Purpose Effect | Ryan Rivard on the Climb From Overdose to Everest
5 Big Ideas, 3 Reflection Questions, 1 Practice
đ§ In This Episode
We explore Ryan Rivardâs journey from a near-fatal overdose at 19 to summiting Mount Everest at 40 â and what he discovered when neither rock bottom nor the summit filled what he thought they would.
Youâll learn why gratitude never becomes automatic (and why thatâs actually the point), how to release the shame thatâs slowing you down, why the summit was never the destination, and how Ryanâs Dodek Method â a 12-dimensional operating system for aligned achievement â creates the kind of alignment where success stops costing you yourself. Plus: how counting just 10 steps at a time got him to the roof of the world.
Listen Now
Chase Club (Ad Free)
đ 5 BIG IDEAS
1. Gratitude Is a Practice, Not a Feeling
Gratitude doesnât arrive automatically â it has to be cultivated deliberately, moment by moment. Ryan starts every morning on his knees saying thank you for another sober day. More than a ritual, heâs trained himself to reframe obligation as privilege: not âI have to go to the gymâ but âI get to show up.â
It doesnât need a dramatic reason. Noticing warmth, your kidsâ health, the chance to move your body â these micro-acknowledgments stack into a resilient baseline. It never becomes fully automatic, and thatâs not a failure. It means it always requires intention. And intention is how it stays real.
2. Everyone Is Recovering From Something
We celebrate recovery from substance abuse because itâs visible and binary â youâre sober or youâre not. But Ryanâs framework is broader: everyone carries something theyâre working through, and most of it happens in silence. Codependency. People-pleasing. Perfectionism. Avoidance. The ism doesnât matter.
What matters is that the process â patience, consistency, releasing shame, serving others â applies universally. The moment we stop treating recovery as something that happens to âcertain peopleâ is the moment we can be honest about where we are and what we need. Your journey from A to B doesnât require a dramatic backstory. It just requires starting.
3. Shame Is Dead Weight in Your Pack
Climbing Everest is already hard. Why load your pack with rocks you donât need? Shame functions exactly that way â it adds weight without adding momentum. Unlike fear, which can motivate and keep you aligned, shame just slows you down. It doesnât protect anyone.
And every time Ryan has trusted someone enough to share something he was ashamed of, the response has been nearly universal: âIâve done that too.â Thatâs it. The secret collapses in the light of community. Stop holding things in secret. Find trusted people. Let the weight come out of your pack.
4. The Summit Was Never the Goal
Ryan reached the top of Mount Everest and expected an epiphany. What he found was that it didnât fill anything â just like drugs hadnât, and just like business success hadnât. The summit was proof that youâre capable. But it wasnât the destination.
The process of preparing for Everest â two and a half years, two training peaks, a torn knee â was the transformation. This runs through everything: the daily grind, the ordinary training sessions, the weekly challenges. Fall in love with the process. If youâre only ever waiting for the top, youâre missing all the climbing.
5. Alignment Matter More Than Optimization
Ryanâs Dodek Method distills 23+ years of recovery, endurance, leadership, and parenting into six pillars: Physical Presence (vitality + discipline), Mental Fortitude (awareness + resilience), Emotional Integrity (vulnerability + connection), Purpose & Identity (vision + alignment), Performance & Impact (mastery + service), and Spiritual Dimension (presence + expansion).
Each pillar has two principles â 12 total. Together, they form an operating system that ensures the version of you at work is the same one your family gets at home. The goal isnât optimization. Itâs alignment. When these pillars are in balance, the noise quiets â because you finally know what youâre building toward.
đ¤ 3 REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. What are you using to fill the wrong cup?
Everyone tends to pour relentlessly into one area â success, fitness, work â hoping it will overflow into the others: relationships, identity, peace of mind. It doesnât. Think about where youâve been overinvesting and what cups youâve been quietly ignoring. What would it look like to pour even 10% of that energy somewhere else this week?
2. What are you carrying in your pack that youâve never told anyone?
Shame loses most of its power the moment itâs spoken â not shared publicly, just shared with one trusted person. Think about something youâve been holding privately that youâre afraid would change how someone sees you. Who in your life is safe enough to receive that? What would it feel like to set that weight down?
3. What is your current Everest â and do you love the climb, or just the idea of the summit?
Everyone has a mountain: a goal, a transformation, a version of themselves theyâre working toward. The honest question is whether youâve fallen in love with the process â the daily reps, the setbacks, the incremental progress â or whether youâre enduring it, waiting for the top. How would your day-to-day change if the process itself became the destination?
đŻ 1 PRACTICE
Count 10 steps. Then 10 more.
At Camp 2 on Mount Everest â 22,000 feet up, with another 7,000 still to go â Ryan stopped looking at the summit and started counting 10 steps. Then he counted 10 more. That was it. That was the strategy that got him to the top of the world.
You have your own Everest. Maybe itâs a health goal, a business youâre building, a relationship youâre repairing, or a habit youâve been failing to lock in. The gap between where you are and where you want to go can feel like another mountain on top of this one. Looking at all of it at once doesnât help â it paralyzes.
This week, identify one area where youâve been stalling because the goal feels too far. Set aside the destination entirely. Ask yourself only: what are the next 10 steps? Not the 10 steps that get you there â just the 10 steps in front of you right now. Walk them. Then count the next 10.
Thatâs how Everest gets climbed.