Barbell Shrugged - The 3 Common Qualities Great Athletes, Coaches & Righteous Human Beings Share

Episode Date: August 5, 2015

Adopt these 3 qualities and you'll quickly go from low performer to high performer.

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we share the common qualities of amazing athletes, coaches, and righteous human beings. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe, standing here with Doug Larson, Chris Moore. We also have Alex Macklin, our flight coach, and he actually does a ton of stuff. The Barbell Shrugged company, he helps make the whole thing actually run.

A lot of shit. This man behind the scenes. Without Alex, we would all be homeless more than I do. We don't have to work if he was here. Pretty much. Keeps our shit together.

This guy's a fantastic weightlifting coach. Absolutely. He's got like two or three fucking full-time jobs. He put together with CTP and Kurt the flight school

and things like that. Flight school. If you hang out on the Barbell Shrugged website long enough, you will run into this man's face. He's in the logo, in the daily logo. And he'll be teaching you stuff. Trust me.

And this is the guy on the podcast, Art. He is. Oh, yeah. I wish we had a different picture now because I was like super small back then. Hey, man. You're big enough, man. You know? We need the yoke version.

Hey, man. At least you're a model. Right. You ever thought about yourself as a model? You're a model. I'm a model. Wow. If you go to barbellstrug.com right now and sign up for the newsletter, you will get pictures

of Alex Macklin in your inbox. That's doing a snatch in his man bag. Oh, God. No, you're not going to get that. Maybe not. Today, we're going to be talking about some things. Yeah, things. Some things.

I lost my words. We're going to be talking about what makes a successful athlete, coach, gym owner, basically anyone who's successful at life has these certain attributes. And we're going to talk about these certain attributes and how they apply to you specifically. I would say extraordinarily successful. This is the thing that really sets people apart. Yeah, this takes people from that like the moderate like pretty good to great really. The reason we're talking about this is because last week, and this is actually why Alex is in town right now, is last week we had a big uh company team retreat for barbell shrugged uh there's about 26 people uh on our team right now not just us folks yeah so i think yeah people

think about barbell shrugged they probably think about the people standing in this room right now but there's a whole team making everything work uh just the way it needs to work. So we had this big company retreat. We brought, I have a coach. He basically coaches our team on how to run a successful company. And when he came in, he talked about a few different attributes. And he, one thing he did say is one of the reasons he was excited to work with us. This is a definitely a guy that doesn't have to work. It's not like he's taking work from just anybody, but he noticed that we were already kind of on the train. We already had a lot of these attributes inside of our company and he was excited to work with us to help refine them. But with that being said, he still presented these attributes to the whole company. And when he laid them out, he's

like, you guys already do this well, but you could always do better and refine them and being aware of these attributes alone is going to help you refine them day to day so when it's brought to our attention it became very obvious what we needed to do to help be better as a company better coaches better athletes because as you're sitting there and you're listening to something like this you're not thinking about just one aspect of life or you shouldn't be anyways. You should be thinking about how does this apply to all sorts of, all the different parts of my life. And it does.

It applies to everything you might do. Yeah. So we want to talk about those attributes today because the way he laid it out, I never really thought about it like that before, but as he laid it out, it was just, oh. Yeah. It was really obvious. You see examples right the difference between the two you know low performance and then high performance attributes

yeah and then when you have that awareness shift you can immediately feel the difference that it would make if you kept that and went about your activities because all the conditions can be the same but the way you thought about it changed the way you can get the outcome yeah and you see it like within yourself too like oh i've been doing this like the whole time and like it brings it opens your eyes up you know like maybe i should have any personal shame ran upon you kind of yeah actually a lot of yeah and let's hear about your personal shame everybody well i mean just i mean you know some of the attributes like for instance we talked about uh knowing versus learning you know that was the first one we were going to talk about that was the first one we were going to talk about. That was the first one.

What perfect timing, Alex Jesus. Yeah, so like the whole example between knowing versus learning something like, you know, you know, you know, if you've been doing something for a while, you know, you have this idea in your head how it's supposed to be done. And then you kind of feel like, you know, if someone does it differently, that it's conflicting with you and you try to like keep them doing the same way that you've been doing but maybe they have a reason that they're doing it differently and you should be trying to figure out why they're doing it

differently and that's like the learning aspect um so if you just you know just tell them what to do all the time then you know you can have i don't know you're not really growing as a person i think you know yeah i think I think we've all seen this. Yeah. And we've all probably been there at some point. I know I have. I think every human being has struggled to overcome this at some point in their journey. Oh, yeah.

It's a primate thing. You learn a certain amount of information about this thing. You find some level of success, and now you can't shut up about it. Right. And now someone wants to state their opinion, or they're doing something a different way than what you up about it. Right. And now, and now someone wants to state their opinion or they're doing something a different way than what you would do it. And then you basically, anytime you go into the knowing realm,

you, you fall out of learning. Like the moment you go into knowing your, your learning is just completely turned off. If you ever like run one article or you got done with that one political science class in college and you went to your next family, you was like, I know what's wrong with all you people. I'm 22. I've got a degree and you got done with that one political science class in college and you went to your next family and you're just like, I know what's wrong with all you

people. I'm 22, I've got a degree and I got shit figured out. And you're right on this topic. Well, to add some context to this real quick. So Brian, your coach has been in San Francisco and in the world of tech for decades now. And he works with super high level companies where he works with Apple and he works with LinkedIn and he works with Google and he works with super high level companies where he he works with apple and he works with linkedin and he works with google and he works with those type of companies and he's worked with a lot of companies that have done really well and succeeded he's worked a lot of

companies that have not done so well and have gone out of business and so he's he's compiled this this kind of list of these three comparisons as as alex said high performing companies do do a and low performing companies do do b or actually in the case of what we're going to talk about today uh the low performing company example would come first that would be knowing in the example we talked about and then the high performing company would would have more specifically a culture of learning versus a culture of knowing and in tech where everything is evolving changing so quickly everything's you know innovations are happening on a daily

or hourly basis almost it seems. So having a culture of knowing in a company like that means that you're only going to know the right answer for so long. Right. And then all of a sudden, a year or two later, what you know isn't really relevant anymore. And if you have a culture of learning,

then what you're learning keeps you relevant rather than makes you, rather than the case of knowing, makes you relevant only for a very small period of time. If you have that culture of learning, you'll stay relevant well into the future. So, I mean, you can take that example and pull it into any time you're interacting with people in almost any setting. When you're interacting with your coach as an athlete, when you're interacting with your athlete as a coach, when you are interacting with other coaches, when you're interacting with the owner of the gym, interacting with your family, interacting with anyone who you're trying to give information and advice to

or get information and advice from. So it doesn't have to be just for business owners, even though that's kind of originally how we learned it. I think applying this to athletes is very relevant. Well, I liked your point about Silicon Valley and how it rapidly changes because I can see, anybody can see in health and fitness today, rapidly evolving, super evolving situation where new methods are being mixed, new outcomes, new ideas floating really fast, faster than ever before.

