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greetings hello good day wherever you are in the world thank you for joining true Hope cast the official podcast of true hope Canada now true Hope cast

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takes a deep dive into mental Health's many psychological and physiological aspects this is the show for you if you

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are looking for motivation inspiration knowledge and solutions and that is really what we are all about here at

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true hope Canada and true hope Canada is a mind and body based supplement company that is dedicated first and foremost to

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promoting brain and body Health to non-invasive nutritional means for more information about us you can visit

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truehopecanada.com today on the show though I've got the pleasure of welcoming Skyler Rock McDonald to the

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podcast now Skyler grew up in central Alberta with soccer being one of his main passions his life took a massive

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turn in 2009 and in 2012 after losing his two best friends to suicide at just

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12 and 17 years of age with depression and various mental health battles taking up much of Skyler's youth he hit a big

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turning point in 2016. now though Skyler has applied the strength he has gained through diversity to Big goals and has

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since climbed over 100 mountains ran over 150 marathons and ran across Canada for mental health awareness today Skyler

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lives in Calgary and is speaking to schools all over the country full-time he's also coaching Runners and athlete

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as well today we're going to be discussing what it really means to be a mental health Advocate enjoy the show

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okay good morning Skyler welcome to True Hope cast thank you so much for being with me today how are you what is going

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well good morning Simon thanks for having me um pretty relaxed morning

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um things are good just getting geared up for 2023 getting into schools to

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present about my Canada run um of course mental health as well so

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um and then of course just getting excited for the and ready for the holidays so yeah that's great buddy yeah

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2023 is like Fast approaching and uh yeah it's such an interesting time for

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um you know like you know a do-over a refresher for the year and you can start things new you can try different things

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and obviously projects like you've got you going on yourself it's no it's so important to have

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um plans in regards to like what you're going to do with your passion what are you going to do with your goal and your mission Etc so yeah it's obviously very

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important to to plan those things out so that's that's really cool man that's awesome as as a little introduction can

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you just let us know let the audience know a little bit more about who you who you are and what it is that you do

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yeah I'm just a dude who loves to run a lot um and uh you know values mental health

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so in 2021 I ran across Canada at 7 300 kilometer journey I did that in just

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over four months um 143 days and we raised 65 000 for the Canadian

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Mental Health Association so that was a big win so I'm uh I'm a runner and a

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mental health Advocate essentially you've got to seriously love running to do that man that's uh that's what so you

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basically ran for four months around for four months every day we would do I guess there was like some

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rest days because um there's a lot I wanted to see across Canada like I'd never really been across

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Canada so to spend days in Montreal and Ottawa and see family out east that was great but on the running days we were

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doing um anywhere is from 50 to 85k a day

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um so lots of running lots of eating lots of sleeping but I loved it it was so much fun and I I definitely want to

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do it again that's what how when you say we did you have like a team of people like kind of

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like driving with you like supporting you and obviously you need to have rest the ability to rest food and drink Etc

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yeah man this is uh ultra running especially but I mean when you're doing a 7 300 kilometer run uh it's a team

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sport like to have you have I would have to run and then everyone else

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um would have to have meals ready um do my laundry Drive the RV

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um do a lot of like social media uh and honestly I only had one driver at a time

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one of the biggest difficulties with the Run wasn't the running itself it was the logistics

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so to you know ask someone for to dedicate that much time

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um you know to volunteer uh is really is a really tough ask so I had several

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drivers along the way volunteer and dedicate their time and help me achieve this stream and this goal so very much a

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team effort um I was just the runner and I would much rather be the runner than driving

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that RV because essentially how it works each day we start I have breakfast

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we make a game plan every day I'm feeling a little bit different some days I feel great some days I don't

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um so typical day might be like all right let's meet 10 to 12K down the road I'll meet up with you you know I'll fill

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up my water bottles grab a grab a quick bite um do any adjustments and then make a

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game plan for the next next stop so if I'm feeling good and we'll maybe go a little bit longer if uh you know I want

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to make it a bit shorter we'll do that so and then the driver drives that distance and waits for me so

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very very patient um job you have to be patient to do that

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job um so man I shout out to the drivers I wouldn't have been able to do it without without uh without you guys

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yeah I think I think I said just your description of that whole process it's an interesting metaphor for mental

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health right because you of going out there you've got this goal you've got this challenge you've got this big thing that you want to do and for a lot of

