Episode 141 | Aug 7, 2025

The Sacred Edge: Where Growth Begins and Comfort Ends, With Akshay Nanavati

What would it mean to truly explore your limits, physically, emotionally, and spiritually? This week on Health Coach Talk, Dr. Sandi sits down with Akshay Nanavati, a speaker, author, and former Marine whose journey through trauma, addiction, and war led him to a life of intentional suffering, deep self-exploration, and global impact. From ultramarathons to solitude in Antarctica, Akshay shares what it means to live at the edge of human potential and how facing discomfort can lead to profound transformation.

“We often demonize one side as bad, right? Pain is bad, fear is bad, stress is bad. But when you start removing that dualistic thinking and embrace both as two edges of a greater whole, you can achieve a greater degree of peace, of freedom, and ultimately growth. The Sacred Edge is about finding one of these dualities that’s causing you friction and playing on the other edge of it.”

Akshay Nanavati

In this conversation, Akshay shares his most recent journey: a solo Antarctic expedition that was deemed “impossible” by many experts. What began as a 115-day, coast-to-coast trek became a profound lesson in presence, mortality, and choosing when to stop. Along the way, Akshay opens up about the power of solitude, his recovery from trauma, and the philosophy he now calls the “Sacred Edge,” the space between opposites, where real growth lives.

Akshay’s personal story is one of transformation. After struggling with drug addiction and losing friends in high school, he enlisted in the Marines. His experiences in Iraq left him with PTSD, survivor’s guilt, and alcoholism that brought him to the brink of suicide. But instead of giving up, he chose to face his pain head-on. That decision launched a lifelong pursuit of mastering the mind through intentional hardship.

For health coaches, Akshay’s story is a powerful reminder that the path to healing doesn’t come from avoiding struggle, but by building a positive relationship with it. His message of stress inoculation, emotional awareness, and going to your Sacred Edge aligns beautifully with the work coaches do to help clients build resilience and step into growth. Whether it’s navigating chronic illness, shifting mindsets, or facing internal fear, this episode offers actionable insight for anyone supporting others through transformation.

Watch The Episode

Listen Now

Transcript

Dr. Sandi: It is not often that you encounter somebody who truly goes to their edge. My guest today calls it your Sacred Edge, and I’m excited to bring him on “Health Coach Talk” so that he can share his story and inspire you.

Let me tell you about Akshay Nanavati. He has overcome drug addiction, PTSD from fighting in Iraq with the Marines, depression, and alcoholism that pushed him to the brink of suicide. Since then, by alchemizing his demons, he has built a global business, run ultramarathons, spent 17 days in darkness and isolation, and survived 100 days alone, dragging heavy sleds through the polar regions. Despite a rare blood disorder that two doctors told him would kill him in boot camp, he defied the odds and most recently pushed his body to the edge of death, dragging a 420-pound sled for 500 miles alone in Antarctica for 60 days on what experts have called “the boldest Antarctic expedition in modern times.”

Combining his life experience with years of research in neuroscience, psychology, and spirituality, he wrote the book “Fearvana,” which is endorsed by the Dalai Lama. Now, Akshay travels the world as a speaker and trainer to help people explore their edges, wage war on their limits, and master their mind in order to reach the heights of peak performance along with the depths of inner peace. I bring you my special guest Akshay Nanavati.

I got to know him at an event that I’ve attended for many years called the Consumer Health Summit and just blown away, Akshay, by your story, by your courage, your determination. And so I thought we’d start out just by having you talk about this trek that you just got back from this solo expedition to Antarctica. What drove you to do this, which was an extreme challenge? So, can you talk about that journey?

Akshay: Sure. So, what the journey was, I was attempting to complete the world’s first coast-to-coast ski crossing of Antarctica. This had never even been attempted before, and many adventurers considered it to be impossible. The mission was to drag two sleds that initially weighed 420 pounds with all my food, fuel, supplies to survive out there completely alone for 115 days, dragging these sleds over 1,750 miles. And the desire was to push the edge of the human potential to try something that was on the very cusp of impossible. And after attempting it, as we get into this, it didn’t play out the way I would have liked, but I truly believe it was an impossible feat.

