00:00.12 stephankesting and we've seen that before. 00:01.63 nextlevelguypodcast It just showed you completely frozen. And then it started telling me that there was an error connecting. And I was like, what the... 00:10.37 stephankesting That's the exact same thing I saw. You froze for about ah minute, and then it showed me Eric connecting, and then you, I'm sure, and I tried to refresh, refresh. 00:20.93 nextlevelguypodcast I was doing about five times. 00:21.00 stephankesting Did we lose those files? 00:22.69 nextlevelguypodcast um No, they should still they should be there. 00:24.85 stephankesting Okay. 00:25.07 nextlevelguypodcast um Sorry about that. 00:27.85 stephankesting No. 00:29.04 nextlevelguypodcast Zencast are being fantastic. and You did mention in the book about the concept of sports psychology, about small successes leading to big wins, about your jiu-jitsu training, how it helps, etc. 00:41.29 nextlevelguypodcast How much of your jiu-jitsu training did you bring into this? I know it's not so much an arm bar in a rapid or you know, like choking out an Inuit who maybe doesn't have your latest charging point or whatever. But how how much did you use your jiu-jitsu training to fall back on? 01:01.19 stephankesting ah quite a bit. I think there are two things that are true. 01:13.05 stephankesting And so by pain being subjective, i mean when people who've never done jujitsu before, they start jujitsu, they're like, oh my God, my face is getting crushed. I can't breathe. I'm getting claustrophobic. ah And it's ah it's a very specific kind of pain. And it's You know, when you get, you might have somebody who's really good at jujitsu, but then they go and try and do a ah marathon, but they're not conditioned to the pain of running a marathon because it's a different kind of discomfort. 01:43.37 stephankesting So the type of pain and being good at dealing with one kind of pain doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be good at dealing with another kind of pain. That being said, toughness that you develop in one area 01:58.16 nextlevelguypodcast Thank you. 01:58.31 stephankesting is transferable. So you anything you do that's difficult, whether that's running or weightlifting or studying really hard to get your master's degree or jujitsu, focusing on on that when you're a smaller, older grappler in a class full of big killers, 02:26.41 stephankesting you're learning things, but you're also learning how to be tougher and how to learn with adversity and defeat. Because by definition, you're going to get smashed. Things are not going to go your way. 02:37.85 stephankesting And you kind of get used to this idea of like, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to roll with Ian today and I'm going to use an over under guard pass on him. And then when he thinks that I'm going to go for the guard pass, I'm going to go for the dog bar. 02:52.31 stephankesting That's my plan. 02:59.35 stephankesting And then you, you crush me with, I don't know, Kazakotami or something. I had a plan. I tried to make it work, but didn't work. This is normal. If we can internalize that and we can internalize, okay, my plan didn't go according to plan. 03:15.61 stephankesting and I have to keep going anyway, then I think that carries across. 03:44.54 nextlevelguypodcast Because that's, i mean, like i've saying earlier, it's like there's so many gems throughout the book. And like you had the mantras of tap early, be a hero later, you know, survive first, then win later. and i And I love that because was thinking these are jiu-jitsu terms that mean, because I'm used to the training and sort of thing, but you think, oh, I could use that in life. 04:05.42 nextlevelguypodcast You know how many times do we, there's one where you said, no more mistakes after you'd had a couple of errors. 04:10.64 stephankesting and 04:11.59 nextlevelguypodcast And I love that kind of you were just telling yourself, right, that's it. We're going to focus solely on this. But then when you do come to something and you go, oh, no, wait, that's dangerous. I'm going to back up here. 04:24.07 nextlevelguypodcast You know, you talk about how you operate at level below what you know you're capable of. It's a way of keeping safe. How much of these kind of mantras, yeah what what was the thing, the the mindset hacks that you found that really made a benefit out of all these kind of little things that you were learning? 04:43.91 nextlevelguypodcast What ones stick out as the key things that helped you during this trip? 04:48.10 stephankesting I think you've mentioned a bunch of them. This idea of survive first, win later really talks to avoiding the catastrophic things that'll take you out of the game permanently. 04:55.18 nextlevelguypodcast Thank you. 05:10.55 stephankesting It's not going to happen. So by definition, it's a multi-day challenge. No matter how hard you study, you're not going to get your PhD in a week. That's a multi-year process. 