Roadman, in today's podcast, I chat with a Dubliner who cycled the lint of Africa. Crazy, crazy interview. You're going to absolutely love this one. Let's cue that intro. The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our long chances? That is the question. This podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Welcome back, Roadman. Thank you for joining me for another feature Lent Roadman podcast. Wednesday is my favorite day of the week when I get to chat to hear from Ireland. Talking to our guests and today's guest is someone who I'm super, super excited to chat to his name is Derek Colin. He's an adventurer. He's a storyteller. He's a public speaker and he has one of the best stories I've heard in a long, long time. My goal with this podcast, it's, you know, it's stated in that intro, isn't it? It's the use cycle as tool for health, happiness and longevity. And Derek is a guy who embodies all of that. He was someone who had a look at his life, wasn't happy with the direction it was gone and he said, you know what, I'm going to press pause on everything. I'm selling all my worldly possessions. I'm going to buy myself a boy skull and I'm going to cycle Africa. He talks to us about the crazy challenges of navigating Africa, the fear he felt sleeping in a tent and even pissing himself, would you believe, with fear at times and the battle to overcome these demons. He went on these two journeys. He had the external journey that we see from North to South in Africa, but the big journey that Derek went on, which we dive deep into, it's that internal journey and that journey to find happiness again. It's a story that's gonna resonate with a lot of listeners and it's one of the most enjoyable interviews of the podcast that I've recorded in a long, long time. Before I jump into the episode with Derek, I would ask you all to dig deep into your pockets and head on over to patreon.com. The link is in the bio, it's patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch. Patreon's how I fund this podcast. We don't have a title sponsor for the podcast as you will have noticed. So the podcast is funded entirely off your generosity and your donations. So I would ask you if you're getting some value from this, if you're enjoying the podcast, the guests I'm bringing you if you're learning something from it, to buy me the price of a point of beer once a month to say thank you and in return I will give you access to the secret podcast. Once a month I bring a Patreon only ask me anything secret podcast to the Patreons. That's going to be dropping for Patreons today or tomorrow so look out for that you Patreons. But I would ask you now to head on over to that link that's in the show notes and make a small donation because honestly it really really helps and for me it's vindication and I'm going the right direction with the podcast and the the stuff, financial support, we need to make this a viable project. Okay, we've taken care of business. There's so much practice podcast. Here we go. Let's get you up to Derek. Derek Colin, welcome to the road, man. Cycling podcast. How are you doing? It's great to be here. Thanks for having me on. Derek, I'm excited about this one, man. I'm not sure how much you've fallen on the podcast, but so I primarily talk to pro cyclists and start all over the world is pro cyclists, you know, you're talking to lads and do boy, your own. Now I'm talking to a double owner around the corner from me. Right. And we're going to need to make it clear that I'm most definitely anything but a pro or anything. You're very modest when you say that, but we're going to get into your story. And I think there is enough a lot that our listeners are going to learn from you today. I'm not a massive consumer of social media content. I tried to draw that line a couple of years ago and I suppose I've been better at it in the last six months where I'm on social media a lot as you need to be in this game. But I tried to say, you know, I'm a producer of content, not a consumer of content. Yeah. But I fucking consume your content. I do. I do. What's the difference then? Not that I want you to blow any smoke now, but what's the difference between watching what are you doing? Anything else you might fully done there. Honestly, it was just a Dublin thing hooked me straight away. I had a buddy who recommend this, your Instagram page. I'll give it a look because we just shot briefly off-air. I feel like we're trying to find our way on a similar path. We're both outdoor enthusiasts. There's a lot of trying to find best practice around mental health, productivity hacks, the power story, all these type of common trends in my podcast. I see so much of that in your podcast. And when I just heard a wrapped in a Dublin accent, I was like, I can't book be drawn to this. Because you just used to listen to American accents all day. Right. Well, that's great to hear as well, because everything to me is a story now. I've always, like, the reason I got into all of this is a story in itself. But when I make a piece of content, even if it's a short video, I always try to have some sort of story in there. And I don't want it to come across a script or anything like that, but I want to just make sure that there's a point to it. And so that way, that way there has to be a middle and an end point to what I'm saying. So it's good that you say that I'd look like my dream is to become a masterful storyteller, whatever that might be. I just want to be good at telling stories because that's what I love listening to. When other people have good stories, I'm captivated by that. I'm obsessed with story and this idea that we have to have that tree act nourish of the set up conflict resolution. And this is what I'm trying to tell clients all the time. So we're working, we're getting clients closer to their goal. Their goal could be, you know, it's complete 100k cycle or it could be to go and, you know, really the six-day event in France.
