Laird Hamilton - Big Wave Surfer: The Man Who Changed The Sport Forever

Full transcript: Laird Hamilton on London Real

2:53 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Laird Hamilton, the American big wave surfer, stuntmen, and the adventure of hydrofoil and tow-in surfing. You pioneered the big wave surfing movement, risking your life by taking on massive walls of water up to 100 feet high. In the year 2000, you earned your place in surfing history, catching a gigantic wave and Tahiti dubbed the heaviest ever ridden.

3:16 You have revolutionized the sport, creating tow-in surfing to access waves previously too huge to surf, as well as developing the hydrofoil for riding above the water’s surface. You are the creator of extreme performance training, a holistic program involving underwater workouts, ice, heat sessions, and breath work, and you have acted and performed stunts in Hollywood blockbuster movies like Waterworld, Die Another Day, and Point Break. Laird, welcome to London Real.

3:41 No, Brian, thank you for having me. Appreciate it. You know, it’s great to have you here. You know, we were talking earlier. You know, I grew up in San Diego, funny enough, and you know where I went?

3:50 Torrey Pines High School, which is where Tony Hawk the skateboarder graduated from. They had surf PE, and I remember when I first started in that school it was just so strange that there were these kids that would meet on the beach and surf, and you know, a lot of the guys that I went to high school with, Laird, they never left San Diego, because surfing, it was a part of them. You know, it was like a part of who they were as human beings. And you know, I’m into Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and when you hear like Hicks and Gracie and the Gracie family’s talk about it, it’s like they use the water for, like, it’s a big part of their lives.

4:23 And you know, before we jump in, I was wondering, maybe you could explain to the average civilian, you know, what surfing means to a surfer, cuz it’s not just a sport, is it it’s almost like a way of life. Well, first of all, I want to put one thing in before I start which is you just to make you a little jealous. So voice comes to my house, hoist Gracie comes in, trains with us on the weekend, so I get to enjoy his, is his passion. But you know that I mean, the ocean for a surfer, you know, is I mean It’s, it, you know, I describe it as my greatest teacher, but it’s, and I, and I, and I don’t like to get to you know to kind of ethereal and spiritual about it, but there’s a connection that we have.

5:12 You know, I tell someone, listen, just to be in the ocean and just be there. Is that in itself enough to draw you to come back day in and day out but then to ride a wave and feel the sensation of riding a wave. I mean, not that is a, you know, it’s a, it’s kind of has one of the, it’s like one of the reasons for being alive like, when, if you look at, you said, well, one of the reasons for being alive is you’re gonna be a husband, a father, a friend, you know, a man, and you’re gonna ride waves, and you’re gonna be in the ocean.

5:47 I mean it’s just, you know, it for me at least, and for those who are connected to the sea, which is where we all came from anyway. And I think there’s something there, there’s some deep physiological things that happen to us as well, but you know, I mean, I think we could talk about this, you know, forever. Yeah. You know, I got challenged to do a Half Ironman a couple years ago, and I did it. We made like a movie about it, and I never was a big swimmer, and it was the hardest part for me, but once I started swimming, I stuck with it, and now I swim once a week.

6:16 I got into the butterfly, and there’s something about being in the water that I can’t explain, and I guess maybe it comes from our aquatic roots back in the day, but it’s just a weird way of moving my spine, and then all these things seem to kind of come together you know for me in the water, so there’s something there. I think, what if you look at, I mean, just think about the just the fact that there’s no gravity, that you just don’t, you’re, it’s one of the places, it’s a very, one of the very few places that you can actually be that there’s no gravity, so you have no, that that kind of tension that we live under every day all day long is gone for moments, and like I said, we, you know, the compression of water allows the blood to flow through the lymphatic system that cleanses it in one hour, which normally takes like a 24-hour period, something like there’s some science like that.

7:08 I mean, the truth is that that there, that environment is connected to us in a way, and swimming is, you know, swimming itself is, it’s almost like, I’d like to say, like ballet or dance. I mean, if you look at the fluidity of a beautiful swimmer, you watch an animal that swims well, it’s just so poetic. And so there’s something, there’s something magical about water. I mean, I have a giant swimming pool in my backyard that I spend hours in when I’m not in the ocean, or when I’m not, you know, accessing an ocean.

7:40 It has that kind of beauty that draws you in with the creatures and the, I mean, there’s just, there’s a lot going on in the, in the sea. Yeah. And I want to get into some of that training you do in your backyard and what you do in the pool a little bit later. Well, what’s the longest you’ve gone without surfing, and how does it make you feel when you’re not there, and what do you, what do you say to all the people who don’t have access to the ocean? You know, what do they do?

8:06 Do they, are they going crazy? Do you think? Well, I think I think we’re missing a piece. I think if you don’t have a relationship with the water, that if you’re not able to be in the water, I mean, listen, we shower multiple times a day, we’re in bathtubs, I mean, we drink it. Without it, I mean, next to air, water is, is you know, one of the keys to existence.

8:29 I mean, without water there’s no life, and so that’s that’s how deep our connection is. So if you don’t have some sort of relationship with it, I mean, one of our greatest and Nate fears is fear of drowning, and it’s because again, the relationship that we have with water, it goes so deep. Indeed, primal. I mean, you know, you’re missing out. You’re missing out, one of the, you know, you’re missing out, and one of the, one of the magic things, you know, like flying.

9:00 Like if you never to flu and flew in a plane and never experienced the sensation of flying, kind of need to experience the sensation of being in the water, on the water, and around the water, and I, you know, I, a world without water for me would be you know, what it would actually be, a world without life. You know, I mean, we look around for places with life, we’re looking for water. But yeah, the, you know, I mean, I’m fortunate to have developed a relationship, and I grew up at the sea, so it’s one of those things that you take for granted, but you know, I’ve had times when I’ve been away.

9:33 I never go too long without being in the water, and I’ve gotten better at it because I’ve started to understand my need for it, so I’m able to subsidize it. You know, I’m able to kind of like, okay, well, I’m not gonna, it’s just not inviting me, so I have other ways of getting in the water and being around water, and so it doesn’t. But when I was younger, I mean, you know, I, within a day or two, you just, I would always say the gills dry out. You know that my longest, kind of my longest periods of time without being in the water were really around injury, so I was really like, I’d, you know, if you give something, you get a severe injury, and then you can’t go in the ocean.

10:16 I’d cut my casts off, and you know, I’d do anything I could to get back in the water. Sometimes that would, you know, kind of slow down the healing. And didn’t you learn your lessons? You learn your lessons about that stuff, and you know, I think for me when I do go through a long period of time when I’m not able to be in the water, that almost fuels my passion and my love. It’s a little bit like fasting or something, where you just really savor it and appreciate it.

10:42 You know, it seems we, the humans, when we just, we take things for granted when it, you have it every day and it’s always there. You just kind of don’t appreciate it like you should, and I’ll sometimes self-induce that. Like, you know, I put myself in California in the summertime, and the ocean isn’t quite as inviting, is obviously the middle of the, you know, the Pacific. In Hawaii, one of the most and you know, one of the most treacherous, but one of the most inviting oceans in the world.

11:08 So it’s almost like I hold myself back, and then I’m able to come into it, you know, with full passion and vigor. That no, like, you wouldn’t, off season, like in your sport, you know, you don’t play a sport all year-round and then think, well, I’m gonna have the World Cup right now. They prolong that stuff every four years, just so there’s an anticipation and a build-up, and I’ve started to learn how to kind of self-impose that stuff. You know, we have a park here in London called Hampstead.

11:38 There’s a pond there that’s called the men’s pond, and actually I go there every Saturday of the year, and I’ve had, luckily, I had Wim Hof on here a couple times, or the first time, five or six years ago. So I’ll jump in this thing, it’s like four degrees centigrade, and it’s my ritual every week, and sometimes I don’t want to go in, but I know when I go in, I feel so much better. I do some breathing, and so it’s funny you say that, because I searched out the water too, even in the middle of a massive city.

12:07 Like London, people are always checking my Instagram, like, where is that? Because it doesn’t look like London, but it’s actually right near, in the middle of the city. Really? Yeah, I mean, it’s, I mean, you know, you seek it out. Why are you drawn to it?

12:19 I mean, this is, these are internal you know, these are internal drawers that were pulled to these things. Like, like, you know, for some fear and some for some danger, and you know, and I mean, I think this, some of it’s hard to, to, you know, difficult to, to you know, if somebody goes, a little, how come you’re drawn to riding a giant wave or something? I’m like, some of it just doesn’t have, there’s no, there’s no, there’s no conscious understanding.

12:48 It’s, it’s more of a draw, and you’re pulled towards it, for, you know, I’m people, adrenaline junkie, and I always I always kind of despise that, that you know, that description, because it’s kind of like it invalidates the pure, you know, the pureness of what you’re really, what you are and what you’re interested in. It’s like, oh, you’re just doing that because you get this feeling. I’m like, that feeling is a byproduct, but you’re drawn by something greater than just some sort of chemical reaction when you, you know, impose danger.

13:22 It’s a little more, it’s a little more intricate than that. What, what is it, do you think? A challenge, a, for you, a teacher for you, like something you feel is like, a man as a human, you’re drawn out to what you’ve described. It sometimes, the rumbling and the low-frequency sounds of that, is it, is it, just pull you out there, and maybe there’s not a logical answer to it all the time. Well, in it.

13:46 I think it’s part of existence. I think it’s part of making you, making you feel I like, you go there, and when you’re in these intense things, and you know, the women would say, you know, the nobleness and the wisdom of the, of the cold. You know, where you go there and the intensity of this situation strips everything away. It just pulls everything. It pulls you away, the you, the you that combs his hair and puts the clothes on and walks down the street.

14:19 That’s the you that goes away, and you know, the monks would say, you know, the now. Living in the moment, and all of these terms. Doesn’t get more in the moment than when you’re in that pond, in that temperature, and everything is, you know, and then it goes to breath, you know, and in Hawaiian, the breath is the haa, or the, that’s the life force. You know, you breathe in, and then the spirit possesses, and when you die, the the breath leaves and the spirit leaves.

14:45 And I mean, you can go deep as you want, but I can tell you it’s the now. It’s the immediacy of existence. It’s like, and there’s no other, there’s no other clutter. There’s no other, I mean, life, your brain is constantly running things, and life is bombarding you, and you you never really get a break, and in this moment, you get a just, a there’s a stillness, there’s a, there’s there’s a stillness and a break that you, that you obviously need, and probably need it on a regular basis.

15:14 Actually, you seek it out. Like, where can I find you know, and and maybe someone has to have ten thousand hours of experience at a skill to make it, some, you know, unconscious so they can be in a flow state again. Then now the moment that thing, so there’s all different levels of it but we know that these intense situations, and then you couple them with skill and knowledge and then all of a sudden, you know, that’s the, that’s the highest level of existence in my, in my, you know, in my opinion, because none of this other stuff does that, and this stuff’s free.

15:52 I mean, this is free. This isn’t, doesn’t cost money. You don’t buy it. It’s not like if you have more of it, you can get more. You don’t, this is, you know, only your effort and your skill and your, you know, and your desire, and your are gonna give you this.

16:07 This is going to be so. This is earned stuff that you earn without, without, you know, without reward really, other than just the feeling. You know, feeling, no, there’s no, I mean, and I think, and that’s where it starts, and people make lots of it. I mean, people make a living. You know, people have the, you’re able to take pieces of it and turn it into a living, and if you, you know, my friend would always say, you know, shame on you.

