instead of focusing again back to perception because perception's reality if we stop if you would stop if i stop you stop we stop thinking about the aspects about what we're doing that we don't like and you're then getting more of it and we start thinking about what it is that we want and envisioning that dreaming about that embodying that visualizing yourself in that life i trust the universe enough to know that i can't help but get it
[Music] hey everyone welcome back to on purpose the number one health podcast in the world thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to listen learn and grow now i'm really excited about this conversation today and i think you're going to absolutely love it because you're going to get practical advice deep insights and potentially even a bit of a spiritual awakening i'm speaking today to danica patrick a former race car
driver and the most successful woman in the history of the sport since her retirement in 2018 danica has become a business owner entrepreneur and an inspirational speaker she's launched her own clothing line written a book and became an
owner of a winery in napa valley she's also the host of the podcast pretty intense a podcast dedicated to helping people become their true best self i had the pleasure of going on the podcast last year where we talked
about my book think like a monk and i've been looking forward to interviewing and reciprocating with danica's love through this podcast danica welcome to on purpose oh man it's my honor i mean it's through it's through your podcast and a few other friends in which you know well that i've been inspired to do my own so uh like-minded missions absolutely absolutely and it's it's amazing how you can have such different
journeys but we all evolved to this similar value similar mission similar purpose and i think that's what i love so much about getting to do this is when i look at your journey i'm like wow like after your incredible success and experiences and if this is what your journey is evolving to you know how lucky are we to connect that way i wanted to start with though i saw uh a lot of posts and videos and things on your instagram recently of you
doing yoga and meditation in nature and by a beautiful river and just it's really interesting and i know i've heard you talk about how nature's been such a big part of your spiritual journey tell me a bit about how nature is we hear a lot about the positives of nature but for you specifically how has nature been so deeply connected to your spiritual journey such a great question and so powerful i just say off the bat quite simply with nature
i don't i would i would challenge anyone to say anytime they've gone in nature that they feel worse like just starting there like have you ever gone to the beach have you ever walked in the woods have you ever gone for just a walk outside in your neighborhood or wherever you live and been like man that was terrible i hated that it was horrible the trees were so ugly i mean you never do that even when you look at a dead tree you're like
wow it's winter and look at that tree doesn't even care it's dead it's gonna come back to life why can't i be more like a tree i think that's kind of the magic of nature is that um i don't i i believe that there's
more of a frequency element to it that goes a little deeper probably more scientific but um but i think it's just that you know it's i feel like we want to be like nature subconsciously like being able to lose our leaves and not care being
able to die and be reborn being able to grow freely finding the light i mean look at trees and how they you know managed to weave their way on up to just find a little bit of light at the top i mean i feel like it's a
big analogy for what we're all aspiring for um so i think it's a little bit more science scientific and subconscious um but then if we just look on the surface i mean for the most part it's beautiful i love those examples already they're
absolutely beautiful and you reminded me of two things as you were saying that in the vedas that i studied there's a beautiful section called the 24 gurus and it looks at the 24 gurus in nature so it gives some of those examples where it looks at 24 elements of nature whether that's rivers trees animals flowers plants and it shows how we can learn something from them so you reminded me of that beautiful section and also what you were saying
scientifically i remember reading about a term i believe it's called biomimicry where you basically emulate nature in your life so what you were giving the example an example i often give to people is like letting and this sounds like a crazy thing but i remember i would often well not often sometimes i would see uh shedded snake skins when i lived in india and it would always be like we were told that letting go was like a skin
a snake sheds its skin like it's not this forced like you don't have to break yourself you just slither out of you know what you don't want to be anymore and so when you were saying that seeking the light and it brought about so many beautiful
visuals and you're so right that you're so right that i i agree with you fully i think the challenge you set us all today is beautiful whenever you've been out in nature and not valued and i was thinking i was
trying to think of a time and i couldn't find one to the point that i was thinking even visualizations when i lead visualization meditations so many people their most relaxing visualization is in nature and and i i think that's such a beautiful message uh that you're sharing with all of us and tell me about that tell me about how different is that because we often talk about this paradox of we're moving so fast in life
that we miss these beautiful things but the truth is no one has actually experienced what it means to go as fast as you have or very little i mean behind the behind the wheel like you've actually lived life in a way where you
are moving i mean how many miles per hour are you driving yeah over 200 almost all the time every time i think i'm cool on the highway i'm definitely not like 200 miles per hour that is insane and you're driving with extreme control
of course in extreme focus but you think about that life's almost like we're driving 200 miles per hour and we miss these beautiful things tell me about the paradox of having lived so much with machines for so long and now spending so much time in nature was that different then or did you always value nature even then i think there's sort of a bigger transition concept to talk about but the first thing that comes to mind is perception
right so as i'm narrowly focused because i have to be on the job and going 200 230 200 you know like you're very narrowly focused so it's that point of perception that i'm lasered in on that allows me to do that job now if you just sort of shift that sort of thought into nature and you go what if i put my point of perception on that flower what if i put my point of perception on how beautiful it is versus how many branches are broken or whatever
