Lisa Tamati: Relentless. Developing An Unshakable Mindset

#83 My awesome guest this week is Lisa Tamati. This conversation will have your jaw wide open in amazement by the end of it! We dive into the depths of her unshakable mindset on how she overcame some incredible athletic feats, and more recently, her relentless quest to help her mother who suffered a severe brain aneurysm and stroke. The journey with Lisa and her mum will have you in awe of what the human body and spirit is capable of. Enjoy! About Lisa: Lisa Tamati is New Zealand's best known ultramarathon runner. Since the publication of her first book, Running Hot, she has gone on to run ultramarathons in the Gobi Desert, the Sahara Desert and the Himalayas.

Learn more about Lisa Tamati: www.lisatamati.com Learn more about Guy: www.guylawrence.com.au

Let It In Academy: www.letitin.com.au TRANSCRIPT Please note, this is an automated transcript so it is not 100% accurate.

Guy: Hi, I'm Guy Lawrence and you are listening to the guylawrence podcast. If you're enjoying this content and you want to find out more and join me and come further down the rabbit hole, make sure you head back to the guylawrence.com.au. Awesome guys. Enjoy the show.

Guy: Lisa, welcome to the podcast.

Lisa: Nice to be here Guy. I really, really privileged to be on your show. Thanks for having me.

Guy: Oh, you're so welcome. I have to say, I was, I was looking at all the fits you've done and I was, I had no idea where to start this show to be honest here because there's so many incredible things that you've achieved and I, yeah, I'm excited to be diving into all that. But the one thing I do ask everyone is if a stranger stopped you on the street and asked you what you did for a living, what would you say?

Lisa: Um, I help people reach their potential, um, more about high performance and, uh, helping people be the best version of themselves that they can be. That's what I do now these days.

Guy: Yeah. Which is a pretty cool, cooler to make a living, I reckon.

Lisa: Yeah.

Guy: So, so the, the next question I would ask if I was that stranger, I gotta be honest, I'd be like, well, how do you do that?

Lisa: Yeah, exactly. That's what you want. This is what you want people asking. So, then you can talk about what you do a little bit more, but you don't want to sort of overwhelm them because, um, yeah, I do a lot of stuff and uh, but like yourself, I'm interested in everybody thing under the sun and I'm very interested in the mind and how the mind works. I've got history is, extreme athlete if you like. And so extreme sort of ultra marathons, expeditions, that type of thing. Um, which I've done for near on a quarter of a century. She started saying I'm retired now from that sort of a game and just using the lessons that I've learned, to coach and help others. So via, we have an online one coaching system, for example, we do sort of retreats. We do, mindset courses. Um, and we we're right into epigenetics program and just personalizing your health journey, um, and trying to get the best out of our clients and, and their athletes. So yeah, that's, and I do a lot of speaking and I've written a couple of books. I've got a third one coming out shortly and yeah. Busy, busy.

Guy: Amazing. And do you know what, you know, the next question I would ask you, well, like I'm just going off on a tangent here. If I, if I had, while I'm meeting you, is what was the toughest thing you've ever done?

Lisa: Agh! The toughest, the toughest race I've ever done in regards to the sporting side.

Guy: Yeah.

Lisa: Or there's some big tough ones here. There was a run

Guy: Well they all look bloody tough, mate

Lisa: Varies from really there was a rice and Niger, which is one of the poorest countries next door to Nigeria. It's a place called Niger and that sort of deep deep Sahara. So sort of halfway to Timbuktu. And, um, we had a 333 kilometer race that was uh, after there, which I've got a documentary on and um, if anyone wants to, it's in German. But, um, at the time I was living in Austria and it was down there, um, and this was only 17 runners, so it was very spread out very fast and I got food poisoning an hour into the race. It started, you're in one of the most dangerous countries on earth. There's a civil war going on the right, you're running through the Sahara and you've got food poisoning. And a week before my husband had asked for a divorce. So, I wasn't in a good friend out there anyway, so that was pretty much hell on earth. Yeah.

