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Walking Across the Country w/ Tom Griffen
10 Plays12 days ago
In this episode I talk to Tom Griffen an adventurer, endurance athlete, writer, and artist. We talk about the life lessons he's learned from his adventures. How writing allows him to express himself and the freedom that brings. How nature gives back to him in so many ways, that can benefit anyone.
As a long-time runner and former National Director of Training at Fleet Feet, he’s tackled grueling feats like walking across America in 2018 and thru‑hiking both the Appalachian and Arizona Trails. His writing—covering travel, self-awareness, and the art of trail life—appears on his WordPress blog and his Substack titled “With a Good Heart”, where he blends reflections on hiking, creativity, and endurance. He also carves wooden spoons as a creative outlet and hosts workshops and coaching around storytelling, kindness, and adventure.
🔗 Key links
- Website (Writer & Adventurer): tomgriffen.com
- Substack “With a Good Heart”: withagoodheart.substack.com
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Transcript
Meeting Tom Griffin and Inspiring Journeys
00:00:00
Tony Montgomery
All right, today have on Tom Griffin. Tom, I think the the first time I met you was on the Appalachian Trail and i had it in my mind that like no one is allowed to pass me on this trail, right?
00:00:14
Tony Montgomery
that was That was like one of the goals. No one's allowed to pass me and then want to get like 15 miles in a day. And then I think it was on day two or three, me and Emma see you just fly by us and we're like, what the hell?
00:00:28
Tony Montgomery
Like this guy should not be going past us. And I was very intrigued to catch you at the next shelter and and talk to you and kind of pick your brain about everything. And lo and behold, I found out um a good bit about you in a short amount of time and been following you ever since. I think it's been three years now following you on your adventures and you know, some of the stuff that you you told us on the Appalachian Trail um really inspired me to pursue the ultra endurance stuff.
00:00:59
Tony Montgomery
I met you and I met a couple other people that were ultra endurance athletes and it was always in my mind. Oh, he has that itch I wanted to scratch and meeting you and meeting them.
00:01:06
Tom
Yeah. Yeah.
00:01:07
Tony Montgomery
um You guys really, one you made it seem like it was doable because that's what you guys, that's what you told me. was like, It's not as hard as you think it is. It's doable. If you can do the Appalachian Trail, you can do a 100 miler.
00:01:19
Tony Montgomery
um
00:01:19
Tom
yeah
00:01:20
Tony Montgomery
But then some of the other stuff and then come to find out you are a writer and you're very eloquent with your
Life Lessons from Challenges and Failures
00:01:26
Tony Montgomery
words. And then you've just done a lot over your lifetime. um So I want to have you on to kind of ah talk to you about, you know, what it's like to to be in the woods for days on time, what it's like to to walk across the country, what it's like to travel and put yourself out there. So appreciate you coming on the show.
00:01:44
Tom
Yeah, well, Tony, first of all, it's a real pleasure to to be sitting here having another conversation with you. I do remember our short, but like I'd say poignant conversations, which is often what happens on the trail, right?
00:01:57
Tom
You have these brief interactions that are potentially life-changing or at least thought-changing in a lot of cases.
00:01:57
Tony Montgomery
Right. Yeah.
00:02:03
Tom
Yeah. Yeah, I do have to address one thing that you just said. So that idea of not wanting somebody to pass you, um you know, I'm not going lie.
00:02:12
Tony Montgomery
yeah
00:02:13
Tom
Like that's I try not to let that be like a thought at my front and center mind. But make no mistake, like as an athlete, as a competitor, you know, I'm thinking about those exact same things.
00:02:28
Tony Montgomery
Thank you.
00:02:28
Tom
And, you know, you You two folks ahead of me, trust me, I was like on the chase as soon as I saw you.
00:02:34
Tony Montgomery
from
00:02:35
Tom
and And it's the same with anybody up ahead. But I think that the competitive spirit, you know, that but where that stems from is... is it is ah is a good thing. And you know it's not like you're out there trying to you know do anything negative or bad. It's just more about like the fun of the chase. And I think that that is a great metaphor for for life in general. but And I would say it applies really well to the the very the fortunate life that I have led. I enjoy looking ahead, seeing something that may or may not be
00:03:11
Tom
ah ah reachable or accessible even. and And I like just kind of buckling in and and going for it, you know, because why not? yeah The idea of life being short is real.
00:03:25
Tom
And the older older I've gotten, the more I've really like seen that as less cliche and more reality. And so why not? Hey, let's go for it. And if it works, cool. And if it doesn't work, cool. Like, who cares? Like, we did it and we gave it a shot. so um So, yeah, it's a real treat to be here to chit chat with you a little bit about about who knows, who knows where this is going to go.
00:03:48
Tony Montgomery
yeah yeah
00:03:48
Tom
but But yeah, if it all starts at the Appalachian Trail, man, it's going to go somewhere good. I'm sure about that. yeah
00:03:55
Tony Montgomery
that's very true very true and it's interesting and you say that with the looking to do like the unachievable things or things that you think like are beyond your capabilities um and i i do that myself as well like i put myself in situations where it's like i don't think i can do that but but i don't know until i try right
00:04:06
Tom
Yeah.
00:04:16
Tony Montgomery
And for me, that fits well with my personality, like the idea of setting incremental goals of like, I've done something similar, so I know I feel comfortable that I can probably do this too, is not it's not big enough for me to like have that pressure to to face that challenge. Right. I need something that's like, there's no way I can do this. like with the with the ultra endurance races, I'm like, I'm 240 pounds.
00:04:37
Tom
Yeah. right.
00:04:41
Tony Montgomery
Like I shouldn't be able to do this, but I think I can. So like, why not? And whether you get there or not, your ability to to push yourself beyond what you think you're capable of, you learn so many life lessons along the way.
00:04:47
Tom
yeah
00:04:57
Tony Montgomery
And you find out really that you're capable of more than you than you ever thought you could be. um So I do, I resonate with that idea of like setting these these lofty goals that you think are scary and you think like, ah, probably not going to get there, but like, why not? Right.
00:05:14
Tom
Yeah, why not? You know, the um one of the most important learning moments of my life and and staying in the theme of endurance athlete, athletics and such, is was ah was an absolute like quote failure in the eyes of you know the participants. i I started and did not finish a race, but that race to this day is probably the most important race I ever ran.
00:05:40
Tom
And i've got you know I've got a couple hundred mile finishes under my belt, which you know in the world of these days, in the world of ultra marathoning, a couple is kind of what everybody's got.
00:05:51
Tom
Ain't nothing special about that. Uh, my, my sweet spot was, was the 50 miler, but I mean, that's neither here nor there. This other race, it was another hundred miler.
00:06:01
Tom
I only made it to mile 89 and my wheels started to fall off. And i mean, all of the details in hindsight were very clear and obvious, but you know, I'm not going to go into the whole race report with you now, but the, but the bottom line is, is I had to drop out of that race and that race taught me more about myself.
00:06:20
Tom
then the than the races that I actually trained for and finished successfully. So I think on some level, I want failure. like i And failure is not the right word. i just i want
Personal Growth and Introspection
00:06:33
Tom
to say yes as often as possible, knowing that they're not always going to reach fruition.
00:06:40
Tom
I want there to be turmoil, because I think that's where I'm going to have something rich to take away. I want there to be problems. I want there to be challenges and things that are going to put me up against the wall and force me to think differently.
00:06:53
Tom
So, you know, I even in the moment when I was getting medevaced off the mountain at mile 89 with like a resting heart rate of 100 plus 120 beats per minute or something nutty like I was in a bad way.
00:07:09
Tom
Even in that moment, I turned to my pacer and I was like, hey man, this edge that I'm experiencing right now is a gift. To know what my limit is today is such a gift because now I can train potentially in a way with this being the the goal as opposed to the 100 mile you know tape that I have to cross.
00:07:32
Tom
This personal thing that I'm now able to look at with my own two eyes amazing. is such a rich thing to have access to, you know?
00:07:42
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:07:42
Tom
Hmm.
00:07:43
Tony Montgomery
Now, have you ever, have you always had that perspective of seeing difficult things or seeing failures as like, what can I glean positive from this as opposed to, you know, what, what went wrong?
00:07:57
Tony Montgomery
I'm a failure, like I couldn't do it and 80 other people finished it. Like, what was there a shift in your life that made you change your perspective from um looking at the negatives to looking at the positives? Or that just a personality trait that you've always had?
00:08:12
Tom
I can't claim that it's a personality trait that I've always had. no way. um If anything, i was completely out of touch with... with any depth of myself until I was a, I'd say a reasonably older young adult, if that makes sense. Like, I mean, I, I just didn't really have much of a clue and I wasn't really an introspective. I mean, I think, I think I was an introspective person, but I didn't know, I didn't know that's what I was doing. I was thoughtful.
00:08:44
Tom
I looked inward. I didn't quite see the the the very obvious value of maybe processing little moments to try to ah glean maybe lessons and big things. i was just I was just winging it. And I winged it for a long time, even beyond my my childhood. you know I think I was probably in my 30s before I started to hit the brakes and say, hold on a second. Like,
00:09:11
Tom
i think I think I can do this a little bit different. And I didn't need to change much because I was already doing it, but my perspective shifted. And I don't know that there was one thing, as you asked, if it was there a moment? I don't know that there was necessarily a moment.
00:09:26
Tom
I mean, perhaps it had to do with the end of a relationship. And and and I think the timing is coincidentally you know aligned with something like that. But It wasn't like, you know, I got hit with that lightning bolt per se.
00:09:41
Tom
I think it was the culmination of just kind of being in a knucklehead for a long time and not really taking life too seriously. and then And then having the luxury and the privilege of life sort of being handed to me.
00:09:58
Tom
You know, I think it wasn't until my 30s that I started truly making conscious efforts to do the things that I was actually choosing to do, as opposed to the things that were sort of falling in my lap just by the ah nature of of my fortunate life.
00:10:07
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:10:17
Tom
um and I didn't want
Acknowledging Luck and Privilege
00:10:18
Tom
that to happen anymore. I wanted to, I wanted to some degree take control or that's not, control is not the word, but I wanted to be, so I wanted to be in charge of what my trajectory started at, you know, who know, not knowing where it was going.
00:10:31
Tony Montgomery
yeah
00:10:31
Tom
And I think that, that, that realization, think it just came through very late blooming maturation of self and,
00:10:44
Tom
It came late, man. i guess
00:10:45
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:10:47
Tom
I'm just lucky. I'm just lucky that it came at all. But I think that that's probably what it stems from.
00:10:53
Tony Montgomery
yeah
00:10:55
Tom
Yeah.
00:10:55
Tony Montgomery
Yeah, yeah. luck it Luck plays such a huge role in who we become in life.
00:10:59
Tom
huh
00:11:00
Tony Montgomery
And I think we put more emphasis on our abilities to make changes in our life versus how lucky we got to have those changes be made upon us, right?
00:11:13
Tony Montgomery
Based on a you know maybe who we met as a coach growing up or who our parents were. like All these things were just random flips of the coin that we got lucky to do. And i always tell people, you know, this idea that I'm a hard worker and I can hang my hang my strap on that and be like, yeah, I work hard. I outwork everyone.
00:11:35
Tony Montgomery
i you know, I just built that discipline in me. And it's like, well, no, like I got so lucky to see my mom raise me and my brother and like do whatever it took.
00:11:46
Tony Montgomery
She was our baseball coach. She was, you know, our chef. She was like everything. And then my dad was a hard worker and I just was lucky enough to see all that.
00:11:52
Tom
Mm-hmm.
00:11:54
Tony Montgomery
Then I got into the military. So i was like these string of events that were all purely luck driven that made me the hard worker that I am. So when I see people that don't work as hard, I'm not like, oh yeah, I'm i'm better than you because anyone can work hard.
00:12:07
Tony Montgomery
It's like, I just got so lucky to be in this situation. um and I think that perspective, one creates empathy for for other people, which I think is is really important to do. um But it also gives you like the sense of urgency of like, what am I gonna do with this luck? What am I gonna do with this opportunity that was placed upon me that isn't placed upon anyone else? And like, how can I take advantage of that? And I think maybe that's what culminated for you, this idea of like, yeah, I'm very lucky to be in this position. Let me quit wasting these opportunities maybe.
00:12:41
Tom
Maybe so. i like the um I like the way you just framed that because it got me thinking a little bit differently because luck, luck, and I know I use that word, but I think what what I would say I'm lucky for is is is maybe less of the things that you just named, like less of the parental participation, less of the of the maybe the so-called good things that you know maybe a good childhood would would potentially afford.
00:13:05
Tony Montgomery
Mm-hmm.
00:13:15
Tom
I think where where I can now look back and see the silver lining of maybe lack of guidance and lack of of nudging in any direction was the fact that I just, I maybe had it in me, maybe the innate me is truly somebody who's able to kind of make whatever work.
00:13:35
Tom
um and put me in whatever situation, I'm gonna make it work. And as a kid, and we did i didn't really have many boundaries. There was no was no real like box that that said, don't cross don't cross out of this this line. you know like I could kind of do and and live however I chose.
00:13:53
Tom
And luck played a part in allowing me to live in that space without damaging myself, you know physically, mentally.
00:13:59
Tony Montgomery
Right.
00:14:01
Tom
I mean, We all have our stuff, right? I've i got things I'm carrying around still from that. but But I was able to navigate that, even as a young person, in a relatively successful way.
