I would want to amplify that pain in order to use it. That's why I believe, that's why I said earlier about the crucible of suffering. Like suffering is the vehicle to attain the next awakening because it's in that crucible that you go into places you've never been.

So you want to use pain as a tool, not run away from it like when you're in pain. Good. Go deeper into it. I'll give you an example. I was working with somebody who had gone through some very horrific childhood trauma and she, we were talking and just like caveat before I go here because it's gonna sound fucked up.

Like she was ready to go to those places, would been working together for a while. I like, she was ready to go where, I'm about to tell you where she went and we were talking about this stuff and I asked her, I. , What if you deserved what you went through? And she literally goes, Whoa. And now who?

What kind of normal person would tell somebody you deserve this horrific child of trauma you went through. And the thing is, I like, I asked her, as we were continuing the conversation, I asked her, Does some party you feel like you deserve it? She goes, Yes. Does some party, you feel guilty for it?

And I said, She said, yes. I said, Good. Then go there. Everybody else will tell you, you didn't deserve it. You shouldn't feel guilty. Like people told me you shouldn't feel guilty. And I get it. You can't control what happens in war. Bullets fly where they fly, but the fact is that darkness exists. So instead of avoiding it, go into the pain ca go into the darkness.

She That night, this friend of mine texted me saying, literally, fuck you. Aha. Because it, she went into some pretty dark spaces. I told her if you feel that, go there, What does it mean about you? What does it mean about God? What does it mean about humanity? What does it mean about life?

Go into those spaces. Sit with it. Be with it, And then see what you find in that ca in that cave, in that hell. And the next day, she shared with her husband for the first time. She hadn't shared, I think she'd been married like 20 years or something. Never shared it with him. Never shared it with anybody.

I don't even know the details of what happened. I can obviously guess to some degree, but I don't know. And I told her, It doesn't matter. You don't have to share it with me. But the fact is you have to go into hell to come out on the other side. So when you're inhale, go deeper into it and use that pain as a vehicle for change.

Because it's through suffering. You find transcendence. It's through suffering. You find the next awakening. And that's why I continue to play on those playgrounds because it's the only place where you will you have to battle the dragon to find the treasure. And the greater the dragon, the greater the treasure on the other side of it.

So use it.

Srini: I think that makes a perfect segue talking about, your crazy, insane death defying expeditions, every time I hear about them like, that sounds fucking I'm you ever. Because I think that, I wanted, I told you I wanted to come back to something, that we would come back to, and there was this idea that you mentioned, this is where you find your bliss.

And it's interesting because I think. an odd paradox where the same place that you suffer so much the same place that you find your bliss. So just to give people some context, talk to us about the, tell them about the most recent expedition, the one that you were on before I last saw you.

And then we'll get into kind of the really important lessons. Cause like I said, that was what struck me most when we had that conversation. Just, on FaceTime a few months back.

Akshay Nanavati: Yeah.

The recent one that actually I've done a bunch this year as well. I went back into the darkness for 10 days. I did 10 days in silent in darkness and

Srini: I heard about that too. Another yet another thing that sounded fucking

Akshay Nanavati: Yeah, exactly. Amazing. Complete darkness. That was the second time I went in the darkness with the one last year, I think the one you're referring to, cuz I've been doing a lot of crazy shit. But the one last year was I went to Antarctica, became one of only 26 human beings to ski up a very remote and isolated glacier and Antarctica.

And Antarctica is one of the most savage, unforgiving in hostile environments in the planet. I lost a finger to frostbite. I got frostbite out there, lost the tip of one of my fingers. And now , obviously I'm going back, but I was supposed to ski from the raw size shelf up the axle hybrid glacier to the South Pole.

We got up the glacier and and then that's when I got frostbite. So I didn't make it to the South Pole, but I did get to experience the beauty in brutality of Antarctica. Speaking of the paradox of how they coexist is one, which nature is like the beautiful playground for that. But I also did Denali.

I attempted to climb Denali before, right before. That was the highest mountain in North America. We got to the high camp, but got turned around by savage storms, which I mean, we saw like a guy fell a thousand feet on, on the mountain, and we saw him being evacuated out there as well, Somehow survived the fall.

I don't know what happened to him long term, but point is to say I was doing a few expeditions last year. Antarctica was the last of which, and I'm supposed to do many more this year, but it all got nicked because of the frost bite. So the big one that I did la the most recent, the big, most recent big one.

