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A Journey Of Self-Discovery, Learning, And Growth With Ray Martin
Introduction To Ray Martin’s Journey
Welcome back to another exciting episode. I am joined by Ray Martin. Ray Martin, aka The Daily Explorer, is an entrepreneur and award-winning business leader. As a coach, mentor, facilitator, speaker, writer, and mindfulness teacher, he’s the torchbearer for greater human consciousness. Ray is also a marathon runner and a fundraiser. He’s on a mission to empower people to live authentically and bring more joy and happiness into the world. Ray, welcome.
What a lovely welcome. Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be here.
I’m so excited. There are so many different things that you and I have to talk about. Is there something to start off with that you’d like to share with the audience?
Only that it’s just a real pleasure to be sitting and talking to you, knowing that you’ve got a group of people out there who are interested in things like personal growth and wellness and well-being and finding your true path in life and these sorts of things, which is something I’m passionate about. I’m just really happy to be here to share what I’ve learned. I’m not the world’s expert, but I’ve got some experience of this, which I’m really happy to talk about.
The first thing I want to talk about is something that you and I share in common. I’m not actively doing it, but I, too, have run marathons and stuff. I have to say that for me, marathon running was such a transformative experience for honestly reshaping my life. The sense that I relearned things that I actually knew but I had forgotten. One of those was that structure is my friend. I actually really like structure. I learned that because when I wanted to run a marathon, I had no idea how the heck I was going to run 26.2 miles.
Me too.
That’s a really long way but I joined a team in training, which is the fundraising side of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. They handed me a training schedule. All of a sudden, I had structure and it got so much easier. How many marathons have you run? When you made that decision, how did you get yourself from? I’ve decided to do this so I’m actually running.
That’s a really good question. I did my first marathon when I was 49. At that point, I was four years into what I would call an accidental, unplanned journey. I went on a six-month spasco when I left London in 2005 and I really genuinely believe it was going to be for six months. I kept on extending my trip as I was learning and seeing things. I ended up doing that backpack trip in fourteen years, but I’ll come back to that later. Four years in, I’d been traveling around Asia, and I’d seen things that really touched my heart and sparked a big emotional response.
I’d been to an elephant sanctuary in Thailand where they were rescuing wild elephants. I’d been blown up by landmines and things like this. I’d been to an orphanage in Nepal because I’d trekked in the Himalayas and I’d organized a picnic for about 60 kids. I saw how much joy and happiness that simple picnic brought, and I thought, “God, what else could I do?” At the same time, a close friend of mine in England died from cancer. I realized that I could support the research that was being done to stop other people from dying.
I started to think, I wonder what I could do. Maybe I could start a foundation or do some fundraising or something, but I had no idea what the activity would be. It was a time in the journey when I opened my mind and heart to being guided by the universe, let’s say, in a simple way. I’ll talk more about that if you want, but I’d switch from rationally and logically planning everything to following my intuition, being guided by my inner wisdom, and letting the universe give me signs and confirmation signals to tell me I was in the right direction.
Follow your intuition. It often leads you to the most meaningful experiences and growth.
As I was sitting pondering for weeks, what could I do? What could I do? Not answering the question. One night, my girlfriend, who I was traveling with, introduced me to two friends of hers, a couple from England. One of them, a guy called Matt Campbell, he’d run about six marathons. He was ten years younger than me, but I said, “What’s it like running a marathon?” He told me, “I noticed Zander that as he spoke, my body and my skin started to tingle. I noticed that physiological response. I’d started to realize that when I get those kinds of signals, it’s really worth paying attention to. Something was going on for me.
This feels exciting.” I asked him loads of questions about it. Then the big question was, I said, “Matt, do you think I could run a marathon on 49?” He said, “Have you ever run before?” I said, “No, not even 100 meters. I didn’t know anything about running, nothing.” He said, “I’ll tell you what. I know why you want to do it?” He knew about the money I wanted to raise.
