#937 - Jeremy Renner - How To Overcome The Worst Pain Of Your Life
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Are you sick of people asking you how you are? No, no, no. I mean, it's, it's, well, there's a real honest answer that comes behind it, right? Whether they're asking or not, you know, you get a real honest answer. And, and sometimes it's in the inopportune times. I remember doing a podcast and, but it was over Zoom, right? And,

the technical issues that were happening to set it up and the thing and what mic to use and how to use this. I'm like, I was, I'm not the tech guy. And I was getting very frustrated and I was getting probably pretty hangry. And like the beginning of this podcast was probably pretty awful. I was quite, quite a cunt. But, but they asked you to look, I'm sorry, I'm just gonna work through this and the thing, I'm not good with tech. And I just, I just have this real, realist, honest way to kind of live.

So I'm not sick in the long way to answer this. I'm not really sick of people asking how I am because I just really do tell them. And if they do care about, you know, if it's about the recovery or if it's about just sort of my health or even mental health, you know, I don't care how they intend it. I just sort of explain kind of how I am in a really truthful, honest way. It's quite beautiful. Have you always been like that? I've always been pretty direct, but I don't think I'd be as open and revealing.

I'm much more open and revealing because of having to focus on myself so much. Why do you think that is? No time to obfuscate or sort of play the social moray game? Yeah, I was never good at that, man. I'm in a crowd of people. I'll get anxiety and, you know, I'd have to like medicate with like, you know, alcohol or something to sort of calm the nerves of being around so many people. Yeah.

I always think if it's going to be a fire, so many people are going to die and people are going to get hurt. People are kind of terrible to each other in large crowds. The more people in a room, the respect level for humanity kind of diminishes. Yeah, the more humans they are, the less humane they are. Exactly. And I just refuse to be in that environment because I think it's disgusting. That behavior, I'm very affected by it and very sensitive to it. So I just choose not to be in those environments. It sounds like you've got

I know, a little bit of a nervous disposition. I think I would say that that's my kind of background too. Thinking, sometimes overthinking, looking for potential errors and issues and maybe being a little bit sensitive to the energy of what's going on around you. Definitely very sensitive. Always been an observer and quite insular in kind of

my thoughts and things. I'm not a talker of small things. I can't really have any quite small, trivial talk. I certainly can have a good time until jokes and da-da-da, but most of the conversations I have are quite in-depth, they're quite thoughtful, or spiritual, or psychological, emotionally driven, connective sort of tissue. Not just sort of like, let's just talk about

whatever the starbucks order i mean i just don't belong in that conversation you know i mean but that's just me right so i just you know when i know those things about myself i just try to put myself not in those situations so i don't set myself up to fail is there a a challenge with wanting that level of openness that level of emotional connection vulnerability but also having an additional level of scrutiny lots and lots of attention press people caring so he's kind of

two things that are a little bit at odds there. Yeah, but not now. It used to be because the platform was to be a famous person talking about a movie or some work you did. This is not that, right? I'm here today to talk about health and wellness and overcoming obstacles and it's nothing more human than... So it feels much more personal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's more, I think, exciting because I think there are...

willing ears. I don't have to force, Hey, I'm here to tell you about this Avenger movie. And here I put a lot of willing ears for the Avenger movie. Yeah. There was a lot of willing ears, but I couldn't really talk about anything. And then, you know, you're kind of not, you're selling something, but you're kind of selling something. This I'm not, man, I really am not. And it's there. There's, I think I still am not sure how and why there is interest in something and me dying, coming back perhaps. Yeah.

You know, I don't really know what's interesting. I can tell you why it's interesting to me. When you know why it's interesting to me is that I'm not fucking dead. That's why it's really cool, man. I don't know for anybody else. They're still alive. They're all doing great. For me, I'm happy just to kind of keep moving through my days and getting better. And that's really exciting to me. That makes me feel quite alive. Did it feel, it sounds like one of the byproducts of movie stardom is a bit of constriction then.

A level of constraint that must be day-to-day. Hello, sir, you need to be awake in the trailer at this time. We need to have you in hair and makeup by then. These are the lines. These are the scenes. This is sit in the seat. Hang on. Sorry, the DP's fucked it again. You're going to have to sit back down for another 90 minutes while he tries to fix the lighting. But then as you spread out into the public world as well, this is pretty carefully controlled. We need to be focused toward the movie, like box office, box office, box office. In that way, has this been a...

sort of break glass moment that's allowed you to sort of really step outside of yourself and not feel so constrained by just being the movie person. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's been that way for a minute, but now there's sort of a, a sort of by-product of this change, uh, this shift from, you know, being famous for X, Y, Z, whatever it is for people. And then now it kind of

wipes away, at least temporarily, that it's more about the man that I am, but I've overcome some obstacles. And not that I have a fake bow and arrow in a movie. You know, it's something much more real and something really quite tender and beautiful. I get...

these amazing exchanges on the street instead of like the rude sort of in the middle of spaghetti dinner, you know, with my daughter taking selfies that I owe them apparently. It's now like, well, glad you're here. You fought through something really amazing, whatever. That's like really thoughtful, amazing, almost like sort of fortune cookie lines of like just beautiful sentiments that are connective and not like,

I deserve a selfie. It's really flipped on its head. It's quite beautiful. It's the you, not the character. Yeah, yeah. And that's what makes this kind of exchange so great. I don't know. I have no idea what I'm going to talk about or have anything really to say, except I can have a conversation about real things. And if you have certain things, you know, you write down, like, I think this is interesting, or let's talk about this. And

I can do that because all I have to do is be me. And that's the coolest thing to be. But I don't typically get to do that because I'm out, like you're saying. Is it some other sort of kind of, like when your life's planned out every 10 minutes and, you know, you get a bathroom break and I can be me and go to the bathroom. Your bathroom breaks are scheduled. You're kidding. Sometimes they're not. Right, okay. Just hold it in. Especially on press tours and things like that. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty crazy, but, you know.

Do the things you love, man. That's it. Just do the things I love and don't worry about it. I, uh, I wonder how many, I wonder how many other guys and girls from your industry, uh,

have this sort of odd cathartic daydream of something happening to them that kind of relinquishes them i'm not yeah don't get fueled against what is it what is it that you really admire about jeremy's career well you know the avengers thing was all right but that bit where he got ran over by the snow plow that really was peak yeah it is it is it really is man i mean i highly recommend it you know at least if the outcome is my outcome yep

I don't recommend it, right? It's excruciating. But the amount of gifts that came from such a thing, I think, are, I guess to me, I mean, it's all my life is filled with gratitude and love and truth and pure joy. It's just really clear, like all the white noise is gone. And for someone to have that in their life, do you have to die to do it? No. It's part of the reason why I wrote the book. There's a lot of things I did learn.

And maybe other people can't. I know there's a lot of people that struggle. I got some life hacks to help you with struggle and pain and pain management, all those type of things. But even as a famous person, there is some like probably, I think it could be some envious things too, like you said, from it. Because there was a lot of great things that came from such a horrific moment. But again, I'd do it again in two seconds for the right reason. I'd probably...

Not jump back on that machine this time. I don't know what I'd do. What were you actually trying to do? You were trying to stop it from hitting... From crushing my nephew. Yeah, from this big giant snow blade and just going towards him. He was at the truck that was perpendicular and just kind of...

He's going to crush him. So you jumped up to get a cockpit? I jumped up to try to stop it. Right. Because it knocked me off. Yeah, it knocked me off and it hit the wrong button. It knocked me off and it went forward on him. I'm off on the machine. Some machines are running on its own now. That's never happened. So, yeah.

Yeah, so I probably wouldn't jump back on the machines. Or maybe I would, you know. You don't get the opportunity to think and reflect back on what you do. You just do it or don't. And then I'd rather be me than my nephew. You know what I mean? I don't want to deal with the haunting images of on New Year's Day, my nephew split in half, you know? Yeah. It's strange thinking about these people that come up to you and they see you. They see something that's really true to you. And I don't know, I wonder...

How many people, how many other people, even if it's not as performative as being an actor, have this sense of having to show up as someone. And when someone comes up and says, well done, there's a degree of hollowness to the praise because this is me, but it's me as a performer. It's not,

Right. Right. I'm aware that this is an artistic outlet for you. It's a calling that you have in life. Somebody's a musician. Somebody's a, a, a presentation, a coach that goes into businesses. Somebody's a PT or whatever. You know, I really loved what you did with my wife's transformation for her wedding or whatever. Thank you so much. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, what about me? Yeah. Yeah. There's a need. You just have to, yeah. Look, if you, there's, there's great things that come with being famous and,

It allows a lot of freedoms and a lot more choices for hopefully doing something you love to do. Hopefully you're not famous for, like, being a serial killer or something, right? But, you know, in the world, if you're a famous football player or whatever the heck it is, you just have to sort of –

take, take, you know, yeah, that's going to be a feeling. You're not going to be seen and witnessed, but how, and how they see you. Like, I like to be, I'm glad I'm seen as the, at least they're picking out the right roles. Oh, I love you in this. I love you in the Hurt Locker, love you in the town, love you in the, you know, picking out something from, you know, back in 94 or something. They're picking out the right ones. I'm like, good. I'm glad you like me for those ones. I'm happy about those movies too. And yeah, there's, there's, I don't take emptiness with it. Like I look at it from like,

It's, it, you have to sort of filter through, this is what they know you as, you know what I mean? And not, and then you go at the end of the day and there's too much of it. You're like, okay, look, I just need to, I can only have much tolerance for

And to, to deal with, okay, I'm still a human being. I can't, I'm just not this cardboard cutout of me. Right. That people know me. So that's why, you know, I just, but I make decisions about that. Like I'll stay home more often or I have, unless I have a lot of tolerance in my tank of tolerance to like, so I can emotionally accept this and have my time and I'm touched and pulled and fingered and all sorts of weird things happen. Is that a, you gotta have enough tolerance.

