Cory Richards pt. 2 - the Legendary Alpinist & Nat Geo Photographer on his new book 'The Color of Everything' - Rising, Falling & Beginning Again
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A student struggling with his practice once asked the zen master Shunryu Suzuki to boil down Buddhism into a single phrase. Suzuki thought for a moment, then he responded: everything changes.
This is part two of my conversation with Cory Richards about his memoir, The Color of Everything. Cory is bipolar and at different moments in his life he has been famous, homeless, institutionalized and an addict. He has climbed Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen, he won the National Geographic Adventurer of the Year award and he has traveled the planet adventuring and shooting for Nat Geo. Then he started over as a writer.
Healthy, sick, good, bad, rich, poor, famous, homeless. Everything changes.
A great book is one you can’t put down that you miss when it’s over. The Color of Everything is such a book and I highly recommend reading it.
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This episode is brought to you by The Better Lab. Good sleep amplifies health, wellness and performance. Getting good sleep can be hard and many people struggle to consistently take the actions that support solid sleep.
That’s why I co-founded The Better Lab, the app that helps active people like you to mindfully build conscious, science-backed practices to sleep better that stick. It’s just what works to help you get great sleep and you can get started today at www.thebetterlab.io and the app is live in the Apple App Store. Check it out and send a DM to @hardwaypod to let me know what you think.
Choose the Hard Way is the podcast about how hard things build stronger humans who have more fun. The purpose of this podcast is not for you to envy, admire or imitate the stories people like Cory share here. This podcast is here to hopefully inspire and empower you to fully embrace being the writer of your own story. It’s a great one, you’re the author and you bring it into being every moment.
Find Cory @coryrichards on Instagram and find the link to pre-order The Color of Everything in the show notes and @hardwaypod on the gram.
Cory Richards Website | Instagram
Color of Everything Pre-Order
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Andrew Vontz 00:00
Yeah, so one of the reasons I became really interested in the area where my company is focusing is because I think in general, as we have become cyborgs, we're technology augmented beings, we're no longer just humans, like our memories aren't augmented by our phone, by the Internet, by AI by all these things. I also think a second order consequence of that, and of tracking and monitoring, everything was sensors, which I think can be highly directionally useful. I think that, on average, people are far less dialed in to how do I actually feel what's happening inside of my body? And how do I feel unreal reaction to the things that I'm doing every moment, day to day, and people most people want like the magic bullet, like, give me the pill, give me the thing, give me the device, that's going to, like flip the switch. And the reality is, I think real transformation happens when you become attune to when I do thing x, what's the feeling I have in my body? And then as a consequence of that, how do I feel when I go train today? Or how emotionally present? Am I with the people who I value the most? Or how am I able to think at work like that type of thing. So I really think that interoception the ability to sense what's going on inside our body and have somatic awareness, I really think that's the next frontier of high performance. And when I talk to people in sport, and Special Warfare and all these other spaces, like that's the direction it should, it's moving man.
Cory Richards 01:31
And and I mean, this is this is such a beautiful jumping off point into into sort of one of the central premises of the book, but there are no, we're a hack, obsessed society, bio hacking, you know, how do I like? How do I optimize performance? And I see this all the time. And and, you know, in the last section we did, we talked about the men's work that I do, and it really came from my, you know, my dear friend, Kenny's, he's, you know, he's been a professional athlete coach, he's he coaches, you know, executives and things like that. And really what it came back to us, people were trying to change one aspect of their lives without looking at the, the entire ecosystem of it. So you're like trying to be a high performer in one area, but the actions and all the other areas are actually not, they're not in alignment with that at all right? So as we as we start to understand what's happening internally, and then we start to reflect on that as external actions and how they're driving it. That's when we can really start to integrate the ecosystem. But if you're like, Yo, man, I want to I want to be the best basketball and he was, you know, he trained like basketball player, like NBA players and whatnot. And they're like, I want to be, you know, I want to be at the top of my game, and he's like, Great, how many hours a night? Are you