But if they can't do it at the moment, it's because they're telling themselves a story as to why they can't do it. So my job is then to get a better story and replace the story, the self-defeating story they're telling themselves at the moment with my better story. I'll give you an example because I hate telling stuff in the abstract like that. So I had a whole hill, it's a local hill to us, me and Derek here in Dublin. And it's a big metaphor, so you know, they are trying to go up and one of the things that's trying to do is you time themselves open and we have this app, Strava, the times you up the hill and you can, you know, there's no cheating that because it works off GPS. So I had a friend and he was stuck at his time going up this hill. He was stuck for about two years on it. And his story was cycling coaching and getting advice around cycling coaching. It's only for pros, it's for someone else. And so I had to just say to him, look, I've worked with people in your exact situation. Here's the results of saying, it works for average Joe's. And it was only when I could replace that story to tell themselves that it's only for pros with a story that works for Joe's that he was able to set himself free from that. And then sure, he knocked like 60 seconds off his PB in an eight week period. And he'd been stuck at that PB for about two years. But I know you're big on stories and sort of the power and negative stories. And I heard one of your recent Instagram lives, you were talking about that as well. Yeah, well, the thing about, I suppose me was that I wasn't always a negative person, but I became some my parents passed away in 2006, 2008, within a couple of years of each So that was a difficult period in itself, but after that is when all the damage was done, let's say, when I started to become very self-destructive, making a lot of bad decisions, and just making a mess in my life, making a mess in relationships that I had with family and friends, and so on. But that was a time when I was incredibly negative, and I was just doing all the wrong things, and it was also a time when I wore myself out physically and mentally, I got to the point where I was like, I couldn't do it anymore. I didn't have any more energy even to be negative, you know? So, I got to that point where I had to make a decision. I knew that if you're going to keep going down this road, you've already burned out, and it's a dead end. So, why don't you try going the other way? And the other way, I wouldn't say it was necessarily being positive, but it was more hopeful. So, I decided that I had to go off and change the story, and I had to go off and do something more positive and start addressing all the things that I got gone wrong, and try and figure out how I could get back to where I was before I had mess happened in the first place. You know, so there was a huge story there that I had created for myself, being the mistakes. You know, I'd created this absolute mess of a life myself, but I had to go and reverse all that and create a new one then, which is what I essentially have today, I guess. But that was the bigger picture for me, if you want. I love this idea that I'm not sure if you've heard this. I think it's a Tony Robbins quote. I've always referenced Tony Robbins. I love his stuff. Bootleg the few Tony Robbins courses back in the day. Remember you used to download stuff illegally off with Loymour and I remember getting a few Tony Robbins courses I thought as a legend. Yeah, yeah. I did that too, but I was going to say was it before Loymour? I know you would send the DVDs out at the time. That was for sure. For sure. Yeah. I remember you had this concept of success leaves clues that you don't need to figure all this out in yourself. That you just look at somebody else who's got where you want to get it. And then almost like pull apart and reverse engineer the steps that they took to get there. And you know, I do this all the time with podcasters now and I look and I see the big podcasters, your Joe Rogans, your Tim Ferrisses, like, you know, Joe Rogans doesn't land a 200 million euro Spotify deal without leaving a little bit of a paper trial as to how he got there. You know, what was he doing 10 years before that? What was he doing? Five years before? But I also was watching one of your videos a while ago. There's a brilliant concept. You were traveling back to traveling. I'm trying to make a sound all exotic. You were walking around the town and you were going back to places that made you happy when you were a kid. I got to tinking. If this idea that success leaves glues, happiness definitely lays glues as well. We can journey back to times like that when we were happy and start to cultivate more of that in our life now. I love the way you link the two of them together. I've listened to Tony Robbins a lot in the past, but I wouldn't have linked them but it makes total sense and what you're talking about was when I believe when I was walking around Dublin City Centre where I was a window cleaner at the age of 14, 15 and I was very happy in my life. So I was walking past these places and they brought up those same feelings. They were fleeting moments but those same feelings were there and like you say they were, I was learning something from them where they're consciously or subconsciously I was getting something from those moments and I try to do that every now and again but something I haven't told anyone this really I walked around Ireland last year for five months and what people don't know is I decided to walk from Dublin to the Great Blasket Island in County Kerry you're familiar with? I don't know anyway. It's a long walk so it took me a month to get there but what people don't know is there was a specific reason I decided to walk to the Great Blasket Island and that was because that was the last place in Ireland where I felt truly happy.
And I at the time I had a girlfriend, my parents were alive, I was on the island and I was looking at it with wonder and I was just so happy to be in Ireland and everything in my life was going well, my career and all this. So I actually walked to the Great Basket Island to try and reconnect with not just that moment but that time of my life and to see if it was still possible to feel that way. And of course it was just a fun adventure right? I was doing it for that reason too but That was kind of the story behind that trip that I never really told anyone. You know, people just thought I was doing another forest gun kind of move, but there was actually been a method to the madness of walking back to where I was walking, you know? You know when you say stuff started going wrong for you? So you feel like, what's the fork in the road moments where, like for me, decided not to go back to working in law? That was a real fork in the road moments, right? You know, there's an obvious career path planned out for me here. you go in, you do your junior council, senior council. And that just scared the shit out of me. And I just thought, you know what, as hard as entrepreneurship is and disrobe the figure on it, I just excite me more. And what the hell in killer quote, life is a daring adventure or noting it all. And it's like, fuck it, that looks more crack and life's meant to be crack. And that was a fork in the road moment for me. Did you have one of those moments or was it just gradually drifting from a place of happiness to a place of unhappiness? I think yeah definitely gradually there was a number of those forks that you speak of one of them of a very Specific one I was sitting at home watching football followed my new night with my dad But I was watching football at my dad and my mom had just passed away a few months before that and I just remember Looking at my dad look he was looking out the window and he was looking past the television and In that moment I actually said to myself like that I don't ever want to have any regret. Not that he had regret but I was thinking about my own life going there's much more to life than even what we're watching on the TV here. There must be much more to my life even. So that was a fork in the road where I started to question the career I was in at the time which was banking. I was in investment banking and that was one of those forks but there was another major one that was when I actually quit my job and went to Africa to do a big cycling trip. I definitely want to get into that now in a second. That's crazy shit folks. I'm out to turn off, don't you? Well, that was the major fork now. If there was ever fork in my life, that was the one that led me to this very podcast. That changed everything, that one decision, and it happened in