To be fingered. Yeah, to be fingered. Now, I don't get, none of the, yeah, it's not so bad now. I think people look at me, or at least I feel they look at me with more fragility so they don't come in like throw me around or like smash me around a bit and pull me. Um,

It feels a little different now, which is great. I'm great. Okay. Happy about that. Yeah. So the kind of elephant in the room, I guess. And I didn't know that you'd gone through your accident. I didn't know that that had happened. I was like, you know, yeah, Jeremy must have. And then there was a series, and then the Avengers finished, and then maybe that came back. There was a series for that. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Just, you know, you kind of weren't there and then you were. So if you hadn't seen this bit in between, if you'd just been watching like the wrong kind of headlines, nothing would have occurred. Yeah. So for the people that sort of weren't aware of what happened, there's something to do with the snowplow. Can you give the overview? Yeah, the overview. It was it's a well.

It was hard enough to recount to write the book, you know. Now I can write the trailer. Okay. So the setting's in Lake Tahoe and it's New Year's and we always have my family in New Year's and we are snowed in for a few days. Um,

sort of armageddon snowmageddon we call that type of type of thing so we had no power electricity or nothing and we were having a great time but new year's day it was gonna be sunny so i had to clear the driveway so we can get out and get some fresh air and that type of thing and uh in the mountains uh you know it's you're at 8 000 feet elevation you get a ton of snow so we have like probably 10 12 feet of snow so that's like sand you know you got to move this stuff to kind of

You can get it out when you're supposed to go skiing and all that stuff. Ends up, I'm taking the snow cap, which is used. A snow cap, if you don't know what it is, it's like a tank. It moves on the snow. It's about 16,000 pounds wet. And it's got a big shovel in the front of it. And it usually drags behind it, you know, stuff. But it's like a tank. And it turns like a tank or a skid steer.

So it's pretty nimble and it floats on the snow because it has these steel tracks and they're wide. So kind of like snowshoes, if you will. Right. So you don't sink in it. But which is great for that. But we took it up to the end of the driveway, which is about half mile long.

We were taking cars that were stuck in the snow and things that were buried. You don't even know what's underneath all that snow. So you have to be very careful. So we're dragging all this stuff out of there. So we have a driveway. So we have access to maybe we'll get food, supplies, something, anything, right? So we take the snowcat and drag all this stuff out. The final one was my truck. And we got it to the top of the mountain where there was a plowed driveway.

and where it's hard and we can actually can maneuver a bit better. And then my nephew, it's takes the help of my nephew, Alex. And so, and we've done this a thousand times. I mean, it's, this is like mowing the lawn for us up there in the mountains. It was just a, we're on this, it's kind of a slope and it was very icy and we're sliding and I didn't like that was sliding towards him as he was trying to unhook a chain from this giant machine and,

And so I turned it around to try to talk to him and couldn't see him and then I was sliding towards him, so I backed up. But again, you have to understand this machine, you have to see this machine to understand, but you have to step on these giant tracks of things that roll and move to get in and out of the machine anyway. There's no platform, there's no ladder, there's nothing. You just have to jump onto the giant metal tracks and then you jump into the cab to start driving this thing, right?

Kind of a design flaw, if you ask me. Because it's really unsteady. Anyway. It's not really a pedestrian type of vehicle. This is a commercial vehicle for ski slopes, right? Right. Typically, people aren't hopping in, hopping out, and hooking a whatever. It's a shift. Yeah, exactly. And so it's just one of those things you have to step out to try to talk to them, to hear them, and all these things. At any rate...

And there's a little toggle switch on the steering column. And that's what will move it forwards and backwards and put it in neutral. And I just keep going backwards just so I don't slide into him because I can't really see him. And then in doing so, I'm stepping on the tracks, hit the button wrong. It threw me off. And now the machine's rushing towards him. I have no idea. I know he's within between the truck and that's 10 feet away.

I get up as quick as I can, and I just quickly jump back on this machine or try to jump back in the cab, leaping up and over three feet, these spinning tracks. And then, you know, I don't make it. And I get caught underneath this machine, and it crushes me. It rolls over like a tank would run over. A log just, you know, doesn't think, does it? And it didn't crush my nephew, which is great. That would have been a real double whammy.

Oh yeah. That would have been terrible. Yeah. I mean, it's yeah. Yeah. Wouldn't my body slow it down a little bit? Probably not. Probably not. This thing's, this thing will climb up a tree. This thing it's, it's gnarly. The power of this machine is, is quite insane. It's impressive. You need it. It's the only thing that'll kind of operate in the, that kind of snow, that kind of, this kind of crazy conditions. And so at any rate, um,

You can edit this the way you want, but at the end, I break 38 bones, my skull cracks open, and my eyeball comes out. I can see my eyeball with my other eye. I can't breathe. I'm awake the whole time during this thing. And I have to survive for 45 minutes on the ice until I get hella lifted out of there. And a lot of the book is about, tells you about that experience because there's a lot of things. There's a death and coming back, and there's a lot. There's a lot of...

mindset stuff, a lot of fortitude. Mental acuity is what got me through. Physical, I mean, there's a lot of things that got me through. But the power of the mind and the body is wonderfully responsive to your thoughts, to heal itself, to hurt itself, whatever. But it's pretty, pretty

what the mind can do. Did you have a practice? Meditation? Oh, yeah, yeah. Did you have this prior? Yeah. Right, okay. How do you think this situation...

Would have been different or how well do you think that your practices in advance contributed? It's hard. It's hard to know. I mean, that's why I had to reflect. That's one thing that's very cathartic about this book is just reflecting back on what prepared me for that situation. I've been in not near-death experience situations before, but I've been in like...

high adrenaline situation. How do you react? What is, how do you react to like things that, you know, a car crash or something, somebody gets hit on the freeway and what do you do? Or you either react or, you know, you, you go into shock or how people deal with the flow of adrenaline rush through their body. Right. And I've always been challenged and I've always come out clear headed in all those adrenaline rush situations.

So it's hard to know because that's how I've always been. I like roller coasters, but I'm not like a thrill junkie, really, right? I'm not like an adrenaline junkie. But I just know how my mind reacts in those situations. I'm always very, very clear-headed about it and an actionable person. So that helped. And then, you know, there was like breathing. Breathing was like you say meditation. Well, I was in Lamaze class when I was 12 years old when my mom was pregnant.

So, and that all Lamaze is, is preparation for birthing a child. Mitigating, you know, pain, managing your pain as you, you know, it's very, very painful for a woman as she's giving birth. So you use these short breaths and all these sort of things, mentally feeding them ice chips and getting their attention away from their cervix, right? And do all these sort of things. I learned that at 12. I didn't know that that was going to save my life on the ice as I got ran over by a snowcat, right? But that was...

huge in it. That's all I was trying to do. Look, if you can't breathe, what are you going to do? Look for your next breath. You need to breathe. I saw my eye. I worry about that later. I saw my twisted legs. I'll worry about that later. That'll hurt. Didn't then I have to find my next breath or this is all I'm a goner, right? Everything will start failing. I'll lose consciousness. My organs will fail. I'm dead. So, you know, yeah, there's a lot of things I think prepare me, but I can only reflect. I can't say for certainty, right? How could we, um,

But yeah, I think there were a lot of things that prepared me. But it was definitely the mental thing through anything, you know, even into the recovery. It's like the only thing you have control of is your perception of something. That is it. You think you can control your body. You think you can control something. But it starts with your brain and your mind and your spirit of what you believe in, how you see something is all in your control.

And I'm not like the half glass, half empty kind of dude, right? But it's a version of that. I could have made it, I could have whined and complained and like, oh God, I'm never going to work again as an actor. None of that, I didn't care about any of that, right? That had no value to me. The value was the mental acuity to get through, to find my next breath, to zoom out so big and so wide. And I keep my perspective there. I live in a very comfortable place.

loving pure life where I oversimplify the simplicity of life because it is just that simple.

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It was probably the first 25 that were the toughest because I don't think an EMT or a fire department can get there until like their first half hour. So the first half hour is rough. And I died in that time because I got tired. I just got sick. Because doing the equivalent of breathing that we all don't even think about breathing, it's not even conscious, right? It just sort of reflects if it just happens in our body.

But I had to like work and I was like doing like a one arm pushup. It took every piece of physical energy I could do just to exhale a little bit so I can get a little bit more back in. It was suffocating. Yeah. It felt like, it felt like drowning. Yeah. In a way. Yeah. Yeah. I was still getting air. You can't do that in the water, but I was, it was, it was like a boa constrictor kind of feeling. Like it just squeezes more. You suck blood air. It's squeezing you.

And it's because my whole rib cage, my shoulder, all this side of it was just collapsed on my lung. It was already collapsed. It's suffocating myself. So I got, once I had my nephew lift my arm up enough to lift my rib cage off my lung, I could get a little bit more air in. It wasn't like suffocating so much. So I can, it was still excruciating, but to breathe was quite, quite the effort. And it's,

If you just to take deep breaths for a minute, if you feel lightheaded, you might pass out. But like, this is just, it's just, it was just exhausting. And with each exhalation and then inhalation, it was just like, so did it feel long? I don't know. I can't answer that. It was just like, I was waiting for my next breath. I was never sure it was going to happen, but I was going to will it to happen. But you got tired. And I got tired. And that's, you know, that's when I just, everything just started slowing down.

It actually probably, I guess maybe it felt like a long time because things started to get slow and consciousness was, the neighbors got here by this point. A lot of things transpired. It was me and my two neighbors I never met and my nephew Alex there for the first half hour. They're on the phone call with 911, whatever, and trying to, they're trying to do everything they can to keep me alive. And I just got tired and that's when I was gone and then came back.

And I was pissed about it. I saw my eyeball again. I'm like, oh, because it was so great. I'm like, oh, it was so great. I was having such a good time. Because I was going, because I did sort of regulate breathing and then it just started to slow. The heart rate started to slow. It was like 18 beats per minute. It wasn't just sort of like I just croaked, right? It was just smoothly into it. Gently away. Just gently away. And like later, everyone, it was great.