He said, “If you stay here in Chiang Mai, where I live, for six months, I will train you how to run a marathon. I’ll get you on the start line of a marathon. I’ll do that for you.” I shook his hand and said, “I’ll do it.” I just agreed to do it. I had to start raising funds before I started my training. I went out into the world via social media and said, “I’m going to do this marathon to raise money for these things. Please start donating and supporting.” I’d made myself accountable then. I couldn’t back out.
The first day that I arrived when, I went to get a sense of my fitness. It just got me to run two kilometers around this small lake. I finished that gasping for breath on the floor, choking, saying, “I can’t believe I’ve agreed to do this. What the hell have I done? I’ll never be able to run a marathon. I’ll never do it.” Matt said, “Trust me, I know what I’m doing. I will have you in twelve weeks from now, I’ll have you running a half marathon and you’ll finish it easily.”
I did the New York Marathon in 2009. It was my first-ever marathon. I managed to get a place, luckily. I raised $15,000. I took it back to Nepal and Thailand, did things with the money, and oversaw the way it was spent. From then I was hooked. I’ve done five now. I did four more after that and raised about $50,000.
I’ve done 10 halves, 4 fulls, and a 50k ultra. The funny story on that one is I was training for a marathon and my coach, who is former Iron Man, runs ultras and stuff and he was running with me and I was like, “I’m going to go run a marathon.” I was asking him about how we’re running up this really steep hill and going. What do you do? There’s like, “There’s only 9,000 feet of climbing.”
You’re kidding. Nine pounds to beat.
Some of them are honestly ridiculous. You’re walking up the hills when you’re running 50 miles or 100 miles. You don’t have to run up every single hill. In fact, you kill yourself. You could be running for 24 hours. Then he goes, “If you can run a marathon, you can do a 50K. It’s only five more miles.”
It’s true.
Now, in that moment, Ray, it made sense. I’m like, “I can, you’re right. If I could do that, sure.” Now, of course, there’s a difference between, “I want to run a marathon.” It seemed like a good idea six months ago, but then we got on the start line, and all of a sudden, you had that. I’m running a marathon. What am I doing? What was I thinking or you’re doing the race and all of a sudden, you have some of those challenging miles where you’re like, this is really hard. I did the ultra, but let me tell you, those last five miles were really challenging.
Typically hard, but again, I completed it. I was really happy that I completed and that’s ultimately what I like to say to people you finish. The great thing about running a marathon is when you finish, you usually get a medal and I know I’m really proud of all the medals that I’ve earned and people don’t tend to go, “What was your time?” They just are like, “You ran a marathon.” Your time doesn’t matter. What are the other marathons that you’ve completed?
I did a New York, London, Berlin, one in Thailand, Phuket, and Warsaw in Poland. That was my personal best, the Warsaw in Poland. I actually did that one when I was 54. It took me six years to break the four-hour barrier for a marathon.
Much faster than me. For me, the highlight of my marathon career was that I was lucky enough to be given a bib for the 2014 Boston Marathon.
That’s tough to get in because you need the qualifying time.
You do. To be clear, I did not qualify. I got in because, actually my younger sister was a massage therapist and did post-marathon work for Adidas and the non-runners and stuff. She goes, “Would you ever want to run Boston?” I’m like, “Hello, yes.” She’s like, “Let me ask.” I was fortunate enough to be given a bib and stuff. Fantastic. Boston was phenomenal. I grew up outside of Boston, so I grew up watching it. I had no idea.
I knew the course, which I have to say was not a good thing. Right, because I had nightmares of having somehow made a wrong turn and adding miles because I literally knew the first six miles. I didn’t really know. After that, I grew up out in the suburbs but then lived in Boston and just outside. I knew Heartbreak Hill. I’d run it before. I knew the whole course.
Is it pretty flat?
No. Actually, it’s a net downhill, but things that make it challenging. The first 5k are slightly downhill. You start the race, you’re all nervous and you’re flying. You’re trying not to, but you’re all excited and now you’re going downhill. You’re like, “This is really, wow, I’m doing well,” then it gets flat, but then you have a lot of really more of the downhills that really get you, but you have what they call Heartbreak Hill, which in and of itself is just a series of steps. It’s not steep. It comes in miles 17 to 20.