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people in depressive States or anxious States or um people who have like bipolar or

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something you know they have this like wild challenge every single day and you

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need support you need people around you to help guide you to help you know keep you

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motivated to just just be an ear for you so you know it's very interesting that like you you talk about running across

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the country on your own as a team sport and it just you know goes to says to me that you know

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mental health is mental health and just being a human being is without question like a communal team effort that you

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need other people around you in order to you know do life successfully so that's really interesting um can you

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what why did you why like why did you run across the country why is that like

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you know that that big application for mental health like where does the birth of that like Drive come from

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yeah there's a lot of reasons for that I mean first of all I've always had the idea in

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the back of my head even before I really uh knew what mental health struggle was

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just as an innocent kid you'd hear about Terry Fox and do the Terry Fox run in

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school and to hear someone run from one end of the country to the other was just

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mind-blowing and inspiring to me and I always thought I'd maybe want to try that one day

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and then as I got older and you know mental health became a high priority and very

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important to me um you know a little backstory is like I I

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actually lost a best friend of mine to Suicide we were 12 years old um so at a very young age like

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I was in that dark cloud that dark time that confusing time when I didn't have the tools to to get through it and just

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really held a lot of that pain and that that hurt in and so mental health has been no no

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stranger to me and um especially depression and and uh you

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know anxiousness and I lost another best friend when I was 16 uh to Suicide so it's really been

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a big part of my life and it's uh it's been a big pain in the past

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like I you know I I remember the days where I wouldn't be able to get out of bed in the morning and just have no hope

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and not know um if life gets better I didn't believe it would

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um but there's a turning point and I knew that I needed to live not just a life full

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life for me you have one life here and you have to fill that um with what makes you happy and so I

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made that my mission and I also made it my mission to live a full life for Josh and for Eli who whose lives got cut way

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too short so they're my inspiration they're my motivation so once the

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pandemic came around that's when I committed to running across Canada I

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knew that depression and mental health was impacting more people than ever across

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not just Canada but the world and now is the time to run across Canada if

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I don't do it now I probably never would I have so much time uh I can't travel

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and leave the country so another great time to see uh our beautiful country and

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uh I'm so glad I did it and you know people ask me like were you worried about like quitting or like not

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finishing and when you have that why like especially for mental health like my why is Josh and Eli like there was no

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doubt in my mind that I'd be able to get to the Finish Line like when you have

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um an inspiration like Josh and Eli like you can honestly do everything and anything you want and that's what I want

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to share with people is like these dark times don't stay forever you can get through them even when you don't think

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you can um I never in my life would have guessed that I'd run across Canada

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um ever and five years ago if you asked me I would have laughed uh so you just

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you're Limitless and you don't know what you can achieve and I just want to share that with people man people can do so

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many amazing things so yeah it's super inspirational and yeah I think that obviously with the experience you've had

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like growing up with with people um they people committing suicide

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um it's it's obviously a really valuable thing that you you probably learned as a

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very young man you know like I I don't I don't know anybody who's committed suicide and I would only re I could only

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believe that there would be a huge lesson to you as an individual to you know

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recognize that obviously life is super precious and yeah like having these like young these young people

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not live the rest of their lives and do amazing things and it it it's really

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super unfortunate like 12 years old like that's so unbelievably young and it's like how how is this how is the system

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Society Community like allowed that to actually happen and obviously that's a huge big question we could talk about

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that for a long long time but if you're you know if I feel like if you're you'll

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run this great massive thing that you did could Inspire like one one kid to like you know reach out to another

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person rather than taking their own life then that's just a huge unbelievable Victory just that one person but I

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believe that you're going to inspire lots of other people when they you know hear about this story and you know we'll talk more about like what you're going

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to do in the next year and going and going and talking to schools I think that's just such an amazing thing like going going to the source of probably

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the biggest demographic of like mental health challenges at the moment yeah obviously we had the pandemic with

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lockdowns and we had all this like isolation we had all this separation and I could only imagine how difficult it

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would have been for those for those kids that like really rely on going to school every day and being with their peers and

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being you know being able to like play sports and being able to be creative and do all those things that's uh that's a

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huge part of that that part of turning into like a a young adult so having that ripped away from you is is very very

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challenging and very difficult so we have to have measures put in place to be able to support those people when they

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do when they do need help and what was your with the actual run itself like was

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there was there like a primary goal you've spoken about like the charitable aspect so you

