Useless Beliefs

00:02:25:15 – 00:03:03:07
Steve
Raised at Alta Ski Resort. Homeless at 16. Part of the three-man team to make the first winter ascent of a Karakorum 8000-meter peak. National Geographic Explorer of the Year type two bipolar. cory explains to us how love it is. Screaming to get out of him is transformed into art, and how creating art integrates his heart and his mind, and how movement, whether in the gym or the mountains, integrates his heart, his mind and his body.

00:03:03:09 – 00:03:22:09
Steve
And cory shares what he calls the Zen cone of climbing. So sit back, grab a fresh cup of coffee or a fresh pint of beer and settle in. Because today you’re in for a real treat.

00:03:22:11 – 00:03:25:00
Steve
cory Richards, I’m so happy you’re here, cory.

00:03:25:02 – 00:03:35:15
Cory
Thanks, man. It’s good to see you. Like, actually. See you. You know, it’s always WhatsApp messages, which is different. Steve, how’s the face? And Steve, how’s the name or two different things?

00:03:35:17 – 00:04:14:06
Steve
Yeah, yeah. Well, anybody’s name and face today I want to welcome someone I consider a true brother. Someone whom I’ve known in almost as many ways as he shows up in the world. Climber. Artist. Gifted. High altitude climber. Athlete to my coaching. Writer. Philosopher. Man and friend. I’ve talked about how it took middle age for me to come to terms with my own intensity, how I just have realized that I’m sort of built different than a lot of people, and I have an unending ability to tolerate suffering and fear, and I can work myself to exhaustion day after day and week after week, month after month, year after year.

00:04:14:08 – 00:04:37:21
Steve
And once in every blue moon, I meet someone who matches my energy, my frequency, my intensity. And the first time I met cory Richards was one of those moments. I was in my mid 30s, socially awkward alpinist. I was at the height of my career and my abilities are up in Canmore, Alberta for one of my annual two-month-long winter climbing trips.

00:04:37:23 – 00:05:01:06
Steve
And I heard about a party one night in Canmore, and I drove by a 1984 Ford Econoline van. You probably remember that Cory, my sister, called it the child of Doctor Van, and it bumped into the curb as I pulled up in front of a brightly lit house. It was 20 degrees below zero and people were standing in the yard smoking with patched 8000 meter parkas zipped up to their chins.

00:05:01:08 – 00:05:28:18
Steve
I made my way inside awkwardly, said Hi to a few people decanted a beer into a red solo cup and glanced around for a familiar face. Nothing. The bump of the music vibrated the flooring, and I made my way to the stairs and into the basement, where I soon caught sight of a strobe light. A tall, lanky, red haired, nipple pierced guy with a closed eyes pumping both open hands above an array of DJ equipment spread across a folding table.

00:05:28:20 – 00:05:51:13
Steve
Electronic music pumped the dancers up and down back and forth to the visceral beat. I tossed my 8000 meter down parka into the massive pile of the same uniforms, and leaned up against the wall to take a sip of my beer. Two hours later, I was still standing there, empty cup in hand, being grilled by a young model handsome blond kid, Cory.

00:05:51:15 – 00:06:15:11
Steve
He wanted to know everything and wanted to invite himself along and everything. It was intense. I was thirsty and I excused myself to get another drink. Exchanged emails with this new young acquaintance and rolled out to my bevy near the Nordic Center. Today, Cory is 43 years old and he just published an incredible memoir, an ebook entitled The Color of Everything.

00:06:15:13 – 00:06:32:10
Steve
Welcome, Cory. I’m so fired up for our conversation today. I can’t wait to get into it with you, because I know that we just have a relationship that allows us to go deep, deep into the heart of ideas that I hope and believe will resonate with the whole community. Thanks for being here.

00:06:32:12 – 00:06:46:16
Cory
Yeah, thanks so much. I mean, like, I’ve been looking forward to this because, you know, you do podcasts, right? And people first of all, I forgot about that party. But now I think, the redhead with a nipple ring must have been Josh Briggs.

00:06:46:22 – 00:06:49:01
Steve
It was Josh. Yeah.

00:06:49:03 – 00:07:14:19
Cory
We always tend to go very deep. And I think that, you know, that obviously started. I mean, I did that relationship very much started when we went to, McAloon in 2009 and, you know, sort of by, by random hand like happenstance that that even happened. So that, that’s when I realized, oh, shit. Like, you know, and this is what I’m sure we’ll get into this, but there’s sort of an older brother quality to you that, that’s always felt very, resonant.

00:07:14:21 – 00:07:18:12
Cory
So thank thank you for having me. I really, you know, thanks for trusting me.

00:07:18:14 – 00:07:35:23
Steve
The inspiration for today’s theme originates from an image I helped to create, perhaps the best image and I’ve ever shot it. So it’s a portrait I took of my partner and my friend Vince Anderson on the summit and Nanga Parbat, and in the picture, Vince is kind of at eye level. He’s on his knees on the top of hunger.

00:07:35:23 – 00:08:06:01
Steve
Parbat has had his back in supplication and in rapture. His arms are spread out to the sides. It’s a portrait that I honestly feel is one of my biggest personal contributions to sort of broader humanity, because I think it embodies and communicates so much without a single word. And what it communicates for me is the truth of achievement and what that achievement is based on motivation and what it looks like when we fulfill a goal.

00:08:06:03 – 00:08:10:09
Steve
Cory, do you remember that picture and do you remember the first time you saw it?

00:08:10:11 – 00:08:29:07
Cory
Oh, you know, it’s funny. I remember the first time I saw it and I don’t remember which magazine it was in. but then I really remember you when you went. Oh, I think it was Vince. that came I went to another sort of house party in Canmore. It was more of a, you know, a team gathering.

00:08:29:07 – 00:08:48:22
Cory
And Vince gave a slideshow, in the living room. It was really special. It felt so intimate. And at the time, because I was so enraptured with climbing and the climbers that I looked up to you and Vince coming off the hills of Nanga Parbat. I was, you know, I felt I felt like this sort of sense of privilege to be there, like I was part of the Cool Kids club.

00:08:48:22 – 00:09:11:16
Cory
And then I remember seeing that image, and I just love black and white, you know, I wish more of my career could have been in black and white. And I just remember seeing that image and being like, oh shit, there are images that transcend the sport. And because they get at something so much deeper and you know that that being emotion, something, something actually celebrated, something felt through film and instead of sort of celebrated, if that makes any sense.

00:09:11:18 – 00:09:38:18
Steve
That exactly make sense because it’s it’s felt not celebrated. And I think it’s real not staged. Right. It’s not the traditional hands above the head triumphant summit picture. It’s like this guy just did one of the hardest climbs in the history of climbing and this is actually what it looks like when that’s done. When that’s half done, I should say halfway.

00:09:38:20 – 00:09:43:06
Cory
Yeah. When it’s half done, it’s the moment you let your guard down for just a second.

00:09:43:08 – 00:10:09:22
Steve
Yeah. We had a few of those, but that’s a story for another day. I wrote a little bit of prose for this inspiration today, and it is when you shed useless beliefs. You may feel shame, probably. Relief. Definitely. Exhaustion. Take heart exhaustion precedes renewal. There’s a few useless beliefs that I’ve shared at various times that I want to share.

00:10:09:24 – 00:10:47:13
Steve
One is that climbing could teach me everything there is to know. Another is that I am only a climber. Another was that receiving. Whether that’s other people’s time, there, intent or words that their guests had no value and that only giving matters. Another one is, I have to say that a big part of my life, when I was focused on just being the best climber I could be, one of the ways I did that was I just filtered out everything into a single channel.

00:10:47:13 – 00:11:16:03
Steve
And so the result of that was when I had two conflicting, or when I had two conflicting emotions or pieces of information that were simultaneously true. I couldn’t handle it. And so I would cut one out, which leads to this kind of black and white thinking. I couldn’t integrate multiple channels of emotion or meaning. And when I talk about these kinds of useless beliefs, we’ve had conversations around this in the past.

00:11:16:03 – 00:11:20:17
Steve
Cory, what is what comes up for you?

00:11:20:19 – 00:11:46:16
Cory
Beliefs in the way we’re talking about them, I think are interchangeable with the word story. And humans are consummate storytellers. That’s what we do. That’s human consciousness writ large is is storytelling. We are given time and then time becomes and when it’s not promised, how much we have, and then times time becomes the vessel of story. And so when I hear you talk about this, I think of sort of the basic premise of a lot of story, which is duality.