like it's all about perception um and so that's kind of what i thought about as you were talking about that but then i'd say that when it came to this sort of extreme opposites of nature and then machine i found being honest it was really because of so much exploration of nature and being in it more and doing more yoga more meditation more connection to myself spiritually on a deeper level that i actually started to shift frequency frequency wise
energetically from the space that i was in it no longer was really that comfortable for me anymore and it wasn't necessarily just about driving the car i think that's more of a dance that's artistic it's like a feel thing there's an um it's it's a different it's it's different than than than what i'm talking about but unfortunately it came in the package which was i just like i stopped resonating with these sort of moods that i was
experiencing around me jobs that i was experiencing around me whether it was just being a jerk on the track to make things happen or to promote something that you weren't that passionate about or to watch other
people promote things that were just like um and uh and then just the the vibe this sort of vibe that everyone had there was like a a cutthroat angry nature just through a rise in my own frequency of being in nature and doing more things that are
in that sort of realm i just wasn't as happy anymore and so i didn't i in that last season of my career i really like to call it like i let it go i was open to continuing on if something made sense and happened but i wasn't forcing it and i wasn't running from it i was just sort of in the middle in that neutral ground of allowing and when it didn't come through i let it go and i just thought it's not for me anymore so
yeah nature was a real powerful thing yeah that's amazing i want to come back to letting it go but let's dive into what you said that you're talking about this spiritual journey and the depth we hear that a lot for a lot of people
and i love asking people to define their own spiritual journey because i think it's so personal and so unique and there are the practices which i want to dive into of yoga and meditation but for you as a philosophy of your
spiritual journey like what does that mean to you how do you define that transition and that focus in your life i feel like spirituality is one of those things in my life that i have actually not set a destination on almost everything in my life i'm destination oriented this is how it's gonna turn out this is where i'm gonna live this will be my life this is my goal it will do this this is the success of it this is what will mean
success and in my spiritual journey it's literally like next step next step next step so in this quest of being i've never really unpacked this verbally like this um so it's a great question um of being present
i'm actually present with being present that makes sense like i'm allowing myself to just take next steps as they come and as they feel right um and not necessarily thinking about uh where i want to end up um which is kind of kind of surprising
for me actually yeah no it's and it's often what deters people from spirituality because it's so much of a revelatory journey i i know that when when we were trained in the ashram it was always said that a spirituality a spiritual journey is one that is received not achieved like we'd always hear that constantly to to help us move away from that achievement mentality that we could do something respectfully not achieve what does that
mean explain that what it means is that the spiritual journey is revealed to you it's not something that you can say i've got it now and i've bottled it up and and here it is i look at my metal look at my trophy of i meditated for 18 hours today look how great i am it was it had to be revealed to you the answer the the next step and kind of what you're saying now that when you're present with your step it's revealed
the next step is revealed to you if that makes sense yeah that that's that that makes sense wow cool no you you made me think of it in in what you were saying of the idea of if you are truly present it's it's almost like i i mean you're making me think about just ways of understanding it and explaining it but it's almost like if you're trying to get across a river and there's lots of stones everywhere it's like if you're present on this stone
you can then see the next one and yeah you know where you want to jump to next but if you're constantly looking at the other side you may just fall into the river right i think about two there's another analogy where you're driving let's say
you're driving from one coast to the next you can't see the other coast you just follow those headlights right you're just following the headlights i mean obviously it's daytime sometimes but you're following the headlights
essentially like showing you you know the next mile or the next half a mile or whatever and it's it's not that you can see it but you just keep following the lights yes following the road yeah that that makes so much sense that that's a really good one i really like that analogy and how do you get comfortable with that uncertainty like how do you get comfortable with really truly being present because like you said in all areas of
our life we're all need the goal we need to see the end we need and i'm not saying there's anything wrong with that but how do you get comfortable in that discomfort and that uncertainty and that lack of surety of where this is going i guess it's because you know i feel like this is an abraham hicks line like you can't get it wrong and you're never done like i guess there's a thought in my head where i feel like i'm never gonna know
the answers to the universe anyway so like i don't even it would be that that would be my answer if i had to set a destination would be like oh i'll i'll know everything there is to know like i'll know everything there is to know about the nature of reality which relates to me as a human but i know that we won't get to know like until we die so i guess i don't even know what destination to set because i'm so used to setting the furthest one
so i guess since i don't even know what to set i just keep taking the next step maybe maybe i need to use that in my professional and personal life too like i i don't how much better could it get let's see you know yeah i i think what you said was really interesting is you talked about how when the frequency of what you were experiencing in your career was no longer matching the frequency you were spiritually experiencing that's when you
kind of were able to let go what do you think about for people who are almost maybe in a toxic work atmosphere or in a space where their career where they don't have the opportunity they haven't achieved that level of success where they now can move on or try something new how have you thought about and i'm sure you had to do this too it's never perfect for anyone it's like how did you deal with the toxicity or the negativity