The trip to Antarctica climbing that glacier.

Srini: Yeah.

Let's talk about that. I think there was some really interesting things that struck me about that experience and I, when you came back, I remember writing this down. But there's one other thing I wanna talk about first. So Annie Duke wrote a new book called Quit the Power of Knowing When to Walk Away.

And I think the Frostbite is such a great example of that. By the time people are listening to this, they'll have heard our conversation with Annie where she talks about, the guys who climb Everest. And often, people. Go far past when they should. They actually don't turn around when they should.

But you had the foresight to, to actually say, okay, you know what, like the frostbite, I'm sure you probably wanted to continue, you were smart enough to say, Okay, you know what the whole point of this isn't to, get there without coming back. You want to return safely, obviously, all of us want you to return safely, but, so that's one thing.

So talk about like the times like knowing when to quit I think is probably a very important skill in

in something this

Akshay Nanavati: It's a, and it's a hard thing, right? To your point about the Everest guys, like there's a lot of people who if you, let's say you, you should turn around at 2:00 PM and you don't, and you make it to summon back, Now you're a hero. But if you don't and then you die then it's a very hard call to make for me, with the frostbite.

Like the way I think about decisions like that is you gotta look at, you gotta bring it back to your core values, your driving philosophy, what, who you are. For me, why I had to quit on the frostbite. I was a burden to the team. Now, like the, as soon as I got frostbite, the team was doing everything for me.

I couldn't my hands were bandaged. I couldn't help set up the tent anymore. I couldn't do a lot of the shit in the stove. I would've, I was a burden to the team. And that to me was unacceptable. You cannot be a burden to the team, right? I would've put, I would've compromised their expedition. And that's not even an option.

But for example, I've already thought about this. When I go back to Antarctica solo, if it comes down to it and I have to like, like I don't want this to happen. If I have to lose a few fingers to complete the expedition, I am absolutely willing to make that sacrifice. Like again, I hope it doesn't come down to it but, so you have to know where your line of risk is and each person makes that call.

There's, rock climbers who free solo at mounts. I used to free climb rock walls. It's like free soloing is climbing rock with no rope. Now I don't do that anymore because that line of risk is way too high for me. But people like Alex h. And and the guy who made the Alpinist documentary, ah, I forget his name, but he was free soiling up ice, and he died at the age of 25.

And the, I'm the one to judge that the guy lived his life and he it's not, he was unaware of that risk, right? So we each have to determine where that line of risk is for us and make that call. And it's not easy to do, but that's why when you come back, especially in those hard moments, when you're, let's say like I've climbed a mountain in Nepal where we were, a hundred, 200 meters from the summit, very close to the summit, and we turned.

That was a hard call to make, but we saw like avalanches happening around us with soft snow, like prime avalanche conditions in, and it was heading to afternoon where you just don't wanna be on the mountain. We were so close to the summit and maybe I could have gone to the summit and made it back and everything would've been okay.

I don't know, that could have happened, but we made the call and I have absolutely no regrets. Same thing in Denali, potentially we could have gone up in, in horrible storms and made it and everything was. But I have no regrets. And none of the team we was with the team. I wasn't so on that mountain.

None of us have any regrets about that call. It was, in our opinion, the right call. And and you have to you gotta know where that line is and because look, if you died, there's no more going out there, so if you come back, the mountain will be there another day to fight for. Like for me, I'm willing to lose more fingers if it, again, I hope it doesn't count to, if it comes down to it to make the to complete my next expedition.

But if it was like on the cusp of. I will be willing to retreat and come back to fight another day, but I don't like, It's also a fine line what the cusp of death even means, right? Cuz the depth of exhaustion I will go to on these next trips and planning is gonna be a deeper, darker hell than I've ever been before.

And I'm ready for it. I know it's coming. And I don't know whether I'll like, I don't know. You won't really know. Sometimes it'll feel like you want to die. . I've had long ultra runs where I've done like a long cuz I've done a 24 hour run. I've done 80 mile run, 72 mile multiple ultra marathons. And I remember one ultra marathon run, I was in so much pain that I was like, if a, if I actually just hit, if I move in front of this car cuz I was running on the side of the road.