16:32 Like, you know, if you’re good and you’re lucky, shame on you. You know. When you were just describing that, there, it sounded like a conversation I had with Alex Honnold, who, you know, climbed El Capitan and had the movie Free Solo, and Jimmy Chin, the director, was here, and there was a guy, I don’t know if you know this guy, called the French Spider-Man. He was the guy that used to like climb the Sears Tower back in the day. So he was here, and he said the same thing.

16:56 He said when I’m on that building, he said, there’s nothing else I’m thinking about. I’m just there. It’s this pure moment, and yes, I could die, but it’s, it’s this place I love to be. And but he can only be there because he has the 10,000 hours to be able to survive there. So yeah, you got to earn it.

17:15 You have to also take some risk, but for him, it’s, he says he thinks it’s crazy what everybody else does on, on the normal Earth. He thinks what he does is actually the least crazy thing I could agree with. That I, I could agree that that’s the most sane that you’re, that you know, from the outside looking you would think, well, that’s insane, but you’re not, you’re not looking at it from the evolution of it. You’re not looking at it from the process of where you, what you developed, and and what you’re able to understand to get to that position, and, and in a way, you’re in maybe the most control that you could possibly be on a planet getting hurled through outer space at, you know, twenty- seven thousand miles an hour, or whatever it is.

18:01 So you know, I can understand exactly that that perspective of, you know, that I have items. And let’s get, let’s get something very clear. Living is dangerous game I mean, just being alive. So it’s great to go, all that’s dangerous, you know. That’s life, or asking.

18:18 I’m like, living is life risky? I mean, you could, you could get hit by a bus on a corner, and it happens all the time, and so it’s not, and, and by the way, you weren’t even doing anything exciting. You’re just standing there. So at least if you’re gonna go, because we’re all going, at least if you do go, maybe have a chance to go at something that you know that you, that you kind of earn the opportunity to be in that situation, and, and, and you know, we don’t get to choose the time and the place, but we do get to participate in the, in the it.

18:50 And Kelvin, and so until then, we get to participate. How do you want to participate? What do you want experience? What do you want to feel? What do you want to feel while you’re here?

19:00 You know, because you know, not a lot of, not a lot of great feelings if you’re not moving, if you’re not exposing, you know. It’s all the good stuff happens from exposure, right? Being vulnerable. Like, love, this is love. What’s love?

19:13 Like, exposing your heart to someone. Well, what’s climbing on the outside of a giant building? Exposure. Your exposed, your you’re, Alex, on the, you know, you’re hanging on the edge. I mean, this is exposure.

19:25 When you’re, when you’re out and exposed, that’s where all the good stuff happens. I mean, but then, you know, there’s always a consequence for exposure, and, and, and the highest level of pain or, or, you know, vulnerability is life, right? I mean, we don’t even know, though. So that’s the whole thing. It’s really the unknown.

19:52 We don’t even know. So, but work, we have made in our mind that that, that death is the apex of vulnerability, right, above everything. And so it’s an interesting, and it’s interesting to hear and know people that do similar things in different fields, that’s they’re so similar attributes. I always say that life is a formulaic process. There’s a certain formula in a life.

20:16 There’s a formula, learning. There’s a formula to failure, there’s a formula to success, there’s a formula, and it’s just a matter of implementing it. You know, what is the backdrop? Is it a mountain? Is it a wave?

20:27 Is it the skies? That the river? Is it the ocean? Is it business? Is it love?

20:30 Is it whatever, you know, what is it? But the formula itself, when you really dissect everything, is pretty simple. Like, we are, we’re all, not, we’re not that much different than one another at all, really. I mean, if I strip everything away and we’re just, have fashion, and it’s just a body with, you know, with, I mean, two eyes and nose. I mean, when everything’s somewhat normal, you got two hands, two feet.

20:52 I mean, you know, it’s, we’re all, we’re not that much different, and either, other formulas, we have complex systems around it, but the formula is that, that govern us, like gravity. Like, if I drop somebody off a thing, off a roof, with nothing, there, they’re all falling, and they’re falling about the same speed, and you know, so, but yeah, it’s an interesting, it’s an interesting thing, the commonality that, that we all, that we all, the humans have, and, and then within that, you know, the different groups of, you know, there’s people that are really scared, and the people that aren’t. You know, the people that are really paranoid, the people that aren’t.

21:32 I mean, these are big separations. These are really defining things that, you know, that separate us. Yeah, you’re so right. I mean, that it did, allowing yourself to be exposed is where all the, the great stuff happens, and that’s where the pain happens. For a lot of my life, I kept myself out of that.

21:49 Like I didn’t, I didn’t even want to have, like, children and a family, cuz I thought, oh man, I’m really exposed now. That I’ve had them, I see the joy, but then I also know, if you ever want to crush me, that’s the way to do it. But now I know that’s the game of life. So if you want the upside, you got to be prepared for the downside, and there is a bit of a formula to it once you figure it out, you know, and I guess that applies to lots of things in life.

22:11 Right, there’s no end. I want to talk about your journey, you know, on surfing, big wave surfing, and a lot of that, kind of the technology that you went down. And I want to, I want to tell you something that I thought was really insightful, and that was when your wife Gabby Reece was on Joe Rogan, and he asked her about you, and he and he said, well, what’s, you know, what’s Laird like? He is, he always off doing this other stuff. And she said, yeah, he’s off with his girlfriend.

22:41 That’s what she said, and I, it’s one thing I remember from that episode, and I was like, this is a woman that gets. She’s like, that’s what he’s doing. He’s with this girlfriend. He does these things that he’s kind of crazy about, and then he comes home to me at night, and he’s with the family. Do you remember her saying that, and do you know what she meant by that?

22:58 Oh yeah. Oh yeah, well, because I’m constantly reminded that this is the only other woman she’ll share me with is the sea. You know, and I, I think what makes Gabby not only an amazing, she, I mean, besides the most amazing woman that I’ve ever met is her understanding of some of my needs, probably better than I understand them, and that, that these desires aren’t against her. They’re not against her. This isn’t against, it’s not, I’m going to the ocean, and that’s against, that’s taking away from her.

23:32 It actually is adding to her and bringing to her me and all my essence. And you know, I get a commonly asked question that, that I experienced throughout my career: has been, told, now that you have kids, I mean, you must not want to do the dangerous things, and this and that. And I’m like, yeah, but first of all, I didn’t, they didn’t ask me to come in. I brought him into the world, and so why would I put on them? Well, I used to do things until you came, and then I stopped doing the things that that brought me all this joy and happiness, and all these things.

24:04 I stopped doing that now because I have you, unless I really just want to stop. Now, if I really just want to stop, and I should just say, you know what, I did that and I’m good with it. I don’t need to do that anymore. But I think it’s important that they also see me. Like Gabby understands what it does, what it means to me, and what it does for me, and what it is.

24:24 I want them to see the effect it has on me. That, having, you know, I told somebody, go look. I go, if I could just raise a content human, that as a father, as a parent, that at the end, I raise a content human, not a champion of this, and at this doubt, and note. I’m not talking about monetary success. I’m not talking about social success.

24:43 I’m just saying a content human, because I don’t see many. The first step in that would be to have them find the thing that brings them something, brings them that feeling, right? That special feeling, which, you know, which the ocean has done for me. I mean, I’m sorry, transitioning into really understanding the true special feeling that that existence is supposed to bring, which is service. That at the end of the day, and I think, as being a parent, it gets into service.

25:12 We’re talking about service, and then ultimately, you know, through these, some of these other things I’m starting to do. I’m sorry, I’m realizing that that’s probably the apex of of happiness, that true happiness is connected directly to service, of you being of service to the community. First, your first, you being of service to you, because you have to start there. Then you’re being a service to your family, then your friends, then the community, being of service.

25:38 But I want them to see that. I want them to see what you know, and the ocean has been something that I’ve been of service to, and it’s been of service to me. I have a relationship with it that has built the foundation. I want them to see that. I want them to see when I come back from riding a giant wave, what that does to dad.

25:57 What does that look like when dad does this thing that brings him this feeling, because maybe they’ll be able to identify that and go, hmm, I can try to find that in my life. Maybe I can find that in art, or maybe I can find that in cooking, or maybe find that in work, or maybe I find that relationship, find it somewhere. Just please find it, you know, and so yeah, that’s a, I mean, I just, you know, I described parenting because, I, it’s easy to get off track, but parenting is one of the apex of evolution, I would, I would believe.

26:27 And I think no one tells you how hard it truly is, because you’d probably not do it, like you said, hey, I don’t know if I want to be that vulnerable, have kids. But I described parenting is building a samurai sword, where you take steel, you heat it up, you beat it with a hammer, and you put it in ice, and is what my children do to me. They take me, they heat me up, they beat me with a hammer, and they put me in ice, and they do that over and over, and then I’m a tempered soul, you know.

26:52 Then I’m, then I’m like, the hardest. Alright, break. What we’re not sure yet yeah, I’d say that’s probably what it’s right, what it’s like. You mentioned the service thing. You know, it took me to my early to mid-40s to start to realize that that was the key, and because most of my life I grew up, and I think a lot of the world grew up in this.

27:15 It’s all about me. You know, I used to get my hair cut at a place down the road, and they used to play MTV with the sound off, and I’d have to look at it while he was cutting my hair, and I was like, do you watch this all day long, because all I see are, you know, gold chains and cars and girls, and I was like, is this what, this is kind of what we tell everybody is the answer? It’s all about our personal gain, and so it, so it takes a long time to get that service message, doesn’t it Well, the admin, the admins working hard.

27:46 The admins working hard. You know, to tell you just by that, by that, and by that you’re gonna be all good. You know, there’s a, and so you know, but you have to go through that process, I believe, if you’re fortunate enough to go through that process, and you know, and you see it time and time again. You know, success doesn’t breed happiness. I mean, you, you see plenty of people that are highly successful.

28:12 In fact, if anything, it probably has the opposite effect, because you were expecting it to do something different than it does, and I can, I can experience, you know, I experienced it myself. I thought, you know, all I need to do is just write the biggest waves and be the best at doing it, and that’s gonna take care of everything, and then you get there and you’re like, I didn’t take care of everything. Now what do we do? You know, now, what now? What now?

28:36 What’s our next move? So, so, uh, so I think that in that process of where you, you know, you have to be able to be fortunate to go through that, and then, and then you realize, and you see it happening a lot with people. You know, when you’re, if you’re struggling and you’re trying to survive and you’re just trying to make, you know, make enough to eat, and and, and, and you know, and give yourself some clothing and housing. I mean, that’s a lot. For a lot of people, that’s, you know, and you’re of service in your community.

29:07 I mean, that’s why you have so many people that, that are, almost, impoverished that are, that are very happy, because they’re content, because they’re doing, they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re going through the effort to just do, take care of the necessities. You know, I always say complaining is a luxury. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s like you want to start complaining, was you the time to complain? Because if you did, if you were just trying to eat, and you were just trying to, you know, how is yourself, you’re not complaining.

29:36 You’re like, hey, I got to figure out how to get to the food and feed my family, and you know, keep the roof over the house. And you know, it’s, but it is about service at the end of the day. There’s There’s their sub. There’s nothing more internally satisfying than, than, then helping people. They just, it just, it’s what we are.

29:57 You know, what’s what we are as a, I mean, we’re a communal creature, and we, we need to help people, and when we do, it brings us a feeling that nothing else does, and it’s to the point where you don’t even need any public declaration of it. You don’t need a public declaration like, wow, look at you, you’re such a good help for your help these people. You can do it, and parents get it. Listen, we get it. That’s where you start your training is in parenting.