while you had to before you could move on and let go because i think that's where most of us spend our lives like most of us spend our lives where you have this energy and frequency around you and you somehow have to continue on every day you have to wake up and go to work and switch on your zoom call i'm just thinking about the people in our audience and and i'm sure you had that you know that that bridge period yeah and this is so
relatable and applicable and useful and i'd say i the first thing that i think about like for myself i'm a dreamer so for me this is easy this is natural it's natural for me to think what's next um because again i'm a future caster forward thinker right so i would say that it's thinking about what it is that you actually want for your life um i feel like i should go back backwards and say this is your situation you tend to become
so uncomfortable you don't want to be there no matter what like especially if you're nurturing these other aspects of yourself and practices whether they be spiritual or or whatever you get so uncomfortable you
really don't want to be there anyway and so you by nature might even start to be seeking out other ways to exist other ways to make money whatever whatever it's going to take for you to get out of your situation um but but i would say like a tangible
thing that you could do would be to just start instead of focusing again back to perception because perception's reality if we stop if you would stop if i stop you stop we stop thinking about the aspects about what we're doing that we don't like by nature then getting more of it and we start thinking about what it is that we want and envisioning that dreaming about that embodying that um visualizing yourself in that life
i trust the universe enough to know that i can't help but get it it's hard when you're in the moment but it but it's good advice because i remember spending a few years in the corporate world in between monk life and what i do now
and and it's like i didn't really fit in or i didn't necessarily love everything i had to do every day but i was able to use the parts of that job that did make me feel alive and just amplify them as much as i could and i
was like oh i'm learning about technology and i'm learning about this and i'm learning about connecting with people and whatever it was and it was just when that's when you when you put your vision and your perception on to those things all of a sudden even something really meaningless can start to feel meaningful because you've started to notice the meaning in it and and i think we just live in a world where we think of it as like this
is meaningless and this is meaningful but even i'm sure you could say this that even on this side of doing things that are more spiritual or meaningful or fulfilling there's still plenty parts of our lives that we have to do stuff we don't
love yeah right absolutely and it makes me think of two uh you know it's another thing abraham i listen to a lot of abraham too but another thing that comes to mind is contrast and how grateful we should be for contrast
because it's in the contrast that it shows us when we show when it shows us what we don't want we know what we do want and so you know just because something and it also it also allows you an opportunity to shift your mindset to gratitude and go this isn't fun but i'm so glad i get to go on this vacation or whatever it is that comes as a result of it because to think like you said that life is just you know this easy breezy flowing extension
of vacation after vacation after joyful experience after joyful experience like it's not realistic and sometimes we have to do things that we don't really want to do but when we focus on why we're doing it it gives it more meaning yeah absolutely tell us a bit about that practical daily spiritual journey that you're on you you mentioned yoga meditation we've seen on instagram tell us about that morning routine of yours or your daily routine
that's giving you that trust that confidence because i often feel like that that trust as you said trusting the universe that trust doesn't come from just a feeling or a belief it comes from a set of practices in my experience of when you know you're doing something to have that relationship of trust because it's a relationship and a relationship relationship requires investment so what are some of the investments you're making
every morning every day that you feel like giving you that sense of some sense of structure and growth well you have to find a way to get sort of quiet enough present enough to notice the signs and synchronicities and feelings of not only yourself but other people in your environment to navigate accurately where you're going i think to get more out of the head and into the body of of of truly what's sort of like the universe guiding you through
messages through those people or synchronicities um but i would say one of my first practices of uh um first morning practices i changed this was this was i think fall of 18. so it was a long time ago i stopped watching the news um and i think that was one of the first most productive things so it wasn't something i actually did it was something that i didn't do anymore so i used to wake up in the morning i'd watch like good morning america or
you know cnn or today show or whatever i'd watch i just that was my comfort zone it was like a familiar pattern uh familiar sound in the morning and i just drink my coffee and make my breakfast and then as soon as i stop doing that and this is something that everyone should know is that anytime you want to change a pattern there will always be discomfort so i remember like and it's not to like revert back because that's the easy
thing to do but it's to try and figure out something to do like maybe it triggers something else that you do so what i started doing is i started watching youtube videos and like watching you on youtube or watching our buddy lewis on youtube or abraham hicks on youtube or whatever it was i'd start watching youtube videos and um and that was what really kind of like gave me a new morning routine um in fact i think i just posted
about it the other day it was like so this is my morning news and it was like breakfast with like a teal swan video or something and so that's that's like that became the norm years ago i love that that is such a big one i love that that's so awesome like choose your news like you know like choose your news rather than uh like you said you had to disrupt that pattern and and that's the hardest thing to do and you're so right the morning
pattern and the morning mood is is everything like it's everything and i think we we just start in the negatives and then spend the whole day trying to climb up to the positive as opposed to like starting in a strong place
and then kind of being broken down throughout the day which is which is better than feeling like you're trying to play catch up all day it's like school you know when you start off with an f you might still end up with a b at the