But I wanted to see what the human mind and the human spirit can achieve on the very edge of all that is. So, being driven by this desire to push the edge of the human potential that had built up over decades of doing hard things from when I first enlisted in the Marines in 2004, after coming out of a lifestyle of drug addiction, that killed two of my friends in high school, to then starting to push all my fears and explore the edge of my fears through mountain climbing, cave diving, skydiving. After serving in Iraq as an infantry Marine officer, I struggled a lot after the war, diagnosed with PTSD, depression, alcoholism that drove me to the brink of suicide. And rising up from that abyss, I got consumed with this search for exploring the edge of the human spirit to see what I would find. And since then, I’ve built a business, written books, run ultramarathons, spent 17 days in darkness. And so this was a culmination of decades of playing on those edges to go this time as far out as possible and unearth the treasures of the soul.

Dr. Sandi: Wow, just incredible to hear your story. And every time I hear it, I’m moved. You talk about edge and you talk about going to your Sacred Edge. That resonated with me. So, can you describe what that is?

Akshay: Yeah, the idea of the Sacred Edge is this realization that every one of us will have a different edge. And if you look at it at a meta level, the entire human experience is this dance of opposites. There’s life and death, light and dark, pain and pleasure, control and surrender, ego and humility, so on and so forth. And through these life experiences that I’ve had playing on these edges, I’ve come to learn that these opposites are not separate but two expressions of the same whole. But we often demonize one side as bad, right? Pain is bad, fear is bad, stress is bad. We think of these as “bad emotions,” “bad experiences.” But when you start removing that dualistic thinking that one is bad or good and start embracing both as two edges of a greater whole, you can achieve a greater degree of peace, of freedom and ultimately growth in whatever it is you’re seeking.

So, what the Sacred Edge is about finding one of these dualities that is causing you friction and going playing on the other edge of it, because that is your Sacred Edge. So, for example, for me, after coming out of that abyss and channeling my own pain and suffering from the war, the friends I’ve lost, my own battle with addiction, I started doing hard things from running ultramarathons and building this business, but I got so comfortable with suffering that I remember once many years ago, I was out on a run and I saw a sign that said 5k fun run. And I had visceral disgust at the idea of a fun run like you don’t run for fun. My paradigm was that everyone had to be an exercise in suffering. And everything I was doing I realized was creating more suffering because I’ve gotten so comfortable with it.

So, becoming aware of this, my edge became joy. It became fun. It became doing playful things. We live in this culture now, especially in hyper masculine cultures where they’ll say comfort is the enemy, but comfort is not the enemy. Comfort is valuable just as much just as discomfort is. Too much comfort is the enemy, of course, but so is too much discomfort, right? They both exist on a spectrum. Even if you look at breath, the foundation of our life, it’s two opposing forces inhalation and exhalation that come together to create life itself. So, when you realize this, you can start seeing your edge. It may be suffering. It may be going deeper into pain if you’ve gotten so comfortable with comfort. It may be stillness. It may be joy. It may be control. It may be surrender. But through practice of awareness and either… which is why I love what you do about health coaches, because it gets you outside of… It gets somebody outside of their own limited lens of reality, right? All of us, you, me. No matter how self aware we are, we don’t know what we don’t know. So, getting a coach can get you outside of that paradigm to see, “Okay, here’s my gap. Here’s what I’m missing.” And then you can say, “That’s my next edge. That’s my Sacred Edge. And that’s where your next evolution lies.”

Dr. Sandi: That is absolutely profound and very closely related to a lot of the teachings in positive psychology, which is what we have in our curriculum and character strengths. So, there’s a character strength that has to do with zest, with just living with gusto and just jumping in and experiencing it fully. But then to counterbalance is a strength of prudence, where you know, “Okay, this isn’t safe. I’m going to say no to this adventure.” And you experience that on your trip in Antarctica where you realized at that point that this was truly life or death and you stopped. Can you share that?