30:27 You get it from, hey, you get to clean the house and get the thing, make sure the, check you, know, make sure the place is good, protect the kids, make the thing, get the food, get the, you know, you’re doing stuff for, in the, in the dark. And moms, if moms are, believe me, moms can be content being at a house they don’t need to run out to a Fortune 500 company and show you how smart they are, though they look at us, some of our behavior is like, we are crazy. We’re crazy.

30:51 Like, look at them, how crazy they are, how not like, and I’m not saying that there’s nothing, you know, women that are highly intelligent and more than capable of running all the, any of these businesses. I mean, some of the best leaders in the country, in the world, are our women, leaders, and we need more of that. It’s just that they’ve also are highly aware of how important it is to protect and take care, and for the feeling of accomplishment. And it’s like, I wish, it’s like I wish I maybe had gotten that sooner, like understanding service, and I’m able to be, you know, I’m developing my life to try to be more, more of service, and, and, but it’s, it’s what it’s all about.

31:33 It’s what it’s, and there’s nothing higher than first of all, my mother, because without a mom, there’s no buddy. There’s nothing. There’s no, we don’t exist. Yeah, they go through that physical transformation too, and you know, we had some guests in the past talk about the psychedelic experience, which is ego- destroying, and sometimes you’re not in control of your body. And you know, I think, was Terence McKenna said, well, a woman goes through that in childbirth, and that a man never experiences that, where all of a sudden your whole body’s being transformed for the service of someone else and the birth of someone else.

32:04 And so I guess, like, yeah, I think when women get all these inherent lessons, and like you said, the service that a lot of us men just unfortunately don’t get, and we have to go on our own journeys. Yeah, why me? And we hope we arrive. We hope we’re smart enough to arrive. I think one of your fellow Hawaiians, uh, Shep Gordon, he’s like a kind of a famous agent for, like, Mike Myers and stuff like that.

32:28 And that was his thing. He always said at the end of the conversation, he said, service to others, Brian. He said that’s the key, service. Well, the first guys, they said that to me. Talk to me about your journey with surfing, because early on, I think you decided you didn’t want to go the competitive route, and I think you would’ve seen your dad kind of go down that way, and it just meant that, you know, there was just a different standard, a different lifestyle, a different way of judging, whereas you kind of wanted to do it for the pursuit.

32:57 Am I getting that right? And how would you explain that to someone who doesn’t know, the ins and outs of that culture? Well, I mean, you know, I was fortunate enough to grow up at a time when the competitive aspect of surfing was kind of only one part of it. It hadn’t really proliferated into the whole entire sport and really been the focus of it. And so there were people in surfing that were some of the best surfers in the world, but they weren’t competitive surfers.

33:27 They weren’t surfing in contests. A, you know, one guy would be the champion of the contest, but then there was maybe a guy that was this even better surfer that wasn’t surfing competitively. He was just free surfing, and surfing kind of has a unique thing where we have an ability to kind of be artistic to it. It’s a sport, but you can still do, like, a like music, or, or cooking. I mean, first of all, how do you judge music?

33:52 You know, how do you judge, how do you judge a chef? I mean, you to sit there and be like, well, I like this food, I like that food, but there’s you know, it’s kind of confusing, and a little bit like gymnastics, or some confusion in how do you determine the winner. You know, I watched my step dad go through kind of some trials and tribulation. He was an incredible free surfer, you know, artistically one of the top surfers of his day, subjective. His performance into competitive kind of format, and, and suffer, kind of some, you know, suffer from that, like, and and be confused by, you know, maybe usurped, the best you’ve ever surfed, and everybody says, yeah, you, yeah, that was great, you won, and then the other guy wins by 0.5 because he, you know, is needs to be the world champ, and who knows what I mean?

34:38 It’s, is the sponsor, is a thing. I mean, there’s so many factors, and you know, I think I had such a competitive nature anyway, that I, my mind, my nature to be competitive was such that it brought out the worst in me. It made me like, I would have been better in rugby or some other contact sport for it, or something like that, even though I was more individual. I did, you know, maybe jujitsu or some other martial art stuff, or, you know, again, but bringing out a naturally aggressive and a naturally naturally aggressive and naturally competitive thing to the point where it’s, it’s obnoxious, and so surfing offered me kind of a free-form stage, a stage where I could just do it how I wanted, when I wanted, the way I wanted, which, which I think suited me.

35:29 And I like the depth of the defining aspect of the danger, because that really separated a lot of people, and then all of a sudden you’re in a smaller group, and then if you’re, you know, and I looked at that as the apex. I looked at big wave riding as the apex, and so I subjected myself, you know, when we were kids, we surfed in these little contests, and it was great, and you win a t-shirt, and then all of a sudden money started coming into it, and some you know, other factors that made it not as, like, fun, like when you were a kid, and then that’s when I separated from it, and I, and I, you know, I’ve, uh, to try to, I mean, it, because it sounds kind of egotistical, but you know, as a little kid I vowed to, like, I was my whole thing was, I want to be the best.

36:17 I want to be the greatest surfer that’s ever lived, blah, blah, blah. Like, that’s the story tale that you tell yourself when you’re a little dreamer, and I didn’t know what that looked like. I didn’t know what, what that would be, but that was my thing, and as I went, I just thought, well, if you, if you served, you know, if you surf the biggest, the best, then you’re the best in my, in my, in my, the way I framed my world, and at the end of the whole process, all I truly felt, what I really found is that I really loved surfing, that I just loved to serve, and I don’t need anybody to see me.

36:57 It’s okay if I go with a friend of mine, and we have the greatest surf that we, you know, and it’s nice to maybe have a picture and a video after, because you can be like, yeah, well, because it disappears, you know, it’s one of these things that disappears, like, you know, like a, like a a bubble or a star or something. They just disappear, and I’ll never be there again, but but yeah, that, that kind of direction was, you know, and then how are you gonna get sponsored if you’re not on the tour? And I mean, there was a lot of things around it that would have, you know, led me away from my direction, but I stayed true to it, even though I went into other branches into other areas.

37:37 You know, I would say my greatest, I would say my overarching goal, and from the beginning, was to never lose my love for surfing, and I thought if I surfed in contests and I was a competitive surfer, that I would begin to lose it, because I watched surfers growing up, people I looked up to go through that process, and eventually they, they they stopped loving it, and I thought if I did that, I would define that as sin. I thought that would be sinful if I stopped loving surfing, and so my goal was to do it any way I could to make it so I wouldn’t stop loving it, and that means I would change the way I did it, how I did it. That’s where innovation came in.

38:19 That’s where a lot of stuff happened, because I would fail, that, the three to go in indeed. Raya wasn’t just like, hey, I’m making country music, and that’s it. I’m like, yeah, now I’m gonna play some punk rock, and I’m gonna go over here and play some Ozark, and I’m gonna maybe I’m gonna combine and make it Punk Mozart with some country, and I’m gonna create some new weird thing. And so I had that freedom to kind of do that, to be more exploratory and not be constrained by social pressure, or, you know, through, you know, in that industry, or, you know, through that, through that.

38:50 Okay, I got a surf like this, and the judges like that, and how are we going to perform, and, you know, and not, and not, and I felt there was a, there’s a homogeneous, ation about that aspect of when you’re confined, and then you’re trying to please people, or you’re, pregnant, please a format. You kind of, it stops your, your freedom, where, where I find that’s where a lot of the greatest things happen, is in that, you know, and it’ll be in failure. Yeah, I mean, of course, when you’re trying to do something different, there’s a lot of failure in that, and and you’re not, and the failure is, it, I mean, other than people’s scrutiny, you know, and the negative things pointed out, you’re, the failure is not, you know, that doesn’t determine whether you won or lost.

39:31 So it can be like, oh yeah, I’m looks stupid, or why would you do that, or I thought you knew how to do that. You can, if the long as you can deal with that stuff, you know, and water off a duck’s back, and not, and it’s not like well, you were gonna be the world champ, but now you lost because you tried this new thing, and now you’re, you know, you drop, you lost your sponsor, and your thing, so you’re not, so that’s not steering you. And so you know, I think there’s multiple factors that influenced me to just kind of, I mean, I hope that answer your question, but just you know, took me off of different route, just open my, my world.

40:04 To you know, to just ultimately my imagination, just like, how you know, just do it the way you want when you want, how you want, and it’s, it’ll, it’s amazing where it could take you. What was that young Laird Hamilton, like 20-year-old? I mean, I heard you were, you know, pretty aggressive as a kid, pretty competitive. I mean, Hawaii’s known as a place where there’s a lot of fights, right? BJ Penn, and I always hear it’s a place where people scrap.

40:30 How were you as a kid? And can you channel all that energy into a solo sport like surfing, or like you said, you need contact or something, or other people? Well, you know, I mean, first of all, Polynesian, Hawaiian cultures are warrior culture. So we, weird, that’s warrior, it’s a word. Culture, we grew up in a warrior culture, which means I was, what, which means as well, it means that there’s confrontation.

40:56 It means that there’s pecking orders. There’s hierarchies. There’s, it’s a warrior culture. It’s, but it’s about respect, you know. It’s about respect.

41:05 It’s about honor. I mean, it’s, you know, all the things that make a warrior, right? So it’s about, there’s empathy. So we have empathy. We have, we have certain, we have character traits that warrior culture does, but there’s certain things that we don’t tolerate, too.

41:19 Like, there’s certain behaviors that, like, oh yeah, yeah, you can’t stare at the guy like that, you know. That’s just not, you know, you’ve, you’re here, you’re coming into his aura, and you better be, you, that’s gonna, you know, you don’t look at a bear, because the bear will chase you if you aggress it. So, but you know, I think about the ocean, was, is that, that was a word, that’s true equality. You know, the thing is, is I was everybody’s equal before a wave.

41:44 Is what I always say, and the fact is, it’s just your skill and your understanding and your abilities that can separate you from someone else, but wave, the ocean doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t go, oh yeah, okay, well, you know, you’re, you’re from a good family or you’re not, or you have money or you don’t, or you’re pretty or you’re not, or it doesn’t do any of that. It just treats everybody the same, and that’s a beautiful thing, and I really enjoyed that.

42:07 I’m like, okay, well, cool. Like, if I do something stupid, I’m gonna pay, and if I do something smart, then I’ll be rewarded, kind of thing. It was like a real instantaneous you know, reward-failure system. Like, it was, its immediate, and I’ll tell you what, you, I don’t, you could take all the aggression in the world, you can take all the competitive spirit in the world, and the ocean will just absorb that. Like, it will, giant rock.

42:35 I mean, it’ll just be like, come on, bring it on. I’ll I love that. You know, give me all you got. And so it was an incredible, incredible environment for me to put all the energy that I had and take it, and if you, you know, and, and, and in fact, if you don’t submit, you’ll be, you’ll be conquered, and it was really about submission. It was really about submitting, that, and I was just maybe a hard case.

43:07 You know, like, I was a hard case. It took a while for me to learn to submit, like, but over time you’re forced to learn to submit to survive, and so, and I’m like, well, probably a pretty good life lesson: learn to submit or die, or, you know, learn to submit willingly. Submit, survive, willingly submit, surviving. You start, you start using that as a tool, pretty good tool, pretty good teacher, amazing teacher, amazing, amazing environment, nothing like it that I know of.

43:41 I mean, gravity is one that, you know, gravity is pretty honest. That way, you know, gravity doesn’t discriminate. Gravity doesn’t, you know, you can act a less, you Alex, you can ask the Spider- Man. I mean, you know, these are, these are, these are elements. These are, you know, water, air, gravity.

43:58 I mean, these are, these are, these are things that are pure. They’re pure, they’re, they’re, they don’t do, they don’t surprise you, only if you don’t have knowledge. You know, people be all, I couldn’t believe that happened, wall goes, because you just didn’t, you didn’t understand it. If you truly understood the process, there’d never be a surprise. You wouldn’t be surprised like, well, I’d, that bear run at me, what could you look at it like?

