Laird Hamilton & Gabby Reece are two legends in their own right.

But together, they are truly an unstoppable force.

What struck me about this podcast was not only the lessons they learned from challenging themselves against nature and sport, but their uniquely powerful union. We get into Laird’s harrowing close calls as a big wave surfer, what it means to recognize Goodness in ourselves and others, the importance of initiatory practices within community, their lessons in parenthood and the art of apologizing, living a life without regret, and how to strengthen your intuition muscle.

I was particularly enthralled by recognizing the spiritual essence that comes from facing things in this world that are big and real.  Laird Hamilton is a world-renowned big wave surfer, considered the primary influence behind tow-in surfing and hydrofoil boarding, and the innovative entrepreneur behind Laird Superfood. Gabby Reece is a former professional beach volleyball athlete and a NYT bestselling author.

Learn more about these legends at lairdhamilton.com and gabriellereece.com.

Recorded on Sept 19th.

AUBREY: Laird and Gabby.
LAIRD: Hi.
AUBREY: Hi. Well, we've had a very stimulating conversation prior to this podcast, the pre-podcast podcast. But now I want to drop into this podcast with you guys, because we're facing a time of extreme stress and turmoil. And one of the training grounds for stress and turmoil is found in sport and activities. You guys are legends, icons in these different arenas of competition, which applies the pressure that allows you to learn something about yourself, to know yourself when things get hard or the wild nature of the waves. So, I really want to enter this by talking about the adaptability and resilience that you guys have developed through your own craft, and how that might apply to the bigger world that we're facing, what internal characteristics and strengths that you guys have developed that can help guide yourselves and your family, and those you love through what seems to be a very turbulent period that we're heading into. The waves are going to get choppy.
LAIRD: They seem very choppy already.
AUBREY: Yeah, they're already choppy and chaotic and surprising. It's an ocean out there that we really don't know, we don't have a lot of data on it. Because there's a lot of storms brewing that are different than the storms we've ever seen before.
GABBY: Yeah. You actually made me cry earlier. But I think for me, it's having a sensitivity that people have already so many things on their plate. Like, what Laird and I and you get to do is a real luxury. The fact that we can train or do sport, or follow a passion. Yes, you take risks, and yes, maybe you're hardwired for it. But it's also a real luxury, I think, to follow that, and to have that opportunity to put yourself in those environments. So, I’m always, almost more sensitive or concerned for the people that they never get that space to go through those. What does Billie Jean say? To feel pressure is a privilege.
AUBREY: But also, with that privilege comes a responsibility. And the responsibility is I've had this privilege, and so, now let me take the strength that I've gained from this privilege, and use it to serve and share and lead and help, guide. So yeah, we've all been in a position of privilege by the amount of pressure we've been able to take on. And then now, all right, what are we going to do with it? So, I definitely want to go deeper, deeper into the layers for each of you guys to talk about, because they're slightly different. Although you've certainly been in plenty of competitions, but, it's different than a volleyball competition.
GABBY: He's in surviving nature, because Laird's never really competed, I think he did one. It was like, oh, these guys are going to tell me what my art is, and so, I'm not going to do that.
LAIRD: I mean, I've raced before too. I mean, I've raced paddleboards. I’ve raced wind surfers. I mean, I've done competitions but...
GABBY: In this way, we're actually so different.
AUBREY: Yeah, and that's perfect because that allows each of you to bring the unique lessons that... And I know that you guys have brought them into your union and into your own, kind of understanding of everything. But now, if we go individually first and then bring it together into a shared harmony, and then bring it to universality, how people can actually take these lessons that you've learned, find the ways to access them in their own life. Because there's always ways to go out, if you're willing to, you can find pressure, you can find something that's really cold, and you can put yourself in it. You find something really hot, and you can put yourself in it. You can find something competitive at the YMCA, I'm sure you can. So, there's lots of different ways that you can access this, but you have to have the will to do it. But to have the will to do it, you have to understand that it's not just about the thing itself. It's about training characteristics that can help you navigate through these challenging times, and are helping us navigate through these times.
LAIRD: And choosing too. I mean, I think, better to choose it yourself, otherwise it'll be chosen for you. I think Jordan says that. He goes, choose your sacrifice. So, better to induce it so you at least get to choose what you're inducing. Better to go, hey, I'm going to go cold, I'm going to go hot, I'm going to go... I'm going to hike to this for three days into the night, or whatever you want to do. But choose it, otherwise it's going to be chosen for you. And it might be something that--
AUBREY: And you're not going to be ready because you've never trained.
LAIRD: That's right.
AUBREY: You've never trained.
LAIRD: That's right.
GABBY: Maybe we can start for you, because his teacher is so different. Mother Nature is such an interesting teacher and for Spirit like Laird, which has been a way not only a lot more defiant in a certain way than I am, but also more artistic. I was sort of more linear in the ways that, am I wise? And I think Laird had this passion from artistry, and also had a much more serious teacher.
AUBREY: Yeah, no doubt. Well, with permission of the Goddess--
LAIRD: Nature.
GABBY: Yeah, well nature is always …
AUBREY: We're going to go in deep here, Laird. We're going to go in deep. I want to start this by, let's say, if you really actually just tap into your mystic consciousness and your heart center consciousness, and you think about the ocean. Think about the ocean. What's your relationship with the ocean? How would you describe the ocean?
LAIRD: I mean, I think if you could just think about every different kind of relationship that you have, friend, you're the son of a man, you're the son of a daughter, you're a husband, I mean, just all those relationships, every different kind of relationship that you could have with people, it would be all of that together, like all of that in probably the most all-encompassing, something that you love, something you're scared of, something that can save you and something that can kill you. I mean, it just has all those characteristics about it. And it gives you... For me, I just feel like I was gravitated towards it as... I mean, why do we just sit and look at the ocean? What is it about it that draws us to it? Everybody. Why is beachfront property more valuable than any other kind of property? Because you're near it, right? You're near that… I say something crazy, but I talk about man's always trying to mimic nature. Man's always just trying to copy, like oh, nature fly, nature swim. All this stuff. We have immunity, and we can fight disease... Man's always just mimicking everything in nature, and I'm going, man has been building a cloud. We're building this cloud and we're putting all the information in the cloud. And I go, "Where's nature's cloud?"
AUBREY: God.
LAIRD: And then, well, the ocean. Exactly. But the ocean is the biggest form of God. It's God. If you look at our creation, where we are, and you say God is creation, well, the biggest most... I would think the deepest, the biggest volume, just everything would be the ocean, right? So that's where the cloud is. God's cloud is the ocean. All that's ever existed, all the information’s in that, in that environment. But...
AUBREY: It's an interface with something that's real, that's true, that's honest. It sets the parameters. Because if you don't have interaction with something that's real, true and honest, if you're in the digital nouveau sphere of some metaverse somewhere, it may not be honest. It may be manipulated, it may be something that's been enculturated, or something that's been kind of adjusted to try and feed you something. But the ocean is just the ocean. It's real, it's true, it's honest, it's God's ocean.
LAIRD: Even like a relationship with people. I mean, now all these digital domains are just variations of the best and the worst of people, that even people I think... I mean, I gravitated towards the ocean because of what you said, because it's honest, and truthful and reliable. It's the most reliable thing. You go there, and you can rely on it. You can rely on its behavior, what it's going to do, and it doesn't matter once you understand some of its characteristics, you can go anywhere there is an ocean and understand the characteristics. Just because it's not the ocean you know, because it's still the ocean. And so, in a way, a wave comes in a certain direction. If you're under, there's no air. I mean, there's just all these things about it that you can rely on. And I think in a world of unreliable people, even family people that raise you, the lack of reliability that you had, to have that as a place to go to like a sanctuary, like a place that you could go, and then have it be a teacher, so now you have this place that you can go to that's your teacher, but it's also super honest and reliable--
AUBREY: Come to the classroom of God, it's called the ocean.
LAIRD: Yeah, welcome.
AUBREY: Welcome to school.
LAIRD: And nature, ultimately. Nature--
AUBREY: The thing about the ocean, it just interfaces with you. It's wet, it's liquid, it's moving--
LAIRD: Yeah, it's what you are.
AUBREY: Yeah, it's really a part of us. So, there is something unique about you, though, because you took the scariest part of this wild, unknown nature. I think people are scared of nature because of the unknown, and because of the scary things that could happen, the big waves. Oh, shit, the big waves. And you said, no, no, no, I want to go there. I want to know that part of the wild, I want to know that part of God. And then I want to see if I can adapt and be able to navigate through the fear and find the ecstasy in the wave that's coming. This is a very good metaphor. If there's a huge wave coming, we're about to all be big wave surfers in this world, right? And so, either you're like, well, I'm going to be fucking the Laird Hamilton of this big wave that's coming, and I'm going to strap in, and I'm going to learn how to ride this motherfucker. You had that kind of instinct and drive, and that's unique. That's a part of your unique self-signature. It must have been just like a part of who you are. Or did it develop? What was that thing that caused you to say, "Oh, that scary thing? I'm going to go there."
