Ultramarathon runner and endurance nut Nedd Brockmann delivered an incredibly inspiring opening session at Cairns Crocodiles, presented by Pinterest.
Touching on everything from his laundry list of muscular and skeletal injuries thanks to his remarkable feats of endurance, like running across Australia and running 1,000 miles non-stop, to his Nedd’s milk business and his liberated view on life, Brockmann’s talk left the crowd with plenty to reflect on.
“Don’t give a shit about what people think. This is going to sound very sombre and crap, but this all ends. I wake up in the morning, and I think ‘I’m going to die at some point’… While I’m here, I’m going to make the most of that moment,” Brockmann told Melinda Petrunoff, managing director of Pinterest ANZ, on stage.
“I think that making the most for me is in these pursuits. I love adventure. I love endurance. I love enduring. I love suffering. Because on the other side of suffering is growth and a beautiful world. You see it in such a great perspective. You don’t need to be a victim in your life. You take your life into your own hands. You need to attack it and grab life by the plums.”
While the applications of his mantra are immediately apparent to Brockmann’s own extraordinary pursuits, there were lessons for the more than 1,000 in the audience. Simply put, growth is only available once one becomes uncomfortable.
“The biggest thing that people forget is that we always have the chance to have a cold shower morning. We know it’s uncomfortable – maybe not in Cairns – but that’s the thing where you think ‘I want to shoot for this goal, I want to shoot for this goal and or how much do I want to raise?'” he said.
“It’s all relative. What’s hard for me might not be that hard for you. People need to keep their thoughts consistent. It needs to be an everyday thought – how can I get uncomfortable? Take your life in your own hands. Make it uncomfortable for yourself. Life will be significantly easier.”
But one should not be contrived in their attempts to be uncomfortable. Brockmann’s closing salvo called on the audience to be authentic.
“Be true to yourself. Do what feels right, and everything else will fall into place. Secondly, don’t chase what everyone else is talking about. Don’t chase the good life. Chase the things that give you purpose, chase things that do good for others. It’s not about being remembered. I get asked what I want my legacy to be, I hate that question because it suggests I’m doing things to be remembered in a certain way. That’s ego 101,” he said.
“Live, embrace now, do now and don’t think about how you’ll be remembered. Just live according to what feels right.”
You’ll likely be relieved to hear that you don’t need to run across a continent to make an impact. You don’t even need to build a following. But Brockmann is proof that with a good idea and a lot of hard work, you can run, and run, and run.