00:14:13
Tom
And without those boundaries, though, I was very quick to jump in whatever comfort spaces you know ah were were plopped in front of me until I finally decided that that's not how I wanted to live. So the luck in this case is like, I'm lucky that it was messy.
00:14:30
Tom
I'm lucky that it was a bit of a mess.
00:14:30
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:14:32
Tom
um
00:14:33
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:14:33
Tom
Because I think that...
00:14:33
Tony Montgomery
And you're lucky that you had the personality to not allow that mess to, you know, detract you to go to jail or to go to this or to go to that.
00:14:36
Tom
Right.
00:14:41
Tom
Right. excellent
00:14:42
Tony Montgomery
Right.
00:14:43
Tom
Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
00:14:44
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:14:44
Tom
So...
00:14:44
Tony Montgomery
Yeah. One of the things you also touched on was this idea, as I look more into like the mental health and mental disorders that we're dealing with now as a epidemic and in society is this idea of, of agency and
The Power of Kindness and Connection
00:14:58
Tony Montgomery
hope.
00:14:59
Tony Montgomery
And it sounds like there was a point in time where you wanted to take agency for your life and you were lucky enough to be able to put yourself in that situation to do it.
00:15:05
Tom
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:15:08
Tony Montgomery
um But the real struggle, I think for, for a lot of people is this, This lack of does life happen to me or can I happen to impart myself into my life? Right.
00:15:21
Tony Montgomery
And you said once you hit 30, like you were able to take that choice, that that opportunity, that agency in your life. And then that's when things clicked. And I. I think about this all the time, like, how can I do how can I make an intervention that improves people agency?
00:15:36
Tony Montgomery
Because I think if we can improve people's agency and and hope, I think that can lift a lot of people up from the mental health disorders that we're seeing across. So I always think about that as like how
00:15:47
Tom
Yeah.
00:15:47
Tony Montgomery
what's an intervention like, what's the thing that we can do to give hope to people? And for you, that just that just clicked. And that sense of agency allowed you to navigate life in a way that you wanted to now instead of having life navigate you in the direction that life was telling you to go into. And I think that's like a very special moment for each each person.
00:16:08
Tony Montgomery
And I'm like, if we can start implementing that in the youth or in places of low socioeconomic status or places of mental health disorders, I think that can begin to like help lift us from this, this fog that we have of, um you know, class discrepancy, but also mental health disorders and and things like that. So it's, it's interesting that that was the thing that that clicked for you.
00:16:32
Tom
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I think I, of course, don't know the answer to this great pondering that you've just now thrown on the table. the Because, yes, wouldn't it be cool if there was a formula that, you know, we could somehow plug in?
00:16:50
Tom
i do think it boils down to people, though, but to the people around us or even and it doesn't need to be a lot like.
00:16:54
Tony Montgomery
Mm-hmm.
00:16:58
Tom
I mean, I still hear the this the singular voices of the occasional, you know, people that just popped into my life who said maybe one thing in passing that they probably have no recollection of, right? that And we all have these people in our life.
00:17:13
Tom
But for some reason, I remembered like those voices. And I think that the collection, the stacking up of those voices over time were part of what pushed things, you know, in the direction that began my my current trajectory.
00:17:28
Tom
So i think I think this boils down to being impeccable with our with our choice of words. languages Language is really important.
00:17:34
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:17:36
Tom
How we communicate with each other obviously is important, but I think truly taking time to be careful and and and be gracious and humble with our language as a gift to the recipient of that language With the po with a possible understanding that that word might be something that years from now they lean into as something that saves their life.
00:18:02
Tom
it's It's not, that's not hyperbole. That's real life. That that's that stuff happens. And And so I think that that's where kindness matters. That's where, you know, showing up with a tender voice matters.
00:18:13
Tony Montgomery
Mm-hmm.
00:18:16
Tom
Even if we're not feeling those things, our responsibility is to bring those things to the forefront. And And that'll be a lifelong challenge for anybody who's choosing to enlist that as a part of their life. But make no mistake, it's making a difference. from the From the Uber driver to the checker at the grocery store, like to just the passing person, a glance, a gesture,
00:18:40
Tom
changes everything. Like it's the smallest gestures that affect the big, the biggest changes. So why don't we lean into that? So maybe rather than it being formulaic, maybe it's just about us looking at our hearts and saying, am I willing to show you my heart?
00:18:57
Tom
because Because if I can honestly say the answer to that is yes, then odds are my voice will follow suit. And I can humble myself before anybody that I'm standing or sitting across.
00:19:08
Tom
And we can share a moment of good that that will that will resonate. and And if that's a strong resonance, man, right now, we need that.
00:19:18
Tony Montgomery
Yeah, yes, we do.
00:19:19
Tom
I mean, we always do, but surely...
00:19:20
Tony Montgomery
Yeah. yeah Yeah. The idea that everyone has a story to tell is the way that I look at it from like a psychological lens of like everyone is interested it's, it's up to you to kind of get that out of them.
00:19:33
Tony Montgomery
Right. It's up to you to create a space of vulnerability so that person can tell their story.
00:19:37
Tom
Yes.
00:19:39
Tony Montgomery
um
00:19:39
Tom
Okay.
00:19:40
Tony Montgomery
And I think kindness is one of those ways of doing it. And like you said, like you just don't really truly understand the impact you have on people as you go through your your day to day life. And it is a choice how you treat people, you know, and one of the things that you you probably, you know,
00:19:57
Tony Montgomery
encounter or maybe not encounter, but you you may not even know it, but like running into you on the Appalachian trail, you know, you've come up a lot in conversations of me and Emma since that time of like, oh, did you see Tom?
00:20:09
Tom
Yeah.
00:20:10
Tony Montgomery
Like he's going on the trail. Like, that's awesome. Let's follow him. Let's see what he's doing. Or did you see his sub stack posts or did you read his book? And like, just because you were nice to us and just because you told your story and, and you were, you were interested in, and you were, you were able to um bring about this idea of like, man, I feel happier and better after talking to Tom, even though I don't really know him that well, you know?
00:20:34
Tony Montgomery
So like, it comes up a lot of like, oh, like what's, you know, what's he doing now?
00:20:34
Tom
yeah
00:20:38
Tony Montgomery
What's he up to now? So the fact that you, I, we only saw you maybe probably like three hours in total on the, on the trail, maybe. You know, and it's like, we've been talking about you incrementally over the last three years because you had a ah positive impact on us without even trying to.
00:20:47
Tom
Maybe.
00:20:55
Tony Montgomery
So you're right. Those little things um bring immense value to to people and excitement and joy in life. And it's just as simple as like, yeah, being kind.
00:21:06
Tom
Yeah. Well, and well, those words, I don't take those words lightly. um That's a real nice compliment. And I appreciate you sharing that, but make no mistake. Like we're connected as a result of that short minute in time that we had. Right.
00:21:20
Tom
And like you, I've been following your your your, your, your, your doctoral education in Oklahoma, your, your move there initially. And then talking to Emma about, you know, tattoo artists in Cleveland, and then subsequently her writing, like,
00:21:36
Tom
this There's a blossoming on both sides that happened. and And that's the beauty of showing up in a vulnerable space with another human being and giving them a chance to be vulnerable by simply showing up.
00:21:50
Tom
And I think the trail, if if we can circle back to that, like the trail is is a is a great place for that to happen.
00:21:59
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:21:59
Tom
ah and And any trail, like any trail, I think affords this vulnerability. If you show up to the trail with something besides that, you're probably missing out.
00:22:11
Tom
You still might get it done and you can check it off your list. And that's fantastic. But I think the the depth of ah of a hike, you know whether it be a long or a short hike, doesn't really matter. But the depth of it probably comes from showing up with maybe your veil pulled to the side a little bit and being open and willing to take in someone's story and then giving them a chance to hear yours.
00:22:36
Tom
And in five minutes, you know, so much can happen as we've just named.
00:22:40
Tony Montgomery
Yeah, I was going to say, like, when you're exhausted at the end of the day, you don't really think about having a cover over you. You're just like free and in nature and you're just exhausted. And you're like, I don't even know the words that are coming out of my mouth, but like I'm talking to you and it's like it's a good time. And there's there is something about like exhaustion, nature, anxiety.
00:23:01
Tony Montgomery
um can't like all that stuff does allow you to be ah vulnerable different person you know you don't you don't have to be as restrictive you don't have to be as confined you don't to be as protective um because we talk about it me and Emma talk about it all the time this idea of like everyone on the trails seems to be so like happy and excited to be out there because you you choose to be out there right you don't just stumble upon a trail and you're like I guess I'm hiking it it's like
00:23:21
Tom
Yeah.
00:23:28
Tony Montgomery
you know Those type of people are the type of people that are going open up and that are going to talk, and it does make it magical to to be out there.
00:23:28
Tom
right
00:23:37
Tony Montgomery
And we'll continue to talk about that a little bit more. But before we do, I'd like to get a little bit of a like a deeper background of some of the explorations that you had, some of the things that...
00:23:40
Tom
yeah
00:23:49
Tony Montgomery
um you know, transformed you into the person that you are today through whether it be life, business, the expeditions that you've been on, just a little bit more insight into into who you are and and what what you've done with your life.
00:24:04
Tom
Yeah, sure. Well, ah well and I won't give you the full here. I was born on this day. It was a sunny day.
00:24:11
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:24:11
Tom
type just But part of my i think who I am does trace back surely or how i move through the world traces back to the way my family um came up.
Military Experience and Transition
00:24:23
Tom
um We moved around a lot. um My dad's job bounced us around. And so me and I've got four siblings, we got comfortable kind of getting to know people, new people on a semi-regular basis.
00:24:38
Tom
And wasn't like being in a military family where you move every couple of years and it's just like rattling off. We moved and then stayed long enough to really get some roots down and then we'd uproot.
00:24:48
Tony Montgomery
Right.
00:24:49
Tom
So arguably that that's a different sort of scenario. You know, you're building deep relationships, then tearing them down or or or or at least, you know, changing things drastically.
00:24:53
Tony Montgomery
right
00:25:00
Tom
So, but we did a lot moving around and I think that idea of that comfort with with a certain degree of discomfort has been thematic since for as long as as I can remember.
00:25:13
Tom
So, I, similar to you, actually I don't know exactly your timeline, but I went directly into the military right out of high school. I went into the army. um I told my parents it was because ah I wanted to follow in the family tradition of military service, which was ah very much a half truth.
00:25:36
Tom
My father was unemployed and my mom wasn't making much money. And I saw it as the only way for me to at some point pay for college, which my maturity level was probably not ready for college. So it was a, it was probably a great decision. One of the, one of the best decisions I would say I probably made at that, at that moment in my life, but spent four years in the military and, and, you know, that's a whole different podcast, but, uh, the military,
00:26:04
Tom
I wouldn't trade it, um but I don't really have any good things to say about my experience in the service. I was in in the early, very right in 1990, right as the very beginning beginnings of the desert storm conflict began. And you know during basic training, they told us we were going to go, we were all going to graduate from basic as soon as we qualified with our weapon.
00:26:26
Tom
They were going to send us to the desert. Like that's what they told us, scared the hell out of me.
00:26:30
Tony Montgomery
yeah
00:26:30
Tom
Like, I think that psychosomatically, just couldn't hit the target with my weapon when, you know, and when we would qualify. um Because I'm actually a real good shot. And I always had been, but I, for whatever reason, I couldn't do it.
00:26:41
Tony Montgomery
and
00:26:42
Tom
and I think it was because I was really afraid. i was afraid of what they were saying, which, because I took it it, took it at face value. Like, hey, we're all going to go die.
00:26:51
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:26:51
Tom
I'm not going to try to hurry that up. Y'all can go. I'm staying behind because I can't hit the target. Yeah. But my I had a very non-military experience in the service. um But I think there's a lot of trauma that comes from being in the military simply by the nature of ah accepting the fact at some point during your training that you are...
00:27:17
Tom
going to you're going to kill somebody. you know I think that there's a certain amount of, and I'll just simplify and call it brainwashing, but I think it's it's necessary it's a necessary component of any armed service when you know I think that that's just part of the deal and they've got it down.
00:27:29
Tony Montgomery
right
00:27:32
Tom
you know I think there's ah there's a reason why the things are done in a certain way. But I distinctly remember at some point in my early time and in the army, like i when I finally did qualify with my doggone weapon,
00:27:48
Tom
I couldn't, I mean, tate I almost reluctantly say this because it doesn't reflect me now, but I couldn't wait for an opportunity to do what I was trained to do.
00:28:00
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:28:01
Tom
I absolutely was chomping at the bit to do things that my that me as just a person before and surely afterwards would never think. Like my brain was thinking exactly as I had been trained to think.
00:28:17
Tony Montgomery
Yeah. Yeah.
00:28:18
Tom
And um powerful training tool for sure.
00:28:18
Tony Montgomery
It's a powerful training tool.
00:28:21
Tom
and um And, you know, the the idea of, you know, if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying, you know, ah you got to kind of like beat the system to to win the system and all the little adages that you learn.
00:28:33
Tom
And I took seriously. I mean, when I finally did get out, like it took me a long time to sort of get beyond those ideas and become a different version of myself.
00:28:44
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:28:45
Tom
Still a knucklehead, but a different version of myself.
00:28:47
Tony Montgomery
Yeah. yeah
00:28:49
Tom
um But nonetheless, I won't belabor that section, but it is a, that was a pivotal four years in my young life. And, you know, I still write about it. I still think about it. I still, you know, hear the voices of both the good and the bad folks that I crossed paths with. But it was a very influential moment in time that I wouldn't trade.