the blink of an eye. And 40 minutes later, it was in motion, the whole thing. Right, let's do really work crazy time machine shit here and travel back to what happened just before like are you so put a point and go I might cycle from one side Africa to the next. How does this come about? I was going out a lot of nights on the booze. It was more of an escape for me to be drinking at the time just from my problems and the things that happened. And I got to the point where I was just hung over every day. Someone annoyed me and work about something that was work related. I walked outside. I stood looking down the river Liffy and I just felt a couple of tears and then I heard a different voice in my head just saying, what are you doing to yourself like you made all these decisions you're not really unhappy about what that person said and work your unhappy because of all the this stuff you're doing to yourself. So it was a kind voice now have to stress that was a different voice than i'd heard it wasn't critical in any way. But i was still schizophrenic nonetheless well yeah and i still hear that voice. But at the end of that little blur but I said to myself, now what are you going to do about it? And I didn't know was the answer. So I walked back in, I said to the ambassador, he was on the phone and said, Hey Dave, I'm going home. And he said, what do you mean you're going home? I said, yeah, I'm going to go home now. And he said, what time are you coming back? And I said, I'm not coming back. You know, I was being Hollywood kind of movie scene. I'd set for myself. I said, I'm not coming back. and I walked out the door with a cape blowing in the wind. But I ended up walking back to the apartment, and my deal was, I said, by the time you get back to your apartment, you've got to decide exactly what you're going to do from this moment on. And by the time I got back to my apartment, I decided that I was going to go to Africa and cycle from Cape Town. I didn't know how far I will Cape Town the Cairo. Now, just a piece together, how that 40 minutes worked. I walked up Grafton Street, up past Stevens Green, all the way to a mill town in Dublin 6 and I said to myself, right, where's a place that you can go that you were happy before? And I traveled to Africa, found it to be a very interesting place. I said, right, maybe I'll go to Africa. Now, how can you start addressing all these problems? And I decided I've got to be on my own for this. Cyclists will understand this one. I've got to be on my own for this. I've got to just go do something on my own. And I initially said I'll do it by motorbike, do a trip in Africa by motorbike, but I couldn't the floor that and I didn't have a motorbike license. So then I said wait what if I did not have a bicycle because I saw someone do a bike trip in Europe before and that looked interesting. Now I'd never done any of these things before.
I'd never really cycled even. I'd never been camping, all that kind of stuff. But by the time I got back to the apartment, that was it. I was going to fly to Cape Town. I booked the flight to Cape Town, sold everything in my apartment, put it all up for sale on AdWords.ie, put all my clothes and the clothing bank down the road and a week later is in Cape Town looking for a second handboy. I need to put up a picture on my Instagram at that bike because folks if you have an image of bike packing and luxury gravel bike to this menu is it was the biggest piece of shit I've ever seen. It's true. It's true. But it doesn't show you like because so often I chat to clients and they have this I get started when mentality. We often hear people speaking, I'd be happy when. With clients, it's nearly your people who want to come on and get started with coach and get started when. And the when is always a monetary hurdle for them. When I get myself a good boy, when I get X level of fitness. And you're showing this item, just get started with where you are right now with the tools you have right now. And that boy you had when I seen it, I just thought, you know, that's a man who's just embraced that get started right now. Right, but you know what I had to do. I taught at the time this bike is amazing This is the anyone to be delighted. I didn't know it in about bikes So when I got this one I thought this is gonna do it a job. This would be grand It was a size two smile for me which it probably noticed from the pictures. So what kind of interest looking help as well? But I didn't know any of these things, you know why I picked this Well, I picked it because I was given it in Cape Town all the cyclists rolled cycling pretty much There is a bit of mountain bike and it's hard to get your hands in a second hand mountain bike. The reason I needed a second hand one is because I needed one that was old so that I weren't things and that would break that I would have to figure out how to fix. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. I don't think it's soft to break along the way, did it? Oh, yeah, all the time. And I did, you see, I, I can't believe I'm saying this in this podcast, but I did get someone to show me how to fix a puncture the day before I left. And these two lads in Woodstock cycles in Cape Town, they're really experienced cyclists and they were thinking, you're going to do what? I said, I'm going to cycle up through Africa all the way to Cairo and they're like, this guy, you're not serious. I was like, I am, can you help me get a boy to go? So they showed me how to fix the puncture. They waved me away from the shop and they were obviously thinking they'd never see someone like me again. You know what I mean? He's not going to last long on that trip. Never mind, survive it. So it was a great computer. Yeah. And just to touch on what you said there, about getting started, you know, I actually booked my flight to Cape Town that day because I figured that if I flew far enough away from Dublin, I wouldn't be able to turn around and just go back home again. And if I booked the flight that meant I had to go. So I forced myself to start because I knew if I'd heard about it for much longer, I'd probably just go back to my job the next day or I'd probably do back out or chicken out or just come up with a new idea of how good the ferret is one. So, talking about this trip, like, obviously it's still long a trip for you to break down and talk to you about the whole thing. So, you went the entire length of Africa. Yeah. So, from north to south, or? I started in the south, so Cape Town is the very southern tip. The trip finished in Cairo, sort of very north, almost the north tip of Africa. And it was about, I always get this mixed up. I think it was 11,500 kilometers, and I covered about 12 countries in all of that. So it would have been every type of landscape you can picture in Africa, like from the proper African savannas, African bush, the mince mountains, and then huge deserts. So to the mid-deserts, the Sahara Desert. So our proper podcasts are probably have a real deep question for you here, but my head just goes to a change our Irishman in the African east. It must have been so important to fuck. I did. I actually, I got heat exhaustion on the first week in the Namib Desert. And this was, I was KO'd. I just put, I managed to reach a large, it was, I was in bits now. I literally, I couldn't cycle anymore because it was hurting me too much. So I was pushing the bike for about the last two hours over this really bad road at the time. And I managed to find this isolated lodge and to put my tent up the side. And I was there for two days, just lying down drinking water to get over the heat exhaustion book. You're right because there was nowhere to get shade there either. Because I... Because my safety wasn't working now. It wasn't. I had everything covered too on my skin, but I didn't know what it was doing, right? It was quite... I'm a very incompetent person at times, like certainly it was then. And it meant that I was kind of jumping head on into stuff that I really shouldn't have been. And that was one of the cycling across the oldest desert in the world, you know? who does that with that experience. Of course I felt it was a great idea at the time. Did you have any crashes along the way? Yeah, the first couple of weeks I went right into a torn bush in South Africa. That was because I didn't know who got balanced a bike. Probably there was a lot of weight on it. Otherwise, I was usually going too slow that you couldn't crash. I'd come to a stop and a lot of hills, especially at the beginning. I couldn't get up the hills. I just couldn't. So I'd be pushing my arm, he might and then it'd sit down for half, never have a rest, push again.