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certainly certainly touched on that for me please but also like the awareness piece like what does what does awareness

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like mean really like mean to you yeah um yeah I'm so like first of all my my

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financial or not I guess my yeah my financial goal I guess was to raise fifty thousand dollars so we

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reached 65 000 that was great that was amazing um but mental health awareness to me and

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like the way I would do that it was tough during the pandemic like you couldn't like schools were barely in so you know

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to get a guest speaker is kind of out of the question um but I did some virtuals I did a lot of news segments newspapers but I think

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ultimately it's just being vulnerable and leading by example like I know when I was in high school or middle school I

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was a younger kid like to see a young man or a grown man you know just talk about his mental

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health just like he would talk about like a broken arm or a broken leg is huge um asking for help is uh is something we

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need to do more of there's no shame in asking for help um and I Taco that in schools like if you broke your leg you

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wouldn't even think twice of asking for help you go to the hospital and you know our brain is the most

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important arguably the most important part of our body and you don't you can't get brain transplants yet at least so we

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have to prioritize that and that's something that especially in the Health Care System needs to change

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um and but yeah just you know speaking about this and being open and being vulnerable

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um I think that at least for me that's that's inspirational when I see other people do that so you know that's my

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hope for for others when I can be open and talk about my mental health struggles and not everything's perfect

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and and that kind of thing yeah that's that that not everything's perfect is a really point because like

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we obviously have a large group of young people like you know are on social media they rely on that and they see a

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particular reality that is obviously fabricated and literally filtered right so it's it's interesting where you if

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that was a large part of your world I was quite a lot I'm nearly 40 so I'm lucky to have like kind of missed that whole bubble especially when I was a

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teenager going in school it must be a really really difficult thing to to see like if you're you know

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you're seeing all these people like doing all these things and being these being all these things and maybe you're not doing that much or you perceive that

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you're not doing that much right it could be a really really challenging yeah really challenging thing for you you know just

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just as when you're you know really kind of figuring out like who you are and what it is that you what it is that you

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want to do um just just before we kind of like move on I really want to talk about the

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charity itself but I wanted to know like how did I and I've been in Canada for a long time I'm blown away that I've not

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heard about this run and this and this massive charitable thing that you've done

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um would there be like a group or an organization that I could be like I could like follow or I could sign up to

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a newsletter for example to hear about things like this in the future

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um it's tough like I think if you're in the Running Scene you might have heard

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about it um but yeah it was like it was pretty quiet um but like I said we raised our goal

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and everything like that and there was a lot of people that that reached out and and that kind of stuff as where like you

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can follow or learn them uh about future things I

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I think just um social media would be the best way like running niches

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um there's another Runner uh Dave Proctor from Calgary he ran across Canada this year

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and he ran across Canada in 67 days 110 kilometers a day it's the speed record

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so and that should have been way bigger too so unbelievable yeah it's on it's it's

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actually almost impossible to wrap your brain around um but yeah you know running is not the

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most popular sport in the world you know so it's it's tough if uh you know an NBA

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player an NFL player and across the country you would hear about that so yeah yeah I like we have a lot of

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listeners in like Europe and around the world I think people recognize how massive and wide Canada is I think

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there's six time zones but it's absolutely Preposterous four and a half okay yeah

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it's preposterously large and um it's no it's not like you know you could you

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could probably get uh south to North and north to south of England in probably a

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couple of days to be honest GPS right now Google Maps to see how far Portugal to Russia is in kilometers to

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put in perspective uh I'll do that that's interesting but um yeah like to run there is a view

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I think his name's Nick Butters he's a English Runner and he's run a marathon

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he's the only person to run a marathon in every country in the world and he's ran around Britain he's uh another great

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Runner to follow another person that his accomplishments should be should be out there a lot more than they are

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um so yeah that's there's some fun running tracks and challenges and there's a lot

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of people that just inspire me and when you follow all these people it starts to become normal so when you talk like I

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got to the point when I would talk about my Canada run and I would talk about almost like

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nonchalantly because it just became so normal to me and it would throw so many people off and they'd be like wait

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you're doing what it's like oh yeah yeah I guess it is a little bit a little bit nuts

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the um I'm just trying to just trying to get my mind around like how like obviously

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you've said you've got the right raising money for charity amazing thing to do um doing something huge to bring

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awareness to the cause of why you're doing it how do you think that um you

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know doing something like running across Canada is gonna directly