00:29:07
Tom
Like as as as much and damage as it maybe did psychologically, I think that it, I think it was important also, more important than it was damaging.
00:29:08
Tony Montgomery
Right.
00:29:19
Tom
I think.
00:29:21
Tony Montgomery
Yeah, I think that's a common trend that I see with people that um come in and out of the military. cause I'm interviewing a lot of veterans right now for a research paper on PTSD and whether therapy worked for them or whether they it didn't work for them and what are what are some of the key characteristics of maybe why that was successful or not.
00:29:42
Tony Montgomery
And you very much get the, it was the worst thing I've ever done and it was the best thing I've ever done. But everyone says like, I wouldn't trade it because it it it was very formidable part of my life.
00:29:52
Tom
Hmm. Hmm.
00:29:55
Tony Montgomery
And, you know, as you look at like the neuroscience, that 18 21 years,
00:30:01
Tony Montgomery
we we still have this malleable prefrontal cortex. That's when it's doing most of the the changing and in the work. So it's it's very easy to ah manipulate. It's very easy to um shape who you are and your ability to make decisions and how you see yourself in the world.
00:30:16
Tony Montgomery
And that's one of the times where where you can get that hijacked and they do a great job of of hijacking that.
00:30:22
Tom
Yeah.
00:30:23
Tony Montgomery
I mean, the whole idea bootcamp is to um tear you down from from who you thought you were your individual self and make you a team, a unit that, you know, is going to go to bat for the people around you. So you become less of I and you become more of of me, which is is beautiful.
00:30:42
Tony Montgomery
in so many ways, like you dissolve the ego that you thought you had. um But when done in ah in a negative scenario, it can very much create this us versus them.
00:30:55
Tony Montgomery
um We're the good guys. They're the bad guys. So therefore we can do whatever we want to them.
00:31:00
Tom
Hmm. Hmm.
00:31:00
Tony Montgomery
And it does give you this mindset when you look back on it you're like, who the hell was that? But it also makes you think like, could that happen to me again? Right? Because there is this whole idea when you look at the research of like, um you know, would you be ah Nazi supporter, sympathizer in Nazi Germany?
00:31:22
Tony Montgomery
or would you try to save, risk your life, risk your family's life and save the Jewish people and everyone, right? It's gonna be like, yo, would totally save the Jewish people, right? And it's like, well, history and research shows that like,
00:31:32
Tom
Thank you.
00:31:36
Tony Montgomery
that's likely not going to happen, right? You're not that person. And those people are, we should study those people more than we should study the ones that would do that. But it is this idea of like, it's so easy to become the person that you don't want to be based on the environment and the people around you.
00:31:53
Tony Montgomery
and I think understanding that allows you to look at people maybe that you disagree with, with ah with a more empathic light, because, you know, especially now with politics, right? You can clearly see there's brainwashing going on and like people are going to look back 10 years from now and they're like, that wasn't who I like really am.
00:32:11
Tony Montgomery
And we experienced that in the in the military.
00:32:11
Tom
terms.
00:32:13
Tony Montgomery
And it is a, it is a formidable part of your life that creates a lot of positive things like discipline, motivation. i always tell people like find a job that you don't want to do and you'll learn to do like, then you'll start searching for the things that you love to do.
00:32:27
Tony Montgomery
And the military was one of those things for me, where was like, It was a great experience. I got to work with some of the best um special forces guys and got to see some of the best fighters on the planet.
00:32:41
Tony Montgomery
But I was also like, I don't want to do this for a living. Like, what am I going to do when I get out? And I started to formulate this future plan that like 18 year old me was never even thinking of the future, which is how I ended up in the in the military. So I do understand. And it is a very common sentiment of like,
00:32:57
Tony Montgomery
it was it was transformative and I would never change it but I hate it or I love it yeah there's no in between
00:33:03
Tom
No, it's, yeah, it's, it's all in or all out, but, but yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't change it. It, um it, it sort of set the stage for me getting out to kind of use that gung ho. Like I got out with that hard charging and and that hard charging mindset, I think I brought to the table too. So it was just a, my fire was fed by that.
00:33:25
Tom
um And I went into the world of education. So I became a teacher and I taught in um private schools, mostly, or I worked in, worked with in positions that didn't require a credential.
00:33:39
Tom
And, and so I just kind of like figured out how to you how to not work the system, but I understood a system that allowed me to jump right in and you know do it rather than have to go through you know a couple of years of schooling to pull it off first.
00:33:50
Tony Montgomery
yeah
00:33:54
Tom
So so yeah, i was I mean, at 22, I was teaching PE with no prior experience. I think the military was my prior experience that I put down on my one-line resume.
00:34:07
Tom
and And then by the time I was 25 years old, I was a my title was, i was the assistant, or no, I was the dean of discipline was my title at a private high school.
00:34:18
Tony Montgomery
That's an amazing title.
00:34:19
Tom
It's just like, it sounds like some kind of, I don't know, it doesn't really sound like a professional title, but nonetheless, this high school was ah was a private school. it was fed by international students and um college prep, but I had no degree and I taught for a year and then at that school and then was ah an administrator.
00:34:42
Tom
um So, you know, i I figured out how to navigate a complex professional world um in a way that, you know, put me in really interesting places at a young age.
00:34:56
Tom
and And I joke now when I look back or when I was in my early 30s, I used to joke that my resume made me look like I was on the lam because I had done so many different disparate things.
00:35:10
Tom
I was a roofer. You know, I worked as a teacher for multiple years. I was an administrator for a while. um i spent time as a consultant in my late 20s. Like i I did things that just didn't, they didn't go together.
00:35:25
Tom
um But like I said, like my life was a series of opportunities that were just sort of thrown in front of me.
00:35:25
Tony Montgomery
Right. Yeah.
00:35:30
Tom
And I immediately just said, why not give it a go, give it a go.
00:35:33
Tony Montgomery
yeah
00:35:35
Tom
And then, so so my 20s was kind of, let's sample everything. and And then my 30s was when I started to be a little bit more discerning. And my 30s is when I got into endurance sports.
00:35:51
Tom
I was always a runner. I was always an athlete. But, and I always, i would always, you know, kick the tires on doing long distance stuff, but I didn't really know what that world looked like.
00:36:02
Tom
And I think at some point I read an article about Western States, 100 miler. um And I think, and the the thing I remember about the article was that they talked about it as the 100 mile buffet.
00:36:14
Tom
And this idea that you could eat all this random food over the course of 100 miles, that sounded interesting to me, you know? um
00:36:24
Tony Montgomery
Yes.
00:36:24
Tom
But, uh, Yeah, so that that like planted, you know, the the weirdest things plant like the most most pivotal seeds. And in my case, for running, that's what that's what it was for me.
00:36:37
Tom
And I started started signing up. But yeah, so education turned into a career. at at one point At some point, it kind of leveled out where I was teaching teach in he or i was teaching high school And...
00:36:50
Tom
special education and You know, again, didn't know what I didn't know, said yes to a job, and it was probably similar to the military, the hardest, worst job I ever had, but also the most rewarding best job I ever had, working with a real diverse, difficult group of students whose cultures and lives I had zero context for.
00:37:07
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:37:14
Tony Montgomery
yeah
00:37:15
Tom
But what I was able to bring to the table was probably something that that came from all of these these these curious and different ah background jobs that I have had, it was the ability to just show up with empathy.
00:37:30
Tom
Like I was i was really interested in what folks had to say. I was really interested in in what they were feeling. i was really interested in giving them space to share.
00:37:38
Tony Montgomery
Right.
00:37:41
Tom
And that became probably the absolute best trait that I had as an educator. I could teach, sure. But I mean, I was working with 18 year old people who couldn't read, couldn't do math, and I wasn't going to change their life by teaching them any degree of, you know, algebra or, you know, reading lessons.
00:37:58
Tony Montgomery
right
00:38:03
Tom
We sat and talked about just life and that became my classroom. Which, like I said, was the hardest thing to ever endure listening to these folk stories, but also then really rich because we kind of created family, a family that we all needed.
Passion for Running and Entrepreneurship
00:38:21
Tom
I needed it.
00:38:21
Tony Montgomery
Yeah. Right.
00:38:22
Tom
They needed it. They didn't know I needed it, but I did.
00:38:25
Tony Montgomery
right
00:38:26
Tom
and And I still look back on those days as them enriching my life as much as I damn sure hope I did theirs. um Yeah, and then at some point along the way, I took a part-time job at a and a running store.
00:38:40
Tom
And honestly, man, I just took that job because i i just wanted to interact with adults. I would have just volunteered and so and helped these folks sell shoes and talk about running. I didn't care about the money.
00:38:51
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:38:51
Tom
i just wanted... i needed adult time, big time.
00:38:55
Tony Montgomery
Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:38:57
Tom
and i And I started working you know a couple hours a week, and it led to more hours a week. And I just fell um i fell in love with... the opportunity to sit across from somebody who had a similar passion as mine.
00:39:09
Tom
And over time, I started developing more and more knowledge that I could share. And and now i was able to kind of bring my teaching, so the teaching side of me to this retail space that and I didn't care about selling stuff, but I i cared about giving people information.
00:39:26
Tom
And
00:39:26
Tony Montgomery
Right.
00:39:28
Tom
And I just fell in love with with the model of business that that particular store did. And on a goof, one day, i said to the owner of that store, this was in Sacramento, I said, hey, if there's ever an opportunity for a guy with no money to own in one of these stores,
00:39:45
Tony Montgomery
Right.
00:39:45
Tom
You know, I'm your guy. And I kind of stayed at laughing, knowing that, of course, that would never happen. I had no capital. i was I was that a middle school, you know, special ed teacher. i was I think I was making like $30,000 a year at the time and in California, you know. and
00:40:01
Tony Montgomery
Right.
00:40:01
Tom
And even then, i was below the poverty line. Not poverty line, but I was not making money. i certainly wasn't saving.
00:40:06
Tony Montgomery
Yeah. A hard, a hard living out there in California on 30, 40 grand.
00:40:10
Tom
Yeah, even and that's even 20 years ago. But nonetheless... An opportunity came up and he pulled me into his office a couple of years later and said, hey, remember that thing you said about owning a store?
00:40:23
Tom
Well, we this the franchise has got an opportunity for for me to kind of henpeck a staffer who's showing abilities and you know willingness to to take this on.
00:40:37
Tom
yeah interested? And I said, yes, without knowing where the store was or what the details look like. I just said, absolutely. I'm all in again, like just kind of like rolling with whatever fell into my lap.
00:40:49
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:40:50
Tom
Uh, and that began my, my, my, I think that my bigger career in, in the running industry, which I still am now connected, but now I'm, I'm sort of on the consulting side of things. So,
00:41:04
Tom
I own that store. It happened to be in Santa Cruz, thank goodness, and Santa Cruz, California, where, you know, it's a half a mile the beach and a half a mile mountainous redwoods.
00:41:09
Tony Montgomery
Yeah. yeah
00:41:12
Tom
Like it was paradise. But yeah, i owned a store for a couple of years, realized it wasn't for me. And, you know, now that and now that I'm telling this story, I think one of the pivotal moments, as you asked before, was it came as the result of of running that store.
00:41:29
Tony Montgomery
Right.
00:41:29
Tom
yeah. Running a store is not easy. And unless you've been an entrepreneur, it's hard to fathom the amount of mental energy that goes into trying to keep any sort of entrepreneurial endeavor alive.
00:41:44
Tom
You're all in. You don't have time to turn off. I didn't take a day off for two years.
00:41:48
Tony Montgomery
right
00:41:49
Tom
Literally, that's I worked every day. and My staff would ask me to take a day off and I never did. wasn't that I didn't trust him. It wasn't that I you know had negative thoughts about it. I just didn't want to miss anything that was otherwise an opportunity to grow the business.
00:42:06
Tom
And I took over, when i when I stepped into the store, it was a failing store. By all rights, I probably should closed the doors. um And within two years, we were... where we were selling more than a million dollars worth of shoes, socks, insoles, and accessories.
00:42:16
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:42:20
Tom
So I turned it around, is is the long and the short of that, but it came at a cost. I stopped running. I put on a bunch of weight. I was unhealthy.
00:42:30
Tony Montgomery
yeah
00:42:30
Tom
you know i was eating pizza every night. like I was working late into the night and waking up early to come back in and do it all over again. And the pivotal moment that i'm that I'm talking about here is I...
00:42:42
Tom
Remember I came, was at work one night, or I was at work, it was 11 o'clock at night. Everybody was home except me. And my phone rang, you know, and it wasn't a cell phone back there. was just the like the landline phone rang.
00:42:59
Tom
I picked it up thinking, oh, it's a customer calling, you know, whatever. They're not gonna expect me to answer. Well, it was one of my mentors, one of the one of the people who I had since developed a ah really close professional relationship with who was really like everything he said was sort of a gold nugget.
00:43:17
Tom
And i to this day, he's still one of my dearest friends.
00:43:17
Tony Montgomery
Hmm.
00:43:21
Tom
But back then he was just like a mentor who saw me as an opportunity to help him grow his business. And he called me at 11 o'clock at night and he said, what are you doing? What are you doing at work?
00:43:35
Tom
And I'm like, well, I got this to do and this to do and this to do. And he said, I just need you to know that there's like, there's no longevity in what you're doing and you are going to burn out. It's just a matter of time. Like you will, you will, so you will stop. Your body will force you to stop.
00:43:51
Tom
It might still be years until that happens, but it's coming. So just heads up, maybe make some changes, you know?
