Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure

Summary

Podcast Summary: Habits and Hustle
Episode 452: Henry Abbott on Misogi - The Extreme Challenge With a 50% Chance of Failure
Release Date: May 23, 2025

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1. Introduction to Misogi

In Episode 452 of Habits and Hustle, host Jennifer Cohen welcomes journalist Henry Abbott to discuss the concept of Misogi—a rigorous practice involving extreme challenges with a 50% chance of success. Misogi is rooted in a Shinto tradition where individuals undertake daunting tasks annually to push beyond their perceived limits.

“Misogi is about taking on a challenge so tough there's only a 50% chance you'll finish.”
— Henry Abbott [00:08]

2. The Concept of Extreme Challenges

Henry Abbott and Tony Robbins delve into the origins of Misogi, tracing it back to Marcus and his friend Garth’s adventurous attempts in the Wind River Range in Montana. These extreme endeavors include running underwater 5Ks while carrying rocks and undertaking nine-hour paddleboard treks through shark-infested waters.

“They were going to pack almost nothing and catch what they were going to eat.”
— Tony Robbins [02:19]

Most of these challenges ended in failure, highlighting the true essence of Misogi: confronting and overcoming the fear of failure to unlock hidden potentials.

3. Overcoming Mental Limits and Pain

The discussion shifts to the science behind mental limits and chronic pain. Robbins emphasizes that many of our limitations are mental barriers rather than physical ones. Engaging in Misogi helps rewire the brain, diminishing pain signals and enhancing resilience.

“The purpose of Misogi is to shut your brain up when it tells you you can't do something.”
— Tony Robbins [04:48]

Henry adds that undertaking such challenges builds confidence, proving to oneself that difficult tasks are achievable.

4. Tony Robbins’ Personal Journey with Pain

Robbins shares his personal battle with chronic pain while writing his book, Joy of Movement. Through physical therapy and guided hikes with Marcus, Robbins learned to push through pain by focusing on movement rather than the pain itself.

“I was feeling like, oh, I'm getting better. Like, I'm figuring out my stuff.”
— Tony Robbins [11:14]

This experience reinforced the idea that movement is essential for healing and overcoming pain.

5. The Science Behind Movement and Healing

Robbins references studies, including those from the Harvard Fatigue Lab, which suggest that physiological limits are often dictated by the brain. He discusses how consistent movement sends positive signals to the body, counteracting chronic pain and enhancing physical capabilities.

“There’s almost no physiological limits. Like people can deal with insane amounts of heat or cold.”
— Tony Robbins [05:51]

He also touches on evolutionary biology, noting that just as animals evolved new abilities, humans can similarly expand their potential through deliberate challenges.

“Maybe one day a human could just try to fly.”
— Tony Robbins [07:27]

6. Conclusion

The episode culminates with the affirmation that engaging in Misogi can significantly alter one’s mindset and physical capabilities. By regularly challenging oneself with extreme tasks, individuals can break free from self-imposed limitations, fostering a life of greater fulfillment and achievement.

“Movement is like life.”
— Henry Abbott [13:35]

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This episode of Habits and Hustle offers profound insights into how extreme challenges like Misogi can transform mental and physical boundaries, encouraging listeners to embrace discomfort as a pathway to growth and resilience.

Transcript

[Tony Robbins]

Hi, guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it.

[Henry Abbott]

Welcome to Fitness Friday. Today I'm joined by journalist Henry Abbott to explore misogi, which is a powerful practice where you take on a challenge so tough there's only a 50% chance you'll finish. Think underwater. 5Ks with rocks or 9 hour paddleboard treks through sharky waters. We also talk about the science behind mental limits, Henry's journey through chronic pain, and why pushing to the edge might be exactly what you need to break through. So let's dive in. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to thank our sponsor, Momentous. When your goal is healthspan, living better and longer, and there are very few non negotiables, one of them quality. And when it comes to supplements designed for high performers, nobody does it better than Momentous. Momentous goes all in on NSF certification, which means every single batch is tested for heavy metals, harmful additives, and label accuracy. And that's why they're trusted by all 32 NFL teams and top collegiate sports dietitians across the country. Here's the thing. They don't sell every supplement under the sun because they believe in nailing the basics with rock solid consistency. And those basics are protein and creatine. Momentous sources. Creapure, the purest form of creatine monohydrate available. An absolute must for both men and women who want peak physical and cognitive performance. So if you're serious about leveling up, go to livemomentous.com and use code Jen for 20% off. Just act now. Start today. Jen for 20% off. Livemomentous.com why do you write about Ms. Ogi?

[Tony Robbins]

Do you know about Masogi?

