How to Set & Achieve Massive Goals | Alex Honnold

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Alex Honnold. Alex Honnold is a professional rock climber. He's best known for successfully free soloing, meaning climbing with no ropes or latching on of any kind El Capitan, also called El Cap, which is a nearly 3000 foot climb in Yosemite National Park. It was also, of course, the topic and focus of the incredible movie Free Solo, which if you haven't seen, you absolutely should watch. I've wanted to talk to Alex for a long time now. I'm not a rock climber. I've tried it a few times, but I've been extremely curious to understand Alex's mental frame around learning and training and his broader philosophy on life. My interest stems from the fact that Alex's free solo of El Cap and his other climbs make him one of the most accomplished and innovative athletes in all of history. And of course, the free solo of El Cap is extremely high risk and high consequence. Today, we discuss how to envision and make progress towards your goals and how to merge the demands of daily work and family life with incremental training for spectacularly big or long challenges of any kind. Alex makes clear that it's essential and possible to build your capacity to exert effort and how to do that in a regimented way so as to bring seemingly impossible goals within your reach. We also discuss how coming to terms with one's own mortality is actually one of the best motivators for building a great life and why most people hide from that reality and as a result, end up living much smaller lives than they otherwise would. We also discuss training, literally what to do to build strength and endurance, not just for sake of rock climbing, but just generally. And that takes us into discussions about weight training, body weight training, running, hiking, and a bunch of other things that you can apply. Even if you have zero interest in rock climbing, today's conversation with Alex Honnold will definitely change the way that you think about your life, what you can make of it, and how to go about that. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Alex Honnold. Alex Honnold, welcome.

**Alex Honnold** (2:18)
Thanks for having me.

**Andrew Huberman** (2:20)
I think Free Solo is remarkable for a ton of reasons. But as a good friend of mine, who I think you know, Michael Muller, photographer, he said before I had seen the film, he said, it's wild because you're terrified as an observer the entire time. But you also know that Alex survives from the very beginning, which is a very unusual.

**Alex Honnold** (2:43)
I think some people don't know that. They watch the movie and they literally have no idea what it's about or what's going on and they spend the whole movie like, oh my God, what's going to happen?

**Andrew Huberman** (2:50)
Okay, so I just spoiled it.

**Alex Honnold** (2:52)
Oh yeah. Well, at this point, I'm like, nobody cares. It's old news.

**Andrew Huberman** (2:56)
Well, it's a spectacular feat and we can go into that feat, but I'd actually like to drill in a little bit to just your process in general. I'm sure that's changed over time and feel free to talk about that. But, you know, I'm very curious about notions of intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, right? And I think free solo is also remarkable because you had cameras on you. It was obviously to be recorded and you knew you had cameras on you. And yet I always thought of climbing as kind of a solitary sport or things that people do in small groups, kind of off the grid. Things have changed now with social media, the way everything can be posted very quickly or even run live. But when you think about the work that you're doing in terms of progressing and goals and milestones for yourself, how do you envision that? Is this in like a... Do you have a diary? Do you have a process where you sit back and you think, what would be awesome for me to experience? Would people like to see it?
What's the sort of balance between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for you?