sleeping? They're like, you know, like, six, and he's like, Okay, well, why are you sleeping six hours? Well, you know, I gotta, like, I was out at the club and like, he's like, okay, great. What are you doing at the club? And they're like, I don't know how, you know, to make three drinks. And you're like, Okay, great. Like, you know, when did you get home? Well, you know, for, you want to be the best you can be. You, you, you have to like be you need to back this way up. We're not even at the layup. Like, you know, great, you've got a great build, you've got like skills. You can't eat, let's not even talk about the fucking layup until we're talking about how much sleep you're getting and who you're hanging out with. Right, like, and that was a huge aha moment for him where he started talking about the integrated systems of wellness. But the truth is a lot of people when we measure stuff, and in this augmented culture, we think that okay, because I understand what I, because I have the information about how I slept, that I'm somehow changing my pattern. No, it's just information. And it's not even good or bad. That's just a value application. All it is, is a metric. And you can keep track of all the metrics you want in the world. It doesn't make you any more optimized or better. If you're not activating on them. If you're not putting any of that information into motion. It's just it all it is is gamified biometrics. That's it, you know, like, anyway, I Sorry, that was really like, that's a diatribe. But like, I feel no, I mean,
Andrew Vontz 04:39
yeah, and you were talking about this in relation to you know, what happened to you as a total human in the process of writing this book, because part of writing a book is you need to sit down for a long period of time, right, Cory? Yeah, yeah. Well,
Cory Richards 04:54
as I started to, cheese, man Okay, I'll start, I'll start by saying this. I, the book writing process took about three years. And for the beginning of that process, I was very, I was still very engaged with athletics, and I was doing a lot of high intensity training. So you know, like, CrossFit style stuff. And then I was, you know, I was, I was getting a lot of exercise over time that wane because my focus shifted into sitting and writing. And so a number of different you know, very specific things happen, like my mobility went down, my hips tightened up, my blood flow decreases, then there's a diet component that comes into it, you're just more sedentary and and then when I sold the book to Random House, in I think it was 2022. Yeah, must know. I don't know, I think no, 2023. I, I was like, I'm not riding here at home in in LA. So I was like, Okay, I'm gonna go to Europe and just sequester. And I stayed in this incredibly Spartan apartment, it was like a friend of a friend who, and they had this extra room in Salzburg, Austria, and it was, you know, this is not Qalam living, I'm not like, I'm going to Europe to just like, you know, this is like, this is like a Dostoevsky apartment. Like it was all white, there was no art on the walls, there was a red couch, small red couch, and a lime green desk, or a white desk, and then a lime green, sort of Queen size bed. I didn't know how to turn the heat on. So I lived without heat. In the winter. I could have asked I just I was like, I just guess they don't have heat here. And I would get up every day. And I would walk to the the Old City, the Altstadt. And then I would sit down and I would write and about, you know, two or three o'clock, I'd order a beer and like, Yes, that's right. I drink again. But, and I was smoking cigarettes, and I just went full in I went all in and I just all of a sudden, I like I came back and and I've fallen out of my physical practice. And I just looked like, I just got to look terrible. I look terrible. I've I've created an ink. You know what, something I was very proud of. But I had lost another piece of myself. And I've always had a very, very tenuous relationship with my body, even at my peak performance. I never liked the way I looked. And, and so recently, I was like, Okay, I don't like the way I look. I'm gonna be honest about that, right now, I'm less concerned with performance, because I don't need it. So what do I do? And I dove into, like, body composition, sort of stuff. And I was like, oh, there's, there's a formula to this. And, and it's been around forever. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna get on it. And one of the things that we started talking about was, how much sleep are you getting? Like, who are you hanging out with? What do those people eat and drink? You know, like, how late do they did start dinner? How late did the you know? How much sleep are they getting? And you start to see Oh, shit, there's there's real doesn't mean you have to ditch your friends. It just means like, that's where the information of things like sleep. And metrics can be really helpful, because it actually points you in different directions. And what I saw was, oh, there's some things that I really need to adjust. But it's again, it's not right or wrong. It's not good or bad. It's just for a specific goal. There's things that you have to do. That's it.