And this was a great thing about the trip though, right? I knew nothing about cycling. My brother is a good cyclist. He's from Auburn, Sutton over that way. And he was really worried about me because he knew I couldn't cycle. I went out one day with him for a 10k ride and he had to drive me home because I couldn't finish. Right? So I started the trip. I did 25k on the first day. and I fainted on top of my tent. I didn't even get to put it up. I just tried to put the tent up and I fainted. But the second day I went down and I did 60k and I was my own hero that day. I was like, I can't believe it. It's 60k and a boy. So this is unbelievable. But that's how the year went on. I was crying a lot for those for us for a few weeks and a couple of months, let's say, for different reasons. I was lonely but also not having experience and not knowing what I was doing. but I was also growing so much in confidence from being able to just keep going every day and getting a little bit further every day, not just in terms of distance, but every day I looked at the map Anthony I was going, well look where I am, I've got this far, I never thought I could even do this. So that was a huge thing that happened throughout that trip and as that grew, it expanded. So when I came to the Simeon Mountains, for example in Ethiopia, I was able to ride up the Simeon Mountains with over 70 kg in the back of my bike. Now that would have been literally not possible at the beginning, you know, but it was just pure not just experience at that time of the trip but it was just mind over matter. I'd gone through so much on the trip up until then I just kept telling myself I can do this. I've gotten this far. What's another mountain? And did you know what I pack? Like I've limited bike packing experience but bike packing is getting real trendy and cycling now. It's the idea of choosing this. You know, making purpose-built stuff for your typical road racing bike, you can get all this purpose-built luggage. So I had a go at it during the summer during the road from here in Moigaff in Clontarf down to Kinsel. My mom's from Kinsel down in County Cork. So I think it's called to 350k down. So it's a big day riding down. You did it one day? I don't know two days, so I'm two, two, 200k days. I kind of told my God. I took some deviations and a buddy in Toreless. So I stayed with him and his coach to force noise and then went down to follow him on the table. Even for that two day trip, I found I forgot everything. I got to the his place in Four Stage, like now to push. I was like, well, I got to get into me James. It's obviously like, sure, he didn't bring me runners with me. D'oo-doo-doo-doo. capitalism? Folks, this is our brief little reprieve in the middle of the podcast, the time where we can take a little collective exhalation and just say, oh, relax! It's also the time where you can head across to Patreon.com forward slash Ventini under scroll watch. The link is in the bio. I ask you to make a small donation. by me the price of a beer to say thank you for the content and support this podcast. In return you will get access to the secret podcast that asked me anything Patreon only podcast which comes once and once to our Patreon members. Thanks for your generosity and let's get back to the schedule broadcast. I have that experience where you're like oh no. Right but you know the the Africa trip, I couldn't forget anything really because if you think about it, for example, if I was in, when I was in Namibia, like people say, did you not, how often did you get lost? I couldn't because there was usually only one road. So I just had to remember what direction I was going with. I just keep going that way. Right? And that was like literally what sided a road that I camped? Okay, yes, this way. Because it would look the same in every direction, right? So there was that. But also, if I forgot something, it was going to stand out like a sore thumb, I want to be properly dumb to leave something behind because you just have to look back and it would be right there in front of you. And the other thing was that I would kind of appreciate if I had a normal I was doing then because the bike was two times the weight it should have been. I was carrying stuff I never even looked at in the bag for that whole year but I really was killing myself. I was cycling up hills and saying to myself what can I get rid of in my bag? I'm sure a lot of your listeners will understand this one too. But I was doing stupid things. I was throwing out pairs of socks, thinking it would save weight. And then the next day I'd be like, oh, where's that pair of socks? I need them now. So I didn't really get over obsessed with the weight on that trip. I do what I can nowadays a little bit more. But I definitely understand where the obsession comes from, trying to lighten and the load. And as far as this is a question, it's not something that comes easy as those Dublin that's to show any sort of weakness or emotion but were you scared or lonely on the trip? Because it's supposed to two different questions, scared, I suppose, Forrest calls to the actual security aspect of it. When you think about Africa, it doesn't feel the same as backpacking across Spain or Italy. It feels like there's a bit of an edgy fucking blood-dome and failed at this thing. Yeah, yeah. Well, with the first one there, I mean, that's the fair. With the first one with the loneliness, that's really what the first few weeks, every night I was crying and my tent, not just for the first few weeks, but for the first couple of months I would say at least I would have moments where I'd just have a bit of a breakdown. And that was due to being alone, of course. I was totally alone for a very long period, especially when I was camping or when I was cycling in the day. It was just me and my own tarts and a lot of those tarts weren't nice.