44:20 You know, like, wide, that wide that wave do that to me, or wide that Curran go that direction, or why did you know, why did these things happen? Well, be, that’s just part of, out, the system works. If you understand it, then that gives you, you know, that gives you a different perspective. All of a sudden, it’s not as dangerous as you think it is. It’s not as, as unhospitable as you think it is.

44:43 It’s why somebody can go do what they can do. Why can they go do it? They can do it because they understand it. They, they have a relationship with it, to the point where they can go there and maybe even play there, like play in a place that that you know, Mark Spitz would get rescued, but he’s the greatest, women in the world. But yeah, but a kid that grew up in a current that knew how to deal with the surf to play in a place that someone that was the greatest swimmer in the world might need to be rescued because they just didn’t have the knowledge of that.

45:10 And I think, and that’s probably true with, you know, all of these environments, the side of that building, the side of that mountain that, you know, the deepness of that Arctic. Talk to me about the terrain and the water and, you know, the geography that is Hawaii, because, you know, I’ve only been to Honolulu. It was a brief stop. I was like 14, so I don’t know the experience, but I’ve talked to people that have been there on Iron Man’s, and I had rich role in the studio who did the five Iron Men on the five islands, and I’ve talked to people that aren’t necessarily spiritual people that say, you know, when you go to some of these islands, you better come with respect, like almost as if like our spiritual respect to the nature.

45:51 And you know, I remember watching Hawaii Five-O as a kid, and Magnum P.I. there’s, you know, there’s all this kind of mysticism around nature in Hawaii, you know, how much of that is real and how much of it isn’t? You grew up there. Well, so Gabby came from the Caribbean, so she grew up in the Caribbean on those islands, and when she first came to Hawaii, she was awestruck by the, the magnitude of what Hawaii is, right? It’s their most remote archipelago in the world, so it means it’s the, most remote islands in the world, the furthest from any, any continent, and you’re coming out of the deep ocean, so they’re the tops of volcanic volcanoes, the tips of volcanoes, which you mean molten lava and volcanoes, and then this, and then the exposure to the Pacific Ocean.

46:39 You have the largest waves in the world. I mean, okay, there’s some other places that have giant waves, and but the consistent exposure to, you know, the largest body of water on earth, and that combination of those mountains with that ocean. It just, you know, the Hawaiians call it mana, which is the power of the Lamb, the strength of the land, and people understand that, because you go to certain places and you just feel the energy that comes off of the earth, and, you know, is there, is there a coincidence that, you know, it has some of the purest water in the world to drink.

47:12 It has some of the best air in the world to breathe. I mean, I’m not sure that’s a coincidence. I mean, I, the island I grew up on is the wettest spot on earth. You know, it has, ii, indigenous species only to the Amazon, and it’s in the middle of the ocean, so you’re talking about powerful, powerful land. You know, tips of volcanoes being eaten by the ocean.

47:34 I mean, this is, this is, this is, this is that, this is kind of the essence of creation, right? This is the essence of, I mean, you know, hurricanes are hitting this thing all the time, and we got massive floods, and I mean, I just, the, the, you know, volcanoes that you can see from, you know, from, you know, hundreds if not thousands of miles away at times, in the, in their, in their evolution, so that the, you know, the, that power is there, right? That, that power is there, and that’s why I say Hawaiian is warrior culture, but you’re talking about that the people that are from there have the power to, and you give, you meet people from Hawaii that grow up in Hawaii, there’s a power that they have that is just connected to nature, that they’re more connected to nature in a way that brings them a certain strength, and be like, you know, I told somebody, ever seen a wild animal versus a domesticated, like, I have coyotes, and they run, and they jumped nine-foot fences like they’re not even there, and I don’t care what dog you own, the dog doesn’t run and jump a nine-foot fence.

48:35 It doesn’t matter what dog yeah, you know, it’s the difference between wild and domesticated. You know, it’s like, and these islands are there, they’re wild, they’re there’s a wildness to them that, you know, that brings that, it brings that feeling, like when people come there, they feel the, you know, okay, and imagine when we really start to dissect and scientifically, we can look at negative ions and exposure in the thing, and that the air is not, you know, no industrialized anything for thousands of miles, and every day. I mean, you have so many things that play into you know.

49:06 I mean, who knows what kind of, you know, energy, magnetic things are happening around volcanoes, and I mean, we have a lot of science that probably, when you go to science out on the place, you go, well, this has this much of this and not much of that, not all these things that make it have this. That’s why you feel the way you feel from it, and but I just know off of instinct, you know, like we do that a lot with a lot of the things that we do. We go off a feel, like, like, hey, you eat something that doesn’t feel right, it’s like, hey, maybe, probably not good for you.

49:35 Like, just go with that. Like, and I don’t mean a garbage. I just mean, like, use eating as a, you know, use your instincts the way you eat, use your instincts with the people, use your instincts with the place, use your, you know, use these internal mechanisms that we’ve developed to give you that sensory, you know, and, and when people go to Hawaii, some people don’t like it there, some people, because they come there, and it’s like this thing, this thing strips it all away.

49:57 Like, we always say, you know, Hawaii is about how you are, not who you are, you know. And Allah, and some celebrities hate that. Celebrities will come there and they don’t get the kind of treatment that they’re looking for, and they misbehave, and then they get the opposite of what they’re looking for, and they’re in shock, and then some people get there, go there, and they, and because they’re the way they are and how they act, they get accepted and pulled into the family, and pulled into as one of the family members.

50:26 You know, in Afghanistan, they have a thing where they, they make you part of the family, and they have a very similar trick, almost exact, same thing in Hawaii, where they call an AI, which is, you know, if you, if you know anything about the, the, you know, the, the lonely soldier. You know, like the lone soldier, like that, they, he was pulled in and protected by a family. With Hawaii, it’s the same way. They pull you in. You’ll become part of the family, like it doesn’t matter.

50:51 We don’t, we don’t, we don’t judge race or gender. Or we’re not, or there’s no judgment. You just say, we, your Han ID, and you’re, you’re pulled in, and be this have that same, you know, did the people get it from the way the island does it, like, or did the island you know, what came first? But the fact is, the islands will spit you out. People come there and they’re like, oh, yeah, and I thought, yeah, yo, can’t be there.

51:14 I make you too introspective. Maybe makes you have to, like, you know, go inside. People are like, yeah, I know, I need distraction, get me back to her, you know, retail therapy, or something but you know, I think there’s a lot of that. I think there’s a lot of that, that pureness, the pureness of, you know, and with that comes, you know, bright. We always say bright light, dark shadow, right?

51:36 Right, there’s flip side of that as well. Yeah, it sounds fascinating. I’m definitely gonna come check it out very soon. Let’s talk about big wave surfing. And I, yes, I guess the question I have is, when was the moment where you realized you were on to something that was gonna change your life and create something new that did no one thought?

51:54 I know you had some critics originally because you’re using like a powered vehicle to go out to these spots where that probably never happened in history, and yet you’re this innovator. You know, you’re constantly in your brain innovating. I know you’re in your shop innovating, which makes you really unique. But do you remember that moment where you’re like, this is something, and I’ve just done something epic? Yeah, you know, I, I, cuz I’ve been, I’ve been fortunate to have, be involved in quite a few innovations again, back to the formula.

52:23 Once you kind of, once or twice, then you’re like, here we go. You’re kind of like Hey, I’m on to something. Part of it is that going off of your instinct, that feeling, and part of it is understanding what the potential is, you know, before it happens. I think that’s what I think. That’s where innovation comes in, when someone’s able to actually see what the ramifications of their idea will have before they have it, because without that, you kind of it’s hard to be driven.

52:54 But you know, with, stamped with, first of all, with tow-in in particular, with using a vehicle to be towed in. A little guy, you know, I describe it like the space shuttle and the 747. You know, the space shuttle takes off on the backs of a 747, and then once it’s flying, it can take off and fly, and so you know, we use that technique, and it was really, you know, we, we did, we fell upon the technique by accident in the summertime. We were playing around in the middle of summer.

53:23 Well, there wasn’t any surf, and we were using like a Zodiac, and we were dragging ourselves behind the Zodiac with the surfboard just to kind of kind of get some practice and have that, you know, ride. And there’s no waves, and all of a sudden I had a little epiphany. It was like, wow, because we, because there was a little wave, and we let go and got on a little wave, and for a second, win, and it was like a light bulb went off. I went, oh my gosh, I think we can, I think we might be able to use this to pull us on these waves that were having a hard time catching, and so that winner came, and we implemented the very first time we did it.

53:59 It was just like, hello, like, you know, this is perfect. You know, and we had a couple of other things that were influencing us as well. You know, I always, because I, I’m always a little reluctant to have someone go, hey, you invented this, or you did this, you did that, because I just feel I have a saying: there’s nothing new, it’s just a new application of an old idea. You know, there’s been billions of people on earth for a long time, and I think that to think you have a unique thought, I think that’s pretty arrogant.

54:29 So I’m always a little bit like, you know, okay. Yeah, and you know, and but, but again, you know, these hybrids. You know, I mean, I think one of the ones that, that you, that you know you may not even know, that’s probably the one that has had the most influence in the world is stand-up paddling. You know, that I was, I was probably the first person to really adopt stand-up paddling and do it in a way that that maybe made it become what it is today. Now there might have been people doing it, and you know, how we say that there was the ancient sport we ever never saw, what we know existed, you know, like a Polynesian thing that Hawaiians were, we’re doing it, and how can people have not been doing it?

55:11 But at the time when we started, there was no one doing it, and the, you know, the developing of a longer paddle, you know, that happened again. These things happen organically. Around, I was writing these big boards that were designed for tandem surfing so I could take my children surfing and I would stand up, and the wind would blow me back out, and I was like, well, why would I just lay back down to try to catch the wave to stand back up when I just use a paddle?

55:35 And you know, and so, and then that, you know, and now we have, I mean, now guys are standing up battling in Dubai, and we started it on Kauai. So you know, there’s, there’s like, the part of it is that the ramifications of understanding those, those, it, those innovations, and you know, what could they do? But the toe-in one specifically was geared towards my original goal, which was to try to ride the biggest waves in the world, and we were out of, we were kind of out of Crocs, where we couldn’t, we were, we were, we were being held back by the physical capacity of our ability to paddle to match the speed of these waves that were beyond a certain size, and so once the waves get to a certain size, it’s physically impossible to catch these waves when they’re moving at the speeds that they’re moving, so we needed the kind of match power with power.

56:25 That’s how it was described at one point, and I was fortunate to have a nice little group of partners that, you know, comrades that we’ve been, you know, doing stuff with, and it works better, you know, it works better when we, when you have a core group together, because you just throw things off of each other, and kind of feed off that energy, and keep pushing. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s like eco-challenge when you got four buddies, and one guy’s down, the other guys up, the other guys down, the other guys up, and we just kind of keep driving the whole force along. And you know, I’ve been, and you realize too that, you know, because I grew up doing individual sports, but you know, at the end, that when you work together with people and you have teamwork, you can really do greater things.

57:15 And I think that’s the success of the species, is that when we work together, we are able to actually lift the bar up and do things, even if it’s just pushing each other’s performances. You know, that alone will do it, but you have to, you know, you can’t be alone. You to push each other’s performance. You have to have somebody else performing too, and so you know, I think that that’s a piece of it. But yeah, innovation is definitely a satisfying thing.