So that mindset is very helpful now. Yeah, I mean, it's not that much different with training because this information is being shared so quickly now. And maybe it's true for everything because the information period is being shared so quick. No matter what you're talking about, you've got to be on the ball to stay evolving. Right. Yeah. And so one thing that I've learned from a mutual friend of all of ours and also a mutual friend of your coach, Brian,

is that Eben Pagan has taught us that the number one phrase that keeps you from learning is the phrase i know i know if you say i know even if you do know maybe you know 99 of it but there's there's that one percent piece even if you're already an expert that that you could perfect and tweak and refine and maybe get some more perspective on and maybe you would change your mind about that one piece so by going into into any situation with the frame of already know that keeps you from learning. If I went to a mobility seminar or a technique seminar or a nutrition seminar or whatever, if I walk in there and I'm like, I already fucking know all this shit. I've been doing this my whole goddamn life. Then you know what? Guess what? I'm not going to

learn anything. Like I'm right. Because I'm, I'm too resistant at that point it's it's too big of like a blow to the ego to like to take in that new information and and and realize to myself that i don't actually know all that and if i if i went into a situation like that i wouldn't learn anything and that'd be really bad for me but every time i go to a seminar or go to a new gym like it's like okay i'm here and i can't i can't go in with that frame where I think I already know it. Because if I go in like that, it's a guarantee that I won't learn anything. It'll be a big waste of my time. So I'm usually looking for the piece that I don't know.

Because there's always something you don't know. Remember, mastery is an asymptote, right? There's like four people that are like, yeah, hell yeah. I looked up the official definition of that. I'm like, man, I'm glad Doug understands this shit. I had a lot of tweets about that. I had a lot of people go like, Mike, why'd. I looked up the official definition of that. I'm like, man, I'm glad Doug understands this shit. I had a lot of tweets about that. I had a lot of people go like, Mike, why'd you give him a hard time? It was not because I don't appreciate math.

Like, a lot of people thought, it was like, I thought because nobody was going to catch it. I had plenty of people. You had plenty of math nerds who were like, hell yeah. These guys are, you too, Alex. You guys are much better at calculus and shit than I am. Yeah, I know asymptotes. Asthocs.

What the fuck is an asthoc? The limit. Yeah, I know ass totes. Ass totes. What the fuck is an ass tote? The limit. Yeah. Yeah, actually, what you brought up, Doug, is you see that in weightlifting all the time. Like, you know,

a lot of weightlifters or even weightlifting coaches would be like, I already know how to do this. This is the only way to do it. This is the right way. It's a default. Yeah.

That kind of develops a lot of people. Yeah, and actually, what's crazy, so I was at Bergener's gym this morning, and actually, I wish I got so I was at Bergener's gym this morning, and I wish I got it on camera because I liked what he said about,

he was trying to tell everybody, there's not really what's wrong, it's just what works for you, and when you come here, I'm going to teach you the way that I know, but if you go somewhere else, you should have an open mind and go learn from them

because everybody has a different way and you're always going to learn something. Yeah, I think what you just described is if you could nail down one characteristic of a coach if you're evaluating it, folks, does your coach have that kind of attitude? I have something to give you and I'll give it to you. I want to encourage you to get all the information you can and see it from as many angles as possible versus if you do it that way, you're getting the fuck out of here because you can immediately tell that difference yeah yeah and i think that's that what's that's what makes like a really good coach like a great coach rather than just you know a good coach absolutely open mind yeah one thing i've seen with

with interacting with other people and coaching and having a wife and like trying to be in positive relationships is that you laugh like you motherfuckers and your wives good god what the hell was i gonna say sorry um i actually don't remember what i was gonna say i'll pick it up what how many shows in a row that I did not derail yet and I'm from the street shit

you gotta think of it you're really smart if you want to identify if you're trying to figure out oh man am I in a state of knowing or am I in a state of learning on a regular basis

do you find yourself telling more than you're asking so I think there are even very skilled coaches you'll find and people who teach, who teach by asking questions and they kind of lead the process of discovery. That's a, in my opinion, that's a much better way of leaving an impression on somebody and really a lesson sticking with them is allow them to kind of discover their own way versus

just telling them the information and just like dictating it to them. I don't know how many times I've tried to teach somebody by asking them a series of questions and then I'm, I walk away going, Holy shit. Like I really learned something. Like I was like this person who's like much younger than me, like taught me something because I'm just asking them questions and I see them processing. I watched their process of discovery and then I'm like, Oh, and then I, I, I discovered myself. Well, if you're just telling somebody something and you're just blindly telling them and not

asking them all, you know, what's their situation, you're basically assuming at that point, a lot of things. And so like assumptions are like a huge thing. I feel like a knowing trait because they make an ass of all of us. Yeah, exactly. So you just, you're just telling people stuff that, you know, and you have no idea what they make an ass of all of us. Yeah, exactly. So you just, you're just telling people stuff that, you know, and you have no idea what they're,

what they're coming from. So understanding why somebody is doing something is really the key. So if someone comes up to me and says, should I squat twice a week? I'm not going to say yes or no. Right. I'm going to say, Oh,

I don't know. Like, why do you want to squat twice a week? Like, give me some perspective on what you're trying to do and why you think that's a good idea at all. Or why all those questions on social media are tough i heard that should i do this yeah can you answer in 140 characters or less i'm like fuck i have no idea like i i need way more information from you than you need from me that's right well you know one

thing that brian was saying is that uh the the high performance question the high performance uh tends to make people uncomfortable. And that kind of resonated with me because when you ask people in that situation, like, why do you want to squat two times a week? People may get really defensive about that. But that's just you trying to learn more about their situation. What should they do in that case? What?