Akshay: Sure. So, what ultimately ended up happening on this trip… As I said, it had never been attempted before. So, I was pulling the heaviest sled any man has ever pulled from the coast of Antarctica, and going uphill from day one, which was unforgiving. It was so unbelievably hard. And by day 50, it was pretty clear that I could no longer complete the crossing. The math just didn’t add up. And we also got hit with some of the worst snow conditions in modern Antarctic history. So, when you’re dragging that much weight through soft snow and uphill, it was this combination of factors that just made it absolutely brutal. And the body just started falling apart.

In those last 10 days, I kept fighting on even though I knew I couldn’t make the crossing just for the spiritual experience of experiencing that level of solitude, isolation, going deeper into myself into hardship. But everything was crumbling. I had days of spine pain, chest pain, days where I was so dizzy, it felt like I was drunk out there falling over and stumbling. Other days where I couldn’t catch my breath. And after two steps, it felt like I was sprinting. And then on day 58, I got shooting pretty debilitating pain in my gut that I later found out was diverticulitis. But at that point on day 58, the doctor said, “If the gut pain doesn’t stop, we have to come get you right now.” Because eight years ago, there was an adventurer who ended up getting diverticulitis. But if you don’t stop and get medication or rest, it can burst. Just to clarify, diverticulitis is infection in the colon. And so if it bursts, it’ll go in the bloodstream, gets septic and kill you, which is what happened tragically to this guy named Henry Worsley eight years ago. So, I didn’t know that I had diverticulitis at the time, but I knew it was a gut issue that killed Henry. So, I’m learning already with my own mortality there. And I tried one more time to see if I could still move on day 60. And after about 15, 20 minutes of skiing, the gut pain hit. And that’s when we knew that it was too dangerous to continue. So, at that point, I called the evacuation and the journey ended.

Dr. Sandi: I’m glad that you made that decision.

Akshay: Thank you.

Dr. Sandi: It sounds like that was prudence. That was a wise choice.

Akshay: Yeah, coming back home alive was always number one priority.

Dr. Sandi: Oh, absolutely. So, there are so many life lessons to be learned from this expedition. So, how can this really help people who are struggling with stress and overwhelm and isolation?

Akshay: Let’s start with isolation, because I think that’s one of the core problems in the human condition. There’s a great French philosopher Blaise Pascal, who said all of humanity’s problems stems from man’s inability to sit by himself in a room alone. There’s this epidemic of loneliness that people are saying is even worse than cigarette smoking now. But I believe the conventional solution is a flawed one and a damaging one in my experience of what I’m seeing people are suggesting as a solution for isolation and solitude. It’s putting connection as a Band-Aid for solution. So, I’ve seen people say this, they’ll be like, just spend more time with people, go out. And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. We are social creatures. Connection is a really beautiful thing. But if you do it as a Band-Aid to your own discomfort with being by yourself, you’re not actually solving the problem. And this is why you can be in a room surrounded by people, and you will still feel lonely.

So, one of my core mantras is the only way out is through, the only way out is through. To master solitude, the key is developing a comfort with it. When I struggled with drinking, I would never have a problem with drinking being in a room. I could be in a room with 100 people drinking and have a 0% desire to drink. But as soon as I was alone by myself at night, the darkness hits both literally and figuratively within. That’s when I would start consuming liters of vodka. And when I hit that moment where I was on the brink of suicide taking my own life, I had to face that. So, it was uncomfortable. It was far from easy. But the only way out is through.

So, over time, I got comfortable to the point of solitude that I could spend 60 days and alone in Antarctica. And out there, the solitude did not faze me one bit, even though I was geographically the most isolated life form on the entire planet. So, the point is you get comfortable by facing that thing. Same thing with stress, right? It’s like working out. I mean, you train like a savage, which is so admirable. You have to put your body through stress. It’s in the recovery that the body gets stronger. So, it’s coming back to the point I mentioned earlier about this paradox of oneness. The dualities coexist. So, you balance stress with recovery. You balance isolation with connection. But if you are uncomfortable with one side, you’re not actually solving the problem. You’re addressing a symptom briefly, but you want to get comfortable with it. So, if stress is your edge, put yourself in stressful situations.