end of it but that first quarter all you're doing is playing catch up and you feel like you're never going to get there but you start off with an a and you end up with you know i mean it just seems so much easier to keep your grades up like when and trust me i'm really scrapping for history here because i'm in school i was 16. um but you know it's it's like that whole thing of just playing catch-up or or for me in my racing career it was
it felt like if you could start off in the championship in a really strong way in the first sort of five races or so it felt like you were always ahead of the game instead of playing catch-up from a couple dnfs to start the season off so um it's the same thing you know micro macro with your day itself in the 24 hours that you have so now i'd say in the last like sort of eight months i've become much more regular with the routine of waking up in
the morning and um rolling over and it started when i lived in indiana for the summer with my parents and i have meditation pillows and so i just like threw it down on the ground and it wasn't a big bedroom i was staying in
and so there wasn't a lot of space so i just threw it next to the bed and i ended up realizing oh that's perfect like you get up and you just go sit down like that's the right spot to put it so then when i moved back to arizona and
you know got my house and filled my you know my meditation spot up like it was it's just right next to the bed and so i get up and um i sit down and i meditate and then sometimes i journal sometimes i pull cards like i burn things whether it be palo santo or certain incense um as we talked about in our interview like what was it sal sight set what was it again sight sense and sounds yes yes so setting that up and um
and then sometimes like you know this morning i did yoga afterwards but sometimes it's just going to the kitchen and having coffee um i really i for a little while i was going to the kitchen and having coffee and then coming back and i'm like no no no i took like the body under control and i went i know you want to automatically walk to that kitchen and get the coffee that you want to have but like take control of that and say i am
in it is my decision what i do with the body and it's going to sit down and it's going to meditate now um the one thing that i'm trying to do and this is like i was just thinking about this the other day and it's funny i was about to go to bed and i was starting to do what i wanted to do and i was like wait a second my mom hasn't texted me back today and i left her a pretty good message like i thought she would have responded
i better not this is what i want to do turn my either leave my phone in the kitchen so that i don't go to bed and wake up looking at messages for some reason i have a default to like look at my messages like first thing and it's my alarm if i need an alarm so i'm like i need to get one of those old school clocks and i need to leave my phone in the kitchen or because i also think of emf like radiation like signals so i think so then i'm at a
minimum i could at least turn my phone on you know off of wi-fi and onto airplane mode next to me and then not so i won't actually have nothing will have come through in the night anyway and then once i'm ready i can still use
it as an alarm but then when i'm ready i can turn on all my systems and go but that's what i need to do next but it was like the other night like the ego was like your mom might not be okay and i didn't i remember when i first
trained myself to not look at my phone first in the morning i used to lock my devices in my car outside so i would lock my laptop my phone like all my devices outdoors so that i couldn't even like get up and go and grab it from the other room because i knew that it was too hard because you're right i was so hardwired and i started waking up to a post-it note that says i am awareness or i am the soul or some sort of spiritual affirmation that that
resonates with me and it would be in my handwriting it's on a little post-it note next to my desk and then now i've started to change that sometimes for a little quote that i read in the morning or there's like just a highlighted line in a book and and i feel like when you start off that way you stop your mind starting with anxieties like i get anxious i get worried i you know i i uh can wake up feeling you know misaligned and that changes as
soon as the first thought you consume from the external world is a thought that is aligned and a thought that is powerful and whether it's from someone's favorite book or even from someone's favorite podcast and i i love that idea that you're sharing on helping yourself to stop you know to stop looking at your phone fest in the morning and i love the idea of the meditation uh pillow right there i i think that's
that's brilliant it's a it's a visual reminder and i think we need these visual triggers and reminders to not have to make every decision in our head make it as easy as we can make it right not put it in another room where you're
like oh i haven't been in my meditation room in a while like it's that whole it's definitely it's like as every time i walk by to go to my bed i have to walk by my table and walk by walk by the pillow walk by my rug walk by
everything i put a lot of intention into setting up so that the space is ready um and to make it beautiful too i'd say that too like you know if you want to create a practice like why wouldn't you decorate it why
wouldn't you make it beautiful why wouldn't you make it inviting why wouldn't you put a beautiful rug down why wouldn't you have a pillow you know it doesn't have to be like drill sergeant kind of like uh something something um that you have
to endure like enjoy it my meditation table my altar has pictures of my family pictures of my dogs it has um you know crystals and certain significant things that i've picked up along the way it has a mala that i do mantras to or it has a pendulum that i'll ask questions to it has decks of cards that i can pull from it has books it has journals like it's beautiful yeah oh i love that i had no idea i love hearing about your altar that's
beautiful it sounded you rem i'm gonna backtrack a little you reminded me when you're saying you're walking past the pillow it reminded me of like a mindful walk of shame it's like you're walking past this this
beautiful space to be mindful and you like feel the positive guilt of i should use this space tell us about oh now i want to talk about your altar that sounds so amazing i i think the idea of having an altar so i grew up with an altar in my home
and you know my parents grew up hindu and so having an altar has been a very normal part of my life and having deities and having um crystals and malas and everything you were saying like and books very very normal in my house and then even now my wife and i have our altar in our home here and we've placed our altar and our meditation space as the heart of our house so whenever anyone comes to our home it's the first place you see everyone walks