LAIRD: Well, I think I was born with a draw, like a draw to it. Just a draw to scary things. Like, you see kids, and there's 10 kids. One kid just always wants to go and jump off something or do something that's a little, you're like, "Hey, you know what, Joey, you might die if you fall the wrong way." So, I'd say I probably had that piece. I had one of those. My step dad always says, big wave riders are born and not made. If you have some of the elements, and then you get exposed to the environment, I think that helps it. I think, drawn to that fear because you are scared that you want to know it, so you have a relationship, and then the fear of it becomes less. It just becomes--
AUBREY: Master your fears or let fear be your master.
LAIRD: That's it. So, go and know it, and then, it doesn't... I mean, fear of the unknown is the scariest, right? What we don't know we fear. Once we know it gets less scary. Like, hey, you're scared of sharks, we'll go hang out with some sharks, and go where sharks are. Pretty soon you're like, "Yeah, sharks are cool. I'm not really that scared of them." But when you don't know how a shark is, and what a shark is, I mean, our ability to paint pictures in our mind of what it could be is amazing. I mean, it's part of why we have what we have on the earth is because we can make this stuff up in our brains. But that's the same thing that can just imprison us. I think you can be imprisoned by that. I think that that's part of my wanting to get set free. I wanted to set my free from that prison of being scared because I was scared on land, so I'm like, "You know what, I'm just going to go to the scariest thing I know." I mean, I know I liked heights always too. I think heights were a big piece of my thing because of the decisiveness of it. You're falling or you're not. It's higher, it's not. Like, it's real clear, like you get there, you look over, you're like, "That's far down there." "Will I live if I land wrong?" All that mindset, and then they're willing... And then that ability to, that commitment of go or don't go, but there's no in between. There's no kind of going. You don't kind of catch a wave. You don't kind of jump off a cliff. You either jump, or you don't. You either catch a wave or you don't. And so, we--
AUBREY: And it's very dangerous, if you actually try
LAIRD: That will be the worst.
AUBREY: To do with a little bit--
LAIRD: Hesitation? It's over. Because then you're going to kind of fall down the rocks on the cliff, or you're going to kind of get smashed by the giant wave. So in a way, I think that that's a piece, I think that decisiveness to real clear, that gives us... For me, I feel like it gave me a sense of I wouldn't say stability, but a sense, like something to hold on to in a universe that's spinning.
AUBREY: It's almost like, I want to say like the safety of courage. The safety of courage. Because the only way you're safe is if you have a lot of courage. Courage means moving forward in the face of your fear, and not retracting. Fear is a contractive force. So, the safety of courage of, yeah, if I'm courageous, we're going to be safe. And that's true in so many situations. Again, bringing this back to the universal, there's only going to be safety if we have courage. If we have courage to speak our truth, if we have courage to stand for what we believe, if we have courage to face the storms and the waves that are coming and say, "No, I'm getting on my board, and I'm going to surf this thing, and I'm not afraid of it, and I'm going to keep going, "that may be the only way that we're going to be able to make it through.
GABBY: But also, I'll add to that at least, I feel like we have to do that... It's funny, because everyone is interested in strength. People, they've always loved force and strength. And I think what I see though, is I think we have to do that, but not because that fear makes us reactive or angry and scared and acting out in those ways. It's like to face it but in that kind of very concise and quiet and loving place. Because we're, sometimes I think, taught to face everything but with... And I have to be careful of this. Laird is really good at being confrontational and loving simultaneously. I've had to learn how to be confrontational, not from fear and use anger. So, it's reminding people too that when we're facing this collectively, is, how do we do that in a place that we're not so scared that we're not loving?
AUBREY: Well, a non-contracted place. And that's also part of the courage.
LAIRD: And stillness too, right? How do we do it in stillness? And there's a form of submission in courage, right? Like, the ability to just be okay to be okay. I don't need to... That the biggest move may be just the ability to not react in a way that you'll have to react for the reaction. That's the thing. I have a saying--
AUBREY: It's choosing the waves that you're going to ride. Are you going to ride this emotional wave or no? Are you going to ride or no?
LAIRD: I use a parable about the guy standing on a paddleboard, and he's standing there, and he's balancing. Then a boat drives by and there's a big wake. He sees the wake coming and he starts to freak out because he thinks the wake's going to hit him, and he starts getting all unstable. Then the wake hits him and knocks him off. Had he just stood there, and then waited till the wave hit him, and then absorbed the wake, he wouldn't have fallen. But he's reacting to what hasn't happened yet. And so, I think there's some pieces in there about being still. I can say, personally, I know that one of the reasons why I'm still here with us and on the planet, is because I've submitted at times and through submission, I was able to survive.
AUBREY: Tell me one of those stories.
LAIRD: Just being held down by a giant wave.
AUBREY: Tell me a specific story about that. And then, if there was a moment where--
LAIRD: Well, I was riding a board that I was attached to, so I had this board that had a big metal fin on it, like a thing, a foil on the thing, a big fin, and I was attached to the board with boots. Snowboard boots. And so, I was mounted to the board. So it was a little bit like having an anchor on your foot. I was surfing in a remote place with a friend of mine. It was just him and I. And we were a mile or a couple of miles offshore, like a mile and a half offshore. And, I caught a giant wave and got caught behind. I wasn't going fast enough, and I got caught by it, and I got pushed down into the dark. I was at the bottom of the... In darkness, mounted to an anchor, like a sea anchor, and I was there. For a second, I went to try to fight to the top. I just, I kind of recalibrated and got still, and was like, okay, well, I'm not going to get to the surface with this anchor on before I need to breathe. The only way I'm going to make it is if I just take my time to get myself in a position where I can get myself out of these, unattached from the boots. Point out the boots, I won't be able to swim because I'm wearing boots. So I'm going to have to just use my arms. I just went real methodically through the procedure of getting myself and I made it back to the surface in enough time that I didn't need to breathe water. My friend was there and he was kind of freaking out because I hadn't come up for a while. But it was just that stillness, that calibration of, okay, really thinking about where I am, and what I need to do and not just reacting. Not just, "Hey, if I just get to the top..." That lack of panic comes from being in those situations over years and years, and having time when you've been held under, and been at the mercy of... I describe it like wrestling somebody who's just a lot stronger and has you. You don't try to get out of the hold when you feel the pressure. But as soon as you feel unweighting or unlifting, you make a move. So again, it's that being able to be okay in that moment, being okay to be still when all this stuff's happening around you and not react in some urgency. That's hard to do. That's something that actually takes some time to
AUBREY: You gotta train it.
LAIRD: Train it.
AUBREY: Gabby, it strikes me that being married to Laird and he's the father of your children, this has got to give you a bit of confidence that if the world comes and throws some shit at your family, Laird's not going to crack. If the pressure comes, you know this man. You know who he is at the core of cores, because he knows who he is at the core of cores. That's the thing. You may know somebody but if they don't know themselves, you don't know them, because you can only know what they know. You can maybe see what they can't see, but you don't really know what... So, you probably have a really high degree of confidence in your man.
GABBY: Well, I met Laird at 25. It was complicated and nothing about it on paper was easy. Laird had a four-month old daughter and was in a complicated relationship. I'm what we would call in the world, a kind of a sensible person. I was working and I wasn't really looking. But when I met Laird, I thought, oh, this is different. I remember, maybe I was married to Laird for a few years, maybe three or four years. And I was at an event which I never go to. Do you remember Carson Daly?
AUBREY: Yeah.
GABBY: Okay, so he walked up to me, he's like, "Oh, so cool. You're married to Laird Hamilton." And I said, "Yeah, because if everything goes wrong, I know that I'll eat." I just said it like that. I mean, I grew up on an island. And in a way, my needs are pretty simple. I'm not distracted by shiny things. I'm a pretty... Like, shelter, food, love, community, purpose. I'm not distracted by stuff. I think intuitively I knew that about Laird. And then obviously, over the years, not only in the ocean, but even personally, being in compressed situations with Laird. Because actually, Laird's day to day is harder than Laird when the shit hits the fan.
AUBREY: I feel you, bro.
GABBY: Because it's like a wild animal. No, I get it.
AUBREY: Because the pressure brings out, evokes, it calls forth the best of us.
GABBY: Well, none of this makes sense. Blah, blah, blah, we are on a flight, we have dinner at six. None of that makes sense to Laird. But like, we have something to deal with? That makes sense for Laird. And so, it's funny, because there are many days where I'm like, "This guy is a lot," because he's always intense, which I love. And that's the other thing, people have to remember, life is people that will let you be a little of this and that. Life is never a little of this and that. Life is this or this. So, where do you want to be? You want the guy on the couch? He's like, "Yeah, huh, what? Did you say something?" Or do you want the guy who's like this, and super intense, and sort of restless and I need something, but there's nothing that anybody can give me. Because I have to wait for the ocean. It's not like we can help him. But behind all that in my mind, I go, yeah, all this means nothing. But when it comes down to it, that person always does the right thing, and is the right person, which is either to help you or to protect me or to be there for a person, or make the good decision. And I'm like, at the end of the day--
AUBREY: You trust him.