Now, I’m not saying you go to Antarctica for 60 days alone, right? You build your way up to that ladder of risk of discomfort. So, first, and I have this one kid who was so inspired by my darkness retreat, he locked himself into a dark closet for 45 minutes initially just to go within, which I thought was legendary. So, I spent 17 days in a darkness retreat. You don’t have to do that. You start with 10 minutes alone, then 15, then half an hour, right? You build yourself up till you’ve developed a comfort with it. And once you have… And there’s not going to be a hard sort of, all right, I’m good now, right? There’s an internal compass that will direct you that once again, coming back to the duality, you have to get aware of that internal compass that takes time alone.

So, now I know, for example, that I had zero discomfort with solitude. There’s not any doubt there. I’ve clearly mastered that, right? So, now I move on to a new edge. There’s always an edge to find. So, at every point in my life, I’m looking for a duality causing me friction, and I go play on the other edge of it. So, at one point, it was joy. At another time, it was surrender. At another time, it was stillness. That’s why I went into this darkness retreat the first time. I had gotten so comfortable in doing, right, building the business, writing a book, pushing myself through physical feats, but I was so uncomfortable with stillness. So, I went and played on that edge. And my first time I did seven days in a darkness retreat. And even in the darkness, I noticed myself working out because I was uncomfortable with the stillness and I’m comfortable with working out. So, I was using that to escape from the stillness. So, I made a rule, “You will not work out anymore.” So, after day two, for the next five days, no workouts, just being still. Now, again, you don’t have to go to that extreme, but do it somewhat slowly. Build yourself. And I think that is the path to not only greater degrees of freedom, liberation from unnecessary suffering, but inner peace, when you slowly build yourself up the ladder of risk, one edge at a time.

Dr. Sandi: That is so true and is really in line with all of the behavioral research, where you start with just tiny baby stuff for a goal. And let’s say you want to do… I’m determined to master an unassisted pull up. Well, started with assisted pull up with a lot of weight assisting me. And it’s so wonderful every time, “Oh, I can take one plate away, and I could go a lighter weight and almost there.” So, seeing that but thinking in terms of what scares you and going to your edge, because I would look at that pull up machine 10 years ago, I said, “That is so scary. I’m not going to even attempt it.” And that’s what I see many people, especially in my age group, they’re scared, “Oh, I have arthritis. Oh, I have other pains,” or, “I’m going to hurt myself,” or, “My doctor told me I can’t do it.” And their life is more about what I can’t do than what I can do. And especially that isolation, I think that there’s such a difference as you’re describing between solitude and feeling comfortable in solitude in quiet versus loneliness where you’re really pining for that human connection.

Akshay: Absolutely. And to your point, just like with the pull up, it’s okay to be scared. This is one of the core teachings in my book “Fearvana.” The whole book is around how do you develop comfort with that fear to move through it. And it’s okay to be scared. It’s normal. I’m scared of everything I do. People see the things I do and think I’m fearless. I was terrified going in the darkness. I was terrified going to Antarctica. I’m now married. You met my wife at CHS. We were there.

Dr. Sandi: She was lovely.

Akshay: Thank you. But she heard on a podcast me say that I’m more scared of asking a woman out than I am of going to war. She actually asked me out on my first date, but I was scared going on that first date. But I went into… One of my many mantras is fear propels you to prepare. So, if you are scared of something, look at, “What is that fear? Why am I scared? What’s the worst case scenario? Okay, this is the worst case scenario. How do I prepare for it?” Even writing a book on fear, I was scared. I was scared it would be bad. People would judge it. People would think it’s terrible. It wouldn’t make an impact. So, because I was scared of writing a bad book, I studied, “How do I write a good book?” And I learned how to write a better book that ultimately was being worthy of being endorsed by the likes of the Dalai Lama. And fear drove me to that is the point that I’m making. Fear was valuable.

Dr. Sandi: Yeah. You talk a lot about this connection between suffering, which is intentional. You put yourself in an environment where you were going to suffer and so many of these challenges that you’ve taken on. That connection between that and healing trauma, ultimately building resilience, which is a big part of what health coaches do. It’s helping people to build resilience, both physically, emotionally, mentally. So, what is that connection between putting yourself out there intentionally to suffer?