Just relentless and at the wrong time.
You’ve just come out of a whole lot of hills, so your lungs are all blown out. I have to say that of the marathons I did run, I was supported every step of the way. There were people cheering, and it was phenomenal. You said that you may still be on this epic journey of I’ve been going on for six months and it turned into fourteen years. For extending, was it just that you were having fun and you felt there was still more to learn?
What triggered the journey was that I had run a business in England with my business partner, who was the woman I was married to, and we were really fantastic couple and did so brilliantly together to build this business up and make it successful. It was one of the happiest periods of my life. The day when she came home quite suddenly, I expected and said, “I’m leaving you and I’m leaving the company.” It wanted life to end at that point, if I’m really honest, it felt like literally the end. At the same time, my dad got very ill and he passed away shortly afterwards while I was finding a new place to live as we separated.
The Start Of A 14-Year Journey
Within two or three months, my life was, and I’d won the Daily Telegraph Business Leader of the Year award six months before. My professional life had really taken off. I had a lot of recognition for the work I did, but behind the scenes, my life was just falling apart. It was horrible. I just couldn’t bear the gap. I knew I had to do something radical. I didn’t know what. For a year, I was just paralyzed. Then a very good friend of mine said, “Why don’t you take a six-month sabbatical? You’ll figure out what to do if you do that.
Go have a change of scene, go somewhere, go and do some traveling, get your mind off everything.” I thought that’s a really good idea. I sold my home in London because I believed I’d be back quite soon, buy a smaller apartment or something, and start something else. I sold that up, but that meant I had to do something with all the stuff in the house. I gave it all away or sold it or I got my stuff in life. I love that book by The Minimalist Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus. I got my stuff down to one bag of clothes weighing 22 kilos and a laptop.
The Life-Changing Impact Of Meditation
The rest of the stuff went. I didn’t keep anything. I thought I was going back to zero. I got rid of everything, and I thought I would take it to Thailand and start backpacking around Asia, backpacking, etc. After 5 or 6 months, when I thought I would be back, I was still very agitated, very scared and very disoriented. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Someone said to me, “Why don’t you do a Vipassana retreat?” Now, I didn’t even know what that was, Zander. When they said that, I said, “Vipassana, what’s that?” I said, “It’s a Buddhist meditation retreat.
You go into a monastery with Buddhist monks, pretend days you’re silent and you sit and meditate.” I’d never been silent more than 10 minutes. It seemed like a joke to think I could do such a thing. The more he described it and talked about it, I got these body sensations. I trusted my instinct. I knew it was the right thing to do. I just knew it. I did that, and it completely and utterly blew my mind. I walked out of that place as if I had a volume knob on the side of my head where 10 is like the noisy mind, really noisy, and someone had turned it down to a 1 out of 10.
I still had a bit of noise, but it was nothing like it. I knew I wanted to stay on the path of developing that practice of mindfulness. I decided to stay around and find a mind meditation community and be part of it, which I did. I continued on the journey because I was growing, deepening my self-awareness, learning about humanity, and learning stuff I didn’t know about. I loved the learning and that’s what kept me going. It wasn’t really about so much fun.
I did have fun, too, but the real attraction of it was the deepening and the learning that was going on for me because it was enabling me to realize that most of the choices I’d made up to that moment in my life, Bronnie Ware describes this in her book, The Five Regrets of the Dying. She says, “You ask any person on their deathbed what they most regret, they always say the same thing, always the same. I wished I’d lived true to myself and not the life others expected me to live.”
The Power Of Intuition And Following Your Path
I knew even though I’d been a successful CEO and all these things, that was a life that someone else expected me to live. It wasn’t really my life. It didn’t feel like my own choice. I was determined to stay on this path of exploration long enough that I got the insights I needed to know what my choice was. What do I want to do with my life? I eventually did come to that clarity, but it took me much longer than I ever imagined.