If I move in front this car right now and a car hits me, I don't have to run anymore. That's where my mind went , let me just get hit by a car, but enough to not kill, not die, but just take me out. And obviously I didn't do that, but like I was literally thinking that, ,

Srini: for sure

Akshay Nanavati: playing some dangerous games

,

and you gotta determine where that line of risk is you.

Srini: Yeah so what's interesting to me is that, this is a really perfect example of a cognitive bias, cost bias that will often cause people to persist at something when they should quit. But the thing is that you are in an environment where that, the reality of, continuing is so amplified.

So when you know the consequences of your decision, Aren't so severe. How do you counteract that bias? How do you, like, how would you translate that to real life? I give you, just a stupid example. It's okay, hey we're, working on this product launch, clearly it's not gonna be a success, the thing is the consequences are nowhere as near as severe the ones you have there.

So how do you that to sort of day to day life?

Akshay Nanavati: Yeah.

it's definitely a definitely different environment. I think it still comes back to looking at and this is the, you need a very high level of self-awareness. Am I quitting because it's too hard? Am I quitting because, This is just not the path. And that requires a very high degree of self awareness to know that, like I always come back to, okay, what are my core values?

What are my, like I have crystal clarity on what are my values? What's my philosophy? What's my mission? Is this an alignment with that? Do I need to if to me it's okay, this is the dream and you will evolve as Okay, this is my path, right? So now I know for example, this is what I'm striving for.

This is who I want to be. I didn't always know this, but now I know with absolute certainty, and in this point of my life, I don't change the dream, I just change the plan to get there. So if this plan isn't working, like the plan has had to be adapted multiple times for what I'm working towards. Because, I got frostbite, covid happened, all these things happened, right?

Like the plan changed and I couldn't do certain things beyond my control. So I had to adapt and move. But the dream stays the same. So now if you're, let's say early on in your sort of evolution where you don't know, this is your path. Then you have to experiment and come into this life with come into the journey with a little bit more of an experimentation mentality.

Let's say I'm a 20 year old kid and I don't know, this is exactly what I wanna do. I'm gonna step into the arena, right? Let me play a little bit. And you don't, and you gotta, you, you gotta, you have to establish the rule. I'm not just gonna quit when it gets hard, cuz everything's gonna get hard. This shit's hard.

Okay, I'm moving through the suffering. I'm pushing through this. Is this really what I want? Is this really what my path is? Like I at one point wanted to go career in the. That path changed. I have no regrets about it. That was my, It was a beautiful life experience. So it requires an extremely high level of self awareness to know, is this really my path?

And if this is my path and I know absolute certainty, then I don't change the dream. I just change the plan and I fight like fucking hell to get there, right? Whatever the thing is, I'll just keep adapting, I'll tweaking. Iteration is constant. You look at, okay, this thing didn't work. Let me iterate.

Like all growth happens in only two ways. Find what's working and do more. If it find the problem, fix the. That's it. So if you know this is the dream, find the problem, fix the problem, and be very systematic about it. Find what's working and keep doing more of it and scale it. If you don't know, this is the dream and you're still figuring.

Then you gotta play and you gotta keep stepping back. Like one of my mantras is stretch and reflect. So play on the edge, stretch, come back and reflect. Like I used to be a guy that would just jump from hard thing to hard thing to hard thing without pausing to reflect. That was a huge mistake.

Now I come back to reflect, Okay, what did I learn? What's the value? Is this who I really want to be? Okay, yeah. I'm really digging this. Let me keep pushing the. Okay. Yeah. I'm digging this. Let me keep going. Let me keep going until I figure out this is who I want to be like. Now I know with absolute certainty, this is my bliss, right?

In the words of sort of Joseph Campbell, Follow Your Bliss. My bliss is adventuring even more so than entrepreneurship. I'm an entrepreneur and author, second, like adventurer first, and that's come over time to discover that. But as you're in the discovery phase, you're gonna have to do a lot of stretching and reflecting, and you need to do both.

Push the edge, come.

Srini: Yeah. I think what prompted me to want to have a conversation with you again was the part of the conversation you and I were talking about, where we were talking about delayed and long term consequences of your habits, and how your consequences are so immediate in a harsher environment.

So talk to me about that. Cause I think that's so to people who are so unaware of Because like you said, was thinking about it. Cause I remember writing about that. I was like, yeah you scroll through Facebook all day, you don't really notice the consequences of that immediately.

