Podbit · On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Miles went over a decade without speaking to his biological father. Then, on a spiritual journey, he picked up the phone, said 'Dad, this is Miles — I don't care about the past, how are you?' The call lasted 45 seconds. It was harder than any training session, any competition, any Olympics. And it changed everything.
Where this was said
At 39:04 · chapter starts 33:00
Jay asks Miles to walk through the road to his Olympic success, and the story that emerges is one of gradual self-discovery. For the 2012 London Olympics, Miles did everything 'correctly' — cut off friends, followed protocols, sacrificed everything — and finished fourth. The next year, he had dinner with a friend the night before the World Championship and won it. That jarring contrast taught him something foundational: not everyone is the same athlete, and why prepare like someone else? Before Rio 2016, he moved temporarily to Korea to train with Young Ho Kim, baffling those around him. He won the first Grand Prix of that season. He went on to enjoy three Olympics, and now when younger athletes describe their stress, he meets it with calm perspective — because he's been through each ebb and flow and has answers. The key to becoming a legend, he says, is unlocking the mind. [1] — Miles Chamley-Watson "Miles's first Olympics was all sacrifice — no friends, no fun — and he finished fourth. The next year he had dinner with a friend the night…" 33:45
Miles's first Olympics was all sacrifice — no friends, no fun — and he finished fourth. The next year he had dinner with a friend the night before a World Championship and won. That realization — that he needed to prepare as himself, not as a generic elite athlete — became his template for reaching three Olympics and building a legacy.
Miles estimates only 0.001% of the population reaches the Olympics, and an even smaller fraction wins a medal.
Miles moved temporarily to Korea to train with Young Ho Kim, and upon returning won the first Grand Prix of the season — validating his unconventional approach.
More freedom doesn't produce more happiness — it produces more anxiety. Kierkegaard identified this 180 years ago: the more options you have, the more you feel the 'dizziness of freedom,' a paralytic unease at having to choose any single one. The freest generation in history is, by his prediction, exactly the most anxious.
Every person lives in constant tension between infinite possible selves and the finite, limited self they actually are. Tipping too far toward infinite possibility produces a loss of identity; too much confinement in the finite produces stagnation. Kierkegaard argued that this tension is never solved — only managed.
Standing outside a cold pool imagining reasons not to jump is the exact experience of pre-commitment anxiety. Once you jump, the shock passes and you wonder why you ever hesitated. The same mechanism governs every significant commitment in life — the dread is always on the outside, the relief on the inside.
Traditional societies had rites of passage that closed off childhood and opened adulthood. Modern society kept the in-between liminal phase but eliminated the ritual that resolved it. The result is 'emerging adulthood' — a decade or more stuck in the transition — engineered by rising education requirements, women entering the workforce, and delayed marriage.
When Mark Manson proposed to his wife, software he didn't know was running — the low-level assessment of sexual market value and other options — suddenly shut down. Commitment doesn't take freedom away. It trades optionality (freedom to do many things) for focus (freedom from distraction). John Dewey called these positive and negative freedom, and the latter is more powerful.
Mark Manson spent years as a location-independent digital nomad — always a new country, a new woman, a new venture. Then the diminishing returns kicked in: countries started feeling the same, dates felt identical, businesses all frustrated him. The cure wasn't more novelty. It was narrowing: one place, one person, one career.
Every meaningful commitment has a dip — an initial peak of excitement, a brutal trough of difficulty, and a second higher peak for those who push through. Institutions once kept people in the dip long enough to reach the other side. With infinite optionality and no institutions, everyone bails at the bottom and restarts the cycle of shallow first peaks.
Stage one — the aesthetic — is the default: chasing sensation, novelty, and keeping every door open. Stage two — the ethical — is learning to choose with eyes wide open, accepting the trade-offs. Stage three — the religious — is when a commitment becomes so total that it no longer feels like a choice. It just feels like who you are.
The ethical stage is rational commitment — you can explain your choices. The religious stage is when your commitment exceeds rational justification. You can't explain why. It just feels like it chose you. Kierkegaard called this the 'virtue of the absurd' — and it's represented not just in faith but in the entrepreneurs, artists, and athletes who can't imagine doing anything else.
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