Andrew Vontz 08:29
What are some of the adjustments you made? Well,
Cory Richards 08:32
I started tracking. I started tracking calories and macros. And people are so resistant to this, and I was for so long. And this is sort of this is one of the central. I'll tie this into the book. I have a lot of stories about my body, and about what this would require. And the first story was I don't have the genetics to look a certain way. That is usually not true. It might require more work to look a certain way for some of us, but most of us are just strictly not genetically disinclined towards something. We might not look like Chris Hemsworth. But a lot of us can get to a very different aesthetic if we're willing to put in the work. So that's Story number one. I don't have the genetics. Story number two. I don't have the time. I don't have the time to walk 12,000 steps a day. That's six miles that's two hour I don't have the time for that. That's okay, Story number two. Story number three. I don't have the money. I don't have the money to hire a trainer. I don't have the money to get another story Story number four. I don't have the discipline to to track my macros is just not something I can do. I'm just too scattered my brain is too ADHD. There's four very, very poor powerful stories that I've told, but they are all stories and they're all false. They're all untruths. Story number one, which I forget which one that was. But anyway, here's the point, genetics,
Andrew Vontz 10:15
genetics was showing the likes. Yeah, yeah, I
Cory Richards 10:19
have a specific set of genetics that tends to carry a little bit more body fat. And is more easily. Basically, I don't eat enough. And I don't eat enough of the right things, very different than my body can't look a certain way. Right? It just don't have the genetics for that. So knowing that I tend to be a little more skinny, fat naturally, what are the things that I can adjust? Right? What is the specific kind of training that's going to impact my body type the most? What do those calories look like? Right? Story number two, what was it tell me? Was it time? Or was it I was walking maybe, of course, I have that time look at how much time we spend on our screens, we can you can walk and be on your screen. If that's what you want to do. You might bump into people don't get hit by a car, but you can walk and do that at the same time. I see plenty of people doing it around here. Story number three, I don't have the money. Okay? Yes, it can be expensive. And you actually don't need to hire a trainer. And but you know, gym membership, whatever it is great. Even if you don't have the money, you can pretty much do all of this at home. So that's a story. That's just not true. Story number four, I don't have the discipline. No, I just haven't practice the discipline to do this. I have the discipline, all of those things were total bullshit, right? Like, in my case, the money thing was, I have money to do it, I was just spending the money differently. I was prioritizing going out and eating out and having, you know, which is fine, too. But But the story, the idea that I didn't have the money was patently false. It was just not a true story. And so this gets really I mean, it's great allegory for the book, or one of the central the core tenants of the book is that everything we do, everything is storytelling. From the moment we wake up, wake up in the morning to the moment we go to sleep, even to our dreams and the meaning we apply to those dreams. It's all storytelling. That doesn't mean stories are false, necessarily. But it's all a story. That's how human consciousness works. We wake up every morning, and we tell ourselves a story about who we are in the world we live in, in the politics and bla bla bla bla bla. And they're deeply ingrained. I'm this I'm that, you know, in my case, I am I'm mentally ill, I mean, what a story to carry for fucking 40 years, I'm mentally ill think about that. That but that's just that's a story. It's an it's an it carries with it a value application. Like I'm applying a set of values or a set of judgments to that. And that's so damaging. And so one of the invitations is to examine the stories that we're telling ourselves, and potentially reframe them, or just tell a different story. You know what I mean? Like?
Andrew Vontz 13:22
Yeah, completely. In fact, I've, I've, you know, I dog eared many pages of the book and add a couple of different quotes here that I would love to discuss with you. And, yeah, to your point. You know, this is from page 308. I know lots of people who have done Ayahuasca 30 times and are still flaming assholes, incapable of sitting with their own pain or that of others. I did laugh out loud when I read that I do know a few of these people, Cory. And then he said, integration means dropping the story because the story no longer informs your actions. And I think a macro question that I have about the process of writing this book, is how do you think about the act of writing this book, sitting with your thoughts, organizing your life in this narrative in relation to integration of story? And, you know, your sense of integration of like, who I am when I sit and reflect on, on my synthesis of my life?
