Riding a Bike Transformed His Physical and Mental Health with Jeremy Grater

Mike Forrester: 00:00:01

Well, hello, and welcome back, my friend.

Mike Forrester: 00:00:03

And this week I'm joined by Jeremy Grader.

Mike Forrester: 00:00:06

And Jeremy is a co host on The Fit Mess.

Mike Forrester: 00:00:10

Really great podcast talking about men's mental health and just what we can do

Mike Forrester: 00:00:15

to move beyond and the real struggles that occur within day to day life.

Mike Forrester: 00:00:20

Right.

Mike Forrester: 00:00:21

You know, it's one of those, we can look at certain people and feel

Mike Forrester: 00:00:24

like they've got it all together.

Mike Forrester: 00:00:26

And that's a facade.

Mike Forrester: 00:00:27

None of us have it together.

Mike Forrester: 00:00:29

It's an actual intentional, uh, you know, Minute by minute, day by day,

Mike Forrester: 00:00:35

kind of working through things and I love the way that Jeremy just in the

Mike Forrester: 00:00:40

conversations that we've had, how he's talking about, Hey man, this came along

Mike Forrester: 00:00:45

kind of set me in a different place.

Mike Forrester: 00:00:47

This came along, set me in a different place, but he's

Mike Forrester: 00:00:50

not taking it sitting down.

Mike Forrester: 00:00:52

And that was something that I've done.

Mike Forrester: 00:00:54

And I know many other guys where it's like, meh, it didn't work.

Mike Forrester: 00:00:58

Jeremy's fighting against that.

Mike Forrester: 00:00:59

And he's looking to see, Hey, how do I get back up to where I'm my best?

Mike Forrester: 00:01:04

And so we're going to jump in and have some conversation here.

Mike Forrester: 00:01:08

And uh, I really hope that this kind of encourages you to take one action towards

Mike Forrester: 00:01:14

becoming your best self, um, moving away from where you're feeling at right now.

Mike Forrester: 00:01:19

So Jeremy, how are you doing today?

Mike Forrester: 00:01:21

My friend,

Jeremy Grater: 00:01:21

I'm doing better than yesterday.

Jeremy Grater: 00:01:23

How about you?

Mike Forrester: 00:01:25

I would say the same, a hundred percent,

Mike Forrester: 00:01:27

my friend, that's a great way.

Mike Forrester: 00:01:30

Absolutely, man.

Mike Forrester: 00:01:31

It's like, you know, if, if you keep coming back, that in and

Mike Forrester: 00:01:36

of itself is a win right there.

Mike Forrester: 00:01:38

So, yeah.

Mike Forrester: 00:01:40

Well, Jeremy, let's, let's start off talking about what does life

Mike Forrester: 00:01:43

look like for you to today on the professional side of things.

Jeremy Grater: 00:01:48

Uh, on the professional side of, I've got

Jeremy Grater: 00:01:50

probably the best job I've ever had.

Jeremy Grater: 00:01:52

Uh, I actually work for, uh, Riverside, the company that we're recording this on.

Jeremy Grater: 00:01:55

Uh, so it was a very cool company to be a part of and, uh, definitely challenging

Jeremy Grater: 00:01:59

me and, and learning a lot, uh, every day, which is also kind of, kind of the goal.

Jeremy Grater: 00:02:03

Uh, yeah, and, and aside from that, uh, I do some podcast, uh,

Jeremy Grater: 00:02:07

coaching and consulting on the side.

Jeremy Grater: 00:02:08

I do a little bit of life coaching on the side, so.

Jeremy Grater: 00:02:11

Kind of, kind of doing a little bit of everything, um, as a result, you know,

Jeremy Grater: 00:02:14

and, and enjoying the freedom of that as a result of the decisions I've made

Jeremy Grater: 00:02:18

over the last few years to get here.

Mike Forrester: 00:02:21

Very cool.

Mike Forrester: 00:02:22

Yeah, it's just one of those of, uh, dude, and you're in British Columbia,

Mike Forrester: 00:02:26

it looks gorgeous, you know, for, for those that are just catching this

Mike Forrester: 00:02:30

on the audio side, I encourage you.

Mike Forrester: 00:02:33

Go over on YouTube.

Mike Forrester: 00:02:34

Look at Jeremy's it.

Mike Forrester: 00:02:35

The trees look great.

Mike Forrester: 00:02:37

And he tells me I can't see it, but he tells me there's a

Mike Forrester: 00:02:40

mountain in the back and, and that's super got me jealous there.

Mike Forrester: 00:02:44

Yeah.

Mike Forrester: 00:02:45

Cause I'm in the flat plain, flat plains of Kansas.

Mike Forrester: 00:02:48

So there are no mountains.

Mike Forrester: 00:02:49

There are just freeway overpasses.

Mike Forrester: 00:02:51

That's the only thing we've got for elevation.

Mike Forrester: 00:02:55

Well, what about on the personal side of things?

Mike Forrester: 00:02:58

What does that look like?

Jeremy Grater: 00:02:59

Uh, man, uh, it's, it's, uh, it's, I'd like

Jeremy Grater: 00:03:03

to say it's all good, right?

Jeremy Grater: 00:03:04

But relatively speaking, it is all good.

Jeremy Grater: 00:03:06

I, uh, I'm in the middle of the longest stretch of my life without

Jeremy Grater: 00:03:09

a major depressive episode.

Jeremy Grater: 00:03:11

Uh, I am living in probably my favorite place on the planet.

Jeremy Grater: 00:03:15

Uh, I. Have a family that I love, and I, you know, look for every

Jeremy Grater: 00:03:20

minute I can to spend with them.

Jeremy Grater: 00:03:22

Uh, I'm 70 pounds lighter than I used to be.

Jeremy Grater: 00:03:26

I'm living a much more intentional rather than a reactive life.

Jeremy Grater: 00:03:30

Um, yeah, I mean, you know, on the surface, I'm one of those guys that

Jeremy Grater: 00:03:33

somebody else probably looks at and goes, Geez, he's got it all together.

Jeremy Grater: 00:03:36

How did he, how did he do it?

Jeremy Grater: 00:03:37

What does it take?

Jeremy Grater: 00:03:39

Yeah, and

Mike Forrester: 00:03:40

I think.

Mike Forrester: 00:03:43

What you've talked about right there is kind of how we can differentiate

Mike Forrester: 00:03:49

where we're at in life, Jeremy.

Mike Forrester: 00:03:52

There was a point where it was like everything negative.

Mike Forrester: 00:03:54

If something could go wrong, man, I could name it off.

Mike Forrester: 00:03:57

There was not a problem, but instead it's like you're looking at it and

Mike Forrester: 00:04:01

going, Hey, things aren't perfect, but.

Mike Forrester: 00:04:05

Here's the things that are great and I'm seeing as wins and I'm

Mike Forrester: 00:04:08

enjoying and I'm loving the fact of these things in my life.

Mike Forrester: 00:04:12

That perspective is so powerful.

Mike Forrester: 00:04:17

And I think until we really experienced that power, we don't understand the true

Mike Forrester: 00:04:22

weight of what it can bring on things.

Mike Forrester: 00:04:23

, did you always have a positive perspective or is that something you had?

Mike Forrester: 00:04:27

I'll take it from the laughter.

Mike Forrester: 00:04:28

No,

Jeremy Grater: 00:04:29

far, far from it.

Jeremy Grater: 00:04:30

Uh, I remember a job that I had for a very long time that I

Jeremy Grater: 00:04:35

career that I walked away from.

Jeremy Grater: 00:04:36

I remember colleagues calling me or because I was just everything was down.

Jeremy Grater: 00:04:40

Everything sucked.

Jeremy Grater: 00:04:41

Like, yeah.

Jeremy Grater: 00:04:42

You know, I had everything to complain about.

Jeremy Grater: 00:04:44

Uh, I was very much a victim of my circumstance, you know, very

Jeremy Grater: 00:04:47

much in my own way, life, life, couldn't stop handing me losses.

Jeremy Grater: 00:04:51

Um, you know, and, and it was all perspective, right?

Jeremy Grater: 00:04:53

I mean, I can look back on all of those things now and see them differently, but

Jeremy Grater: 00:04:57

at the time when everything feels hard and everything feels like it is stacked

Jeremy Grater: 00:05:00

against you, it's hard to not see it.

Jeremy Grater: 00:05:03

In another way.

Jeremy Grater: 00:05:04

And when you are someone living with depression, there is always

Jeremy Grater: 00:05:07

this veil of no matter how good it is now that's coming, I can't,

Jeremy Grater: 00:05:12

I can't avoid that from coming.