00:11:46:18 – 00:12:12:00
Cory
And that comes from, I mean, that’s the oldest sort of those are those are the bumpers of myth. Right? And, and so right, wrong, good, bad, black, white, evil, you know, like all of these things that we use to sort of navigate the world. And then we attach to one because it feels safe. And in that attachment that necessary conflict arises because in being one, you’ve now created the other.

00:12:12:06 – 00:12:34:18
Cory
And so I think that, the journey when we talk about the hero’s journey in some ways and listening to you, what comes up for me is that the hard work is detaching from hard binaries, even though they feel comfortable and somehow. And this takes people. People try so hard to stay the same. We talk about how hard it is to change.

00:12:34:20 – 00:13:01:09
Cory
People try so incredibly hard to stay the same because it’s comfortable and we. So we actually resist that change heavily, which is why we say it’s hard to change because we’re trying to stay the same. And for me, that work, that life, that journey has been about detaching from those hard binaries and and taking on the real, painful work of learning how to hold two or more things in my head at once that seem to conflict, when in fact that is the nature of everything.

00:13:01:09 – 00:13:21:10
Cory
Many things coexist concurrently that simply don’t make sense, or they seem to contradict each other, and yet they exist at the same time. So obviously a lot comes up for me, and I’m going to give a little spoiler away because you mentioned the book, the title itself, The Color of Everything, is a nod to the fact that nothing is black and white.

00:13:21:12 – 00:13:25:15
Cory
that the world exists in shades of gray, which is the color of everything.

00:13:25:17 – 00:14:04:05
Steve
I love that, I love that the most useless belief I think I ever held, and the most destructive, useless belief was that I didn’t matter. And I think that a lot of climbers, and I think, frankly, that a lot of contemporary humans wrestle with that. This is a belief that we have to let go of. And it’s when you realize that you even believe that that’s what I meant by feeling shame and then relief and then eventually renewal.

00:14:04:07 – 00:14:05:11
Steve

00:14:05:13 – 00:14:14:22
Cory
That renewal is the release from you know, it’s weird because, like, to not matter gives you a sense of shame for existing.

00:14:14:22 – 00:14:15:14
Steve
Exactly.

00:14:15:18 – 00:14:23:03
Cory
Right. It like, it necessarily is like, well, then there’s shame because that exists. If I don’t matter then what the. You know, I’m just taking up. I’m a waste of space.

00:14:23:03 – 00:14:23:20
Steve
Yeah.

00:14:23:22 – 00:14:53:17
Cory
And so many of us, I think, learn that in subtle ways. And I will just speak for myself. I don’t think that all of my climbing was bad, and I don’t I don’t mean to harp on it or say that, you know, I don’t regret it at all. But so much of it, even though it was born from sort of a genuine passion, it was born from this childhood obsession and going climbing with my dad, my mom, my brother, it became maladaptive to the point where it was like literally trying to prove to the world that I mattered.

00:14:53:19 – 00:15:17:05
Cory
Like, kind of like I, you know, feeling that, like, look, I exist, I exist, you know, like and the story of I don’t matter. It was sort of just planted very early in my childhood, and it came in subtle ways that weren’t that weren’t intended at all. Nobody was telling me that. But it’s the story behind it. It’s the belief that gets reinforced behind it, if you know what I mean.

00:15:17:07 – 00:15:48:04
Steve
Absolutely I do. I think that this gets to a theme I want to dig into, which is out of motivation because I think that there’s the belief that we don’t matter leads to, a predilection to believe that we need a reward to matter. And these can be financial rewards status. I think the most common reward, and I want to dig into this with you, is recognition.

00:15:48:06 – 00:16:25:23
Steve
And I know that this is something that both you and I have wrestled with over the years, but it also includes, like I just deserve this because I worked hard, which I don’t know what to call that entitlement, I guess. Or, you know, all reward motivated people have what is, in my experience, sort of this false experience that the experience of being rewarded should just be pleasant and enjoyable, and that because they deserve or, you know, are owed status, recognition, money, whatever, that they’re kind of free to choose what they want to do and not do.

00:16:26:04 – 00:16:55:10
Steve
And free to avoid anything mundane, unpleasant, or most of all, uncomfortable. And there’s a few things, and maybe nothing in my lifetime of experience that is more uncomfortable than climbing at extreme altitudes. That’s like literally the most uncomfortable thing I know of an existence that I have experienced. What have your motivations been? I mean, you know, you say like, you had this from your family that, you know, you were rewarded.

00:16:55:12 – 00:17:15:08
Steve
You got external validation, both from family and also from your, you know, our club, right? Like our club of unclick of climbing that you were able to, you know, accomplish something and you got, you got positive reinforcement out of that. At what point did you realize that that’s what was going on?

00:17:15:10 – 00:17:38:19
Cory
I mean, honestly, like, I think I knew it long before I voiced it, which is so often the case with truth, or what we’ll call honesty. You know, oftentimes we know we’re in a relationship that doesn’t work, but we’re too afraid to voice it because the fear of loss is too great. And so I think, I think I had that, that sort of innate knowledge for a long time.

00:17:38:19 – 00:18:12:24
Cory
And that extended both to photography and climbing, where there was a piece of me that was so devastatingly stressed out by the thought of continue doing. But I wasn’t ready to to admit that, you know, well, admit it first and foremost, and also admit that, like the reason I was continuing forward and tolerating that discomfort, not only physically but emotionally, was because I feared that if I didn’t do these things again, I wouldn’t matter.

00:18:13:01 – 00:18:37:17
Cory
Like my my my reason for being. Essentially, I confused identity, and I confused identity with doing which, you know, I am. I started, I identify, I am a climber, I am a photographer, I am this, I am that which, which is in some ways if you look at it like sort of it’s not really a very good use of the English language.

00:18:37:17 – 00:19:17:12
Cory
We have so many other ways to describe the experience of doing something without negating our being because I am. Period, I take pictures. That’s a journey, right? I climb mountains at times. That’s a journey. So there’s sort of a trapped ness, like a stuckness that comes from the identity of climber. there’s this. And yet then you get rewarded for going out and risking so much, and you’re really heavily rewarded until it doesn’t work either because you don’t do it anymore or you die.

00:19:17:14 – 00:19:40:17
Cory
And, and our culture is built on sort of the, the idea of the concept of individual exceptionalism. And so we create a narrative, a hero narrative around ourselves. And there’s some, there’s some like, there’s a really beautiful book. I think it was the Pulitzer winner in maybe 1974 called The Denial of Death, which basically puts forward that the, basic, the most basic for human anxiety is the fear of death.

00:19:40:17 – 00:20:00:16
Cory
And in order to, repress that necessity so that we can function in life, our primary drive is to be the hero of our own story, which makes total sense as it relates to myth. What we’re doing is creating ourselves to be a hero in order to justify our existence in order to matter to the world.

00:20:00:16 – 00:20:08:09
Cory
And I think sometimes that just gets spun so far forward that you forget that I matter just because I exist one.

00:20:08:09 – 00:20:08:23
Steve
Hundred percent.

00:20:09:01 – 00:20:10:21
Cory
Just because I’m breathing.

00:20:11:17 – 00:20:17:08
Cory
You know, yeah, I totally use that validation. I wanted the rewards, you know?

00:20:17:10 – 00:20:41:23
Steve
Yeah. The rewards. I think society tends to, Or maybe not. Tends to. Society shapes us to want the rewards and to expect the rewards because we are constantly elevating people who have achieved something amazing. And look, they have this, you know, beautiful partner, and they have all this money and they live, this magical fairytale island or whatever, right?

00:20:41:23 – 00:21:04:10
Steve
They have this fairytale life. Nothing is, you know, this is sort of social media is entirely built on this whole thing. But I think that it’s really important what you say. One thing I wanted to reflect back and sort of put a pin in and pause on is you said you knew it for a long time before you actually could speak it, and how that is the nature of honesty.

00:21:04:12 – 00:21:49:05
Steve
And I think that that’s really beautiful, what you said. And it’s very true. Right. Like that, I, know that that you knew it. And I watched you go through that especially like, you know, let’s say around 2011, 2012 that those, those years right after you climbed gosh, from to in winter with Simone and Dennis, I remember like feeling so bad that I couldn’t, like, reach inside of you and with a wrench and, like, adjust something so that you could see it because I could see it and then could figure out as your brother how to fix it for you.