through it it's it's the first place i see after i wake up and come upstairs uh tell us a bit about like i i you already dived into it but i love the idea of setting up an altar if someone doesn't know what that is or if someone's more new to that concept why has it been helpful and how did you even discover that was that common in your home or background or something you're aware of no this actually started um back in north carolina
when i lived there i lived there for five years and i had i feel like i don't know where i picked it up but it was like a i was in for a while i was picking up things at antique stores and it was like this old little cart thing and it started really slowly where it was just the extra room where it would be like a pool table or something like that would go in it near the right off the pool in the backyard and then i was like can i move
some of this stuff over and then i was like i'll do a little yoga and then it was like what if i move it all the way to the corner and then i go in the middle of the room and then what if i move that out and let's paint this room and then what if i buy a bunch of little knick-knacks and start hanging them and so like i progressively kind of made this my room which is when i wrote a book a couple years ago called pretty intense um
i have a whole chapter in dedicated to your woman cave because it always seems like guys have like their man cave but that's so true they'll have their wool man cave so it started like that and then i had this
table and i started just putting things on it that i like books and things like that and then it just sort of like migrated into being a meditation table and i had you know my eye pillow i had like lavender spray and i had all kinds of little things
on this table and i was like wow and back in those days if i would be sitting there meditating i would have been called weird so i didn't do it as much but i had like a meditation table and i would do it sometimes when i was alone but it was also originally really just a place to put a lot of really meaningful things to me um and i think if i'm pulling from like you know where i grew up and culture it's like almost feels blasphemous to
say you have an altar right yeah yeah i was wondering if that was the case yeah yeah and i and and since i i didn't grow up in church i didn't i in fact my mom said not long like a year or so ago she was like i'm sorry i didn't take you guys to church i'm like that's okay um and not because there's anything wrong with it just because it kept my scope really open and um and so and and also i don't have those really negative attachments of sort of
it being blasphemous or wrong um and it's the intention that matters that's what i focus on so this intention of a space that's really dedicated to to loving not only myself but loving people in my life and aspects of my life so that's kind of
how it started um but i think that i really think that that's kind of what whole i would guess that's what holds a lot of people back from creating what they would call an altar um you probably even heard me call
it like a meditation table or just because it's lingo that's not yes yes it's just like a little more a little more um inappropriate or i do the same i i can relate to that i do the same all the time i'll say my meditation space or whatever and it's yeah it's just because you you don't want to you don't want to alienate what's i mean the definition of alter to me the definition of alter i actually i really don't know what is
the definition of altar i i don't know about the english dictionary definition but i know about the definition of um from from a spiritual vedic place it would be that this is considered the the temple within your home so and and what is a temple there temple is a place that reminds you of your eternal connection with higher energy the divine the source so a place that is of spiritual memory uh would be considered the definition of
you know having a temple in your home uh a place that reminds you of of who you are what you believe in and what you really care about you know for a while so um i i i went to i've gone all to all kinds of churches in my life i became a catholic at one point in my life and went to that church and then i went to baptist church and then i didn't go to any church and i started off going to no church but i remember what i always used to be
able to say even in the very beginning going to church [Music] was that i i really felt like i could be just as spiritual just as religious at home and it doesn't take this building to make it happen and in fact if i don't show up here and
get a message what's the point that's blasphemous right um so i've always had this innate knowing that like it's not some destination that is like opening up some space portal or permission to like live a certain way or
be be uh be loved on some like like religious spiritual level um i don't i don't subscribe to that so yeah i encourage everyone to have their own altar like yeah whatever that means yeah have your own nook your own corner i think it's just it it helps kind of add to this sort of idea of like make the space beautiful if you had a spot that was filled with things that made you smile wouldn't you want to go there exactly and we don't have that
we don't have that i think that's a great great tip and great insight and i don't think we've ever shared that message on the podcast before i i think it's a really really great idea and i loved how you described it there a place that makes you smile dan again your career though it's obviously you've had to be an extremely disciplined focused individual to achieve what you've achieved it doesn't come through anything but that hard work tell us
about the idea of building a habit because you had to build habits to become a successful race car driver you've now built different habits to focus on your spiritual journey if someone's listening and watching and going how do i build better habits like i just i can't get myself even if i built this beautiful decorated room and i put the pillow down but i just walked past it and now i feel guilty that i don't meditate and
i keep hearing everyone tells me to do yoga and pilates and meditation but i you know and and some and i'm sure you meet people who say this to you all the time like where does someone start with habit formation from your experience of building habits well first off i think it's very difficult to just say everyone should xyz because it might not really be for you um i think there are so many different mindful modalities of life and
i know that i don't do all of them i do some of them so i think the important part is figuring out which of those some really are for you and easy for you like it doesn't have to be hard you know maybe for someone it's getting
up in the morning and writing five things that they're really grateful for and that feels easy for them it's not something i do you know but that is a practice of mindfulness of gratitude of spirituality of getting in the right mindset so for me i
