#494: Michael Phelps and Grant Hackett — Two Legends on Competing, Overcoming Adversity, Must-Read Books, and Much More

For me to be able to swim at such a high level every single day.... whether it's nutrition, sleeping, drinking water, I treated my body like I was a Ferrari. I treated my body like I'm a high performance race car because I'm asking it to do so many things. I was sleeping probably 8-10 hours a night with a 2-hour nap during the day. I was eating 8-10k calories a day. I used to have massages. I had one PT/strength & conditioning guy for 15 years that did all of my massages, all of my stretching, all of my grafting, all of my cupping.

You're not alone. That's the one thing I truly, truly want to repeat, and you'll hear me say it a lot of times in this podcast, but you are definitely not alone with your thoughts, your emotions. But if you are afraid or you're scared or nervous, reach out to somebody for help—a trained therapist or a trained doctor.

That's the coolest thing for me that I am so excited about with having depression or with having anxiety—it honestly makes me who I am. I understand it's never going to be fixable, and it's a part of me for the rest of my life, but you know what? I think it's something that I want to learn more about and something I'm excited to wake up every day and have that chance to learn more about.

I can't stress enough how important it is—if you have something going on inside you that's not normal, say something to somebody, write it down, [do] something. Don't hold on to it. Life is definitely too damn short. I want to slow down time as much as I can and be able to enjoy everything that life has to offer.

Training, I knew I had to be perfect if I ever wanted to do something that no one had ever done, right? I was trying to compete and do things that people had never seen before period in the Olympics and swimming ... From a workout standpoint, I had to be as hungry as possible.

There's somebody out there—that's what we all have to realize. No matter what we're going through, somebody is there to hold your hand, to give you a hug, whatever it is that you need because we are not alone in life.

If I'm not taking care of myself and filling my glass up by taking the time that I need for me, I have no shot in being able to be a good husband, a good friend, a good dad.

If you have to pull me out of the water after this session and put me in an ambulance, I do not care as long as I get every ounce out of myself—and you've got to show up with that attitude every day because that's how tough the guys are that you're racing.

Just because you're good at something doesn't mean that you don't fall into the same fate as everybody else when it comes to mental health or just being a human.

Take a deep breath every once in a while and relax. It's not about racing the clock in every single thing that you do in your life.

That's what kids are—they are the best example of really living in the moment.

A lot of superpowers have, on the other side of the coin, super-weakness almost by definition, right? Because if you have a hyper-focus on anything in life, by definition, you have to neglect other things. You only have so much attention to slice and dice.