05:22.04 stephankesting So then... 06:01.42 stephankesting You should be there within the top couple of percent of how hard you can possibly go. And what are the worst case scenarios? Well, you might tear a muscle. You might fall down and get embarrassed. 06:14.38 stephankesting I guess you could maybe have a collision with somebody and break a leg, but 06:43.54 stephankesting and you do one little slip, you're going to maybe lose the race, right? You're come in, take 0.01 seconds off your time. And guess what? Somebody else is going to pass you by 0.01 seconds. 06:56.70 stephankesting If you do a little slip on a cliff face, you fall to your death. So I encourage risk. Like I think taking risk is an important thing. 07:09.62 stephankesting but I encourage taking intelligent risk. And I also encourage taking risk that just falls on your own shoulders, right? 07:29.55 stephankesting If that's really what gives your life meaning, go for it. 07:30.85 nextlevelguypodcast Mm-hmm. 07:32.47 stephankesting The calculus changes a little bit. If say you're free climbing and there's a whole bunch of people underneath you there's a there's a wedding party at the bottom of the cliff it's a pretty complicated analogy here and if you fall you're going to land on one two or three people 08:16.51 stephankesting So staying a level below what you can do, which is another thing that you brought up in the wilderness, you, you have to leave something in the tank. 08:28.26 stephankesting You can't be going 100% to 100% of physical limit. 08:34.69 stephankesting Because what if something goes wrong? 08:43.84 stephankesting And you get there and then you find out that is not the end. Because what you thought was there isn't there. For some reason keep going. You pull up to the perfect campsite there's a family of bears on it. 08:54.78 stephankesting Okay, I got to keep going. I cannot stay here. So if you've gone to 100% your... if you used up all the fuel in your tank, by that point you're screwed. 09:25.48 stephankesting You should leave it all on the match. You should leave it all on the mat. Obviously, hopefully not injuring yourself, but... 09:51.25 stephankesting that that would be sad but it's not the consequences that aren't very high if you're i don't know uh climbing some mountain and you are completely cooked and you didn't make it back to your camp now you're really in trouble because nighttime's coming and it's getting colder and you're out of water and you're out of fuel and you're out of food and good luck so the the idea here i'll give you the most 10:10.61 nextlevelguypodcast Amen. 10:28.03 stephankesting ah Unlikely advice that you're never going to hear from ah from a life coach or ah or a guru. A lot of it is lying to yourself. 10:39.99 stephankesting How do you lie to yourself? I'm just going to go for a little bit here. i'm I'm just going to get started. I'm just going to go for a couple of hours today. And then once in motion, you keep going. 10:52.10 stephankesting And now instead of just going for a couple hours, you've gone for 10 hours, 12 hours. ah The weather is going to get better today. I know it's going to get better. If you've ever worked with kids, you're taking kids on a camping trip, you know that a lot of it is lying to them. 11:10.55 stephankesting Oh, I know it's rainy, but don't worry. It's going to get nice this afternoon. We're going so much fun anyway. And then you end up having fun. even though the weather never does get better. So you can lie to kill to kids. 11:20.49 nextlevelguypodcast Right. 11:22.32 stephankesting You can also lie to yourself. And so strategic lying to yourself and strategically distracting yourself are important tools to use in moderation. But it's not always going to be like this. 11:35.79 stephankesting I'm just going to go for a little bit. i'm only going to I'm only going to write one page of this document. I'm just going to get this task started. 11:54.09 stephankesting That initial hump is a hard one to cross. 11:56.84 nextlevelguypodcast Because I think that's a big thing about the book is like there's there's a gem on every set couple of pages you know where you kind of go, oh, you know that's a really good way of looking up I'm going to try and incorporate that. And it's like what you're saying is, I think you said about the times you tried to go to training, you couldn't be bothered, but you put your gear on and thought, I'm just going to turn up at the car park. 12:12.83 stephankesting Hmm. 12:15.58 nextlevelguypodcast And half the time it's, well, I'm there anyway. may as well just go in. 12:18.05 stephankesting Yeah. 12:18.23 nextlevelguypodcast It's like going to the gym and do one set of one exercise. well And you think, if you're still not fit happy then, leave. Yeah. But at least you've done one thing, you know, and then suddenly you go, well, I'll just do a second one while here. And before you know it, you've done a full workout. 