00:43:58
Tony Montgomery
yeah
00:44:00
Tom
And, About six months later is when my time can't, when the time that, you know, I was, that burnout that he predicted was happening and things were just falling apart around me.
00:44:10
Tony Montgomery
yeah
00:44:13
Tom
And the moment in time that changed me was when I admitted to myself that I could not do it anymore. And I called him and told him,
00:44:26
Tom
And i said, i need help. And I think that's probably the first time in my life where I used those words aloud to somebody that I was not like angling.
00:44:39
Tony Montgomery
Right.
00:44:39
Tom
you know i think I might've said that in the past, but for self-serving reasons.
00:44:39
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:44:44
Tom
In this case, I said it because i didn't have anything else.
00:44:49
Tony Montgomery
yeah
00:44:49
Tom
I needed help. I said, I need help. I don't, I can't, on paper, I'm successful. but this is not gonna work for me and I don't know what to do.
00:45:01
Tom
And him being an amazing leader, an amazing human who saw people's heart said, ah got you. And the details came later, but i he gave me a place to land.
00:45:15
Tony Montgomery
yeah
00:45:15
Tom
And that moment, I think, made me aspire to become that.
00:45:22
Tony Montgomery
yeah mm-hmm
00:45:22
Tom
I want to be a place for other people to land, you know, and not, I don't want to, don't want to put it all on me, but I want to offer opportunities like that for, for people around me because probably tracing it back to that moment when it was such an integral moment for me, um, and for the, the forward momentum of my life.
Serving Others and Transformative Connections
00:45:42
Tony Montgomery
Yeah, there's something about this idea of, you know, so verbally admitting that you can't do it on your own.
00:45:43
Tom
Uh,
00:45:50
Tony Montgomery
Right. And you're like, being extremely vulnerable and being at his low point thinking like, man, my whole life, I've been able to navigate and my whole life, I've been able to be the person that can do everything.
00:45:54
Tom
Yes.
00:46:08
Tony Montgomery
And now i can't and
00:46:08
Tom
Right.
00:46:11
Tony Montgomery
who's going to be there for me, right? And that's one of those things that you just don't truly know until you until you get to that point. And then lucky for you, you had somebody that was going to be there for you, right?
00:46:23
Tom
lucky So lucky.
00:46:24
Tony Montgomery
Because you could you could easily see this idea of of you being extremely vulnerable, you being at the bottom, you reaching out and that mentor saying like, hey, figure it out, man. you got You're on your own. I got my own life problems, right?
00:46:36
Tony Montgomery
And that could have caused you to go into a completely different trajectory, right? But he was there for you and and he helped you and he gave you a plan. And it was like, oh man, like life's much easier when I'm not just trying to do it all by myself. Right?
00:46:50
Tom
Man, you're saying it right there. That's that's it.
00:46:52
Tony Montgomery
Yeah. Yeah.
00:46:55
Tom
But in that, I think for so many folks, and I don't know, for me, I can speak for myself for sure, like being willing to see myself in a week, you know, and that week's not the right word, but as ah as having weaknesses that are obvious and public,
00:47:14
Tom
it that's a lifelong process of real of realizing that that's okay. In fact, it's probably better, more important two to name those things, to to avail yourself to those things with people to to then make yourself a stronger person.
00:47:32
Tom
um
00:47:32
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:47:33
Tom
Yes. If it, man, take the people away, pick take people out of anything you do. And and it's not going to be as much fun. It's probably going to be more of a grind. Like you might feel some self-satisfaction, but it's going to be, yeah it's not as good as it could be.
00:47:48
Tom
If other, if there were people involved, everything's more fun when you can do it with somebody else.
00:47:49
Tony Montgomery
right
00:47:54
Tom
Um, And, but I think a lot of that force, it asks us to trust. It asks us to maybe eschew the wiring that we came up with and become a different version of ourself. And something needs to happen in order for us to see that as ah as an option, let alone actually making it happen.
00:48:14
Tom
um Because that's that's that's the scariest thing.
00:48:14
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:48:18
Tom
I think honesty about our own shortcomings is... well, for me, is has probably in my life been the hardest thing two to manage.
00:48:30
Tom
and ah And I've reached now a point, though, where looking at that stuff, like, I want to find all that now. Now I'm like, oh, let's name it.
00:48:37
Tony Montgomery
Right.
00:48:39
Tom
let's talk Let's throw it all out there. Like, because once you realize that that shit makes... ah it like just feels good to like feel it just brings out a better version of you. Like that's all that's all I want to do. I want to look inward and then and then practice outward.
00:48:57
Tom
And and I don't want to hide that stuff anymore. But I spent a lot of years, Tony, a lot spent a lot of years
00:49:00
Tony Montgomery
Yeah. Yeah.
00:49:05
Tom
you know following the programming that that I was told. I was was told about what it is to be you know a man, what it is to be a professional, what it is to be an athlete.
00:49:17
Tom
All those voices, man, all those voices. I've had to just like squelch.
00:49:22
Tony Montgomery
yeah
00:49:22
Tom
and and and And then... henpeck the voices that i that they were out there too, but they didn't get much. um And then of course, the more you then give yourself over to that, the more you surround yourself with those people.
00:49:35
Tom
And next thing you know, you've got a community of folks who are uplifting each other's journeys like this.
00:49:37
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:49:41
Tom
And think that's that's when life, I don't know, they say middle age is when your life gets rich, starts getting like really and full.
00:49:41
Tony Montgomery
Right. Yeah.
00:49:47
Tony Montgomery
Yeah. Yeah.
00:49:49
Tom
I don't know, maybe that's true. I'm i'm feeling that.
00:49:51
Tony Montgomery
Yeah. Yeah. there There is this point in life where you quit serving yourself, right? So everything you do in life is to serve you.
00:49:58
Tom
Yeah.
00:50:00
Tony Montgomery
So you want to start a business to make money. You want to be the best athlete. So you you reach out to the people that can kind of guide you along that path. And they're going to tell you all the things that serve you best. But then there's a point in time where it's like,
00:50:13
Tony Montgomery
I'm just really tired of serving myself. It's very unfulfilling. It's very empty. Like, can I, what can I do to start serving others?
00:50:22
Tom
ah
00:50:22
Tony Montgomery
And then that's when you become more introspective of like, okay, well, in order to serve others, I have to figure out all the flaws that I have in me so that i'm better better able to serve others. All the things that I've been hiding in to allow me to pursue entrepreneurship and being the best athlete.
00:50:40
Tony Montgomery
Now I have to expose those things and not necessarily fix them, but like learn how they are part of my personality and how can I get the best out of them?
00:50:50
Tony Montgomery
Or how can I suppress the negative things so that I can start serving other people to the best of my abilities and and uplift in other people's lives?
00:50:57
Tom
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:50:58
Tony Montgomery
um Because like you said, when when that happens to us, it's the best feeling of the world.
00:50:58
Tom
yeah
00:51:03
Tony Montgomery
So how can we get there? How can we get to those people and how can we start serving them? and you know For me, there was a ah point in my life where that flipped to being less self-serving and more serving others.
00:51:13
Tony Montgomery
and And as soon as you do that, it's like, I want to be a better person for other people, not for myself.
00:51:19
Tom
and
00:51:20
Tony Montgomery
like I've been dealing with myself for a long time. like i like I like who I am. There's nothing wrong with who I am, but like let me shift things so that I can start serving other people and like lift up their life and maybe have a potential opportunity to
00:51:30
Tom
Yeah. Yeah.
00:51:33
Tony Montgomery
um bring them some joy as opposed to just thinking about joy for my for myself. And whether that's age, whether that's a point in life where you had somebody do it for you, it's hitting rock bottom, like whatever it is, you're going to get there.
00:51:40
Tom
yeah
00:51:46
Tony Montgomery
And when you get there, it just like life opens up for you and in
Walking Across America and Mindfulness
00:51:51
Tony Montgomery
a different way. And it's very it's very exciting once you're there.
00:51:54
Tom
yeah You know, Tony, when i when I did my walk across the US, there's a fella. i like Can I share a quick anecdote?
00:52:05
Tony Montgomery
course.
00:52:06
Tom
Yeah, so ah little backstory only because I think it makes better sense. um So I started this walk across America because i had a goal.
00:52:18
Tom
And the goal stemmed from a twenty five from from from something i had years before i took my first step on this journey. um I was sitting in a barber shop fresh out of the military and I was waiting for to get my hair cut. I was still getting a high and tight, like even out of the military. I was still going in there asking for like the fade and waiting in line though because it was a popular barber shop. And so I grabbed an old magazine off the the magazine rack and it was a National Geographic from 1977, April of 1977. And there was an article in there about a guy who walked across the United States.
00:52:55
Tom
And it was, you know, back in back in those days, National Geographic had the best photo essays. And um so it was this great text, great photos. And I just devoured this 30-page spread about this dude that walked across America.
00:53:11
Tom
Because in my mind, I'm like, what?
00:53:13
Tom
you can You can do this? And, you know, I had no context for this or anything like this. And it just blew my mind. I knew when I was done reading that that I was going to someday,
00:53:13
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:53:25
Tom
make this happen. I think I even told the barber that and he just looked at me like I was some kind of idiot.
00:53:28
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:53:31
Tom
But anyway, fast forward 25 years, you know I'm sitting on my hands for these this quarter deck a quarter century and you know I decided I'm going to go finally make this happen. Well, in my mind, when I started that walk in Los Angeles, I was only thinking about the Atlantic Ocean.
00:53:50
Tom
It's 3,000 miles away. And first day of my walk, I can't wait until I'm done. Like that's where my head is. I'm just obsessed with every step.
00:53:59
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:54:01
Tom
um I'm walking really fast. I'm walking past people. People are calling out to me. Like I'm just like beelining to nowhere. um To a place that's six months at least away from me.
00:54:15
Tom
and And that becomes thematically how I move through the majority of the state of California. And I barely get to the border of California, Arizona, and I'm injured.
00:54:27
Tom
And I li a gimp across the the the border there, across the Colorado River, and I call somebody. And again, another phone call. Hey, I can barely move. Like, my tendonitis is so bad that I can't even take a step I think I need to take a break. Well, that break was a month-long break.
00:54:48
Tony Montgomery
right
00:54:48
Tom
During that month-long break, I reflected on what had just happened. All right. I barely remember the last three weeks of walking because I was going too fast.
00:55:01
Tom
I was ignoring folks' suggestions to go to this neat place to see this to or to come to their house for dinner or go to, you know, i was i was a man on a mission.
00:55:11
Tony Montgomery
right
00:55:11
Tom
And the mission was like really long way. But i was i was ignoring opportunities because I was too busy focused on me. There was one exchange I had though, that I suddenly like recognized the poignance so poignancy of while I was sitting on my couch with my foot up, icing it back home, you know, moping around. i didn't I didn't even want to leave the house because all my friends thought that I was, you know walking across America.
00:55:37
Tony Montgomery
Right.
00:55:37
Tom
It's afraid to be in public. So I remember this interaction that I had with a fella named Art, right? Now I met Art at a crossroads in Pomona, California. So just east of LA.
00:55:53
Tom
And at that point I was still cruising along. Didn't have a sore foot yet. It was coming, but I didn't have it yet. And Art is in a wheelchair. And Art and I both reach the pedestrian crosswalk at the same time and we've got a red hand.
00:56:08
Tom
So we're waiting together. And I feel Art looking me up and down, top to bottom, you know. And at some point he looks over at me and I look over at him and we meet eyes and he says, hey man, what the hell are you doing?
00:56:22
Tom
Now, at that point my journey, I had a backpack on, but he could tell that maybe I looked different than other dudes that were wearing a backpack on that street. I don't know. Anyhow, Art and I walked, rolled for like the next five blocks together, just chit-chatting.
00:56:40
Tom
And telling me telling ah telling each other stories. And I'm telling him what I'm doing, why I'm doing it. He's telling me about why he's in a wheelchair and and how it's not a permanent thing, but you know, he's for now, it's what he's what he's dealing with.
00:56:48
Tony Montgomery
Thank you.
00:56:56
Tom
we we're just kept We're just getting to know each other a little bit. And at some point, Art stops his wheelchair and he kind of turns it and like shifts it a bit on a dime to face me. And we stop in the middle of the sidewalk.
00:57:09
Tom
And Art says to me, Hey man, this thing that you're doing, this long walk, it's pretty damn cool. You know, he's like underlining it. He said, this thing is really cool what you're doing.
00:57:22
Tom
But I need to remind you that what you're doing, it ain't about you.
00:57:27
Tony Montgomery
Hmm. All right.
00:57:27
Tom
He said, this thing that you're doing, it's about me. And he's pointing to himself. He goes, it's about me. It's about that guy who you're going to potentially talk to at the next red light.
00:57:38
Tom
It's about those people that are driving by you, wondering what the hell you're doing, walking as far as you're doing, as you're going. He goes, this thing you're doing is really damn cool. Please do not lose sight of that. But make no mistake, this walk that you're doing is about us.
00:57:55
Tom
And if you miss that, you're gonna get to the end of this walk and you're gonna you're gonna have missed all the opportunities. Your drive is what got you out here.
00:58:07
Tom
But if you take time to talk to me, I assure you, gonna go home and I'm gonna think about this time that we just had together.
00:58:14
Tony Montgomery
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:58:14
Tom
I'm gonna think about your big thing and now I'm gonna be thinking about my big thing. And I'm goingnna think about what I could do that might be out of my comfort zone, just like you're doing your thing out of your comfort zone. And now my life has potentially changed having crossed your path.
00:58:30
Tom
Your walk is about me.