GABBY: Yeah. What do I care? Okay, you're restless. Laird said to me one time and it really was true. I walked in, and he was in the shower, and I looked at him and he could tell from my eyes. And he goes, "Do you think it's tough to live with?" He's like, "Try being like this." I thought, you know what? I love him. And his daughters, they get it, they know him, and they see it. My 19-year-old who's in Israel right now was like, she goes to me, "Do you know that I've never heard Dad say anything negative about you?" And so, as they get older, they're starting to really cherish these qualities about their dad, that maybe was like, whoa, what's his deal? He's just so intense, like, what are you eating? Oh, you're eating? And they're like, "Oh, my gosh," but yes, it's the trust. And it's sort of at the end of the day, when we focus on things, it's like, what really matters?
AUBREY: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's enter your portal of competition. Because one of the things that I really like to think about is, there's sacred, what I'd call sacred competition. It's honest competition, it's real. When you're out there, and you're playing volleyball, it's real. They're fucking trying to beat you. They're trying their hardest. It's real, it's authentic, it's honest. They are giving you their honest best, that's the beauty of competition. Like a wave, it's honest. It's honest. The players are trying their best to win within the construct of the game, but they're trying their best to win. Sometimes they might try to cheat, but he's not talking about that. But like
LAIRD: But they still trying to win even
AUBREY: But still, they're trying... Exactly. You even understand that you're trying to win, I get it. You're just cheating. But fundamentally, there's an honesty to it. And so, that's something beautiful, it's real. It's divine, I would say, and that's why I call it sacred. And then there's the comparison competition, which is, oh, that person looks like this. Well, I want to compare, compete. And that's what I think is the shadow of competition. I think someone for you, as a woman, being able to go so deep into the realness of competition, what I'm interested in is yes, I want to talk about that force, meeting that force and then honestly. But also, how it's related to the shadow aspects of competition. Because for you, competition, you understand it. You get it. So, I would imagine and anticipate that the shadow competition doesn't have as much a hold on you.
LAIRD: Vicious competitor. Let me just sidebar vicious.
AUBREY: I'm sure.
GABBY: But I'm not competitive in all things. If we're going to go to the door, I won't be like, "I'm first." I don't care. I'm not one of those people.
LAIRD: No, just Backgammon and every other game--
AUBREY: It's a defined game. I understand.
LAIRD: Just not through the door, but every other single game that was ever made.
GABBY: I never, I never--
LAIRD: I can't wait to hear you on this one.
GABBY: Say, "Oh, I was right" or any of that. I think there's a couple of elements to that, which is the appropriate place. Because I'm more interested in my life than like, "I won." I don't want to be around those people. But competition did a couple of things for me. It was just really the platform. So, volleyball gave me a family. I didn't grow up with that much stability. Also, because I was 6'3 at 15, it sort of gave me a really obvious tribe. People would say to me, "Oh, do you play basketball and volleyball?" "Yeah." "Oh, that's why you're so tall." "Yep. That's why I'm so tall." And it gave me this tribe. But what I also learned in that particular environment, there were two things that I really liked. And for me, personally, as a person who played professionally, I only felt that a few times. You have these little perfect apex moments. There's so much precision. And again, when I'm talking about the real precision, it doesn't happen that often. That was really fun to experience. "Oh, wow, I practiced that so many times." There was one
AUBREY: Yeah.
GABBY: But the other thing was, I always really respected myself more as a person after practice, after working hard, after training hard. Those environments made me feel good about me. I felt like, because it's honest. I'm like, "You can't phone this in." I simultaneously when I went into college, I started, I would move also part time to New York, and I was in fashion. So that juxtaposition was like, this is a little bit like smoke and mirrors, phone it in. You look the part. And this was like, "No, you've got to earn this." I really liked who I was in that environment. You get to know yourself, like you said at the top of this conversation. I got to know myself. Was I going to freak out? Would I be someone you'd want to go to war with? But that's how I want to be. I want to be somebody that somebody can be like, I can rely on that person, that they will not lose their wits about them when they just get their neck squeezed. So, competition did that for me, and it taught me a lot about getting up after losing, and being even humiliated and embarrassed, and being like, you can survive that. Because in our mind, oh, that's one of the worst things that can happen. I'm humiliated in front of a bunch of people. And you survive another day. So, it gives you room because then that makes you braver. Because you're like, oh, well, I've failed so many times.
AUBREY: You face your fear publicly on TV, this is it.
GABBY: I've failed so many times. Let's go. Business, relationships. I mean, relationship was even harder. Laird is the one who really taught me about courage, about loving, because I was definitely guarded there. I remember we almost got divorced a few years into our marriage, and I remember thinking it was unfair that Laird always had his neck on the chopping block when it came to vulnerability and love. He would look at me like, are you ready yet? Are you going to come down here? Because it's all a risk in that way. So, that took me a few more years. I didn't learn that in sport, the emotional one. So it definitely helped them for those other things. And then the other part of comparison that you mentioned, it was very liberating, because whether it was fashion and working with literally girls that were so beautiful, when you would sit at lunch, you'd think, they say you can't have it all, but I think this girl has it all. It almost looks like someone I can't look at too much because I might stare at her, she's so physically beautiful. And then conversely, in sports, girls who could jump out of the gym, were super strong, lean, ripped, athletic. So, you just had badassery all around you, all the time. So you learn to celebrate it, and be like, "You know what? Good for you. You're a badass." And so, that really is helpful--
AUBREY: And that takes you knowing yourself and knowing yourself, like, oh, no, I know myself. My unique self is also badass. And so badass recognizes this badass in front of me. There's so many different aspects that you just mentioned in that little rant. But one I want to go back to is, is the work that you have to do to perform, to get that apex moment for both of you. There's just reps and work and practice and training. That's also something that for some people we've gotten used to it, but without sports or without some activity you really care about, you don't get to practice that it takes work. It takes work to build a company like Onnit. Or like the superfood company that's thriving now for you. It's work. You got to work. You got to work for everything, and sports teach you how to work.
GABBY: Yeah, and it's interesting that you I bring this up because one of the conversations that we have a lot about our three daughters is, where are they going to get that? The oldest one did it through education, the middle is gravitating more towards sport. The younger one is just by nature, I feel like she's a grinder. She just has this grindy mentality.
LAIRD: You mean your clone?
GABBY: Little bit.
LAIRD: That one? You mean that one? You wonder where she got that?
GABBY: So, I go, okay, because I just want them to be able to, to your point, we'll have athletes for example, that come see us and they were, let's say, really good in college and almost good enough to be pro but got an injury. We just always remind them, this loaded gun, you just have to pick your next target. You figured that part out. So, make it genuine. Wake up so that you're solving problems you want to be solving. Onnit was something like, you're okay, I got to do this, but you were okay to solve those problems.
AUBREY: It's the problem I wanted to solve more than anything. At that time.
GABBY: Yes, so that part, I loved volleyball. Clearly, my relationship with volleyball is so completely different, and had a space where Laird's is a forever lifestyle relationship with the ocean. I see that with mountain athletes, but now it's different when you're in the–
AUBREY: Well, Laird is relating to a being, the ocean is God, this is part of his spirituality, it's his church. So, it is different in that way. But I think there's a temple that you still hold inside your psyche, and it's the temple of competition. Laird speaks to that in the competitive nature. That fire to compete. Oh, here's a game, here's a defined game. And within this game, there's not only do I want to win, but I want to talk a little shit too. Because that's a part of the game. That's a part of the fun of it, at least it is for me. That's like a big part of this. We're playing this game, so this allows me to be a little bit bad. I'm going to be bad.
GABBY: I do say that that's one thing about sport, especially for women, is to allow yourself to be like a belligerent teenage boy. You know what I mean? When I played ball, you had that. I always was more quiet, though. I wasn't a person who would talk smack. I mean, you'd have to push me really far.
AUBREY: You're just the quiet killer.
LAIRD: You were also getting some other pressure from outside. So, that was making you... You were already getting attention because you were doing this other work, and you had a lot of stuff going on--
GABBY: You don't want to be isolated.
LAIRD: So, she was already a target. It was like, don't give them another excuse. They're already...
GABBY: But I do say this about sport, or even training hard, when we do pool training. In that moment, it's like, you're just a being. I'm not a woman, I'm not this age, you're just like the spirit that's expressing themselves this way. And so, that--
AUBREY: Level playing field. You don't get to bring any of your other stuff, of yourself. You're an animal. You're an animal who can do a certain thing. And you either can't or you can't. You go up, and you go... You gotta block and you got to hit her, there's someone who's going to hit over it, or around it or through it or whatever. Or, there's a blocker who's like, nope, not today. And that's the truth.
GABBY: Yeah. And I think that that was the other thing, too, is getting to express that side. Because as we live longer in life, then we become sort of more things, if you will. Like now I'm someone's mom and someone's wife. And in a way, it's like, no, I'm just a spirit living. So, that always gave me a good reminder about how to go back to that. I know how to do it in my training still, now, but sport really helped me with that.