Feel as judged as possible. What should they do in that case? In what case? They don't know why I'm saying it. So they should say, why do you want to know why I want to know? Yeah, turn it around. Why are you asking me that? But the low, why, it's just why looks at each other. Slow departure.

But I really like what he said, though. I don't know about this guy. I really like what Brian said, though, is that uncomfortableness is that, you know, growing and learning things is uncomfortable sometimes because it's unknown, you know, but the knowing, the low performance is easy, and that's a sign of that mediocrity. He said sometimes I take it one step further and say if you are in a state of learning and growing, you're probably always going to feel uncomfortable. Unsure, right.

If you feel very comfortable, I think you're probably fucked. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that means you're probably way behind the leading edge of where you would find your best self and your new information. You're way behind. That's actually another thing that our friend Evan says is that all learning takes place outside your comfort zone. I think it has to.

If you're inside your comfort zone, there's no possibility for learning because you already know it. You already know it. The same thing we're just saying right now. The story I was telling earlier before the show started was I was at NSCA maybe 12 years ago, something like that. National Strength and Conditioning Association for folks who may need to break out the Googles. That's right. So we were at a conference in Vegas, and me and my strength coach, Mark, at the time, now still a very good friend of mine, who taught me pretty much essentially everything I know about lifting,

or at least until I got to college or graduate school. I was hanging out with him because he was very generous and took me to lots of conferences and whatnot when I was younger. And Boyd Epley came by, who was one of the first very notable strength coaches to basically ever be. Strength coaching isn't a very old profession. It's only a couple of decades old. On a collegiate level, at least I think he kind of founded the thing. Yeah. He's pretty much the one that put strength and conditioning on the map.

And he did a bunch of other notable things. I don't know his whole history, but he's a somebody. And if anyone knows something about strength and conditioning, he's one person who should know. And came by, we were watching somebody do something. I don't remember the whole situation, but came over and talked to me and Mark and was like, we were demoing something or playing with something and he was like,

why would you use something like that? And we said, oh, we were thinking about doing it for these reasons and whatnot and he was like, oh, that's very interesting. Thank you. And kind of just kept walking.

He was just walking by and I was like 20 years old. I knew something about strength and conditioning but not nearly as much as the guy who damn near founded the whole profession and he asked me what i thought and i told him what i thought and he said thank you and he walked away didn't try to say no that's not why he would do that or right or even tell me it was a good idea or not he was just like that's interesting he just wanted to learn what i had to say about it and he could have been doing it for a million reasons he could have been like let me get this this uh person who doesn't know what's going

on, this perspective on this. I don't know why he asked me, but, but he is in a place of learning. He was not, he was not trying to impress anybody with his knowledge base or, or trying to prove that he knows the quote unquote right way to do things. He was just trying to learn something and he easily could not even go to those conferences and just be like, you know what? I already know all that shit. I'm the fucking who cares kick back in his chair margarita mojito that's right yeah for someone who's trying to achieve mastery that's the only way to do it i think uh one of the most important things you can focus on i think it's if you want

to be a good writer a coach you want to be a good spouse or an athlete or father. I think one of the skills and it is a skill. It's something I've struggled with my whole life. But I found the more I focus on the barraguette is that there's an art and a skill to observing and to be in the habit of looking for things that are interesting. So you don't just walk through a crowded auditorium of people doing all kinds of strength conditioning shit. You're observing what's going on as you're rushing to the place you've got to be because everywhere around you are endless things you could observe that could hold lessons for you. Like this guy was observing. It's one more data point to add of your map of data points that give you a bigger framework of the truth. The more data points, the closer to the truth you will get.

That's why I sort of feel that vibe. Observing is super important. It's like being present. Always has to be worked on. Our buddy Zach Evanesh always says, he says, always be a white belt. It's kind of a martial arts thing where you have a white belt when you're a beginner,

and then, of course, everyone knows that when you're an expert, so to speak, that you're a black belt, which isn't necessarily true, but that's kind of what people think. But even within martial arts. Black belts everywhere are angry with you now. Especially the fake ones that get their ass beat on YouTube. I ain't saying who that was, but.

Well, there's plenty of people in the world of martial arts that think that you actually don't know anything at all until you're a black belt. Like once you're a black belt, now the learning can begin. Now you start learning, yeah. And that's something that's talked about in many different martial arts and actually a lot of people even say like like once you're a black belt if you have a black belt for a long time like people that have the blackest belts they're black because

they're brand new and then they kind of fade to gray over time you wash them and they get worn out and they they turn lighter and lighter and lighter and then like you know the the theory goes like you start as a black belt and then it fades kind of back to white, and then you start all over again. I remember hearing that, like, in taekwondo when I was, like, 14 and whatnot. So taekwondo is so tricky, man. Good story. Don't do MMA. This is cool enough for you.

No, not another one. Right. You know, the whole concept though, is that you, you never stopped learning. Like you, you keep going and there's, there's no such thing as being done. There is no done. There's always, there's always something more to learn. And so, um, if you ever find yourself in a place where you're like, you know, I think I, I think I did it. I'm done. I figured out every piece of it that I need to figure out. Then you're, you're deluding yourself or you're lying to yourself.

There's always something more. You know, mastery is not, not possible to achieve. There's only the pursuit of mastery. Yeah. And that reminds me, Doug,

I say that people get also get caught up in that. I want to do the athlete thing. I want to be a great athlete, great lifter, great coach, great whatever, but I'm young. I haven't learned all.

I think I should learn. I haven't got enough accolades. I think people will now take my opinion serious so I think you get in a trap too of if you chase knowing enough the amount of knowing you'll find will never fucking be enough to make you feel like you know enough like the more you chase uh if your numbers driven and all it matters how much you lift in the gym there's always gonna be somebody more lifting more it always calls that tension to reemerge in but if you start with a learning attitude and you focus on what can i learn today and how can i ask a good question to get somebody else to have an insight

that i have no matter where you are that's really where magic can start happening i think right i totally agree with that like the you guys have heard the term the hedonic treadmill like hedonic means happiness the happiness treadmill so to speak where you know if you're trying to like keep up with the joneses and you're trying to like get the bigger house and the nicer car and make more money and like you keep doing that you can keep doing that forever never ever ever ever ever being happy there's plenty of millionaires and billionaires even that aren't happy people they're always they're always in pursuits of more more more of the thing that doesn't actually cause any amount of happiness or more specifically any amount of fulfillment so

it's very similar. Like you're never ever going to get to the point where you know enough because there's always more to know. And so if that's your, if that's your barometer or that's the rather a better term, maybe if that's like the, the actual end goal is to know something, but there's no such thing as ever knowing anything you're, you only pursue knowing because there's no, there's no such thing as ever knowing anything. You're only pursue knowing cause there's no, there's no end ever. Then you're going to be unhappy forever. But if you value learning instead,

then you can be happy every single day cause you can always learn and there's always something more to learn. And so if you're coming out from that perspective, then you know your, your day to day happiness as a state is much more likely. Are you ever frustrated that you'll never know it all? Yes. Yeah, me too.