think that it's more a matter of like testing the waters of a bunch of different things that you could do that make you feel good um and and so that's really just comes through testing it just comes through testing some people you know some people are gonna love meditation some people are gonna really love yoga some people are really going to love a walk with their dog some people there's so many different ways to connect with yourself to create
practices um and habits and so i guess maybe not thinking about and not thinking about habits as being like all these are the ones that you have to subscribe to um go with the ones that feel natural to you like go with the ones that feel good like i love to work out guess what it's a habit you know if i hated to work out i'd probably try and choose a different sort of form of you know being moving my body other than going in a gym
and throwing some weights around um so and and i think i think it's really about following what it is that it feels like is natural for you um and then it always ends up at a deeper level i mean we treat others as we treat ourselves so if you feel like you're worth the time to have a habit like then you tend to respect others that do too so it always just starts with yourself it starts with the self-worth enough that you deserve the time to
take an hour to go work out or take a half an hour to go meditate or take an hour and a half to go to a yoga class like it starts with believing that you deserve it and then also your why like why are you doing it are you doing it because you have to are you doing it because you are being guilted are you doing it because someone told you this is what's going to be good for you are you doing it because you want to feel good
are you doing it because it does feel good are you doing it because you enjoy the place that you arrive at when you're done doing it um find your why like i mean as a as like a specific example it could be pretty regimented like with my food i'm very um you know i don't eat gluten and dairy and beans there's like a bunch of things i don't eat and it's and it's really easy for me to stick with it because of my why which is that i
want to feel good and so i know that when i eat things that are not in that in my sort of normal um lineup that it makes me either feel bloated or distended or you know whatever it can cause breakouts it can you know there's a lot of other things and i'm like i just don't want to feel bad so it makes my it makes it easier to do it so when you know why you're doing it you keep going it's like another example specific example would be
say you're going on a beach vacation and you got to put a swimsuit on guy or girl and you're like you're really good about what you eat and working out for a couple of months before you go because you have your why right it's like makes things or you're getting married and you know especially girls are like i'm getting married you know and like you have your why it makes the job a lot easier when you know why you're doing it so having a why is
also helpful i think there's a great piece of advice i i've been going on about this on the podcast but it's it's been real for me and it's what you're saying definitely a line so i've never enjoyed going to the gym or working out but i've always enjoyed sports so i love sports extremely athletic enjoy competition like fun competition and back and forth and during the pandemic and since i've really moved to the us i used to play football soccer
twice thrice a week in london because all my friends play and that's where i grew up and we'd play after work in the evenings and then when i moved to the united states for the first two years i lived in new york and i was very busy with my career and didn't really make that much time for it and then when i moved to la i realized that getting 22 people to play a game of football was pretty difficult uh any weekend like that's pretty tough to do
and i recently took up tennis and i'm not good at tennis i i haven't played tennis historically but i'm absolutely in love with it because it's playful it's fun i run and sweat more than i ever would if i went to the gym and i
was on a treadmill and i feel like i start my day just with this like childlike enthusiasm because it reminds me of being at school or you know that kind of feeling of like i just played a game of tennis at the beginning of the
day and and i do that every i do that about three four mornings a week now and not only am i getting better at tennis but the idea of what you're saying is like you've got to have fun with it and my wife for exercising has always been to stay healthy and to never let my bad health be my own cause like that's always been a very clear thing for me it's like if something's gonna happen to me if it comes from the outside that's fine i
don't want to be the one creating it for myself because of my negligence or whatever it may be and you know but the why for me of going to the gym or like that feeling just never worked for me because i've never really been into like oh look at my muscles or this that's not been my why but for me the idea of feeling happy every morning like you said feeling good uh you know it's a huge one so yeah i encourage everyone because for
ages i didn't feel like i enjoyed working out and i kept questioning like what i was going to do to stay fit and then when you find it it's like oh this is so obvious but uh it's it's been life-changing you can order your eggs a million ways in the morning you can do a million different workouts you can do a million different mindfulness mindful practices um there's something for everybody out there so just because you don't fit into
one box that somebody's talking about doesn't mean that uh you can't do it you know yeah yeah i heard you say something on a podcast with our good mutual friend rachel hollis i believe uh and and you and it really
stuck with me i think it's a really powerful statement and and it's it's not counterintuitive to what we said it's it's complementary but it's also exposing a different truth and you said that i've never experienced growth without pain and
and you know and and i think that that's so true as well that you know we don't always experience that tell me about where that lesson just where in your life have you felt that that's just been so true and and something where
you've got more used to that as well i mean it's happened a lot especially in the last four or five years and it comes in the form of jobs changing relationships changing friends changing um it can get the whole your new life's
gonna cost your old one saying it's it's um and that's hard because if we're going into another sort of aspect of things and it's this this idea of change and that we're not i don't think we're actually all that sad about where we're going because the idea is that you're improving and you're expanding um but there is an aspect of you that has to let someone thing else die and deaths are always sad um so the sun the idea that you'll never