57:40 You know, there’s, it’s a process again, the formula of failure. You know, the scrutiny of other people. You know, there’s a famous woman entrepreneur who has done some incredibly innovative stuff. Once said, she said, when you have an idea, don’t show anybody for a year, because they’ll discourage you, and I think there’s something to be said about that too, or it, either you got to be undiscussed, got to not show anybody, so they discourage, because most people go, oh, you don’t want to do that, why would you do that, that’s stupid, and then you fall kind of victim to that social pressure.

58:16 You know, and we see that a lot now, just with the way the world’s going, that where people are being held back so much by scrutiny of other people that at the end really don’t even care for the other people. You know, and so it’s like, hey, you got people scrutinizing you, and you’re, you’re reacting off of their scrutiny, and they don’t really even care, but that wasn’t your problem. You’re in discouraged, bull, is that true? Like, did you know at a certain point?

58:43 Yeah, I mean, I’m still victim to the, you know, gravity and to water, and I’m still victim to certain things, but yeah, I had a, one that, there’s a, you know, Gabby, Gabby calls it the terrier theory, where they’re just, you know, on terriers, just, just doesn’t the relentless pursuit. It’s obnoxious to live with. Is it not just to be, I told Gabby once, I go, you think it’s obnoxious to live with? I mean, imagine being this way. Like, it’s terrible.

59:06 Like, have you just said the relentless thing of just, you know, I’m gonna do this, you know, that that, that’s a, it’s not, it’s not easy, and I think that unbridled that kind of behavior can lead in all kinds of crazy directions, but if properly, properly channeled, I think there’s some real production. You know, I obviously I’ve experienced the productivity of that kind of relentless drive in pursuit, where you just don’t, you know, the R&D process can be completely discouraging. You just, you make a prototype.

59:42 It takes six months. You get it, it breaks, you’re like, okay, now what? And then you make, you know, and then it takes three months, and then you get it, and it works for a second, then it breaks, and then as I can, you know, so, and then you just, so, but you just keep that, you know. And I don’t think there’s a Thomas Edison, is, you know, of course the great inventor said, you know, all you need to be an inventor is an imagination and a pile of junk, but the truth is that relentlessness to pursue.

1:00:08 I think that’s a big piece of it. I think you just don’t, you just don’t let up. You just don’t let. And what does that look like for you? Does that mean you’re constantly thinking about it?

1:00:19 You’re constantly doing things. You get frustrated when it doesn’t happen. Like, what does that look like? But when Laird is on a mission for a year to develop the foil, or the this or that? Yeah, that’s every night.

1:00:33 In your, in your, you’re seeing it. You’re dreaming about it. You know, you’re in the day time, you’re, you’re messing with it. You may get distracted, and some else go on, and then you come back, and then you’ll get distracted over here, and you’ll come back, and then you’ll be something important than you, and then you just, but you’re always coming back to the line again. No, you know, and how whatever that looks like, you’re just, you come back to the line.

1:00:58 Maybe you work on something that’s gonna actually help you do something that’s actually gonna help you eventually get back to the line. You know, whatever that, whatever that looks like. You know, I mean, mind, body, soul, spirit. I mean, you know, all of those things, you know, whatever is gonna continue to help you get back to the line, but it, but that process is, it’s tiring. It can be tiring, especially when you’re not used to it.

1:01:26 I think when you get, when you, when you have done it a quite a few times, you start to you know, have less sleepless nights. You have less sleepless night, and you can, you can somehow sleep and still have the thing be spinning in your mind, and you can be pursuing it and still do everything else you, you need to do in your day, and still, you know, listen you know, listen to your children, and you know, participate, and then, and then, but still come back, that you have it there, and it’s just, you know, now you’re able to kind of put it a little further over in the corner, but it’s still in the room. You know, it’s still in the room, and you’re still, your dis, constantly, and you might leave that thing sitting for a while.

1:02:09 They might just be like, hey, it’s just there, but it’s still there. it’s still all of that, all, it’s still there. It’s just, you’re gonna end up coming back to it. You’re gonna come back to it. You’re just gonna keep coming back to it until eventually you’re able to manifest it in a way that’s sufficient enough for you to let it go, but you either prove to yourself that what you think was, it was, it is, which might be good, or you develop it into something, into, into, and part of it can be just learning how to do stuff, the actual learning of the technique, or the use of the product, or whatever it is that you, you do, that in, and I, unknown for me, I’ve been enjoying doing that in, you know, in a lot of different, air innovation in, in fitness, because I get, ultimately, a most of this stuff comes from boredom, and I have the luxury to actually pursue this because I’ve made a career in this, so I have the fortunate ability to do this, this, this stuff, and you know, and so I’ve been, you know, a nutrition, I come back, innovation and nutrition innovation, and you know, and they might not be innovation per se, like some revolutionary innovation, but it might be my version of, of some, some, you know, antidote that just makes it easier, or for me, ultimately, I always use myself as the guinea pig.

1:03:30 I start with me. Like, you know, the old, that old TV commercial for cereal was, you know, just Mikey. Like, it, like Mikey likes it, like, give it to Laird and see if he likes it, if he likes it, you know, and it’s kind of one of the, I use myself as the first prototype, and you know, and what’s nice is, because sometimes I been down roads where I’m like, am I crazy? Like, I’m just doing this thing, and I’m like, this is the best thing ever, and I can’t believe no one is, and then you know, and then eventually, you know, all of a sudden you see new people doing it.

1:04:01 You’re like, and then you see ten, then you see 20, and then you see 100, and then you see a thousand, and you’re like, oh good. I’m like, I’m relieved. I’m not, you know, there’s a thousand other crazy people like me, or it’s I’m not as crazy as I thought it was. You know, I’m not as off as I thought it was, which is you know, that’s part of the fulfillment. That’s the side that you, that brings the fulfillment of the, of that, of that process again, that whole arc of, of the, you know, of the formula, right?

1:04:28 The arc, the beginning, and I think I really enjoy the beginning arcs, that initial ramp up of all of the, of the evolution. Like, it just, everything is ramping up from when you have a thought, an idea, into a valid thing, whether it’s a technique or a device, or whatever that is, but that, that, that beginning stage of that, and then you kind of hit this plateau, and that’s less interesting, you know, that’s, that’s not as, that’s not as fulfilling in my opinion. I mean, and I’m okay with, with them, with that, you know, that chipping away at the, at the, you know, that those little incremental parts to refine and polish something.

1:05:14 I mean, I think you know, with surfing’s an example of that, where I just, you know, it’s, I mean, I got 50, more than 50 years of it, and it’s still, I’m, I’m into it, and I’m working on always and never, and probably never satisfied, but you know, the beginning ramp was nice when you first learn and you’re a beginner, and then you kind of all, you start to get it, and then pretty soon, wow, I got it. Then before you know, you have your proficient, you know, or it’s working, or whatever that looks like. That’s, that’s them, that’s, that’s a good time.

1:05:43 That’s a, that’s it. And then so that’s, I like to reinvent that. Like, okay, okay, cool. I’ve got that. Now what’s the next one?

1:05:49 And then you know, and you don’t always know when they’re gonna come, you know, but they’re, but they’re always there as long as you’re open. There’s a great quote by an anonymous stuntman that said, you know, never let your memories be bigger than your dreams. And you know, I have to say that that’s something that, you know, you can, those are words to live by, you know, that and retain your youthful enthusiasm. I mean, I think these are all these are all pieces to that whole, being innovative, and being fulfilled from that process, learning something new, and you know, I mean, and being fulfilled from that.

1:06:24 I mean, there’s, there’s some real satisfaction. You know, you can talk about service and and happiness, and then you, and you can also talk about satisfaction from, you know, learning something and evolving, you know, into it and becoming proficient. That’s, that’s, that’s a pretty fulfilling mechanism as well. Yeah, I want to talk about the training and the diet, but before we do that, talk to me about fear, because as the toe-in started and you started getting better at it, the, the access to wave started getting bigger and bigger, and now you’re getting to these fear challenges that, you know, not many humans have experienced before.

1:07:01 Is there a formula for fear? And how did you approach that? How do you approach that? And again, it’s weird, cuz you’re like the jack-of-all-trades. Like, there’s guys that want to build the thing in the lab, but you got to go, you’re like the test pilot and the engineer, and there’s a lot going on.

1:07:18 There’s only one Laird. You know, so talk to me about that. Well, you know, it’s interesting after watching the documentary on Alex, and at one point when they do the study and they said, yeah, he’s not like normal people. His brain doesn’t process fear the same way, and I can say I understood that quite well, actually, and that my upbringing was such that I was constantly in danger growing up as a young child, and you know, I wouldn’t say it was like Jungle Book, but it’s a little bit like Jungle Book, you know, where you’re the little human baby in the jungle, and there’s a giant black panther and a huge bear and other stuff, and you’re, first of all, I don’t think the human body is capable of being in fight or flight that much.

1:08:12 I don’t think we’re, I think it’s physically, it’s too taxing. The system is more intelligent than that, than to allow you to be in that state of consciousness, because it’s too taxing. The system couldn’t survive just constantly. Like, Alex couldn’t make a climb for four or five hours in fight or flight at the level that any one of us would be if you just put us anywhere on that, put us in that exposure. And so I feel like I could relate to that, because growing up, I was, you know, people go, well, you know, what was the scariest thing that ever happened to you?

1:08:46 And I’m like, yeah, first of all, we have a mechanism to cut those scary things out, and when you’re truly scared, your ability to memorize is very fragmented, because it uses a different part of your brain. Your brain shifts, and you don’t have room to make images to store memory. You’re just trying to deal with the things you have to do immediately to survive. The brain’s like, yeah, memories aren’t important right now. Survival is important, because we won’t even need memories if we don’t survive.

1:09:14 So it adjusts the way we look at this, that we’re looking at it, so we don’t. So when somebody goes, hey, can you remember? I remember like snapshots of moments that were scary, but I also grew up, you know, getting sucked out to sea a lot, like, I like this, this was a daily occurrence, and this is something that I’ve kind of started to understand after pulling back and looking at how I grew up and why I wasn’t more scared. Why would, why don’t I have a, I mean, I think, I think we have us.

1:09:42 There’s, there’s a certain percentage of us that have a better ability to be scared. I think that we’re just, there’s a, there’s a group of us that are designed to be able to handle fear better in order to help the species survive. You know, there’s some research around dolphins, and when they’re threatened, they put the babies and the mothers in the middle. They create a ball, and they put the babies and the mothers in the middle, the adults around that, the older males around that, the outside, and then the young adolescent males are on the frontline, because they have an ability to be scared like, their despair, not, not be scared.

1:10:19 This does not know. Maybe they just, maybe they don’t know, maybe they’re just works more expendable. Like, we’re, I’m not sure, but there’s, and there’s a percentage of us, and we know through some science that there’s people that are just predisposed to do dangerous things better, and then if you’re in an environment that allows you to have that high exposure with that mechanism, so you’re predisposed to be a kind of a risk taker. Now I put you in an environment where you’re being exposed to risk consistently.

1:10:46 Now I was said, you just have a different relationship to risk. There’s a, an incredible book, Chris Christie Nolan-er, who talks about the art of fear, and she talks about the envelope and growing the envelope of fear, and that you start off with this envelope of fear, and it’s this big, and then I go outside of that envelope, and then it gets this big, and then I go outside of that envelope, and gets this big, and I go outside, and eventually my envelope for fear is this big. Everybody else is, is that big, but our fear is this big, because we’ve been outside, so we’re not scared.

1:11:18 We’re not scared, and, and it doesn’t mean you don’t have fear, and how you use the fear is a different thing. That’s a whole nother subject, where when you’re able to take fear and use that for strength and force, for decision-making, then you become, then you have a special power. Right? Can you consciously do that? What, sank, can you consciously do that, like, take down here?