What you think is the end is often the beginning of something greater. Keep going, there’s more to learn and discover.
Sometimes it doesn’t. I totally agree that choice is just key. It’s so important. I certainly in parts of my life, have done this, forgetting that I actually do have a choice and I will absolutely own that sometimes the choices that we have are crap and crappier. They’re not choices that we want to make, but there is so much power in not just saying, “I can’t do anything or I don’t have any choice here.” We do.
What makes us make those choices? I’ve always never figured it out.
Embracing Mindfulness And The Importance Of Choice
I know. You’re like, “I don’t have any choices.” We’ll go back to you. My partner is leaving my successful company and she’s leaving our relationship. What do I do? Do I go on with my company? How do I do that? What about this relationship? Both are not choices that you would ever have imagined you would have to make at that moment. However, when I think about empowering ourselves and reminding ourselves that we do have choices and that we define our situation, I don’t let it define us.
All of a sudden, you’re like, there is some power in saying, “I’m choosing this. I wish I had another choice. It’s fine to say I wish I had a better choice or whatever.” Look at you like, “I’ve no choice. I’m choosing not to go back to my England life. I’m not ready. I don’t know what I’m doing yet.” I certainly have been in that thing where I was at a crossroads in my career years ago and I’m like, “What do I want to do? I know I need to make a transition because what I’ve been doing for a job isn’t working for me.”
What I found is I got more clarity by focusing on what I didn’t want in a job versus what I wanted because sometimes you go, “What do I want? I have no idea.” A lot of people can get really clear about things that they don’t want. I don’t want a high-stress work environment. I want to be around people who care. They’re driven, but in a different way, if that makes sense.
No, it does make sense completely.
That helped me look at the jobs that I had and what aspects of those jobs did I really like. That led me to do technical instruction for seventeen years because I was like, “I like teaching. I’m a natural teacher. I’m curious about stuff and I want to share it.”
I love what you’re saying, Zander, because often when I’m coaching people, I ask them to think about what the thing would feel like every day, not what the name of the job is because that’s hard, because that’s trying to put a structure or a form to something which you’re trying to feel your way to. It’s the wrong tool. They say, “What do you mean sometimes?” I say, “For example, are you working alone or are you working in a team? Are you helping people grow and develop? Are you just analytic or studying data?” Then we get into a really interesting conversation where a picture starts to emerge of what they’re really trying to create.
When I work with people, I’ll ask that, like they’re struggling with what I do or whatever. I go back and say, “Look back at the jobs that you’ve had or the things that you’ve done. What did you enjoy there?” Sometimes, in doing that, I don’t have to do anything. All I did was prompt the question, but other times, I’m like, “It sounds to me that you like this, this, and this.” What jobs have that allowed you to do that more?
One of the things I’ve been thinking about all morning before I talk to you. In my book, I talk about not yet. I think not yet is such a powerful thing as a marathon. You’re training for a marathon. Ray, have you run your marathon? Not yet. Why? The New York Marathon happens in October. It’s May. You’re like, “No, not yet.” It’s not that you’re not going to run it. You haven’t done it yet.
Your body needs to get itself ready. It’s not just your head.
I think not yet is so powerful because there are things that we’re working on. You had been in Southeast Asia, and you had a really long time not yet. Am I ready to go home? Not yet. Right now, 1 or 2 of your not yet.
The idea I’ve had in my mind is to do retreat-based coaching. I have a vision for that, but it’s not ready yet. I don’t have it all worked out, but certainly, something I’m thinking about. That’s one of them. Until about a year and a half ago, the not yet was a loving relationship, a partnership. I now have met somebody and I’m a year into a relationship and I’m really enjoying how that’s unfolding.
That came after a long, long time of not having me in my life. I feel like everything comes when you’re ready. I’m ready. There are a couple. Another knot I have is that I really want to get back on two wheels again. I used to be a really avid motorcycle fan, but I haven’t had one for a long time because I’ve been traveling around the world and living in different places. Now, I’m pretty much based in the UK again. I can actually ride again.