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influence motivate open the minds up of young people

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I think just because I had such like a normal

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like childhood in the sense like I wasn't in like I wanted to be a professional football player

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um European football so and um you know like I thought you had

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to be in all these academies and you know have all these you know advantages I just felt like I could never reach

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that and I thought you had to have like be equipped with like these special things or like this incredible talents

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and basically be born to reach these these uh these dreams which

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I eventually got to the point where I just realized it's consistency and hard work those two things and when you put

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those into what you love like you have that's you have no it doesn't it's not work and you get really

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good at it because you just want to do it all the time so for me running is uh that's all I did and you know I got to

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the point where I got to turn professional and like I never would have guessed that but at the end of the day

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it's just hard work and uh and consistency and anyone can do that so to

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share that message with with kids and not just kids but anyone like you can be 40 years old and and go and start

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something learn another language learn another um you know instrument I just saw a 91 year old graduated from University like

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that's so inspiring and uh yeah it's just anyone can be consistent and work

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hard so it's like an idea of like showing what what just like fundamental ethics

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of like you know of working hard and and kind of sticking with things and reaping

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the benefits later and you know you can you can dream big at that point all the time do what you love and you

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you really have to because if you want to get good at something you have to do it consistently over a long period of

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time so it makes sense to do what you love because if you don't pick something

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that you love you're probably not going to be consistent and you're probably not going to do it for a long time and so

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yeah it's do what you love and that can be scary because it's a big leap sometimes you don't have the financial

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security sometimes you know like you don't have that two-week paycheck or the

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startup is very difficult but it's always worth it like when I started this run across Canada I put every penny I

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had into it and I didn't know how to email companies I didn't know how to

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like do anything with an RV I didn't you know it was you know work with a charity

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um so it's it's just really spending time out of

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your comfort zone and and in in a realm of something that you love and you're gonna inevitably be good at it I've

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never seen anyone work hard at something and not achieve their goals share sometimes you might

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um might take a couple times to reach it uh but you will get it and qualifying

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for the Boston Marathon great example of it uh for me that's a big goal I have to run a marathon in under three hours that

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might take three or four attempts but I know that I'm gonna be I will be able to do it because I'm putting in the hard

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work yeah I think just being able to push yourself physically and mentally and like you know trying to do something

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like running a marathon for three hours that takes so much work so much commitment to yourself and that only um

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that's only going to you know breed the types of qualities that's going to you know create

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successful individuals I think and I think taking responsibility for for

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things is something that young people want I think it's what they need and I

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think that yeah like if you can show them that you you can do these amazing things and it's only gonna yeah motivate and Inspire them to think that they can

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they can do similar things or greater things or even just like you know what we you know minor accomplishments I

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don't even know what that really means but I thought I think I think you know what I'm talking about um which which charity were you associated

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with and why did you why did you choose them uh so the Canadian Mental Health Association

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um I had to pick one because I wanted it to because I'm running across Canada for all Canadians so for

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me to pick like a local charity um that doesn't help all Canadians so

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um once I kind of read more about the Canadian Mental Health Association it was it was a no-brainer and um you know

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it's and it is it is a great organization they have branches throughout all of Canada

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um and they work you know within the community and there's some really great programs out there I highly recommend anyone to check them out I stopped in at

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a lot of locations along the run and got to meet their staff and see the programs and and it's a it's a great organization

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amazing um in regards to like Canada as a country I've only been here I've only

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been here for like seven or eight years but you obviously lived here your whole life um and at such a young age you're

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exposed to significant Mental Health crisis you know like within your school within your classroom within your within

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your friend's Circle so do you think like as as a country right now we're in like a we're in like good shape when it

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comes to treating mental illness because obviously over the last couple of years like it's just like let's just shop

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through the roof especially in teenagers we can talk about literally all demographics in regards to that but especially like kids and teenagers we've

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never kind of seen mental health and mental illness in the type of state that it's at right now but in your experience

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you think like Canada like we're in like the we do like a decent job or a good job or a bad job at like supporting

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those kids it's a great question um I think from like school's perspective

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or like from like counselors and like people that are very passionate about mental health they have like the best

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intentions but they have to work with the resources and the budgets that they have where we do an extremely horrible job is

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the higher ups like the people that are in charge of like the Health Care system and the budgets uh three months before I

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actually started the run across Canada I was in a really dark point in my life and I self-admitted myself to the mental