see someone again um you know never live here again never go to this job again never park in that spot again there's the the nevers are the things that have to we have to sort of die to that and die to the dream like because i i mean you know it's in changing there's essentially an idea that something isn't going to happen that was going to happen and so it's when that has to go away that you have to allow that that that dream to die and
i think that's also a really painful thing however you know on the other side of it you know this is why when big things happen and the growing pains happen you come out the other side and you're like oh that wasn't that bad like you know you because you're ending up somewhere better ideally um so i guess for me it's come in the form of true emotional breakdowns like i mean just like where i like get it resonating in my body i can
feel it i can feel it and like i always get a lot of action in my solar plexus um sometimes in my heart but definitely my solar plexus sometimes i have this horrible thing where um i feel it in my body before i know it in my mind
so that's a real bummer so i'm like wait what's going on with my why don't i feel why can't i i ate a strawberry and i feel like i'm gonna buckle over that's not right like you know my body's like and then you know it's cut it sort of
followed you know within the next days by something that is emotional and a breakdown of some sort and all of a sudden there's usually like a big flood of information that comes through um but yeah it's it's it's that pain or even on a smaller level explaining me not watching the news anymore right so i wake up in the morning and it's while it's not maybe painful and i don't have some sort of physical reaction going on but i kind of
have a little bit of a mental one or you know a little bit of an emotional one where i'm thinking well i want to watch tv and it's like no this shift is going to be uncomfortable and um so it falls it's a scale you know there's you know it's it's happened in all facets of my life and uh you know i also describe it like you know with with messages that come through to us as the universe comes knocking for what is it what we resist persists
so you know it's like it's knocking on the door and then it's like pounding on the door and then it breaks the door down and then it comes in it can't find you and it burns your house down because you're somewhere in there and that shadow is hiding somewhere i've experienced that i know what that feels like yeah definitely definitely and what is what has made you where have you become more comfortable with letting go like
i loved what you explained about the i won't be able to park at that spot again or go to that job again i won't see that person again like i think that was such a when you were repeating those things i was like yeah those are the things we really worry about like that's what we're holding on to it's that repetition it's that security it's that comfort it's that consistency that's what you're losing how have you become better if you have or
how have you become better at processing letting any of those things go in a way that you think our listeners could today maybe learn apply take a few of those things because i think i i mean letting go is probably the hardest human emotion of anything right of any of the things you have to let go because we get so intimately connected with something it's the familiarity of the discomfort it's that whole and this is where you start to learn
that all these like silly sayings are true it's like finding comfort in the discomfort and and the comfort is just just really just familiarity you're like oh got it i've been here before i know how this goes and you you can sort of lessen the blow by surrendering a little bit more to it because it's in the resisting and the gripping that your house has to get burned down so just don't let it get to that point where you can just go
okay not for me and that comes with like going all the way back to the beginning of the conversation about getting quiet enough that you can start to feel and notice the signs and some synchronicities and like the doors that are opening and closing for you instead of um being so like attached to this idea of how things are supposed to go um i also think i have a little bit of an easier time because i'm i'm a future thinker instead of a past
thinker so i think it is burdened on those who are really like uh symptoms of that would be someone who's like really nostalgic um someone who has a hard time forgiving someone who is um you know sentimental which is kind of like nostalgic but someone who um really ruminates on the past i mean um yeah i think i think there's a little bit of a harder time for someone like that because it's it's it's you're associated with memories so now
you're being told you got to let go of those memories so but if you keep thinking thoughts of the past they start be they they can only be created in the future and so you know you've got to you've just got to learn to let go of them i
mean look a future caster has their own issues to deal with destination syndrome but um but i think it gets easier to move on and allow that change when you can just um and you know maybe it's uh i like to shift my mindset
from going from like oh shoot like because i i think like everyone else when something comes you're like no and then i'm like but what if it's better than i could ever imagine yes and i like trick myself into thinking like but what if it's gonna be better and the idea is that it should be yes yes it always is somehow let the contribution into your you know into the universe that you've been putting through contrast and experiences and dreams and
visualizations let it get delivered to you because if you keep hanging on to that you're not gonna get that right and so you've gotta like allow that to happen but you've gotta surrender and make space you've gotta make space in your world you got to make space in your in your emotions and your perception because your perception becomes reality so you know there's a letting go it's like also maybe this is something applicable for
people listening is that when i retired i looked at it like a letting go not quitting and so learn the difference between letting go and quitting because wow there's a really it's a nuanced difference and to me it came and this is about being able to be present but with the letting go it's it's it's you making an effort and an effort and an effort and then you go wait a minute it shouldn't be this hard and then you just let it go
even though it might be you quitting retiring walking away whatever it is you tried and so when you know you've tried that's not quitting it's like seeing the signs and so for me and my at the end of my career that's what i
had to realize was that you know i'd never had a problem with a sponsor before and they they left at the beginning of the year i had all these other projects going on that i had never had going on all these other businesses starting