00:21:49:05 – 00:21:51:16
Steve
And that was really hard for me.

00:21:51:18 – 00:21:58:18
Cory
Well, yeah. I mean, it is because you had already been through it, right? And you would you would learn. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you were still going through it.

00:21:58:18 – 00:22:08:06
Steve
And that’s how that’s the only reason I knew anything. Right. Or that’s the only reason we, any of us know anything is because I just was a little bit ahead of you on the curve. Ten years. Yeah. Right. Exactly.

00:22:08:07 – 00:22:27:09
Cory
I mean, people state, you know, they start with why, why, why, why. And I actually I think that’s I think that’s a disservice. It’s a great question. Why am I doing things? But I honestly, you know, in the men’s work that I do, we always start with where which is not honest is I like a well where are you actually then we can get to why.

00:22:27:11 – 00:22:53:19
Cory
But let’s just start with where you are, like being honest. Are you, you know, are you cheating on your wife? Are you, are you financially stable or unstable? Like, just a little, little, and big things? Are you are you are you genuinely happy? And you create a picture of where you are in life because then you have a solid foundation for what needs to be, what you would like to address and why, you know, and then you get to the whys.

00:22:53:20 – 00:23:12:07
Cory
But it’s yeah, that honesty is there or, you know, is there. My marriage it was there in like you’re saying and climbing it was, you know, and I think it really came to a head and, you know, 2021, it took a, you know, ten years, a decade before I really realized what you, what you’re hinting at now.

00:23:12:09 – 00:23:38:06
Steve
Yeah, yeah. And I want to go back to 2011 for a minute because I think it’s really a watershed for you. If I look, look at you and your life in February 2011, you climb gosh from to in winter. The first 8000 meter peak in Pakistan to be climbed in winter with some on and more on Dennis, a rope call.

00:23:38:08 – 00:24:02:20
Steve
And you made this film, a short film called cold. An incredible film. For those of you who have not seen it. And you closed that short film with some pretty haunting lines that I’ve gone back to a few times. You had in the film. You had you guys had made it to the top, you come down and there was no big sense of like climax when you’re on the top.

00:24:02:20 – 00:24:23:03
Steve
In fact, the opposite. It was like obvious from the film, like how much you have just a tiny window of survival there before you have to turn around and start down. A storm comes in, and this is all told through the filmmaking. And then you are buried in an avalanche. You have one arm sticking out, your head is left above the snow.

00:24:23:05 – 00:24:47:13
Steve
And as you narrate the end of the film, you’re approaching base camp after the avalanche and after this, you know, very emotional scene where you just sort of film yourself right after the avalanche and you the narration is somehow we all got lucky. We’re on the homestretch now. No more fear. Somehow. And all of this I know there is incomprehensible beauty.

00:24:47:15 – 00:25:14:19
Steve
And in this moment I feel strength. Maybe I’m strong enough, but I don’t know. I still don’t know. And here’s, here’s somebody who’s not even in base camp yet after having just you, I mean, you’re still to the only North American to have climbed an 8000 meter peak in winter to my knowledge. Incredible achievement would be a pinnacle for anyone in any mountaineer’s life.

00:25:14:21 – 00:25:39:19
Steve
And I can hear the self-doubt, an inner critic coming through like you literally did it and you’re like, I still don’t know if I was if I’m strong enough to do it. And I was like, dude, like, you literally did it. Like, what the hell are you talking about? You did, in fact, climb you two in winter with two of the strongest, most accomplished how-to-do climbers to ever do double boots.

00:25:39:19 – 00:25:42:21
Steve
Let’s be honest, those guys are both just complete. You know.

00:25:42:22 – 00:25:43:09
Cory
They’re many.

00:25:43:14 – 00:26:03:23
Steve
You know, creatures of the wall, as Messner put it years and years ago. And I think that you are, of course, right to doubt whether or not you belong there 8000m in winter, because there’s a lot of humility in that. And frankly, no one belongs at thousand meters in winter. Like we’re not designed for that. We can’t survive that.

00:26:04:00 – 00:26:36:23
Steve
The core idea underneath this is one of the things that I saw in you at that time, and that I was developing in myself, but had not quite gotten my full handle on, was sort of this idea of leading myself first and progressing as a person. Enough that I could look at others and see where they were, and notice that there on this point of the journey, and it’s really easy to get off on the wrong foot with our, our, our work on ourselves.

00:26:36:23 – 00:27:12:00
Steve
And I think that the biggest stumbling block is motivation, because I think we’re programmed into a reward based motivation and I think it’s a complete fallacy. I think it doesn’t work. I think that, you know, in that film and throughout your life as a climber, you’ve been constantly in every interview I’ve read about, in every interview I’ve read with you, you were questioning your own motivation and transparently sort of airing some different motivations.

00:27:12:00 – 00:27:33:01
Steve
You talked about, you know, all the attention it was an incredible achievement. And the film was also an incredible piece of artwork, and it brought so many people into the experience. And you were reaping the reward, and it wasn’t filling the void within you because you thought that that was supposed to.

00:27:33:03 – 00:27:33:12
Steve
Right?

00:27:33:15 – 00:28:02:04
Cory
Yeah. Well, the reward, you know, it’s so funny. There’s like this sort of metaphor and allegory of like, you know, that you climb the you climb the ladder to look in the box, and the box is always empty. And at that point you can choose to continue to climb another ladder, knowing that the box is empty. or you can convince yourself that maybe there’s another boxes full.

00:28:02:06 – 00:28:30:02
Cory
The reward is mistaken, as the external validation. So we mistake that reward the external reward with what we’re actually looking for, which is the internal fulfillment and our wholeness. But a lot of people miss it. People mistake story as a series of events. That’s not a story. The story is actually what you’re what you’re trying to unravel or understand inside.

00:28:30:02 – 00:28:59:09
Cory
That’s the story. The external events are the plot, and the plot leads you to the theme, which is ultimately what the story is about. Right? And so often in this shit, we mistake the internal goal for the external goal. And so when I’m saying I’m not strong enough, I’m literally saying like, okay, it’s sort of a now I look at it as sort of a harbinger for what’s to come, which is, let me go do this again and see if I’m strong enough.

00:28:59:11 – 00:29:27:01
Cory
Okay. I don’t feel strong enough now. So let me go do this again and again and again. Maybe it’s a different mount. Maybe it’s a different partner. Maybe it’s a different job. Maybe it’s a different assignment. Let me just see. Let me climb this next ladder because I’m fucking certain that boxes fall. Right. And so the motivation becomes the end goal or the motivation becomes everything that comes with that, that from the external on those journeys.

00:29:27:06 – 00:29:32:09
Cory
And certainly there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a little bit of success. There’s nothing wrong with celebrating yourself.

00:29:32:11 – 00:29:46:21
Steve
Yeah, yeah. And this goes back to like avoiding black and white thinking, right. Like we have to integrate both of these realities. But I think that you’re totally right. Like there’s nothing wrong with we, and nobody’s perfect. Like, we don’t have to, like, be monks and not enjoy ourselves.

00:29:46:23 – 00:29:47:18
Cory
Yeah.

00:29:47:20 – 00:30:07:11
Steve
but I think that there’s I love I want to go back to this, climb the ladder to look in the box. And the box is always empty, as you said. I think that that is this reinforcing cycle, which to me is the doom spiral. motivation. Because then you, you constantly and I went through this in my own climbing career.

00:30:07:11 – 00:30:45:15
Steve
Right. I was just like, I’m every year I’m doing these things. And every year all the journalists asked me is, what am I going to do next? And I’m like, guys like, I just did this thing. It’s really, I think, quite beautiful and I’m really proud of it. And it was an incredible journey. And, and, you know, even like you’re already asking me what’s next like, well, like going home and sleeping and like having a good meal and maybe like, trying to eventually get motivation back to do this again and it was like, okay, now I’m in this doom spiral where I don’t feel motivated because the reward doesn’t taste as sweet anymore

00:30:45:17 – 00:31:13:03
Steve
and the reward doesn’t go up exponentially. The reward kind of stays the same. And when the reward has been the same for ten years or 20 years and you’re doing the same thing, running on the same hamster wheel, sort of like, Okay, well, you know, there’s got to be more to life than this. And that’s sort of when for me, when I started with all this kind of self-doubt and I threw in a lot of self-sabotage, something that you and I have talked about in private.

00:31:13:03 – 00:31:17:00
Steve
We’re both sort of many experts, I think, on that.