All right. If anybody had a shot, among us especially, Doug would have a shot. He's like, it's not happening. So what are some habits of maybe being a more learning person? Because I feel like you can definitely develop, if you're a knowing person, you can develop into a learning type person.

Like, what are some things that maybe learning people tend to do? I was actually tricked into this learning once. And I read the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Yeah. And basically, it suggests that instead of telling people things, you should ask them about themselves. And then once I started that as a habit, sometimes I would catch myself. I'd be in a conversation and then I would go,

oh, I am talking way too much. About yourself. Yeah, I'll be talking about myself. I need to pull back and ask them about them. And next thing I know, I ended up learning all sorts of stuff, which I had no idea. You start listening. And next thing I know, I ended up learning all sorts of stuff, which I had no idea. Like I had, I was, I was, I knew, I knew the, I knew everything about politics. I knew, I knew the right answer to a lot of things until I started listening to people.

And then I was like, Oh, well maybe that perspective, you know, I, I get it now. Like, and, and just catching yourself from talking about yourself and then just asking people about them. Cause you're going to find out what they're passionate about. And they're probably an expert in something in which you may not even be aware of. And now you're, you're learning very quickly. And then they may know something that, you know, you guys share a common interest in and you didn't even know.

So yeah, you grow by learning from them too. I think it's just the practice of asking questions. And the more questions you can ask, the better. And then if you can just be aware of when you are telling too much and just need to move over to ask. It's real easy. I mean, as soon as you notice it, don't go, well, I'm already in the telling thing. I'm going to go with it.

Don't do that. Just stop and then just start asking questions. Side note, I feel like this is a good way to get women too is just ask them a bunch of questions. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I was going to say, it would have been a great way to get women if you didn't say that on a very public forum. You're all suspect now.

What do you think about stuff, darling? Barbell dating advice? I was going to say, this helps you, but it also helps you to actually understand the person you're working with, where they're actually coming from. We all see a lot of coaches who it's very clear that the objective is to say as much to the audience and demonstrate as much significance and proof of authority as possible versus coaches who you can tell the mindset or the approach is I need to see where you are viewing this problem from. I need to know and understand, actually care about where you're coming from. I need to think carefully about your experience and where your mindset is at so I know how to best approach you versus coming in assumptions

and with something to prove on my end. Yeah, already knowing like, well, you fucked up. See, it's true. That's what you need. I think honestly, that's what you need in business and in relationships

to be a good coach is the more you ask, the more you can honestly engage, the better everything will be. With that, I think we'll take a break. When we come back, we'll talk about the next two or three steps to picking up chicks. This is Tim Ferriss

and you were listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Barbell Shrugged is brought to you by you. To learn more about how you can support the show, go to barbellshrugged.com and sign up for the newsletter. Man, you should see Tony Robbins clap.

You're doing it like half of his. He's got banana hands, man. It's all about what you believe to achieve with the clap. Oh, geez. Is this happening? I feel like we're going. And we're back talking about the attributes of successful people. Banana hands?

And banana hands. Picking up chicks. And that. And that. And that. All right. Next two things on the docket. We have certainty versus clarity. What does that mean, Michael?

I was going to ask somebody else. This one was kind of hard for me. Like, it was difficult. This was the hardest out of the three for sure. Yeah, definitely. Out of, like, the difference between the two, you know, almost didn't really see like the difference until Brian kind of explained it a little bit more.

Yeah, so in the last example, the low-performing attribute was knowing and the high-performing attribute was learning. And in this example, the low-performing attribute is certainty, which is kind of like knowing. It goes along with knowing. Yeah, it's kind of similar, which is why I think it's hard to Right. So it goes along with knowing.

Yeah. It's kind of similar, which is why I think there, it's hard to understand the distinctions and why it's different. But what I got out of it was the low performing attribute here is that certainty is more about your, your personal self limiting beliefs, which, which in many ways leads to kind of irrational behavior,

positive or negative. It could, it could be either one. Like you could have a self-limiting belief around, you gave a good example earlier when we were discussing the show about someone comes into the gym and they have a self-limiting belief

that they can't jump on a 24-inch box or 18-inch box or even a 12-inch box, depending on who you are. They think they can't do it. And then if anyone who's been a CrossFit coach for any amount of time has taken someone who thinks they can't do it and then 20 minutes later they're doing it and now they think it's easy because they

couldn't get over the fear behind it. Rationally. They thought that there's no way they could ever do that. And it was more psychological than physical. Yeah. Like, I don't know how many times I've been in the gym and helping people with their cleaner snatch and they're like,

I can't lift this weight. I can't lift this weight. And then, you know, walking them through that and showing that they can and they do it, you know, so that self-limiting belief. Actually, I had that problem a lot, too, when I first started weightlifting. I would almost, like, approach a weight and be like, I can't lift this. I was almost afraid and that fear of the weight, you know.

And, you know, that was a big thing, you know, for me. And when I got over that, you know, over time, you know, getting more comfortable and what exactly what i want to do and knowing that this is heavy i've got a i've got to treat it like a heavy weight i've got to attack it that's how i got over that you know so i guess a subtle distinction also some people might say this thing's tough now oh i will just never be able to master the overhead squat so it's not just acute it's like they're projecting out of fate but because something has given them a hang-up, they won't be able to overcome that challenge. And of course you can't with that kind of mindset. Right.