LAIRD: That was the foundation too when you look at it. If I think about all the work and the discipline and the getting up from failure and all that stuff, you just realize that really all of that was just to set the foundation for the real game, which is, how long can you live with high quality life? How well can you survive a relationship and parenting? For me, I go, the real thing is, I call it the victory through attrition, right? It's the guy that's standing on the top of the hill and no one's left, you just win. You just win because you're the last guy left. But if you look at it, you go, hey, what's the real contest? The real contest is, the whole thing. The whole life.
AUBREY: The big game.
LAIRD: The whole life. What life did you live? What was the quality of the thing? And at the end, when you're standing and you're like the last guy up there and you look around, you go, "Well, no one's here." You don't even have to be any good, right? You're just the only one left. So, when I think about her and her discipline, for her training, for her work, for her family, that's the real competition. Sport gave her the foundation, to be able to have the work ethic, to be not discouraged when you get down. All those values that you need. But the big game is this other one, which is called life. It's a tough one, and we're in it.
AUBREY: Yeah, and so same thing to you. I imagine the fact that she's gone through the crucible of competition to that degree, you trust Gabby. You really trust her. You trust her that if things come up, she's going to be able to handle it. She's going to be able to grind if she needs to grind, she's going to be able to adapt if she needs to adapt. If she's attacked, she can respond, not react. There's all of these things that you can trust about your wife. And so, what I see here is just like a deep bond of trust that's between you guys. And I think as we enter these more challenging times, and I think relationships are really getting tested, and challenged right now in a significant way, it's about, can I trust you? Can I trust you if things get way harder? I think that's important. So, you start looking at those relationships. It's not just your wife or your husband, but it's also that inner circle around you. And then that circle ripples out, and it's like, alright, how far does my field of trust go? Who can I really count on if things get gnarly? Because it can happen in a moment. You don't know when it might happen. You don't know what attack may come--
LAIRD: Takes a second.
AUBREY: It could just be, like, here it is. And then who's going to rally, who's going to be there for you? And who's going to abandon ship?
GABBY: I think what you're saying is interesting, too, because we always loved the word civil discord. I think it's a really, just a perfect phrase within that, civil discord. And to your point, where we're coming through three years of... A lot of people stopped being friends, just because they had a difference of opinion. And so, trust doesn't mean you agree with me, and we do everything the same way. It just means I can hear you out, I can hear something that's different than I believe. And still, we can talk about it.
LAIRD: And I can rely on you too, because you can... I mean, I've said it before. In the ocean, it happens a lot. I go, I don't need you to like me, I'll still save you. No, I'm saying I don't even care if you like me. Don't like me, but I'll still come and put my ass on the line and save you because that's the person I want to be. I want to be the person that will do that. Whether I like you or not. I don't need to like you.
AUBREY: What you're speaking to is goodness. In our postmodern world, they're trying to erase goodness, but goodness is real. Goodness is the good, the true, the beautiful God. Good God, good God, good God. This is it. And now of course, you can talk about the God that's everything, that includes the bad, and you can get really confused with that. But we actually deep down know goodness. We know what goodness is, it lives in our heart.
LAIRD: It does.
AUBREY: When we trust the goodness in the people around us, then if the mind is thinking different things, then you go in, and then you kind of can look at those ideas. And if you trust that they're not so fragile, that if you penetrate some of their ideas that they'll go, "Oh, shit, that idea was not good." You're right. You want somebody who's willing to do that. Who doesn't have that ego, and that facade, like I can't be penetrated because I'm the intellectual, and I'm the one who knows anything. And if you challenge my ideas, I say the pyramids were 3,000 years old, and Graham Hancock's like, "No, they're 12,000 years old," and leave the room and storm off. You can't trust that fucking guy who storms off. He's got to be like, "Interesting. All right, well, let's talk about this."
GABBY: I wonder why we're so afraid.
AUBREY: Our identity. Our identity is wrapped up in our beliefs. So, you're a doctor, an immunologist, or this thing and then you put this thing out. And your record, and your identity, and then you're afraid that if this gets wrong, then people won't think you're smart at all. And your value proposition for your whole self is wrapped up in what you believe and what you've said. So, it gets really confusing when you're fused, when the self is fused to the thinnest part of your identity. It's a fucking problem. The self has to be different. The self has to be in the heart. And then your identity is like, well, it's evolving. It's always evolving. It's adaptive to the reality and the truth that comes about. We were talking about Bobby Kennedy before we got on the podcast. I gave him the most solemn oath I could ever give. I said, "If you choose to run for president, I give you my word and I give you my sword, I'll do everything I can. Everything."
GABBY: Why did you do that?
AUBREY: I did that not because I knew any of his stances on any policies. I understood a little bit of what he was saying about war and about glyphosate and about... And I agreed with the kind of surface level, but I didn't really know him that well, but I was already all in because I felt his goodness. I trusted that no matter what, he was going to listen and not be offended. He was not going to be stubborn. He was going to take the information, the best information he could, and act honestly. Maybe he wouldn't act right when all the tallies were in, but he would act with honest intention. I knew that about him. He's a good man. He's a good man, and goodness is real. Goodness is real. And I think that's what I look for when I'm trying to align myself, is like the goodness, and the ability. Now, the ability to actually be in your goodness, requires the type of training that you guys have been through. Because I think most people do intend to be good, but until they've trained themselves and actually know themselves in a deeper way, sometimes they're incapable of being good when the pressure hits. This panic will arise. I mean, I'll tell a story about my father, who I buried this year. In this one moment, he was not a great, comfortable scuba diver. I'm reticent to share this story, because I love my father. And he'd gave me so many gifts, and he's such a beautiful man. All of that was true. But like I saw a moment of badness come out of my father, and a moment of badness come out in a tough situation. So, we were in Hawaii, we're doing this scuba certification. I was 13, getting patty certified. We were doing an exercise where you do the buddy breathing, right? So, regulators go off on one person, and then you breathe, buddy breathe back and forth. So you pass the regulator--
LAIRD: We have one regulator, taking turns.
AUBREY: Two people down, yeah. So we were doing it, and then he got, like you said, a moment of panic. I don't get enough air. And so right before I was able to take a breath, he grabbed the regulator back. I was just calm, and I just grabbed... I swam underneath and grabbed my own regulator, and started breathing it and then, the instructor ultimately talked to us about it. But that was a moment where fear hit him. And he loved me so much, but he hadn't trained himself and put himself in situations where if some challenge comes and he's threatened, that he knows how to respond. So, that was in a way a part of his training. I was 13 so I didn't like to coach him through how this could impact his life in a positive way or something. But it was just simply that my father was a good man but the pressure created a bad action, and I say bad, and just that it wasn't in the way that it could have been because fear had seized him.
GABBY: Few years, we trained a lot of people in the pool. They'll use the water to do all the military training, and a lot of guys get what's called aqua trauma, because they want to see, right?
LAIRD: They actually just use the pool to break people. They use water specifically to break people. Because it's one of the, probably there's, I always say five primal fears right? Falling, burning, eaten by a big animal, drowning. I mean, we have some deep, primal fears. And so, water is very useful to bring out that.
GABBY: But we say without having to really mess with people, you can see in about 10 minutes, you'll know pretty quickly. You'll go, "Oh..." And there'll be some people who really surprise you. They will not really have listened to what your directions were, they're down there, they got the dumbbell, they haven't made the right choice. But you look in the eye and you're like, "Oh, they're still okay, though." And it could be some lady who doesn't look especially fit, maybe she has a very strong mind, maybe there's just people also different.
LAIRD: It doesn't always make sense who does well. I mean, sometimes it makes sense, you're like, oh, yeah, you would expect they would, and they do. But then sometimes you would expect they will, and they don't, and you're like, oh, okay. And sometimes it just surprises you. But yeah, it's...
AUBREY: That's why I think with your community and with the people you love and trust, that you've got to go through initiatory practices. You've got to do the things that will allow you to know them.
LAIRD: You do, you won't know otherwise.
AUBREY: Competing with them is one way, going through challenging external environmental situations. Like when I hiked Mount Snishka with Wim Hof, and a bunch of brothers without our shirts on in the sleeting Polish winter in January. It was fucking cold. We had ice spikes on our shoes. It was gnarly. And so, I'm climbing, scrambling up this fucking hill, the wind's blowing 70 miles an hour. We got a chain to keep us from falling off the other side. And one of my ice spikes slips off my shoe and goes down like 40 feet, just like toboggans down the fucking Hill. And I'm like, "No fucking way." I have one spike on and the other one on. So I'm trying to hobble down and sliding, it's a mess. And then one of the brothers who's there who is not like the strongest of us, but he grabbed my spike. He's cold as hell too. And we're all trying to get to the top, because that's the end of this suffering. He just sits down with me, takes off his gloves, helps me put on my ice spikes and gives me a hug. It was Humble the Poet. I'll never forget that moment. I learned something about that man. At that point, when I needed something, he was there. He was there. He took off his gloves. And he didn't just, "Here's your spike," and keep on going. No, he sat with me. And he was like, "Alright, I got you."
GABBY: To completion.