1:11:43 I don’t know if you can. I, I think that you do. It comes calm, just I think it becomes conscious later, because I think it’s influence, and you make conscious decisions based on that ability that you’re able to harness that energy, and you’re not, you know, it’s the old fries or run, or, you know, fight or flight. Right? You’re gonna make those decisions, and you’re gonna decide what to do.

1:12:04 You know, I told somebody ago, if you ever want to see what fear looks like, watch an antelope run from a cheetah. I go, that’s what fear looks like, and fear is fast, and most of the time faster than the cheetah. The cheetah is the fastest animal in the world. So how fast is fear? How is intelligent is fear?

1:12:20 So fear has its own fears. Your friend, harness it. You know, use it like a thing. Fear is in your enemy, and you’re trying not to be scared, because we’re already past that round. Now we’re highly, you know, we’re already fear.

1:12:32 We love, we were in the fear. We get exposed to it. Now we have this other skill that we can do, and so through that process, then you start being able to do these things that, from the outside, when people look upon those things, they think that’s that’s, that doesn’t make sense. Like, that’s just, that’s either stupid or foolish, or they, they’re gonna create some sort of disclaimer to write off the fact that this is actually maybe a skill, and, and it’s one that’s rare, and so you know, so they don’t, all part of it is so that people don’t have to respond, be responsible for themselves.

1:13:08 4-wire may, they not doing more in their own lives. I mean, that’s so we just go, hey, yeah, throw the disclaimer out, and then that makes me cool, like, cuz he’s dumb, or that’s stupid, and so that makes me okay, because that means I don’t have to take any risk, even though maybe intuitively they feel like they might want to, you know, and, and it’s an interesting thing. In the book, it’s a, there’s a great section where she talks about, in the art of fear, she talks about taking a kid to a waterpark, and then, and then there being a giant slide, and then you, and then, and then the kid going, I’m really scared, and then – and then the adult going, oh no, don’t be scared, you don’t have to be scared.

1:13:46 That’s the wrong way to approach fear. You should, you go, yeah, you should be scared. That’s scary, and that’s designed to be scary. Are you ready to be scared? Like, are you ready to be scared today?

1:13:58 Like, if not, that we won’t go, but if you’re ready to be scared, you want to be scared, let’s go do that. And so you know, and I think I was exposed to these opportunities a lot growing up, jumping off waterfalls. Being in true, is it true when you were seven years old, you did like a 60-foot jump into the water? Yeah, okay. Just know, just another day in Hawaii.

1:14:20 You know, but that drawl, you’re drawn to that, that thing, right? You’re drawn to it. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s not, you know. And it’s, I mean, listen, we go about what we do because, you know, people ask you this. When we approach something dangerous, we, we become militant.

1:14:41 We become a like military, like slow and smooth as fast. I mean, our, our protocol the way we approach and how we act about danger and fear is with such respect, and we, we do it in such a way there’s no just foolhardy. I mean, that’s, you know, we have a couple sayings, you know, ride to ride another day. You know, what I mean? Like, like, we have things, we have mottos that we use, that, that, you know, there’s no, there’s no shame in a failed attempt, but there’s no honor in no attempt.

1:15:13 I mean, you know, these are like things that we live by that, that speak to us, and, and the way we approach these, these, the, the ocean is, were worth. I mean, we’re, were methodical. We’re, we’re, we slow down. We tie that, we tie the knot twice. I mean, everything is, you know, our training is geared to that.

1:15:33 You know, we have no shame in walking away and going out, not today. That’s just not, that’s not today’s, not the day. You know, don’t, don’t push it, because, and that’s where, you know, that’s where some struggle came in when we started filming and using cameras, and being like, okay, well, the camera crews here and everything, and you’re like, yeah, no, not today. They’re like, well, but we’re here and everything’s ready to go. It’s like, we’re, those are the things, or other people like you.

1:16:01 If you, if you start getting influenced by other people, all, come on, what’s wrong? You know, you know, you’re scared, you know, or, or what, not good enough for you, or whatever. I just, anything that would create, would take us out of using instincts, knowing, you know, what it’s done. Through that, this sums up, or even using Gabby’s instinct. Gabby would constantly, I mean, not constantly.

1:16:21 I just made it a rule to have her tell me whenever she had an intuition. I go, listen, if you have an intuition of any kind, because she, at one point she had one, she had an intuition about one of the days I didn’t do it. I got one out, and I heard she’s like, well, you know, I had an intuition about that. I’m like, whenever you have an intuition about something going on, tell me, at least then I’ll have the warning. Maybe I won’t, not, not go.

1:16:44 You know, maybe I won’t, not go, but at least I’ll have, I’ll be heads up. I’ll be like, you know, okay, well, be a little more cautious today. And so, you know, I think, I think that the people, that’s part of it, and you know, and again, back to using Alex again, one more time, as something that I appreciate. The day he goes, he goes, I’m not good. I don’t know, I’m not, you know, it’s like, hey, no problem, perfect.

1:17:10 I mean, you know, it’s, I think you have to do. You have to do that. You have to, you have to, you, you because then, in a way, you take the control into your own hands instead of saying, I’m letting the situation control me, good, and then because once you let it, once you give it over to the situation, then you’re at the mercy of whatever can happen. If you take it yourself, then you can go, hey, you know what, not today. Okay, today’s the day.

1:17:37 I feel it. Somebody will be like, oh, you know, probably not a good day. I’m like, no, I’m going. Like, today’s the day. I’m already, I feel it.

1:17:43 So, but yeah, that’s, it’s a, there’s a lot going on. Was that wave, and Tahiti, one of the scariest ones? I think I read that one of, you’re the guy that towed you out was pretty terrified by that wave. Was that the scariest one, or is it not always the size that equals fear for you? Well you know, that particular wave, that place, that place, that that way breaks it, the shallowness of that water, the, the, the you know, somebody had passed away at that wave like a month before, on, on not nearly as severe of a day as that day was.

1:18:21 That was a really defining moment, and it was also you know, and somebody quotes it in one of the films or something. They say, oh yeah, that’s the kind of stuff that they’re only there. There was only cartoons of that stuff. Like, that was a wave that that I intuitively felt existed, but I’d never seen except in cartoons, and so in a way, and so that, that’s what that meant. That meant, you know, that was a life, that was a life’s dream moment, a livestream moment, like a life’s dream, like a dream your whole life.

1:18:59 Since you’re located in a moment like, in a, like, there it is. You go do it. When you do it, you’re not sure if you can pull it. You pull it, and you know, you just, I mean, you, you know, you worked your, you worked your whole life to get there. You know, you worked your whole entire life to, to to do that.

1:19:21 To they have that, and you were, and you weren’t, you know, and that wasn’t like, I wasn’t, you know, 15 years old either. I mean, so I mean, that was a, that was, you know, that was a lot of life had gone by, and I’d already done a lot of stuff, and what was interesting, is that what it meant to me, but it also kind of quieted all the naysayers, of about my tech, about the technique I was using. I really didn’t have an opportunity to really show the define line of the separation between what could be and what couldn’t be, and that wave represented that that was just, there was no question that that that you just couldn’t, you couldn’t be on that wave without the technique that we had developed, and so that, that was another piece of it, right?

1:20:16 That was another piece of it, and, and I didn’t need that so much as, and I wasn’t like, I, okay, I, oh yeah, we showed, we you know, we quieted that, that group. It wasn’t even that as much as, it, that it was for me. It represented that, that inferred from, for me personally, in what I believed it was like, oh yeah, okay, yeah, this is really this technique that we, that we’ve been using, that we believe allows us to do this thing, that that we think it can, it can, and it did, and, and there, and there’s no, and there’s no, there’s no question about it, and there wasn’t, and no one would even dare squeak anything different, because there were, there’s no way that you couldn’t, you, you couldn’t, and so it’s just, that’s a management.

1:21:09 I think that definition was nice. Okay. And it’s this massive wave with this coral reef, and if there’s any mistakes, you’re just gonna get ripped to shreds. Yeah, yeah, what’s a life coral reef? And like I said, the guy, a month before, it bounced off the bottom and ripped off half his skull.

1:21:25 You know, we, I mean, I tell people it’s a little bit like GP motorbike racing in your underwear. I mean, we just don’t, you know, on these reefs, I mean, the ocean is amazingly forgiving, but we, if you go down and you, we don’t have protection. I mean, you can’t really, well, we’re a real hell, nor any kind of water helmet, can you know, fro for us who grew up without them, that they can kind of impede your, you know, mess with your vision, you know, affect your equilibrium.

1:21:53 There’s some, and then you’re not wearing armor. It’s not like you have a body suit and shoulder pads and knee pads and boots and stuff. You’re like, you know, you’re, you’re in your undies. I mean, you might have a little, you know, nightgown on or something, but you’re not, you’re not wearing anything. You’re, you’re, and this is, and this coral reef is sharp, and you know, and at the least you’re gonna get staff, but you just get cut from that.

1:22:14 I’ll give you, you know, give you good infection, if it doesn’t, just in some cases, you know, kill people. And there, there’s a, you know, we’re, we’re fortunate that we don’t have these waves every single day, so that we don’t get the volume of exposure, that we don’t get a lot more fatalities or more people getting hurt. You know, and the people that are in these waves can’t even get in these waves without a certain level of skill, so there’s some self-protecting things that are happening within this field that kind of protect the humans a little bit from it.

1:22:46 You know, it’s not, you can’t just slap anybody behind the wheel or tell anybody yeah, just go, you know, hike up that thing right now, or something, you know. So it doesn’t have to be controlled and protected quite the same way, because of it. It’s almost self-monitoring in, in some cases. Wow, that’s epic. That’s a really epic, the way you describe that.

1:23:06 Tell me about the extreme performance training. I’ve seen the videos, you know, I’ve seen the MMA fighters out with you, and I’ve seen you walking down with the weights underwater, and then also the, the sauna stuff, and we can get to the diet, but how did this come about? I know a lot of it’s a game, and, and something you play with your own fears with the water and your breath, but how would you describe it to someone who’s never heard of it? Well, you know, the best way I could describe it, and this is kind of a part of the, this is the irony.

1:23:37 The stories that I, I’m not a big fan of swimming, so, so that is funny. If you, and if you, you know, you ever see a killer whale put into, you know, put into a tank, I mean, they get a floppy fin. You know, they’re not happy. So you know, my, so this was a technique that really came out kind of organically, came out of a combination of weight training and swimming, and a way to take everything we were doing in the weight room and all the lifting that we were doing and put it into the water, and put and create a change the environment, which induced some other kind of factors, which created some breathing patterns, regulated, regulated breathing patterns, so you can only breathe when your head comes out.

1:24:27 Like, you’re doing swimming, is it every three strokes, is it every five strokes, is seven strokes? You know, we do a lot of vertical stuff, so a lot of jumping, a lot of stuff off the bottom, so a lot of leg-driven stuff, which normally swimming, swimming is more upper body, and the legs play little factor, they use too much oxygen. So now we’ve taken weight training, and now we’ve, in, we’ve introduced weight training into the pool, right? So now here we were, in now we’re in an environment, doesn’t have gravity.

1:24:55 You can lift a little bit heavier weight. You don’t have all the negative side effects of, you know, creating momentum with weights that can create injury. So you’re protected. It compress in the body again, back to the lymphatic. It allows the blood to flow, so you, so you can do a lot more volume of stuff without getting sore.