00:58:34
Tom
And at that moment, I heard that, but it didn't sink in. It sunk in when I was reflecting on that story back home, feeling sorry for myself with my foot up, remembering you know that I'm racing all these miles, going too far, too fast.
00:58:55
Tom
And it was in that moment when I thought of art, when I was like, all right, if my foot gets better and I'm able to go back where I planted the flag in the sand, I'm changing everything.
00:59:08
Tom
I'm not going to be focused on distance, not going to be focused on mileage or where I need to be and when. I'm not going to think about the doggone Atlantic Ocean. I'm just going to think about walking and I'm going to open myself up to the likes of other people.
00:59:21
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
00:59:25
Tom
ah um My goal will still be my goal, but it's going to be moved down on the priority list. It'll happen, but I'm going to open myself up to the other unknowns that that Art is advising me to you know make sure I don't lose sight of.
00:59:43
Tom
And Tony, everything changed.
00:59:45
Tony Montgomery
yeah
00:59:45
Tom
From the literally the day, my foot healed, first of all, and from the day that I showed back up to where I had left off, I just started meeting an endless line of people.
01:00:00
Tom
that would stop and chat, that would you know interact with me. it would Now I was bringing a different openness and vulnerability to the table and they were bringing that too. So we were like magnetically attracting each other, right? It wasn't just this randomness.
01:00:16
Tom
My choice allowed that to happen. And in doing that, I met roadside saints. I met people who told me stuff that I still think about every single day.
01:00:29
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
01:00:30
Tom
I still get a random phone call from from people that I met like for five minutes, just like you know you and I.
01:00:37
Tony Montgomery
Right.
01:00:37
Tom
They still call me up every now and again. Hey, Tom, just thinking about you. What you up to? And then we'll get on the phone and chit chat, catch up about this and that. but it But it stems back to art.
01:00:48
Tom
Art reminded me. Art told me like the biggest lesson that I think I ah probably needed that just in life as much as I needed it for that walk.
01:00:55
Tony Montgomery
Right. Mm-hmm.
01:00:58
Tom
It's not about me. It's important for me to choose to do big things. That's, we can't forget that. Like big-minded folks need to do big-minded things.
01:01:09
Tom
But we need to remember that what we're doing is as much influencing the people around us as it is us and our livelihood. and Yeah.
01:01:19
Tony Montgomery
Yeah, it's this idea of you you want to rush through life to get to the finish line. But then when you get to the finish line, you're like, what the hell did I do with my life? Like it's all passed me by. right
01:01:32
Tom
Yeah.
01:01:32
Tony Montgomery
And yeah, and obviously that's a that's construction of you know the world that we live in, that you know speed and and doing things fast and like getting to the point and being done.
01:01:32
Tom
What's important?
01:01:44
Tony Montgomery
you know Everyone in the PhD program is like, I can't wait to be done. I can't wait to be done. And it's like, as soon as you start thinking that, and I tell people all this time, as soon as you're thinking about how many miles you have left, you're no longer going to have fun doing what you're doing.
01:01:48
Tom
Hmm.
01:02:00
Tom
That's right.
01:02:00
Tony Montgomery
Right. And the PhD is the same.
01:02:01
Tom
that
01:02:02
Tony Montgomery
As soon as you start thinking about like, I can't wait to be done, then you're no longer present in the moment. And then when you're not present in the moment, you're not open to the opportunities that life presents you.
01:02:13
Tony Montgomery
And it sounds like one of the key themes that that keeps coming up with you is like when you allow life to give you opportunities and you take them, life's good. when you're so single track focused and you're just trying to get through life well then you don't get any of those opportunities and life becomes this this struggle and i think there is this there is this idea that like the more daunting the task the faster i want to get done with it because it's going to hurt and i just want to be done with the hurt and it's like well you know the hurt teaches you a lot of lessons like
01:02:29
Tom
Yeah.
01:02:32
Tom
Yeah.
01:02:51
Tony Montgomery
You know, there's a reason you chose to do this thing. and every step counts, every mile counts, right? It's not the finish line. It's like, the progress to get there. And that's one of the things that I love about life is this, it's like, it's this constant strategic game of like problem solving.
01:03:10
Tony Montgomery
And the only way you can solve problems effectively is if you look at your next step, not look at the finish line.
01:03:15
Tom
Yes.
01:03:17
Tony Montgomery
And I think Art with his, you know, very insightful words allowed you to, you know probably probably made it more salient it was something that you probably already knew you needed to do but you needed someone to to tell you that you needed the injury to happen so that you can reflect on it and then yeah this whole new perspective um and it probably changed the way that you completed the rest of that that journey and like you said you met some lifelong friends along the way
01:03:42
Tom
oh
01:03:46
Tony Montgomery
um
01:03:46
Tom
Yeah. Hmm.
01:03:47
Tony Montgomery
But one of the things that I would be interested to hear your view on this is like, we do have these things happen. It's like this the pain, it's like pain, right? So when something painful happens, it's the most painful thing we've ever experienced in our life, right? You stub your toe you're like, this is the worst thing ever. Meanwhile, like five years ago, you broke your leg.
01:04:09
Tony Montgomery
And that was the worst thing ever. Right. And so we're always on this journey of, you know, today is the the worst day ever. or This is the you know, this is the only day. And then and then you forget about it.
01:04:21
Tony Montgomery
Right. So you get this life lesson. And maybe you've gone through life and you've forgotten about it. What what continues to pull you back? Or what what is one of those things where, is this one of those things where it just sits with you all the time? Like, how do you keep that salient and forefront of your mind of like, I don't wanna rush through life Because I'm sure something probably came up in your life where a business opportunity and you get back into that rush mindset, like, how do you stay present? What are the things that you do in your life to keep you moving through it in a way that allows you to have these interactions and have these meetings? What what is what works for you?
01:04:58
Tom
Yeah. ah Well, i I have a practice. I mean, I have a daily practice ah that I think sets the tone for my day.
01:05:10
Tom
um And I'm not 100% good at keeping that practice, but I do my best. and and And my best, I think, is...
01:05:17
Tony Montgomery
Mm-hmm.
01:05:20
Tom
is enough to at least keep it top of mind. um And so that practice is ah it's a daily yoga meditation and and words. So i every morning is, it's funny, like I've been eating the same doggone breakfast for the last 20 years.
01:05:36
Tom
I've been getting up at nearly the same time every day or for that for the same amount of time. Like I've got a very like locked down habit-based practice that includes about a half hour worth of movement.
01:05:51
Tom
and And, you know, I think the easiest thing to call it is yoga. I used to teach yoga and I practiced for a lot of the years in studios, but this is just me at my house, moving my body in a way that feels right for the day.
01:05:55
Tony Montgomery
Mm-hmm.
01:06:05
Tom
um There is a flow sort of that I move through, but it's not anything that, you know, i don't know that it has names or and it's just, I'm moving my body with with a deep awareness of what it wants. so So it's it's about tuning into, all right, today, gosh, um my back's a little sore. I'm going to do a couple of back stretches and lay on my back and do some stuff.
01:06:25
Tom
But it's about a half hour of movement preceded by about five minutes of just sitting. Um, meditation, I, I, I've always found to be like, people fight meditation.
01:06:38
Tom
Like they fight to do meditation is what I've.
01:06:40
Tony Montgomery
All the time, yeah.
01:06:42
Tom
And, and when I was, um when I was a yoga teacher, I was like, We're meditating when we're moving. Like you don't need to sit silently and try to control thoughts. Like that's the opposite of meditation, frankly.
01:06:55
Tony Montgomery
Great.
01:06:55
Tom
i I met this this guy and i don't know what his title would be, but he was a fellow who lived in India for his whole life, born there. And at one point in his life during his yoga studies, his his meditation studies, he he literally lived, like sequestered himself in like a cave for like a decade or more.
01:07:17
Tom
I don't remember what the year, it was years worth of just being alone in a dark place and you know eating whatever people brought him. And I had the good fortune of sitting and having like a proper meal with him in my hometown. He came to town to do a talk and I got to go have dinner with him.
01:07:34
Tom
And he said, in America, people don't know people meditate wrong. like In fact, you probably will never. In an american an American society, you're never going to be able to truly meditate because your brain is always going.
01:07:49
Tom
As an American who's born and raised here, your brain is always going to be going. so you're going to constantly be fighting to meditate. And he goes, If you just pick like one movement every day that you like do just downward dog, let's say every morning you decided to just do downward dog for one minute.
01:08:12
Tom
And then maybe after that gets, you know, sort of easy, you do it for two minutes and then a little bit longer and eventually you're doing it for maybe 10 minutes, who knows? He goes, that's all the yoga you ever need. Because in that you have, you have awareness, you have, you know, you're probably paying attention to your breath, but either way, he's like, that's your meditation.
01:08:32
Tom
Just pay attention to one thing. That's enough. And so meditation is one of those words that i I try not to use like, oh, well, I meditate, you know, because we judge that.
01:08:42
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
01:08:45
Tom
and And I don't want that to be the case.
01:08:45
Tony Montgomery
Yep.
01:08:47
Tom
I sit for about five minutes, sometimes more, sometimes less, sometimes with my eyes open, sometimes not. Sometimes I'm thinking about the day, sometimes I'm thinking about as little as possible.
01:08:59
Tony Montgomery
yeah
01:08:59
Tom
But I sit and then I move and then I get up and i eat my breakfast. So that's a part of my daily practice. And if I take that out of my day, it throws a bit of a wrench in my machine. And I find myself less likely to to kind of to move in a linear trajectory through the day. I get a little bit more like distracted.
01:09:21
Tom
I got you know i gotta to go do these other things on my C list of of priorities. and
01:09:28
Tony Montgomery
Right.
01:09:28
Tom
And so i just I lose sight of what's important when I take my practice out of my day. um The other thing that I've been starting to do is is midday stops where, and and you can you can do this however, but where I just sort of do this little somatic exercise.
01:09:50
Tom
I'm like, all right, I'm gonna take my thumb and index finger and I'm just gonna like roll them together like this. and then And then I'm gonna open my fingers and I'm gonna put them back together and do it again. Like really micro somatic exercise.
01:10:06
Tom
moments of presence where I take and I do that for like a minute and I feel like what that does is it brings me back to a regulated place where I'm here. You know, a minute before i was maybe over there, you know, mentally I'm who I'm in 10 places at once, but for at least a minute I'm here.
01:10:25
Tom
And I found that that lately has been a real important tool in my ah in in in my bag of tricks for awareness.
01:10:35
Tony Montgomery
Yeah. Right. Yeah.
01:10:37
Tom
and you know And I think i think there's there's no right way, there's no wrong way, there's no there's there's nothing necessarily, there's no way to do it that's gonna work for everybody.
01:10:46
Tony Montgomery
right
01:10:47
Tom
But I do think that that the one thing that as I've gotten older that that keeps me on the rails is my awareness that I... my awareness of being there, like just paying attention. Am I there now? No. Okay. What can I do to get back there?
01:11:03
Tony Montgomery
yeah
01:11:03
Tom
And what can I do to to get back landing in this space? So introspection, inward looking, and, you know, um honest with honesty ah with self, ah these, these things I think are the, the crucial bits to my, of my life that I think have brought the the, the, I don't know, the biggest payoff, uh, emotional payoff, uh, something that has actually made me move through life, I think with a higher degree of peace.
01:11:35
Tony Montgomery
Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the biggest things that I, you imparted and I try to impart in people is like, it's a, it's your thing that brings you awareness of being present.
01:11:46
Tony Montgomery
Right. So like, sure, you laid out your routine. It's like, no one should copy that routine because that's what Tom has built throughout his life that works for him. Right.
The Journey of Writing and Self-Expression
01:11:56
Tony Montgomery
And, you know, so it is one of those things where there has to be, I feel like there has to be an intent,
01:11:56
Tom
That's right.
01:12:03
Tony Montgomery
throughout the day of trying to find ways to bring yourself back to being present. It's not something that comes natural to to anyone that I've met. Maybe it does for some people, but this idea of of telling people to just be present is like telling somebody to build a house that's never seen a house before.
01:12:22
Tom
Right.
01:12:22
Tony Montgomery
you know, it's like, what are the tools that make you present?
01:12:23
Tom
right
01:12:25
Tony Montgomery
um Could be journaling. It could be the thing with your finger. It could be an alarm.
01:12:31
Tom
Really?
01:12:32
Tony Montgomery
Like there's so many things that can bring you back to being present. But I think that is one of the keys to having in a ah a life where you can remember the lessons that it has taught you. You have to have, you have to be able to quiet your mind enough to be present, to think about,
01:12:53
Tony Montgomery
the things that you've learned in life because life is so chaotic that it can be very easy to fall out of that practice.
01:12:57
Tom
really
01:12:59
Tony Montgomery
Again, it goes back to the whole pain thing. Like what is happening now is the most important thing in your life to where you can't even think about what happened five years ago, 10 years ago, 12 years.
01:13:09
Tom
Yeah.
01:13:10
Tony Montgomery
So it's like, how can we, be thinking about things that are how can we not have our ego drive like this is the most important thing right now and think about like no it's not like life is more than this thing that i'm chasing like what what can i get what can i stop how can i stop life from from being chaotic right now and it is just it is those simple things you know everyone has Everyone should develop a practice that brings them back to being centered, brings them back to having that peace in their life and that quietness. And you are right about meditation. um
01:13:45
Tony Montgomery
from From an athlete's perspective, when I first got into meditation, I was like, all right, I'm going to win meditation. How do I win meditation? Well, I'm going to quiet my mind to where I have no thoughts ever because that's that's what enlightenment is, right?