[Henry Abbott]

I do.

[Tony Robbins]

Do you know where it comes from?

[Henry Abbott]

Isn't it like. Yeah, I do.

[Tony Robbins]

Do you know it comes from this guy? This comes from Marcus.

[Henry Abbott]

Oh, it does?

[Tony Robbins]

Yeah. Yeah, you should read that chapter.

[Henry Abbott]

Oh, my gosh. Okay. I'm gonna read that chapter. That's the chapter I did not read.

[Tony Robbins]

And then Kyle Korver.

[Henry Abbott]

We'll talk about it.

[Tony Robbins]

Okay. So when Marcus was in medical school, Harvard Medical School, he and a friend named Garth, who were very outdoorsy, and they didn't like being in Boston and they wanted to sort of get back to the country. So they went to the Wind River Range in Montana, which is extremely high elevation, like 12,000ft at the low parts, and it's very intense. And they were going to pack almost nothing and catch what they were going to eat. And deal with altitude by just being tough. And like, 10 minutes in, that's a slight exaggeration. Garth gets altitude sickness and has to go home. So then. But he's in the lead up. He's been talking to Marcus about how he does all these martial arts. And there's this, like, Shinto tradition of misogi where you do, as Garth explained it, which is not totally accurate with the Shinto tradition, but you, once a year, you do a challenge that's so intense that you think you're only 50% likely to make it. And so Marcus latched onto it as this idea of a way to get into your capabilities that are beyond what you think they could be. Right. We're held back by our brain a lot of times. Right. A lot of the times, even in, like, breath holding, you get this panicky feeling. You have to breathe long before you need oxygen. Right. So you want to defeat that a little bit. And so they've done crazy things. One of the ones was run a 5K on the ocean floor carrying a rock. So if we were partners, I would drop the rock. It's like they do it in, like, the Channel Islands, so it'd be like 10ft deep under the waves. Drop the rock on the ground, and then you dive down and pick it up and run as far as you can and then drop it. And then I swim down, pick it up, run as far as I can, and they do 5K. Or they. They paddle boarded from the Channel Islands to Santa Barbara, which is nine hours of, like, wind and sharks and like, you know, craziness and like nine hours or they climbed the height. Actually, most of them failed. This one, they. They arranged to climb the height of Mount Everest in, like, I think it's called the US Bancorp Tower in la. Is that what it's called? Something like that. But a skyscraper.

[Henry Abbott]

A skyscraper. What's the point? Like, so this idea. Why did he do. So the idea of doing this misogi. Yeah, yeah. Was basically picking one thing a year that you're doing that is something that you think you have a 50% chance of actually completing. Basically, it's like a super hard challenge.

[Tony Robbins]

Yeah.

[Henry Abbott]

What's the purpose of it?

[Tony Robbins]

So the purpose of it is to shut your brain up when it tells you you can't do something. Right. The purpose of it is to show your brain movement is actually interesting in rewiring your brain in terms of, like, limits and also pain. So if you have chronic pain, which is a big topic in the book too, because it's the reason why a lot of us don't move like we want to. I talked to this awesome pain expert, Rachel Zofnus, who explains basically like the way that you convince your body it can do something where like it's sending pain signals, is carefully progressing through more movement, right? The movement sends the signal back like, no, we're okay doing this. So in doing a masogi, you're, you're telling your body like you might feel like we can't paddle board for nine hours, but I'm telling you we can. I'm showing you we can. We're going to feel that we can, right? And once you've finished that, you kind of have this self regard where you're like, maybe I can do.

[Henry Abbott]

Right? It's like anything. It's the concept of doing hard things to show improve to yourself that you can do hard things. Yeah, right. So it gives you the confidence to do something again or different. Right?

[Tony Robbins]

And there aren't. They used to have this thing called the Harvard Fatigue Lab around like World War II where they would just abuse people and see how much they could take, right? And they found there's almost no physiological limits. Like people can deal with like insane amounts of heat or cold or you know, dehydration or whatever. Like they just like can't really find the limits are in our brain. So I mean this, I mean this is where it sounds like kind of trippy, but like in writing this and I went to this research, like every animal that flies used to not fly, which means there was like a first one to fly.

[Henry Abbott]

Like that is trippy, huh?

[Tony Robbins]

How badass is that, right?

[Henry Abbott]

And they had it and they just like one, one day an animal was like, hey, I'm gonna try to fly.

[Tony Robbins]

I got this.

[Henry Abbott]

And then they just started flying.

[Tony Robbins]

And I think about the lemmings, right? It's like they're all trying, right? They're all just like, maybe I got it, maybe I got it.