1:25:13 I mean, there’s a, there’s a lot of factors. There’s the, the fear side of breath-holding, which, you know, psychologically plays a whole factor. To, you know, everyone benefits from it. It’s just not the fact, is, is that there’s not an athlete in the world. There’s not a human in the world, first of all, that would not benefit from this type of training, and the fact, and, and the truth is, we can take a little kid and we can take a grandparent.

1:25:39 We can take anybody in the spectrum, and and they can do an aspect of it, so we know it’s sustainable. You can do it your entire life, so you can do it from when you’re a little kid, and you can tell, you know, some of the exercises that we created, you know, or my children created. My daughter swam down and did this one thing when she was little, and like, wow, that’s cool, moving, so we just, we turned that into a move, and you know, we have a bunch of different moves that we do that, that that have names.

1:26:07 We have, you know, and I, and I have, you know, we get there, everybody from, in, phenomenal swimmers to, you know, to, to people that don’t swim, you know, like jumpers, people that are jumping, runners. I mean, anybody, water polo player, Navy SEAL. I mean, we, we just, the diversity of, you know, of women, children. I mean, we just, so there’s no, there’s no, you know, Gabby, Gabby, Gabby, and I have been kind of doing this a long time. There’s, there’s, there’s aspects of it that really developed the cardio system, so you become more cardio efficient, so that means when you go ride your bike or you go run or you go do these other activities, you’re actually more efficient.

1:26:54 So you, you, you’re better at running. You’re better at riding. You’re better doing this stuff because of the nature of the way the cardiovascular system, the breathing system, ultimately is developed in with these moves and with, with these patterns in the water. So you know, that there’s, there’s, and then it’s an incredible thing for recovery, so a lot of it, a lot of it’s like recovery-based stuff. So you, you know, like I have my hip replaced, and, and within, you know, within two weeks, I’m in the water jumping and moving and doing stuff that I wouldn’t have been able to do for another month or two.

1:27:28 Guys, you know, I have people, pro athletes with me, stuff or ankle stuff or whatever, and you know, whatever the injuries, and I can come in, their shoulders, whatever, whatever you have going on, we can, we can run you through these different protocols, and really kind of nurture the system, protect you, and then eventually we take these same kind of things that we use in rehab, REM, recovery, and we boost that into performance. So you know, I always thought it strange that a lot of the moves that we do in training, we do different moves when we’re in recovery, right? We get, oh, I gotta go to rehab, and I do all these different moves, then I, when I’m done, I go back to my other training, but that seems kind of stupid.

1:28:09 Why don’t we just think, all the moves are doing in rehab, and then make them more intense, and then that’ll be our training, because it seems like that would be the best, cuz then you’d be doing all the things that we’re supporting you to get back to your training. So a lot of that, a lot of that’s happen, but again, it’s back to innovation. You know, a lot of, a lot of innovative stuff, and then we’re always looking for new things and new techniques, and we, you know, we have a bunch of different drills we do, and we have, you know, there’s a bunch of flippin’, looking new underwater flips and rotations and inversion, and, and and you know, some pretty, pretty cool stuff, and, and, and, and within that, we’re always incorporating heat and ice, so we use heat and ice as part of that system, because again, if you talk to exposure of fear, we talk to exposure of vulnerability.

1:28:58 Now we talked to exposure of heat, exposure of ice, exposures exposure. These are mechanisms, and as you trained exposure, you get better at, and you know, the truth is that your ability to deal with fear exposure will be enhanced, and you will have better ability o’the fear when you deal with cold. You better be, you’re, you’re better ability. Your heat will help your ability to deal with fear, vulnerability, you know, exposure, right, these are all, and so we, the body doesn’t really differentiate, the system’s turn, were exposed, it can be emotional exposure and so we believe that physical exposure helps you strengthen emotional exposure, right?

1:29:45 So again, the interconnection between the whole system is all interconnected, and so, and I think there’s that, we like to separate and say, oh, that’s one thing and this one thing, but you know, we’re doing, we’re not doing, they’re, they’re doing some studies right now, and I’m connected with a couple of the doctors, are doing a study on depression clinically, depressed people spending time in saunas. They’re doing like a sauna protocol to help, help with clinically depressed people, I believe, and so does the doctors that are involved in it, that it will have an absolute effect on them. I know for my, um, my own personal experience, I know through, you know, CTE and PTSD, and, you know, all of these, you know, I have friends and people that have exposed to a lot of different injuries, and, and, and, and soldiers, and not just all the different fields.

1:30:37 We, we do heat, we do ice, we do breath work. We are healing, we are, we, we get healed, we get, we get healed, we get help, and, and so those are all, you know, again, those are all back into the formulas, and then the simplicity of the formulas, and that they’re interconnected, and we’re connecting, you know, we’re connecting physical health with emotional health. We’re connecting the true, and if you don’t eat, if you don’t feel good, and you don’t eat good, you, you know, it’s, or if you’re not eating good, you’re not physically feeling good.

1:31:14 It’s hard to feel it mostly good. It’s like those are connected. Like, if you feel bad, like, physically bad, you, you’re gonna probably feel emotionally bad. It’s only, you can be all happy and be physically wounded that doesn’t, there’s no, those, that’s, that’s a separation. These are together, and so, so and that’s all the stuff that we’re kind of, you know, I mean, it’s a workout, but it’s where we’re trying to work it all out right at the brain.

1:31:41 Soo, and you mentioned, you mentioned diet a bit. I mean, would have been your major breakthroughs and then innovations for yourself with your own diet? I mean, I’ve watched some of the things you do, but you know, you’ve, you’ve had a while to work on it. Right now, what do you think is the truth for you? Well, you know, we know.

1:31:58 I mean, listen, we know we need to be hydrated. You know, we know we need you know, water is, you know, critical. Good water, critical. you know, I mean, we’re fortunate that we’re able to, you know, as an organism, humans are able to eat a lot of different ways, and we can actually eat terribly and survive. It’s amazing what we can eat.

1:32:21 We know we need minerals. We know we have to get the minerals, you know, we know that nature probably has everything that we need. That we know that in nature we have everything. It has everything we need. We just need to be able to get nature to the people.

1:32:36 You know, that’s part of what we’re doing. A layered superfood is getting, getting nature to the people, trying to get people things that they need. We know that these good fats that we’re consuming are highly important. That not all fats are fat, like, there’s good fats, bad fats. Like, it’s important.

1:32:55 We know that there’s, you know, we know that mode that that that I truly believe that all the medicines are in nature. I mean, it, and, and we just need, we just don’t understand them. We don’t know how to use them. I mean, we can, you know, they have laboratories trying to extract this and extract that, but I believe that that, that, you know, that most, most cures or most medicines are in nature, and some, in some form, and some in some combination, in some relationship, and, and so I think, you know, of course, quality.

1:33:28 I mean, I think we, we don’t put the importance on what we consume. We consume every day, all day long. We eat, and we don’t connect what how important it is. We, we dress nice, we drive nice, we live nice, but we don’t eat nice. Like, when really in general, and, and I think because we don’t put the importance on it, I mean, especially in our country, we just stuff and go.

1:33:50 I mean, the average minute in America meal in America’s like three and a half minutes. I mean, and so, and then, and then most of the stuffs, air. Like, we just, the foods not, you know, that it’s, it’s, it’s process too many times. It doesn’t have enough nutrients in it from the beginning, and, and you know, and, and you know, and we’re using all these other, we’re using bad oils, and we’re using, you know, tons of sugar, and just, you know, there’s just a lot of factors that, you know, I know whole food.

1:34:17 The more we can consume whole foods to supply us with the stuff we need, the better. Like I said, minerals, water. I mean, these are just, you know, these are just basic needs of humans in a way, but we’re just, you know, most of us aren’t, aren’t getting getting it. And I think we weigh too much. I think we’re just consuming way too much.

1:34:37 I think that we need to. I think fasting isn’t, is really important. I think not eating is incredibly important. Again, back to what we spoke about, you know, being away from the ocean makes you really appreciate the ocean. Not eating makes you appreciate eating, but that, but, but the appreciation of a good meal when you’re hungry really is just a emotional response to the body’s need, an acceptance of what you’re giving it, so that you’re emotionally, you feel well.

1:35:07 I feel, so you know, I just feel so good, and it tastes so good. Yeah, when the body’s like, yeah, give me it. I need it. I wanted. I’m ready for it.

1:35:14 And so I think there’s, you know, again, back to some of these things that keep connecting. You know, that, that are connecting, that we’re, you know, connecting the top and the bottom, and, and, and you know, it, again, exposure to exposure, and, you know, you know, it’s, this is, I think there’s a lot of, there just seems to be a lot we don’t know, and, and, and I don’t, I think we, we make it more complicated than it is. But again, in nature, I think we’re gonna find you know, the things that we need.

1:35:45 I think they’ve been there. You know, it’s, it’s what we need to nurture the system. I think we need to appreciate and respect what food is, and try to get the things we need out of it, and, and not just eat only for taste. I mean, we know that, we, you know, in our company, we know that we have to make things people make things taste good for people, because people are eating in a way consistently that, that, that they will do it. They won’t make it a habit.

1:36:17 They’ll be like, oh, uh, it’s, you know, I’ll do this once, but I’m not gonna, it’s not gonna be part of your lifestyle. And so that all of the things that I’m talking about are part of a lifestyle. It’s part of a mentality, it’s part of a value system. It’s part of, back to, I said about service, and, and, you know, and you know, and nurturing the system. It’s all part of that.

1:36:37 That’s part of a lifestyle. That’s part of a way we look at each other. It’s, it’s part of the way we treat each other. It’s part of the way, you know, it’s part of the way we look at the world, as far, the way we treat the world. You know, it’s, it’s part of what we consume, the way we look at what we consume, what we, you know, how we, how we do that.

1:36:54 I mean, these are again. I have a feeling that when we, when, when it really, it all gets dissected down and we look at it. I think the formula is going to be pretty simple, and you’re just gonna go put it wherever you want. You know, was that Plato’s law? You know, like a star attracts other stars and gets bigger, and black holes just keep sucking things up, and they keep disappearing.

1:37:15 It’s like there’s just, there’s certain things that you know, these are laws. These are laws that we just don’t know, and I, and, and you know, and, and again, follow, trust your instincts, pursue, your pursue the feeling that you, you know, and I don’t mean your instincts for, like, a chocolate cake. I mean, like, you know, and what, what’s the next five years look like for you? Is it, is it all about these, India, about layered superfoods, and then also, physically, do you have more challenges?

1:37:45 Do you know that you can never do some of the things you did ten years ago? How do you approach all of those things? You know, the thing about, well, XPT, but, and ultimately, you know, the thing about layered superfood is, is that’s probably the greatest service platform that I’m exposed to right now. My greatest opportunity to be of service, and ultimately be of service with real impact. Like, I’ve been of service to be, you know, hey, do a sport.

1:38:19 It’s great. You’re on the ocean. More people that are in the ocean will care about the ocean. It’ll help protect the ocean. I mean, you know, it’s, it’s great, and, and you know, sometimes I hear myself and I go, yeah, you’re idealistic and bum bum blah, and all that, but the truth is, is that if people feel better and are nourished better, they’re gonna, there, I mean, if they eat better and they’re, and they, and their nerve, if their nerves better, we’re gonna feel better.

1:38:43 They’re just gonna feel better. There’s gonna be, there’s gonna be better for them in their life, right, which ultimately will probably be better at their house, which is gonna be better at their community, which might be better in their country. You can be better in the world. So that’s an idealistic point of view that I believe in. Truth, that they’re, that they’re, that, that is, that that is something that’s really important, that I think when it’s hard for people to make good decisions, if they don’t feel good.