I’m going to say my experience of being able to travel in Southeast Asia is that getting a motorcycle is not hard at all. I mean, frankly, there’s a motorcycle, there’s a motorcycle, but maybe you don’t want to drive there.
No, I did have scooters and small bikes in Southeast Asia for commuting around the cities, but I never wanted to travel on a motorbike. It was not really my cup of tea there because there are so many good buses and other ways of getting around.
Absolutely. Frankly, sometimes, the actual operation of a motor vehicle is in some of those places.
How does insurance and all that stuff work?
Also, my observation has been that sometimes the rules of the road are very different or nonexistent. I’ve been in places where I’ve been on buses or taxis, and people are coming in at me from six directions.
You’re right. In India, people routinely drive on the other side of the road in the opposite direction. I drove a Royal Enfield around India with a couple of friends, and people were getting knocked off their bikes all the time.
I was in Delhi on business and some of the stuff was just like we would be pulling out and there’s like cars from three directions coming at us at 40 to 50 kilometers per hour and I’m going to get creamed. I remember these two older women were crossing the street and we were coming towards them. As I said like 40 to 50 kilometers per hour, we’re going and they’re just walking. They’re not walking faster. We’re not slowing down. I think you’re going to hit some brakes, and we’re going to crank, but I believe there’s this karmic belief that it’s all going to work out. It does. I’m like, “I can’t drive here.” I think I found what may be one of the most challenging jobs in the world.
Which is?
I thought that, in the whole world, it was a driver’s ed teacher in New Delhi. I saw a couple of them.
Very chill.
Student driver and they’re there. I’m like, “Yes, I get someone’s got to teach them.” That’s got to be a challenging job.
Did you take it or not?
No, I did not take driving lessons there. I just watched it, but I saw it twice. I saw and I was like, “That’s got to be a really challenging job.” The chaos that is driving an engine. This has been fabulous, but if people want to get ahold of you, how can they get ahold of you?
The book I published after my fourteen-year epic journey is called Life Without a Tie. There’s a website, LifeWithoutATie.com. That’s the easiest way.
Is your book available on Amazon?
Yeah, it’s available everywhere. Quite a lot of people in America have read it, I think.
I’m sure it’s good. I will take the time and read it. It sounds fascinating.
Ray’s Six Rules For Happiness
In the final chapter of the book, I included what I would call my six rules for happiness, which came clear to me after fourteen years of living that journey.
Do you want to share your six rules?
I don’t know how much time I’ve got, but a lot of people ask me, what did you learn from the fourteen years? That’s probably one of the big questions I get asked. I said, “I can’t just say this one thing.” There are certain ways of living, I think, that are really very, very prerequisites if you’re going to have an extraordinary life rather than ordinary. Those would be things like building a strong core foundation in yourself would be one of the first rules. That’s about the amount of attention you pay to your values, your vision, your purpose, what your limiting and empowering beliefs are and working on those constantly, spending as much time as you can in your element, which is when your strengths and your passions collide and you’re in your zone.
Lastly, knowing what, at any moment in time, what the driving forces are that are influencing your decisions like driving forces apply to all of us, all humans, things like the need for recognition, service, the need for belonging, those kinds of things. They’re always in play. They’re in play every day, but we just don’t really realize it.
1) Having a dashboard where you’re constantly updating all of those things. 2) It would be what I call taking full 100% ownership for everything that happens because, like you said earlier often things arise, events, they’re not brilliant. We don’t like them. They’re not what we would have wished for. We’ve created that event for some reason; our soul and our spirit are making those events happen for our own benefit.
We don’t think of it like that, but we have to take ownership of it and say, and no, that’s the real truth. We have always had a part to play in what’s happening, and then we’re always at the course of some degree. 3) What I would call having the ability to become your own observer. This is what I call a superpower because often, when we’re stuck in our own thinking, we have no option than to go on autopilot and do the same thing we always do. The way to get beyond that is to step outside of our own thinking and observe ourselves that we are the person observing the thinking, not in the thinking.
