Life & Work with Jeff Tan

Hi Jeff, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
It wasn’t exactly bliss growing up in the working-class suburbs of Western Sydney, Australia. The area never featured in tourism commercials – it’s not the image of Australia you’re probably thinking of right now. There were no palm trees, no beaches, rainforests, nor outback kangaroos or cuddly koalas.

The suburb I grew up in was poor and rough. There’s no other way to describe it.

To top it off, as the child of Singaporean immigrants, I was the only kid in my school that looked like me. And boy, did I get reminded of that all the time. Every day I was told that I didn’t belong in the country that I was born in. “Go back to where you came from” was the soundtrack of my early years.

Athleticism in the schoolyard was the only thing that mattered in life, and as a skinny, scrawny, uncoordinated kid, I was at the bottom of the social heap. To top it off, I grew up in a very religious environment and I was told what to think and what to believe every minute of the day. In short, my childhood wasn’t very happy, and my future didn’t look exciting.

It wasn’t until one day in my late teens, that my older sister Jo told me about the dream she had of moving overseas and living in the UK. Until then, I hadn’t even considered that there might be a life for me outside the four walls of my mediocre existence. “There must be something more than this,” I started wondering daily.

It occurred to me that if I could finish my studies and move far away, I could hit refresh on my life and rethink who I wanted to be.

That’s the mindset that I took with me throughout my twenties. “Why not?” became the question I asked myself with every opportunity I came across. This mindset of curiosity and possibility led me into new experiences and opened up a ton of new doors. Yet, one belief still held me back – I still considered myself unathletic. It’s amazing how inherited-limiting beliefs from childhood have a way of just sticking around.

One day in my early thirties, my buddy Alex challenged me to run a marathon with him (removed incomplete sentence afterward). Upon my protest, he said, “Jeff, you can run the marathon. All you have to do is the right training and have the right mindset. I wouldn’t lie to you, of course you can do it.”

Asking my signature, “Well, why not?”, I registered for the marathon and spent the next ten months going through the proper rigorous training for it. Finally, in Nov 2013, I did it – completing the Melbourne marathon in 3:56, feeling unbreakable. There’s something about your first marathon that is simply incredible – it’s an intense emotional high that every marathoner will remember forever.

From there, I was hooked. Why stop at one marathon, in one country, in one continent? Realizing that only a very small number of people had completed the crazy dream of running marathons on all seven continents, I decided my goal was to join that exclusive group.

Each year, I ticked off a marathon in a different part of the world; from the savannahs of the South African safari to cosmopolitan Copenhagen and Los Angeles, from Outback Australia to the skyscrapers of Tokyo and New York.

For my finale, I planned to race the infamously brutal Antarctic Ice Marathon; 26.2 miles of freezing conditions at Union Glacier, a short skip from the South Pole. Challenges abounded throughout – including a paperwork mix-up that resulted in me getting deported from Chile back to Los Angeles. Making it back to the expedition meeting spot just in time, we landed on the Union Glacier Blue Ice Runway in a specially equipped jet and were greeted with the most breathtaking view possible.

The jagged edges of the Ellsworth mountains surrounded the glacier; pure breathtaking scenery that photos and videos don’t come close to capturing. The place was so cold, -5F in summer, that no life existed. No plants, no animals, and certainly no penguins – Union Glacier is deep inland.

The race itself was predictably challenging. 58 global athletes faced frostbite, high winds, slippery footing, and blinding white light in all directions. Five and a half hours later, I grabbed an Australian flag that was set up near the finish line – one flag for each of the countries represented. With my arms raised in personal victory, I stumbled across the finish line and joined the Seven Continents Marathon Club.

This whole experience made me realize that if I can run marathons on every continent – a skinny, outcast kid from working-class Sydney – you too can overcome your inherited limiting beliefs, all you need to do is retrain the way you think.

Now I’m doing what even I thought was beyond impossible a few years ago; I’m setting out to run an ultramarathon on all seven continents (an ultramarathon is anything beyond a 26.2-mile marathon; typical distances are 50K, 100K, and 100 miles+). By doing so, I want to inspire people that anything is possible. Whatever your own dream is, it’s totally possible too.

This dream might be something that people have been telling you is crazy, and that you could never do. It’s made worse by the fact that you probably have your own inner critic telling you the same thing: you’re not good enough, you’re not smart enough, you’re not athletic enough, you don’t have the resources, you’re not attractive enough, who do you even think you are?

It’s that inner critic, combined with well-meaning loved ones, that hold us back. Hold us back from doing the things that we want to do. Hold us back from living a life of possibility.

I’m here to tell you the opposite; it’s totally possible.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Let’s start off with the obvious one: it was a challenge rewiring the way my brain to overcome the inherited beliefs that I’d always believed.

Sure, the implanting of the thought from my buddy Alex that I could run a marathon was the catalyst that got me off the couch. Yet, I’d be lying to say it was easy in that first year. Every day, I would question myself; Am I actually a runner? Can I actually do this? Who the hell do I even think I am?

It did get easier over time as the marathons started stacking up, but there’s a point in every marathon once you start hitting 20 miles when all bravado and confidence vanishes. That’s when you start thinking, “I don’t know if I can do this; I honestly don’t know if I can reach the finish line”. Critically, that’s when the doubt starts creeping in – why am I even doing this? No one’s asking me to put my body through this pain.

Before I share my message at keynotes on stages, I often have feelings of doubt. Who am I to share this message? Do I have the right to say this? I’m not a psychologist. I’m not an expert in mindset. I’m not a certified coach. All I am is a guy that likes to embrace a life of possibility.

Hudson is my six-year-old son, and I want to ensure that he grows up knowing that he can be whoever he wants to be. He can live whatever life he wants to live. Too often parents, teachers, and communities impose what they want on children. They dictate the thoughts and even choose the dreams that young people have. That’s not right.

We need to be empowering young people with the confidence and the knowledge to know that this is the only life you get. And what matters is embracing a life of curiosity and true potential. I was told all my life I have to be a certain person, believe a certain thing, do a certain occupation – and that’s not true freedom. We get one life, and I believe it’s our duty to make it one of possibility for us and for the people around us.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?