Jeremy Grater: 00:05:13

So when you have this lens of my life is going to be miserable at some point,

Jeremy Grater: 00:05:19

regardless of what I do, it's hard to not live that way and feel like, well, if I

Jeremy Grater: 00:05:23

go somewhere, traffic's going to suck and all, there's going to be too many people.

Jeremy Grater: 00:05:27

And I, I'm not going to get that job.

Jeremy Grater: 00:05:28

Cause I'm not good enough anyways, because you're constantly

Jeremy Grater: 00:05:31

reminded that pain is coming.

Jeremy Grater: 00:05:33

Because when a depressive episode just decides to show up, good

Jeremy Grater: 00:05:38

luck getting out of the way.

Mike Forrester: 00:05:41

So as you've kind of got that, you know, depression is

Mike Forrester: 00:05:45

there, it's, it's in the shadow, like we're just waiting over your shoulder

Mike Forrester: 00:05:49

and you've, you had that, you know, perspective, like you talked about of,

Mike Forrester: 00:05:55

of Eeyore, you know, everything's wrong.

Mike Forrester: 00:05:57

Woe is me.

Mike Forrester: 00:05:59

How did you switch from that to where you're at now?

Mike Forrester: 00:06:03

You know, celebrating your longest, um, timeframe of not

Mike Forrester: 00:06:08

having a depressive episode.

Mike Forrester: 00:06:09

I mean, that's a big shift.

Mike Forrester: 00:06:11

How did you get there?

Jeremy Grater: 00:06:12

Yeah.

Jeremy Grater: 00:06:13

Well, uh.

Jeremy Grater: 00:06:15

A decade and a half of therapy, a lot of exercising, a lot of

Jeremy Grater: 00:06:19

experimenting with letting go of vices that were holding me back.

Jeremy Grater: 00:06:23

I mean, it is, it's, it's, it's kind of all of the things and it

Jeremy Grater: 00:06:26

took over a decade to get here.

Jeremy Grater: 00:06:28

So I'd love to be able to say I did this one thing and it went away.

Jeremy Grater: 00:06:32

But ultimately, you know, my, my journey started with.

Jeremy Grater: 00:06:35

Uh, just a stupid knee injury that was ridiculous.

Jeremy Grater: 00:06:38

I literally hurt myself getting out of bed and was embarrassed by it and

Jeremy Grater: 00:06:42

ended up going to different doctors and physical therapists for different scans,

Jeremy Grater: 00:06:44

trying to figure out what happened on.

Jeremy Grater: 00:06:47

You know, keep in mind, like, I have a family history of, you know, parents with

Jeremy Grater: 00:06:51

knee replacements and things like that.

Jeremy Grater: 00:06:52

So my physical therapist said, you know, in order to not follow that

Jeremy Grater: 00:06:56

path, you should get on a bike as much as possible to preserve your knees.

Jeremy Grater: 00:06:59

And that yeah.

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:01

Sounded ridiculous.

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:02

I thought that's, that's crazy.

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:03

I'm 30 something years old.

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:04

I'm not going to start riding my bike for the first time since I was a child.

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:08

And so I did what I normally did.

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:09

Wouldn't complain to my brother.

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:10

Oh, I can't believe this stupid doctor thinks I'm going to go ride a bike.

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:13

And he was like, dummy, just decide you're the weird guy that

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:16

rides his bike to work every day.

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:19

And, you know, it was one of those things where for whatever reason, the way he

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:22

said it, when he said it clicked, I was like, I'm weird for lots of reasons.

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:25

Why not that one?

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:25

So jumped on Craig's list, ordered a bike and, uh, you know, picked it up

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:30

about a week later and started the ride.

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:32

And, you know, it was a nine mile ride to work and I started doing

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:35

that back and forth every day.

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:37

And what was amazing about it was not only like the physical benefits,

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:41

like I got stronger, I started eating better because I was physically

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:44

challenging myself in different ways.

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:46

But the, the, the presence that I discovered.

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:49

On that bike where it was like I need to pay attention to right now or I'm going

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:53

to die like I'm going to hit that bus.

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:54

I'm going to hit that pothole.

Jeremy Grater: 00:07:55

I'm going to hit whatever that that focus on now was pivotal because I

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:02

always lived in the past of everything.

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:04

I regretted everything that went wrong.

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:05

I was worried about the future.

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:06

What's going to happen?

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:07

How am I going to mess up tomorrow?

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:09

How am I going to blow it at work today?

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:11

And finding a way to just focus on right now was really, I mean, I give

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:16

credit to the bike for changing my life, but it was that moment of realizing

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:21

I want more presence in my life.

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:22

I want to be able to pay attention to right now because

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:24

this is really all that exists.

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:26

My version of the, of the past is fake.

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:29

Someone else's version of the same story is different.

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:31

My worries about the future are fake.

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:33

They don't exist.

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:34

I can't control what's going to happen in the future.

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:36

So I, you know, that.

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:38

Bike ride, that realization put me into a therapist office where

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:41

he taught me how to meditate.

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:42

He taught me about Buddhism and different philosophies there that were

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:45

really instrumental in just sort of having a different outlook on life.

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:49

And so it was, it was the one door of the bike that opened the door

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:52

to presence that opened the door to meditation that opened the door to.

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:56

Eating better that opened the door to getting off of antidepressants that

Jeremy Grater: 00:08:59

opened the door to getting off of alcohol, like it just cascaded from there.

Jeremy Grater: 00:09:03

So, I mean, if, if I'm trying to answer your question with, how did I get to the.

Jeremy Grater: 00:09:09

Longest period without depression in my life.

Jeremy Grater: 00:09:11

The one thing that I think made the biggest difference

Jeremy Grater: 00:09:13

was a consistent gym routine.

Jeremy Grater: 00:09:15

Doing something hard every day was I think the biggest, uh, you know,

Jeremy Grater: 00:09:21

obstacle I overcame to get to this point.

Jeremy Grater: 00:09:23

Um, you know, I'm still haunted a little bit by.

Jeremy Grater: 00:09:26

When and if is it going to come back, but, you know, I get little whispers

Jeremy Grater: 00:09:29

of, you know, overwhelm that are usually the trigger that lead to the depression.

Jeremy Grater: 00:09:34

And now I can recognize them for what they are and, and

Jeremy Grater: 00:09:37

realize that I have some control.

Jeremy Grater: 00:09:39

And if I go to the gym or if I go run or if I go swim or if I get in a cold plunge

Jeremy Grater: 00:09:42

or go sit in the river for 20 minutes, like those things can slow it down.

Jeremy Grater: 00:09:46

So I have the tools now to recognize it sooner and do things to combat

Jeremy Grater: 00:09:51

it and, and live, you know, a much more stable, healthier life.

Mike Forrester: 00:09:56

Dude, I love the fact that it's like it.

Mike Forrester: 00:09:59

It's a longer, bigger scope and, and picture like a timeframe that you laid out

Mike Forrester: 00:10:06

there, um, because it's like day in, day out over a longer span, doing one thing

Mike Forrester: 00:10:13

consistently, and then looking for what.

Mike Forrester: 00:10:17

Else to add additionally, instead of Jeremy almost doing like that new year's

Mike Forrester: 00:10:22

resolution thing, where it's like you pick 10 areas and you're just going to

Mike Forrester: 00:10:27

stop cold turkey, what you've been doing, that's kind of, you know, cutting you off

Mike Forrester: 00:10:31

at the knees and trying to make all these.

Mike Forrester: 00:10:35

Other changes, right?

Mike Forrester: 00:10:37

Where it's like you set yourself up for failure because you

Mike Forrester: 00:10:41

only have so much energy.

Mike Forrester: 00:10:43

You're trying to leave yourself in the past.

Mike Forrester: 00:10:46

Um, how did you, how did you buy into that kind of process

Mike Forrester: 00:10:53

of this is the long haul, not.

Mike Forrester: 00:10:56

The overnight quick fix, you know, to stick with it.

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:00

Yeah.

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:01

I think it was the evidence, right?

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:02

Like it started with the decision.

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:05

I'm, I'm the guy that rides his bike nine miles to work

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:07

and nine miles home every day.

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:09

I just adopted that.

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:10

That's who I am now.

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:11

And so it became weird not to do it almost immediately.

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:13

Like as soon as I could do it, like it sounded good on paper, but like riding

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:17

nine miles when you haven't ridden a bike since you were six or whatever,

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:19

like that was, that was a big leap.

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:22

But once I did it, I was like, Oh, yeah.

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:24

Not only did I do it, but it's kind of cool that I do this.

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:26

Everyone else is sitting in traffic.

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:28

Everyone else is riding the bus, risking getting stabbed.

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:30

Like, you know, I'm, I'm good like this.

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:33

I'm kind of unique and people would ask me about it.

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:36

Like, so it became kind of the celebrity status of like, Oh, the

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:39

weird guy that rides so far to work.

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:40

How about that deal?