[Henry Abbott]

That's so true.

[Tony Robbins]

Like, maybe one day one of them will.

[Henry Abbott]

So can one day a human could just try to. Why don't you just go outside and try to fly?

[Tony Robbins]

Have you tried to have those skin suits? They're getting closer.

[Henry Abbott]

You think so?

[Tony Robbins]

I mean, I don't know. But like I'm not going to tell them they can't, right? Like I'm going to leave that up to them.

[Henry Abbott]

Do you think humans are going to be able to fly one day?

[Tony Robbins]

I'm not soon.

[Henry Abbott]

But, but, but if animals can do.

[Tony Robbins]

That, things that used to be fish to fly now. You know what I mean? Like what I mean, we all evolved from, like, little sea creatures.

[Henry Abbott]

That's true. That's true.

[Tony Robbins]

Yeah, I guess I just, I.

[Henry Abbott]

You know, it's limitless to what we can actually achieve.

[Tony Robbins]

And the. And there's this great study about, like, you can see on an MRI in the brain, like, a little thing that happens when a thing starts to fly. Like, when the first dinosaur started to fly, the skull got a little different to accommodate, like, this little new brain activity.

[Henry Abbott]

Use this for me.

[Tony Robbins]

And when a pigeon flies, that same little part of the skull, like, has this little extra activity of like, whatever they have to do to fly. Like, I'm guessing that the first step in humans flying would be that in our brain, right?

[Henry Abbott]

We're flying.

[Tony Robbins]

So this is the mi to me is like, you can change your brain. You know, they can. They can put a freaking. I don't know why they chose this thing, but they. Like an owl can only survive if it catches mice and stuff, right? And that's why its eyes are, like, way bigger than ours. Like, 30% of their head is eye, and they have better eyes than we do. But they would put like a, like, basically goggles or lenses on the owl so that it was seeing the whole world through a prism. And it was like, totally screwed up. Now they can't survive, right? But it would take them like two, three days to. To learn how to catch a mouse looking through that crazy mess. Cause they just, like, learned a new language. They learned a new way to do it. Right.

[Henry Abbott]

Wow.

[Tony Robbins]

And it's like, only survival will give you that, like, crazy burst of learning, right? And I feel like this is what the masogi is touching a little bit. Is like, maybe we can do way more than we thought.

[Henry Abbott]

So is the idea that this place gives tells people that they need to choose and pick a msogi every year so they can then not feel limited by anything and get. Get rid of limited beliefs of them.

[Tony Robbins]

Great question. So you know how I said this is kind of like learning language? And there's like the two ways, right? There's like drilling with your teacher doing vocab drills. And then there's like, just move to Quito and see if you can speak Spanish. Right?

[Henry Abbott]

Right.

[Tony Robbins]

So in the lab, you know, you pay them whatever. That's going to be the vocab part. That's where they're going to assess you and watch you and coach you. Like, the outside, the lab part is not part of the paid service. Right. This is just like that's how Marcus lives his life. And a lot of his friends and some. A lot of the NBA. You know, Kyle Korver was an NBA player for a long time. He and Marcus became, like, best friends. And that's kind of how Misogi got out into the world, is because there was an outside magazine article about Kyle doing his first song with Marcus. I don't know, like, 10, 15 years ago. And so there's like this, you know, that that knowledge is out there. Marcus does it all. Every year. He does masogi. And I think if you want to, you know.

[Henry Abbott]

Yeah.

[Tony Robbins]

His recommendation is somewhere out in nature. Not something you practice with friends and not something that's, like, easily measured. So it's fun to have it kind of amorphous, you know, like, we're going to go from here to there or from that mountain to that mountain or whatever it is. But the problem is, if it's something you practice, then you're going to be thinking the whole time about, well, I know I can run this mile pace and this many miles and blah, blah. And that's not how he wants you to think. Like, Kyle Korver had never been unpatible before in his life when he first started to paddle from the Channel Islands, which means his brain is, like, massively expansive. Right.

[Henry Abbott]

What am I doing? That's so scary.

[Tony Robbins]

It's so scary. At some point, someone dropped a chicken burrito in the water, and they thought they were going to have shark attack. And then, like, there was a. I don't know what a sunfish looks like, but I guess it has a fin that looks like a shark. And they all, like, freaked out because there was this, like, fin in the water.

[Henry Abbott]

So he did a paddle board without ever doing one before.

[Tony Robbins]

Yeah.

[Henry Abbott]

And that's so dangerous, though, too. Isn't there, like a. Like, there's. There's a. There's a fine line between being bold and being stupid.