01:13:53
Tom
ah Yeah. ah Right. Yeah.
01:13:59
Tony Montgomery
is it's like, that's not the point of it.
01:13:59
Tom
right
01:14:02
Tony Montgomery
And for me with meditation now, the point is to give yourself time to be ah aware of what you're thinking.
01:14:14
Tony Montgomery
And if you're doing that, then you don't worry about the thoughts that are coming.
01:14:15
Tom
yeah
01:14:19
Tony Montgomery
You're not trying to have peace of mind. You're trying to be aware of what's going on in your mind because trying to control those things, as we know in neuroscience, it just doesn't happen.
01:14:32
Tony Montgomery
And so, yeah, so that's awesome that that's that's what you do.
01:14:32
Tom
no
01:14:35
Tony Montgomery
And that's in i would be I'd be very curious to know how writing plays a ah part in writing You know, not only being able to express yourself, but also being able to create those those memories of the things that are important to you. When did when did writing come about? Because when you when you were talking about your childhood and the ability to have freedom and creativity, that immediately made me think of like, oh, that's why you're a writer, because you've always had this freedom to think and explore and do all this stuff.
01:15:04
Tony Montgomery
When did write in come about in your life? And what what does write in do for you? And like, what's the practice of writing for you? Because everyone has their practice of, you know, um need to write 10 minutes a day, I need to do this. And you have books and you have blog posts and you have, you know, everything that you have. So but what, what has writing and done for you?
01:15:22
Tony Montgomery
um when did it start? and And what's your process of of writing? and
01:15:27
Tom
yeah Yeah, writing to me is is a vehicle for discovery. And I think discovery is probably the thing in my life that drives my every single move.
01:15:40
Tom
um I mean, I was in um one moment in my life, I was an archaeologist and discovery, right? Looking for artifacts that are interesting, that tell stories, right? What are the bits and pieces that you can dig and find that will tell you more and then and then more thereafter?
01:15:56
Tom
um To me, that's writing. And and writing goes back... Probably to my, I mean, I was never, I wasn't that kid that was like, oh, I was writing books for my family when I was a little boy. Like I used, I was, writing was something I was i i was good at. I think I probably had nice handwriting and I liked aesthetically what it looked like. So I would write more. i think that's, I'm very visual and I am artistic in that regard. Like I like when a thing sort of appeals to my visual senses.
01:16:25
Tom
And I think that the old days of cursive writing, I love that. i love the artistic stroke that came from making that letter L, you know, in the correct way and all the little tricks and trades. And my grandma wrote in calligraphy and I used to mess around with that. So I think writing, writing thoughts became an extension of just the artistic expression of writing one letter.
01:16:50
Tony Montgomery
yeah
01:16:50
Tom
And, and so as time went on, you know, I, there was a time in my early, I'd say teenage years where I, so I got my hands on, uh, this is going sound funny, but I got my hand on hands on like a book of Jim Morrison's poetry.
01:17:08
Tony Montgomery
Okay.
01:17:08
Tom
Jim Morrison, right? The lead singer of The Doors, which, you know, his poetry didn't make that much sense, just like his songs kind of didn't either. But I was a fan of the music. And so I'm like, oh I want to go There's a book on his poetry. I'm going to get that. and And it spoke to me. You know, yeah we have these interesting moments in our life where you read a thing and, whoa, it's just like really hammering your heart. And And, and I started sort of copying his style and I'd write my own poems.
01:17:34
Tom
And then I would give them to friends, hey, I wrote this for you, you know, and, and I was able to see their eyes light up, not only maybe not only because what I had written, but the fact that I had given them this handwritten thing.
01:17:46
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
01:17:47
Tom
So there was, i saw value And i think I think this is a moment too where I needed that kind of validation. um was really trying to be seen as a young person.
01:17:57
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
01:17:58
Tom
And this was an opportunity for me to use something that came very easy to me and also something I quite enjoyed two to sort of fill some of my empty buckets.
01:18:10
Tom
You know, I could give you a poem, watch you light up, and as a result, I felt pretty doggone good.
01:18:10
Tony Montgomery
yeah
01:18:15
Tom
Now, that empty bucket needed more than that, but at that moment in my attempt my life, that was enough. um and that just sort of snowballed, you know, I, I, one poetry book led to more and, you know, next thing you know, I'm reading all sorts of old and new poets and then friends, you know, that, that opened up my social circle a little bit differently because I started meeting people with similar interests and, you know, we'd suggest book titles. And I think that that's,
01:18:44
Tom
That's probably a pretty common story or, you know, how we how we get in, how we learn about authors and writing and all that. But my practice as a writer was almost always about ah just self-expression. I wanted to put how I felt on this paper because I couldn't couldn't necessarily do it with my with my words.
01:19:05
Tom
couldn't speak it.
01:19:05
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
01:19:06
Tom
So let me maybe write about how I feel by looking at this tree or looking at this ocean. and and And metaphor became a really important part of my life.
01:19:18
Tom
um I understood metaphor and I understood like the really weird, deep ones. Like as a younger person, I understood how to talk about grief by writing about an apple.
01:19:30
Tom
Like I got that.
01:19:30
Tony Montgomery
yeah
01:19:32
Tom
And, and I never, I don't know that I even now would be able to explain why or how, like, but I just got it. Like it just clicked really easily. And And so I was constantly writing, trying to figure out my own metaphors.
01:19:44
Tony Montgomery
Mm-hmm.
01:19:45
Tom
How can I write about my feeling by using this this inanimate object? and then And then I would, and I would feel so good. it was just me and my page and my pen, and it felt so good. So it became a self-validator.
01:20:00
Tom
I think my my writing became a way for me to truly get to know myself and then and love myself in a way that I'm... I wasn't really taught how to do necessarily. And I surely wasn't necessarily, it was something I needed. I needed to be able to look at myself and be my biggest fan because i had spent so many years of my life trying to get the people around me to do that for me.
01:20:26
Tom
and And I think writing was the one thing in my life that I could do and truly love having done without needing anybody's thumbs up or thumbs down. like In fact, it was many years before I even allowed people to see my stuff.
01:20:45
Tony Montgomery
Right.
01:20:46
Tom
um or or would have ever, i god i would never have called myself a writer. and And, you know, I always thought, well, what it would it be like to actually learn how to write? You know, I didn't really, i never took writing classes. I didn't do any of that stuff. I just wrote.
01:20:59
Tom
But, the competitive side of me wanted to be a really good writer. And, and, and I, but I was afraid, you know, that I battled that.
01:21:04
Tony Montgomery
right
01:21:07
Tom
I we really battled that for a while because it was such a special and intimate thing that I was doing with myself. I didn't want to ruin it by giving it rules and, and giving it, you know, things that, well, I just, yeah, not giving it rules.
01:21:16
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
01:21:22
Tom
I didn't want to play that game. But, you know, my 30s, I was like, well, I love writing. My dream life would be to just walk and write. all That's all I want to do, just walk and write.
01:21:34
Tom
Maybe at the same time. Like, that would pretty rad. Do both. But that's really all I wanted to do. And that's been my that's been my answer to the question. Like, what would you do if you could do anything? ah Just walk and write. That's it.
01:21:44
Tony Montgomery
yeah
01:21:45
Tom
and And in my 30s is when I started really saying, like, yes to to the things that were honest inside of me and then making those things happen. That's when I decided, you know, I'm going to go, going to go get better at writing, not because I want to be a better writer necessarily. I mean, I do, but I also just want to see, and just want to, I want to, I want, I knew that writing what was going to make me better.
01:22:10
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
01:22:10
Tom
I knew that. So that was my motivation. And I went and did an MFA in my mid thirties, or actually it was probably my late thirties. Went did an MFA, uh, in creative writing.
01:22:22
Tom
And, I think during that time, timeframe is when I actually started referring to myself as a writer and believing it. But then also during that time, I realized that my intuition about writing was right in the sense that the more I learned how to become a better creator of writing, better like curator more learned the better, human the more I was becoming a better human being by being a better writer.
01:22:56
Tom
And the only way I can, I'm not gonna be able to explain this very well because I think I still am working this out. But what I understand good writing to be is honest writing.
01:23:09
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
01:23:09
Tom
And my my leaning is towards essays and towards nonfiction stuff, but I think it applies to all. I cannot write a good essay unless I'm being honest.
01:23:19
Tony Montgomery
yeah
01:23:20
Tom
I can't write a good essay unless I'm really being honest about something and then being honest about what lies beneath that. And the but the the the deeper I dig, the more artifacts I find.
01:23:32
Tom
The deeper I dig, the more stories I am uncovering about, in a lot of cases, me. And i'm ah I'm learning now about myself. I'm finding these bits and pieces and nuggets and broken pieces. and And I'm finding all of these things that when I put them together, I see a fuller version of myself.
01:23:50
Tom
and And writing now is that.
01:23:53
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
01:23:53
Tom
Writing is a place for me to like take all my disparate pieces and start plugging them back in. And who knows, maybe by the time I die, I'll be a fuller version of who I once was, you know, or who I'm, who I meant meant to become, I think is probably more like it.
01:24:10
Tom
ah But it's not even about that. It's about finding that one thing. It's the next step. As you were just saying, like, it's not about what it's, this is ultimately amounting to.
01:24:16
Tony Montgomery
yeah
01:24:21
Tom
Who cares about that? I don't give a shit about It's about, oh, I just found this one thing that is shining up ah something I already knew about myself. It's making me understand that a little bit more.
01:24:33
Tom
Boom. It's in my body now. Now let me go find another one. Let me take another step. Writing is walking is is walking to me. It's the same doggone thing. It's just two different actions moving moving the same direction or moving for the same purpose, I think is it.
01:24:52
Tom
So i don't know if that's really answering, you know, that question why and all the things that, you know, we generally ask writers because I don't really have like that pathway in a way that even I fully understand.
01:24:55
Tony Montgomery
Yeah, yeah.
01:25:08
Tom
But what I know about writing is it makes me the happiest I could ever be. And every time I sit down to write something write, I well can't say every time, but many times when I sit down to write a thing, what I think I'm going to say is not what comes out, but what comes out is precisely, number one, what needed to come out.
01:25:29
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
01:25:30
Tom
Number two is something that I didn't see. Like I didn't know until I sat down to write. And that's, that is such a joy bringer for me.
01:25:43
Tom
um That's discovery, right?
01:25:45
Tony Montgomery
I
01:25:45
Tom
That's discovery. It's finding something new. um Yeah. And I, feel I just feel like it, I've got, I could just gush about writing. Like I, it's like, you I will, I'll leave it there for now, but like, that's, that's what writing has become to me.
01:25:55
Tony Montgomery
i see that. That's awesome. Yeah.
01:26:02
Tom
And
01:26:03
Tony Montgomery
Yeah. I mean, i think couple of things that you you touched on is this idea that authenticity is what people crave, right? And riding in an authentic way going to not only allow you to explore deeper parts of yourself, but it's going to allow people to read it and think like, yeah, this guy is being real, it's being authentic. And that's what I crave in my life. And, you know, the best authors, the best podcasters, the best speakers are the ones that are the most authentic. And you can, you can feel it and you can tell it when they're not being authentic.
01:26:37
Tom
Sure.
01:26:38
Tony Montgomery
And I think, like you said, part of that idea of like looking ahead in the future creates unauthenticity because you're trying to be that person now and you you haven't even done the work to get there.
01:26:52
Tony Montgomery
so you are not authentically you.
01:26:52
Tom
This.
01:26:54
Tony Montgomery
You're just trying to be the person that you you want to be, And it's like being present in the moment is is an authentic and and beautiful thing that writing has allowed you to do. And also, the i think the idea of like being able to tell your story, right?
01:27:07
Tony Montgomery
is so important, right? And I think that's where Raiden plays a huge role in people's lives. And I i don't think Raiden gets the credit it deserves for how it can create mentally healthier people.
01:27:21
Tony Montgomery
Right. When we look at things like emotional intelligence and our ability to regulate emotions, to improve mental health disorders.
01:27:21
Tom
Mm-hmm.
01:27:30
Tony Montgomery
One of the things we think about is like if you're able to express how you feel, then people know how you feel and then you feel seen. But if you don't have those words, if you don't have that vocabulary, then you're not able to express. And then it becomes frustrating. And then you just give up, right?
01:27:46
Tony Montgomery
And because the way the education system is, we don't put a big emphasis on the value of being able to tell your own story, the value of writing. And I think that's something that is so, like,
01:28:00
Tony Montgomery
prominent in order for people to live a healthier and happier life. And I think being able to express yourself is is great and being able to help people express themselves in any way, shape or form is like the lifeblood of what makes people feel seen and and happy and like living their best life.
01:28:11
Tom
All right.
01:28:18
Tony Montgomery
And I think I hope that as we transition out of hopefully standardized testing, we get into these ideas of like, what will make people a happier as human beings? And it's like writing and creativity and exercise and like,
01:28:35
Tony Montgomery
Not novel concepts, but things that we've you know pushed to the side for so long. And the way you expressed it makes so much sense to me. And and it creates this beautiful picture of what Raiden has done for you and what Raiden can do for for other people.
01:28:50
Tony Montgomery
um And I'm definitely curious to know that once you began publishing, did that ever take any of the like the love away from it? Or were you still able to write the way like you wanted to write?
01:29:05
Tom
that's a good question i I think part of what academic, ah well, I should just say, what I took away as a part of my MFA was that publishing was really important.