12:31.98 nextlevelguypodcast i But i did love that in the book where you were like, okay, I'm just going to do a wee bit more here. And you do an extra 15 kilometers paddling while you're in agony, you know. and then Or you would talk about your recovery where you bought some cherries and you inhaled some ice cream sandwiches outside a shop. 12:50.62 nextlevelguypodcast These little things, these kind of like, we follow you through this journey and we're knackered as we follow you. Never mind what you were going through. How did you use recovery, the well-being, the... 13:02.27 nextlevelguypodcast the satellite phone calls to your wife and kids. How did you deal, you know, how did you use that? and What did it teach you about coming back stronger? You know, like to to persevere, but also to then use it as a chance to grow and rehab learn about yourself, but come back stronger emotionally, spiritually, physically, but in whatever sense we're using it. 13:27.16 stephankesting Yeah, I think it certainly happened. the ah At the end of the journey and in the months that followed, i think it really did help answer some questions for me and ah come bring me closer to acceptance on some issues. 13:50.07 stephankesting whether that was done intentionally or not is a is a good question i think creating the space for that not necessarily everybody but for most people we have wiring that activates when we're in nature i mean we lived in basically a natural setting Human beings, modern, anatomically modern humans are a couple hundred thousand years old that entire time. And all of our ancestors prior to that, everything from the early Homo sapiens to Australopithecus and before that, they were livid in nature. 14:36.98 stephankesting Surely some of that has to be wired into our brain. So being in a place like that, really creates the opportunity and and and getting away from the distractions really ah creates the opportunity to do that and to um to to do some growing. 15:01.45 stephankesting In the short term, the day-to-day recovery, that was something I could have handled a lot better. And it's something I actually think I've improved on since i wrote that book i figured because the basis of short-term recovery if if we're not talking sort of existential recovery if we're just talking recovery from feeling like dog shit because you've been going for 12 days straight without a day off the core of that recovery is sleep and the core of that recovery is rest and nutrition but mostly sleep and then it'd be nutrition and 15:38.57 stephankesting on subsequent trips that I've done, which haven't been as long, but some of them have been pretty remote. I think I've made sort of tactical improvements in how to get better sleep when you're out in the bush and how to improve on nutrition when you're out in the bush. 15:57.32 stephankesting And I think that would have helped if there's one thing I could have changed about that trip, that long trip that I did, it would have been better sleep. My sleep was so fragmented. And we all know that, you know, if you don't sleep enough, you don't recover. 16:12.26 stephankesting And it also affects mindset, right? You go from, oh, this is an interesting challenge to, oh, this is the worst thing ever. And it's still the same thing. 16:23.91 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 16:23.97 stephankesting You're still dealing with the same issue. But in one, you're like, if you had a good night's sleep, you're like, oh, i there's three different ways I could solve this problem. And if you had know i ah shit night's sleep, you're like, I can't believe this is happening. 16:39.33 stephankesting This is the worst. So 16:46.08 stephankesting if we're talking recovery in the short term, that is something that I struggled with quite a bit and kind of made a mental note to improve on in the future. And I have. 16:58.30 nextlevelguypodcast Because it definitely comes across in the book like about how every put you know youre you can be as prepared as you want, but the second you get soaked, it goes up. you know You get the chill across your face or your lips get chapped. All these like mishaps. 17:15.47 nextlevelguypodcast we're all fine when we're tough, when we're strong, when we're fed, when we've got' ah we're warm, we've got a full belly, whatever. 17:21.57 stephankesting you 17:21.88 nextlevelguypodcast Second, you can't sleep. Or, you know, you're soaked through, you're chilled, or you're worried about a bear coming, you know, so you hardly sleep, or you sleep it in the wrong position, so you're next. 17:33.01 nextlevelguypodcast There's so much in the book, and you and then you go into these great things of, here's a way I managed it myself. Here's an and insight for as to then apply to our own lives. And we get so much from it. 17:44.28 nextlevelguypodcast This question might get you in trouble, though. You referred to your wife as as a strange woman when she agreed to let you go off the day after you married her on this escapade. 