Right? Do you have a loan on the trip? Or do you mean you feel alone in life with your parents up and past the way? Both, you know, both because I was physically alone. I wasn't really talking to anyone. No one knew I was down there doing what I was doing. And then they also the aspect of that I was physically alone for those times. And as I was saying, it was because I was starting to ask myself questions that I never dared to ask before. And I like asking myself really deep haunting things that were just destroying my own character. But I had to ask myself those questions in order to get to the other side, in order to start fixing those problems. So there was that aspect and that was making it go. What's our question, Jaskin, yourself? But I was drinking way too much, that was a stir. And that, the drink, like why was I drinking so much? I was telling people because I loved the crack, loved going out with the lads, loved the banter. But actually the truth was I was escaping my feelings and my feelings were that I'm totally, I feel totally alone, I feel like I've been abandoned by my parents, even though that didn't happen, I felt like my parents had abandoned me because they both suddenly just disappeared. And then I was also feeling this, although the world was against me for the years that followed that, you know, I felt I was, had this victim mentality, but I was never allowing myself to believe that because that's not a very attractive quality, right? So I was acknowledging to myself on the boy koala cycle and you know what? You're not a victim. People die, people's parents die. You've been very privileged. You had a very good upbringing. You're just feeling sorry for yourself way too long and holding yourself down because you're too afraid to face the truth and start going out and reaching for the opportunity in life. So I just found those questions where I didn't address them the past because it was easily distracted too, right? When you live in the city, you're distracted not by just my nights out or drinking, but by everything, by online social media or friends work, everything that's going on around you. Very interesting to change yourself. I even was talking to friends about their career and about where they're going with it. And so few people are willing to pick up their head and actually look at what direction they're going and ask, am I happy? Do I like where I'm going? And it's not even that they They justify not picking up their head, but they don't even contemplate picking up their head because they're just so busy. They get your kit ready for work the morning next day. It's your shorts and shoes are earned and polished and off into the fucking car, stuck in traffic all the way into town, work all day, come home, pick up dinner on the way home and then it's rinse and repeat. There's not a lot of time for introspection in that day as usual. I guess Africa and a cycle like that, it just gives you so much time for that introspection. Exactly. And that's what cycling does too, right? You spend so much time on the bike, especially when you go out on your own, you spend so much time, it's almost like self-terropy. You have that, and that's what's great about cycling too. It could be bad for some people in a sense that they might be facing tasks that they didn't want to think about, but because you're too busy cycling and thinking about the bike and you're in motion, you tend to be a lot more positive in terms of your thoughts. So that's what definitely helped me on the Africa trip was the bike, the rotation of the wheels, the fluidness of the trip. Every day was just rolling, one was rolling into the other, so to speak. And then metaphorically too, that's what was actually happening. I was at one with what I was doing. So it really, really helped me. It was difficult for me to get used to being on my own and thinking about these things, but it was actually therapy. It was me starting to coach myself and starting to bring up these questions so that I could address them and not just have them hold me down anymore, you know? And did you find that over the course of your trip to Linton Brett of Africa, did you find resolution in your own heads with so many questions? Oh, 100%, yeah, yeah, definitely. What I would say is everything's easy to say in hindsight. So when I finished that trip, for example, after one year, I thought I had everything figured out, and I thought, oh, that's a fixed army problems and all of that. But actually, when I went back to the city then and went back to the real life, if you want to call it that, I found that a lot of those issues were still there and I hadn't addressed everything that I taught, I'd addressed and one of, I think the big elephant in the room was, are you going to go back to the life that you had before and how are you going to start going and doing something that feels more meaningful and more purposeful to me? So that was the one thing I hadn't done until that point that I really had to go on a dress after that. Do you ever, do you own a? I do now and I did a couple of years ago. I've only started back into it a couple of weeks ago, yeah. Do you? Would have been awesome to see your journal across that Africa trip. Oh, actually, I wrote a blog journey. Yeah. You must send me that. I'll share it with listeners as well. Yeah, yeah. It's actually done a different website. It's called knowhangingaround.com. That was what the blog's name was and what I did was check that out. I think the journaling for me addresses a lot of that stuff you're talking about. Like, oh, as part of my morning routine, of this morning routine where it takes me probably half an hour or I go up in the morning forcing idea, we'll have this rush, we'll show you some day, we'll get you over, some day I'll show you this red light unit and it just simulates the zone rise because we get such shit cloud cover here in order that we don't get the zone and we've such a, you know, primitive ancestral need for that zone and the sunlight penetrates ourselves at a level which we need and we crave and now have an access to it, you know, brings on things like seasonal effect of disorder and inhibits testosterone production and a lot of stuff you need for a performance.