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health unit and I really got to see what it was like and you know it's just little things

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um like people in the higher ups that make that decision to make that the meal

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supply for the mental health unit and the rest of the hospital the same as the the prison meal Supply

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someone made that decision and can sleep at night with that um there's people that are taking their

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life wanting to take their lives and actually have the courage to ask for help and they go to a hospital and

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they're turned away because there's not enough beds that's so wrong and

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you know not only that if you want to go and talk to a therapist or a counselor

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you know we ask people to talk and we encourage people to speak and ask for help but you have to pay 150 an hour or you

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know not that might be an exaggeration sometimes it is more but sometimes it's less but we don't treat it like we we

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should and it should be way more accessible um and you know the higher ups have all

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these statistics that they put on their websites and everything but do they really make an effort to change it I

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don't think so so that's my two cents um yeah I think from the bottom like from the ground and

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the front lines I think we are our hearts and our minds are in the right spot and we're prioritizing it the best

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we can working with these schools you know the teachers and the counselors are all on board and they agree with the message but we need to change from uh

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from a higher up yeah there's such a massive massive literal division between the people

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making the decisions and then the people who are having to experience the end result of those decisions and yeah I

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don't personally don't think that smartest most intelligent competent people go and work for the government in

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my opinion especially in the higher ups it's actually blown my mind in the past few years um to the level of incompetence that is

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running our country and probably most countries and most governments around the world right like so unrelatable especially in the UK is the same thing

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we have you know ministers that have never had to you know struggle on a monthly basis for food and stuff like

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that and they're making the decisions for millions of people so I wouldn't want to be in that position either but

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it's like you know if you have like let's say for example we have like people who are in charge of the health

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of you know millions of people and you can look at them and you can say that there's no chance that that's a healthy

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individual like how are they to give advice in regard in regards to that and I love what you said about

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um I didn't know that but like the you know you the the food and the nutritional quality of like a prison is

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exactly the same as if you're you know in a Mental Health institution like what

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we know about nutritional deficiency and mental health disorder that's just an absolute no-brainer

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science is unbelievably solid on that so someone's even just ignoring that or they're just like not well read on it

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either way it's completely ignorant and it's completely unacceptable so yeah again that's another topic we could just

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absolutely rip on all day um do you think that there are some simple

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things that we could be doing that we could be doing better like maybe like not on a Government Federal

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you know like 40 million people type of basis but maybe in like maybe smaller towns smaller communities do you think

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there's some things that we could be doing better you know even from like just a simple thing like you know social interaction

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is huge so just like even organizing activities it doesn't even have to be an emphasis on Mental Health but just doing

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like group runs it doesn't even have to be exercise it could be like I don't

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know anything um I think that's a really easy Point way to start um especially since the pandemic we

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haven't really got to see face to face so interaction is good um that also gives other people a chance

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to you know kind of pick up on red flags that people are struggling too so

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um I think there's a lot of things that we can do as individuals as well um you know when I look at mental health

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kind of look at it as a spectrum if you look at you know some days you sit at different places on that Spectrum so if

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you look at it as like a scale of one to ten ten being like you're suicidal one being like you're on cloud nine

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recognizing when you're about to hit like a s you know if for me now and this

28:46

is something I wish I did in high school when I recognized that I'm at like a three or a four maybe it's been like a

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bad morning I have a list of things that I can do meditate have a shower go on a

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run read Journal um simple things that I know

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um that work for me that I make a list when I am in a good State I can make a list in my iPhone be like okay this

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works this is making me really happy right now so that when I am going through those darker times I can reference this list and I can be like

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okay let's try these um so I when I recognize that I'm at like a three out of ten I start to look

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at that list and do a few things because when you wait until you're at like a seven eight nine it's really really

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tough to get out of that so that's been that's something that I think a lot of people can do just as individuals

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um yes that's really helped with me yeah that I mean that's huge that's

29:38

that's literally simple tools that you can do that are at home they're available for you to kind of do at any point but I think what's missing for a

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lot of people is the ability to recognize or to put themselves on that type of a scale to have that like

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self-reflective ability I think that's something that um you either you know learn from maybe

29:57

your parents you learn from an amazing teacher or you know you go through something traumatic and you learn you

30:03

know you recognize that that's something you kind of need to do for your own like mental health I don't think that's something that we particularly like

30:09

focus on like maybe in like schools and teaching kids how to recognize their emotions there's obviously schools that