And then something brought me back. Psych. God damn it. And I saw my eyeball again. I'm like, ah, dude, I'm in this busted body. I'm in this busted body again. I'm like, all right, here we go. Let's get back into it. So it wasn't, uh, no one was, I mean, CPR would have. No, yeah, no, no, no, no. It wasn't for very long. It was only like, you know, my neighbor, cause it just happened to my neighbor the day before when she saw her uncle die. What? Yeah. Yeah.

Or, yeah, I think it was her uncle. No, it wasn't her brother. I think it was her uncle. And it just happened to her then. And she happened to be working in the medical field anyway. So it's kind of a great thing having kind of a nurse be your neighbor. But, yeah, she said, yeah, I saw you go. And, yeah, because your face turns all these colors and it's like a lizard or a chameleon or something. Yeah.

At any rate, so I don't think it was gone for very long, but it doesn't really matter, I suppose. I guess not dead enough to have brain dead or whatever. Maybe I'm brain dead now. I've always wondered this. What does looking at your own eye look like?

Uh, you know, it's, it's one of those, it's a queer situation, you know? Um, it just like, it's looking at your foot facing the wrong direction. And then your other leg, that's not a joint, but it was broken and shattered. Like there was twisted all like a pretzel. I knew that it was supposed to hurt. Did it? No, I don't hurt later. I'll worry about that problem later. And just like the eye, I'm like, ah, man. And I, and I rolled my face on it. It's like, let me put that thing on ice. Cause I was like laying on the icy asphalt. So let me ice that thing.

You know, I thought about that, dude. Right. Yeah. I said, it is funny. Right. But that's what I thought about. I'm like, Oh, let me put that on ice. And I had my nephew lift my arms so I can breathe. There was like conscious, my hyper, hyper focused, conscious stuff was to survive. And I went through every checklist of my body. I have a strong, strong awareness of my body as well as an athlete, as a stunt performer, also as an actor, because it is my instrument to, to even act.

So I'm very, very aware of my body, how it works, all the things. So to my knowledge, I don't know all the things, but at least I know the basics of how my body should operate. So I'm just constantly going through like, you know, what it really initially felt like for my breathing was like when you get, when you lose your wind, you get kicked in the stomach or punched in the stomach. It's that suffocating, trying to find your breath, right? It's what it sounds like on the 911 call. It's like this.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Pretty obvious. So start there. So just trying to work through that and getting my body to be in a place so I can get air in. And eventually it got to that place where he had to hold it in a very specific, my arm up in a specific way so I can breathe. I could start regulating the painful way to now the new way I breathe. The one arm push up breathing type of thing. A lot of effort. And yeah, it's that. But all the mental part of that is the main thing that got me through initially.

That sort of mental focus. No one was going to help me breathe, no matter who was there, who could have done it or not. Nobody could have. I was the only one that was going to be able to make myself breathe in any way possible. No one knew exactly what was wrong or how I started. I just kind of flattened. My head's crushed, you know. There's blood everywhere. So they're thinking a whole lot of different things. I'm like, fuck all y'all. I just need to breathe in so I can breathe out.

I'd even use expletives to help me laugh. Didn't swear once. Oh, I see. I had all these, yeah, it was hookers, whores, and hamburgers that I would scream out because the huffing of the H sound would make me laugh.

I had to do that to get air out so I can suck air. And also have a laugh. That's my eyeball. That's my twisted ass legs. Yeah, I already died. What else needs to happen? This is my body. It's my body. I'm owning it. So those are the sense of humor I even had, if you can, in that horrifying, you know, drawn out 45 minutes, you know.

And then you get it. There's no rule book. There's no directions in how to overcome something like that. We're not taught how to do anything like that. You didn't have a blueprint beforehand. You just do what you can do. What do you got? And say yes to everything. Do whatever works. It's fascinating how much mental clarity you had. Yeah, yeah. You had to. Had to. I was dead. If I passed out, I would have been dead. I wouldn't be sitting here. I'd be dead. They're too far high up in the mountains. No one could have gotten to me.

Oh, of course. You're so high up in the mountains that even breathing normally, I imagine, is a little bit more difficult than most normal people. Yeah, at 8,000 feet. Yeah. So maybe my body's also prepared for it. I also have higher mental oxygen in my body because I do work on that stuff. But there's no one thing. But the mental part of it was the one thing that did get me through at least to the next exhalation. And then that got me, it bought some time.

You know, I came back for whatever reason. And then the paramedics got there shortly after. And then they had to, you know, do the crazy thing in your chest. They stabbed your chest like in some movie or something. And what are they trying to reinflate the lung? Either that or release pressure. Right.

Don't ask me. I didn't go into the details of it. Even after the fact, I had to worry about other things than the scar on my chest. I couldn't care. But it's the guy that's choking on something and they put the big pen in the neck. Yeah, it's kind of like that thing. It's pretty much like that. I'm like, oh my God, that happened. But yeah, then they could also get fentanyl and all that stuff into you and sort of mitigate the pain. Oh, that's fun. Yeah. So I think that's when...

Things got a little, when they started cutting my clothes off, I'm like, I relinquish my duties now. I mean, someone else's. And I give my body to you. Because I did the best I could. But now, like, you know, so I think they already have me regulating my breathing or using a pump to kind of regulate the breathing a bit more so I didn't have to, like, consciously fight for every breath. So I just said, I give my body up. I'm done. And I just let them go for it.

And thank God for them. And one was my friend or a friend of my friend, one of my best friends. He was a firefighter. He's a fire. He just retired. And then the guy that the jabbing and stuff, he had to call my buddy and be like, look, Renner just got hella lifted out of here. Sorry, we did the best we could. Dude, you get that phone call. You know, it's brutal, man. So brutal that my friend had to get that phone call. But at any rate.

All these little moments that keep flooding back, talking about it, you know? Such great... It all represents love to me, you know? If I catch any feelings, I don't get triggered with rage. I don't get triggered with disappointment or sadness ever. It's triggered with an overwhelming sense of love, gratitude. Something I hope never goes away. I can't imagine it will. Kind of like alchemy. Yeah. To take something like that and to see...

All of the love that came pouring back in. Yeah. I mean, it's the ultimate thing that got me through. It's the only thing you take with you when you die is the love. It's such a beautiful, beautiful space, place, and a loving space. And then you come back around in the ICU, presumably. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was pretty much, I was, yeah, they had to put me in a coma.

and get to work. There's a lot of life-saving stuff that I do initially. Don't know about any of those things. Even to this day, I don't know all the things that they do. Probably don't care. I don't know. You know, you have to move my eyeball back in. I know there's duct tape on my eye. Again, whatever works, dude. I mean, what's in my body is just hammers and screws, hammered screws and...

A pipe that they've hammered through my knee to down here and screws and plates. And it's very like sort of this carpentry work. So putting duct tape on my face to hold my eyeball back in, you know, is just as, you know, this is how you do it. You gotta use what you've got. You use what you got. And that's what they had. That's what we did. And that's what worked. My vision in my left eye is better than my right eye now. You're kidding. It's better. Yeah. It's amazing. I don't recommend it. So...

What I'm interested in is when, and you've sort of hinted at this already, when the pain starts to kick in. Well, that was the initial...

Every synapse is firing. Everything in your brain is lit up when you're crushed. Everything was, I never experienced a feeling like that in my life. It's like if you hit a hammer on your thumb, you're like, oh, motherfucker. But like on every inch of your body, it's like, what is going on? There's so much information. You don't know what to pay attention to. So that was very confusing.

The pain was everywhere and everything, even like in your spirit, it took, everything was, you know, you don't know what's going on. So it was very confusing. It was very bright. Um, a lot of flashing, you know, cause there's like a lightning strike that happened when my skull cracked and the eye came out. It's so weird that I'm talking about this. When my skull cracked. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I don't look like it happened. Right. Yep. Yep. Um,

There was like a lightning strike and, you know, you start messing with, I don't know. It was such an overload. Felt like it was like, you know, you got to turn off the power because there was an overload of information, overload of pain. All your nerve endings are like on fire. Like it was like fiery hot lava. It was like all these things were happening. And again, the worst part of it is like you got stepped on by an elephant and you can't breathe. You just can't breathe. That was the worst of it. It's like, who cares about the rest of this stuff? I mean, all of it hurt.

But I don't even know what that is anymore. Pain became my bitch a long time ago. How so? It's because it's all a construct in your mind anyway. It's your body's way of saying, hey, it's trying to preserve itself. Your body tries to preserve itself by saying there's pain. Oh, that's hot. Don't touch it. Or this is that. Don't do this. Try this. Right? So again, mind you, this is not during the accident. This is after the accident. And I started to deal with pain in a different way.

And I wrote a whole chapter on it called The Agreement about having to give neural pathways. You can change them for your brain. How I receive pain is different than how I received it before. I can still stub my toe and ow, motherfucker, yes, right? But I understand what it means.

What the body's really trying to tell me. Like when the body gets a break, it instantly swells, tries to create its own cast and do all these sort of things to protect itself. The body just tries to preserve itself. It's a miracle what the body does. It's fantastic. If you are in alliance in what the body's trying to do and the body realizes, ah, you are listening to me. Okay, I won't bother you so much anymore. And that's where we became the agreement of like, you can't tell me that's painful anymore because that's a metal barrier.

Piece of metal now. You're not even a bone. You can say it's broken. So I have to reprogram my brain from receiving those pain signals in that way. And it takes a time. It takes about 28 days to really, really reprogram. Yeah, explain this 28-day cycle. Yeah, it's like a lot of cycles. Like from a menstrual cycle, a moon cycle, human patterns and behaviors, a lot of toxicities to leave your body take around those times. But it's just something about...

that 28 days seems to be something congruent in a lot of different versions of our lives. And with patterns, to really create a positive pattern or take a negative pattern to a positive pattern, it's like 28 days. And then you don't have to think about it. It's not a conscious thought anymore. You don't have to begrudge to stretch every morning. You're just stretching every morning after 28 days, essentially. It doesn't have to even be that long. It could be less. But to...