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:42

Um, so it was the evidence, right?

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:43

Like it, I proved that I could do it.

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:46

And then, Hmm.

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:48

You know, when, when I proved that I didn't have to live in the past or

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:51

in the future, I saw the benefits.

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:53

So it was just like, like you're saying, you can't set out to do 10 things at once.

Jeremy Grater: 00:11:58

Pick the one, prove to yourself you can do it.

Jeremy Grater: 00:12:00

And then, yeah, maybe you'll have to go figure out the next thing.

Jeremy Grater: 00:12:03

But for me at almost every turn, just doing it leads to the next thing.

Jeremy Grater: 00:12:08

So when I started, I wanted to, to start running, I started walking.

Jeremy Grater: 00:12:13

And then I started feeling good enough to run and I was like, okay, cool.

Jeremy Grater: 00:12:16

I can do this.

Jeremy Grater: 00:12:17

And then, you know, when you're running more, you're like, I want to cool off.

Jeremy Grater: 00:12:20

So let's go jump in a cold river.

Jeremy Grater: 00:12:21

Like, it's just like these natural things that happened when I was riding that bike.

Jeremy Grater: 00:12:25

When I first started riding that bike, it was to an office where like most offices,

Jeremy Grater: 00:12:29

you'll walk by the counter that has all the cookies and the crackers and the, you

Jeremy Grater: 00:12:32

know, the junk out on the table and you grab one, cause it's just what you do.

Jeremy Grater: 00:12:35

You're kind of hungry, whatever.

Jeremy Grater: 00:12:38

In that ride, I started seeing that, that plate of food as not food.

Jeremy Grater: 00:12:43

I mean, it might as well have been a pile of rocks.

Jeremy Grater: 00:12:44

I just like logically couldn't even process, Oh, that's

Jeremy Grater: 00:12:47

something I want to eat.

Jeremy Grater: 00:12:49

It didn't even look like food.

Jeremy Grater: 00:12:50

And then, you know, being the kind of person that I couldn't wait to

Jeremy Grater: 00:12:53

spend even more time away from work, I realized, Oh, there's a gym downstairs.

Jeremy Grater: 00:12:56

What if I went and spent some time in the gym on my lunch break,

Jeremy Grater: 00:12:58

just to get away from my desk?

Jeremy Grater: 00:13:00

Like it just, your mind starts to look for what else, like this feels good.

Jeremy Grater: 00:13:04

What else can I do to feel good?

Jeremy Grater: 00:13:07

And so it's just, it's just honestly experimenting.

Jeremy Grater: 00:13:09

We find, find something that you like doing and just commit to doing it every

Jeremy Grater: 00:13:13

day with the realization that you'll probably do it four or five days a week.

Jeremy Grater: 00:13:18

But like, if you love it, you're not punishing yourself, you know?

Jeremy Grater: 00:13:21

Oh, I got to lose 30 pounds.

Jeremy Grater: 00:13:23

I better go to the gym.

Jeremy Grater: 00:13:24

I don't want to like, you're setting yourself up for failure, but if you're

Jeremy Grater: 00:13:28

like, I kind of like my neighborhood, I want to go walk around in it.

Jeremy Grater: 00:13:31

Start there and just see what opportunities that opens for you, see who

Jeremy Grater: 00:13:35

will join you, who happens to be into, I don't know, kayaking or whatever, right?

Jeremy Grater: 00:13:40

Like, like, just open yourself up to those opportunities.

Jeremy Grater: 00:13:42

Just keep saying yes to opportunities to do better and the rest of it follows.

Mike Forrester: 00:13:48

Yeah, it's, it's amazing when we quit.

Mike Forrester: 00:13:51

You know, like you described being called Eeyore and I have described mine

Mike Forrester: 00:13:57

as well as like Eeyore and the Hulk.

Mike Forrester: 00:13:59

Like, that was the combination of where I was at.

Mike Forrester: 00:14:01

Right?

Mike Forrester: 00:14:02

Um, when you change that perspective of how opportunities around, but

Mike Forrester: 00:14:08

if we're so negatively focused.

Mike Forrester: 00:14:10

We don't see that stuff.

Mike Forrester: 00:14:11

It's like we're wearing blinders to only go, show me the negative things.

Mike Forrester: 00:14:17

And it's like, yep, it can be right in front of me and I wouldn't see

Mike Forrester: 00:14:20

it because I'm not looking for it.

Mike Forrester: 00:14:22

Um, you talked about as you, you know, we're working out and

Mike Forrester: 00:14:28

feeling good and riding the bike.

Mike Forrester: 00:14:30

Like, you know, all these things are shifts in what you've been doing

Mike Forrester: 00:14:36

and, and, um, You know, how you've been acting, you'd also stepped out

Mike Forrester: 00:14:43

of your career and away from that.

Mike Forrester: 00:14:45

And for a lot of us, when we step away from work of what

Mike Forrester: 00:14:48

we've been doing, there's like this loss of identity, right?

Mike Forrester: 00:14:52

This gap.

Mike Forrester: 00:14:54

Did you experience like that?

Mike Forrester: 00:14:56

Identity shift is your 1.

Mike Forrester: 00:14:58

You know, making these changes in your life, but to also, as you're stepping

Mike Forrester: 00:15:01

away from that career, was there that kind of, who am I without these things?

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:07

Yeah, I've had that a number of times in my life.

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:09

You know, I worked for 20 years in commercial radio.

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:12

I was a talk show producer.

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:13

I filled in as a talk show host.

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:15

I was a assignment editor.

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:16

Like I had kind of a cool job.

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:18

Like when people would meet me and find out I worked in

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:19

radio, like, oh, that's cool.

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:21

You know, when you're in it, it doesn't feel very cool.

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:23

Right.

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:24

Um, but you know, there, there are shows that I was passionate about

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:27

producing and helping be successful.

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:28

And when they went away, it was like, Oh, who am I?

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:30

Like I spent so much time of my life trying to make this thing good and

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:34

have it have an impact on people.

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:35

And then it goes away.

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:37

Uh, you know, walking away from that career in general

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:40

felt really good at the time.

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:41

I mean, I literally was going to a doctor every year for my,

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:43

for my, you know, physical.

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:44

And he would say, you have to leave that job.

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:46

It is literally killing you.

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:47

It's toxic and it's, and it's killing you.

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:49

So for all of those reasons, it felt good.

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:51

But all of a sudden, you know, I used to want to go to a concert.

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:56

I knew who to call and say, Hey, can I get tickets?

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:57

Oh, sure.

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:58

They'll be waiting for you at the window.

Jeremy Grater: 00:15:59

Or, you know, like I had, I had this power, I had this access.

Jeremy Grater: 00:16:02

And when that started to go away, it was just like, well then who, if I'm not the

Jeremy Grater: 00:16:05

guy with the connections, if I'm not the guy that can help you spread your message,

Jeremy Grater: 00:16:09

if I'm not the guy that can influence the way people think about things, who am I?

Jeremy Grater: 00:16:14

Like, what, what am I even doing here?

Jeremy Grater: 00:16:16

And, you know, aside from all that, you know, walking away from my career

Jeremy Grater: 00:16:19

was joined by moving away from the town where I spent my entire life and country.

Jeremy Grater: 00:16:24

I mean, we literally moved from the U S to Canada to a town where we knew

Jeremy Grater: 00:16:27

nobody knew nothing had no jobs and we're renting a house for the first

Jeremy Grater: 00:16:31

time in, you know, 15, 20 years.

Jeremy Grater: 00:16:34

So everything about my life, other than the family I brought with me changed.

Jeremy Grater: 00:16:38

And I mean, I think I'm still kind of trying to figure out who I am here.

Jeremy Grater: 00:16:43

Uh, you know, I've, I've made a lot of progress in, in sort of determining

Jeremy Grater: 00:16:46

my purpose and, and what I'm, what my reason for being is no matter where I

Jeremy Grater: 00:16:51

live or what I do, but yeah, shedding that ego and, and letting go of who,

Jeremy Grater: 00:16:58

you know, I think the world perceives me as who I even perceive myself as.

Jeremy Grater: 00:17:02

Uh, it's hard and it takes time.

Jeremy Grater: 00:17:03

There's a grieving process.

Jeremy Grater: 00:17:04

I mean, they're literally, you know, I, whenever I go home, it's weird.

Jeremy Grater: 00:17:08

It's like, I'm, it's like, I'm possessing the body of the,

Jeremy Grater: 00:17:11

of an old version of myself.

Jeremy Grater: 00:17:13

Like when I go to the bars where I used to go, like, just get hammered for fun

Jeremy Grater: 00:17:17

and I'm just in there to have lunch.

Jeremy Grater: 00:17:18

I'm, it's just, it's a different, it's a different perspective

Jeremy Grater: 00:17:21

on the life I was living.