00:31:17:02 – 00:31:17:15
Cory
Oh, yeah.

00:31:17:17 – 00:31:21:04
Steve
Yeah. How did that manifest for you and your journey?

00:31:21:06 – 00:31:24:18
Cory
The self-sabotage or the or the would like? I mean, that was, you know.

00:31:24:18 – 00:31:29:24
Steve
Like, yeah, take your pick, but it’s a buffet of options.

00:31:30:01 – 00:31:48:22
Cory
It is a total buffet of options. It’s like one point I want to like, you know, we always talk about the summit. Doesn’t matter. It’s a journey. It’s a it’s a trope. Right. And it’s so annoying. And you’re just like, well and the way I like to, it’s more of a Zen con. It’s like only the summit, can illuminate its own insignificance.

00:31:48:24 – 00:31:49:12
Steve

00:31:49:14 – 00:32:10:14
Cory
Which means that in order to understand that the summit doesn’t matter, you have to get to the summit. So the summit does matter or doesn’t matter? Right. So it’s it’s like it’s, it’s a really you know, the summit does matter, but only to show you that it doesn’t matter. So it’s very because the only that view can offer it and, and I know, I know it’s, I know it’s kind of try I know it’s a trope.

00:32:10:14 – 00:32:39:13
Cory
And also there seems to be a lot of truth in cliches when you start to unravel them. That’s why they’re cliches. the idea of like, self-sabotage is, is one of those things where, you know, like you say, I’m a little bit of a master of it. I think we both are. Where it goes back to that fundamental, questioning of your viability as a as a human being, as a being in this world, like, do I matter?

00:32:39:15 – 00:33:05:19
Cory
And all of a sudden you start to get, these external sort of hints that maybe you matter and then you mistake them for mattering. And then, because of that, you sort of you lose sight entirely of, of the journey inside. And then because you don’t trust it, you burn it down. And that’s what self-sabotage. Yeah.

00:33:05:24 – 00:33:17:14
Cory
Right. Or like that for me, that’s what self-sabotage is 100%. Oh, I’ve proven this thing and now everybody’s actually reinforcing it for me. but I still don’t believe it. So fuck it. Where are the matches? Let’s go again.

00:33:17:14 – 00:33:21:10
Steve
Tell me a story about that. Tell me, like a real life example.

00:33:21:12 – 00:33:24:19
Cory
You mean from today or from, like, no.

00:33:24:21 – 00:33:27:13
Steve
Like this morning? you know.

00:33:27:15 – 00:33:48:15
Cory
Like, I mean, for example, there was a time where, you know, where after room two, after all this success, I was on the northeast team. I was, you know, production company with my friends. I just got married. So things were actually really good. And there’s two realities in this story.

00:33:48:21 – 00:34:15:19
Cory
But rather than then accepting that, settling into it and really examining it, going, okay, I’ve got space to understand and really start to, you know, explore what it means to be instead of do. I was like, fuck it, I’m gonna cheat on my wife. I’m going to start drinking a lot. I’m gonna react heavily to to my, my sponsors in a very, negative way when they, when there was a pay cut.

00:34:15:21 – 00:34:32:05
Cory
And I’m not going to even try to engage with my friends on this film company because look at me. I’m so fucking great. Why do I need to do any work? Right? So it’s all these things where I was like, well, let’s just let’s burn this whole thing down now. Not only that, now I can feel sorry for myself.

00:34:32:07 – 00:34:50:16
Cory
Right. And now I can use that as motivation. now I can be like, oh, look at me, I’m so destitute and I could create a new creation story of look how I rose from this, when in fact that’s all it was really about. I mean, not all it was really about, but that’s so much of what was it about?

00:34:50:19 – 00:35:06:04
Cory
It was giving myself a new motivation, a new motivation for self-hatred. Hey, look what I like. I’m such a fuck up and a new motivation to rebuild from self-hatred. But again, you know, it was cyclical over and over and over. And there was, you know, there’s more examples of that.

00:35:06:06 – 00:35:37:17
Steve
But oh, yeah. And this is so common in climbing, I think that I mean that many microcosms of that story. You know, I think Mark Twain originally, at least to my knowledge, wrote about it when he talked about that in Kids Are Kill and now he, quote-unquote, got good with the knife. And what he was talking about was more or less self-sabotage, like kill, you know, killing relationships, cutting people out, you know, just being a jerk so that people didn’t want to be around him.

00:35:37:19 – 00:35:58:04
Steve
these were all exactly this type of behavior, that sort of deconstructed whatever structure of success and modicum of normality he had created through his climbing and his artwork, so that he could hate himself enough to do it again. That was.

00:35:58:06 – 00:36:14:09
Cory
Exactly. It’s it’s so good. That’s easy. You hate myself enough to do it again. Yeah. And then and know that ultimately I’m going to self-sabotage and that would I just I had a thought and I wanted to come back to what you said about like, what’s next, what’s next, what’s next.

00:36:14:11 – 00:36:14:18
Steve
Right.

00:36:14:22 – 00:36:32:02
Cory
First of all, we don’t take some time to celebrate the wins. So I that’s work that I’m trying to do, celebrate the win. Even now as the end of the book’s coming out. Like what’s next? What’s like and take a moment to just like, sit. And, you know, I’m curious about your experience with finishing a book. So hold on.

00:36:32:04 – 00:37:03:17
Cory
And when people say, when they say, what’s next? I love the question because I’ve finally found an answer that I enjoy to give to people. And it’s when people say, what’s next? I like to say this because ultimately that’s what you’re going for, this, this right now, there is no next. It’s just this let’s take a moment to be here rather than future fucking ourselves, which we’re always doing.

00:37:03:17 – 00:37:10:12
Cory
I get your question. Am I going to go climb a mountain? Am I going to write another book? I’m not going to answer that, because, quite frankly, I don’t fucking know.

00:37:10:12 – 00:37:11:09
Steve
Yeah.

00:37:11:11 – 00:37:29:07
Cory
And so I can give you some bullshit answer or I can say, well, what’s next? Is this? Yeah. And what’s next now is this, you know, and, it pisses people off, which is also great, you know, but it also reminds us, hey presents like let’s, let’s, let’s I mean, all of us spend 90% of our day either in the past or present.

00:37:29:07 – 00:37:32:23
Cory
So like, just take a moment right now, how about this?

00:37:33:00 – 00:37:33:14
Steve
Yeah.

00:37:33:16 – 00:38:02:10
Cory
When we hear somebody bitching and moaning about something, or, you know, just expressing emotion. And this is, I think, a fundamental flaw of the, of the culture and society that we live in. Is that or let me say, there’s space for work here when we hear somebody, bitching and moaning about something that we understand is trivial in relationship or in regards to what we’ve experienced, we immediately stamp out their emotions by saying, yeah, but, but consider this.

00:38:02:10 – 00:38:04:10
Cory
Or you don’t even like, you know, you.

00:38:04:10 – 00:38:04:23
Steve
Don’t even know.

00:38:05:01 – 00:38:16:04
Cory
Them, but you’ve never yeah, you don’t even know you. You haven’t stood on that like blah blah blah. And what we’re doing is we’re literally rejecting their emotional experience. They’re sharing vulnerably. Yeah. And then we shit on it.

00:38:16:05 – 00:38:17:17
Steve
We gaslight them.

00:38:17:19 – 00:38:36:03
Cory
We gaslight them. And so what they do and the message they learn is well. And especially children. They learn when we’re trying to tell them they’re starving kids in Africa. What they learn in that moment is my emotional experience. And welcome here. so I’m just not going to tell you. And then later on we’re going be vulnerable.

00:38:36:03 – 00:38:48:16
Cory
Tell us everything you feel and even relationships. I see this all the time with my girlfriend where we do it to each other, you know, be vulnerable. Just tell me how you feel. And then they tell you how you feel and you get mad at them for what they’ve just, you know, and you’re like, what the fuck are we doing?

00:38:48:16 – 00:38:50:19
Cory
Like, that’s not healthy.

00:38:50:21 – 00:39:15:17
Steve
You know? But see, that’s where you go into the definition of honesty where you first have an awareness. For sometimes for a very long time before you can have the courage or the resolve or the need, maybe just to name it and say this is not healthy. The part that I want to go back to is motivation because I think it’s so interesting.

00:39:15:17 – 00:39:29:00
Steve
So what is a healthy motivation? What what what does it look like? I have some theories, but and before I like have you kick holes in my theories, I want to see if you have a theory.