So to tie this all together, the low-performing thing was clarity, and that is more about – You mean high-performing. The high-performing thing was clarity. Oh, excuse me. Yeah, that's right. So, sorry. Certainty is the one that we have already mentioned,

and that had more to do with your limiting beliefs around what was possible for you. So low-performing people and low-performing companies, low-performing athletes, they have a very high amount of certainty that they can or can't do something. Whereas high-performing people, they have a lot of clarity around two things specifically. Nothing to do with their past matters. They have clarity around what is right now, like what factually is the situation, how much can I lift right now, how good is my mobility,

how good is my technique, how many pounds overweight I am, what my body fat percentage is, what I'm eating, how good my diet is, whatever. They know what is currently. They also have really high quality clarity

around what they want in the future. So as opposed to being certain about what's going to happen where they have these irrational fears that's driving their behavior

about what they think is going to happen in the future, rather they know what is right now and then they have a very clear vision for what they want

to happen in the future. And that has nothing to do with them thinking this is obviously going to happen necessarily. They're not certain that this thing is going to happen. It's more about I have this thing that I want to happen and I have a clear path to get there. Yeah. So knowing what is and where you want to go, that's what they worry about.

And I feel like, oh, go ahead. Sorry. I was going to say that that keeps them from being stressed out all the time. Yeah. Okay. Because they know what is right now and they know where they want to go. If they focus just on those two things, then it's not a very stressful situation to be in. Cause you're only focusing on the two things that matter. Yeah. I feel like that's a really important part of too,

like the goal, like setting goal process. Like, you know, what, where you are right now and you have, you know, where you want to be. And so, you know, like that gap in between, you've got a, it goes along with the learning too. You know, you've got to figure out what do I need to do to get there? What do I, what do I need to do to get to where I want to be? You know? I got reminded of the conversation we had with Bill Phillips on around body transformation. And you think the self-loving belief might be, I've always been fat, always be, will be fat. Of course, that's a tough condition to put yourself in. Versus the classic scenario of objective, humbling, but actionable starting point, which in this case would be like a before picture. Here is reality.

How long did it take me to get here? What are the variables contributing to this? And now all of a sudden you can see what could be manipulated for the better outcome. It gives you a sense of what you can play with and change to make the future happen versus just the assumption that because I'm this way, the future will be the same as this. Like, I really liked the way he has framed and the power of an objective starting point for shaking you out of that belief. And it's uncomfortable. I think people, people are comfortable kind of going back to what we're talking about is certainty. Like it's, it's comfortable to be certain, like I can or can't do this thing it's like oh i'm certain of it it's like and then that belief you can kind of live in comfort there and like okay now i you know i just have to accept my fate

yeah one way or the other you take these out of your hand you give them somebody else in your mind you remove from responsibility right clarity is like that's hard work like clarity is like identify like looking at all the data, like uncovering things that you've probably been hiding from yourself. I mean, this is something I've discovered. Everybody hides things from themselves all the time. Chooses to ignore it. Yeah, and they don't even realize it.

Sometimes you don't make it to the gym as often as you'd like, but you're doing something to distract yourself from going to the gym as frequently as you would be. But you don't even recognize that maybe it's just as simple as, like, your morning routine. You're putting something in your morning routine, or you're doing something that's keeping you from doing it, even though, like, you've got this distraction you put in place and you're not even willing to look at it.

So, like, stepping back, looking at all the information, looking at your entire life as a whole and getting clarity about where you're at. Objectivity. I find most people have a hard time. A lot of people have these goals, like I want to be here, be there, but they're not willing to look at where they are right now. That's the part that takes the most courage, right? It's just the beginning point to say, look, where am I at? Because that requires that you come to terms with a lot of bad habits and decisions that have been made up to that point possibly yeah and people tend to look around at other people and go i want to have what they have and it's like well and that also there's clarity there as well as like what did that person do to get to that point and people never want to look

at the work that someone did to get there they really love looking at the end result that's a fucking great point they love looking at the end result but they don't want to they don't want clarity around the work that put in because if they look at the work that the person put in then they're gonna it's they are gonna realize i'll make a book it's super hard oh shit i put a book out of my bookshelf and quotation marks behind me. But, man, I just had a thought, a great book to read, dude, Robert Greene, Mastery. Like, there's people like Mozart. Oh, Mozart was a mucal genius. No, he fucking worked unimaginably hard. To the point to where he actually killed himself from it.

I mean, he worked himself too hard. But this is a case study. No, but it's a case study. Don't do that. People look at it and say, oh, I wish I could get there. But if you just treat that person as a case study and you take a careful, considered look at what brought them there. And, like, I make a habit of seeing here's somebody I admire. This is something I think I could potentially want to really do one day.

And I look at it and I see that person's whatever part in their life. They may be 55, successful writer, TV personality, person, whatever it might be, athlete, coach, world-class coach. You can look where you are and say, okay, well, I desperately feel like I want to be there. I'm going to beat myself for not being there now and all that shit we talked about. But you can quickly see they're 50. I'm 22. There's these years ahead of me. Where were they at at this point?

Were they wayward? Were they doing some kind of other sport? Where were they at 10 years ago? What is their trajectory? It gives you a sense of reality around how long it might take to actually get to that projected point. It gives you a sense of what's realistic so you don't beat yourself up enough about rushing this development. And people wish they had the result, not the path. Yeah, and it empowers you to say, I can get there.

All I need to do is commit and put in these steps and do the work, and I can fucking make this happen. This sounds counterintuitive, but having a high amount of certainty almost implies that you understand your past really, really well. So if you look over, over your life for the last five years or so, you know who you are based on your history. So from that, you can extrapolate out. Okay. Well, I trained five days a week, every single week, and I never missed. So I'll probably still be in shape in two or three years, or, you know, I, I never, I never budget and I always overspend. So I probably won't have any money in the next five years or whatever. You're going to keep being yourself in most cases. So most people think that if they can look at their past, then they'll be certain about where they're going in the future.

They'll still be them in the future. But what clarity means, since it's about what is and where you want to be, is that from that perspective, you can't ignore your past. You don't have to be the person that you were you can start over right now as whatever is is true whoever you are right now is true and whoever you want to be is possible and you can forget about your past which means all i highly recommend doing this by the way it's much easier said than done but it it's it's good work you're free to throw away who you done, but it's good work. It's good work. It's tough to throw away who you used to be. It's good work.

You're free to put down the heavy bags whenever you want and quit carrying them around with you. That weigh you down. All this shit you're carrying around from your past, you don't have to hold on to it. Or you can keep just the good parts that are useful and get rid of the baggage that weighs you down. Yeah.