Cory Richards 14:24
Again, great, great question. The whole writing process, if I can, for me, the way I understand integration, and the reference to integration in that that specific paragraph as is as it relates to psychedelic therapy and healing, which, by the way, huge proponent of participate in all about. So when I'm referring to integration in that context, it's it's about taking all of the information that we've learned that we have around our specific life path Arthur specific life story and arranging it in a way that promotes the greatest sense of well being, and healing, and for progress, right and evolution. And so the act of writing this book was in its own way, one long, integrative process, and arriving at the end of it. And I even referenced it in the last chapter, there's so much of this that didn't feel it wasn't that it didn't feel honest, it didn't feel applicable anymore. Because the story had been integrated into something new altogether. And the story, ultimately, all the stories I was telling, I had started to step outside of I had started to leave them behind, because I didn't need them anymore. You know, I didn't need them to identify like the story of addiction, you know, when you. And I'm not saying there aren't addicts, by the way. But when we talk about addiction, that is a very, very, very powerful story. And you think about all the stigma that comes along with that. And I identified as, as an addict for very long time. And if I'm being honest, in some ways, I thought it made me really special. Look at me, I'm broken, hey, I've got this story of being an addict. It makes me special, it makes me sick. And and ultimately, that was one that I was like, Am I really that? If and if you are, by the way, if you if you feel if that story keeps you safe? By all means, stick to that story, I want you to stay safe. For me, it was it was a question of Is that really true? Or have I had very poor impulse control based in specific beliefs and behaviors around myself and painful emotions that I'm unwilling to sit with. And the ladder ended up in that seat, see the difference like I am this or, yeah, I have a specific pattern of behavior. One is immovable, and the other is malleable. One keeps us captive one sets us free. Because one room leaves room for evolution. Again, if you are an addict, if you're the kind of person or if that's something that you identify with, and you're the kind of person who hasn't drink on Friday night, and by Monday has no home and it's it's sold the house, don't you don't need to go down this road. This is just an example. Right? Part of that part of the thing that and I've heard Gabor Ma Tei say wanted something similar, but like, one of the reasons why I eventually stopped going to AAA and doing things like that was because I started to see that I was recycling my trauma, right. And I was staying trapped in the story of my trauma. Now, I think a is one of the most powerful, beautiful, exceptional, helpful organizations in the world, it has helped countless people. And so all for it. And I think it's really important to note that oftentimes, when we continue to tell the story of our trauma, once it's once we've sort of like understood it, except that it keeps us trapped in that story. And I say at some point, like even being a survivor, in some ways, keeps us chained to our trouble. The idea is to be a victim, you have to be a victim in order to be a survivor. And ultimately, for me, if you can take that big powerful step is you don't even need to identify as a survivor anymore, because the original trauma has been integrated, and let go of and the story itself. Now it's just something that happened. And it gave you a lot of interesting information as to the way your life works and who you are. And probably if you've done that work, the trauma might have become a huge, huge gift, because it led you down that road. Totally different stories.
Andrew Vontz 19:12
Completely, I'm going to read something from page 311 That kind of follows up on this thread. So you say I have a deep need to matter. Much of my life and career has been about exactly that. And the thing that I wondered when I read that and I wrote this in the margin and came back to it is how do you see putting this book into the world as related to that part of yourself?
Cory Richards 19:39
Yeah, it's there's so much meta shit in this and trust me I like I like fuck, part of me wants to you know, not put it into the world because like the exercise the real value in it is like letting it go. And the irony of putting a story or putting a book out into the world that questions the story is that now you told the story that now you're fucking cemented in, in some ways, right? Like, it's so fucked up. And I think about that I'm like, shit. Well, now I just wrote a story that I don't even feel totally like I relate to in some ways, but now that's the story that's out there again, you know. And so the work will be not identified with it, which I really, I don't, in some ways. But look, if you want to get into what that specific statement is referring to, is that through, you know, a specific set of circumstances and relationships that I had growing up in my family, I questioned and I learned very early on that like that, or at least I felt like, I don't know if I matter, because if I matter, why are these things happening, right, and it's nobody's fault, I don't blame anybody for it, they were just happening. But at the time, it created a sort of a value deficit, I can't matter if all the shit is going on, like, because if I mattered, I would be protected from this, right. So spin that forward into later life where you have this value deficit. And so you find ways to be to be valuable. And so as much as I loved climbing, and as much as I loved photography, and as much as I thought they were beautiful, and I had moments of pure joy in them, I also started leveraging them to prove to people around me that I had value that I mattered, right. And that's what I'm referring to, in that moment. Like, it did become a pursuit of like, the, you know, the cult of ego, my own ego, I was drinking my own Kool Aid. I was and yet I also knew, like, this doesn't on some core level, I'm like, this is all kind of bullshit. Like, I'm not the best climber in the world. I'm a decent photographer, I and yet, I'm really leveraging this fame, or this, you know, notoriety, I think calling it famous a little bit much. And then I leveraged it into success, that's not entirely unnatural. It's, you know, that's okay. Two pieces of that are okay, it's when we start to go overboard with it. And it becomes sort of a false flag, and we get to hide behind it that that it becomes problematic. So a lot of my career was like, as soon as I started getting a little, like, little shine to me, like mean into the shine, you know, show it off, you know, but but then then I got to hide more and more behind that. Over time.