AUBREY: To completion. He rode it out to the end. And so, that was an initiation that allowed us to trust each other. Jumping off the icy waterfall into the water and seeing how long we could stay underneath the water as we broke through the ice. All of these crazy things that we did, you learn something about yourself, and you learn something about the brothers who were there. And sisters, we didn't have sisters at that time at the place, but it was beautiful. And that's what we do in the sweat lodges that we do, in the plant medicine ceremonies. You learn about yourself, and you also learn about the people around you. That's what develops this type of trust. And without those initiatory practices, and intentionally going into them, I don't think we can trust people.
LAIRD: Well, you don't know that's--
AUBREY: You don't know.
LAIRD: You don't know until you get into the fire. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing about most relationships that you have with people, is you really don't know who you can trust. So, you can have an idea that you think you know who you trust, and you're like, "Yeah, I can trust this guy," and then all of a sudden you get in the spot and you're like, "Okay, I guess I can't trust this guy." And then this other guy shows up that you don't really even know, and you're like, "You are my new best friend." And you know what? I don't care that I don't relate to you in any other way. And it's like what Gabby said earlier about having to deal with my monotony in a monotonous time.
GABBY: I'm not saying I have to deal with it. It's something I observed.
LAIRD: You know what I'm saying. But because you know that the thing, when it really, really counts, which you know what, let's hope maybe we never have to go there. Let's hope that we never get in a situation where you have to rely on the person that you need, but just knowing that they have that gives you a certain ease that is the foundation of real. And that's why you have it when you have a partner, because somewhere along the way, when you spend 28 years with somebody, you're going to get a little... You're going to get a squeeze. But when you have friends, I mean, I have friends that I would say I lost, but I lost friends that just weren't my friends anymore when I knew I couldn't rely on them. Like, "Hey, come get me," and they're like, "Oh, yeah, I was going to go but I just didn't think..." They had 1000 reasons why. And then the guys that you barely know come flying in there and puts their butt on the line for you, and you're like, you know what, you're my buddy.
AUBREY: Yeah, for sure. What you're talking about is like the jet ski, little--
LAIRD: Rescuing people. Just rescuing, being picked up in front of a giant wave, getting, crashing on a wave. When you're riding certain types of surf... We're using jet skis to get us on the wave, but also to rescue us. And so, guys willing to put themselves on the line that'll come and put their butt on the line for you. And sometimes your friend, that is your friend, that is your best friend, and all of a sudden, you look around, and he's nowhere to be found. And then he's over on the side somewhere, and you're like, Well, I just didn't want to lose the jet ski. And you're like, lose the jet ski? I mean, we're fortunate that we get the opportunity to have that situation to learn, because then you find out, what is the real person? What's the real essence? Are they just going to be like, hey, no, I'll take that air, which at the end is going to be hard for you to get over with, over that, when you're there and you're like, hey, I needed the air and you just took the air because that... It's not really a choice, it's not like you want that decision. It's just once you see it, it just changes the way you're capable of looking at your friends. It just changes it.
AUBREY: Yeah, I understand.
LAIRD: You can't undo it.
AUBREY: It's true. And you have to hold the possibility of transformation,
LAIRD: You do, always.
AUBREY: Especially someone you love and care for. And also, forgiveness and redemption. That's something that I think also culturally we have a really hard time with is forgiveness and redemption. We were talking about this. People who were finding out that they... Well, I might have been wrong about that. Oh, I might have been wrong about that. I think there's a lot of people were finding out, I might have been wrong about some things--
LAIRD: Might have been wrong. People don't like to be wrong, because it forces change. That's the thing. Because you say I'm wrong, then you might have to do something a little different, or you have to change how you look at it. We don't like to be wrong. That's not one of the things that we're like... Because it forces responsibility. "Hey, you're wrong," so then I'm responsible, so now I have to change.
GABBY: How about all of our friends who maybe in the last few years have made different choices, and then maybe more information came out, and they were like, wow, maybe we've been duped or--
LAIRD: We've had some amazing--
GABBY: And I see some of my friends and I'm like, man, you're seriously badass.
AUBREY: Totally. You're not holding them in shame. You're not freezing them in their moment of ignorance, you're not freezing them in their moment of weakness. There's all--
LAIRD: You're cheering them on. You're like, yeah, there's hope, because you're hoping maybe you can do it. Maybe you don't even know, do I have the capability of actually doing it? Because that's cool, because that's what it looks like. And I think that's important for all of us, is to see these things so it gives us... I mean, we're the monkey see, monkey do, right? That's what we do. If you're going to be the monkey that doesn't see and does, then congratulations. But normally when we have examples of, oh, that's what it looks like to just... And it seems pretty uneventful. Like, hey, you know what? I guess I was wrong about that. That's kind of... I mean, bummer. These are big commitments. It's not like you can undo certain things you've done. Even though things change and you admit you're wrong, you don't not do it, you still did it. But, at least I mean, it's nice to see that because it gives, I don't know, I guess it gives you something to look at as an example. That's what it looks like to be wrong, to admit it, and to make a change.
AUBREY: And that's what it looks like for their community to not freeze them in their moment of weakness, and not freeze them in their moment of where they fall, and to say, no, I'm holding the possibility for the best version of you to emerge. And I'm going to keep looking at that version until that version looks back at me. That's a beautiful gift that you can give to your friends and lovers.
LAIRD: It's true. It's true.
GABBY: I always like the messiness of being human. I just feel that the more we can say, hey, I am going to do the best I can, and I'm going to show up in the ways that feel really important. And I'm super flawed and messy. It's so much easier--
LAIRD: The admittance of that is so beautiful.
GABBY: It's so much easier to just work from that place. And I know just for having kids, like you just told a story about your dad. My kids, and I have girls, they're even a little more heavy, I think, because the level that they pay attention. I feel the grace that I get from them, because I'm willing to--
AUBREY: Grace is the right word.
GABBY: Well, that's what they're giving me.
AUBREY: It's the right word.
GABBY: I always say listen, whether your kid's three or 17 or whatever, you're going to have to apologize. "Oh, I thought this," "I said we're going to do that. Oh, I ran out of time, I blew it." It goes far. It goes really far. My youngest daughter said to me, she goes, you have a harder time apologizing than even I do. And I'm like, "You're right."
AUBREY: "You're right. I'm sorry."
GABBY: I know it's futile, but it's liberating. It's so liberating to be like, or I thought this, I think this. And also when--
LAIRD: Isn't it the irony, though, in a way? The ironic thing, how liberating it is when you're able to admit it, but then people won't do it. So, you're like, oh my gosh, you're chained that you won't just say, I was wrong, or I'm sorry. I was--
AUBREY: Exactly, it shows a kind of fragility. Like if you're adaptable and elastic, then you're not fragile. Like the bamboo tree is one of the strongest trees because it just bends over when the hurricane comes. And when the hurricane's over, snaps right back. Oak tree, well, strong enough wind, that thing will crack, it'll fall. And maybe if it's strong enough, no wind can come. "I am the tree that no wind could come and knock me down." I have respect, mad respect to that type of tree, but also, the adaptable--
LAIRD: Till one termite eats one little hole and then...
AUBREY: Laird was always better. Again, I've learned a lot not only being in this relationship, but being, with having a family. Because it's like learn or die, right? And he's always, always good, easy at apologizing.
LAIRD: Well, that's just because I make so many mistakes.
AUBREY: You better be good at apologizing. A lot of practice.
LAIRD: I do, professional. I'm just good at it.
AUBREY: Professional apologizer.
GABBY: He said to me, why am I the one always apologizing? And I'd be like, "Huh, well."
LAIRD: Because you're always wrong.
GABBY: No, I never said that.
LAIRD: You thought it, though.
GABBY: I did, I totally thought that, but I never said it. I think what I learned is as a kid growing up, I didn't have a safe environment to apologize, and I didn't trust the adults in my life. So I held on to this fortification, because imagine if you could make a mistake and apologize. And then the people around you taught you that it wouldn't be brought up again, it wouldn't be held against you. They would say, hey, I really appreciate it, and then you'd move on, you'd flex that muscle more. So I had to wait till I was an adult to just... And then I'm like, okay, now when I see it, I even say that if you have let's say a difference of opinion, and just for math sake, we'll do it this way. I'm 90% right in this conversation with Laird, let's say. But what I have learned is even within that 10%, he has a really good point. You should be able to say, I see--
AUBREY: Own 100% of your 10%.
GABBY: I see your point. It's not hard. I get what your point is. That's the thing we try to teach our girls. I always say to my girls, listen, you might have a thing with me at some point, but if you could communicate to me clearly... Because the problem is, we get into these things with people, and now we're apologizing for the way that we approached them with this feeling that we have, versus saying, hey, when you did this, it made me feel like that, can we talk about it? Then they have the chance to say, oh, let me look at it. But if you go ballistic, and you go after them, and you go crazy, all of a sudden, you're like, "Hey, I'm really sorry that I reacted that way." And you lost your chance. So, I try to tell them, hey, listen, come at us. But try to do it in a way that you get your chance.