01:29:19
Tom
Now, whether or not that's true, I don't know. But that was something that I was left feeling marked my value as, or at least alluded to my value as a writer, was getting it published so that other people can see.
01:29:35
Tom
Now, of course, publishing something allows, you know, for a wider audience. And I think we create so that other people can see our stuff, whether we're an artist or a writer, or whatever, like That's part of being a creator. So I see both sides, but, but it, but the impetus was more about value. Like I'm a good writer.
01:29:51
Tony Montgomery
Right.
01:29:52
Tom
If somebody says, Hey, I'll take that and put it in my journal or whatever.
01:29:55
Tony Montgomery
Validation. Yeah.
01:29:57
Tom
Correct. Um, so straight out of that program, um, I did my damnedest to you know get stuff in journals and ah and I did. And each time I did, I was like, oh, I must be a good writer then.
01:30:09
Tom
And and i was recognizing that the messaging that that was giving me was not probably very healthy. you know
01:30:17
Tony Montgomery
yeah
Publishing and Creative Freedom
01:30:18
Tom
i
01:30:19
Tom
was taking a yeah I think Ensemble that was taking away from the joy, but I was still writing, but I felt like my my impetus for it was definitely outcome driven more than it ever had been.
01:30:30
Tony Montgomery
Yeah, extrinsic validation as opposed to intrinsic validation.
01:30:35
Tom
Truly. Yeah. um It was a real, it was a bit of a crux when I, when I wrote my book about my long walk. ah And I had never intended to write that book, by the way, but I chose to write that book.
01:30:51
Tom
ah two years after I finished that walk and Call it a quarantine project or what but you know, that's when it came when it came out but I was I I pitched that book to a lot of publishers a whole lot I know it's very common to pitch books to publishers and get zero response like you just crickets and
01:30:58
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
01:31:13
Tony Montgomery
That
01:31:15
Tom
You just hear nothing back. You don't even get a confirmation that your email went through.
01:31:19
Tony Montgomery
is huge, yeah.
01:31:19
Tom
You know, you get zero. Well, i I heard back from, don't know, I think I probably submitted to 50 different publishers. And I heard back from like three, which, I mean, that's high percentage under the circumstances.
01:31:33
Tony Montgomery
is huge yeah
01:31:35
Tom
Now I heard back from folks saying no, but um from those, those three people all told me no, but they explained why. And you know, their rationale was, was whatever. They were still saying no. So I didn't know it wasn't gonna, their response didn't necessarily change how I was feeling about the no, I guess is what I'm getting at.
01:31:55
Tom
um and i but i But that was a story I really wanted to share. i really wanted to... I had just written 300 plus pages. i wanted to share the story of this book or of this journey because it was a book that I would have read.
01:32:10
Tom
like And so I wanted other people to have that opportunity too. And I... I really had a hard time self-publishing that book, Tony. Like, because there's a, again, there's a judgment, at least an internal, like within that industry or within the writing world.
01:32:19
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
01:32:23
Tony Montgomery
Right.
01:32:27
Tom
and maybe it's just my perception, which is very possible, but I'm pretty sure that there's a stigma that comes with self-publishing.
01:32:33
Tony Montgomery
There is. yeah Yes, it's not just you. There's definitely a stigma.
01:32:36
Tom
Yeah, okay. Yeah, I didn't want to like, I don't want to make any universal statements here.
01:32:40
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
01:32:41
Tom
like But yeah, it felt like I felt like I was putting out, you know, a shitty book, because it was self published. And but I was like, you know what, this is what I'm working with. I i tried like I put out fit, I but did my 50 queries, I didn't hear anything back.
01:32:57
Tom
All right, I'm just gonna make it happen. And um And, that but but that choice that choice forced me to really think deeply about why.
01:33:08
Tom
Like, why, but first of all, why do I care about the judgments of others around me?
01:33:15
Tom
And let me think, let let me really think about the layers of that. And then, like, if I really love what I just wrote, why I should be excited to share it, if nothing else, with with my friends at the very least.
01:33:15
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
01:33:28
Tom
Like, I didn't know it.
01:33:28
Tony Montgomery
Right.
01:33:29
Tom
i You know, honestly, that's probably who, that's the only people I thought were going to buy that book anyway, was my friends and probably my mom would buy a couple copies.
01:33:35
Tony Montgomery
Right. Exactly.
01:33:38
Tom
um so So that that that moment in time was, in hindsight, really important because it forced me to do some serious inward looking. and And that inward working looking took some time, but I think ultimately i ended...
01:33:55
Tom
I came out of it feeling probably how I i felt felt good about it. Like I felt like, oh, I made a thing and it's really good. I'm proud of it. I stand behind it. It doesn't matter how it is, and how it appears in the world.
01:34:08
Tom
Like, and if the people who are judging that, you know, they're probably not my people anyways. So whatever, like we're good.
01:34:13
Tony Montgomery
Congratulations.
01:34:14
Tom
um But I had to battle that. Like that that took some time. So publishing, i think, in it is is weaved with some baggage.
01:34:26
Tom
And i I needed, and probably still, I still need to go through that. um And I'm in the process right now of of republishing that book with a publisher. And that brings a whole new level of of questions and curiosities because I'm like,
01:34:37
Tony Montgomery
imagine
01:34:43
Tom
Oh, okay. Well, if I'm thinking of my book as a, as, as, as a, as something that's going to make me some money, self-publishing is the way to go, baby.
01:34:53
Tom
Like, cause that's, cause that's where you actually see profits, you know?
01:34:53
Tony Montgomery
Right. Right.
01:34:56
Tony Montgomery
right
01:34:56
Tom
um But when you do it with a publisher, they put their little publish stamp on it and that's cool because it's a proper house, but you know, you probably aren't going to make much money unless it's, you know, I mean,
01:35:08
Tony Montgomery
No, you won't make much money, but you'll reach a wider audience, right? You'll get your story out there because that's part of what publishers do is they give you their email list.
01:35:13
Tom
That's right. Right.
01:35:17
Tony Montgomery
They give you their connections and, you know, you can go on maybe a podcast tour where you talk about your book and then get it more exposure and, you know, then...
01:35:19
Tom
right
01:35:26
Tony Montgomery
So there's there like you said, there's pros and cons to to each of it. um And I think the the biggest thing for me it would be like, does it change? Like, do they want me to change the story I want? Like, that would be the frustration for me as a writer would be, are they manipulating my story to fit their narrative?
01:35:47
Tony Montgomery
Am I still able to tell much? Am I still a able to write the way that I do? Like with poetry, there's so many rules in poetry of what you have to follow in order for it to be the correct poem.
01:35:54
Tom
Yeah. Oh,
01:35:57
Tony Montgomery
Right. It's like, I don't I don't want any of those restrictions. I don't want that. I'm not a writer in that way. i understand the benefits of it. it makes you more concise.
01:36:06
Tom
yeah.
01:36:07
Tony Montgomery
it makes you more like your words have to be chosen very precisely, but it's like, it takes away the essence for me. And just wanted to see if publishing did that for you. And it sounds like you were still able to write the books that you wanted to write in the way that you wanted to write them.
01:36:21
Tony Montgomery
um And I think, yeah, I think that's a question you always have to ask yourself.
01:36:22
Tom
oh yeah
01:36:25
Tony Montgomery
Like, am I still being true to what I want my vision to be, or is it being manipulated in those, in those situations?
01:36:32
Tom
I'll tell you, man, i have embraced, absolutely embraced the idea of self-publishing.
01:36:37
Tony Montgomery
Yeah. Yeah.
01:36:38
Tom
hi I mean, I'm down. i' I'm not anti-publishing, you know, in the traditional sense at all. But I love the idea of making a thing and then...
01:36:50
Tom
like getting it out there right away. I'm a bit impatient that way. Like if I make something that I want to share, i kind of don't want to sit on my hands and, you know, play around with it.
01:36:54
Tony Montgomery
yeah
01:37:00
Tom
I just want to like get it out there so I can move on to the next project. Like I got, i got shit to say and I got projects to do, man.
01:37:06
Tony Montgomery
just
01:37:07
Tom
don't, I don't want to wait on one. If I can do it on my own and just get it out there, I'm going to do that. And I've, you know, the one, the the book that I, you know, that's front and center kind of with my name on it is, is this memoir that I wrote, but I've got a dozen other books that I've written that aren't even on my website because they're ones that I made for like, you know, my 25 best friends and just sent them out or like they're, they're, they're projects that, you I love, like I deeply love, and they probably are something that I could quote, do something with, but
01:37:40
Tony Montgomery
Right.
01:37:42
Tom
But already did. and And then I moved on. like that's It brought me joy.
01:37:44
Tony Montgomery
Right.
01:37:46
Tom
It brought my friends. you know I was able to give them something too. they probably liked it too. And then I'm happy about that. But yeah, writing writing's been curious that way. Actually, just the the the business of creating has been curious that way.
01:38:00
Tom
There was a time that I was a painter and I would do gallery shows and things like that. And that got that bummed me out real fast. like
01:38:08
Tony Montgomery
Really, why is that?
01:38:10
Tom
Because the, well, I don't care.
01:38:11
Tony Montgomery
You're being, your all your patients are being judged and maybe?
01:38:16
Tom
and know I think it was less about that. it was just more like the business of art I started, so I stopped putting my name on art for a long time. And then I started like hanging my stuff up anonymously in random places.
01:38:29
Tom
Like I would sneak into a hallway or a restaurant or whatever with a piece of art. And when nobody's looking, put a little nail on the wall and hang that sucker up.
01:38:40
Tom
And i've I've hung more than a thousand pieces of art anonymously like that all around the world. Like I used to do, you know, when I would go on business trips, I'd bring pieces with me and hang them up.
01:38:52
Tom
And, and when I go travel, I'd bring pieces. And sometimes it's, you know, it's more stealth than others. Sometimes it's just public hanging up of art.
01:38:57
Tony Montgomery
Right.
01:38:58
Tom
And, and, oh man, I love doing that. That's fun. Like, that's just, that's fun.
01:39:03
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
01:39:05
Tom
It's, it's, yeah, I, that to me is, that's my jam more than hanging up a piece and then having to talk about what that brushstroke means and all that stuff.
01:39:15
Tony Montgomery
Hmm.
01:39:15
Tom
Like I, I like making stuff and i like, I like then displaying or showing that stuff off in a way that suits me rather than along some sort of traditional linear pathway of sort of like social expectation.
01:39:19
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
01:39:35
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
01:39:35
Tom
I'm kind of over it.
01:39:36
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
01:39:37
Tom
I'm over it.
01:39:37
Tony Montgomery
No, I understand that. I understand that. One of the things you,
Solitude, Creativity, and Gratitude on the Trail
01:39:41
Tony Montgomery
we touched on earlier was this idea of, you know, the more people you, the people you bring into your life are are very valuable and spending time with them is very valuable.
01:39:49
Tony Montgomery
um
01:39:50
Tom
Yeah.
01:39:50
Tony Montgomery
But also being on the trails is very isolating as well. So you have both of these things happening at once, right? the I mean, the idea that yes, we ran into each other on the trail,
01:40:03
Tony Montgomery
I don't want people to get the idea that like you're constantly with people and it's very isolated. You're there by yourself for, you know, six to eight hours a day, especially when you're doing like the Appalachian trail or something like that.
01:40:08
Tom
yeah
01:40:14
Tony Montgomery
So what, what pulls you to the trail, what pulls you to walk in and and what do you get from that isolation, that solidarity?
01:40:25
Tom
I'm really good at being alone. um And think part of that is just because aloneness is something that
01:40:35
Tom
has been common throughout my whole life. um Maybe when I was young, it was i was because I was shy. you know Being shy meant I wasn't as social as a bunch of other kids.
01:40:49
Tom
um But i I like to be active. So I could be shy and active very easily and feel comfortable. And so I think that my adult, the adult version of me is, I wouldn't say shy, but I'm, I'm more of a watcher first.
01:41:06
Tom
um I'm not necessarily going to like mix up things socially. i'm I'm much more likely to kind of be on the periphery until I find my little comfortable spot and then I'll pop in and kind of keep things sort of mellow.
01:41:21
Tom
I don't, I sort of I have social anxiety that way.
01:41:24
Tony Montgomery
Hmm. Hmm.
01:41:25
Tom
Nobody believes me when I have shared this cause I I've gotten so good at it right? As we do. I've gotten good at, at navigating those sorts of moments that maybe bring out the most anxiety in me. But yeah,
01:41:38
Tom
But being alone is an opportunity for me to not have to worry about anything else but me. And I like that.
01:41:49
Tom
And i I think these days ah being alone is different, but I think there was a time when being alone was where I could breathe, was where I could just kind of like, I don't need to put on any airs.
01:42:05
Tom
I don't need to... Pretend I'm somebody that I'm not. I don't have to worry about with the next thing that I'm going to say. you know, there was a time when I needed you to see me where I really wanted you to be impressed by me.
01:42:18
Tom
And when I'm alone, I don't need to think about any of that stuff. And so i think in my younger years, solitary adventure,
01:42:30
Tom
or at least adventure like with, you know, maybe one other person where it was, you know very insular and quiet um was appealing for, for reasons, because it allowed me to, it allowed want the real me to come out and not a, not this contrived version of me that I was trying to be, but that wasn't necessarily, you know, the, who I, who I truly was at heart.
01:42:56
Tom
I think as I've gotten older though, what I've realized is that I just like being alone, man.