Andrew Vontz 22:34
I know that your your dad was really into the stoics. There's of course, like a giant cultural conversation around stoicism, great branch of philosophy. I'm a personal fan. And there's a there's a moment I don't remember which climb this was on. But there's a moment in the book where you're reading one a Ryan Holiday, during one of Ryan holidays books, and like you're doing one of the things that I think on its face, almost every human on the planet would be like, this is like one of the most courageous things so human being could do. And you're like in a tent, reading Ryan Holiday book. I just thought that was pretty funny, Cory?
Cory Richards 23:11
Well, I love stoicism. But I also see, you know, there's really what I'm a fan of is Neo stoicism. And I think stoicism as it gets presented today is and as in its original route was actually we know so much more about neuroscience now. Yes, that sort of the the highest calling of stoicism is to be able to observe the emotion and not apply a value system to it. You know, you believe you are not harmed and you will not be harmed, right? That that that is a beautiful sentiment, it's a wonderful aspiration. And emotions are actually essential to our survival. So when we tried to sidestep the emotion, we're actually we can't we can't we we actually our brains don't work that way. That's, that's using the prefrontal cortex. But But all this stuff starts in the amygdala, right? Like, that's how that's the emotion processing, the limbic system is how we're using. That's how we're interpreting emotional information around us. So if if the amygdala and the limbic system are specifically if the stress response of emotional processing has not been regulated, your prefrontal cortex, your logic and reason is completely fucking offline. We can't work, you know, from the outside in it actually comes from the inside out. So we have to integrate our emotional experience and use the information that it's giving us and only then can we start to examine the stories we're telling about it. Right. And that's sort of the basis of cognitive behavioral therapy too is like okay, so thing happens we feel an emotion. Now let's check the story that drove that emotion. It requires mindfulness but stoicism as it was understood back in the day. And as it sort of gets presented now, it's not as simple as you know, I choose not to be scared. Fuck that you can't do that you are scared, start there. validate that now work out into the story that you're telling yourself about being scared. And that's so Neo stoicism incorporates neuroscience and emotional sciences into the broader concepts of stoicism. Does that make sense? Let's get
Andrew Vontz 25:43
that makes sense. Let's get more meta in this moment. When you sat when you sat down in the process of as you describe it in the book, no spoilers, but a bit of a spoiler you kind of like start writing the book. During the narrative of the book, you began writing the book or you like you talked about, like, I've started to like write some pages, it's now become this thing that you're reading, and so on. And now oh, here we go. We got this, this amazing book, which is a highly impressive work of literature that I greatly enjoyed. When you sat down at the outset, you were at this period of great transition in your life, and you had no way of knowing that it would end up being this thing. And we're doing this several months before the book will be released. We're gonna release this interview, very approximate to the release of the book, and I have this feeling it's going to be wildly successful, and like, you're going to be talking to Terry Gross and all over the place again. But how did you feel in that moment? When you sat down to do this? Did you sit down with confidence? And did you have foreknowledge of what it might become? Was there fear? How did you feel?
Cory Richards 26:49
Hmm. You want the real story. I'll give you the real story. Yeah, I
Andrew Vontz 26:54
do. Yeah, let's do it.