LAIRD: I am telling them, come at us a little less. She's saying, come at us, I'm like, come at us just a little less.
AUBREY: Can we lower the volume? Just the volume.
GABBY: Oh, they're tough. They are tough. Yeah, so I think there's all those things where once we learn... But it goes back to the other thing you were saying is, when I have those people around me that I can trust, that I do feel that vulnerability. And for people listening, we're using sport and nature activity as an analogy for building this resilience. But it could be, like you're in the parking lot, and someone frustrates you. There's another opportunity right in that moment. We have opportunities, small and large, all the time to exercise this restraint and the discipline to be stronger to handle. And so, I don't want people to think it's only, like you have to train and be like, all the time. Yes, it is helpful. It definitely helps the organism, but it is reminding them, you have opportunities to be vulnerable--
AUBREY: You have opportunities to train every day. Life is school.
GABBY: Every day, someone goes, you just go, "Hey, have a good day." Or someone's sitting there and you go, "Hey, good afternoon. How are you today?" You didn't want to, you're shy, you're scared, whatever. All these small opportunities to make the organism just a little more dialed up.
AUBREY: I want to touch on one of the points that was in there. My wife, Vylana, grew up in an environment where there were irrational levels of punishment for minute mistakes. She got grounded for a year one time for listening to music that she wasn't supposed to be listening to. A year.
GABBY: What, secular music or something?
AUBREY: I don't know, it was like Nappy Roots or something. I don't know.
GABBY: Like a Christian home?
AUBREY: No, that's the thing. It was a very strange scenario, but--
LAIRD: Discipline.
AUBREY: Nonetheless, an overreaction. There was an overreaction to the action, and in the overreaction to the action, then she learned, alright, well, in this environment, I'm going to lie. I'm going to fucking lie. Because if I get caught doing the smallest thing, the reaction is so great that I'm going to learn. So, she's had to go through her own transformation of relearning that pattern, which requires, "No, it's okay. You fucked up, you made a mistake. It's okay. You're not going to be grounded for a year."
LAIRD: Yeah, you're not in survival mode.
AUBREY: You're not in survival mode. I don't have kids yet, but I intend to. And in that, I think one of the reasons why I feel very blessed by my parenting is that there was... It wasn't a punishment household. It was based on the bond of love. So, if I did something, then they would express to me how it hurt them, or how it hurt another person. So, they always just showed me the pain that it caused, and then allowed me to trust my own compassion, my own actual sympathy for what I did. Then I would feel so bad, and then I would learn, but they never had to discipline me.
LAIRD: Spanking would have been easier.
AUBREY: Yeah, for sure. Then really looking at everything you did. “Yeah, alright. Whatever.”

LAIRD: I’m done, okay. What's next?
GABBY: No, but I think what you're saying is a really important point. I've used this analogy a few times. I've had times where I was playing a game, and I'd have a coach that would look at me in a way that was like, "No, you're going to figure it out." But I didn't know I was going to figure it out. I didn't know I could do it. And they'd say, yeah, you'll get it. And just that, I would either get there sooner, or I would go back into the situation with, all right, I'm going to figure it out. And I think with our girls, we talk about not creating good liars. We talk about that a lot. And by the way, girls would be way better liars than boys. They just are.
LAIRD: We're way more transparent.
GABBY: Yeah, we're way more thoughtful and think, "Well, if I do this, and then they say that."
LAIRD: Manipulative
GABBY: Yeah, of course.
LAIRD: I like the way you say thoughtful, and I say, manipulative.
AUBREY: Emotionally attuned.
GABBY: Yeah, that way, we're certainly more deathly.
LAIRD: Mind jiu jitsu.
GABBY: But sometimes, we talk about with our girls, if they're going through a hard time, it's that just even thinking they will work it out, they're going to get there. That vibration, I think they feel it versus you don't say anything, but they think, "Oh, they don't believe in me."
LAIRD: And also giving them the comfort to be able to express themselves. When they do, you don't just punish them for that. So, giving them that platform where they feel that they can kind of just talk about things to you in an open way, which at times, you're kind of going, "Did you have to tell me that?" But you want that relationship to be open like that, so that they have that. Because they want to tell you. They actually want to tell you.
AUBREY: It's the craziest thing, if you like you're telling your kids like they can't have sex, well, all right, fine, but what if they do? And then what if there's an issue? What if they really need to talk to somebody about it? That's a nightmare scenario that doesn't work. Closing off the conversation about sex, or recreational drugs, or any of these different things, it--
LAIRD: It actually takes away the interesting part of it. The truth is, when you communicate with them open like that, they're less interested--
GABBY: Way more conservative.
AUBREY: Well, because you can also share the truth of the perspective, and they can actually talk to you. So, if they come up upon that situation, or if they even fall down in that situation, like yo, I took this pill, or I did this thing, and it didn't work out well, you're like, it's alright, I'm here for you. So that's one aspect of it. Another one that came to mind was, what you're saying about, I trust you guys to work it out. I'm imagining a fight between the girls, imagining a scenario where you go, "I hear both of you" but instead of you declaring and being the judge, and like I declare you're right, I declare you're wrong, you're punished, you're not, you're like, I trust you guys to work it out.
GABBY: Yeah, as long as, when they're younger and one was a lot bigger than the other, it was like, "Please don't kill your sister."
AUBREY: Of course, of course. That's where you have to step in.
GABBY: I'll give you an example. Our youngest daughter does like to stir the pot. That's her personality, it's fantastic. I'm sure it's going to work out really great for her in her life. But our middle daughter is in a relationship with an incredible guy, and they're great. But my younger daughter will go in and poke them both, and before you know it, they've almost ganged up on the youngest, right? I have been in a situation because I'm the mom, and you do have these impulses, where I want to, like little sister, and sisters should get along and all this. And then my thought was actually, "No, this guy is only interested in my middle daughter," all her needs and protecting her and what's right for her. Then I thought, oh, you know what, if in my lifetime, my daughters could each have a person like that for themselves
LAIRD: How amazing is that
GABBY: That feels really important. And plus my youngest daughter is a troublemaker. So I was like, well, you kind of created it.
AUBREY: It's some part of the real consequences of the psychodynamics of being in family.
GABBY: Right. And then the other part was like, I was so happy for my middle daughter that I was like, she has this person who likes us fine, is very nice to the younger one if she wants to be cool, but he's perfectly happy to stand on the side of his partner. I'm like, that's what you want for them. Someone for them. Not someone who's like, "Oh, hi, Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton." No, you're for her.
LAIRD: I know that, for us sometimes, at least I'll speak for myself, but just having to stand on the sideline sometimes and not interject, not try a thing, and just kind of let them. I think it happens early on. It's like a muscle, you get trained at it. Like when you see your daughter crawling over the thing towards the staircase, and there's like a stair and she's going to fall down, and you're kind of, you want to go grab her, but you're kind of like, "Oh, man, I really don't, but I got to let her kind of fall on that step so that she understands the consequences of the step." And so, it's a little bit that. So I think for us, sometimes that's been at least--
GABBY: Athletics definitely helped with that.
AUBREY: I've been sharing a lot of family stories here. I think about my stepbrothers, Brian and Tom. Brian and Tom would always get in fights. I was about the same age difference to Brian is, as Brian was to Tom. So you could assume that Brian is a fighter and he was a fighter, so me and Brian would get in fights, but we never got in fights because we competed against each other. We competed at fucking everything. Everything, like whether it was late at the house, we're playing pool, we're playing basketball, we're playing yard football, we're playing whatever. We got to actually compete. Brian and Tom never competed. Tom wasn't an athlete in that way. But Tom had an idea about being a fighter. Brian is like a rascal, he's the youngest of the boys, and he would poke, and then it would turn into a fight. This conversation is just reminding me of that dynamic where, how come me and Brian never got into a fight? And I'm just realizing, because we were always play fighting constantly.
GABBY: With rules.
AUBREY: With rules. And so, we gotta get that out. So, if we felt something, we'd be like, let's go out to the fucking court. Let's see.
GABBY: Like a gentleman's battle.
AUBREY: Yeah, exactly.
LAIRD: Beautiful like what Yuki is doing in Chicago, just like--
GABBY: Yeah, our friend, Joe Kim Noah has been taking guys from different gangs and they play basketball against each other.
LAIRD: Inner city stuff.
GABBY: Really creating a different flow in harmony between the guys.
AUBREY: That's cool.
GABBY: Yeah, it's really cool.
LAIRD: Yeah, they get to play against each other, and they've had some big success.
GABBY: So that's why I think we, ultimately, always respect a worthy opponent.
AUBREY: Yeah, I mean, Bird and Magic may not have loved each other, but they fucking respected each other.
GABBY: That's right. It's so beautiful.
AUBREY: It’s a very important thing.
LAIRD: And I bet now, they could probably sit down and have a few laughs, and really appreciate it.
AUBREY: For sure.
LAIRD: So, at the end, part of that thing, of that whole friction allows them to actually probably have an understanding of one another, that's beyond anybody that they actually know. Probably two of them could relate to each other and understand each other better than even players that played with them on their own team. So, because of that.