It's all within your brain, the power within your brain and your mind. And it takes fortitude. It takes trust and faith and a whole lot of other bag of goodies that you can't be weak in spirit. You cannot. You have to be strong.

If you don't believe it, then no one's going to believe it kind of attitude. It's not going to get done if you're not going to do it. You have to do it and believe it. And a lot of that came through because I had to walk on my leg. And my leg had a spiral fracture, spun around, it was shattered. And so they had to hammer a big piece of titanium in and just plates and screws and plates and screws. And he said, you're going to have to walk on this thing.

Otherwise, it's going to be pretty much just like a log, stiff thing. I'm like, all right. To keep it mobile. Yeah, to move it. All the scar tissue, right? You know, you got to keep this thing rocking and moving. So I got the okay from the doctor. Like, I have to move this thing. Otherwise, it's going to be just a club leg. So I started doing it and my body is screaming at me. Ow, ow. I stepped down. Ow, ow, ow, ow, mother of God. Ow, ow, ow. It's broken. My body's telling me. I'm like, no, it's not.

So I started yelling at my foot and my leg. I'm like, look, motherfucker. Sorry about my language. I'm just like, look.

We got to work this out. The doc says, you're not broken because you're a piece of metal. Like I'm literally talking to it like it's like my appendage of my body is like a scorned lover or something or like a bad dog. Quality dog. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's like, what are you doing? Why would you cheat on me? You know what I mean? You're betraying me. Essentially, it's such a betrayal. And so to be so crazy enough to like to talk about my appendage is a separate thing. Yep.

You know, it was opened up to this idea that I have to really change. I have to change it because I know all the things I'm telling you I knew before. I just like I have to really work this out. I'm literally arguing with my leg every day. I'm arguing with my leg many times a day.

Every time I go, I have to go move it, get blood flow through it. So for blood clots, right? Scar tissue, all this stuff. So otherwise I'm threatening, dude, I'm going to lop you off. I'm going to chop you off. I'm going to get a wooden peg. I'm going to get a fucking parrot and an eye patch and go live a pirate life, motherfucker. Either fucking do it or don't. Like I'm screaming, right? I'm saying it like I'm saying it now. Like no joke.

But saying with that intensity and that belief, dude, because I did also was okay living the pirate life, dude. I was totally okay with it. I was just happy I was alive. I didn't care about acting again. I was, I'm just happy to see my family there with me, all the people I love around with me. I didn't care about what the future held for my body, right?

in that sense. You know what I mean? Or I was willing to do it. So I'm threatening my leg. I'm going to chop it off. I mean, it's like, it's the most insane thing ever. And I know I'm,

I know that as I'm saying it and I reflect back on it sometimes at night and I'm like, dude, that was a good talk we had. That was a good talk. It's a lonely business recovery, right? When you're in a bed alone, you're the only one recovering no matter how many doctors you got, how many people love you, giving you tea, whatever the heck it is. All that's amazing, but you're the only one that can make you get better. And that's it, man.

And me and my leg were partners of crime at the time. And yeah, I'm talking to curtains. I'm talking to all sorts of things. It's quite a lonely space. But it was a thing that helped me reprogram the neural pathways and how I received pain.

And it took about 28 days, about a month of me yelling at my leg as I'm doing physical therapy. I do. I'm doing it every day. I did it as soon as I got home. I was in two ICUs for six days apiece. As soon as I got home, I was breaking out of them every day. Get me home, get me home so I can sleep. And as soon as I got home, I'm doing physical therapy. You know how painful it is. I don't care. So I got on it real quick.

And so after doing that, having this agreement with my leg, all the other things, like my ribs and all that stuff kind of fell into place immediately.

Much better than I anticipated. My lungs were like plastic suitcases for all the goop and things to kind of come out of it, blood and all this stuff. It's so weird. And it was quite a hot mess. But as the leg, that was really quite the issue because it was the physical therapy part of it. And that's where I focused all my energy. Then the rest of the body just kind of fell into place. It's like I focused on one bad dog that was pooping on my pillow or something, right? I'll just focus on the leg. Okay.

And, and then it just, I just, pain became just something that I can manage because I know my body sends signals to my brain, but it doesn't mean I have to receive it the same way. What's your advice to somebody who's currently dealing with pain? You know, I'm not going to say you have to yell at the thing. I think getting an understanding of it, I think there are other ways, you know, I think

Modern medicine is fantastic for the short term, but for long-term and chronic pain, I think there's got to be other ways. I deal with it all the time, but I certainly don't take pills. I do injections of peptides, amino acids, vitamins, maybe some natural anti-inflammatories, things like that. I think everybody's got to deal with inflammation. I think there's a lot of great science that's coming out.

I get a lot of access to people that I've been dealing with for a long time and also been doing it for a long time. But none of that matters. What matters is what your body says. I listen to my body. My body tells me what it needs. And I listen to it. I pay attention. And I also talk the fuck off.

Like no joke. It's a part of me. It is what I am, but it is just my spirit living in this vessel. So I'm going to take care of it the best I can. So I'm going to listen to it and it's going to listen to me. And it does. And that agreement I have with my body gets me through every day. How do you know when to listen to it and when to tell it to fuck off? It starts to scream at me a bit. The volume that it reaches? Yeah, it gets a little louder or it's actually not even that. It's more, it's repetitive.

in nature not just something like it's not just an afternoon or a stiff morning it's just like oh this has been a week of this repetitive thing i'm like all right i gotta i gotta help my body out here i'm not doing something right i'm doing something wrong i'm putting something in my body or i'm not done it's something else right the body like if you have an injury usually some other part of your body overcompensates and that kind of stuff so you have to really kind of

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Just sink into that reframing, that mental reframing around pain a little bit more for me. Yeah. Again, somebody, I've, again, not run over by a snowcat, full Achilles detachment. Yeah, yeah, fuck, get out of here. That was a motherfucker. Yeah. Well, here's the thing. See, singular to any one of those, it's way worse than getting ran over by the snowcat. I would disagree. Because there's only, yeah, there's only one thing, and it's, I was tested to my limits, to my death. Mm-hmm.

So nothing else can, I don't care. Pop both my Achilles tendons right now. Like, eh, whatever. I'll limp out of here or just waddle out. Right. Because the worst thing that's happened to you is the worst thing that's happened to you. It's like, all right, this is going to be a terrible year. I didn't know that already. But, you know, we'll reattach. They're probably doing six months now. They got Aaron Rodgers machine they can do. Yep. Yep. Yep. You know. But my point being, uh,

with that for me, I resonate an awful lot with the loneliness. I think, I think this is one of the, one of the things I really want to,

to get an insight yeah patience from around you yeah the role of patience and yeah how you deal with loneliness how you remain sort of mental fortitude and you think into that that's interesting i think yeah especially for you talk about uh you know the achilles tendon because it is such a long ongoing thing and then 12 month recovery man it's a real injury yeah it's a it's a real damn injury dude it's and it's like no joke like you can break any bone and you're done in a month

And people aren't really that conscious of it because usually you're just playing sports or you're just getting out of bed and it can pop, right? It can happen anywhere. Usually you're doing something kind of athletic, just playing pickleball. Mine was cricket, which is a much more British way to do it, but yeah. Either way, usually it's not a sexy way to have such a gnarly injury. But anyway, so people aren't caring. People care a lot about my injuries because they're very aware of what happened. Like, oh yeah, you're playing cricket, you know, whatever, that kind of made me make fun of you for it. But there is

a real loneliness in, in, in that. So I gamify recovery. I gamify my pain. I gamify that loneliness, meaning I set, set goals. I, I, uh, daily goals was always like, as long as I'm better than I was the day before. And I don't, it doesn't have to be a high standard. It's just like, I moved my elbow an inch more than I can move it the day before victory. Right? So at least it's progress.

It's this, and the setbacks are fewer because you don't set such a crazy high goal. I'm going to start, I'm going to run a four or five 40 at the end of the year. You know, it's like, come on, then you're going to set yourself up for disappointment. But, um, so to gamify things and give myself confidence and self-confidence in, in my loneliness is like getting better. I always push myself. Even after the PT leaves, I'm doing stuff on my own. It's a 24 hour job. It's a 24 hour job.

As long as I get my good sleep, then the rest of it's like, what am I putting in my body and how do I get better every day? And then I hit higher goals and I find ways to heal my family in me getting better. That helped immensely. I can remove myself out of the equation and my pain and my recovery because I'm getting better to heal my family. If I get better, my family gets better. I'm not getting better even for me. That was a huge perspective that I had as soon as I woke up from the coma.

I apologized that I was in the accident. I said I was sorry. And I promised my daughter, if you wait for me, I'll get better. It was like, I relieved myself of the duties of me wanting to get better for me. I was getting better for them to heal them because I hurt them. It was easy. It was a one-way road of recovery. There's no other direction to go. I have to heal my family. Isn't it strange that we find it

to do something for us for other people than do something for us for us. Yeah. Isn't that a strange quirk of humans work? Yeah. It's the same thing. You've probably been in movies where this is actually a scene. The bad guy wants to get the information out of you so they're torturing you and they're doing stuff and you're like, no, it doesn't matter. Then

then they bring in someone you love. Yeah. And that always breaks everybody, right? And there's an interesting stat around the likelihood that we ensure that we complete a course of antibiotics is around about 50%, maybe a little bit less. The likelihood that we ensure that our dog completes its course of antibiotics is like in the nineties. So we're significantly better at looking after an animal than we are looking after ourselves, despite the fact

that if we are not functional, the animal's fucked. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And again, with this, it's so interesting that we can use somebody else, other people, group of other people, as the motivation for our recovery in that way. Yeah, well, I think that it's something in the, I think it's within the limitations of, in a perspective, it seems like it's the limitations of a human experience, right? But it's also an act of love.