So I start today with just 10 minutes standing in front of that and I'll get my meditation done when I'm standing in front of that. I'll down point of water with some salt and some lemon in it. I'll jump into a cold shower and then I'll have a coffee and I'll have a journal and kind of try and keep that to a half an hour or 20 minutes, a half an hour and I'll try and do it every morning if I can because I feel like it just sets me up for the day. But on that, you're in on a piece. What I try and do is look back at yesterday and think about what lesson was life trying to teach me. You know the way sometimes we need to repeat the same mistake 10, 20, 50, 100 times before we get the lesson from it. And like the classic examples to hang over, like you talked about drink there, like waking up with a headache, having no energy and hating yourself is clearly life telling you, wasn't a good idea to have those 20 shots to kill her last night that. It does take us sometimes, you know, going to Africa and stop and drinking before we actually heed that lesson going. You know what, this much drink isn't actually good for us. Right. And another thing with that is my case was very extreme, right? It was quite a ridiculous thing to do to go and sorry, your problems out. Nobody should have to go on cycle Africa to solve the problems out. Especially when there's lying and hyena now, this outside your head. But I think something that I've noticed in life since then, more so, is that there's quite often a point in people's life and it is a fork whereby something, it's usually something very bad, something very significant happens in their life. It could be a death, it could be a breakup or a divorce, it could be losing their job, becoming redundant, it could be anything like that. But it's a moment that cracks their casing, let's say, and it makes really think long and hard about what they're doing in their life and where it's going and what does it mean and that's a moment that kind of forces them to make a big shift to make a big decision in their life in my case it was the Africa trip right and going on to do what I do nowadays but I've seen that in so many people that I know and it's all relative right it won't look as significant in some people's lives as it does in others but I've seen that happen so many people where people are times for people around me and they've gone on to start their own new business, for example, or they've gone on to take a new course in college or quit their job and go do something else. You know what I mean? So I think that's what happened to me in that case before the Africa trip. It's something that happens a lot of people in life. It's just a matter of when. But it's nearly isn't it trying to guess, I suppose, and it's a big part of the podcast, it's a big part of what you do with your Instagram videos. It's nearly trying to get someone to take corrective action before it gets to the chronic stage. Like you can go to the physio to get your knee fixed early and get a small adjustment. You don't have to wait to get the full blown fucking operation. So it's like Africa's the address for chronic stuff but a lot of stuff you're teaching through your your to your Instagram it's like being out in the mountains and just getting because especially in this COVID era we're living in now where everyone's scared our fucking shadow. It's like, there's no one in the mountains. That was my big beef with the lockdown we had here in Dublin. Remember we were at 2K? Yeah. And like... You haven't got there yet. 2K for me, it's Dolly Mount Beach at St. Dan's Park. They were packed. Like I can ride up in the mountains with no one around. I don't see anyone for five hours. It's like, you know, there needs to be a little bit of use in your head around somebody else's directives as well. Or it's like, we're trying to avoid people and social distance and yet I'm going to a packed beach with 500 people. Right, doesn't make sense, yeah. The one with the, I mean with those, the messages that I tried to put out nowadays, I tried to just make them more relevant for people. So for example, when I was camping in Botswana, let's say, that was the scariest part of my trip on the Africa trip. I was terrified because there was a lot of dangerous animals outside. I didn't know how to deal with them. I could hear them around my tent and I was crying and shaking inside and one night I fainted, one night a couple of nights I wet myself right it was that scared but there was great lessons to be learned from that in terms of fear because I did that every night for weeks and months on end and eventually I realized about fear that you know what the things I'm afraid of either one they don't happen or number two they don't exist and I knew that because that's what my first-hand experiences were teaching me. Now the thing was I can't explain this sort of thing to people back home and the way they can understand because the first thing they're going to say is that I can't go on campus in Africa, right? And I say, I understand that. So actually one of my biggest motivations for coming home last year to Ireland to do a trip here in Ireland was that I wanted to do something that anyone could do. And that's what I'm trying to do every day now. I'm trying to do things and go places that anyone can do or anyone can go. And that way whatever the message is that I'm putting out there, Not only can they understand the message but they can go and replicate it down to a T if they want or in their own way. You know what I mean? So that was the whole reason it made it so meaningful for me to be back in Ireland too, is that whatever I'm putting out there now, it's stuff that people can actually really relate and hopefully take value from but realize fully that you know what you're saying is just go and do it now and stop waiting like you were saying before waiting for the right time, waiting till I have the money, waiting till I have the time, waiting till I have the experience because the stuff I do, it doesn't require any of that.
You know what, that reminds me of a famous Mark Twain quote and it's like, I'm an old man and I've known many great troubles but most of them never happened. Yeah, you just- I've never heard that before, that's brilliant. You're just sitting in the tent there, scared of the, you know, the vogue man outside, but someone else fears that like the animals outside the tent is a very real fear. It's true, yeah, it is. But actually that puts things in perspective too, right? Because I did realise that, I realised, okay, you opened the tent door here, if there's red eyes out there, that's a cat, that means you stay where you are, right? But there was also, out of that experience came a different lesson, and that lesson was, you know what, that was something that I should have been afraid of, it was a prime affair, but it was rational. Whereas all this crap, all this shit that that I was worrying about for years, all the social anxiety I used to get, all those little worries and what do people think about me, that actually doesn't matter. And I knew that because I spent so long shaking in that tent every night, that all that stuff just totally dissipated. You know what I mean? It just became totally meaningless, like a little squeaky voice in my head. Isn't that brilliant? I was like, you're out on social media now. When you start putting content out, you get amazing warmth coming in and you get to connect with, like, you know, I would have never connected with you, probably unless we bumped into each other in a Dublin Pope. But social media, it's great because it brings people together. When you do start getting the odd person, we'll show a negative comment your way. And you were saying, you're not worrying about what people think. And I heard a grace, I think it was Joe Rogan, or podcast where he was talking about the sort of people who are giving you that negative commentary. He's like, they're just not high achievers. And he summed it up noise deep by saying like MJ, Michael Jordan is not in your YouTube comments trolling. Yeah. So I always just think down there when I see a negative comment to a podcast like MJ, Anthony your comments. What do you, it's good. The another one I heard before was Casey Neistat, you know, the, the blogger, you took her. Yeah. You took her. Yeah. You took her. He said, he's made a lot of videos about this. But he said, you know, what the haters, the people that come in and troll and leave this negative stuff that has no real purpose, their punishment is their life. I'm not that mean that I actually think about that anytime I see it. I often do wonder, what's that all about? When I say I don't care what people think, I actually do. I really do. I just have to try very hard not to. So when people leave negative comments, which happens, probably at once a day or whatever, I will notice it and I'll have to sit with it for a minute and then try and move past it. But there's times when it's just really needless, right? And anyone would be affected by it. But it's just the case of the amount of