GABBY: Are you hopeful for the future?
AUBREY: I am, I am. Yeah. I can get lost in periods of despair and despondence. But when that happens, my whole system powers down, and I'm not alive anyways. So, I make the conscious choice to continually step into the brave winds of hope, and dare to hope and believe and see the more beautiful world emerging. Is it going to happen? I don't know. But I'm going to see it, and I'm going to believe it, and I'm going to be the last one to get off the ship of humanity. If we're sinking, I'm going to be the last one to say, keep bailing, keep bailing, keep going. And I'll be the last one that dives off the ship of humanity and life. I really believe that about myself. I've found myself deeply and I know that that's a choice. It's a choice to just keep hope alive, even when things seem hopeless. I don't think we're anywhere near a place where I think things are hopeless, because also, I have a gnosis of God, of the Divine. I'll never count the divine out. I'll never count God out, like God's got to play. I think there's rules to the game, and there's free will. The game of life has its defined rules, and God's not going to do something crazy, and just come in, and there's a voice in the sky, and he's going to sort it all out for us. But in us, as us and through us, as the divine working in its subtle, miraculous ways, I think there's something that the algorithms can't predict. There's something that we will never see coming that's going to be emergent because of the divine working in us, as us, and through us. That's what gives me hope. That's the only thing that gives me hope. Because if you look anywhere else, we're headed towards a disaster. But if you really believe, if you believe that there is a force that binds us all together, this life source, universe, God, whatever you want to say, if you really believe in that, you're always going to know there's a chance.
GABBY: I feel that way. Laird, in our house, we always say, pay attention.
AUBREY: Yeah, because we don't know what the pathway will be. We don't know how bad it will get. We don't know what we're going to have to endure. We don't know what the challenges will be. I think that's why you have to build these internal strengths and characteristics. A lot of people are focused on the external. "Well, I got seven years of beef jerky, and I got 5000 pounds of rice, and I got enough ammunition to last me..." Okay, great, but how's your internal constitution? How much are you investing in yourself? Also, how much are you living right now? So if it becomes that Hoka Hey, today is a good day to die moment, where a wave is coming and you can't escape it and you know it's death, can you look at your lovers, your family and the ones you love and say, I love you so much, and I fucking lived and we lived and we did the best we could. I want to live. I want to live that Hoka Hey life. I want to live a life where no matter what, no matter if tomorrow it's the end, and we get the signal that Russian nukes are coming and we're launching our own, I want to know, you know what, Aubrey, you fucking lived. Nothing you can do right now but you lived. And so--
LAIRD: That's our job.
AUBREY: That's our job.
LAIRD: That’s our job. If there's anything we're supposed to do is that. We're supposed to do that.
GABBY: It's true.
LAIRD: Ride the wave.
AUBREY: Ride the wave. If you're going to go out, if there's a huge wave coming--
LAIRD: Yeah, go out in flames.
AUBREY: If there's a huge wave coming, go to the route, strap that fucker in, and let's go.
GABBY: Remember when we had that fake bomb, one on Kauai, did you hear about that a couple of years ago? So, we were sitting on Kauai and our girls were sleeping downstairs and we're drinking coffee. It was really early in the morning, and Laird's like, well, there's this bomb missile. I was like, okay, we were having coffee, and he was sort of like, "Would you do anything different right now?" And I'm like, "Not really, we're all here."
LAIRD: Let's go up on the porch and enjoy our coffee, and not crawl into a drain somewhere, and be scared. And then what? Come out to a place you don't want to be anyway? It's not going to be too nice if there is one coming in, and the thing's leveled.
AUBREY: That means setting your affairs in order. In near death experiences, you have a life review, and that's the blessing of a near death experience. I would say that the plant medicine path that I've taken has brought me to many of those life review moments. My very first one was this massive life review moment. So, I've gotten the blessing of being able to look at my life, many times from a point where it seems like obliteration is imminent, at least the obliteration of the self that I knew. And really, all I really cared about is, did I do my best? Did I live the most I could? Did I move with courage instead of fear? All of these things. And if I lived that way, and if I squeezed the juice and tasted the food and made love like a warrior poet, if I did all that, all right. So the life of Aubrey Marcus was 42 years and eight months, okay, so be it.
LAIRD: Seriously.
AUBREY: Because we've lived. There's a piece in living every day like that, and that no matter what happens, you know you've lived.
GABBY: Well, it's a little bit like when we talk about the training, or competing. When you leave it all on the court or the field or in the gym or whatever, it's good.
LAIRD: No regrets. I said to somebody this morning, I go, yeah, we're talking about passing on, and I go, Yeah, well, when I get up there, I'm going to be like, what do you think? How was that wave riding? Was that good? Was that sufficient for a life? I rode those big waves. We, I think, intuitively sense in ourselves, no, we do know that, right? We know if we're living a life, and if we're not. I think we're given some of that skill. I think that's one of our intuitions, our sense. Like we can sense truth as long as we have the truth sword sharp. We can sense it. I told somebody that it's almost like looking... They talk about wanting to hit the truth, and I go, "Well, it's kind of like hunting. If you hunt for an animal, you start to know its characteristics, you start to know its footprints, you start to know its behavior, you start to know where it likes to go." Pretty soon you're like, well, where is it? It's over there. And that's acting like this, and that looks like it, that's the animal. So I think there's something to be said about that.
AUBREY: I think truth has a resonant frequency. So, if you've lived a world where you have, imagine that you've never heard real music, and all music is offbeat and off tune, and untuned. You've never had real music. Are you going to be able to tell if the violin is out of tune or if the guitar... No, because you've never heard it tuned. But, going up against the ocean, being in the ocean, that's real music. That's God's music. Going up in competition, that's real music, that's God's music. That's real. And so, it gives you a way to actually know, oh, I know the feeling of truth, I know what authenticity and honesty really feels like, it reverberates in my body, anthro-ontologically, which is anthro post the body, ontologically that which is real. You know it. It's like, we're all actually tuning instruments for the truth. But the problem is, if you've been bombarded with reality shows that aren't real, and news that's not honest.
LAIRD: Numbed.
AUBREY: Everything is all manufactured and packaged and manipulated, you may lose your bearings to your ability to resonate with the truth. You may not be able to detect, is that a true frequency?
LAIRD: That would definitely block your signal, and not having the ability. Yeah, just not having experience with it, definitely makes it hard.
AUBREY: Well, we got a wild ride ahead of us.
GABBY: We're getting our sleep and training and we'll be there.
LAIRD: Also, I think it's important to be aware of the sea. Like when you're going to navigate, like when you're in a boat and you're going to navigate somewhere, kind of important to know--
AUBREY: Where you're going.
LAIRD: And what's out there? What way is the wind blowing? What way is it potentially going to blow? Because sometimes I find myself spending time looking at a lot of stuff that doesn't seem to be making sense for me to spend time doing it, like what do I need to know about this and this and this and all this stuff? But somewhere, intuitively, I feel like I need to know it. I need to know it just to help me navigate the terrain, navigate the environment. Whether that's identifying people that are doing good things, the people that aren't doing good things. So, at least you have some way to... Some bearing, some kind of, some knowledge about the potential of where you're going to go. Because you're not going to just arrive at a place without having some idea how we get there.
AUBREY: I want to ask, one question that's coming to mind is, you talked about sharks. Sometimes there's going to be a shark bite, something's just going to come out of the deep, and it's just going to hit you. There's a part of me that wants to believe, if you're listening to the ocean, and you can feel the subtle vibrations, you'll actually feel like maybe today is not the great day to swim in this spot. Maybe today is not... Something's off. And I do believe that, I do believe that's the subtle way--
LAIRD: Oh, I have it. I have it. I've felt, I've done it. I've been in the water and thought, "No, I better go in. I don't like it." And then later, I'll hear, "Did you hear that they saw a giant shark?" And I go, "Yeah," because I felt it. So, if we're in harmony... I told somebody, it's like this, you're walking through the forest, and you just kind of go, something over there, and I can't see it, and there's going to be a big old grizzly around the corner that you... I mean, we have those skills, right? We have those abilities, those intuitions, those sensors that give us the ability to know that stuff. Now, we've become so distanced from that, because we've killed everything dangerous, and we've made everything... We've gotten rid of so many of the things that we needed that for, but that's something that we're built with. We have that ability to sense those. I mean, I think because of my relationship with the ocean and the time I've been in it, I'm more hyper sensitive in that environment, specifically in that environment. And maybe the level of fear I have of being eaten by a giant animal with huge teeth. But you're like, okay, sure, cool. But having that feeling, like you know what, something doesn't feel right, and reacting off of those. I've talked before about, you'd be walking down the street, and you look over and you see a guy on a ladder. Something's weird, and you just look, and the leg of the ladder, there's a little hole or something. And you think, "Well, if that guy keeps doing that, that thing's going to go and that guy's going to fall off the ladder." And you don't think any, you just walk back by and then later on, you hear, oh, yeah, the guy on the ladder down the street just fell off and died or whatever, and you're like, so the next time you see that you go, "Hey, you know what, if you keep doing that..." and then you keep doing that, and every time you feel those intuitions, you react on them, that muscle, that intuitive muscle gets stronger, and you get better and better at seeing it and reading it because it is an instrument that you can tune. You can become more, I mean, women have a natural, women's intuition. I mean, there's a reason why they don't call it a man's intuition. It's called a woman's intuition where Gabby will warn me, she'll just be like, "Hey, you know what, just be careful today." Like, I had a thing, and I go onto high alert. Okay, she warned me, let me be conscious of what's happening. Those are real things. We really have those superpowers. I mean, they're a lot duller than they probably were in our past, because we're so far away from nature, where that's where we had it. Why do animals go to the mountains two days before the tidal wave? All the animals just vacate. They're like, "Oh, we don't know. All the animals just ran away." How did they know? They don't have a Geiger counter, they didn't know it was going to be an earthquake, but they intuitively, the relationship that they have, they're still in their essence with nature. And so, they react that way. I think we can reawaken ours and be more--
AUBREY: Yeah, our connection to the field.