Jeremy Grater: 00:17:22

Um, so I don't, I don't know that I have a lot of, you know, advice on

Jeremy Grater: 00:17:26

how to get through that, other than to know you will get through it.

Jeremy Grater: 00:17:29

It just takes time.

Jeremy Grater: 00:17:30

It takes intention and deciding that you have the gift of building a new identity.

Jeremy Grater: 00:17:36

I mean, that, that's the great thing about, about it is it's all fake.

Jeremy Grater: 00:17:39

So whatever you want to become, decide that's what you want to become and

Jeremy Grater: 00:17:43

just take the steps to get there.

Mike Forrester: 00:17:48

Do you like try and figure this out on your own, like when these

Mike Forrester: 00:17:51

times of identity shift occur or are there, do you find it beneficial to like.

Mike Forrester: 00:17:56

Ask other people around you, you know, people that you trust, or,

Mike Forrester: 00:18:01

um, does it just come through time and, and internal mental thought?

Mike Forrester: 00:18:07

I

Jeremy Grater: 00:18:07

mean, I think, I think there's an element of both of I've been

Jeremy Grater: 00:18:10

in therapy for as long as I can remember.

Jeremy Grater: 00:18:12

So having that sounding board to go into that office and have someone hold

Jeremy Grater: 00:18:15

up a mirror, you know, and reflect back with what you're telling them helps you.

Jeremy Grater: 00:18:19

Process it differently.

Jeremy Grater: 00:18:20

I mean, literally, you know, I consider and think about things all day long.

Jeremy Grater: 00:18:23

But if I, if I say them out loud, my brain like literally hears it

Jeremy Grater: 00:18:27

differently and responds differently.

Jeremy Grater: 00:18:29

So just having that, that voice, whether it's your friend, your mom, your spouse,

Jeremy Grater: 00:18:34

your therapist, whoever, you know, your journal, talking to yourself on

Jeremy Grater: 00:18:38

your voice memo on your phone, like saying it out loud helps your brain

Jeremy Grater: 00:18:41

process the information differently.

Jeremy Grater: 00:18:43

So if you can do that.

Jeremy Grater: 00:18:45

I think it can help you fast track the process of getting where you want

Jeremy Grater: 00:18:48

to go, because we tend to get stuck in these thought loops and start to

Jeremy Grater: 00:18:51

find all the reasons why it's wrong and sometimes just saying it out loud.

Jeremy Grater: 00:18:54

You realize how ridiculous the thought sounds so that it's just kind of the

Jeremy Grater: 00:19:00

process of getting out of your own way and just going like what, like if

Jeremy Grater: 00:19:04

I could wake up today and be anybody.

Jeremy Grater: 00:19:06

Who would I be?

Jeremy Grater: 00:19:07

What?

Jeremy Grater: 00:19:07

Like, what's the life I'm trying to achieve?

Jeremy Grater: 00:19:09

Write that down and then fill in the blanks of how do I get there?

Jeremy Grater: 00:19:13

What does that person do?

Jeremy Grater: 00:19:14

Does that person walk by an overflowing, you know, laundry basket every day and go?

Jeremy Grater: 00:19:18

I hope somebody does that.

Jeremy Grater: 00:19:19

Or does that person take that into their own hands and put a load in right?

Jeremy Grater: 00:19:22

Like how just you have to make decisions that are that are in alignment with

Jeremy Grater: 00:19:28

the life you're trying to live.

Jeremy Grater: 00:19:29

And if you you.

Jeremy Grater: 00:19:30

Continue to let life just sort of dictate how you're going to be

Jeremy Grater: 00:19:33

and how you're going to respond.

Jeremy Grater: 00:19:35

Then nothing's really going to change.

Mike Forrester: 00:19:37

Yeah.

Mike Forrester: 00:19:38

It's like 180 degrees from where I was before trying to avoid

Mike Forrester: 00:19:43

pain and discomfort, you know, just to play small to fail small.

Mike Forrester: 00:19:48

Um, you know, what you're talking about is stepping out, doing things

Mike Forrester: 00:19:52

to find and find like that confidence that, um, Not necessarily your

Mike Forrester: 00:19:58

purpose, but at least some kind of activity that's moving you forward.

Mike Forrester: 00:20:02

So you're walking a little more confidently and, and, um, assuredly,

Mike Forrester: 00:20:07

I guess would be the word for it.

Mike Forrester: 00:20:09

Because it's like, otherwise, it's just like, I, I regress into

Mike Forrester: 00:20:13

the Eeyore kind of doop dee doo.

Jeremy Grater: 00:20:17

It's really easy to do.

Jeremy Grater: 00:20:18

And, and I think, I mean, I don't, I don't mean to say this to make anybody feel

Jeremy Grater: 00:20:23

bad, but I think that a lot of us live.

Jeremy Grater: 00:20:25

A pretty typical life and it feels hard the job sucks things are expensive you

Jeremy Grater: 00:20:31

can't afford to do the things you want to do you can't get to the places you want to

Jeremy Grater: 00:20:34

go so life feels hard but it's it's kind of like saying you know i've never trained

Jeremy Grater: 00:20:39

for a fight but i'm going to get in the ring with i don't know mike tyson and i'll

Jeremy Grater: 00:20:43

see how it goes you're going to get what.

Jeremy Grater: 00:20:45

Like he's, I don't care how old he is.

Jeremy Grater: 00:20:47

He's going to crush you if you haven't trained.

Jeremy Grater: 00:20:49

So what's been key for me is finding the things that are hard and

Jeremy Grater: 00:20:54

intentionally doing them training.

Jeremy Grater: 00:20:56

So I love cold water plunges because it's hard.

Jeremy Grater: 00:20:58

I have to talk myself into doing it every time.

Jeremy Grater: 00:21:00

And then I ended up getting in there.

Jeremy Grater: 00:21:02

And after two or three minutes, I could be in there all day.

Jeremy Grater: 00:21:04

It feels great.

Jeremy Grater: 00:21:05

When I go to the gym, how much more can I lift today?

Jeremy Grater: 00:21:08

And then I'm, when I'm done, I feel great because I did something

Jeremy Grater: 00:21:11

intentional and I did something hard.

Jeremy Grater: 00:21:13

And so when you have that sort of safe sandbox to play in, to do hard

Jeremy Grater: 00:21:16

things, to prove to yourself that you are capable of doing hard things,

Jeremy Grater: 00:21:20

all of a sudden a bad day at work.

Jeremy Grater: 00:21:22

Just kind of brushes off.

Jeremy Grater: 00:21:23

And the fact that, you know, eggs went up another two bucks, a carton or whatever.

Jeremy Grater: 00:21:27

Yeah, it sucks, but.

Jeremy Grater: 00:21:29

Oh, well, I can sit in ice water for 20 minutes, right?

Jeremy Grater: 00:21:31

Like, all of a sudden, the confidence that comes with that becomes

Jeremy Grater: 00:21:35

the resilience you need to get through all the curveballs in life.

Jeremy Grater: 00:21:40

Decide that life decides to throw you.

Mike Forrester: 00:21:42

Yeah, it's, it's almost like you, you gain like a Teflon kind

Mike Forrester: 00:21:48

of, uh, Mentality, like, um, just in the way things are coming at you, they

Mike Forrester: 00:21:54

kind of slide off doesn't mean that there's not a recognition or admittance

Mike Forrester: 00:21:59

of, oh, my gosh, man, to two bucks for eggs and five bucks over here.

Mike Forrester: 00:22:03

It's like, yeah, there goes something, something else.

Mike Forrester: 00:22:06

But.

Mike Forrester: 00:22:07

I think it goes back to your perspective.

Mike Forrester: 00:22:10

At least I know for me, it's like how I'm looking at things

Mike Forrester: 00:22:12

and how I'm doing things.

Mike Forrester: 00:22:13

And, um, you and I had, had talked before, you know, the interview began

Mike Forrester: 00:22:19

about getting back into our routines.

Mike Forrester: 00:22:21

And, um, you know, because we're talking about habits, you know, if you.

Mike Forrester: 00:22:28

If you fall off and it's like, Hey, Jeremy, I'm doing these, uh,

Mike Forrester: 00:22:33

you know, seven habits and if I quit doing those habits, is there

Mike Forrester: 00:22:38

a way for me to get back in there?

Mike Forrester: 00:22:40

Jeremy to like, you know, begin picking it up.

Mike Forrester: 00:22:42

Doesn't mean that, you know, like I'm never.

Mike Forrester: 00:22:46

Never worth the, uh, the weight of a, of a man card, so to

Mike Forrester: 00:22:50

speak, you know what I mean?

Mike Forrester: 00:22:52

Is there hope for me?

Jeremy Grater: 00:22:54

Of course.

