Jimmy Chin: The Cost of Risking Too Little

Jimmy Chin (0:00)

There are two great risks in life, risking too much and risking too little.

Jonathan Fields (0:06)

Most of us only ever count the cost of one of them. Our guest today, Jimmy Chin, has spent his life walking the line between those two risks. He's the Oscar-winning director of Free Solo and Meru, and one of the most accomplished mountain athletes and photographers alive. But he started as the son of Chinese immigrants in a small city in Minnesota, raised to become a lawyer or doctor or professor. Instead, he moved into the back of his Subaru and lived there for seven years to climb. Now at 53, a father of two, he's written a book, Rules to Live By, built on conversations with people like Yo-Yo Ma, Yvonne Chouinard, Kelly Slater and Chris Tompkins, all circling one question, what really matters?

We get into why Jimmy says he had his midlife crisis at age 10, why Yo-Yo Ma played a flawless concert and felt absolutely nothing, and why Yvonne Chouinard looked at a billion-dollar milestone and was crushed by it and how that affected Jimmy. But the moment I keep coming back to, it happens when Jimmy's seven-year-old daughter looks up at the Grand Teton in Wyoming, a peak that breaks grown adults and says, Dad, I want to climb that.

What happened on that 18-hour day? And what she said to him up there on the mountain changed how he thinks about risk as a parent.

Jimmy Chin (1:26)

Kids want their parents to be alive, but they also want their parents to feel alive.

Jonathan Fields (1:31)

Because the real question isn't how much you're willing to risk, it's what is costing you to play it safe. We'll also hear how Chris Tomkins lost the love of her life and went on to protect 17 million acres and what a 13th birthday gift reveals about how Jimmy measures success now. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project. And we'll jump right in after this short break.

You have spent much of your life pursuing things that make you feel intensely alive. In your case, that involves things that are radically different than the typical person, climbing and filming some of the biggest, scariest peaks and environments on the planet.

And then a couple of years back, you turn 50 and you start sort of like looking at the next season of life. And I'm curious, what questions do you start to ask as you move into that, that another mountain or another film project can't really answer in the same way anymore?

Jimmy Chin (2:40)

I think I've been asking the same question for a long time. And if I was really going to break it down, it would be, what really matters in life?

And the answers to that question have evolved. But in some ways, for me, the answer has kind of always come back to some similar thoughts. John Cracow, a good friend and mentor of mine, early on in my career, said to me, there are two great risks in life, risking too much and risking too little.

And I think as I've gotten older, I've continued to examine the question of what does it mean to risk too much? And what does it mean to risk too little? There are costs to both. I think we often think a lot about what it means to risk too much.

I think we spend less time thinking about what's the cost of risking too little. What's the cost of not taking the risk? What's the cost of not pursuing that dream or that objective or that thing that brings meaning in your life? And what's the fine line between the two of them? I feel like I had a mid-life crisis when I was 10 At a very young age, I was like, what am I doing? And to what end? I always felt this sense of urgency. Like I understood that our time here is finite. And I was always like, I want to do more. I want to do more. I want to explore the world. I want to go on adventures. I want to feel something. I want my life to have meaning. I want the things that I do to have meaning. And that kind of sense or that experience I had from a very young age, I don't know. It's a chicken or the egg question. You know, my parents were librarians at a small university in Mankato, Minnesota, which is a small rural, I wouldn't say rural, but it's not a very big town in south central Minnesota. And surrounded by cornfields and beautiful valleys and forests. But I always had the sense where I had to go out and explore the world, whether that was in the forest in my backyard or the rest of the world. And you know, I read voraciously as a kid because I was being fed a lot of books. And it really kind of my imagination was always full of these wild adventures that I wanted to go on.