00:39:29:02 – 00:39:48:01
Cory
Okay, this is a really cool question. I love it and I’m going to try to connect these dots. I was walking down I was in Miami the other week for a film premiere. I was walking with a guy named Dan Buettner and he asked me, what is how do you know what the next quote unquote, right action is?

00:39:48:03 – 00:40:05:16
Cory
And, you know, I had this very sort of meandering, philosophical answer about what is right and wrong. And he’s like, no, no, I get it, I get it. What? How do you know? Like, how do you make a decision? And I said, well, I, you know, like, would tell me yours. And he said, does it align with your purpose?

00:40:05:16 – 00:40:39:16
Cory
And can you clearly define your purpose? And does this action or this course support or undercut that purpose? And so I think when it comes to motivation, it’s a very similar, not identical, but a very parallel answer. What is your motivation? Where are you now? What is you know, what is your purpose genuinely? And does your, does your motivation align with that purpose, or is it coming from a different place?

00:40:39:18 – 00:41:02:07
Cory
And that’s where you have to get real and honest, right? Like, oh, actually, my motivation doesn’t align with my purpose. It might actually be counter to it. So I would say that a healthy motivation is when you can clearly identify your purpose and put those and put those two in lockstep and understand your virtues, what they mean, your values, what they mean, and do those things line up.

00:41:02:09 – 00:41:15:22
Cory
You know, that’s a very broad answer. But at the same time, I think it’s those motivations are always going to be a little different. So I guess the primary motivation would be to align with my purpose.

00:41:15:24 – 00:41:38:10
Steve
I love it. Well, it it connects to this idea of the importance of leading yourself, because only when you lead yourself according to right decisions and make enough good decisions that you make progress as a person, will you start to be able to help others?

00:41:38:12 – 00:41:57:00
Cory
I mean, just as it relates to training, I know we don’t want to talk a lot about training on this, but I just recently, you know, I worked with you as a coach and it was profound, profound. And it helped me achieve something phenomenal. And then I moved on to a different coach. And recently I, I, I this is this is a this is a point of honesty.

00:41:57:02 – 00:42:22:04
Cory
I started working with a new coach and he said, what’s your motivation? And I said vanity. And he said, wow, nobody ever just admits that it’s vanity. And I said, that’s it. I want to fucking look good naked. I like that’s it. And he goes, okay, well now, now we’ve got an honest platform. And, and so in that he and here’s, here’s the thing.

00:42:22:04 – 00:42:44:08
Cory
Why do I want to why is that my goal. Well yeah there’s social conditioning. There’s social programing. There’s all of that. And I make space for that. And rather than coming from a place of self-hatred, I hate my body. So I want to change it. I was I switch the narrative. I want to give this to myself and my body, and I want to make this an offering.

00:42:44:08 – 00:43:05:07
Cory
I want to love my body, not. I want to love it when I look in the mirror. I want to love on my body. I want to give it the love that it deserves. Yeah. And by virtue of naming it externally, I was I was trying to name something internally. And this is one of those times where, if you’re honest, the external goal and the internal goals start to align over time.

00:43:05:09 – 00:43:19:00
Cory
Yeah. Which really what I wanted to do was have a little bit more discipline. I wanted to understand my body a little bit more, and in doing so, I started to love it. And guess what? I lost 15 pounds and I look great naked like, so, you know.

00:43:19:02 – 00:43:20:00
Steve
Like cool.

00:43:20:00 – 00:43:22:13
Cory
Win. But I came from a different motivation.

00:43:22:15 – 00:43:52:18
Steve
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes. So the only thing that seemed to be important was like, who? How can I take what I’ve learned and help other people with it? How can I give back? It felt like a responsibility. And I think one of the key things about responsibility is when you feel responsibility, whether it’s like you have to walk the dog every day or you have to do your homework or I don’t know, whatever it is, pass a test.

00:43:52:20 – 00:44:12:01
Steve
You know, it’s going to be hard to fulfill that responsibility. You know, you’re going to have to work your ass off to do that. And so it’s the opposite of like, oh, things should be easy now, or I should have all these, this money and all this attention. It’s like, no, I have to work now, and I actually have to work really hard.

00:44:12:03 – 00:44:46:01
Steve
And, and it’s and it’s in service of this, this responsibility that I feel because of where I’ve, what I’ve been able to do and where I am at this point in my life and back to death, like knowing that this life is finite, right? Like it feels. And I think for me, that’s been the so far at this point, I’ve maybe I’ll change my mind in a few years is that that’s been that that wellspring of motivation that feels like it’s not sending me down any kind of death spiral.

00:44:46:01 – 00:44:51:16
Steve
It feels it feels pure. It feels good. It feels literally endless.

00:44:51:18 – 00:45:22:18
Cory
Was I mean, I love that, I love that, and with giving comes gratitude. And I believe that gratitude is not to be cliche again, but I do believe that gratitude is the single greatest bio hack. When you look at the sort of rewards of when we actually make a legitimate shift to gratitude, not just giving a lip service, but when we actually start to feel, how special this is, something in us biochemically changes, and we’re able to not only take on more but give more.

00:45:22:19 – 00:45:38:08
Cory
Giving is a bottomless well. So long as you’re giving from again an honest place, not giving in order to be seen as giving, but giving because you understand that through it you are also more full.

00:45:38:10 – 00:46:00:24
Steve
I think that is sort of this the secret and you’re and you know, you’re talking about the cone of having to get to the summit to realize that it doesn’t matter. You know, to get to the point where you have abundance, you have to give away everything. That you have an, an endless on an endless sort of treadmill of giving and giving and giving.

00:46:00:24 – 00:46:03:10
Steve
And because you want to, you know.

00:46:03:12 – 00:46:13:22
Cory
When you the last big question was what’s the, what’s the, what’s a good motivation. And I’ll just finish it by saying, love, you’re acting from a place of love. That is a great motivation.

00:46:13:24 – 00:46:39:14
Steve
I want to bring us back to the artist’s life because that’s one of the themes I really want to explore with you, because you are a person. In my view, you’re an artist first and you know you’re a lot of things and you’ve been good at many, many things. And I think that that’s I told you once that it’s really hard for you because at that time I was specifically King.

00:46:39:16 – 00:46:59:05
Steve
you know, you’re, you’re photography and you’re you’re climbing. And I was like, you know, your purpose is being split here, and, you know, you’re you I could see you getting pulled back and forth, and the North Face and others were also pulling you back and forth. Oh, wait, you can climb 1000 meter peaks in winter and you can take these amazing images.

00:46:59:07 – 00:47:35:16
Steve
Whoa! We really like you. Like, come along, you know. And by the way, you have to do two jobs. You know, it’s really unfair, to be honest, to yourself, and you know, of, of, you know, brands to, to do that, in my opinion, poetry and inspired a lot of the kind of thinking around, this, this my thoughts for today, for our recording and, you know, there’s poets like Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, who is sort of I posted a picture of her on our outline today as sort of our muse for the day.

00:47:35:18 – 00:48:01:24
Steve
If you haven’t read her stuff, and if you’ve ever experienced depression, please go read The Bell Jar. and Sexton others, these were kind of coined the confessional poets because they wrote openly about their experiences with mania, depression, addiction, even experiences in their in mental hospitals were not off limits. Lowell wrote a poem called waking in the blue, and I’ll read a little bit of it.

00:48:02:01 – 00:48:30:23
Steve
He wrote. My heart grows tense as though a harpoon were sparring for the kill. This is the house for the mentally ill. You can’t read these poets or read about their lives and think it would be glamorous to follow in their footsteps. Right. Like, and you know, you’ve been a great voice in our community and beyond like way beyond the outdoor community.

00:48:30:23 – 00:48:58:23
Steve
You’ve been an incredible voice around sharing your journey with mental illness and healing from mental illness. And you and I have each shared our experiences privately and publicly, but together we’ve talked quite a lot about our experience, specifically with PTSD that we each individually experienced through climbing and the link of that to depression. And you once said something that I thought was really great.

00:48:58:23 – 00:49:28:19
Steve
You said that PTSD doesn’t know the difference between a landmine in Iraq and an avalanche in Pakistan. And I just think that that is such a true statement, and it kind of gets to the heart of, you know, this emotional experience that we have in the mountains. You know, so many artists have and I think honestly so many climbers and I’m going to throw ultra runners in there too.