01:43:02
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
01:43:02
Tom
I just like it. You know, there might've been a strategy behind it before, but now like I'm not afraid to be alone with myself. I'm good. In fact, I can go days and days walking, in moving along on a trail with no music, no podcasts, no nothing.
01:43:19
Tom
Like when I walked across the United States, I didn't listen to anything. Just me. I listened to footsteps and cars. ah Too many cars. but But yeah, i enjoy I enjoy the opportunity to just walk.
01:43:33
Tom
And what I know now is that I mean, walking let's let's be honest. Like walking, it's kind of boring.
01:43:41
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
01:43:41
Tom
It doesn't mean it's not awesome, but it's kind of boring. But boredom is required for creativity to truly like show its face. And I believe and and appreciate the fact that I can go out for a walk and never once be like bothered by that aloneness.
01:44:03
Tom
And in fact, if anything, I am very available to whatever is percolating. And because I'm by myself, because I'm not being distracted really by anything, I'm noticing these things as they creep up.
01:44:18
Tom
and And as I've gotten older and maybe thinking about more things and more life experiences, the things that are popping up are really great meditations on previous experiences or you know future aspirations.
01:44:32
Tom
And I get to see them clearly because I'm generally alone. Now, the other thing that I should add, Tony, is that like i will I hike fast. I'm i'm a fast mover.
01:44:41
Tony Montgomery
Yeah, you're very fast.
01:44:44
Tom
Alone is something that I think also just is the result of the of the fact that I don't have many hiking buddies that go my pace. like
01:44:52
Tony Montgomery
Right.
01:44:53
Tom
And I'm not saying that to like to shine a light on, because I have a fast pace, but I'm not like out there trying to beat people. I just walk fast. And I've only met a couple people that keep pace with me for more than you know a couple miles.
01:45:07
Tom
So that's probably a factor in the aloneness too. It's just by the nature of, you know, my, my, my gate.
01:45:15
Tony Montgomery
Yeah, no, yeah, definitely, definitely very fast. it's It's interesting. Like whenever, whenever I'm hiking by myself or even with, with Emma, um there's a lot of silence and it's so like when I did my first hundred people were like, Oh, I bet you learned a lot about yourself and you know, all this other stuff. And i was like, not really. Like I learned a lot about really bad music that I can't control from repeating in my mind over and over and over again.
01:45:50
Tony Montgomery
yes And I'm like,
01:45:50
Tom
Totally. Oh, I love this.
01:45:52
Tony Montgomery
How do I get this out of my mind? How do I, why is this song coming up? I don't even like this song, but I like like hours go on and you're just like, this is, I guess this is what I'm working with right now.
01:46:03
Tony Montgomery
And it's, it's fascinating. The stuff that to me, that's, what's the best part about it like, what's going to, what's going to pop up in my mind today.
01:46:05
Tom
Yeah. love
01:46:12
Tony Montgomery
And is it going to be profound or is it just going to be like stupid and laughable and, um,
01:46:12
Tom
yeah
01:46:19
Tony Montgomery
And you don't control any of it. i think that there's some beauty in that. There's some beauty in going to places where you're like, you just don't have control and you just let it go and let it rip.
01:46:27
Tom
Yeah.
01:46:28
Tony Montgomery
And like what comes, comes, i you know, you may go on a walk and think like, I'm going to think about some profound stuff. And just like meditation, you're there for like three minutes and then all of a sudden your mind drifts to, you know, some horrible song something.
01:46:44
Tom
totally
01:46:45
Tony Montgomery
some mantra that you just like things that go on. um So there, there's, there are some profound moments in there, but there's also a lot of, a lot of garbage, a lot of junk. I don't know.
01:46:55
Tom
Oh, it's 99% garbage.
01:46:55
Tony Montgomery
Yeah. Right.
01:46:57
Tom
and Or just like random, like maybe not garbage, but it's just random.
01:46:57
Tony Montgomery
Random.
01:47:02
Tom
Like your music for sure.
01:47:02
Tony Montgomery
Right.
01:47:03
Tom
And I'm laughing at that because like I wrote down so many of the songs in my last, I was just, i just got off the trail. I was on for like,
01:47:11
Tony Montgomery
Right.
01:47:12
Tom
like four weeks. But I was writing down these songs because I'm like, these songs are coming out of nowhere. and not even They're not even bands that I know the names of. It's just like a tune that maybe i have some nostalgia for from like the 70s.
01:47:21
Tony Montgomery
right
01:47:26
Tom
Like, where is this song coming from? And And yeah, it just is. yeah It's your subconscious just like releasing. And so profound thoughts are are really rare.
01:47:39
Tom
i think if you go out thinking, oh, I'm going to go out with a and have a life changing thought experience, you're not going to have any of that. Like be prepared for nothing. As you say, junk is going to like come out of your brain.
01:47:48
Tony Montgomery
Right.
01:47:51
Tom
I think that. that stuff makes room for other things, right?
01:47:56
Tony Montgomery
Yes.
01:47:57
Tom
So we have to release that. We have to, and and noticing is is comical. So, you know, it's fun to see the weird stuff that comes out and the maybe you catch yourself singing or some homemade song that just appeared out of nowhere too. Or maybe you're thinking about some really ridiculous, like it's it just doesn't make sense.
01:48:17
Tom
But I believe that that's like, it's like boiling. It's boiling things off that are just like clutter.
01:48:22
Tony Montgomery
Yeah. Yeah.
01:48:22
Tom
And inevitably you're gonna find something magical in there. Something really special.
01:48:25
Tony Montgomery
yeah
01:48:27
Tom
um I wrote about this in a recent sub stack and I'll share it with you here because it's exactly what we're talking about. you know, you have a couple days on the trail where your brain is just kind of firing.
01:48:42
Tom
You're singing random weird songs. You're having all the things we're just talking about. And then inevitably there's like a quiet and you're walking and it's just your foot strikes and maybe a little breeze, some trees and you're paying attention to very little.
01:49:00
Tom
You're not even aware that it's quiet. And then all of a sudden something hits you, a thought maybe, or a memory, or maybe just like a feeling that you don't even really have a thought associated with.
01:49:15
Tom
And it's the sort of thought or feeling that immediately like blinds you in a sense that you feel an emotion that is so overwhelming that you're you're weeping. And you don't and maybe even know why.
01:49:27
Tom
But those moments to me are what the trail has to give. Those are the gifts that the trail will give you if you let it, right?
01:49:34
Tony Montgomery
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
01:49:38
Tom
We can distract ourselves with all sorts of other things But when we are out there and just an open and vulnerable, as we've been talking about, the trail will give you something that you need, whether you realize you need it or not.
01:49:53
Tom
And you might not even understand it. I was out there this this past time and I started reciting like eulogies to people in my life who are still alive.
01:50:06
Tony Montgomery
yeah.
01:50:07
Tom
I was talking to them as if they were walking alongside me. Hey, Tony. Here's what i know about you. Here's what you brought to my life. Here's what I feel. And here's what i while I'll never forget about you and our time. Like I was having these conversations, not even, I was just, I was i eulogizing the living people in my family.
01:50:30
Tom
And in every single case, I was absolutely weeping.
01:50:36
Tony Montgomery
yeah
01:50:37
Tom
And I don't know where this came from. i don't know why i was doing this.
01:50:39
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
01:50:41
Tom
I can't even say that there was necessarily a result that I was like, well, yeah, I understand that. I have absolutely no understanding of what went down.
01:50:47
Tony Montgomery
Right.
01:50:50
Tom
And it lasted a solid hour.
01:50:52
Tony Montgomery
yeah
01:50:52
Tom
i mean, miles behind me, time went by, I didn't see anybody. There was no one even, I feel like there weren't even birds chirping for an hour.
01:50:58
Tony Montgomery
right
01:51:00
Tom
I was just in this space moving, and speaking aloud these profundities that just melted me. And if anything, that the end result of that was just me realizing that the trail knows what I need.
01:51:19
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
01:51:20
Tom
I don't necessarily know exactly what I need, but the trail knows. And if I open myself to it, it's gonna give it to me. And the trail in that regard is like the the most important thing that I could ever include in my life.
01:51:34
Tom
And if I go out there and shed what I, you know, the versions of me that i that that that are just in the way and I just walk, well, as they say, what, like, solvitur ambulando, right?
01:51:49
Tom
All is solved or it is solved by walking.
01:51:52
Tony Montgomery
Yeah.
01:51:52
Tom
and And it's true. You will... You will be given something that you need.
01:51:59
Tony Montgomery
Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of neuroscience to, to back that up. And the idea but you're talking about, um, is definitely felt I've had those, those feelings. I've never heard it expressed that way, which is, which is great because relates to meditation.
01:52:18
Tony Montgomery
It also relates to psychedelics as well. And why psychedelics have a profound effect on people is because whenever you them, like say mushrooms, for instance, you, you take the trip and then you get inundated with all these,
01:52:34
Tony Montgomery
geometrical path like everything and you're just flushed with like all this stuff and you go through that for about an hour to an hour and a half and then it's and then it's gone and then it's just you and your empty brain because it's just been overwhelmed and now you have silence and now you have thoughts right and that's what you got from the trail like you you've
01:52:54
Tom
Yeah. Right.
01:52:58
Tony Montgomery
put in the work to get through the junk, so to speak, to empty your mind and now allow yourself the opportunity to explore. And it goes back to like reward with effort.
01:53:14
Tony Montgomery
Effortful things you do in your life will give you a reward, but reward without effort is where you get like substance abuse and addiction and all this other stuff. So when you put in the work mentally, like like meditation does, like being on the trail does, you have to go through that process of like, get it out, get it out, get it out, get it out, all these random thoughts. And then all of a sudden your brain's like, all right, like i'm I'm exhausted, I'm tired.
01:53:40
Tony Montgomery
I'll let you explore what you need to explore now. And it does, it just, the thing that you need is what it gives you.
01:53:44
Tom
Yeah, man.
01:53:46
Tony Montgomery
and it's
01:53:47
Tom
Well,
01:53:48
Tony Montgomery
it's a beautiful thing. And the way you put is, is Amazing. And obviously with writing and everything, you're able to elegantly eloquently talk about that stuff.
01:53:58
Tony Montgomery
So it's it's awesome that you ah you said that because that's definitely I have to imagine that's what everybody's felt.
01:54:02
Tom
am in such gratitude of
01:54:04
Tony Montgomery
um But you put it into words and and I appreciate that.
01:54:10
Tom
i mean i am i am in such gratitude of of having found something in my life that is able to, I give something feels right, good, feels deep.
01:54:23
Tom
feels feels right feels good feels deep um
01:54:27
Tony Montgomery
yeah.
01:54:28
Tom
Yeah, I just feel very fortunate for an opportunity to be out there to do that, you know? i mean, i want everybody to have that, something like that in their life. And, you know, it's just not as accessible. So I'm, my good fortune is not lost on me, nor will it ever.
01:54:43
Tom
And so as that any chance I get, like I get off the trail and I immediately start planning what my next thing is going to be, you know, it's,
01:54:52
Tony Montgomery
yeah
01:54:53
Tom
It's just a ah it's a very integral part of my life and i i be I'd be a fraction of myself without it, for sure.
01:55:00
Tony Montgomery
Yeah, no, i'm I'm the same way. And then you get back on the trail and it's like you're a kid at Christmas. You're like, I can't believe I've gone so long without being on the trail.
01:55:07
Tom
Oh,
01:55:09
Tony Montgomery
It's a magical place. it's ah It's a beautiful thing. And I appreciate you coming on and being able to share those stories with us.
01:55:17
Tom
heck yeah.
01:55:17
Tony Montgomery
Can you go ahead and let us know your your website, your sub stack, and also put those in the notes. So if people want to follow along and look at your books and stuff like that.
01:55:27
Tom
Yeah, sure. You want me to rattle rattle them off to you here?
01:55:29
Tony Montgomery
I think mine. Yes.
01:55:31
Tom
Yeah, yeah. So my website is my name, Tom Griffin, TomGriffin.com. Griffin is not spelled in the traditional way and it's always confusing. My last name is spelled E-N, not I-N, but whatever.
01:55:45
Tom
you'll You'll find me at some point. So TomGriffin.com or...
01:55:47
Tony Montgomery
yeah
01:55:50
Tom
Where you can find my writing, which I would encourage you to check this first, is on Substack. It's a free so free place to to read some some essays, both mine and a whole bunch of other amazing writers.
01:56:02
Tom
And um I'm there also under my name, or if you type in with a good heart, which is both my book title and also my Substack name, with a good heart, we'll get you there as well.
01:56:17
Tom
So yeah, that's where you can find my stuff. um And like Tony said, I guess we'll put it in the in the notes too. um
01:56:23
Tony Montgomery
Yeah. Perfect, Tom. Well, I appreciate you coming on the show and sharing everything that you did. um I think there's some very, very insightful stuff in here and just being able to chat with you is ah is always a pleasure, man. So I appreciate your time.
01:56:37
Tom
Oh, well, the feeling is mutual, Tony. It's been a real joy to to reflect on, you know, what happened to make all to make this happen. um And then also share some of these stories. I hadn't thought about a lot of this stuff before or in a while. And and and that feels good. i'll i'll have I got food for thought for for for days here.
01:56:56
Tom
ah
01:56:56
Tony Montgomery
Perfect, Tom. Well, thank you for your time.
01:56:57
Tom
Oh, thank you. and I appreciate your time too, Tony.
01:56:58
Tony Montgomery
yeah
01:57:00
Tom
it's's It's a real pleasure to sit with you.
01:57:02
Tony Montgomery
Yeah, likewise.