It's oh, I just wasted, 20 fucking hours that I could have spent doing something far more with wild of my life. And you don't see that consequence until a year, a year down the road. You're like, Damn, what did I, what could I have done instead with that time? But, So talk to me about this idea of immediate and delayed consequences

Akshay Nanavati: Sure. Yeah. So like in the playgrounds, I play in like in Antarctica and mountains, if you mess up, if and I, I've made my fair share of mistakes on the edge as well. The you feel the mistake, if that instantly, like psychologists call it immediate return environment versus a delayed return environment.

So even in Antarctica, like you're in a stressor, as soon as the stressor is gone, you're instantly relieved from it. Whereas in the quote unquote normal world, I could work my ass off for, let's say a, a business launch that I'm doing and I still have no idea how it's gonna play out. The stressors are, Constant the results are more delayed.

I don't know. I could work my ass off to get this good grade and still not know whether I'm gonna get into this college or not. So what I learned, and this has been in invaluable learning for me. , I realized how effect it is when the consequence I is immediate. If I don't set up this tent correctly, if I put one peg wrong, that tent could blow off.

That's going to be a very severe problem that could kill me. So I was like, all right, this is an immediate consequences, an immediate return. How can I bring this back into the real world? And it's as simple as yes. Okay. To your point, if I spend all day on Facebook, I'm not going to die, right?

Like the way I can if I make a mistake on in, in Antarctica or on the mountains, but I have to frame it in my mind as an immediate. Consequence as an immediate return. And that's simply reframing your mental reality because the let's go meta on this for a second. Like, when you engage with reality, you're not engaging with reality as it is, right?

You're engaging with your belief systems, your lens, your perspective on reality. Like a good analogy is if I'm wearing red glasses, the entire world is going to look red. This is why two people can be in the exact same scenario, and we all know this, right? One person will look at the. Negatively, everything sucks.

All you know, everything is shit. The other person can look at the same exact scenario, grow up in the same exact way, and be like, Life is grand. Here's why it's beautiful. So it's important to get recognized that you are engaging with your lens of reality, the constructs that shape. How you view the world around you.

So if you see that everything is a construct, everything from the littlest lens, like even if I look at this tree in front of me and I see that it's green, how do I know that's a green tree? I've been taught from a young age that color is green and that thing that I'm seeing is a tree, right? There's a.

There's an imperceptible moment. We're getting super spiritual here. In Buddhism. They talk about this like an imperceptible moment between pure experience, the pure business, and all the constructs that have been attached onto that pure business. Now, by recognizing there is that space, I can choose what construct I assign to things.

So coming back to your question about immediate consequences, I have to constantly, and by no means am I perfect at this. I'm far better now than I am before. Is I will look at this thing that I'm doing and pause. Let's say for example, I don't real, I don't do this anymore, but let's say for example, I'm wasting time on YouTube or Facebook.

I will have to step back and literally say to myself, If I do this one year from now, this is all the things. Like I look at the consequences. I'll look, here's all the things I could have done. Imagine if I were to die one year from now and I spend all day next, next week doing 2020 hours of Facebook instead of, training to ski across Antarctica or building this.

What will my life look like? Will I feel the pain of that regret? So one of the greatest tools to do this is actually literally, Buddhism, they do this a lot, is a death meditation. Visualize your death, step into your death and get super real with it. Imagine, And I'm not just saying live every day, like it's your last, That's a very, like that cliche, because if you did, then.

Often you wouldn't do the hard work required to, to step into the battlefield. It's not just like that kind of mentality. It's like stepping into the reality that one day you will die. This is actually, I finished writing my book because dude, you're an author. You know that writing a book is hard. I procrastinated from time to time and what helped me finish it was like, Dude, imagine you dying, never having shared your message with the world and visualizing myself on my deathbed, just being like a piece of shit who never did all the things that I wanted to do, right?

So I'm turning what is a delayed consequence. Spending time on Facebook, wasting my time into an immediate consequence simply by reframing that reality in my mind. And this process is constant. You don't do this once and it's magically solved. have to turn every pain and every reward as well into an immediate thing.

So same thing with rewards. It's not just pain, right? I used to be the guy that if I ran 10 miles, I'd be pissed off. I ran, didn't run 12. If I ran 15, I'd be pissed off. I didn't run 20. And that's a miserable way to live. So now I also make the reward immediate. Cause, same thing in Antarctica, like the rewards are immediate.