Easier said than done. Easier said than done, but... Valuable if you can pull it off. There's a process called integration where that's exactly what you do is you try to go back into your past and pull out the things that are beneficial and get rid of things that were not. People tend to package everything together and lump it all together. They package it together. They take things they dislike about themselves.

They attach a lot of good things about that, and they try to forget it and they're usually pretty successful at it it's always there but it's always going to limit who you might be there's a process called integration which can be done many different ways ask your local therapist about it yes I've been to therapy

that's something everybody should work to understand themselves fully, as fully as possible. And understand what they want. Yeah. And it is fucking extraordinarily hard, like Doug had suggested. But possible, especially if you have the courage to start. Yeah. Yeah.

So you brought up having a therapist, quote unquote. And something we talked about the other day that was really interesting is that anyone who deals with people for any period of time eventually realizes that they are therapists. A lot of people call themselves, they're CrossFit coach, they call themselves a CrossFit therapist, and it's kind of a joke, but it's kind of not a joke. Anytime you're dealing with people, if you're a coach or anyone that has to be a leader in any way, or that manages people in any way, anytime you are trying to get someone to take your advice, your job, one of your primary jobs is to make them feel understood. Right. And that's kind of what therapy is all about. Like asking someone why they feel the way they feel, feel, excuse me, and letting them share their thoughts with you. And so having a therapist, um, might just mean

you had a coach at one point. Cause they kind of are your therapist. I've actually never seen a psychologist, but I definitely have business coaches where I'm like, I walk out and I'm like, that was a therapy session. Yeah. But they just don't have a degree in psychology or whatever. So what are some like very actionable steps people can take, Doug? For the certainty versus clarity thing. So clarity, again, we said is about knowing what is and knowing what you want so um you really gotta dig into those two things so knowing what is

ideally um you would be able to find something that's objective and measurable conveniently in the world of fitness there's pretty much everything's measurable whether you're you're hitting a one-armed back squat or you're you know doing one of the crossfit you know girls wads or hero wads for time or even if you're running a four-hander sprint for time, whatever. There's some way to measure those things, and they're observable, measurable, repeatable. That's kind of the mantra behind a lot of the CrossFit training to understand if you are making progress. So we happen to be in a very good world for that.

So if you are a person right now who doesn't track any of your metrics, so to speak, that are important to you, if you're a weightlifter, certainly snatch, clean, and jerk are important things to track. Front squat, back squat maybe are important things to track. But I know a lot of people that they lift or they train or they do whatever, but they don't write anything down ever. And they really don't even know if they're making progress. They're like, I think I got stronger. And you're like, how do you know? They're like, I don't know what my one rep max is. I kind of feel strong.

Yeah. They do the same shit in their life like yeah i want to make my money where what'd you do to do it yeah or get the job do the thing i want to do what are you doing to make that happen wishing shitting in one hand and looking at the other i don't know you see which one fills up first you gotta fucking take action you gotta have a goal and see daily am i getting close to this fucking goal or am i not? That's a phrase my dad always said. Shitting in one hand and wishing in the other. Which one fills up faster?

Well, like Doug was saying, it's got to be measurable. And you could say, well, I want to make more money or I want to train more. But how much is that? What is that? Be specific. I want to get in the gym like four times a week, you know, so it has to be something very, very, very, very concrete. Yeah, we actually did a whole episode right around New Year's on goal setting. So if you can dig into how we prefer to goal set here, right, right here, right now. But it's the only way you should definitely go back and watch that episode because we talk about goal setting essentially the whole time. But really the only point that I'm going to make right now is that you should make a goal that is more behavior driven.

So with the example that you just gave, show up to the gym four times a week, that's something you can control. So if it's behavior driven, it's something that you can control. So show up to the gym four times a week. I have some control over that. You know, I gave the example of measuring your back squat, but you actually don't really have, you don't have control over what your back squat ends up being. You only have control over the things that you, that you do to make your back squat go up.

So squatting twice a week would be a great example to eventually improve your back squat max in that example. The last attribute that we want to look at, and this is going to be very much about teams here. I mean, as an individual, you can do it, but I mean, usually if you're working out in the gym, you are also, even if you're competing as an individual or you're working on your individual goals,

you still have an environment where there is a team and stuff like that. Even if it's just you and your coach. Yeah, I would say even if it's you and your coach, this applies. That's a team.

Two-man team. Yeah. Two-man team. Or woman. Yes. We have a... Now you make me look like a sexist asshole, man.

Well, you are. No, I'm saying it could be a very lovely, intelligent, awesome, ass-kicking female weightlifting coach. A douchebag man who doesn't deserve to fucking have all that money and that status.

Fuck that guy. Him and his testosterone and his jangly balls. Fuck him. Wow. Now make your point. Some shit about a woman. I'm looking like a woman scoring. I just had to answer the charge with counter energy.

I'm going to have to do that more often. So everybody's clear. We can do that more often. That was fun. Just poke him a little bit. You'll see some really crazy shit come out. I do not react well to poking. If you fucking agitate me, I'm going to get agitated back.

Let everybody know. Ah, Charlotte. All right. The last attribute is alignment, which is what you're going for. But the two attributes that were compared are agreement versus alignment so agreement would be your your low performance attribute in this example and then alignment would be your high performance attribute so even though all these low performance attributes knowing certainty agreement they they they sound

like they would be such good things so it's kind of counterintuitive that we're saying that they're not necessarily good things. And so that's kind of why we're bringing them up because at first glance, they look like they would be really important and very positive traits. But in this example for agreement and alignment, agreement being the low performance attribute, the way that we were defining agreement is that it's more about methods, like how to get something done versus alignment, which is more about your purpose, like why something is important, your beliefs around that thing. And so as a team or even just athlete and coach, if you have good alignment on what you're trying to accomplish and why it's important then it doesn't really matter if you agree on the methods right so if you know that you're an

athlete and you're trying to be a better weightlifter as an example and so um and you want to be a better weightlifter because you want to be the you know kind of the best you you can be and you want to go to nationals and and you want to do it without wrecking your knees in the process. And you plan on, you know, competing weightlifting for three to five years, and then you probably step away from competing and just do it to be healthy. And you want to be able to still weightlift when you're 45 years old. So you can show your kids and all that. And your coach understands exactly why you're lifting weights, why it's important to you and, and your beliefs about, um, how extreme the training should be in the context of your whole life. Then now that coach really knows a