I mean, the fuel behind that is all love. So in a spiritual form, that is just...

what, you know, we are to be anyway. In the human form, it's us protecting ourselves. Like the body's trying to protect itself, right? And, you know, we try to protect each other. We're social creatures. We're a thing. We try to, right? Ultimately, people are good. We're just not in situations for us to be good to each other, right? Even if you are doing this because you're going to help to heal your family, you don't want this to be the

defining, lingering memory of what happened, et cetera, the recovery is still on you. Finding the solutions is still on you. And it's also still my body. Like, I don't want to, I'm not going to hobble around this spinning rock for the next hundred years because now I'm titanium man. Get out of here. You're laid awake at night a couple of weeks, a couple of months in. It's just one of those normal days. It's been an all right day of rehab. It's been an all right day of whatever, but you're just,

You're kind of deep in the hole. And what, where was your mind going to keep your motivation, to keep driving you forward? I always focused on the things that were better. Now, not every day, all of me was better, but some part of me was getting better. And that's all I cared about. Just sitting up was like a giant milestone for me. Not peeing in a jar. That was a great victory for me to go bathroom, right? Just whatever it was, I kept things really simple.

And, and, and I made it okay. That'd be, that's an amazing thing. So, cause there are days that aren't great. And there's a lot of people that might get stuck in a rut of, you don't even have to be in recovery. I mean, you can just have a bad day and just like, but your brain, right. It's not, you can't let it wallow in that. Just get up off the couch, move, go move your body oxygen through your system. It'll help you navigate something just to make a different choice. And it'd been easy for me to like,

not have any positive thoughts about things, man. There's, there's not a lot of help or, or hope to grab onto. So I just built the things that I could grab onto. Like I said, I kind of gamified things and I, you know, I guess there's, I was just filled with such gratitude, but I wasn't going to ever,

have a low bar set right there's that duality of it's like i wasn't gonna like oh as long as i can just kind of walk or like no no they said if i walked again if i did i'd walk funny and said you're never gonna run again i said i wish you would have told me that i heard it from my family later on

I would have been running faster earlier just at that challenge. I'm also that guy. That fuck you energy? Yeah, yeah. Or to challenge me because I know what I can do and I know what I can't do. And I know my limitations. And sometimes I'll try to – I always try to exceed what I can or can't do. You have to go to such extremes of your obsessions to really grow. Right.

Like what cold plunges do for the body and like even extreme hot does just the nerve endings in your body. Use a lot of heat, vibration for pain. Talking about pain. Heat, high heat, high vibrations, great for pain. Were you using... Like power plate stuff. Power plate, yeah. Power plate stuff because that gets really, really intense vibration. That's great to like just numb the nerve endings. A really hot...

bath and then I, it's the reason why when you bang, when you stub your toe, like you said earlier on, why do you rub it? It's because it's really difficult for the body to receive multiple signals at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it just, it just confuses all the nerve endings seemingly. Cause I don't feel it. It's a, it's like, it's why I got off the pain medication like that.

Yeah. What was your relationship? You know, a lot of people have injuries way less bad than this. And that's the beginning of their road down the dark path. I'm glad I had it. I'm glad it was there. It was necessary. I mean, God damn, was it necessary? But...

I think it was like when I got home, switching from epidurals and IVs and all this stuff of writing intravenously to deal with your pain management. And then going on just now, just taking pills, taking Oxycontin.

You know, you get behind on that, you're kind of screwed because then you realize, oh, it's going to take a minute to get to your system. Yeah, what's the bit of advice I was given after my surgery? Never chase the pain. Oh, yeah, no. You've got to get out ahead of the pain. Yeah, yeah. You've got to stay ahead of it. Otherwise, you get behind, oh, man, it's going to be a bad day or so. Yeah, it was. So it happened once, maybe twice.

But then it was like maybe four weeks in when I was home and I had a night terror. My mouth was broken, everything, so many breaks in my face and my head and my teeth don't align. So I had a night terror and then your teeth don't align. It's easy to crack a tooth. And I cracked a tooth. Then I felt pain. I'm like, wait, I'm on Oxycontin and this is breaking.

breaking through. I go like, yeah, it was breaking through. So I'm like, well, then what do I need that Oxycontin for and the Gabby Penton? Like I'm out of here. So I went emergency extraction, put in a post, take the thing. I'm crying just because so happy that my pregnant dentist had come in and do this for me. And, um, got home and I said, I'm, I'm getting off. I'm not taking this stuff. I took it for the next day for the tooth. Uh, and then when that felt good,

I just said, I'm cold turkey-ing this stuff. And then I cried for like three and a half days straight and shivered and cold sweats and the whole thing. Because of pain? Coming off the pain meds. Tell me what that's like. It was way worse than the accident. Why? Because how bad coming off that stuff is. It was just like uncontrollable crocodile tears. Emotionally just out of control crying. And it wasn't sad.

I was just crying. I was doing PT, just doing his band and stuff, just sobbing. I just couldn't stop sobbing. And, you know, I was shivering. I was so cold. I had all these electric blankets on me like I was coming off heroin or something. It's actually, I guess what it is or something, right? Oxycontin. Anyway.

After the three and a half days, I talked to the pain management guy, the doctor, and he's like, yeah, you can't do that, dude. No one does that. You need two weeks at least to kind of wean off of it. Both Gabby Petten as well. All your nerve endings are like feeling everything right now. I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm freezing. I'm shivering. I'm crying. Well, it's okay if you do a little bit. I'm done with it now, so I'm just going to stay off of it. Thank God. I got to shake it. But wow, what a terrible thing to do.

to be hooked on. Wow. I mean, if you need that, because then your body gets numb to that kind of stuff anyway, then you need more of it, which is the terrible thing to it. So it's like you need to get the fuck off that stuff as soon as possible is my recommendation. Find other ways. And high heat, high vibrations,

do tremendous things to your nerve endings to mitigate your pain and it allowed me to sleep that's why i love to i take a super super hot bath as much as i could stand

And then vibrations, like the parts that were really kind of just giving me some achy, achy sort of feeling. Were you sitting on a power plate? No, I mean, I was too fragile at that time. I do it now. But I did like they have a roller that's a vibrating roller. Okay. Super intense. Just rests. I put it under both my knees or both my ankles. Ankles and knees. Boop, night-night, going to bed.

Amazing. Wow. If you have any ankle or knee issues, as long as it's not breaks, as long as if you're healing from breaking, do it. But great for nerve endings, tendons, to get blood flow, circulation for your things that are hard to get blood flow through, like tendons, you know, right? Pretty tough. All the cartilage areas, all our joints, you know, are all going to fail us anyway. But I just got...

Every joint screwed early on. What would the, take me through the big recovery modalities, sort of what contributed to your, to your rehab and, because you seem to recover very, given how intense and, and sort of catastrophic the injuries are, you recovered really quickly. Yeah. I, I, I became obsessed. I had to become obsessed at recovery. It had, it was my main focus. And it was awesome because my life was freed from any other obligations, even parenting, sadly. Yeah.

So I have to get this so then I can go back to being a parent. So I can go back, right? So I became obsessed at, like I said, it was 24 hours a day. That's all I focused on. That's all my brain energy went to. That's all my thoughts went to. We're all recovery, healing, getting better, even dreaming of my bones growing over this metal pipe and all this stuff. It was just all that was, I was all in with every part of my body, even in my damn dreams about recovering. So the obsession. And then it got to a place where,

Maybe if just a few weeks later, I didn't have the plastic suitcases for my lungs. And then I'm sitting up in a thing and I'm in a wheelchair and I'm moving around. And it's like I'm mobile. I'm getting more blood flow in. Now it's just getting better faster. And now it's maybe 16 hours a day of obsession. And then reduced to 12. And it kept getting less by the summertime. It's eight hours a day.

I have to start my morning routine and all the things and just keep going, keep going. And then what my body allowed me to do that was just sort of like not recovery stuff. I would do life stuff that was like recovery stuff. I go walk in the sand. Great for your ankles and stability and my hips and knees and all that stuff. But at least I'm outside in the sunshine at Lake Tahoe.

breathing in the air, getting my feet cold. That's the biggest cold plunge in the world. That thing is freezing and just go in there and that's awesome. Right? So I can do that. So now I'm just doing eight hours and I reduced it to maybe four hours by the time I started going back to work, I'd have to commit to four hours a day, hyperbaric chamber, put O2 throughout my body. Red light therapy was huge. I still do these to this day. Um,

I mean, between the high heat stuff and the vibration, the red light, infrared beds, and hyperbaric chamber, I'll do this for the rest of my life. Mm-hmm.

What peptides were you using? Thymus and alpha, thymus and beta, BPC. Yeah, thymus and BBC 1 by 7, MOTC. I love MOTC. Huh? MOTC is great. Yeah, yeah. And there's TB500. There's a long, long list of stuff. I had to do hormone replacement stuff because my testosterone was at 200. I had to get that up because I was going to get some energy. So then I'd get in the gym instead of falling asleep in the gym.

Um, so that helped getting, regulating that. Cause again, I'm 54 and at that time, you know, I didn't, no one tells you how to get old, but I guess my testosterone was super low and, uh, that affects a lot of things in your body. Mm-hmm.

especially your energy. So, um, yeah, and there's a whole list of different peptides and I rotate them in and out. It's not like I do, uh, them all the time. I just kind of rotate just like supplements. I do the same thing with supplements. I rotate them in and out of my life. I'll go for a stretch of two months or three months on three months off or that kind of thing, you know, just to get your body to regulate, challenge it, let it try to produce its own HGH, its own testosterone, all those types of things. Um,

Really, really great to work on your body from a cellular level out. Using the NAD? Yeah, yeah, I do that every day. Wow. Every day. Sub-Q? Yeah, sub-Q and also IM and I don't do it through the IV because it just takes too long to go through that suck, you know? It's not nice. It's not nice. Sub-Q NAD is... I feel that, dude. It's like a shot of coffee. It's really interesting. Yeah, yeah. I also feel like the...

light version of it uh in this can do your stomach like oh gosh but it's only for 10 seconds it's nice it's nice once it goes five minutes i had this i had this theory about nad that one of the best parts of nad was it finishing it wasn't actually the effect it was like i've just been in so much discomfort yeah exactly precisely precisely precisely yeah exactly yeah it's yeah because i don't know many things that you put in your body that immediately make you feel good

Like an IV, that's an instant thing. You're getting hydrated pretty instantaneously. You're getting great vitamins. You can smell the vitamins, vitamin C in your- When they do that push. Yeah. So that you feel pretty instantly and you feel good. Not much else I can think that I've done. And I do everything, everything.

maybe a hot bath. And that's only because you get out of it and you're like, okay, I'm not in pain. Like a cold plunge. Other than when they say they're going, yeah, dude, you feel so good getting out. Yeah. You feel good getting out of that because you're not dying anymore.