Guy: My God. How long does it take you to run the 300 and,

Lisa: well, the time limit was about 86 hours I think was, um, I actually only got to the 222 came up with all that sort of stuff going on. I, so I, I took 64 hours to do the 322. Um, and then I was in such bad shape. I was, you know, really, really ill with the food poisoning and of course. The dehydration and, that was just horrific. You know, my heart was breaking at the time and when you don't have your mind on the game as well, um, then, you know, and it was very dangerous race. Like it was run by an ex French foreign legion guy who really didn't give a shit whether we all lived or died or he was there for the money. We'd all pay quite a lot of money to go. And the privilege of doing this for me and it was so badly organized, like we would need to have food come from France. They didn't tune up. That's why we ended up eating local goat to been on the Land Rover for three days as we drove out into the desert. And that's what, you know, got me. And a couple of the other runners as well, is, was, you know, things like not enough water at the checkpoints and things, you know, so it was pretty,

Guy: well, I, there's two things I've had food poisoning while I was hiking through the Himalayas. It was, it was hell, I was so trying to run, I can't even starting to comprehend that. And the second thing was, when you said running for 64 hours, are you like running nonstop or do you,

Lisa: so with ultra marathons, the way it is is there are races that are, uh, Mulstock races. So the clock has going, that does not mean you cannot stop. It just means that the clock has going and the competitors aren't sleeping. So the race is on the whole time. So obviously you can stop and go, you can, you can have it, you, in that period of time, I probably had two, two hour stops at the checkpoints. Uh, what, you know, seeing a doctor there was on the thing and trying to balance out my, my blood pressure and blood sugars and all that, which was gone all up the oops and I kept passing out and stuff. So yes, you can stop but the clock is going. Um, and so you don't stop for more than, you know, a two hour period sort of thing moving.

Lisa: Um, and it gets down to very quickly to a walk, you know, because uh, especially when you've got food poisoning and I'm at basically you've got to get from a to B in a certain period of time. And obviously the quicker the better if you want to win the race or get get near the pointy end. Um, but it is mostly about survival. It's a survival thing more than less having, yeah. So I had met some of them horrific, doesn't tree and vomiting and cause in, in a desert environment where you've got very limited water on your back, like, you know, to two or three key, uh, liters of water, you know, you can dive very quickly out there and if you get lost and, um, you know this, okay, so take me back. How does one end up, yeah, how does one end up in the crap like that?

Lisa: Um, I grew up in New Zealand, so I've in New Zealand and from Taranaki and um, grew up in a very, very sporty family. Um, grew up with a dad who was a real hard ass and, uh, he put a lot of, a lot of pressure on us as kids to perform in sports. So, uh, he, he was, he was someone who didn't tolerate weakness. You know, if he got sick, you were in trouble, that sort of thing. And, and he's a great dad, but he was very intense, you know, very much a lot of pressure. So you wanted us to represent your country and a sport and I was the first born. Um, and I was a girl, which was a disappointment, I think to him. Thank goodness I had two younger brothers come along, uh, who shade the Lord. But if they had his way, I would've made an ESI his soldier and an old black and, uh, you know, uh, top corporate people.

Lisa: So he just expected to behave a lot. And so you grew up with that sort of pressure and I always wanted to please my dad. So, um, I did gymnastics as a kid and I was, so I learned a lot of discipline and training and, but then when I got to puberty, I grew up too tall and just didn't have it. I didn't have the skills that you need for that sport and I didn't have the body shape that you need for that score. It, you know, they very much, you know, you got to be tiny, you've got gotta be, and I was tore very tall and athletic built, you know, um, and so they, they too, a lot of shelf loading because I was wrong body shape and I was constantly being told on my coaches, your fat, you're overweight, you know, which I was not by the way, but I was in regards to the size, that gym, this have to be.

Lisa: Um, and so then I went, you know, years of, of, of self hatred, self-loading of not being good enough of thinking that I was the fattest, ugliest thing on the planet. Um, and you know, they, they sort of go sort of formative years can be so brutal, you know, those, those puberty years for girls especially can be really quite brutal. Um, so that really affected my self esteem on who I thought I was and how, um, you know, all of that sort of jazz. Anyways, so then I quit gymnastics and my dad was just so disappointed in me. And so then I tried it with other sports and he just said to me, Oh,