17:54.44 stephankesting Hmm. 17:56.21 nextlevelguypodcast You talk in the book about these amazing, like, the Inuit tribes, the people of Cree, you know, all these kind of fascinating parts of your journey and the interactions as you go along. 17:56.74 stephankesting Sure. 18:08.72 nextlevelguypodcast What has this taught you about people, our connections, as is humans, I know it's quite a grandiose question, but what what what's it taught you about our place in the world? 18:16.97 stephankesting Hmm. 18:21.50 nextlevelguypodcast Because, you know, you realize nature could wipe us off the planet if it wanted. 18:22.67 stephankesting Hmm. 18:25.32 nextlevelguypodcast We're nothing when you see the speck of the power of wildlife and nature, etc. What have you learned about, you know, your relationship? What have you learned about being a father, about being... 18:39.68 nextlevelguypodcast the coach, the guide, you're guiding us through the book. 18:44.13 stephankesting Yeah. 18:44.93 nextlevelguypodcast what What's it taught you? How have you changed since then? 18:49.98 stephankesting Yeah. So the irony of doing a solo trip in the wilderness is that it's not really ah solo trip in the wilderness. 19:03.66 stephankesting It's, it's in some, to some extent, a team effort. It's a team effort with your family. Your family has to support you to some extent. 19:14.40 stephankesting And I'm very lucky that my wife did support me. And, you know, when we, uh, turned out She wanted to get married in a certain place, in ah the UBC, University of British Columbia Botanical Gardens. 19:29.64 stephankesting It's a beautiful setting. But we lost the date that we were supposed to we were supposed to get married in the fall. The only other time they had available was the day before I was supposed to leave on this journey. 19:41.87 nextlevelguypodcast I'm sure that went down well. 19:42.10 stephankesting So we talked about it. It went down really quite well. As like I said, would you like me to change the date? And she said, no, stick with the plan. Now, a cynic might argue that maybe I haven't yet found out about the massive amount of life insurance that she took out on me. And I don't think that's the case. 20:02.20 stephankesting But it does speak to the importance of finding people who are willing to support you. And if I'm willing to support somebody in some way, they don't have to, their support to me doesn't have to be the exact same way. 20:14.29 stephankesting if somebody, I don't know, likes tango dancing and I can support their tango activities by not freaking out when they go to dance tango with some other guy at tango class and they can support me. i guess the obvious example here would be when I want to go off every couple of years on a solo trip for a couple of weeks to a couple of months. 20:42.88 stephankesting So, It doesn't need to be reciprocal. It doesn't need to be fairsy-squaresy. It just needs to meet both people's needs. So the larger point, though, is really, as I was saying, it was a solo trip, but I did it within the context of a web, a social web. So there's obviously my family. 21:04.81 stephankesting There's obviously my brother. I wouldn't have been doing that trip if my brother hadn't given me that kidney. So my brother was out there with me. Then in a kind of a larger sense, had I run into problems, I could have pretty much gone to any of the Cree, Dene, or Inuit villages along the way, knocked on the door, said, hey, i've and there weren't that many villages. There were, for the first half of the trip, I passed three little villages, and then in the second half of the trip, nobody. 21:37.17 stephankesting But had I come across a hunter, and said, I've lost my boat, they would have helped me. And if I had come across a hunter who said, I lost my boat and I broke my leg, I would have helped him. 21:52.45 stephankesting and There's kind of a camaraderie out there. So just because I didn't run into people doesn't mean that they wouldn't have... 22:04.94 stephankesting helped each other and that I wasn't to some extent relying on that. I was relying, even though I didn't call them, on bush plane pilots, right? if If I broke my leg, if I lost all my equipment, if my tent burned down, if all my food got stolen by a bear, what's my backup plan? 22:24.47 stephankesting What's to get on my GPS satellite communicator to get on my sat phone. And then there was one more way I could send messages by rooting my phone through ah satellite dish. 22:38.89 stephankesting I could have called for ah bush plane to come get me. That's me relying on other people. So 22:48.44 stephankesting just because you're doing something alone doesn't mean that you are achieving it alone. The fact I was up there, to some extent, not as concretely, meant that I was following in the footsteps of many thousands of Native people over many thousands of years who had traveled this route. 