lot about you and that coach can program very appropriately for you. And now it's not just, not just him saying, okay, well, I'm going to give you what, what I think is good for you. Yeah. Right. And there might, there might be some crossover between what he, what he might assume you should be doing and what you actually should be doing based on your goals there might be some crossover there but but certainly will be different with him saying um if you come into them and say i want to be a really good weightlifter and then that's the whole conversation he goes no problem i got you he writes your workout right to you here's what clokoff does yeah and he's gonna oh russian well i mean i say that because like what you need and what an olympic calvary athlete needs what they're doing might be look a lot different what

we're doing over here different country different athletes but if you understand what they're trying to achieve versus what your needs are makes it all make a lot of sense takes a lot of the anxiety away right so something comes to me in a more generic example says i want to get in shape what do i do i don't say i i know exactly how to get you in shape here's here a bunch of workouts. And I just write them a bunch of workouts. I just give it to them without knowing anything about them. Because I don't know why they want to get in shape. Like, maybe they just had a knee surgery a couple of years ago and they haven't trained and they've been sitting on the couch and they have a bad job and they just want to be happy and not have a beer gut. And I don't know. Well, that's one very specific situation where the workouts I would

write for that person would be radically different than the person that comes in and says, I want to be a competitive weightlifter and go to nationals in three years. So it's really important to know a hundred percent why somebody wants to do or learn. Yeah. It's hard with the knowing thing. It's hard not to say it ever, but, but the concept is that you shouldn't like think, you know, at all, but it's hard not to use it in everyday language. But, but yeah, so you do need need to to know why that person or to try to understand rather why that person is doing what they're doing and you should constantly constantly be relearning and asking that person you know why do you want to do this how's that feel do you want to do this why is that important to you that should be a daily conversation if you are coaching an athlete

or just interacting with anybody asking more questions is a daily conversation if you are coaching an athlete or just interacting with anybody asking more questions is a fucking awesome skill you know whether you're trying to pick up chicks or whether you're trying to coach your athletes uh asking more questions tends to be something that people just don't do enough of right you made a good point earlier how once you have a great understanding of that then you can realize uh that there's tons of methods in the mix oftentimes a lot of them are fantastic and compared to each other just as good even though just different now you can pick which one maybe makes most sense to you and apply it to the purpose knowing that just because you didn't pick the other thing doesn't mean this is

somehow like a wrong decision or you're missing out on something no there's all kinds of tools to achieve the purpose and that's what matters right so back when i was doing more mma and i was in mma gyms a lot more frequently of course all the other fighters would say like hey like what should i do and they come ask me for strength and conditioning advice and in a lot of cases they'd have a fight in like six weeks and they'd be like man can you like i need to get ready for my fight like can you show me how to do the thing like the over the thing that you do overhead like the snatching the snatching thing you know i mean i'm like well why do you want to why do you want to

do snatches because you know i'm i'm guessing they think it's a really good exercise. It's going to make them really strong, so they're going to be a better fighter. But I don't necessarily know why they want to do it. And so, you know, but if they do come at me with that response, then I say, well, like, you just want to be a better fighter. You want to be more powerful. You want to be stronger. And, you know, maybe snatching, even though it can do that do that kind of but not probably in six weeks you probably get to spend your time learning how to do it correctly you know any any benefit you get

from it's going to be minimal at best in six weeks you'd be better off just you know front squatting and pressing and pulling and doing all more pure strength work really because snatching isn't necessarily going to make you a better mma fighter especially in six weeks but if they come to me and they say well i want to learn the olympic lifts and i do have a fight in six weeks but i want to learn the olympics lifts because i think they're fucking awesome and i want to do them the whole rest of my career for 10 years and it's not this like short term like i want to get stronger in the next six weeks because i have a fight coming up and they fully intend to do the olympic lifts well after their fight and they have good mobility and all that then maybe that's a different conversation but usually it's not usually

they're just like shit i'm out of shape i got to do something and they do something. And they see us on videos doing snatches and cleans and stuff. And they come to the gym and they say, hey, can you help me out? Doug is so shredded. I want to do those things. I want to do the same things Doug does. That's right. I feel like, too, what you said about the understanding, I feel like there has to be a mutual understanding, too.

Totally. There's got to be. You both have to have that understanding of each other for it to work. So yeah, I mean, if you're a coach or you're the client, you've got to have this same mentality of alignment and clarity and learning as well as the coach. And the other thing I'll say about within a gym, a larger team, there may be multiple coaches all around each other. Lots of athletes in an environment where there are lots of big personalities, people who see things a different way and sometimes disagree. I think it's actually a very healthy thing. I mean, the points, those opinions cross a fertile ground for learning.

But then as a whole, if we all agree on what we want to achieve, this makes for an overall much stronger group. The last thing you want to fucking have in these situations is a bunch of people who fucking pull back on what they believe or just accept something just to achieve some sort of stasis. In that case, you're just a fucking generic average place. You need diversity and ideas to fucking prime the pump and create a gradient that pulls everybody upwards towards the common goal, I'd say. Right. We had a really interesting example the other day where you were on Instagram and there was a video of you doing some curls where you- It was doing them all wrong. For the girls.

You were doing some curls, but you weren't even doing them that crazy wrong, so to speak. If anybody's ever seen anybody doing dumbbell curls, fucking period, I'd say there's something there that is not by the book if you want to break out the bible like joe reading principles and shit how many bodybuilds we've seen swinging a little bit i was just doing some curls to achieve my gunnage like pump city like trying to get on this whole train that alex is on way behind but i was just a little little little kip at the bottom because you know i'm just feeling it i like to actually from kettlebell trains taught me if i'm moving as a whole and moving this weight more efficiently with some

body weight it's just as fine it's just perfectly fine my bicycle get huge and maybe i'll even get a little bit of training effect from that you're like mildly rocking it was like a such a subtle fucking rock that i had no problem with that instagram moments like what could possibly go wrong with the sharing of this even if you you were rocking really heavy, it doesn't matter. Yeah, but the funny thing is we could observe that two trolls went at it fiercely. Fierce troll battle in the comments. One guy's like, basically like, what in the fuck is this

idiot doing? He will never achieve optimal muscle tension and growth with the swinging. He's already knowing. He's knowing. Yeah, he's knowing. And the other guy's like, who the fuck are you to tell the Chris Moore how to do fucking bicep curls

and then it quickly as we noticed quickly devolved into fuck this guy no fuck that guy and then two or three comments later what

was this conversation about curls what was this about egos took over I feel like there was like they wanted to be right so bad

that I even noticed that like they were taking on each other's arguments. It was almost like a flip-flop effect happened. It's what happens on Facebook. It was really fun to watch. It's hilarious.