Cory Richards 26:58
I was bored. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know where I was going. I had no direction. And and I and I, honestly, I moved to LA. You know, I loved climbing I love photography. And, and I had had this very public, sort of, it was a mixed bipolar catalogue and some mixed bipolar episode on at the base camp of dal Geary. And it seems crazy to everybody. And, you know, it kind of was I was like, I'm moving to LA, I want to make films. And everybody's like, Dude, what the fuck man? Like, you're, we can't keep track of this shit. Even my parents, you know, and no, Ill Will there. And so I came out and I was I was learning about writing scripts. And I was in I was like, Okay, I wanna you know, I'm gonna write a script. So I started the script that was kind of, it's actually a great story, but and then I was like, Wait a minute. Do I know, I don't? That doesn't feel quite right. And then so I was like, some, you know, I was reminded to write, right? Well, you know, so I was like, oh, you know, I'll just use this as sort of an interesting, could I write a script about a life that looks like mine? Right? Not about my life, necessarily, but about, like, Could I use my lived experience to do something interesting. So start with that. And like, that doesn't feel right. And then it was like, Korean just write a fucking book. Like, just write, just write about your life, just just stop trying to make it a thing. You know, or, at first it was even, you know, try to write a book. I mean, that came pretty shortly after, but it was like, Oh, I think maybe I should just just write about my life and see what happens. And that's when it started taking form. And there's a huge thing that happens when people write memoirs that everybody like, I think, almost all memoir, like, authors who write memoirs are gonna go, there's, there's a point of fear, a deep point of fear, where you're questioning and you're going, is this just so fucking self serving? Like, why does my story matter? That's so funny. You walk into a bookstore and it's just lined with the shelves of your just like, mine doesn't matter. Like, it's just another fucking book, like, and so there's fear that you're going to be rejected that your story doesn't matter that you're not going to finish there's all this fear around it, at least there was for me, there was a lot of fear and and insecurity. And then there was also sort of the, the contrary deep knowing of like, everybody, I believe, is everybody's story matters. Because they help us relate, you know, they tie us together, they, they help, you know, think of all the books that you've read that, like, have helped you through a time of darkness, or a time of life. that have inspired you. If that person thought their story didn't matter, and they didn't write the book, you wouldn't have had that shepherd in the dark, right? Like, you wouldn't have had that. So I just kept writing. And, and then some chapters started leaking out that well, I was like, Oh, this is you know, and then I engage some people and said, Hey, what do you think? And and then you start gathering momentum. But again, it took a year and a half before I actually put together a book proposal. I just wanted somebody to do it for me, nobody was going to do that for me.
Andrew Vontz 30:33
And the book is, it's highly structurally sophisticated. And is that the way it came out? Or did that structure emerge over time? And just to give you one, for example, or perhaps a few things that I noticed, like there's a discussion early on, in the book with your, with your dad, which I've wrote down, and now of course, can't find but anyway, at the beginning of the book, you're talking to your dad about physics, and you're talking about the Yeah, you're talking about matter. And then I saw a symmetry between that conversation and kind of your experiences at the end of the book related to interbeing. And, like, what we can learn from, from the practice of meditation so like, there's that there's the, the birth scene at the beginning, like you kind of recount your birth, the umbilical cord, and then at the end, there's the umbilical cord of the purple rope that bound you to your your climbing teammates, and the survival of the avalanche. So and then in the middle, I'm not going to spoil it, but like there's, there's an event that's kind of you know, like that provides this really interesting symmetrical frame. And there's almost this mirroring from beginning to end. So did you set out to construct it in that manner? Or did that emerge through editing and kind of reshuffling things?