23:09.75 stephankesting It's a route called the Old Way North. It basically connects the boreal forest with the tundra. It was an ancient trade route. The fact that it's known, the fact that some of these portages have been there for thousands of years, even though they're not much traveled today, connects you to the people who were there, the people who suffered from the same mosquitoes. 23:31.19 stephankesting So just because you're there by yourself doesn't mean it's not connecting you to the greater web of humanity. 23:38.35 nextlevelguypodcast Because that's definitely what I took from it was how you were connected to your history, to your family, to the future generations you were inspiring, to the training, the people you had competed or trained. 23:53.23 nextlevelguypodcast There was so much involvement. And even just each person that you met, you were part of their story as much as you were vice versa. Every time... 24:03.59 stephankesting You won't believe what happened. I ran into this crazy guy today. 24:06.51 nextlevelguypodcast yeah But it's there generally is a joy on each page of like you commiserate with you you, we applaud you during in your things, we kind of we see that we we feel the anxiety, the danger. that you know like It's such a good read. 24:25.91 nextlevelguypodcast And I knew there were so many times I wanted to say, stop here. Let's go into this a bit more because you were talking about like sports psychology and i'd be like, oh, this is brilliant. And they're like, no, no, no. We need to get back to the story. And it is a genuine joy to read. 24:36.26 stephankesting Mm-hmm. 24:38.74 nextlevelguypodcast But what how would you want people to read this? To not just take it as the understand your story, but like we said earlier about the Matrix film, to see it on the different levels, to understand, to grow. 24:50.35 nextlevelguypodcast How do you want people to take this book and then go out and and live their life? 24:56.80 stephankesting Well, far be it from me to tell people how to solve their own individual problems. because But it's a certainty that everybody's going to have problems. 25:07.69 stephankesting At some point, you're going to deal with major health issues. Hopefully, you're in your 80s when that happens. But you never know. Hopefully, you're you know if you live long enough, you will have problems. 25:23.24 stephankesting Friends and unfortunately family members pass away. How are you going to deal with that? You're going to have to at some point. I think that 25:34.86 stephankesting seeing how somebody else struggled through, sometimes not very gracefully, their own process, and that process might look insane to other people, but it made sense to me, 25:49.73 nextlevelguypodcast Thank you. 25:49.94 stephankesting might ah encourage them to find their own route through, even if it looks insane other people and to try one thing. And if it doesn't work, try another thing. Obviously I'm a big advocate for trying it in the outdoors, but if that doesn't work, then go try it in whatever your setting is, whether that's, you know, make some time and some space to deal with the things that are eating you, eating at you. 26:22.13 stephankesting ah it's just an example. i I don't think my way has to be your way, but it's sometimes useful to see that somebody found a way and it's pretty strange. 26:36.39 stephankesting And it's, some people would think it's kind of mental, ah but it was, it makes sense within my context. So what's going to make sense in your context? 26:47.60 stephankesting I don't know. Something different probably. 26:51.23 nextlevelguypodcast I know that wherever you are in life, someone will get something from this book. you know It could be a new way of thinking. It could be ah inspiration and motivation. it could even be kind of dragging them out of a dark place where they think they don't know how to continue. 27:07.13 nextlevelguypodcast But just like you're saying, by seeing... how you went through it and what you learned from it could be enough to change someone's life. It is a phenomenal piece of writing. And it's not just for people who want to read about insects with larvae and how you went past islands and inhaling ice cream sandwiches. 27:27.20 nextlevelguypodcast There's so much more to this behind it. 27:28.03 stephankesting Yeah. 27:29.60 nextlevelguypodcast And I generally think everybody should get a copy of it because everybody needs to find... go on the journey of their version of this trip and learn how to push on in life because we're all capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit i know we're short on time but i would love to have you back because i think we're just touching the surface and so much in this book but what would you want people to take from this like what would you want this is uh the the message to take from this interview 28:01.22 stephankesting wow uh 28:05.90 stephankesting it's a difficult thing because everybody's different but at the same time human beings have been struggling through loss and through difficult situations ever since we were human right right every one of your ancestors figured out how to struggle through life long enough at least to reproduce. 