You've got to go read it. If you go right now, go put Bernie Sanders for president 2016 on your Facebook wall, and then you're going to get comments from people who don't even maybe know what's going on. They just have what they believe, and now they're going to fucking make you believe what they believe, only it never works ever never in the history of fucking primates ever has another human being convinced another monkey person what you're doing is wrong because i happen to know the fucking truth how how much are we gonna go back and forth that the need you need more proof that you cannot fucking convince anybody of anything no that's not the way not the way to

go about solving a problem yeah i mean I feel like internet trolls are definitely low performance. No one even knows who you are making a shitty comment. That should be the new definition of an internet troll is low performance. You're so low performance, we don't know who the fuck you are, and you're not going to get a comment in return. Until today. Not saying the name. The thing that doesn't tend to happen when you get trolled online or or anywhere else is that and this this can happen in in quote unquote real life as well

is that very often someone sees something like that they assume that they know what you're trying to do or why you're trying to do it and they never actually ask you why it would have made a whole lot more sense for someone to say, well, I often hear, or I'm pretty sure you're supposed to do this. Why do you do that? Why did you choose to do that today? There's a pro and a con to any variation in training. You would have been happy to answer, wouldn't you?

I'd be like, man, I'm trying to get swole as a motherfucker. No, I'd say, I'm just doing a few curls, and I'm moving a little bit, because who cares? They're fucking curls. You could have said, I did strict curls for 20 years and this is just

a slight variation or something like that and there'd be totally nothing wrong with that. It wasn't like you were being unsafe. You punk kids could see the day

when I was running the rack doing 21 curl sets. I would have shown you fucking strict curls then back when I was 18 and in my prime for guns. Right. So I try to remember that myself.

If someone comes into the gym and they say, well, my coach told me to squat like this or to do an exercise a little bit kind of quote unquote weird to me. Instead of saying, no, your coach is a fucking idiot. You do it like this. You say, oh, that's interesting. Why did they tell you that? And you start to question them on why. How did that coach get to that conclusion? Because I know a million times I've told somebody to do something,

and I know they went back to their coach and they said, Doug said do this, and their coach went, you don't need to do that. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Because once I go talk to that coach in either one of those situations, we usually end up agreeing on the thing, whatever happens to be. You said it differently. Yeah. It whatever happens to be said it differently. Yeah. It wasn't because I said it differently necessarily.

It was, it was, it was because like if, if an athlete comes to me and says, my coach said to do it like this and I, and I say, I don't know why they would say that. And then I,

then I go, where's your coach? And maybe said, maybe I'm visiting, visiting another gym or something like that. And they say, they don't coach Billy over there said I should do it like this i go that's interesting and i go over to billy and i say he said you should do this and he goes oh yeah no actually well so he had this thing and

then this other thing happened and we we tried this we tried that we tried this other thing and didn't really work and so for now we're doing this but we're hoping to regress to this other thing like there'll be a rationale for it more than likely but but i could very easily just jump to the conclusion that billy's a fucking idiot you shouldn't do that because I hadn't gone through all the steps that Billy went through to get to that conclusion. So it's just easier to say why did that happen

or just to go talk to the source because that type of confusion happens all the time, especially in the fitness industry. There's so much dogma in the fitness industry. Loosen your ass cheeks and ask a question instead.

I know. I think most people who work in the fitness industry, we all kind of want the same thing, right? Right. We all want people to be healthier and fitter and all this kind of stuff. And we all have our preferred methods for getting there. And a lot of times people get caught up in this very specific method is the only way to get a bigger squat or this is the only way to shed fat or this is the only way to

do this or that. Yeah. And they get very attached to that method and they quickly forget that we're all trying to do the same thing and a lot of these methods they do differ maybe a little bit in quality or whatever but they're all going the same direction and they should just learn to help kind of like appreciate the other thing that's alignment really going in the same direction yeah instead of like appreciate the other thing. That's alignment really, going in the same direction. Yeah, instead of like trying to tear down, like someone goes, oh, I don't like the way this coach teaches this thing, just saying, hey, he's trying to help you out.

Let's keep going. Let's focus on the methods I'm using and maybe even incorporate what they have going on if it's helpful. But like I find, I mean, all you have to do is be on the internet for about five minutes and you can find coaches like attacking each other's methods. Facebook is the worst. It's really frustrating because once you've been coaching for a while and if you ever, some people never zoom out. I've seen it.

You know, these guys are much older and then they don't really, I guess they're definitely they're definitely in their methods and they have a hard time getting out of it and it's really uh frustrating to watch sometimes but a lot of coaches they they get out and it's happening i think a lot of coaches being forced into it because of the internet like a lot of young coaches are going there's like a generational thing happening where it's like oh we have to be very accepting of other things because there's proof this other thing works pretty well too. Damn internet. Fucking providing proof and all.

Yeah. So it's, uh, if we could all not get so wrapped up in the methods and arguing on the internet, maybe we could help more people. Yeah. Not gonna happen. But you know what? Great closing idea. Great wishful thinking.

One more, one more, uh, one more point to that. I feel like people can recognize that kind of stuff and they tend to gravitate away from It was an idea. Great wishful thinking. One more point to that. I feel like people can recognize that kind of stuff, and they tend to gravitate away from those people. Like the low-performance people, people tend to see that subconsciously almost. Probably. This person's like super negative, and they're just – they know it all, and they're not open-minded. They don't want to listen to anybody.

I feel like people get kind of really turned off about it. At least I do. I just can't. It's because you're so smart, Alex. Hopefully now people will hear this and they'll be aware if that's what they are experiencing and didn't quite know why that would be. Maybe they assume that this is what strength is and now they realize that it doesn't have to be that way.

Yeah. Boom. I feel like I know this is a great show. I'm certain of it. Do we all agree? We are agreeing on it. Perfect. We agree. Thanks for joining us today.

Make sure to go to barbellstrug.com, sign up for the newsletter, and we will see you next time. Boom. Later.