00:49:28:21 – 00:49:40:19
Steve
I’ll have, you know, challenges with mental illness and depression. Does the artists experience that differently than the climber?

00:49:40:21 – 00:49:44:17
Cory
Who does the artist experience different than the climber? Oh, wow.

00:49:44:19 – 00:49:46:12
Steve

00:49:46:14 – 00:50:05:11
Cory
In my experience, and when I talk about mental stuff, I really because I’m not a clinician, I’m not a psychiatrist, I’m not a psychologist, I’m not a social worker. I’m not a therapist. That is my that is my disclaimer. So I speak from it from my experience. I, don’t experience them differently.

00:50:05:13 – 00:50:07:15
Steve
the, the.

00:50:07:17 – 00:50:18:09
Cory
The darkness that comes from mental health oftentimes I think is confused with a catalyst for creation.

00:50:18:09 – 00:50:19:11
Steve
Interesting.

00:50:19:13 – 00:50:21:18
Cory
Now, I might be splitting hairs here.

00:50:21:18 – 00:50:25:12
Steve
I confused by whom outsiders are insiders.

00:50:25:14 – 00:50:59:02
Cory
The insiders, like I would say for myself, the experiencer. Yeah, that I confused the pain as necessary. for the creation or the climb, which is also a creation. I also think that when we have, PTSD or PTSD, which is complex post-traumatic stress, which, you know, when we have those things, oftentimes there’s a disconnect that happens, from our body and our mind.

00:50:59:07 – 00:51:21:22
Cory
And, and I would say there are three pillars of existence, as a human, there’s the body, the heart and the mind. the body in the heart are distinct and they’re all distinct. And yet health comes from their integration. Healing comes from their integration. And so when we have traumatic experiences, we essentially get trapped in a mind cycle.

00:51:21:24 – 00:51:35:15
Cory
And oftentimes I think the act of climbing for me was trying to reintegrate, however clumsily, the mind and the body. and so I, you know, I said, okay.

00:51:35:17 – 00:51:43:18
Steve
Okay. Can I just interrupt you to say yes? Me too. Me too. Yeah. Just like jumping up and down, raising my hand here like. Yeah.

00:51:43:20 – 00:51:47:16
Cory
Yeah. And I’m not taking any movement. Movement, movement.

00:51:47:18 – 00:51:57:01
Steve
I like movement full body, but bipedal. All four limbs and three dimensional movement.

00:51:57:03 – 00:52:14:04
Cory
And our culture. It’s not just PTSD, it’s our culture. It is so cerebral. And it is so mind forward that all of us, we, we find, we go, oh, well, when I move, I feel better. Well, yeah, because you’re integrating your, your, your whole existence into one thing for a moment because it’s required.

00:52:14:07 – 00:52:16:04
Steve
Yeah.

00:52:16:06 – 00:52:21:16
Cory
and, and I think through art, I was trying to integrate my mind and my heart.

00:52:21:20 – 00:52:23:08
Steve
Oh, I love that.

00:52:23:10 – 00:52:48:03
Cory
because I believe that. Because what I don’t believe anymore. Now, oftentimes they come concurrently is that pain and suffering is necessary for great creation. And we see that throughout art, especially with, you know, the 27 club or whatever, you know, these profound young artists or artists who are screaming, out with, with love, with angst, with frustration.

00:52:48:03 – 00:53:08:04
Cory
They’re they’re literally the conduit for the human experience of emotion. Their art is anyway. And yet so many of them were deeply troubled or tortured. And that came with addiction. It came with all sorts of, you know, it came with mental health struggles, what I believe, and maybe again, I’m getting too fucking weird here.

00:53:08:04 – 00:53:08:12
Steve
For.

00:53:08:12 – 00:53:13:00
Cory
For some people, but I believe that again.

00:53:13:02 – 00:53:13:17
Steve
Art.

00:53:13:17 – 00:53:41:07
Cory
Is the creation. The art is love. It is love manifest. It’s coming through you. And the reason that so many people who have, that darkness creates such profound art is because it’s it’s it is our beings. It is our innate beings love pushing through the darkness. It’s literally screaming to come out. What I don’t believe is that they necessarily rely on each other.

00:53:41:10 – 00:54:02:09
Cory
I believe once you are integrated or on that journey to integration, once you find a way to unify in some way or tie those three pillars back together, you no longer need the torture because you can touch it. You can reach into it for a moment, you can understand it, but it’s but you’re more able to access love.

00:54:02:11 – 00:54:10:12
Cory
You’re more able to access it in a more, consistent way. Can and I would argue, go ahead, go ahead.

00:54:10:14 – 00:54:40:19
Steve
I just I want to go back, but can I just say that it’s there was a time in my life when I was climbing and that was who I was? That was my identity. As we talked about that, I feared integration because I understood the motivation for climbing to come through the pain, as you just put it. and I was like, that’s the wellspring.

00:54:40:19 – 00:54:53:08
Steve
I don’t want to shut that off. I’m like, if that goes away, I don’t know what will happen to me. Like, I won’t be able to do these things anymore that I’m doing. I wanted to stay in the tortured place.

00:54:53:10 – 00:55:12:16
Cory
We will because because culture has created a story around it too. And quite frankly, you know, I have a therapist friend who works with a lot of very high level people, and one of the things she and she does a lot of psychedelic therapy, and one of the things that a lot of her patients say is, you know, had I resolve these issues earlier in life, I never would have created my X, Y, and Z, right?

00:55:12:18 – 00:55:21:18
Cory
I actually don’t know. Is that true? I see that’s the thing, I don’t know. It’s again, that’s a story that gets created because people start to feel this more fundamental.

00:55:21:18 – 00:55:22:22
Steve
That’s the story I created.

00:55:22:22 – 00:55:45:24
Cory
Yeah. And it’s a really, really tough one because artists throughout time have exemplified an example, that exact thing that did the, the nature of torture in order to create. And while there is an absence salute, you know, there’s a book called, touched with fire, by Kay Redfield Jamison.

00:55:45:24 – 00:55:53:17
Steve
We’ve talked about this book. Yeah. You actually come onto this book, amazing book is that the listener has not heard about it, but tell us about it.

00:55:53:19 – 00:56:22:20
Cory
So anyway, it’s it just documents the the sort of the parallel, journey of bipolar or what used to be called manic depression. And the artistic temperament. And there is undoubtedly a link, between the two where so many artists, are either documented bipolar or are believed to have been bipolar. and and but what she but what I, what I took away from it is like.

00:56:23:01 – 00:56:43:23
Cory
Yes. These two things oftentimes exist concurrently. But it doesn’t mean that in order to make great things, you have to be sick. You have to be tortured. You have to. That is a that’s a story that we tell in order to excuse or stay hurt. And we don’t need to stay hurt to make stuff we don’t.

00:56:44:02 – 00:57:05:14
Cory
In fact, I don’t believe that life wants us to stay hurt to make stuff. I believe life is crying out that that innate mattering, that innate specialness of existence, is crying out to create outside of that, or if more freely from that, doesn’t mean you’re not going to experience pain and hurt, and certainly doesn’t mean you can’t leverage it and lean into it.

00:57:05:14 – 00:57:08:14
Cory
Yeah, but you don’t have to become it.

00:57:08:16 – 00:57:41:06
Steve
I so hope that some tortured young artists hear what you’ve just said and connect with that and start to shift our trajectory. The catalog of you know, poets who have committed suicide as long there was a 1995 study, it was called The Price of Greatness, and it was done by psychiatrist Arnold Ludwig. And he looked at a thousand creative artists and found out that 20% of them died by suicide, compared with just 1% of the general population.

00:57:41:08 – 00:58:15:04
Steve
Yet the very fact that this research is actually done by a psychiatrist kind of shows us how our understanding of tortured poets is changing. And, you know, when we put that in the context of what you’re telling me and, and how my experience parallels yours, I can talk about my experience in a minute, but the, the, the madness, quote unquote, of a poet of the artists starts to look more like a psychological problem or a less like a spiritual ordeal.

00:58:15:06 – 00:58:16:24
Steve
Is that how you see it.

00:58:17:01 – 00:58:38:21
Cory
One of the problems of Western psychology or I don’t want to say Western Freudian psychology, is that we’ve made this an issue of the mind. And certainly there are chemical imbalances, there really, really are. And those things that’s, that’s a real thing. That doesn’t mean that it’s not a spiritual struggle. It doesn’t mean that because what I’ve found is the more spiritual I have become.