[Tony Robbins]

They did have a. Well, they had each other. They had a bunch of them, but also had a boat of, like, they could retire.

[Henry Abbott]

They can jump in the boat. Okay.

[Tony Robbins]

Okay. Yeah. Don't die. That's one of the other rules.

[Henry Abbott]

Oh, that's another rule.

[Tony Robbins]

Don't die.

[Henry Abbott]

That's. That's a good one.

[Tony Robbins]

It's a great one.

[Henry Abbott]

Yeah.

[Tony Robbins]

Yeah. Very important.

[Henry Abbott]

Very important. What else did you learn about pain and how to. And how to.

[Tony Robbins]

You're asking today because you're in pain.

[Henry Abbott]

Push through pain, maybe.

[Tony Robbins]

Yeah, yeah. No, I. I went through hell while, like, it was. So I'm Writing a book about joy of movement. And I went like. Like, I was, like, on the floor in the dark with, like, an open bowl of Tylenol. Like, it was like, the most pathetic.

[Henry Abbott]

Oh, my God.

[Tony Robbins]

My brother in law, I was feeling like, oh, I'm getting better. Like, I'm figuring out my stuff. And my brother in law popped by. It was Christmas. And he's like. He's like, this is so sad. I'm, like, seeing it through his eyes. I'm like, yeah, it's super sad.

[Henry Abbott]

Oh, my God, that's hilarious.

[Tony Robbins]

But so then I did regular pt, like all of us would do, but, you know, I had to come back out to Santa Barbara to finish writing the book. And when I got out here, they were like, can you just. Can we just try to help you? You know, can we assess you? And I had said I didn't want to be part of it because I don't want to, like, lose my journalistic objectivity or whatever, and. But finally I was so desperate, I was like, all right, let's go. And they assessed me on a Friday and put me through little. I had one session of physical therapy and then just did the workout, including that thing I mentioned with the foot on the floor and weird stuff like a stork press. Look that one up. That's kind of cool. There are a bunch of weird moves I had never done before. And then the next day, Marcus, you know, who is a doctor, he's a medical doctor, and he knew all of my results. He was like, why don't we go for a hike? And then on the hike, the hike that he took me on in the hills above Santa Barbara, which are so beautiful, we're hopping from rock to rock, which isn't something I would have been doing. I was in so much pain before. But because he knows what he's talking about, he gave me permission to give it a whirl. And Jen, like, it was like, you know, first one, I'm like, we'll see how this goes, right? And, like, first one, like, okay. But then as my right leg was usually more painful, so then I'd like to. You know, there's a stream and I have to clear it and make it to the next rock. I'm like, I go airborne. I'm just like, this might be murderous when I land it.

[Henry Abbott]

Yeah.

[Tony Robbins]

But it was okay. And, like, I'm thinking about using my hips more, and I'm thinking about the ball of my foot, and. And then next thing you know, I'm like, like, I can do this. And I think that I had, since I had already done the pt, I was ready for this, but I wasn't going to give myself permission to take that kind of risk. But I needed to move like that. I need to convince my brain not to send wild pain signals all the time.

[Henry Abbott]

Right, Right, right.

[Tony Robbins]

And then it totally fits with the research. At some point you gotta move, right. And it's not the day of the injury. Right, Right.

[Henry Abbott]

Well, they say, like, even when you get like, it's. To stop moving is like, that's what. That's what becomes deadly. Right. So, like, when I never. I'm. I'm like you. I. I need to move. I'm not someone who does well.

[Tony Robbins]

Yeah.

[Henry Abbott]

Being sedentary. So even when I. When I have the flu or something, to really feel terrible, because movement is. To me anyway. Movement is like. It's like. Like life. Right. Like, if I have a bad back, even with a bad. An injury, I still walk to get the blood circulating. Do they teach you that back there?

[Tony Robbins]

Yeah. Well, I sent Mark. There was an article in New York Times, like, three years ago maybe, which said, like, basically, to. To cure what else you walk.

[Henry Abbott]

Yeah.

[Tony Robbins]

And there's a lot of evidence about this. And so I sent that to Marcus. I wasn't sure what he was going to say. And he was like, yeah, for like, a broad swath of people, walking will cure a lot. Right. A lot of us are so immobile that this counts as.

[Henry Abbott]

Right.

[Tony Robbins]

But he's like, but, you know, don't you want to do more fun stuff than that? Right. Don't you want to learn how to really move? Marcus's take is that basically, if you manage your hips and your. And your ankles and feet well, then these things will still come up, but they'll just be speed bumps.

[Henry Abbott]

Right.

[Tony Robbins]

Rather than being out six months, you'll be out two weeks. It.