28:30.06 stephankesting And you you said it. I think that we are a lot tougher than we give ourselves credit for. Sometimes it takes a while to get there. And just because you muddle around trying all the wrong things first or muddle around and are unable to take action for a while, know, don't Don't give up because eventually they're hopefully if you keep looking and if you keep trying different things, it's kind of that act of looking that's often helpful. 29:08.49 stephankesting It's the fact, oh, I can't go this way. Maybe I'll go this way. Oh, damn it. That way is blocked too. What if I go way out here? and We're talking metaphorically here, right? 29:19.42 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 29:19.94 stephankesting I hate my job. I just can't stand my job. Well, maybe I should try this kind of job. Maybe I should try to experience this other thing. Maybe I should just test out the waters a little bit here. 29:32.81 stephankesting Maybe i fight by trying out these different things, I will eventually find a route through. I'll eventually find my answer. My answer isn't everybody's answer. 29:44.30 stephankesting But, you know, when I think of how my life has been changed by little chance encounters, by people... whose names I might not even remember, who just casually dropped something and it just stuck in my brain. 29:57.87 stephankesting And for better for worse, it made an impression. And years later, I'm, that has become part of my, my psyche. It's become part of my belief system. 30:10.61 stephankesting It's kind of amazing how we are these adaptive sponges that absorb ideas. And if people come away with one idea, from this book. That's great. That's fantastic. I'd be so thrilled. 30:22.04 stephankesting And if they want to tell me about it, I'd love to hear it. That'd be the ultimate honor. That'd be the ultimate endorsement. It'd make me very happy. 30:32.81 nextlevelguypodcast Well, I know you're going to get more than that because there's so much to take from it. And it doesn't matter whatever part of journey you're on in life, you will get something from this. There's so much to absorb, understand. And mean, I can't remember when I first discovered you. 30:48.31 nextlevelguypodcast And then it must have been something you said on an Instagram or a YouTube video that suddenly I thought, oh wait. And then I i you know went in and watched more of your videos. And before I know it, like we were saying at the start, 31:00.26 nextlevelguypodcast it's been years that we've interacted through different things. And I was kind of like, well, he just gets it. Every time I see something, you know, you're thinking it opens me up to thinking in new ways or taking new points and stuff. And I think you, you have, you very well deserve success with the book. You know, you're going to, it's going to help so many people, but until we can do another one and really go into other areas, 31:25.80 nextlevelguypodcast how do you want people to follow this journey? mean, you've got your the grapple art side of things. You've got your your own stuff. how How do we follow along and see the the amazing author picture, for example, you took? 31:39.45 nextlevelguypodcast How do we interact with the book? How do we get in touch with you to let us let you know about own perseverance journey? 31:47.07 stephankesting Yeah. 31:47.07 nextlevelguypodcast How do we compliment you on your berry? You know, all these things. 31:52.65 stephankesting Well, my my presence online is kind of multiple personality disorder, right? There's the jujitsu martial arts aspect, and that's all through grapple arts. And if you search my name, you know, Stefan underscore Kesting on Instagram, Stefan Kesting on YouTube, grapplearts.com, that's the martial arts aspect of it. 32:13.66 stephankesting I've started putting my outdoor musings and ramblings and videos on another channel, Essential Wilderness. So that's at Essential Wilderness on Instagram. It's at Essential Wilderness on YouTube. 32:26.04 stephankesting It's Essential Wilderness, the site. And I'm trying to grow that out. I think have you you have to have them separately, even though there is so much overlap there. And I think the book kind of represents the overlap. 32:38.43 stephankesting If people want to grab the book that's available anywhere, ah Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Indigo. I don't know the Scottish bookstores so well, but I went and checked at my local, I went online and checked the local independent bookstore that's just around the corner and typed it in. And yeah, it was there available for, for order. So it's pretty much everywhere. It's also on Kindle. 33:03.62 stephankesting It's also on audio in audio book format. So you can get it pretty much anywhere. Uh, I think those are the main ways to get ahold of me and to to consume my content for what it's worth. 33:17.31 nextlevelguypodcast Well, I'll hit stop just now.