LAIRD: There's no doubt.
AUBREY: And then still, there's going to be things that you can't explain in a random. I was there at the New York Jets, September 11 game with my best friend Aaron Rodgers. He's never been more excited about playing a season, he's never loved the team more. He was so all in, so all in. Spent three days there before, and he's getting ready, and then he's out there, fourth play of the game, and it goes down. And there's so many thoughts that you could have about, oh, man, should I've felt this in the field? Could I have known? Could I have warned them? Could he have felt this in the field? Is there something that he wasn't looking at? But then you have to also make space for just, there's chaos and chance. When you have bodies colliding into each other on a field, there's going to sometimes be something weird that happens. So ultimately, I drove him home from the game in the third quarter. They brought me down because he couldn't drive because his fucking Achilles is ruptured. So, I'm talking to him, and I'm like, I don't know why this happened. I don't know if this is God's plan secretly to have some mission and influenced it that way. I don't know if dark forces in the universe came in and a shark bit you. I don't know. And I don't know if this is just chaos, man. But what I do know, so it can be any one of those or some combination of all the above. But what I do know is you get to decide what this means to you. You get to decide and look back. It's your choice whether you look back at this and say, I'm grateful for that, or I'm not. And that depends on the actions that you take. And that's the only thing that you can do in those situations where the shark bite comes.
LAIRD: I don't think I've ever been not grateful for any of the injuries I've ever had. Because that's why I'm sitting right now, right here. So, not one of the things that's ever, in my life ever, ever, I mean, at the time, I didn't love it. And during the process, I didn't love it, but maybe what I learned through the recovery, what my training was, what my diet was, just whatever saved me from being in another situation where I might have really perished and not just been wounded, or whatever the million things are, I just think that those are all, we have to have that kind of faith, you gotta have that belief that in the system. You have to have that belief in the system. When you're talking about believing that, it's going to be okay. Well, that's connected to that. It's all connected to that. It's connected that I can do it again. All that process of the failure and what you learned in that injury, kind of, because the injury is failure, right? When we look at injury, it's just another I lost, right? If you're hurt, you're lost. It's the same thing, right? But that process of losing or being hurt, and then coming back around and being able to do it again, that's where the transformation happens. That's it.
AUBREY: It's the most romantic story you can live. It's not romantic, if there's no hardships for the hero. If it's easy for the hero, hero's like... It's not romantic.
LAIRD: Exactly.
AUBREY: What makes big wave surfing romantic is that sometimes it goes terribly wrong. And that's the romance. That's the romance of the thing. That's the romance of competition, too, is sometimes it's fucking really hard and things are brutal, and you're really down and you have to dig fucking deep and just say, no, no, no, I'm going to assert my will into this field. I'm going to come out and there's something emergent that's going to be there. Life is fucking romantic, and we're living in romantic times. And if we can look at that as this is the times where we get the opportunity to be heroes, because it's romantic as fuck.
LAIRD: And crazy entertaining. I mean, when you watch the humans, you're like, "Oh, my God. Look what they're doing now. What were they talking about? The aliens looking down going, yeah, somebody goes, "Oh, yeah, aliens wouldn't care about what we're doing." I go, are you kidding? Have you seen what we're doing? This is some entertaining--
AUBREY: It's incredibly interesting.
LAIRD: I just watch like one story and it's entertaining on TV. Never mind just watching the whole group. Look at the whole group what we're doing, it's like, oh, my God, what are they doing now? Come on, are you serious?
AUBREY: "Come on, humans. Really? Oh, man. I didn't see that one coming."
LAIRD: Snap out of it.
GABBY: I'll tell you a quick tale to sum up what you just said. Laird came home, and unlike Aaron, or a basketball player, Laird surfs with everybody on smaller days. So, he'll go out and surf and I guess he fell or something. He came in and he said, "Yeah, I was out surfing and I fell on a wave or something." Some guy comes up to him, he goes, "I saw you fall." Laird goes, "You saw me fall" The guy's like, yeah. And Laird's like, "I've fallen on more waves than you’ve ridden." And I thought, it's about right. People see, oh, the moment, but they don't realize how many wipeouts there are.
AUBREY: Of course.
LAIRD: For real. Aaron's there. That's how he got hurt. Unplanned. I'm in a position to get hurt.
AUBREY: 18 years.
LAIRD: That's what I'm saying. The fact that you're even there says it all. It's like--
GABBY: He seems like he's in a good place, though. I feel like he'll rally back.
AUBREY: He'll bounce back. He's got the warrior poet in him. That's why he's my best friend.
GABBY: Can see that.
LAIRD: Well, we send our love to him, too. I was not happy when I saw that.
AUBREY: I know, it was tough. Well, this has been such a great surprise and delight. We didn't know this podcast was going to come together until two days ago.
GABBY: I know, when they called me and they go, "We're going to go." I was like there's no way those guys are available. So, thank you.
LAIRD: We were supposed to come the day before which you wouldn't be in the whole thing.
GABBY: Thank you both to you and to your crew for making room for us, and making it happen.
AUBREY: Of course. Such a pleasure.
LAIRD: Thank you for sharing the poetry and the tears and the love, and the hope.
GABBY: Way to start a conversation.
AUBREY: I know we could go down a lot of holes, but, we'll leave it at that.
AUBREY: Who, maybe we'll do another show. Maybe we'll do another show.
GABBY: I want to do a show with you after you've had a kid. You'll be like, "You know that stuff I thought? Well, some of it, I'm not sure." We're kidding. We'll talk about tempering for your soul. In the words of Byron Katie, the two best things you could ever do as a parent for your children, listen, without fixing their issues. Just listen, truly listen, and make yourself happy, whatever that means.
LAIRD: Show them what happiness looks like.
GABBY: So they know what it looks like.
AUBREY: Well, I think I got the second part because I can show them how to live a life that's really happy.
GABBY: I'll teach you a trick. This is like a steering wheel, a make-believe steering well. And when they're in the car, this is obviously like... You're just going to squeeze it, squeeze it, and like, oh, okay, don't say anything, just squeeze the steering wheel. It's really good.
LAIRD: Well, I'll leave you with, so I believe that parenting is like building a samurai sword. So, your children, they take you, they heat you up, they beat you with a hammer, and they stick you in a bucket of ice. And they do that over and over and over again. At the end, you're a tempered soul. And so, I think parenting is our highest evolution, evolving as a human.
GABBY: If that's your choice. Because I also honor that people maybe are teaching from a different place.
LAIRD: But when you're in the parenting mode, let's just say when you've--
GABBY: You've made that choice. You've had an uncontrollable biological urge. I saw Laird, and I'd never thought about kids. And I was like, "Oh, I would like to have his babies."
AUBREY: Yeah, totally. Well, because also, there's a field of trust. Oh yeah, this is going to produce something. There's a father here that I can trust. And so, my biology is like, oh, yeah, let's do this.
LAIRD: There's a woman and I will supply her with all the meat she needs.
GABBY: Thank you. Thank you, lover.
AUBREY: Anything you guys want to share with the listeners? Anything you guys got going on projects?
GABBY: Thank you. Well, I mean, we just always want to invite people to take care of themselves. That's what we always hope, the invitation. That's all, just the invitation. And as far as projects, I mean, we have you mentioned earlier, thank you, Laird Superfood. I have a podcast, "The Gabby Reece Show."
LAIRD: That one's hot.
GABBY: Very original. And Laird is the guy out in the ocean.
AUBREY: I'm on Aubrey Marcus Podcast. It's fine. Don't worry about it, let's go.
GABBY: So, I can remember. And then Laird will be the guy out in the ocean, looking for waves
LAIRD: Plans, but--
GABBY: He's trustworthy. That way. Thank you for having us.
AUBREY: It's been an absolute pleasure.
LAIRD: Thank you.
AUBREY: And thanks y'all for listening. We love you. See you next week.
LAIRD: Aloha.
AUBREY: Thanks for tuning into this podcast with Gabby and Laird. It was recorded before all kinds of crazy shit started happening in the world. So, blessings to everybody listening to this at this time, and this place. Sending infinite love to all of you.