positivity I get online is overwhelming. It's incredible. So that works for me. And you can have this one. You can have this one and make it your own. So when I start getting these negative comments, they were definitely upset me at the start. And now my new default position is I care so much, absolutely value 100% take on board the comments of a very small number of people. And then I don't give a fuck about the comments of the rest of people. So you know, if my family, my group of close friends, my girlfriend, and I'm obsessed with what they think about what I'm doing, and what, you know, the image I'm putting out as they say, and if I'm changing in their eyes, that's something I'm really aware of. But just random people online, I just have it like a shield up about where it's just, I just doesn't even penetrate at all. they were like, I suppose it makes sense too because you know the intent of the message from your family and friends because you know these people and you know where the like intent is everything right. If someone has a negative comment there, the likelihood is the intent is not very good. It's probably because they're not having such a great day themselves or a great life. But yeah, that does make sense. All right. Derek, I want to finish it up and talk about your love at a mountains and forests. And it's something that's definitely again, like when we talked off air, I was like, Derek, we're on the same journey here, we're on the same path. It's like you're doing health like the tagline for our podcast is cycling to pursue health, happiness, and longevity. The tag for your podcast, if you had one could be walking to pursue health, happiness, and longevity. I love it. I'm gonna steal it now. I can do it. So, but the mountains are something that's so close to my heart as well. Like I feel like, you know, I try, I don't know anything about meditate. You know, all you have my version of meditate. And then, you know, there seems to be weird snobbery sometimes around meditate. You're not the unit right. Or you're using head space or your shit at meditate. It's more about the results you're getting from me than the process. And one of the ways that I find, I don't put a label of meditate. I put it's definitely meditative for me. It's just riding my bike up the mountains on my own. There's no one around. My completely clears my head. The effort of cycling up the hill means you just have to singularly focus on your brain. It's just inhale, exhale, for hours and ends just to keep the bike going forward. That's sort of intensity. And it clears my mind of everything. I come back no matter how shit the weather and I'm just completely refreshed after four or four hours of riding. Yeah. Do you find the forest and the mountains something similar for you? Well, what you just described there, that is meditation to me. That's what I know as meditation. I'm like you, there's no snobbery around it for me. I don't like to put fancy words in this stat in the other. So whatever works for me works, and what I do in the forest is just the same as what you do in the bike.
And it is meditation. It's your way of keeping the brain. By the way, have you ever watched on YouTube documentary called slow mo? No, I'll check it out. We'll check it out. You got to watch this. If you're a cyclist, you got to watch this because it's about a guy who rollerblades down the pathway. Some boulevard in Florida, I think it is, are California everyday and he's famous now but he's an ex-doctor and he talks about the science behind why it makes you feel so good, that type of movement. So it's a 100% relative to your cycling as well. It's called slo-mo. So recommend you check that out. Definitely. But getting back to the forest thing, I don't know what I'm doing in the forest. I go into the forest. I used to go into the window to think about my problems and to go and try and sort out all the worldly problems that I had. And then I started to go in there and not think. I got tired of thinking about my problems. I also ran out of problems to think about. So I went in there and I realized, you know what, this is just a fun place to be because it's quiet and calm and I can actually just think to myself about normal stuff, not just my problems. And then there's also a lot of people don't probably realize they've started to study the forest in different ways. So I'm just genuinely interested. This is the nerd side of me, right? So I started to learn about why pine trees are so effective on your breathing. So there is a science behind that. The chemical compound pointing cans the lungs in the same way as marijuana or an asthma device. They're actually the same chemical compound used and what I just mentioned. So there is actually a science behind why you feel more relaxed in the forest or near a forest or in the mountains as you would do in the city, right? So I think about that sort of stuff It is just about the way it makes me feel. So like you said, when you go up there on your bike and you have that time to think and you're just going through your fresh air and you're just going through the motions and you come back and feel refreshed, it's exactly the same way for me when I come out with a forest. Because I'm walking in there too, don't forget. So I'm getting that exercise and getting that fresh air and I'm getting that quiet that we just don't get a normal life early off. in places where there's no traffic, where there's no phones, no computers, no advertising, there's no people telling us what to do or what to think. So you're right, it's the exact same type of experience. I'll finish it up on this one, Derek. And it's a common thread that I see among people who are happy. And it strikes me from chatting to you and looking at your content that you're a lad who's, if I don't want to say happiness is a destination and say you've found happiness, which are a long way on that path to finding happiness. And when I see that, and I love this analysis of common trends and what is the bits that make people happy. And again, you remind me of something that it's often subtraction to make people happy. It's taken stuff away and bringing us closer to the way we used to live ancestrally, rather than addition. It's not the new card and new watch, the new suits I'd be happy when. It's the take shit away and get back closer who were meant to be is what makes me a little happy. I love that. I love everything you just said there because it's actually what I tried to do with the type of trips I take, especially I start to get to really strip them down back to basics, do real simple stuff that everyone can do and it doesn't have to be a big reason why you're going to do it. You don't have to have to climb a mountain for one reason or another, you should just do it because it's fun. But it's also what I'm trying to do with my life in general. Let's go back to the the way things were. And I heard someone say this recently, I think it was a doctor, that the hardest thing in life that people, the biggest obstacle people come across in life is not learning how to do things. It's how to unlearn what they've learned. You know what I mean? So all the stuff that they've picked up, all the negative stuff, all the stuff that hasn't served them well over the years, they have to unlearn that before they can replace it with the good stuff. So that's also something that I'm always trying to work like I'm in a happy place as much as possible, but I still have to work on this as much as anyone else. And a lot of that has got to do with unlearning all the crap that I've picked up over the years that hasn't served me. Because there is a point where like none of us are five years old and thinking to ourselves, you know what, I'm real unhappy. Like we're all happy kids. And it's at some point we learn something or we take an action that doesn't serve us and we go further and further down that road. And sometimes it can be a big process of stripping all that back. And you know, Sometimes it is as severe as having to take a trip across Africa. But the starting is, like, and you see it with, you know, the suicide numbers and, you know, brought me in there. Because I said, we're here in Ireland and crazy suicide numbers, nationally. And, you know, it's one is too many. Never mind the numbers that we're saying recently. Yeah. Yeah, it's immense to see that now. It's not really getting much coverage either in the media, but that's a big problem, right? There's people not talking about it and and people that are struggling should be going to therapy. If they can't afford therapy, they should be talking to their family and friends about it. We should be all open to that, you know? So if you're listening to this podcast, folks, and you are struggling, I would say, for conceal everything, head off to Africa. Get yourself a tent. Oh, boy. You can't, fucking three years later, you will be sorry. Please don't do that. You know what? I was giving a school talk yesterday in, I don't know if I'm allowed to say the name of the school. Anyway. a big private skill in Dublin City, Sanjay.