30:14

do do something like that but like on a on on a broad scale like we should be you know teaching kids about their

30:21

emotions how that works and what they can do to um help help themselves when they're

30:27

feeling anxious or rageful or anger and again like asking questions and being open to support and some help I think

30:34

we're like slowly moving out of this like like World War II parental

30:41

way that we had like I know that my grandfather would have parented my dad in you know like in like the in the 50s

30:49

you know like eight years after the war second world war it ended right and there was literally like there was no

30:54

time to like uh really go through like feelings and emotions and things with

31:00

like kids like they were literally like in Wartime right so it was like there was no really kind of like time for that and I understand that for sure and then

31:07

that kind of feeds into my into my parents generation and that kind of slips into me and that's slowly and

31:13

slowly I think we're becoming a little bit more aware um I mean we're not like directly in love in some places in the world we are

31:18

in like War times but you know not here in like Canada right now anyway uh and so hopefully like you know I me as a

31:25

parent I feel like I'm a lot more aware of like my three-year-old can be you know an absolute hurricane of emotions

31:34

but like me as a 40 year old adult I can't have the expectation of him being

31:39

able to regulate his emotions like I can I've got 40 Years of it right he's got three and these things these biochemical

31:45

changes happen to him really fast and you know he like will have these outbursts and I have to just like sit

31:52

back and recognize that um in more of like a like a casual response rather than like

31:59

an immediate reaction where it's like you can't be angry like that just because of that you know that's not okay and you know it's just like that's just

32:06

a wild old-school parenting role I suppose but I feel like it's very very

32:11

slowly weeding out of that but I don't think we're getting enough um education and enough support from yeah the higher

32:17

ups as we've spoken to about that before what do you think about that oh I think we're making like tremendous like

32:23

Headway like you said like if you compare Generations like we're way more open about it

32:28

um which is which is great uh but we have such a long long ways to go so yeah yeah we're ready to

32:36

um tell us about like your next like next goals you're gonna run across you're gonna run across Russia

32:42

not right now um I did just look at the Google Maps so

32:48

the equivalent is almost like running from Portugal to Turkey and back

32:54

that's a lot of countries as well it would be super fun and actually so one of my goals is I would love to run

33:01

around the globe I've looked at the logistics uh it's 26 000 kilometers so

33:07

about four times um the distance of running across Canada

33:13

uh but you know I'd be really cool you basically have to close a loop so you

33:19

have to finish where you start and you have to do that minimum of of 26 000

33:24

kilometers and I think you have to do it's been a while since I checked

33:30

because the Canada run I was like I want to come back to this in a few years but I think it's like five continents

33:37

um that you have to do so that's something I'd love to do but right now like uh I'd love to qualify for Boston

33:42

Marathon my girlfriend uh ran it last year and I went with her and it was so

33:47

cool the energy um so I just love to cross that off the bucket list and it gives me a good goal

33:53

to train for and it's keeping me consistent um it's really fun and so yeah I want to

33:58

go do that and I'm gonna go run Berlin marathon in the fall I'm doing that as a mental health fundraiser as well for a

34:06

London charity actually which I know is where you're from Simon so it's called rethink mental illness

34:13

and my two best friends uh and myself we're gonna run that in memory for Eli

34:20

um Sam Jordan and myself we were best friends with Eli and Eli was our friend who you know took his life uh in 20 in

34:28

2012 uh just 20 days after his 17th birthday so um yeah we're I'm excited you got a

34:36

bunch of fundraising we're gonna do and a bunch of running so I I really can't complain

34:41

that's amazing well I'm certainly going to keep keep tabs on on that type of progress for that one that's that's

34:46

awesome um and you're going to be going into schools next year and and having

34:52

conversations what what does that look like yeah so that was kind of something I knew I wanted to do even before I ran

34:58

across Canada um so this year uh the start of the school

35:03

year uh in September until now I've been into schools um for Zed classes uh calm classes

35:10

Health classes um and like entire schools and I share my journey across Canada and

35:18

um you know my my journey with mental health and you know just try to inspire and and motivate

35:25

um you know the the younger generations to you know not just chase their dreams and set big goals but prioritize their

35:31

mental health maintenance and um and not be scared to ask for help what was the what was the response been

35:38

like so far from these younger kids oh man like I'm way like I didn't realize like

35:45

the impact that like I guess this journey could make and it's just it's so fulfilling like