1:39:08 So that’s, so we go, we know that, you know, and, and so on the big servant, you know, right now I got to survive parenting. That’s, that’s still up in the air. It’s a 50/50. It’s a 50/50 shot with the girls, but, but you know, the, the, you know, in Gabby and I, and our, and our relationship and our love, and the time, you know, we’re going on 20, more than 20, 22, 23, you know, over 24. We have some years that we’re starting to rack up, you know, together.

1:39:33 That’s always something that’s consistent that that’ll be until I’m not here on the planet. You know, and unless there’s another plan that I, that I don’t know, somebody forgot to tell me about, but the you know, the, and then for my own personal kind of, you know, the selfish part of me that’s about riding waves, and you know, my whole focus is in foiling, right now. So foil surfing, foils, I believe, are the way to ride the biggest waves in the world. I’ve just recently was in Peru, in Portugal, at, at this giant wave called Nazaré, which is kind of one of the premier big wave spots right now in the world, that’s getting a lot of attention because of its proximity to, to the land, but also to the big Atlantic surf, and so we were doing some hydro foiling there, and then I traveled to.

1:40:23 So I have a couple goals in Hydra foiling that that that are keeping me interested. You know, long, long, you know, I’m always, I always kind of set things up further, farther, faster, you know, bigger, higher, all that kind of stuff. It’s, those are, I guess it’s a crazy thing, but but so, foiling’s got my, you know, we’re doing this. We have electric hydrofoils, boards. We have manual prone, pout of paddling ones.

1:40:51 We have stand-up paddling ones, and then we have Owen toe-in one. So foiling kind of keeping The Selfish Laird, you know, surfer, that’s kind of fulfilling that bucket, you know, that that spoke. God, we were speaking about Bay’s anomic recently, the book with Bezos’s book about the flywheel, and I always describe, describe the life like a tire, you know, and with spokes, and if any one spokes loose, there’s a bump in the roll. You know, try to keep one of those, but you know, so that, that’s selfish, the surface, the surface poke, is that is the foiling thing, and that that’s pretty lined up to have plenty to do.

1:41:30 We just, we’re always relying on conditions, you know. So, and then that feel, then another spoke is the fitness, be prepared physically to be able to handle and endure those situations, and and and and perform you know, I mean, obviously age, you know, age becomes a thing out there. I’m not looking at it right now as you know, and I think I said this to Gabby the other day for the first time. I’m like, you know, I really wish there was more surf right now, cuz I feel like, you know, like, like there’s like a mechanism saying, hey, you know, you’re not gonna be able to just do this at this level forever, kind of thing, but I don’t know what that looks like, because at the end, maybe whatever I’m doing, I’ll be able to do at a level that’s more than fulfilling, in and might, I’m not using the what I’ve done as engage and I’m not having, I’m not going back and doing comparing.

1:42:25 Like, I used to run the, you know, I used to run the 40, and you know, three two, and now I’m running it in three seven, and I’ll be your dad. Now I’m at 42, and I’m seeing like a decline. I’m doing different things, and so every time I’m doing some of these new, so for me, I’m the best I ever was at that, right? And, IV, I’ll be the best I’ve ever been at this new thing because it’s new, and I never did it before, so there’s maybe there’s a way to set it up that way, to, you know, where we don’t have to just compare it, you know, where they say comparison is the death of happiness.

1:42:57 I mean, it’s like, you know, if you just keep looking back, well, I was not done, like, you know, and then it goes back to my saying, you know, dreams bigger than memories, you know, all of that. So what does that look like? So maybe if I keep pursuing, and I have these right now. I have a bunch of new things stacked up, you know, and then there’s this spoke, super food spoke, that’s that’s a, that’s an incredible thing that just is bringing a lot of people, probably more people than I could have ever imagined, in a more diverse way than I ever could imagine having a real impact in, because of, because it’s, it’s, it’s good for humans, just for people, and not everybody can ride a giant wave or be towed in or right a hydrofoil board or Santa paddle across every channel in Hawai’i or whatever there is, but they can enjoy this super food.

1:43:48 The kids can enjoy it, the adults, the grant. I mean, everybody can enjoy these products. They’re incredible, you know, and then they’re, and then there’s the fam, the family, you know, the family spoke, spokes. There’s multiple spokes. There’s, you know, three, three daughters, and and Gabby, and, and you know, and, and those, those things, and then there’s the, you know, then there’s the new haven’t done yet, what’s coming next, kind of area, and that, and that I’m always open.

1:44:18 You know, I’m open to that I mean, there’s always evolutions within these, and I think like I said, I love innovation. That’s the thing that keeps me excited in all these different areas, and and also as a person, you know, as a, like, innovation as a person, like I want to try to grow you know, I’ve been studying some Adlerian psychology lately. I really appreciate that perspective, and you know, and you know, the bad news is it says it’ll take me half of half of however I’m old to actually implement it, so it means I got like 27 years of before I can actually implement it, but I’m you know, I see, in like, all that, I wish I would, like to be able to, you know, offer some Adlerian, and then just keep all these pieces attached, you know, keep everything, everything working.

1:45:06 That’s the, but that’s the challenge. You know, that’s the, that’s the Theon, the ongoing challenge, but, you know, and then keep inspired, just keepin’, and keep all these things helping me be inspired you know, be inspired to be a dad, be inspired to be a, you know, boyfriend, a surfer, a, you know, husband of my, my wife, friend, and my friends, and just, you know, all those, you know, all that. And then at all, again, it’s that you know, it’s that wheel, right?

1:45:39 Just keep that wheel rolling, and then hopefully all of them are feeding in into the, to the, to the center. You know, yeah, what scares you? Well, Gabby, you know why, you know, you know, I mean, I mean, I think, I think I like any, like, I think like any anybody. I think we’re, I think you were, have all have certain innate fears. I think, you know, hey, providing for your family, something happened to your family.

1:46:13 I think, I think something happened to your kids. I mean, that’s, I never felt more vulnerable in my life than when I had children, and what that vulnerability felt like, his next level. I mean, like, I, you know, you have your partner, and, and you know, you feel vulnerable to your partner, but that there’s nothing like the vulnerability you filter your children. You know, you, you put your, you know, your baby in the car with the seat, and then it drives out the driveway, and you’re just like, you know, and as they get, they’re getting older, and so that’s, that’s a little, a little less, because you, you know, you know that you’re, you’re that your daughter is probably capable of choking somebody out if they really try to hurt her, or something, but you just still have some, some of, you know, how are they gonna be?

1:46:53 How’s their life going to be? You know, how’s their life going to be? What life, what world are they going to be in? What world are they gonna be? And how’s that, we’re gonna look like, you know, what what things are they gonna have to go through that?

1:47:04 You know, that, you know, how’s that, how’s that, how’s that gonna, how’s that going to look? I mean, I think I have a fortunate I’m fortunate that I have a relationship with death. I don’t know if it’s a good one, but I have, and I think that that helps me a little bit in life, because I don’t know if I truly believe that, did you know? I don’t think I believe that, that that’s it. I don’t think it’s an end, so that gives me hope, right?

1:47:37 That, and, and we don’t know after, so that gives me a little bit of insecurity, you know, a little bit of the unknown. That’s where the fear comes in, but you know, so that, so that, right? Yeah, I mean, you know, and then, and then, hey, can I do things at the level that I did them, and all that stuff, but you know, sometimes you have to listen to what voice is talking, you know, is it the ego talking? Is it the ego that’s, that’s, that’s, you know, you got to let, let let those thoughts run and be like, yeah, maybe I, maybe I can, maybe I can.

1:48:12 Do I really care who do I have, who’s that for? Who am I proving that to? Do I need? Is that for me? Do I need you are, my, trying to show everyone I can still be what I was, or can be what I am, or whatever.

1:48:24 I mean, that, you know, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a wicked game. That’s okay, man. That’ll, yeah, I’ll stop you from doing all the other stuff you need to do. You know, yeah, yeah. Now that’s a great answer.

1:48:36 I appreciate that. You know, I always finish off by asking a couple questions at the end. I’m gonna ask you there, if you could pick up a phone and call out 20-year-old Laird Hamilton and give that young man some advice based on everything you know now, you know, the formulas, the innovation, the understanding fear, or the understanding death. What would you tell that that young kid? My the London Real tribe, where you get exclusive access and insights from our high-performance guests on wealth creation, productivity, leadership, morning routines, health and well-being.

1:49:15 Laird, I really appreciate this conversation. It’s fascinating stuff, and yeah, I think people can learn a lot from this, and it’s not just about surfing. I think the innovation stuff is powerful, and just the connection to our environment and to our bodies and everything.

1:49:41 So well, thanks for going deep with us. I really appreciate it. Well, you made it. You made it all possible, so without your, without your generosity, it wouldn’t been happen. It wouldn’t happen, so I thank you.

1:49:53 I appreciate your, your work. When can I come train with you? XPT, my pools open right now, so if you, if you show up here in Malibu, you’re, you’re welcome to her for a plunge. We, we save a spot for you, you know, fresh meat, but we’ll take good care of you. We always do.

1:50:16 We’re, we’re quite generous in our approach, so we always take good care of everyone. I appreciate that. And his experience better in Malibu or better in Kauai? Just different. I mean, you know, I mean, it’s a little hard to compete with Kauai.

1:50:31 Right, yeah, it’s hard to compete with Kauai, because you’re, you’re, it’s Kauai, but, but Malibu, Malibu is pretty amazing, aren’t it? Hard, too hard to beat here as well. I mean, either one, they both, in a way, they just, they’re both so unique. It’s, you have to try. You actually need to be in both of them.

1:50:49 I, we have quite a few people that do the XPT events with us that go into both of them. They really, really enjoy it, you know, just, what do they say? Different, equal to, and different. Right, right. And how do people find out more about the training and the superfoods?

1:51:06 I mean, I keep hearing about your coffee, and it’s amazing. So how do people get some of that? How can I get some of that? Well, Laird Superfood. You can go on Learn Superfood, and Laird Superfood.com is where you can, where you can, you know, we move a lot of product through Amazon as well, and we have retailers, but Laird Superfood is the site, and then XPT Life.com.

1:51:28 So Laird Superfood.com and XPT Life.com. So XPT Life has all the training work, and, and you know, all the breath, and they, and, and the mobility, and just all of our, you know, kind of our philosophy, and a bunch of the training work, and then, and then Laird Superfood.com, you can see all of our, and you know, the new, new innovation, and we’re, we’re shipping all over, so we’re, we’re pushing, and we just, we just closed a big deal, so we’re, we’re starting to push, push the stuff all over. Great.

1:52:02 So I can get it in the UK as well? Yeah, yeah. Okay, all right, great stuff. Next time you’ll catch up for you. Good.

1:52:09 I would appreciate that. Next time we do this, let’s do this in person, and thanks, Laird. This is incredible. I’ve been following your stuff for a long time. Obviously watched a lot of your stuff and your episodes on Rogan, and Gabby’s episode, and this was incredible.

1:52:23 So thanks. I love your innovation. I’m an engineer by training, but I think you’re a better engineer than me by looking at your foils and stuff. So yeah, thanks for continuing to push it. It’s real inspirational.

1:52:34 Well, I appreciate you, and thank you. Thanks for having me. And you have to come join us. Please do keep up that pawn dipping in the winter. I want to hear about it.

1:52:44 I will. I’ll send you some videos too. We just have to get a nice machine, because we don’t have any pawn, so all right, great. So are you, so much, Laird, wishing you all the best. Thank you a lot.

1:52:55 All right, take care. All right, Aloha, man. Cool, and thank you everybody for tuning in. We appreciate you. We’ll see you next time on London Real.

1:53:01 Bye.