You finish the hard day of skiing and you're in your tent and it feels fucking heavenly, so now I also make the reward immediate, and it's as simple as like pausing, just to acknowledge nice fucking work. You did that 20 mile today. Awesome. And that could be it, but that it, that is enough of.

Telling my brain that this was the right behavior, right? This is the right thing. And I'm almost like through conscious effort activating the release of dopamine in my brain. Now I don't have a brain scanner to, to shade that has done that. But data has shown this. We can do that, right? We can consciously release dopamine in our brain.

We can consciously activate neurochemicals through the power of conscious energy in the mind. So I'm literally doing that to make the reward instant when need be. I'm also doing that with pain to make the pain instant because when it is, Now you will do something about it. And even if it's not like in the most, like in, in the in a sense of true sense, like in Antarctica where you will die, you can make it so just by using conscious energy.

Does that make sense?

Srini: . Yeah,

Akshay Nanavati: And that's what I'm constantly doing. That's how like a big a core portion of staying disciplined is just if you can do that shit enough. It you'll guarantee to be stay disciplined. Because if the pain is, as I said, we came back to the con we were talking about earlier, if the pain is strong enough, you will do every fucking thing to avoid that pain.

Cuz that's the nature of pain. It fucking sucks.

Srini: . Yeah. Yeah. I, And I think that, you know what really strikes me to, you mentioned the comment, so live today is your last and you wouldn't do the things you need to do. Cause I, I remember writing a Facebook post about this. Cause usually the only thing I ever put on a Facebook is just cuz I'm testing ideas to see, and I was like, yeah, okay. This is yet another one of those stupid platitudes. from that James Dean quote, I was like, No. You know what? I'd modify this. I was like, Dream as if you'll live forever, and live as if you're gonna die by the end of the year. Because that is realistic.

You could say, Okay, if I'm gonna die by the end of the year, then there is a lot I could do. Whereas it's like, Oh, if I'm gonna die by the end of the day, it's great, I'm gonna go just get completely blitzed

and this is gonna be the most hedonistic day of my

Akshay Nanavati: Exactly.

Why would I do all the hard work it takes Exactly. If this was my, So I completely agree that I think

Srini: Yeah, no, but nobody would literally be like, You know what, It's the last day of my life. I'm gonna sit down and write a book.

You would just

like

Akshay Nanavati: Yeah. Fuck hard.

Srini: dude, this has been really cool as I expected it would be. So I have one final you which, I know you've heard me ask before.

What do you think it is that makes somebody or something, unm.

Akshay Nanavati: Sorry. Say that again.

Srini: what do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

Akshay Nanavati: I think it is the the relentless pursuit of mastered mind, body, spirit, and your craft. Whatever your craft is, like striving for that next edge on that, and using your craft, using your pursuit to be of service to something else. Victor Frankel says, self actualization if we go back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs is the highest thing we.

Self-actualization is a side effect of self transcendence and self-transcendence means we don't live in this internal vacuum within ourselves. We live as a part of something bigger than ourselves. The human, family, society, God, whatever you wanna call it. And so when, and but it requires this duality of pursuing your path selfishly, and with selflessness, like the duality of both these seemingly contradictory forces can coex.

And when you do that, when you pursue these dualities as one and strive for the greatness, whatever your version of that in your craft is and do it and service something ba, the greater you become legendary. You become unmistakable, You become your version of what PLO Culo calls fulfilling our own personal legend.

Srini: Amazing. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and to share your story and

Akshay Nanavati: thank you for having me, brother.

Srini: Yeah. Where can people find out more about you and your.

Akshay Nanavati: You can find me at fear of va, so D R V a fear.com. I'm on Instagram. I share the journey and the lessons on Instagram at Fear of VA. In the book, Fear of Anna is available on Amazon, Kindle paperback. All the profits go to charity as well. We support many causes, like survivors of sex trafficking to former child soldiers and on fear.com.

I also have a bunch of trainings, like a training on the 25 ways to. Pain the pain cave, whether it be physical, emotional, physical or spiritual, any kind of pain. The different weapons, cuz not every weapon is relevant in each time. And the different weapons to, to fight whatever pain you might be going through.

So you can find me on all those spots.

Srini: Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.