That's why it feels good. It doesn't feel good ever. Does it feel good? No, it feels like hell. So by getting out, you're just not dying anymore. Your body's screaming, I'm dying, I'm dying. Cold proteins release, cold shock proteins. We all know this, they do it. I don't do a lot of cold plunges because I think you have to kind of, I do those when needed. I do, there's a crowd chambers, you know, I'd rather do that. Crowd chamber, I felt.

being a little bit more effective. You like the hyperbaric? Hyperbaric, I love. I love it because it does take a little bit more time, but I can do my, yeah, I can do emails, a cup of coffee, because I can sit in a chair just like this.

and um not just sit there and be like i'm in some treatment i'm like forget it i would never do it but i'll i'll just biostack in there i'll do red light mask in there i'll i'll do whatever i can to do multiple things i do many things all throughout the day you know how uh how is it like again i would have these things on right now yeah well but it'll mess up with the mics um how is it that your face looks like your face

Why does your face look like your face if so much destruction happened? Was it reconstructed? Interestingly enough, the only skin that broke was on the back of my head, and that's where all the blood was gushing.

Because when it got ran over, it went to my cheekbone pressure and the back of my skull here. That was where the rollover pressure went. So that's why I broke this cheekbone and it floating around. It broke my orbital and then my jaw. So this and then my jaw broke in three places. And then the crack here. All the other marks on my body are scars from the surgeries to put the metal in. So-

It was more the insides of my body that were crushed. And luckily, one of my ribs poked my liver because it broke in two spots. So there's a couple gaps. There was like 14 breaks and only six ribs. So several pieces of my ribcage were just gone. Floating. Yeah, just oozing around. So what was I talking about? I can't remember. Oh, yeah, my face. Why did your face look like your face? Yeah, yeah.

And once the swelling went down, they can see where the real damage is really just to my jaw because it's hard to fix your jaw apparently. And also my teeth got pushed in the molars. So nothing sits right. That's still the same case now. Yeah. Yeah. Forever. Wow. Yeah. They can't palate expand. I think, I think we'll be risk losing the teeth. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to lose them all anyway from all that trauma. Yeah.

hold on to them so i'm gonna hang on to them while i can and i still got a decent smile everything's fine it's just when i bite down it's like chewing eating is just not that enjoyable you gotta be careful with what foods you eat then no i'm only careful with foods i eat just um just what i want to put in my body you know and i'm not really a stickler about things you know i'm just i'm just conscious about what it is a bit yeah i like i like eating steak but you know i don't try to chew on stuff too much

That gum will never chew gum. I've heard a gun amount. What a price that you're going to have to pay. I'm interested in how... So anyway, the swelling with your eye, how does that go back in? There was so many ways that I should have an eye patch or a glass eye or something at this point, right? Because the orbital nerve didn't get pinched in the crack. And your nostril tissue, no damage to like essentially anything behind the eye or any of the nerves, right?

It's a miracle. It's a miracle. It was really the best way that this could have happened. It's a miracle. Essentially, it's just like moving it back in and duct taping it and just swelling went down and it started operating again. Yeah, it was crazy. Yeah, so I think, I mean, there's, I don't know, there's a little unevenness with it. I don't care. My face is my face. I still look the same, I guess, for the most part. And there's no like plastic surgery or anything that had to happen.

Um, it was all internal. Like they put in, they put the plates in my eye and my, my cheekbone. I said, we don't have to do it, but because your face is, you know, you're, you're living, we're afraid maybe you'll, you'll lose your cheekbone if we don't support it with a metal plate. And they just went inside my mouth and cut open all under the skin and put these plates in. Wow. You know, so then, and I had screws in my, my skull and then my jaw to kind of rubber band it to put, to heal the jaw. Wow.

And then that was it. And then that was it. It's pretty harrowing how they get these screws out, though. They just get a screwdriver from Home Depot and they just rip them out.

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In the description below or head to functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. That's functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. I'm interested in how you avoided becoming a victim of this. How would I ever be a victim? Well, you've had this thing happen to you, which you didn't choose to. I wasn't even victimized. How could I be a victim? You understand how this narrative plays in people's minds. But I'm telling you my perspective. That's how. If ever I...

I've been victimized and still never be a victim. Certainly doesn't even apply to this incident. I made the choice. I don't regret my choice. I'm only saddened that I put so much terror in my family's life. My nephew cannot unsee the things I did not see. He saw the blood gushing, holding my arm, squatting to hold it in a certain position for 45 minutes, my eyeball out, legs twisted up,

Just calm, cool, collected, partial shock. But you can't unsee it along the long list of all the other things that have happened and transpired because of it. So there's no, there's no, it's always my perspective and that's what I have control of. And it's, I refuse to be haunted. I refuse to hobble around. I refuse to, and it's not going to happen. My will will not let it happen.

But I, what is it? I, I, I just not going to happen.

Like if I believe I can fly and sprout a propeller out my ass, trust me, propellers about to come out. I want to propel around this room. I believe it's physically impossible. So I don't believe it, but that will, the reality is you build it. You can build your own reality. If you don't, you can become victimized or a victim, but you have to be sort of active in your believing and your doing and your, in your heart and your will. And your will is a thing is your life force, right?

So, you know, and it started with not wanting to hurt my family. You know, I wouldn't want to have been on their side, looking at me in the bed or hearing about it. My mom heard about it on the phone call. How about that phone call? Had a 13-hour drive to get to my hospital bed in the snow and the eyes. It's brutal. So, yeah, there is no me in any of this, man, except getting better version of me. You know, there's no being victimized or victim mentality in it. It's impossible. It's impossible. It's impossible.

It's just a square peg round hole. It doesn't fit here. It doesn't apply. At least I make it not apply if it does. How has this changed your outlook on life now moving forward? It's quite the same. It's a lot better because there's less obstacles, and that's where the white noise has gone. The things that I gave credence to or gave great value to are wiped away. What like?

Everything outside the basic things that I want in my life. Time, shared experiences with people I love, laughter. Just really, when I oversimplify a simple life, again, a very complicated, busy life I have, but I keep...

the white noise out. I don't listen to the, it's like the idea of like reading the comments or reading your reviews or like, I never did really anyway, but a version of that, you know, what that is for an individual. What it is for me is not giving so much energy to my career

I do. Obviously, I mean, I was working a year after the incident and I'm on second season, fourth season right now, but I give energy to it, right? But maybe how much energy, maybe I'm more married to central part of my life is my health and wellness. Everything else falls into place. I'm filming in Pittsburgh right now to get better. And then I happen to be filming Mayor of Kingstown season four.

But I'm there to get better. My garage is filled with workout equipment, hyperbaric chamber, my red light, but all these things, my fridge, I brought a sack with my peptides and things like I'm committed to my health and my wellness. It is a central part of my being and it has to be. And I like it and I love it and I want it to be. So that simplicity, like it doesn't make, then I don't get busy doing a bunch of other dumb stuff, you know, whatever, like what I would normally might do.

And it's way better because life is much simpler. And that's the only thing that's really changed is just like, I just don't give so much energy and get myself away to just things that I don't want anyway. You know, I already have everything I want in my life anyway. You know, especially as like, I have like many careers, I have many careers and I do a lot of things. And like, so I always had that drive to do stuff, right? As an independent sort of be my own boss and go do things, right? And

Um, you, and you know what that's like. I think any athlete knows what that's like. I think any businessman knows what that's like, but when do you stop and really to get to enjoy it when work becomes the central part of your life, but then you don't get in reap the benefits of all the hard work. Then what the fuck is the point? So now I'm doing the point. I'm working hard still, but I start with living the life first, doing a life first that I want to live. And then, um,

You know, prioritizing what, right? I reprioritize it. I think it's the best way to say it. It's like, I just put the priorities of me and my health that I didn't do before. I might wash my face once a week, you know, go to the gym, brush my teeth. But like now I do like complete opposite of that. And I do so many things to, uh, for my health and my wellness from the cellular level on out, you know, and it feels good, dude. Oh my God. It feels amazing.

And then I'm so much better with everybody else. I can sit here in this room and not be in any pain. I can be in a good mood with you. I can do this all day long, you know? Is that different to how you were before? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This would be a chore. This would be work. This would be time away from my daughter. I'd be here with a chip on my shoulder. I should be with my daughter right now. No, she's with me all the time now. I have her in my pocket.

I give her little peanuts down there once in a while. You know what I mean? Spirit is with me all the time. So I have that perspective. I'm not in angst of not being with my family or loved ones. Pretty amazing sort of perspective to have. And I try to hold on to those. It's a much lighter and loving place and space to be. I'm interested in the way that your mindset changes going from

Going from having to be so self-focused to selfless focused to that, and then sort of moving between these two, right? Because there's a tension. It feels like there's a tension here. You're showing up to make yourself better, to help to heal everybody else. You've got you that also needs to be served an awful lot. And yeah, it feels like there's a dynamic that's going on here between. Yeah. I don't know what the future holds to be honest with you, brother. Um,

The, the giant shift was, which is, it's hard to say, you know, cause it, cause it's to me. So it's like, it's like an airplane, right? And you use, use, um, pressure in the, in the, in the cabin, right? And the things come down, you're supposed to put it on yourself. Then your kid, well, every parent's going to be like, no, you put it on your kid first.

that's been me, you know, raising my daughter. I'm always going to look after and do the best for my daughter. And just like you're, we brought up earlier about how we like to take care. It's easier to take care of everybody else instead of yourself. And it's such like such a martyrdom kind of thing. It's just, it doesn't, it doesn't really help us. But if we fill our own water first, we fill us first and then we can serve others better. It's so I have to work that every day. I worked out every day because my instinct is to always do something for somebody else first. Right.