Akshay: When you train in suffering, you build the muscle to endure suffering, endure the suffering that life is inevitably going to throw your way. You’re essentially training to be the eye of the storm because life is a storm. There’s going to be chaos. There’s going to be suffering. There’s going to be things that you can’t plan and predict, and you’ll go through hardship. But when you train in a storm, you learn to stay still in the face of it. And it builds the muscle to handle when things inevitably get hard.

Now I’ve gotten to a point where I don’t get fazed by life. There’s nothing that can trigger me. It doesn’t matter what happens. And yes, I go through emotional moments. I’m a human being, but I don’t live in it. I’ll go out of it instantly, “Okay, I’m feeling this. Now what do I do with it?” So, that’s what the key is it builds your ability to endure hardship. So, when you go through the next hardship, you’re not broken by it. I mean, right before going to Antarctica, my Marine mentor was killed in combat. This was my brother in the Marines. And of course I felt sad. I would want to feel sad. I remember crying. I thought about him in Antarctica, tearing up, just thinking about my brothers I’ve lost.

But the pain is no longer your prison. When you develop a comfort with pain, you can transmute that pain. You can access that pain consciously. And I remember we were talking about this in CHS, that pain becomes a pathway to your power. So, when you’ve developed a comfort with it, now you can go into the pain and say, “This becomes a weapon. Right now I think about the brothers that I’ve lost. I think about my friend that died in Iraq.” When I was in Iraq, my vehicle drove over an active bomb that by some miracle didn’t explode. My friend’s vehicle drove over an active bomb and exploded, he died. And that stayed with me. And one, there was a time in my life that drove me to drinking. But today I’ll access it. My life is an honor to his being, to his identity, to who he was, to every person I’ve lost on the path. So, my suffering becomes a place I can consciously access to go there, to drive me forward, to step in as a vehicle for not only my own greatness but for a mission that is bigger than me.

So, that’s really what it’s about. It’s to train that. But as I said earlier, the only way out is through. I worked with this one woman who was going through symptoms of post-traumatic stress from the Boston bombing. And every time a loud noise would hit, she would feel uncomfortable. And I said, “All right, the next time it happens, I just want you to pause and be with that discomfort. Don’t do anything, just sit with it.” And she goes, “But that’s really hard.” And I said, “I know.” And I’m not like faulting her for it, but we’re all taught that the only way out is… We look for the easiest way out, because the inherent nature of hard is it’s hard, it’s uncomfortable. But it is hard, but you’re going to have to face it to get to the other side of it. And when you do, you will attain a level of peace and freedom that you can’t possibly fathom right now. So, that’s why it’s about building that positive relationship to struggle, to trauma, to pain, to hardship, so you can actually weaponize it as a tool for your own greatness.

Dr. Sandi: Yeah, in doing so, you are transforming struts. You are transforming that trauma, so that you can live better now, and you’re preparing for the future because you’ve already had the acceptance that our thing will happen. And there’s a theory of stress inoculation. Each time, you picture it. And this is something that can be quite powerful. Or you imagine. And most people stress out on things that just in the scheme of things are pretty inconsequential. They get upset about… For example, you’re about to arrive home and you know that it’s going to be chaos and you’re going to get really upset and stressed and lose your temper with your family as you walk in the door. So, as you’re about to walk in, you imagine you take some breaths, but you prepare for it. You imagine the worst chaotic thing happening and your kids screaming at you and you’re just going to float through it as if nothing will bother you. So, so many of the things that you’re saying can be applied to those day in day out things that we tend to stress over that really don’t matter.

Akshay: Absolutely. Yeah, there’s a great teaching from the Buddha on this. Buddha said we’re all stabbed by the two darts of suffering. The first start is the one we don’t control. So, let’s say I stubbed my toe against a door. The first start is the pain in my toe. But the most of where our suffering happens is the second dart, which is what I call the unnecessary suffering. That’s when we start saying, “Why did this happen to me? Why do bad things happen to me? God hates me. This door is stupid. This house is stupid,” whatever it may be, that inner dialogue, right? So, to your point about this example, I come home. And, yes, I may feel a little stressed, but I don’t respond to it. I don’t go into the downward spiral of it. I pause, I acknowledge it, I be with it. And then I decide what to do with it.