35:53

I literally have kids messaging me after saying like I saved their life or they

35:58

found a passion like I had one uh young man say he loves fishing so he's going

36:04

to make it a goal to go to Five Alpine lakes in the mountains in the next in

36:10

the next two years and uh and fish because that's gonna help him get into hiking in the mountains and he gets to

36:16

do what he loves so man when I hear that stuff um It's amazing And

36:22

it just makes me want to get in front of as many students as possible because like I said we can all we can all

36:27

achieve what we want to do um we just sometimes need that little push yeah I think that

36:34

kids especially crave mentorship they crave Role Models they

36:41

crave that type of inspiration they even crave the stories I'm sure just you telling them the actual story like

36:46

stories is one of the most ancient ways that we've communicated as humans forever and I think it puts you in such

36:53

a first of all it connects you as individuals and it also like such an emotional thing to go through to listen

36:59

to like a truly remarkable story from another human being I think that it inspires people in a

37:06

in a way that can't be mimicked and you know we have this weird culture where we

37:12

celebrate these celebrities that like live in Hollywood and you know or you know we have this very weird culture in

37:19

regards to that people we never met before people that don't really do amazing things but like actually me you

37:26

know like you know like a rumble like yourself like who does literally heroic stuff that without question would you

37:32

know inspire a lot of people to to do remarkable things and yeah like just as

37:37

you shared what that kid shared to you like that's that's like that's tingling stuff man that's super cool

37:43

uh I I appreciate it man at the end of the day I just want to be that voice that I needed to hear when I was in

37:50

those dark times so it's easy for me to do I just I just get up there and talk to my younger self and uh and it's easy

37:58

man and if I know that it's not easy for a lot of people to be vulnerable so maybe it's a gift that I'm able to do

38:05

that and you know and I and I want to use that gift yeah I think for a lot of like young men

38:11

I think it's important that they see older men being vulnerable being open talking about all these types of things

38:16

and being a lot more connected to their their thoughts and being more connected to their to their emotions and it it

38:22

opens up the door for other people to do the same and yeah I think that's uh really powerful way that you'll be able

38:28

to influence people in so many different ways man so that's awesome can you let us know like

38:33

how people can connect with you I've been through your Instagram some really cool stuff from the run so if you're

38:39

interested in that you should certainly check that out because you know what an amazing life I feel like um being in

38:46

British Columbia for like you know five six years I feel like I could spend my life just exploring this province let

38:53

alone the whole country um such an amazing place place to be so fortunate and yeah you you know you can

38:59

so what an amazing place to be a young person and you know be into hiking and being in the forest and just being

39:06

outside like you couldn't really ask for a better place in the world to be so how can people

39:11

um connect with you scholar oh yeah um well you can definitely connect with me I'm a little bit low-key

39:16

I don't have like uh you know a website yet or anything but um on Instagram uh Skyler runs

39:23

um you know you can always shoot me a message um you know if you're just need someone to talk to even

39:29

uh if you need tips on running um hiking that kind of stuff um

39:34

my email is skylerroth speaking uh so you can reach out to me there if you're

39:40

you know if any teachers or schools are listening to um feel free to reach out to me there I'd love to come in and speak to your

39:45

students um and yeah if you're looking for a running coach reach out to me on either of those I'd love to work with you too

39:52

so so yeah and you're in you're in Calgary right uh

39:57

I'll be moving to Calgary next month yeah I'm in I'm in central Alberta but yeah um I'll be in Calgary and uh yeah

40:04

when I'm when I'm out your way we'll have to we'll have to get out on a run 100 maybe play football I'm more used to

40:11

running around after a football rather than running running but we can maybe mix it up and do both let's do it awesome well Skyler thanks so much buddy

40:18

for coming on to True hope costs I really appreciate it super inspiring stuff I can't wait to hear um more about

40:24

you know maybe at the end of next year we can hear about how it's gone with these schools because I think it's you

40:30

know it's going to be such an amazing thing to be able to go and speak to these young people so I look forward to having you back on the show if you're up

40:35

for it but again from me thank you so much uh thank you and yeah we'll definitely uh we'll definitely have to connect

40:42

again in the future awesome thank you so much well that is it for this episode of True hope cost uh

40:47

the official podcast of true hope Canada will be back with you next week uh don't forget to subscribe if you haven't yet you can leave us a little review on

40:53

iTunes if you want but that is it for this week we'll see you soon

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[Music] foreign