Jeremy Grater: 00:22:54

I mean, there's a, as long as you woke up today, there's hope, right?

Jeremy Grater: 00:22:57

Like you know, I, I'm in one of those points now I, we were talking

Jeremy Grater: 00:23:02

a little bit before the recording, but like I recently went on a

Jeremy Grater: 00:23:04

trip that threw me off my routine.

Jeremy Grater: 00:23:06

And when I started getting back into my routine, I got hurt,

Jeremy Grater: 00:23:08

which set me back even farther.

Jeremy Grater: 00:23:10

And, you know, much like what I explained with getting on a bike leads to one thing,

Jeremy Grater: 00:23:14

leads to one thing, leads to one thing.

Jeremy Grater: 00:23:16

And all of a sudden you're doing 40 things that seem crazy to you.

Jeremy Grater: 00:23:19

Five years ago.

Jeremy Grater: 00:23:20

Now I'm at the point where like one thing at a time has slipped away.

Jeremy Grater: 00:23:23

And I, and I've reverted back to a lot of the, you know, old

Jeremy Grater: 00:23:26

ways of, I'm not sleeping as much cause I'm staying up late.

Jeremy Grater: 00:23:28

I'm doom scrolling.

Jeremy Grater: 00:23:29

Cause I just need to numb out for a few minutes before, but

Jeremy Grater: 00:23:31

like just terrible habits.

Jeremy Grater: 00:23:34

And so I've made a deal with myself this week.

Jeremy Grater: 00:23:37

You're going to go to the gym once this week, just go once, just get in the door.

Jeremy Grater: 00:23:41

So that next week you realize I went once, maybe I can go twice.

Jeremy Grater: 00:23:44

The first, when I first started going to the gym, I literally put on my calendar

Jeremy Grater: 00:23:48

every day that I was going to go, didn't go once, but it was on the calendar.

Jeremy Grater: 00:23:52

And at the end of the week, I looked back and I went, you literally have no excuse.

Jeremy Grater: 00:23:56

You had the time, you made another choice that went against

Jeremy Grater: 00:23:59

what you're trying to become.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:00

So after that, I put on the shoes and I went, didn't stay, but I got there.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:06

Did that for a couple of days.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:07

And then finally I went in, didn't really have a plan.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:09

Didn't really know what I was doing.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:10

So I just kind of like lifted some stuff around, ran on the treadmill a

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:13

bit and we're like, I did something.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:15

And then I got more intentional and learned, you know, a routine.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:17

I found an app that helped me, you know, design a plan that I wanted to stick with.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:22

So it's, if you're at that point, if you're at that reset point where I, all,

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:26

all the 10 things I do to, you know, keep myself healthy, I'm not doing any of them.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:30

Pick one, do it once this week.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:33

Next week, do it twice.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:34

Like, and don't beat yourself up.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:36

Life gets in the way that's it's really good at it.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:39

And it's going to happen.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:39

This isn't the last time it's going to, it's going to happen again.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:42

I don't care how perfect you work out your routine.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:44

Your kid's going to get sick.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:45

You're going to have to travel.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:47

The house is going to catch on fire.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:48

I don't know.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:48

Something's going to come.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:49

That's going to, going to mess it up and you have to have the resilience to go.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:52

Okay.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:52

This gets on, gets put on hold.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:54

And we start over and rebuild, it's all rebuilding over and over again.

Jeremy Grater: 00:24:59

It's frustrating as hell.

Jeremy Grater: 00:25:02

It's, it's the only way to do it because you're never going to be able to

Jeremy Grater: 00:25:05

maintain a perfect routine all the time.

Jeremy Grater: 00:25:07

There's this great, uh, image that I see in different forms all the

Jeremy Grater: 00:25:11

time about what consistency is.

Jeremy Grater: 00:25:12

It's not Monday through Friday, 7am to 8am.

Jeremy Grater: 00:25:16

It's Monday, Thursday, this week, next week, Wednesday, Thursday,

Jeremy Grater: 00:25:20

Friday, the week after that.

Jeremy Grater: 00:25:21

Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, it's, it's wherever you can make it happen,

Jeremy Grater: 00:25:25

but that you're doing your best to get it in as much as possible.

Jeremy Grater: 00:25:29

It's when you look at that calendar and it's blank and you did nothing

Jeremy Grater: 00:25:31

for yourself and you didn't do any of the things that you know are going

Jeremy Grater: 00:25:34

to make you happier and healthier.

Jeremy Grater: 00:25:36

That's when, that's when you're stuck and you just need to pick the one thing

Jeremy Grater: 00:25:39

that you like that, you know, you can commit to doing and get to doing it.

Mike Forrester: 00:25:43

Yeah, you don't have to be perfect, but you do need to, uh, keep your

Mike Forrester: 00:25:48

commitments to yourself to find that, man, Jeremy, it's, it's totally different when

Mike Forrester: 00:25:53

I feel like I can trust myself and keep.

Mike Forrester: 00:25:55

My word and commitment to myself.

Mike Forrester: 00:25:57

Like I show up so different.

Mike Forrester: 00:25:59

Um, and I, I feel almost like when, when I stop keeping those commitments, that's

Mike Forrester: 00:26:05

when other things come along with it.

Mike Forrester: 00:26:07

You know, it's like, Hey, they brought their buddy.

Mike Forrester: 00:26:09

Here's anxiety.

Mike Forrester: 00:26:10

Here's depression, frustration and anger.

Mike Forrester: 00:26:13

And it's like the band's back, you know, um, but I love that you're

Mike Forrester: 00:26:19

talking about having compassion.

Mike Forrester: 00:26:21

You're showing up, but you don't have to show up constantly, which could be

Mike Forrester: 00:26:27

confused with consistently, you know, you're, you're, you're delineating and

Mike Forrester: 00:26:31

differentiating them and, uh, being clear to say, give yourself grace, but show

Mike Forrester: 00:26:36

up in the best that you can, uh, In this here and now, um, when you were talking

Mike Forrester: 00:26:42

about, you know, like cycling and there being cookies and then it's just like,

Mike Forrester: 00:26:46

Hey, it's not the cookie that I need to pick up that I would have before, but

Mike Forrester: 00:26:49

now I'm just seeing it as being there.

Mike Forrester: 00:26:52

Dude, you completed a huge task in, you know, losing 70 pounds.

Mike Forrester: 00:26:57

That is, you know, keeping that commitment to yourself over and over

Mike Forrester: 00:27:01

and over to, to get to that point.

Mike Forrester: 00:27:04

Um, how did you transition from almost like, I know we've got doom

Mike Forrester: 00:27:09

scrolling, but like, Do meeting, you know, just where it's like the boredom.

Mike Forrester: 00:27:13

Hey, it's there.

Mike Forrester: 00:27:14

It's accessible.

Mike Forrester: 00:27:14

I'm going to partake.

Mike Forrester: 00:27:15

How did you transition to not just picking up that cookie and seeing it as being

Mike Forrester: 00:27:21

present, but not having power over you.

Mike Forrester: 00:27:25

But then also like, um.

Mike Forrester: 00:27:28

Not doing like the boredom eating or, um, eating to medicate, how

Mike Forrester: 00:27:33

did you, you know, shut that off and change direction for, uh, you

Mike Forrester: 00:27:38

know, getting to 70 pounds lighter?

Jeremy Grater: 00:27:40

Yeah, I mean, I'd like to say that I shut it off.

Jeremy Grater: 00:27:43

That's something I still wrestle with.

Jeremy Grater: 00:27:45

I still, you know, will find myself looking at the pantry and taking

Jeremy Grater: 00:27:48

a beat and going, am I hungry?

Jeremy Grater: 00:27:50

Am I bored?

Jeremy Grater: 00:27:51

Am I stressed?

Jeremy Grater: 00:27:52

Like, why am I really here?

Jeremy Grater: 00:27:54

And, you know, that's key.

Jeremy Grater: 00:27:55

If you can develop that beat that allows you to question,

Jeremy Grater: 00:27:59

what am I actually doing here?

Jeremy Grater: 00:28:01

I find that does most of the work for you.

Jeremy Grater: 00:28:03

Um, but I, I, I still struggle.

Jeremy Grater: 00:28:05

I, you know, I was staring at tech talk before bed last night.

Jeremy Grater: 00:28:08

I was, you know, in the pantry this morning trying to figure out what I

Jeremy Grater: 00:28:11

wanted to eat to, to calm some stress and then caught myself and stopped.

Jeremy Grater: 00:28:15

Um, it's, it's an ongoing battle.

Jeremy Grater: 00:28:18

I do know that when.

Jeremy Grater: 00:28:20

I have the habits in place like running, like going to the gym,

Jeremy Grater: 00:28:24

like the things that are hard for my body to, to accomplish.