00:58:38:21 – 00:58:59:20
Cory
And that does not mean that I am religious in any way. But the more awe and wonder I have for the sort of the big mystery and the acceptance of that, and believing in something that is much greater than myself, even if it’s just a connectedness of things. that the more readily my psychological hurdles have started to soften.

00:58:59:22 – 00:59:01:22
Cory
So when we try to make it strictly in its.

00:59:01:22 – 00:59:08:03
Steve
Psychological hurdles, what is a psychological hurdle like bring that into reality? For me to bring that into a story.

00:59:08:05 – 00:59:37:12
Cory
like, okay, so I was assigned the label of bipolar two when I was 14 years old, and I’ve lived with that label, and I’ve lived in that label for a very long time. And in doing so, I’ve adopted the story, or I did adopt the story of a sense of brokenness. And by doing so, I identified all of my maladaptive behavior as some sort of fundamental flaw.

00:59:37:14 – 00:59:54:24
Cory
And so those are the things, you know. And not only that, but I hid behind it, and I think so often people do, especially nowadays, where we find out, we started to learn about our trauma, we start to learn about our maladaptive or neurodivergent behaviors. And then we go, we’ll see, I’m fucked up. So that excuse is what I’m doing right?

00:59:55:04 – 01:00:31:18
Cory
I don’t believe that. But I did it for a long time and it’s normal. Yeah. and so the hurdles would be, you know, real chemical imbalances to sort of being like, well, I’m being a shitty person and I’m going to blame it on this thing. and the more I’ve engaged with, a sense of, yeah, I sound like such a hippie, a sense of, of oneness, a sense of wonder, a sense of finitude and and and also the sort of seemingly infinite nature of things.

01:00:31:20 – 01:00:53:16
Cory
and the more gratitude I extend towards that, the more those hurdles, the, reliance on being depressed or now are trying to excuse behavior by hiding behind some sort of episode, whatever it happens to be, or even experiencing an episode has become so much more manageable.

01:00:53:18 – 01:00:54:01
Steve
Right?

01:00:54:01 – 01:00:57:02
Cory
Because I’m engaged in a spiritual journey.

01:00:57:06 – 01:01:00:04
Steve
And that gives you tools and it those tools help you.

01:01:00:04 – 01:01:00:15
Cory
And that.

01:01:00:15 – 01:01:01:11
Steve
Great.

01:01:01:13 – 01:01:31:11
Cory
Yeah. And also it’s important to be like, look, if you have a chemical imbalance, you know, or if you’re experiencing something, but also make space for that. That’s great. Like if we have tools for that too and that. But, the way I look at it now is the tools we use to mitigate the spiritual or the chemical imbalance, help us level like the level set so that we can do the hard work of going internal and starting to discover the spiritual struggle 100%.

01:01:31:13 – 01:02:04:01
Steve
We’re recording on April 24th, about a week after Taylor Swift released an album called Tortured Poets Society. And one of the things that I liked about that album was that a lot of the album is mocking people for acting out these exact, obsolete stereotypes, and so she is invoking sort of tortured poets in the lyrics of her song songs, not to celebrate the glamorous myth of the tortured artist, but to actually deflate it and dismiss it.

01:02:04:01 – 01:02:46:17
Steve
And she has a song, a song lyric, and it goes, you’re not Dylan Thomas, I’m not Patti Smith, this ain’t the Chelsea Hotel. We’re modern idiots. Of course, the Chelsea Hotel had to look it up to figure this out and do some research, but, that’s where Dylan Thomas died of alcoholism when he was 39 years old. He was, of course, Dylan Thomas was a famous poet, and he lived a life of debauchery and excess and, you know, and what I hear her saying here is, you know, kind of accusing her counterpart in the song, her ex, in this case, that if he acts troubled, it will make him seem deep.

01:02:46:19 – 01:03:08:22
Steve
And so, you know, he and she’s kind of calling him out and when I listen to that I was sort of like hey Taylor, I feel a little called out not for my current me because I wouldn’t have recognized it if I had been that person when doing that kind of behavior, when she, you know, when I if I had heard that 20 years ago, I wouldn’t have recognized myself in it.

01:03:09:01 – 01:03:14:19
Steve
But now I’m like, oh, you’re calling me out like from 15 years ago. I love that.

01:03:14:21 – 01:03:21:08
Cory
Yeah I love it, I love that you brought up Taylor Swift because I’m not a diehard swiftie but I get downloads in Taylor. So yeah.

01:03:21:08 – 01:03:21:21
Steve
I’m not.

01:03:21:21 – 01:03:30:22
Cory
Going to lie there was some loud warnings going climbing on, you know, through Infinite Darkness where I was jamming out T. Swift. So.

01:03:30:24 – 01:03:31:12
Steve
Yeah.

01:03:31:14 – 01:03:33:03
Cory
Thank you for bringing up these.

01:03:33:06 – 01:03:54:20
Steve
I’m not going lie. I like I like her music, too. And one of the reasons I wanted to bring her up is because she can’t play the tortured artist. Because what is Taylor Swift? Embody, if not success? Right. Especially at this moment in time when it seems like she is like literally the most successful person in the universe.

01:03:54:22 – 01:04:22:12
Steve
You know, so it would be completely false of her to claim that narrative right when she’s so clearly like living completely the opposite narrative. Not to blame her or fault her for that. But I think it is a culturally relevant observation that certainly aligns, with my experience. And it kind of goes back to, you know, my idea.

01:04:22:14 – 01:04:52:14
Steve
I think this concept that we were talking about of, you know, shedding useless beliefs, feeling shame, relief. And then there’s this exhaustion phase where you’re just like, like, okay, how am I going to do that again? And then you know, taking heart because exhaustion precedes renewal idea. You know, I think that there’s that kind of story, I think, you know, to go back to story and storytelling and how we are story making creatures.

01:04:52:16 – 01:05:19:21
Cory
Well, here’s the thing. I think there are two things. First of all, our experience. And we know this, the outward appearance of what somebody like Taylor Swift’s life looks like does not negate the fact that there might be deep internal struggle and torture, of course, but I think what she’s saying, well, you know, it’s funny that we’re having a debate of sort of swift on this podcast, but I love it.

01:05:19:23 – 01:05:33:10
Cory
I think you’re absolutely right. And what she’s saying is that, you know, being tortured, being young, artistic and tortured is not an identity. It’s it’s a it’s a bunch of stories. It’s a bunch of things.

01:05:33:10 – 01:05:36:23
Steve
Try telling that to the 25 year old. You.

01:05:37:00 – 01:05:56:03
Cory
Right, right. And I would reject it wholeheartedly. And I wish I could look at him right now and be a little bit, you know, aggressive like dude being young, tortured and like being young, tortured and artistic. It’s not an identity. It’s not a good look. I know it feels like it. I know it actually allows you to sort of get away with some shit in me.

01:05:56:04 – 01:06:21:15
Cory
You think it makes you feel deep or you think you make. It’s not deep like it’s not actually, it’s a trope. And, and this is me talking to myself, and I know you’re going to have to go through this. but I promise you, when you come out of it in 20 years, you’re going to see that it was a false narrative that in many ways allowed you to behave like an asshole.

01:06:21:17 – 01:06:48:00
Cory
And I’m not saying people who struggle with mental health issues and happen to be artists at the same time are all assholes. I’m simply saying that the story we tell about the mad genius about the tortured artist is a trope that is very, very old. And so often we engage with it simply because the harder work is not being tortured, but being not tortured.

01:06:48:03 – 01:07:01:05
Cory
It’s easy. It’s comfortable. Darkness is fucking comfortable. Darkness is a blanket pulled over your eyes where you don’t have to look at the world, and you just get to sit there and stew in your own. Yeah, intoxicating warmth, you know?

01:07:01:05 – 01:07:05:24
Steve
And as you said earlier, you know, it’s people who work so hard not to change.

01:07:06:01 – 01:07:07:13
Cory
and, yeah, getting out of bed is hard.

01:07:07:13 – 01:07:11:23
Steve
What is comfortable is comfortable and what is familiar is comfortable.

01:07:12:00 – 01:07:31:10
Cory
And the stories we tell become comfortable. They become who they become. And when I say stories, people, you know, they go, oh, sorry. You know, like, oh, you climbed a mount. No story is like this. You wake Steve. Steve woke up this morning and Steve told himself a story about the world and everything in it and all the relationships he has created.