Cory Richards 31:56
I wish I was that smart. But also, it didn't emerge through editing, it ended up being the way I wrote the book. So, okay, yeah, it just was the way I wrote it. What I was clear on is that and as some of the social media that I've been putting out of around the release, one of the things I'm doing is like book reports, because I think books are awesome. And what I was very clear on is that like, there there's and I didn't read this till after the book, but if anybody's interested it's called Wired for Story by Lisa Crone, I don't know how to say her last name Kron Crone. It's brilliant. And then I think even more seminal toward the way I understand story is Joseph Campbell, and you know, hero with 1000 faces the hero's journey, and specifically my favorite book of his the power of myth. And I knew that great stories are all structured basically the same, right? And, and so I have mine divided literally into three acts are part one, part two, part three, you can think of them as three acts. And they follow a narrative structure of the basic story that that all that the hero's journey operates on, right. And it's the basic structure of every film we watch. It's formulaic. And it's not because I was trying to achieve a film structure, it's because that's the way our brain understands story best, right? The hero, the protagonist, is called to journey, right? Something happens. And, and it could be an internal thing. It could be an external thing, right? But something happens, and there's an invitation that invites them out. And then they either take the invitation, or they don't. And of course, you take the invitation. And that's when you get into that's the end of Act One in any film, then you get into like in a film structure, what people have called the fun and games section, and then you start speeding up and you go through life and you like things are clicking, things are clicking, and then there's a halfway point right at the center, where something cataclysmic or something marvelous happens, and it changes the trajectory, right? But as soon as that happens, even if it's cataclysmic or marvelous, shit starts to unravel, right? And it gets really, really, really, really hard. Really, really, really, really dark. until right at the end, where you break into that third act, or section three, where everything is the dark night of the soul, all is fucked up. And then there's a moment where it's your at the protagonist is at their lowest in which they are forced into reconciliation with the problem that they are trying to solve internally that they've been trying to do externally through most of the, you know, the whole story. And then there's a switch and it happens and if and the Oh, only gift I had was I actually noticed in my life, this switch that was happening, or it was like, Oh, shit, everything's falling apart what's happening. So then I started being very aware of like, the change that was taking place. A lot of people think like, the plot is a story. And this is from Lisa's book, like, the plot is not the story, the story is what happens, you know, is all that is how the protagonist transforms throughout. That's the story. And the theme is what overwrites that and the plot or just the things that happen, basically. So anyway, that's a little granular, but I'm obsessed with how we tell stories. And the structural thank you for that, like the structural basis of this was both thoughtful, and, and reflexive. Because it just made sense to me to write the book that way without thinking about it. That's just how it came out. Did
Andrew Vontz 36:01
you always know you would start with the same that opens the book?
Cory Richards 36:06
No, I didn't know. But I'm happy I did it made sense to do it that way. And I also think I could have ended that scene before I did. And I was thinking about that today. I was like, Well, what if I left it as more of a cliffhanger. But then I you know, it is the way it is? And it's an invitation. And I like that because it sort of lays out the premise for the rest of it.
Andrew Vontz 36:32
Yeah, I mean, I thought it was a fantastic place to start always good to start in the middle of the action. Yeah. So yeah, definitely. And we talked a little bit about your physical transformation through the writing process, and what happened afterwards? What was your experience of becoming deeply immersed in the practice of writing? And I mean, it's highly conscious, as opposed to meditation, which is a different way of sitting down. But what have you learned about yourself from being a writer in a more committed way than you've ever been?
Cory Richards 37:11
Again, I've you know, these stories, these stories of oh, I'm ADHD, I can't focus. It's a story. Actually, I can have laser focus, if I set up the framework. And so what I've realized is I need framework. I need accountability, I need a plan. If I don't have a plan in place, which by the way, I don't do all the time. And it's, it's still something that I'm navigating I'm really working with. It's like, I'm growing up at 43. I truly, I'm like, oh, fuck this is this is what growing up means. But what I realized is there's the story that like, oh, I don't, you know, I can't I, I could never do that. Well, if you put the system in place, and you put all the pieces around yourself, you can pretty much do anything. It's just structure. So I learned again, that that was a story that was false. I'm ADHD, I don't have the discipline to do this. Again, and that's part of where one of the things that we talked about on the other podcast is like this idea of presence, where I felt very, very, there were days where I felt like almost manic in the writing process. And it felt so good. To have this coming, I just felt so good. Because I was engaging with with creative flow. But like you point out, it's not present. It's very different than that. But being in flow for hours on end is a marvelous, marvelous experience. And the more you do that, the more able you are to return to it. Because again, you've set the systems in place.
Andrew Vontz 38:56
Has your relationship with how you tell stories on social media changed at all as a consequence of becoming more deeply immersed in writing?
Cory Richards 39:08
Honestly, I mean, I want to I want to, I want to say yes, but the truth is social media to me is an I love everybody. Thank you. If you follow me like I thank you, like you really are making my life possible. And I appreciate it so much. And I really struggle with social media, because I understand and see holistically what it's what it's doing to us. There are positive benefits to it, unquestionably. And there's a lot of this mindlessness that's taking place that's that's eating our attention that's taking us outside of the the amazing experience of life, you know, and so I have a I have a strained relationship with it. I think it's made me more mindful of what I put on social me either rather than just being reactive, oh, I have to feed the algorithm I want to talk about, I want to talk about more interesting things. Of course, like in this moment, you got to sell the book. And that's part of commerce. And there's, you know, thank God that we have it to be able to do those things. That's just a reality. But like, how do you how do I create content that is, I think, a little bit more meaningful. You know, I think we did that with ever snow filter where we were trying to we were actually trying to do something interesting with the medium. And so approaching it that way, like, Okay, this is, this is a fascinating medium. What can I do with it? That becomes a more interesting question. But like, I do have it. I don't love social media. It's not my favorite thing.