Belvedere College. No, I did that a couple of weeks ago though. So I was giving this talk yesterday and half of the talk was like, no listen lads. I don't recommend any of you do this, right? I had to pre-mise everything with that. Cause they were like, you slept in your tent with lines outside and I was like, well, I did, but I'm not saying, that's not the point lads, right? That's not the point. These are the same private skill kids our Mars telling them it's too dangerous to get the boss into town because you'll have to walk past working class kids. And the same time, it's the lottery of life, right? It's going to be harder for them than it is for the lads around my way, you know, because they've got all this pressure and expectation on them. So I kind of feel sorry for kids in that case too, you know? Show me the son or shelter. Show me a great man who's the son of a great man, doesn't exist. Right. And with the story as well Anthony I'd probably finish on this point. I think for me like the whole the moral of my story is that like I'm 38 now so I think I'm super young I plan on living well into my 90s so I just think that I felt at the age of 30 I think it was that it was too late to go and do something or to start or to change direction which I needed to do at the time not everyone does but I did start and even if it was now I wouldn't think it was too late it's It's so silly to think back at that time now, because why did I think it was too late? I've got another like 60 years left on this planet. The last 38 have taken a pretty long time. So it's kind of like the moral for me is that it isn't, it's never too late to start making changes to your life if you think they need to be made. And the time is right now, there's always a way to start looking at how you can do that. Definitely I'll wrap up with this short story on that team. I heard this one and it was like an 18 year old kid you in a UCD for a fresher's registration. And beside the 18 year old kid in the order lion was a 66 year old man. And the 18 year old says to him like, Oh, are you in the wrong line? This is registration for a forced year of freshers. And he said, No, no, I'm where I need to be. And she's like, you know, you're not thinking you're a bit old registrant for like a four year psychology degree at the age of 66. And he's like, you know what, in four years I'm going to be 70 years old, whether I follow my dreams or I don't. I was like, I'll put you back in your box nicely. Yeah, that's brilliant isn't it? And it's so true. It's so true. I don't know why. I think it's because we're all afraid that time is running out and it's really not for most of us, you know, we've so much time left here. Patience, like it's taking me seven years to get where I am now and that's not the half of where I'm going. So, Derek, I've, uh, Okechatiya, Illinois, I feel like this mightn't be our first, uh, chess, or mightn't be our last chess, should I say. If anyone wants to follow your journey, which I would hoyly encourage them to do, because it's always interesting for me to entertain. And where's the best spots, uh, for them to follow you? Thanks, thanks so much as well. Thanks for the time. And this has been super interesting. I really appreciate it. Um, to follow me online, well, the hazard of what I do, I'm pretty much everywhere. But the one I think that's updated the most and where the most engagement kind of happens is probably Facebook. So it's Derek Cullen outdoors on Facebook. But it's also an Instagram. I usually put stuff up in there, daily too or YouTube if people don't use either of those platforms. So pretty much everywhere I think. And you're slinging a bit of swag these as well. Are you the outdoor brand? Yeah, so I started up a brand last November called Outdoor OUT, D-A-R-E. and started selling a lot of stuff last November, but then I had people saying that I was infringing on copyright, so long story short, I went off and got my trademark quietly, went very quiet for six months, got my trademark approved, so I now own the name and I'm relaunching it this month, so that's out there. That's also on social media, but I'm gonna start releasing that for whoever wants to buy any in the next week or so. It's like hoodies, t-shirt, outdoor gear. I'm gonna be fucking plastered in a walkin' around Dublin. Ha ha ha. Good, good. I need to hear it. Derek, I appreciate you taking the time. Thanks so much and thank you to everyone listening out there and have a great week. Hey everybody, it's Anthony again. Really quick, I want to invite you to join arguably the best thing I've ever put out inside the roadman community. It's a challenge, it's a challenge called a 14 day kickstart challenge. So regardless of where your fitness is at right now, This is gonna be the catalyst for making you faster and making you leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guesswork out of everything. It's 14 days, training plans regardless of what your level is. There's masters, beginner, advanced. There's meal plans, shopping list and even a video course holding your hand and talking you true at all. So what I recommend you do right now is just stop everything, press pause on this audio and go to roadmansoycling.com forward slash 14 day or check out the link in the bio at www.roadmansoidcling.com.com slash 14 day.