So the practice is that, like I told you, like the idea of like, oh, wait, I went to Pittsburgh to film Mary Kingston. No, I didn't. I went there to go work with a great PT there. They got a great medics there. Do all my health and wellness. And then I get to go back on set and create jobs and have a lot of good time on the show. Like all that. It's secondary. That's just the way I think about it. You could look at it like, yeah, I went there. Of course, I went to go film there. Otherwise, I wouldn't be in Pittsburgh. But no, I'm going there because I, you know what I mean? I take control of like,

it so I don't feel like I'm victimized by my job. Like my job is removing me from my health and wellness. No, I can't do that. Same with anything. So I think starting with taking care of myself, because again, because I have to, again, I wouldn't do this if it didn't get ran over, if I didn't fucking die. Sadly, my health and mental health and spiritual health would be depleted no matter how much I tried. So thank God I got crushed.

Because now I take care of myself very well and I take care of others even more so. It's interesting what you said about...

the hamster wheel that you get on the priority of a job, of a calling, of something that's really important to you. My friend Bill wrote a great book, Die With Zero, and in it he says, delayed gratification in the extreme results in no gratification. And I think a lot of people that are super, super driven, they get caught in that trap. I get lots of positive reinforcement from the job that I do. I get accolades, I get recognition, I get validation. It keeps you hooked along. Correct, yeah. I'm spinning on this hamster wheel. Yeah.

waiting for the day when I arrive. At what? At something. I'm going to continue to manana manana filling my cup. I'm going to keep on pushing down, taking a little bit of time. And I wonder as well whether a good bit of that is that

a very busy life, a very chaotic life, doesn't actually force you to turn inward and go, is this actually what I'm supposed to, am I spending my life in the best way that I can? It's like, well, look at how important I am. Look at how busy I am. I can't be wasting my life. Look at how back-to-back the calendar is. I've got my toilet break scheduled in, 12.05. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, you see different countries where capitalism isn't like the forefront of your existence. Some monetary things, some status, some jobs, some cars, some object, right? Yeah.

Whereas some more, you know, you go to Japan and it's more sort of Buddhist sort of thinking and there's capitalism there for sure. But you go to Italy, there's capitalism there too, but there's also a love of life. Way more cigarettes. Yeah, exactly. There's wine and when they close their shop at two, you go take a nap.

Or there's just, you know, there's a balance that can happen. In America, it doesn't. America has such a strong sort of sense of capitalism. And it's also, you know, a strong country for that very same reason. And industry is one thing, but then I think we lose sight of, like, you know, the American dream is, it needs to, can shift. It can shift. We don't have to, it's, you know, it's, you know,

It's interesting time, this time of information that we have. We could get so connected to everyone on the planet with all this information. And I found not disenchantment with the American dream that maybe I knew in the 80s, which is I'd go to college, I'd get a thing, maybe get a Porsche, whatever the heck it was as a young, dumb boy in the 80s. It certainly shifted as I matured as a man and now gotten older. But I have no regrets.

And that came from dying and being in the hospital. I said, I wrote two goodbye notes, one to my family, one to my daughter. I had no regrets. And I was so ready to go again because I was on machines. And I'm like, oh, man, I think they're going to pull the plug on me at this point. But, you know, it's nice to get that confirmation that you don't have regrets. So I'm going to keep going with that idea and keep living. I'm going to be doing something right. So I'll continue with that.

The ways I was thinking, because that confirmation was just a great, great gift to receive, along with no bad days. I'm not going to get any bad days the rest of my life. That's pretty awesome. Why? Because I want to live a long time. Because I know what a bad day feels like. I can have maybe a bad moment. I can find frustration. You'd be hard-pressed to get any rage out of me. Was that something that you had before? No. I wasn't a ragey guy. No. No.

I mean, neither. But just like, you know, just the idea of like, you know, what, when you see, you get, you have to know the limits, right? And then reach beyond the limits, tested beyond my limits and dying and coming back. It's like, all right, there's a different sort of, oh, also I got to see behind the curtains. You know, I know what happens. And like, it's super exciting, wonderfully peaceful, super electric, magnificent, magnificent.

It's everything. There's no time, place, or space. It's like all that, you know, it's like, oh, that's just a knowingness just in the back of my mind. Wow, that's amazing. And there's a long list of amazing gifts that kind of came with that. But going from like, oh, wait, capitalism, the thing, that's the spinning rock that we're on. And again, they keep zooming out.

That's where I start. Then I can get back in. Once I find I'm too microed into something, like my blinders are on and information is limited, I'm like, what am I doing here? I'm giving too much credence to something that has no value. And that's what I did a lot. And I think that's what a lot of us do all the time. Because we have the freedom, the luxury of where we are in our lives to pay a lot of attention to stuff that doesn't have value.

You know, how many colors of toenail polish are there for God's sakes or whatever that the minutia of what are we doing? So let me zoom out. Let me zoom out a little bit. I mean, aggregate what actually matters here.

And then go back in, re-engage into conversation, re-engage into my life, re-engage into, you know, whatever I was doing before. Because we can get a little caught up. We can get caught up. I feel like there's a ticking clock and the things that pressure and all these things we either put on ourselves or society can put on us.

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How do you think about balancing your desire to be professionally a very competent actor, pushing your limits creatively in terms of the way that you show up? Because that does require obsession with the micro. Sure. You win in the weeds when it comes to stuff like that. Yeah. Especially, I'm sure there'll be more movies. Yeah, I think that'll take time. I think I can swallow the idea. I didn't think I was going to go back to work. I had to live life in reality, not in fiction.

It's hard for me to go back. But it meant a lot. I was around a lot of love. So then that felt... What was the first day back on set like? I mean, it was very difficult. All of it was very... Energy levels were very low. I had like a couple good hours where I was awake enough to perform. As a character, I knew very well. And so that part was easy enough. I had to do a stunt as well.

Um, little challenging, but work through it. But all the working through with stunt guys and even the director all set up the cameras, it was all just acts of love. So that, that was what felt great. Everyone was, was happy that I was, was, was back. And, but, um, so yeah, it's, I took it as it felt, it felt very loving and a very loving set and amazing group of people.

So that's why I'm back again, you know, and it's pretty awesome. And I think it's just, to me, it's also to make a statement. I was tired of, you know, just doing recovery. I got recovery down to eight hours at that point a day, and I had to reduce it to about four hours to start working. But I said, I think I'm ready. I think it's time. I got to get back on the world. I can't just be

You know, some like gym rat, some recovery rat. Like a gym rat would be like a recovery rat. I mean, that's all I'm doing. I'm obsessing on recovery. I got to do something else. I got to participate in life. And like, why not do it with these people? There's a kind of fragility associated with that focus on recovery that never actually leads to you going back out into the real world. You know what I mean? Right. Well, that's also, yeah, becomes kind of futile at that point, right? Well, what do I get to set my goals to do?

You know, I think I was ready. I was definitely very social all throughout that, you know, so I was getting that, I was getting fed that part. But yeah, just kind of get it back out in the world. And the world was really wonderful to me, you know, instantly with the set. And then even people I met out about, you know, I got wonderful treatment by people wherever I went. And wow, that love that I would get.

just further just filled up my gas tank to get better get stronger do better be better and uh but all starts with me i'm not doing it for anybody right i'm filled with things i need to do for myself and there's zero selfish bone in my body you know what i mean and i always had that and i don't know if you too but or if it's just a general thing i feel selfish to take care of yourself so that i need to take care of everybody else right i don't know if that's

But it certainly doesn't even come across. There's not a selfish bone in my body, and I know it no matter how much time I spend on myself. You know what I mean? What would you say to someone who is deep in the hole, some sort of recovery, complex illness, injury, and they just haven't got that same fire that they need? Yeah, I know, man. You need people around. You need a support system. Emotionally support you.

Even if they're just there in the background and you hate them, you hate hearing their voices in the other room as they're playing games. And my family was doing that. I didn't resent that. I would just love hearing their voice there. The rumblings in the other room as I was in there with rubber bands and stuff and doing my thing. They'd be happy if I wheeled out and joined them. But I had, there's always love and support. You know, you gotta have, you need a community almost, you know? Maybe that's why they have like, you know, treatment centers. There's lots of other people you go into struggles. There's

you know, but you know, you're not alone, right? You have to believe that you're not alone and you can't do anything all by yourself. And that kept pushing me to keep going because I, I had a lot of help and that help I interpreted as low. And that was just all of you I needed. So I would say find, find support. If, I mean, if you're gosh, if you're a person alone in a hospital, you,

You know, wow, you got nurses there. You got a team there that's trying to help you, you know, help them help you, help your body help you. You're not alone because you have your body. Create as a separate thing. It's a new girlfriend or new boyfriend or whatever you want it, new dog. It's a new separate entity that you get to work with.

separate your body from yourself, from your mind, then you can work together to get better because they work together wonderfully. If right, that's a great dialogue to have. That's, that was very clutch for me in my loneliness of it, but it's very, very effective for, for neuropathways and make a new pathways for yourself. To treat your body like something that needs instructing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or, or treat it with respect.

Like I think it's a bad dog. I think it's a bad analogy, but it's like, you know, it's just like, it's as a partner, but you are, you're not helping me out here. So you got to listen to me. I'll listen to you if you listen to me, but treat it as a respect. It's still, I respect my body.