And maybe it’s setting up structures that, “Hey, when I come home, I tell my family I need 10 minutes alone before I can get into the chaos,” or whatever, right? You set up structures. But you can do that from a place of peace and responsiveness as opposed to reactiveness. And we’re going to go through hard emotions. We all do. When I came back from the war, I struggled with survivor’s guilt. Everybody told me don’t feel guilty, and I get it. Rationally, you can’t control what happens in war. Bullets fly where they fly, bombs explode when they explode. But emotionally, my guilt was just an expression of love for my brother. So, instead of demonizing it as a “bad emotion,” I accepted it and embraced it and weaponized it.

For a long time, I had the picture of my friend up on my wall and it said, “This should have been you. Earn this life.” And my guilt drove me. It helped me. I used it to sober up to write my book “Fearvana.” And it was valuable because every experience is valuable if you choose to access it and use it from that lens of the second dart. We will all go through first dart sufferings. That’s just human. And it’s not only the pain, it’s the physical pain. Even right now, if somebody comes into this room with a gun, I’m going to feel fear. I don’t choose it. So, most of our internal subconscious response to external stimuli is beyond our control. So, the first darts are internal as well, not just external, right? There are emotions, but pausing and creating that space between our emotions and who we choose to be outside of it, that’s where the power lies. And if we pause, we can seize control of those second darts of suffering and now eliminate that unnecessary suffering.

Dr. Sandi: Yeah, yeah. I think it is so powerful when someone tries to stay in the moment. And many people just don’t do that. They’re either back in the past, living in the past, or fearful of the future—what might happen, “What if this happens?” and they’re imagining that terrible future as opposed to deeply appreciating right now, which you can access through your senses—what you can see, what you can hear, what you can feel, what you can taste and smell. And as you get there, it develops this profound appreciation for just being alive right now and in the moment. And I wonder, as you were going on your journey in Antartica, what were some of the thoughts? What came into your head—some of the high points and low points as well?

Akshay: Yeah, the beautiful thing about an experience like that, doing such hard work in complete isolation, and also with no stimuli for the first 30 days, it was flat white nothingness, not a mountain, not a tree, nothing. Flat, empty white nothingness. And so you are forced to go within in a level that normal life won’t take you. So, the mind goes everywhere. I had some of the most highest highs where I would be skiing and tearing up thinking of nothing pure bliss connected to all that is, to God, to myself, to Earth, to even my wife back home. Paradoxically, in isolation, I’ve had moments of greater connection than I’ve ever had anywhere else where you’re just one with all that is.

And then the lowest lows where I wake up and I see new snow outside my tent. And I’m crushed because I know how hard this day is going to be. And whenever there’s new snow, it’s very hard to drag those sleds. And so you when you’re in those positions, those low lows, the pain, it’s so important to bring awareness back into the now just like you said of the presence to eliminate those second darts of suffering, the unnecessary suffering.

And presence is one of the core virtues. Over time, I’ve realized that I think there’s two core virtues that allow every other virtue to be exercised consistently, and those are presence and courage. Courage is how you move through anything hard. Anything. And life will be hard, right? And then presence is what allows you to do it and focus one moment at a time. So, if in Antarctica, after the first day when I’m struggling to take a few steps because the sled is so heavy and I’m going uphill, I’m thinking about day 100, I would break mentally.

So, one of the tools that I developed out there to stay consistent—and people can apply this to working out, to writing a book, to building a business, whatever you’re doing—is removing the future and the past. So, if there is no past, there is no future, there is no need to be consistent, because there’s only now. Monotony does not exist if there is no past and future. And this is easier said than done. I get it. The mind is going to go where it goes. But the more you train in presence, and, to your point, bring it back to the five senses, “Let me focus on my breath, let me focus on my next step.” This is why I loved endurance sports, and I got into it so much because endurance sports are a great teaching in presence. When you’re running for 24 hours, like I’ve done, if on hour 10 you’re thinking about hour 24, you’re going to break when you’re suffering already, right? So, you bring it back into the now. And you use your senses to do that.