01:07:31:10 – 01:07:55:03
Cory
This, like we all do this. These are the stories I’m talking about, you know, you and and and when you get to that base of honesty that we’ve talked about, you start to go, wait, I’ve been telling the story of being mad, you know, living madly to escape the madness. Well, that might just be bullshit. That might just be a misunderstanding and an excuse to go do shit.

01:07:55:05 – 01:08:13:07
Steve
Yeah. And I want to say, I think telling, telling stories and especially documenting them, creating our writing songs, journaling, writing is often a way to it’s a coping mechanism because it disassociate us from being in the moment of.

01:08:13:09 – 01:08:18:21
Cory
So happy you said this, God, but keep going, because, I.

01:08:18:21 – 01:08:38:20
Steve
Mean, that’s what I saw when, I watched cold. When I watch cold the first time I saw, like, when you filmed yourself. I know we’ve talked about this, and I don’t know if you agree with this observation or not, but I felt like, okay, the reason is because people were like, oh, he’s so vain. He’s filming himself.

01:08:38:20 – 01:08:52:09
Steve
And I was like, oh no, he’s filming himself because he needs to disassociate from this trauma that he’s experiencing. And the camera is giving him away to do that. Is that what happened?

01:08:52:10 – 01:09:34:00
Cory
It’s so interesting because again there’s two pieces that are, is there vanity in it. I don’t think vanities the right word. Was I aware of myself and what was happening. Yes. Did I think it was important. Yes. And the camera as you point out, and this is so often the case with war photographers where we use the camera to in order to disassociate from the horror and the, the, these, these emotions that are largely intolerable, we put something between us and the experience and it literally, physically puts a wall between us so we don’t have to feel.

01:09:34:02 – 01:09:47:06
Cory
And yet we’re still experiencing it. And, and then we get lauded, especially in photography with like people talk so much about presence. You have to be so present to make a photo. Bullshit. You’re in an act of creative flow.

01:09:47:12 – 01:09:47:21
Steve
Yeah.

01:09:47:21 – 01:10:02:23
Cory
And that is very different than presence. An active creative flow can be the most distracted thing in the world. All you’re doing is looking at elements. And yes, it narrows your focus, but it is not presence. In fact, you are completely not present with the moment in front of you.

01:10:03:00 – 01:10:08:22
Steve
Yeah, I would agree. You’re actually disassociated from the moment in front. Yeah. You know and I had.

01:10:08:22 – 01:10:11:11
Cory
That and it doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing.

01:10:11:13 – 01:10:31:01
Steve
Well I struggled with this like with my friends. And then eventually I just kind of gave in to it I’ll be honest like that, I struggled with my friends taking pictures during climbing while we were climbing because it started to be like, oh no, wait, wait, hold that. Like, can you go down a little bit? I was like, no no I can’t.

01:10:31:02 – 01:10:53:19
Steve
Yeah. Like that moment is over, I’m going up like I’m here to climb. I remember having this great moment with Marco Fraser when we were on sea attempting Nipsey in 2000, in the Fall Away and you know, he was filming and he was taking pictures, and I was there with Barry Blanchard and Marco. And we are we are attempting this, this new route.

01:10:53:19 – 01:11:17:01
Steve
And, you know, we only had so much daylight and so on. And after about two hours of this, I just I just left. I just, I just untied from the rope and just started climbing and eventually they caught up with me and oh, actually, eventually I got to a point where I didn’t feel comfortable without the rope and I stopped and waited for quite a long time.

01:11:17:01 – 01:11:40:16
Steve
And because they continued to film and Mark was like, well, what are you doing? You know, like, you know, he’s kind of yelling at me and all that. Why I took off all this stuff. And I’m, I was just. And I just looked at. I came to climb. Yeah, yeah. And we had this, like, moment where it clicked for him and he literally put the camera away and is inside his backpack, not any place accessible.

01:11:40:16 – 01:11:58:18
Steve
And I was like, okay, good. Beautiful. And that completely changed the experience of that climb for us because we you know I was like no I want to be like you said, I want to be here. I want to be now, I want to be doing this thing that I’m doing. I don’t want to be posing. I don’t want to be thinking about like, I don’t want to be waiting.

01:11:58:20 – 01:12:15:15
Steve
I want to climb. And I think that coming, coming to that, you know, and being able to distill all your presence and all your motivations, you know, I’ve only had that happen a handful of times.

01:12:15:17 – 01:12:24:07
Cory
It’s a special moment and it takes cultivation. And I love that that you actually communicated something. you know, it was.

01:12:24:09 – 01:12:25:18
Steve
Out of frustration.

01:12:25:20 – 01:12:27:08
Cory
Of course not. Happens.

01:12:27:08 – 01:12:28:03
Steve
Right.

01:12:28:05 – 01:12:49:20
Cory
But it’s funny because like, actually I, you know, in the, in the photo books that I have coming out. So I was writing this journal entry about it. I talk about I was looking, I was looking, looking, looking looking for for for 20 years looking, looking at things and, and what came out of me. And this often happens when I journal it’s the last few sentences that end up distilling an idea.

01:12:49:20 – 01:12:55:01
Cory
And I said I, I had to stop looking before I finally started to see.

01:12:55:06 – 01:12:56:05
Steve

01:12:56:06 – 01:13:16:14
Cory
And what that means is exactly the story that you’re telling. You have to put the camera down and that and then, and then you have to work at presence and be like, oh shit, this is a different thing. How much of the world did I miss because my face was behind the camera? I don’t I don’t regret it.

01:13:16:14 – 01:13:35:23
Cory
I absolutely love it. I’m so grateful for that journey. But I’m so curious because sometimes when I look at photographs, it’s only then that I go, like now, as I’ve been going through it, I’m like, oh shit, I was there for that, but I didn’t experience it at the time.

01:13:36:00 – 01:14:09:19
Steve
Yeah. I think that this has so many, you know, there’s so many themes in this conversation that have connected, you know, the expression of art, the expression of sport, and just the expression of being human in this day and age and time, but hopefully can teach us all something. So I want to, thank you so much for bringing, your thoughts, your vulnerable vulnerability, your heart, and your experience.

01:14:09:21 – 01:15:02:13
Steve
And part of what I want to accomplish with this series is showcasing you and what you’ve experienced, what you’ve learned, how you see the world now after all of these experiences, as whether that’s as a bipolar type two or an artist or a climber, as a photographer, as a filmmaker, in all the ways you’ve shown up in the world, that is so far for me and share that with with people, because there is so much goodness, I think, in the mountain journey, and there’s so much goodness in our mountain community, and there’s so much wisdom and I, I hope that you do own that in the present, that you have been to these places.

01:15:02:13 – 01:15:23:17
Steve
And you maybe you didn’t see them at the time, but they are still in you. You were strong enough to do those incredible climbs that you did. I mean, just for reference, Cory, you climbed to the summit of Everest on from the North Col without supplemental oxygen and eight hours, which is like a good time for like a person using supplemental oxygen.

01:15:23:23 – 01:15:46:15
Steve
So, I mean, that’s that’s really, really, really hard to do. And, you know, I hope you can on and be all of those, those things and integrate them and, and I want you to know that I love you a lot. And I’m really grateful for you showing up as you are, and so grateful for you being on this podcast and sharing your life with us.

01:15:46:17 – 01:16:09:07
Cory
Well, I, I appreciate it. And, I just want to throw some back your way. Like, you know, it is a bit of a, you know, I’ve, I’ve struggled with brotherhood my whole life. And, by virtue of that, I’ve, I’ve worked in some ways to collect brothers. and I’m so passionate about men because I think healthy men create a, you know, create space for healthy women.

01:16:09:07 – 01:16:35:01
Cory
And I think we work back and forth in that way. And so I just want to appreciate you for creating space to talk about these things and putting different things into the world. I’m so grateful that you’ve been through all that you’ve been through. But this is what’s led you to this place because this is special and creating a venue for honest conversations, whether they relate to the mountains, art, mental health, or whatever happens to be, is, is needed and important.

01:16:35:01 – 01:16:51:05
Cory
And I’m so genuinely grateful,, to to have you in my life. But to be able to, you know, share this space with you. but really just to have you in my life. So thank you.

01:16:51:07 – 01:17:13:04
Steve
Thank you, Cory, for that thoughtful and inspiring conversation. If you want to hear more from Cory, check out his brand new book, The Color of Everything. Voice of the mountains will be back on September 1st with Vince Anderson for an electric conversation about fear. I’m your host, Steve House, and this is voice of the mountains.