um sponsor wasn't coming along and so i'm looking at like all these things are happening and i'm i'm like you know what and i'm not that happy when i go to the track and i'm like um i'm gonna look at all these signs and signs and synchronicities and symptoms and um and just i'm this is letting go this is not for me anymore but we become so identified you know of course like we become and that's why it's so important to
uh nurture other aspects of yourself diversify it's like a portfolio for anyone who invests or has an investor you know look at yourself like a portfolio don't put all your eggs in one basket don't be all in all in stocks and not in bonds or
whatever whatever your financial advisor does it's all about like diversifying so that you have stability because then no matter what happens one aspect drops out and you have other to support others to support you
great insight i i absolutely couldn't agree more with you on that i think i think the idea of you know just yeah just the idea of creating space to to really let go and to realize that you can't change the direction you want to go in if you are still holding on tight to something that's being taken away from your grasp anyway and and often that's what creates more friction and more tension is when you're desperately holding on to something that
doesn't exist anymore uh and and you know it and you're so right about it being we always we always ask the question like what if something goes bad and like your idea of like well what if there is an opportunity here for the best thing ever
so i mean this has been amazing danica i've been so grateful for your time we end every on-purpose episode with the final five so this is one word or one sentence maximum uh so this is your final five danica are you
ready yeah okay so the first question is what's the best advice you've ever received have fun ah nice okay what's one piece of advice you wish people would stop giving i'm so guilty of it opinions you should wait for someone to ask for them i'm literally practicing this in my life i'm like only an opinion when someone asks for it [Laughter] absolutely it's funny sometimes i find like my friends are like jay why do you never why didn't why
don't you like tell us all the stuff you share in your podcast in your book and i'm like because in my social relationships i'm i'm just like i'm just hanging you know because i i relate to what you're saying like i just don't i'm not i am me fully internally but i don't try and be that in my social circles until i'm asked for it so i i relate i think that's a really good answer because yeah it's otherwise it can be painful to give
advice all the time and not see it being lived but also i think that sometimes we refrain from asking for an opinion sometimes because we're scared but also like look at it like a form of respect if somebody wants my opinion on something or advice that's a form of respect this is a this is a form of um communication of relating of um connecting yeah i couldn't agree more all right question number three uh what's the biggest lesson you learned
in the last 12 months that i was supposed to be choosing myself all along like my relationships were all about like this is how it's gonna go and they're not choosing me and then i'm like oh god that's because i was supposed to be choosing myself thanks mir thanks great big beer love you hate you love you so yeah it's like when we when we treat ourselves a certain way that's how we teach others to treat us and so you know
i i didn't choose myself all the time and didn't prioritize myself um enough in certain aspects so um yeah that's that was the last that was the lesson yeah what's uh what's a skill or a habit or a mindset that you've learned now that you think would have helped you as a race car driver more telepathy you know i think that uh i i probably still didn't visualize enough visualization is so helpful i mean shoot they've proven that you can
literally increase your muscle mass with your mind yep so i guess i would have done more visualization yeah beautiful that's that's a great answer i i i mean i remember a whole section of my book is dedicated to visualizations and meditation because i'm such a big believer i remember reading years ago about how lewis hamilton and and david beckham visualize everything and so you know that's that's a beautiful one and obviously you didn't
need it you did it you succeeded without it so uh but but but it's a nice it's a nice addition to everything else i remember doing it when i was a kid and go-karting and i did it like i'd visualize a perfect lap before qualifying but i'm saying like you know i did like i said in go-karting i'm sitting there like i don't even know what this is but i'm like visualizing my perfect lap executing it but there's always more of
that right if a little is good a lot is better yeah i could have visualized more perfect passing more perfect laps more perfect finishes visualizing myself winning i think i could have done more i love that that's great advice thank you for that and fifth and final question if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow what would it be i say this hesitantly it's because i think that it always comes out anyway and if it was
already put out on the front end it would reduce a lot of confusion however it will be a different world but it's something i seek every day and that's just truth i'm such a truth seeker and i feel like it always comes out anyway and if you can't understand what's going on it's because you don't have enough information because there's not enough truth included and so i i think that i i just would say that everyone would have to be
truthful um i mean i'd also like to caveat that with kindness but you know sometimes the truth hurts too and um you know if we can look at it from a more sort of quantum or spiritual perspective of that you know everybody's just a reflection
of us then we really we really see a lot we would really see a lot that's great thank you so much danika that's been an amazing time spending with you everyone go and subscribe to danica's podcast pretty intense
and you can order a book by the same title to find out more about that woo man cave i love that and danika again thank you so much for being so generous with your time and energy with us and i can't believe we still haven't met so i'm looking forward to that day when we can be in the same room together uh and share some energy and share more of these great insights so i really really look forward to that i would just love that i'm so it makes
me sad that we couldn't do this in person but um i uh i i know that day will come and it might not be in the form of a podcast and maybe that's the luck is that maybe if we just let go of this idea that it was supposed to happen for the interview and now we get to go like have lunch or dinner and meet your wife and maybe maybe maybe it's going to come in a whole different more expansive form awesome well thank you danica thank you for your time