Want to live an extraordinary life? Start by taking 100% ownership of everything that happens to you. It’s the key to real growth.
It’s quite a different place to look at it from. That’s what the Buddhists would call being mindful of your own thinking. In particular, they talk a lot about this cycle of craving, which is the source of all suffering for people in the West. 4) Make sure you build as much as you can, powerful, purposeful, sustainable relationships throughout your life. Really choose your friends carefully and develop those relationships intentionally and with intention. I’ve got stories in the book. I was away for thirteen years, and I came back to the UK at the end of this journey. I took part in a new business because someone I’d helped fourteen years before reached out to me.
This is a great example. There are lots of examples like that. 5) Once you’re doing all these things I’ve already spoken about, the most important thing is you’re using all of that understanding to empower others. The best way we can be really deeply fulfilled in our lives is to empower others never about us. That’s got to be part of your life map. If you’re not empowering others, it’s very hard to be deeply happy.
One thing, talking about Buddhism, years ago, was doing a coaching course and I was reading all these different books and I always find it funny, you read all these books and then there’s one little nugget from a book that you take away and the thing that you take away was this idea in Buddhism that things aren’t inherently good or bad. It’s how we interpret them.
What I like to say is I live here in California, and the sun is out today. I’m like, “It’s great. The sun is out.” If I’m a farmer and we’re in a drought, I might view the sun being out as not so good. The sun itself being out is not inherently good or bad. It’s how we interpret it.
I think that the way situations come up and how we interpret what’s happening directly affect how we react to them. You’re right. You said something about basically get out of your own way. We are all creatures of hell. We do something the way that we’ve done it because it’s how we know how to do it, it’s comfortable. It is uncomfortable to step out of that and say, “I’ve got to make this different.” Whether it’s changing your job, your exercise, your eating, you decide to write a book, run a marathon, all of that, there is sacrifice. For me, Epic stands for every pilgrimage, including commitment.
Another thing we share as a common experience, writing a book. I don’t need it. This is the only book I’ve written. I had no idea it was going to be as hard as it was.
I always joke that I’m a talker, not a typer. Somehow I’ve written 3 books and 2 of them are Amazon bestsellers. If you told me that in college, Ray, I would have been, “No, there’s no way.” I hate writing. I don’t like writing, but I figured out how to share my wisdom, get it onto paper, and then have something to form. Writing a book takes so much longer than anyone interprets.
It’s not even the writing part that’s hard. It’s all the post-writing and pre-publication. I don’t know about you, but when my EPIC Begins book came out, I read it cover to cover six times because I had to keep proof of it. By the time it came out, I was like, I don’t want to open and read part of my book for about three months because I’ve just been so into reading my own words.
It’s on every page. Don’t you? You know it so well.
You do and then someone’s like, “Your book.” Then you’re like, “Please read it.” I’m tired of my own words, Ray. Ray, I want to thank you so much for being here.
Thank you.
It’s just been excellent. Epic, might I say.
Thank you.
Closing Thoughts And How To Connect With Ray
I want to remind everyone that if you’re interested in beginning your epic journey, go to EpicBegins.com. If you go there now, you can get a free eCopy of my book EPIC Begins With 1 Step Forward: How To Plan, Achieve, and Enjoy The Journey. As always, I want to remind you that epic choices lead to the epic life that you want.
Important Links
- Ray Martin
- The Daily Explorer
- The Minimalist
- The Five Regrets of the Dying
- EPIC Begins With 1 Step Forward: How To Plan, Achieve, and Enjoy The Journey
About Ray Martin
Ray Martin, aka The Daily Explorer, is an entrepreneur and award-winning business leader. As a coach, mentor, facilitator, speaker, writer, and mindfulness teacher, he is a torchbearer for greater human consciousness.
Ray is also a marathon runner and fundraiser. He’s on a mission to empower people to live authentically and to bring more joy and happiness into the world.