Jeremy Grater: 00:28:28

I see food differently because I start to see it as the fuel that makes

Jeremy Grater: 00:28:30

that, that work easier or harder.

Jeremy Grater: 00:28:32

So if I want the run to be better, if I want the gym workout to be

Jeremy Grater: 00:28:36

better, Doritos are probably not the best choice to get me there.

Jeremy Grater: 00:28:39

Right?

Jeremy Grater: 00:28:39

Like it's just one habit feeding another.

Jeremy Grater: 00:28:43

For me, it's easier.

Jeremy Grater: 00:28:44

It's easier to start working out than to start eating better.

Jeremy Grater: 00:28:48

And so if I can start working out.

Jeremy Grater: 00:28:49

And then my body says, you don't want that.

Jeremy Grater: 00:28:51

It just starts to process it differently.

Jeremy Grater: 00:28:53

It starts to see it differently.

Jeremy Grater: 00:28:55

And so it, it doesn't even really become as much of a mental choice and it becomes

Jeremy Grater: 00:29:00

one that's easier to make when I'm at a restaurant and we're trying to decide,

Jeremy Grater: 00:29:03

Oh, do we want to is, is dessert a special occasion rather than at home?

Jeremy Grater: 00:29:07

You know, Oh, are we going to eat popcorn again tonight with the movie?

Jeremy Grater: 00:29:10

Like, It's, it's just having one habit that feeds the other,

Jeremy Grater: 00:29:14

like whatever, whatever gets you started will develop into that.

Jeremy Grater: 00:29:18

For me, it was the biking that led to going to the gym that changed my

Jeremy Grater: 00:29:22

relationship with food that made me question the medication I was on that

Jeremy Grater: 00:29:26

made me question why I was drinking.

Jeremy Grater: 00:29:28

It was all this cascading effect.

Jeremy Grater: 00:29:30

And so between writing 9 to 18 miles a day, adding a, you know, 30 to

Jeremy Grater: 00:29:34

45 minute workout a day, not eating junk and not, you know, swallowing as

Jeremy Grater: 00:29:38

much beer as I could possibly find.

Jeremy Grater: 00:29:41

70 pounds kind of melted away doing all that.

Jeremy Grater: 00:29:44

Now, if somebody, somebody came to me today and said, how do I lose 70 pounds?

Jeremy Grater: 00:29:47

I would certainly not say start biking 18 miles a day, only eat clean food, go to

Jeremy Grater: 00:29:52

the gym an hour a day and stop drinking.

Jeremy Grater: 00:29:54

Right.

Jeremy Grater: 00:29:55

That would, they're going to fail tomorrow.

Jeremy Grater: 00:29:57

There's no way you're going to do all that overnight.

Jeremy Grater: 00:29:59

So again, like pick the one thing that's reasonable that you enjoy.

Jeremy Grater: 00:30:03

Experiment and see how it goes.

Mike Forrester: 00:30:06

The one thing I hear, like you, you've talked about the gym,

Mike Forrester: 00:30:09

the bike doing a number of things, right?

Mike Forrester: 00:30:13

That are taking time.

Mike Forrester: 00:30:15

And the one thing I hear from a lot of guys, Jeremy is, I don't have the time.

Mike Forrester: 00:30:20

So how did you make the decision to say, I may not have the time?

Mike Forrester: 00:30:26

As it exists right now, but I'm going to put something away.

Mike Forrester: 00:30:29

I'm not going to partake in this anymore because I am that weird guy that

Mike Forrester: 00:30:33

bikes nine miles, you know, each way.

Mike Forrester: 00:30:36

How did you make the decision to, um, make that the priority and move something off?

Jeremy Grater: 00:30:43

Well, I mean, honestly, the, the bike thing was terror.

Jeremy Grater: 00:30:46

I didn't, I don't want to have knee replacements.

Jeremy Grater: 00:30:47

I don't, I don't want to end up struggling to keep up with

Jeremy Grater: 00:30:50

my kids and one day grandkids.

Jeremy Grater: 00:30:52

Um, so it was terrifying to think of having my knees replaced and

Jeremy Grater: 00:30:55

all the things that go into that.

Jeremy Grater: 00:30:57

So that fear motivated action.

Jeremy Grater: 00:31:00

The other thing I'll say is I was having a conversation with a friend the other

Jeremy Grater: 00:31:03

day, who's, uh, just recently retired.

Jeremy Grater: 00:31:06

And he was asking me about cold plunging because he knows that

Jeremy Grater: 00:31:08

I've been doing it for years now.

Jeremy Grater: 00:31:10

And I was like, Oh, that's great.

Jeremy Grater: 00:31:12

That's so cool.

Jeremy Grater: 00:31:13

Like, I'm glad you're curious about what is it about this particularly

Jeremy Grater: 00:31:16

that you're, you're interested in?

Jeremy Grater: 00:31:18

And he's like, well, you know, I just figure I'm retired now.

Jeremy Grater: 00:31:20

It's time to take care of myself.

Jeremy Grater: 00:31:23

And that just hit me like a ton of bricks.

Jeremy Grater: 00:31:25

It's like, I don't want.

Jeremy Grater: 00:31:27

I don't want anyone to wait till they're in their seventies to

Jeremy Grater: 00:31:30

start taking care of themselves.

Jeremy Grater: 00:31:31

Like the, when I think now about the advice, you know, cause you

Jeremy Grater: 00:31:35

usually get the, what would you ask the, you know, what would you say

Jeremy Grater: 00:31:37

to the 20 year old version of you?

Jeremy Grater: 00:31:39

Consistency, like just what, just do something and do it a lot.

Jeremy Grater: 00:31:42

And over time it will pay off.

Jeremy Grater: 00:31:45

But if you wait till you're In your seventies to start, there's not enough

Jeremy Grater: 00:31:48

time for the compounding interest to build up to, to help you be the version of

Jeremy Grater: 00:31:53

you, you want to be, you can get closer.

Jeremy Grater: 00:31:56

Certainly I would much rather you still wherever you are in your, if

Jeremy Grater: 00:32:00

you even are in your seventies now, and you're hearing this start now and

Jeremy Grater: 00:32:03

get closer to that version, because here's the, here's the other trick.

Jeremy Grater: 00:32:07

You never fully reach it.

Jeremy Grater: 00:32:09

I don't care what magical course somebody's selling you.

Jeremy Grater: 00:32:12

I don't care what three steps to freedom you bought for an online course,

Jeremy Grater: 00:32:16

whatever you never fully reach it.

Jeremy Grater: 00:32:18

This is a lifelong process.

Jeremy Grater: 00:32:20

You'll get closer.

Jeremy Grater: 00:32:21

You'll feel happier.

Jeremy Grater: 00:32:22

You'll feel better.

Jeremy Grater: 00:32:25

The goal you have should be the North Star that you would never actually

Jeremy Grater: 00:32:27

achieve because I don't know that you can.

Jeremy Grater: 00:32:29

I don't know that any human being can ever become so fully actualized and Zen.

Jeremy Grater: 00:32:34

That they're just like, Oh, there's nothing left to do.

Jeremy Grater: 00:32:37

I I'm in pure bliss.

Jeremy Grater: 00:32:38

100 percent of the time strive for contentment, man.

Jeremy Grater: 00:32:41

Like strive for like, I'm better than yesterday and that

Jeremy Grater: 00:32:45

will always pay off for you.

Jeremy Grater: 00:32:46

But if you wait, there will come a point where there's not enough time

Jeremy Grater: 00:32:51

for the, for the interest to pay off, to make it worth your while.

Mike Forrester: 00:32:56

Jeremy, if you had caught me before I started.

Mike Forrester: 00:32:59

Working on my healing and I had heard you say you're never

Mike Forrester: 00:33:03

going to reach it, keep working.

Mike Forrester: 00:33:07

My question to you would have been, Jeremy, if I'm never going

Mike Forrester: 00:33:09

to get there, why start today?

Mike Forrester: 00:33:12

Because I'm already tired from fighting the depression.

Mike Forrester: 00:33:15

I'm already exhausted.

Mike Forrester: 00:33:17

I don't need to fight to do something consistently to be on a journey to

Mike Forrester: 00:33:22

something that I'm never going to reach.

Mike Forrester: 00:33:24

Why would I want to, to jump in there, Jeremy?

Jeremy Grater: 00:33:28

Because life is pain.

Jeremy Grater: 00:33:31

It's up to you to choose which pain you want to endure.

Jeremy Grater: 00:33:34

Do you want to endure the pain that life throws at you?

Jeremy Grater: 00:33:36

Or do you want to endure the pain that you bring upon yourself?