Andrew Vontz 40:49
Yeah, and you mentioned ever snow filter, and you write about it in the book. And I think you actually talk about some version of this. But it's really it's like the the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which is, once you observe something, you've changed it more or less, right? Yeah. And so you've also mentioned, do you have another book? And then I imagine there's another book after that, that you might be working on now that you're not talking about? Do you want to talk about it?
Cory Richards 41:17
I wish you well, there is a book in my head that I'm working on. But I haven't started putting I haven't put any pen to paper, the book that comes after the color of everything, which comes out in July, that's the memoir is the photo book. And that is coffee table. It's by 10 Speed Press, which is an imprint of Random House. And that's a fun one, because it leans into it leans into mental health and a fun way. In fact, it organizes my entire career through the lens of the heart and the brain, which I think, you know, it's pretty clever. It's fun anyway. And I'm really excited about that. It's less, you know, it's not a big, personal story. It's, but it's, it's, it's my life through photographs, essentially. And the third book is, you know, without saying too much, I think there's I have a lot of ideas about Well, I'm not Yeah, we've talked about it, but I'm not going to actually specifically say what it is, yeah. Good. Put, like, leave an Easter egg for people. No,
Andrew Vontz 42:32
that's great. And, you know, one of the things that I've gotten back into in the past couple of weeks, Cory is I've gotten really into reading physical books again. And, you know, I'm a dad, I've got two young kids and like a lot of people, I've got a lot of stuff going on, I've always loved to read. And something that I've been doing more often is just completely shutting my phone off, not reading on a Kindle. And I've been reading physical books more even got a dorky light that I wear around my neck, so I can wear my blue black glasses and not have overhead light on and have my weird light thing. So my kids make fun of me all the time. But I just wanted to say thanks, because as a consequence of this interview, for the first time in years, you know, I read a 354 page book in a week or five days, I think, which I definitely wouldn't have done and I loved every minute of it. It's a fantastic book. I'm really excited to see, you know, where this journey takes you next. And I guess the last thing that I would ask is actually a request because I know once people read the book, once they listen to this interview, the thing they're going to ask is, can you have Cory Richards and Andre Agassi on for a future episode of choose a hardware? So I don't know if you guys are friends. But this is an open invitation. I know this book is going to totally blow up. You're very modestly described yourself as not famous, you're super famous. You're going to become even more famous. And I'd like to this is an open invitation. I'd like to have you and Agassi on the show maybe fall 24 Will you do it?
Cory Richards 44:06
I would love to I would actually adore that. And and I will say this if if Andre ever hears this, we're not friends. But I know. Andrew right now is hinting at something that I say in the book. One of the best books I read, and one of the books that really set me off on my journey was Andre Agassi's book open. I am not a tennis player. I am. But But reading that book, and the way he wrote and the way he described tennis, the way he described his life. Even though I had no idea what it meant to be a tennis player, I can relate to everything in relationship to my life. And one of the things that he writes throughout the book, which was so fascinating to me, which I just hit it hit so hard was I hate tennis. So Andres book was seminal in my process. And I cannot extend him enough gratitude and yeah, I ribbed him a little bit of my book. But I would love to be on a podcast with him if for no other reason to that just to say thank you over and over and over again for the profound privilege I had to read reading His words.
Andrew Vontz 45:16
It's a fantastic book I love that book as well. And I also want to know what is in the GIL water for anyone who read the book I don't know if you remember that but his trainer would would color his like recovery and electrolyte drinks and be like today I got an orange Gill water. I'm like, Man, I want to know what's in the Go water. Dude, come on the show. I see. What's in the guild honor man. We all want to sip. Awesome. Well, Cory, thanks so much. Thanks so much for for being here and being so generous with your time. I really appreciate it. It's
Cory Richards 45:48
my pleasure. Thank you for having me. It's so psyched to do this. Let's do it again.