And I realized out there, one of my core mantras became “die alive.” In every moment, this version of me is dying. It’s never going to exist again. There is no tomorrow. This whole day, live it as if it’s my entire life. And if this version of me is dying today, I am going to choose to die as alive as possible. And that little mantra became an anchor point for me to bring myself back into the now and into the heightened state in the now. I’m going to live this moment fully alive, because this moment is the only thing that’s real. And the more you use this, use senses, use your mantras, you don’t have to think… I mean, it’s hard. On your one day when you’re working out and let’s say… Obviously, after one day working out, you’re not going to see weight loss instantly, right? And you’re going to feel dejected. After one week of this, you’re not going to maybe see the results you want instantly. You’re going to feel dejected. But you focus on, “Okay, I did this thing today, and today is the only thing that’s real.” And you attach your self-esteem to the work, not to the result. So, I celebrate myself for getting out of the tent that day and being in the fight, for doing the hard work regardless of the result. That’s another key lesson to bring presence is to attach your self-esteem for doing the work and not the result. And the more you do that, the results happen as a side effect of that.

Dr. Sandi: That is so true. My philosophy exactly at my age, at 75, what I find is that I hear people just complaining, and they’ve decided the future is going to be awful and, “There’s nothing to look forward to. It’s all downhill from here,” as opposed to really embracing what feels good at the moment. And you mentioned courage. Courage is such a key strength in positive psychology. It’s the basis for action: the courage to speak your mind, the courage to say no to a sugary snack, for example, the courage to go out and lift a weight that you may think, “Oh, this is too hard.” Then it’s also curiosity. And I approach it with curiosity. They’re like, “Oh, I’m curious to see…” I was doing some deadlifts before I got in the call, and I’m at this point where, “Okay, I’m just curious to see if I can partially lift it at a new weight.” And yes, it’s that exhilarating feeling. Yes, but it was approached with courage and curiosity like, “I wonder what would happen.” And I think you approached your expedition with curiosity as well as courage.

Akshay: Very much so. Yeah, I actually say the four core virtues. So, I mentioned courage and presence, but we have four core virtues that I’ve learned over time, and it’s courage, presence, curiosity and play. Using life as a process of self-experimentation. Hey, I’m going to be playful. This is going to be hard. I’m going to see what happens. And yes, you may get hurt on the way, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, like you’re going to get rejected walking up to that man or woman to introduce yourself. You’re going to have people say no to you in business, things that you know… You’ve built a business, it’s not easy. You’re going to go through hard times. But when you view it, “Hey, what’s going to happen out there,” curiosity for the future to your point, and just with the playful attitude, I’m always laughing. My wife and I are always messing with each other. We’re always having fun. We’re laughing all day every day. So, life is hard, life can be serious. So, when you bring a playful attitude to it, it makes you bulletproof to the hardships of life. So, train yourself in those four virtues, and you become indestructible.

Dr. Sandi: Such wisdom. And these virtues are emphasized by health coaches who often come to this work because they have had an illness themselves, where they have struggled as you have, and they change their life, they turn around, and now they have a calling to serve others. And you certainly do in terms of the work that you’re doing, because I think it’s a result of the wisdom that you have and that you impart. So many lives are changing, and you really encourage that, even just out of… “Do it to the limit.” I was like, “Okay, I’m going to go to my edge. I’m going to try. I wonder what would happen if I put on another five-pound plate here.” So, it is in so many ways going to an edge and living fully. So, Akshay, where can people find you and learn about you and follow you? You have such amazing wisdom to share.

Akshay: Thank you. Thank you. The book “Fearvana” is on Amazon in paperback, Kindle, Audible. You can find me on Instagram @fearvana. And my website fearvana.com has more resources and tools to guide people through the challenges of life and find bliss on the other side of it.

Dr. Sandi: Thank you. Thank you so much. And you are an inspiration.

Akshay: Thank you so much.

Dr. Sandi: It’s been a pleasure talking with you.

Akshay: Likewise.