Jeremy Grater: 00:33:39

If you can choose to be sore and achy because you lifted heavy weights that

Jeremy Grater: 00:33:45

day, rather than sore and achy because you sat on the couch and haven't moved in six

Jeremy Grater: 00:33:50

months, and stress is killing you and your job's hard, which one are you gonna pick?

Jeremy Grater: 00:33:55

We were talking before you hit record about going to the gym

Jeremy Grater: 00:33:57

and the soreness that you feel.

Jeremy Grater: 00:33:58

I used to hate it, like, Oh, this hurts.

Jeremy Grater: 00:34:00

This sucks.

Jeremy Grater: 00:34:01

But then I realized like, that's proof that I'm alive.

Jeremy Grater: 00:34:03

That's proof that I'm doing the work.

Jeremy Grater: 00:34:05

That's proof that I have another shot at getting better.

Jeremy Grater: 00:34:08

So it's always life's always going to suck.

Jeremy Grater: 00:34:11

It is, I'm sorry, that's the hard truth of all of this stuff is it's

Jeremy Grater: 00:34:15

always going to be hard, but you can make it better than it was yesterday,

Jeremy Grater: 00:34:19

incrementally, sometimes massively, but for the most part, it is a slow process

Jeremy Grater: 00:34:24

and the more intentional you are about the pain you endure, the easier all the

Jeremy Grater: 00:34:29

other stuff is that you deal with gets.

Jeremy Grater: 00:34:31

To deal with, I have not been in my room in the dark for three days

Jeremy Grater: 00:34:35

dealing with depression because I decided to do something different.

Jeremy Grater: 00:34:39

I would much rather be sore, be disappointed in myself for not

Jeremy Grater: 00:34:42

going as much as I want to, but, but intentionally trying to become the

Jeremy Grater: 00:34:46

person who doesn't live with this thing than to be constantly looking

Jeremy Grater: 00:34:50

around the corner for, oh, is it here?

Jeremy Grater: 00:34:51

Is it there?

Jeremy Grater: 00:34:52

Where's it coming from?

Jeremy Grater: 00:34:53

And then having it hit me over the head out of nowhere.

Jeremy Grater: 00:34:55

So.

Jeremy Grater: 00:34:56

Both suck.

Jeremy Grater: 00:34:57

Both are hard, but I like the one where I have some control over the outcome.

Mike Forrester: 00:35:02

Yeah, and I think that's part of the journey is I get to choose.

Mike Forrester: 00:35:07

I get to choose which I'm going to do.

Mike Forrester: 00:35:09

And if you had known me before, my big thing was pain avoidance.

Mike Forrester: 00:35:14

I didn't want to be discomfortable.

Mike Forrester: 00:35:15

I didn't want to be put out of, um, What I felt was safe, you know, it

Mike Forrester: 00:35:22

was like, this is the pain I know, and I don't have to worry about

Mike Forrester: 00:35:26

anything else, but it was such a small, disappointing and frustrating life.

Mike Forrester: 00:35:32

If you can call it a life, I was eating out an existence.

Mike Forrester: 00:35:37

Um.

Mike Forrester: 00:35:38

Whereas what you're talking about is, yes, I'm fighting, but there's

Mike Forrester: 00:35:42

rewards and things to celebrate in a, in a totally different way

Mike Forrester: 00:35:49

than we could ever have imagined.

Mike Forrester: 00:35:52

When we're fighting, you know, like you talked about the three day episode

Mike Forrester: 00:35:55

in the dark depression, all of that.

Mike Forrester: 00:35:58

It's, it's a totally different fight.

Mike Forrester: 00:36:01

It's fighting for something, not against something.

Mike Forrester: 00:36:04

Um, I think is where the real power comes in.

Mike Forrester: 00:36:06

Is that,

Jeremy Grater: 00:36:07

yeah, but that

Mike Forrester: 00:36:08

line up with what you feel

Jeremy Grater: 00:36:09

it's in our genetics.

Jeremy Grater: 00:36:10

I mean, Prehistoric versions of us sat in caves trying to avoid the tiger outside.

Jeremy Grater: 00:36:16

So of course we're, we're still terrified of the tiger outside.

Jeremy Grater: 00:36:19

So we're trying to avoid discomfort.

Jeremy Grater: 00:36:21

We're trying to be safe all of the time.

Jeremy Grater: 00:36:23

Society wants us to be safe.

Jeremy Grater: 00:36:25

There's how many, how many apps do you have on your phone that bring you

Jeremy Grater: 00:36:28

everything you want to your front door that you used to have to go out into

Jeremy Grater: 00:36:31

the world to get, you watch Netflix when you used to have to go to the video

Jeremy Grater: 00:36:34

store, Uber brings you your dinner.

Jeremy Grater: 00:36:36

Like you don't have to go out into the world to do hard things.

Jeremy Grater: 00:36:39

And so.

Jeremy Grater: 00:36:40

Yeah, it's, you have to decide, do I want to sit here waiting for the tiger

Jeremy Grater: 00:36:46

to show up or do I want to go hunt him so I don't have to worry about it anymore?

Jeremy Grater: 00:36:49

That's the part of your brain that you're, that you're talking to when you're on

Jeremy Grater: 00:36:53

this journey, when you're trying to figure this out, I would much rather go hunt the

Jeremy Grater: 00:36:56

tiger and find him than sit in my house waiting for, for it to show up one day.

Mike Forrester: 00:37:02

Yeah, that's so true.

Mike Forrester: 00:37:03

That hits so hard right there, man.

Mike Forrester: 00:37:06

Uh, cause you know, it's out there, but, uh, you don't know.

Mike Forrester: 00:37:09

If it's after you or if it's off, uh, you know, playing, playing in the jungle.

Mike Forrester: 00:37:15

So for you, like what did an ideal setup of daily habits look like for you?

Mike Forrester: 00:37:23

And like, what was the outcome?

Mike Forrester: 00:37:26

From those habits that kind of set you on that path for the rest of the day.

Jeremy Grater: 00:37:30

Yeah.

Jeremy Grater: 00:37:31

I mean, it again was kind of a cascading thing where, you know,

Jeremy Grater: 00:37:34

there's a coach that I work with, and I went to him kind of at rock bottom.

Jeremy Grater: 00:37:38

I'd lost a job and was terrified about the future and not taking care of myself.

Jeremy Grater: 00:37:42

And he Uh, the first thing we talked about was just how I felt every day.

Jeremy Grater: 00:37:46

I felt miserable getting out of bed every day.

Jeremy Grater: 00:37:49

So we talked about coffee and I described that that was

Jeremy Grater: 00:37:52

basically all of my food groups.

Jeremy Grater: 00:37:53

I just drank coffee all day long.

Jeremy Grater: 00:37:55

And so he was like, scale it back, dude, one or two cups stopped by 10.

Jeremy Grater: 00:37:59

And it was one of those things again, that I knew that I've talked about,

Jeremy Grater: 00:38:01

that I've interviewed people about, but I just, I love, I love coffee.

Jeremy Grater: 00:38:06

So I had to, I had to let that go.

Jeremy Grater: 00:38:08

And then he was like, and then start going to the gym two or three days a week.

Jeremy Grater: 00:38:11

So I started doing that two or three became three or four and then I

Jeremy Grater: 00:38:15

added a trail running on the off day.

Jeremy Grater: 00:38:18

So I was either in the gym or running on a mountain every day.

Jeremy Grater: 00:38:20

And on top of that I was having coffee which you know, and

Jeremy Grater: 00:38:24

and I was tracking my protein.

Jeremy Grater: 00:38:25

I was tracking my calories.

Jeremy Grater: 00:38:27

I was drinking a ton of water.

Jeremy Grater: 00:38:29

I was getting seven to eight hours of sleep every night.

Jeremy Grater: 00:38:32

Journaling, meditating, like, just check in all the boxes, like, you know,

Jeremy Grater: 00:38:38

taking my vitamins, all the stuff.

Jeremy Grater: 00:38:39

Uh, and so again, if, if someone was asking me for advice, I

Jeremy Grater: 00:38:45

would not give them that list.

Jeremy Grater: 00:38:46

I would say, you might land here one day, but start by drinking more water.

Jeremy Grater: 00:38:51

Just see how that goes.

Jeremy Grater: 00:38:52

Start by taking vitamins.

Jeremy Grater: 00:38:53

See if, see if that helps.

Jeremy Grater: 00:38:55

Like, just try the one thing, but yeah, I mean, for me, it's, you

Jeremy Grater: 00:38:58

know, it's getting up at five, which.

Jeremy Grater: 00:39:01

I hate sometimes, but if five to six is the only time I have for me to

Jeremy Grater: 00:39:06

take care of me, then I have to get up at five or six, you know, and,

Jeremy Grater: 00:39:09

and do that because I've, I've just, you know, I, I did the math on this.