But I'll tell it to fuck off once in a while, you know? And it's like, ah, I gotcha, I gotcha, I gotcha. But, you know, I give my body a personality. Like, it's a, you know what I mean? It's a, I see it in my head. And then we have this relationship. Now it's just like almost unconscious thing that happens. And nothing, nothing, I get no flarebacks or setbacks or anything. I mean, the worst, and also, I never use the word even pain. I'll use discomfort. I'll use inflammation, stiffness. It's the worst thing I can ever say about my body.

But not pain. No. I don't know what pain is. That ain't pain. Inflammation, stiffness, walking, whatever. My back's like all out of whack and out of control and whatever. It's hard for me to get up and down sometimes. But it's just all temporary. It's temporary. You move through that. It's a bad afternoon. It's a rough morning. Whatever. Who cares? You move through it. It's temporary. It's all temporary anyway, isn't it? Your time on this planet is temporary. So make it the best you can. Work through the obstacles the best you can.

Right? We all got to get obstacles, no matter how rich you are, how poor you are, how strong you are or whatever. We're all going to have problems and obstacles. How good you are getting over those and through those, how fast and efficient you are with those. You're going to have more joy in your life. There's a lot more room for joy and laughter and other things you really want.

I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up what, at least to me, as a total noob in this world, a muggle outside of the industry, looks like maybe one of the biggest productions of all time, which was the Avengers series. Yes, yeah. Like looking back on that, what was being involved in that production like? You know, it removed it initially itself from, you became part of something so

It's such a collective type of narrative. The movies I was doing before were pretty more like I was a lead of a movie and the story is told through my character. It's just such an ensemble sort of piece. So you had to rely upon so many things and so many things that didn't even exist. And it's fantasy and there's a green screen and people are dressed in checkerboarded outfits. And so this fantasy world exists.

And then there's something that became really powerful in knowing that how much it meant to kids, right? How like, you know, the wide-eyedness of hope with kids, like, I don't know, it's such a great sort of conduit to kids. And I love kids. I'm the oldest of seven and it's sort of my birthright just to, you know, to have them or to be with them. That's why I have a, you know, renovations foundation. I mean, to give hope and opportunities to kids is really, really important to me. So like it started off there, you know,

We're dressing in costume. I mean, it looked ridiculous. At first, we're all dressed, you know, there's Hemsworth. You look a lot like a Hemsworth. And he put him in, he's got a wig and he's just, but he's got like a latte. He's in his store car. He's got this, this, this foam hammer or rubber hammer and this bow and arrow. And we're all trading around our props and,

Like we're at some Halloween costume. I was going to say, what's it feel like when you step out of each, your respective trailers and you come in and everyone's got the, it is kind of like. Yeah, that's when we all, because we're all figuring it out. This is at the beginning, right? In the first Avengers, we all kind of figuring out,

each other and then each other's characters and costumes. And, uh, and then it's just grown into, you know, a family, you know, a personal family. We have our own private sort of chat and all gone through like marriage and divorces and kids and all these things happen over these last 13 years we've been together. And it's also shared on a stage. That's almost a significant culturally significant sort of 22 giant films to make the last one that all,

led to Endgame, right? It's quite a significant thing to have happened over the course of almost 12, 13, 14 years. And it was awesome to be a part of that. And I get to take away, again, like I said, it's the

great friendships, lasting friendships. We'll have matching tattoos that sort of signify our bond that in this extreme narrative, crazy narrative of superheroes and a strange fantasy world brought us together. And now I have like really, really amazing loving friends and I have great conduit to children to be able to help them and, um,

Because being famous before kind of sucked. It ripped away your sort of, well, I wouldn't say it's totally sucked, but it just takes away your privacy, all the things, you know, you don't get to do just normal things. I'm just a normal dude from, kid from Minnesota, California. I want to do normal shit. I just don't get to do. Fine. But I can do other things. Great. But, you know, having a voice to kids, because I took my daughter when Endgame came out, she was five years old and I dropped her off at school for the first time.

And she was in kindergarten. And then as I dropped her off in there, it was kind of nerve wracking. I hear my name, Jeremy Renner, be called by some third grader. I'm like, why does this third grader know my first and last name? That's Jeremy Renner. They're not even saying Hawkeye. But I think something, oh, that's Hawkeye. And I had like 30 kids come chasing me down with cell phones out. I'm like, what do you do with cell phones, first of all? Anyway, so I take pictures with them all. I'm like, get back in, get back in your classrooms. And I went home, kind of freaked out that all these kids chasing me.

I thought, oh, the cool thing that is now to have, I can use a celebrity, have a real voice and use it in a proper way, use it for a good thing. So that forever changed my life. And that's where the foundation came involved. And I can really make a difference for kids. It's usually foster youth and disadvantaged youth. And to put a smile on a kid's face is just the best feeling anyway.

And hard to do if I was playing Jeffrey Dahmer, hard to do, probably couldn't do it if I was doing this role or doing that role or doing that role. But because I did something that kids could watch. Like my daughter never saw any of this stuff, but these kids were older, whatever. So anyway, I had such conduit to kids and that became such a beautiful payday for me.

Because the greatest payday for me doing anything in Marvel was my access to give love to kids, to inspire kids, to give them, especially this foster youth and disadvantage youth, some opportunities and plant some seeds of hope for them. Can you remember what your last scene was in the filming schedule for the entire sort of franchise so far? What was the last thing you did or the last day that you were on set? Were you there for the final day of filming overall to give the big...

Oh yeah. Yeah. We had, yeah, we had all that. We got all of us together just to do press. I had to get all the Avengers together. It's cause it got quite big at the end game. Um, so that was like a big sort of high school reunion kind of feeling. Um, like, Oh my God, I know he's, nobody's in costume this time. Um, but I, yeah, the last day of filming, I, yeah, it was, it was a, it was a reshoot, I believe for, uh, for Scarlett and I, um, her death scene was brutal. Um,

But I also did the Hawkeye series, so then that continued on. Kicks it on. Yeah, that kind of continued on. Because I love to continue on. But mainly continue on because I like the character and I think I can do a lot more with kids with it. I want to affect a lot of kids. Was there ever a sense of poetic irony that Hawkeye, given that one of your eyes was out of your head and on the floor, did that pass? Probably other stuff to focus on during that 45-minute period. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, they didn't come to my head. So what are you focused on now? What's coming up next for you? Well, I stick really quite present. I kind of try not to let my future get a hold of me because it did in the past. So I focus the Renovations Foundation. I have a couple of camps that I'm doing. It's grown tremendously.

quite significantly, which is great. A lot of support, a lot of community support. So I'm really focused on that as a, outside of my mental health and physical health. And the foundation is probably second in line as far priority. That's a bigger scope of something. And all my family's involved in the foundation as well, which is so killer. It's given them a, you know, real direction in life as well. My passion to help kids. So it's really easy. And my sister, you know, running it.

And then work-wise, yeah, there's a movie coming out later this year I'm excited about. The Knives Out is the third one in that. And then Mary Kingstown's continued on. People seem to really like that one. It does well for Paramount+. And I'll probably do one more season for sure, it seems, if people still like it.

which I think to do is going to be a pretty cool season. But outside that, I'm building a house. I'm always building and designing and doing those things and trying not to get too busier than just that. That's a pretty booked year. I'm trying not to work anymore for the rest of the year so that I can go focus on the foundation and helping that grow and that sort of stuff. So those are the important things to me.

In my family, of course. I can't wait to spend the summer with my daughter. She loves working with the foundation and helping the kids. And it's pretty cool. Pretty cool to see her growth as an emotional, emotionally intelligent creature. She's a lovely, lovely human my daughter's become out to be. So very proud. I'm happy for you, man. Yeah. Thanks, man. I'm really happy. I'm really happy. Jeremy Runner, ladies and gentlemen. Dude, you're awesome. I think...

Being able to see somebody sort of publicly go through a challenge like this is really important. It really, really is. Yeah. I'm glad it became a public thing. I'm glad. I mean, I never wanted to be because I woke up and there was like, you know, I was gone for a while. But by the time I woke up, it was like it was everywhere, right? And like that was a private moment between me and my nephew with my family on my driveway. It's none of your damn business. And I, you know,

But I guess I just kind of leaned into it and just made it, they made it public. So then I shared a private experience with everybody and it was wonderful. That's where a lot of the narrative grew from me being a man or a brother or just a friend or I wasn't the actor anymore. I was just somebody that went through something.

something they might be curious about or not, or just someone that's had a lot, right? So that was, I'm really glad it became such a public thing. And I'm glad who me being very private, typically shared a lot of sort of milestones that I had through social media or through the press. The press is very like, whatever I said on social media, they just went out and printed everywhere. And I'm glad I created a lot of wonderful relationships with the public, with fans that you can't just, I mean, I'm glad I'm so glad for it. Um,

But I tried to do the Diane Sawyer thing and then say, okay, here's what happened. Now let's move on. Let me get back to it. No, no, no, no. That's just the beginning. Write the book, do the interviews. Oh, yeah, write an album. Yeah, all this stuff. So even like with this book, it's just only going to be a chapter. It's not going to be I'm letting this go for the rest of my life. I'm never going to let this go. It's just always going to be part of now my DNA. I mean, it is for me. And, you know, the importance of it will be maybe less in public, which would be good.

But it's something I can't just shove away anymore. It's just now become a central part of who I am. And I'm thankful for that. Maybe don't do it again. I'm not going to do that again. I'm on the snowcat again, but, you know, I'm just, you know, I'm not going to let that thing haunt me. That's not happening. Jeremy, I appreciate you, man. Yeah, thanks, brother. Appreciate it. Ooh, tasty. Jeremy Renner made it all the way to the end of that episode. Well, why not watch The Indian Hawkeye, Naval Ravikant?

I get asked all the time for book suggestions. People want to get into reading fiction or nonfiction or real life stories. And that's why I made a list of 100 of the most interesting and impactful books that I've ever read. These are the most life-changing reads that I've ever found. And there's descriptions about why I like them and links to go and buy them. And it's completely free. And you can get it right now by going to chriswillx.com slash books. That's chriswillx.com slash books.