Jeremy Grater: 00:39:13

Somebody was talking about all the habits and all the things it

Jeremy Grater: 00:39:16

takes to do what they need to do.

Jeremy Grater: 00:39:17

And I was like, if I spend one hour every day taking care of me, not necessarily a

Jeremy Grater: 00:39:22

dedicated hour, but 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there adds up to an hour, that's

Jeremy Grater: 00:39:26

5 percent of your day, your whole day, 5%.

Jeremy Grater: 00:39:30

That 5 percent can change 100 percent of your life.

Jeremy Grater: 00:39:34

So I hear that you don't have time.

Jeremy Grater: 00:39:36

We all have time.

Jeremy Grater: 00:39:38

You might have 10 minutes.

Jeremy Grater: 00:39:40

You might have an hour.

Jeremy Grater: 00:39:41

I don't know.

Jeremy Grater: 00:39:42

I don't know how busy your life is.

Jeremy Grater: 00:39:44

If you have a phone, you're probably spending too much time looking at it.

Jeremy Grater: 00:39:47

If you have Netflix, you're probably spending too much

Jeremy Grater: 00:39:49

time walking, watching it.

Jeremy Grater: 00:39:51

And listen, I'm, I'm all for movies.

Jeremy Grater: 00:39:52

Like watching movies is that's my family loves.

Jeremy Grater: 00:39:55

It's, it's like part of our DNA.

Jeremy Grater: 00:39:58

So there's an, there's a time for that.

Jeremy Grater: 00:40:00

And I get that, but like, I guarantee if you, if you literally logged in 15

Jeremy Grater: 00:40:05

minute chunks, what you do all day, every day for a day or two, you'll find

Jeremy Grater: 00:40:09

that you have more time than you think.

Jeremy Grater: 00:40:11

You're just not prioritizing the things that you know are more important to you.

Jeremy Grater: 00:40:14

And that is hard to do when you are in the trenches and when you have a job that

Jeremy Grater: 00:40:20

sucks and things aren't great at home and like, and you know, the list is huge, but

Jeremy Grater: 00:40:24

it's that list gets smaller when you start finding the time to take care of yourself.

Jeremy Grater: 00:40:28

People make the, the, you know, the airplane analogy of, you know,

Jeremy Grater: 00:40:31

put on your own mask to be able to help the person next to you.

Jeremy Grater: 00:40:34

I don't, I don't like that analogy.

Jeremy Grater: 00:40:35

It's kind of fatalistic.

Jeremy Grater: 00:40:36

So there was one that I learned relatively recently about

Jeremy Grater: 00:40:40

the, the champagne fountain.

Jeremy Grater: 00:40:42

You know, when you, when you go to the wedding and the glasses are all

Jeremy Grater: 00:40:43

stacked up, they're always filling up the top one so that it can overflow

Jeremy Grater: 00:40:46

and fill all the glasses below it.

Jeremy Grater: 00:40:48

That's a much more celebratory way to look at it.

Jeremy Grater: 00:40:51

If that analogy doesn't work for you.

Jeremy Grater: 00:40:53

The one I discovered the other day was, was literally the gas tank in your car.

Jeremy Grater: 00:40:56

I. Hate pulling over to fill up gas in my car for a lot, for a lot of reasons.

Jeremy Grater: 00:41:01

So I will drive that thing until there is a drop left and,

Jeremy Grater: 00:41:05

you know, and take my chances.

Jeremy Grater: 00:41:07

And it just kind of hit me the other day.

Jeremy Grater: 00:41:09

I was driving around with my family and I was like, you know, I'm, I'm on

Jeremy Grater: 00:41:11

E I'm hoping we're going to be able to accomplish everything we want to do.

Jeremy Grater: 00:41:16

Most likely we run out of gas here and this ends badly.

Jeremy Grater: 00:41:19

So if I just take the time a little bit earlier to fill up the tank

Jeremy Grater: 00:41:22

and make sure that it's full, I can take my family so much further.

Jeremy Grater: 00:41:26

And I just, for me, that, that was the one that.

Jeremy Grater: 00:41:28

That clicked because that's how I drive.

Jeremy Grater: 00:41:30

I drive on E all the time and I live on E all the time.

Jeremy Grater: 00:41:34

So I need to, you know, add those things back into my life that fill me up so

Jeremy Grater: 00:41:39

that, you know, when my kids are being normal kids, it doesn't drive me crazy.

Jeremy Grater: 00:41:43

I have the resilience and the strength to go like, okay, cool.

Jeremy Grater: 00:41:46

This is them being them.

Jeremy Grater: 00:41:47

Participate.

Jeremy Grater: 00:41:48

Don't resist it because you're angry and frustrated and tired.

Jeremy Grater: 00:41:51

So yeah.

Jeremy Grater: 00:41:52

As much as it sucks, pull over and fill up the tank, man.

Mike Forrester: 00:41:55

Yeah.

Mike Forrester: 00:41:56

Don't let your kids be the thing that breaks the camel's back

Mike Forrester: 00:41:59

because you're so far on the edge.

Mike Forrester: 00:42:02

I've read about that.

Mike Forrester: 00:42:03

I won't say I've lived it.

Mike Forrester: 00:42:05

Although I have way too many times and they were the recipients of like

Mike Forrester: 00:42:09

the wrath of dad and it's like You didn't do anything to to deserve that.

Mike Forrester: 00:42:14

So yeah, I like the fact of hey, make sure you've you've got enough in your

Mike Forrester: 00:42:19

tank that uh Your kids aren't going to be the thing that tips it over.

Mike Forrester: 00:42:23

So,

Jeremy Grater: 00:42:24

but also, you know, to touch on this point, like even with the

Jeremy Grater: 00:42:27

full tank stuff can still grind you down.

Jeremy Grater: 00:42:30

Like, you know, you're still going to have a flat tire, like

Jeremy Grater: 00:42:32

stuff's still going to go wrong.

Jeremy Grater: 00:42:33

So again, like I'm, I'm sitting over here giving you all this, you

Jeremy Grater: 00:42:36

know, advice and wisdom that I've learned and applied to my life.

Jeremy Grater: 00:42:39

And I still struggle every day.

Jeremy Grater: 00:42:41

Right.

Jeremy Grater: 00:42:41

It's, it's never perfect.

Jeremy Grater: 00:42:42

It's never ideal, but if today's a little better than yesterday,

Jeremy Grater: 00:42:46

then, then I'm on the right track.

Mike Forrester: 00:42:48

Yeah.

Mike Forrester: 00:42:48

The thing that I think is, uh, like one of my biggest challenges, Jeremy

Mike Forrester: 00:42:52

is relearning lessons where it's like, I knew it and I stepped away from it.

Mike Forrester: 00:42:57

And it's almost like that medication.

Mike Forrester: 00:42:59

Oh yeah, I'm doing great.

Mike Forrester: 00:43:00

I don't need the medication or the supplements or the vitamins or whatever.

Mike Forrester: 00:43:04

And it's like, then that's where all the dominoes fall.

Mike Forrester: 00:43:07

You know, the house of cards every

Jeremy Grater: 00:43:08

day for a year.

Jeremy Grater: 00:43:09

I feel great.

Jeremy Grater: 00:43:09

I guess I don't need to go anymore.

Jeremy Grater: 00:43:12

Yeah,

Mike Forrester: 00:43:12

100 percent man.

Mike Forrester: 00:43:14

Well, Jeremy, thank you so much for, for joining me and sharing and just

Mike Forrester: 00:43:18

being open and honest about where things are at, how it's like, you know,

Mike Forrester: 00:43:22

yeah, our identity is, is going to be challenged at times when we step away

Mike Forrester: 00:43:26

from that job or, you know, things shift.

Mike Forrester: 00:43:29

But, uh, dude, we're not stuck in the ruts and the challenges that we face.

Mike Forrester: 00:43:33

They aren't Final that we do have control and it's about making small incremental

Mike Forrester: 00:43:39

changes while still showing ourselves the grace in that growth process there.

Mike Forrester: 00:43:45

So, Jeremy, thank you so much.

Mike Forrester: 00:43:47

How can guys reach out to you outside of the podcast?

Jeremy Grater: 00:43:50

I mean, the best way, honestly, is through the podcast.

Jeremy Grater: 00:43:52

You can find us on all the social medias at fitmessguys.

Jeremy Grater: 00:43:56

You can also email us anytime info@thefitmess.com and our

Jeremy Grater: 00:44:00

website is thefitmess.com.

Mike Forrester: 00:44:03

Awesome.

Mike Forrester: 00:44:04

Jeremy, thank you again so much.

Mike Forrester: 00:44:05

I appreciate it.

Mike Forrester: 00:44:06

My friend.

Jeremy Grater: 00:44:06

Thank you.

Jeremy Grater: 00:44:06

Appreciate the opportunity.