Barbell Shrugged - The Language of High Performing Athletes and Coaches w/ Mike Bledsoe and Mark England — Barbell Shrugged #428

Episode Date: December 4, 2019

Mark England has professionally coached thousands of clients worldwide using the power of words and stories for over a decade. He holds an BA in business and a Master's in Education. Mark is the co-founder of Procabulary, Enlifted, and is a lifelong personal development enthusiast.   Mike Bledsoe is a Navy veteran and the founder of The Strong Coach and Enlifted.  Mike started one of the early CrossFit boxes while he was still in college back in 2007.  A few years later, they started a little podcast called Barbell Shrugged. Since leaving Barbell Shrugged, Mike is revolutionizing the coaching industry through The Strong Coach and Enlifted.   In this episode of Barbell Shrugged, the guys take a look into the software of the body and how high performers use language to advance their athletic and coaching careers.   In this episode of Barbell Shrugged, Anders Varner and Doug Larson discuss:   What is soft language and its effects on success.   Programming the software that make the hardware (muscles) work.   Why you have control over your thoughts and emotions through language   Why coaches need to teach their athletes about language   Enlifted athletes and coaches program   And more…     Mike Bledsoe on Instagram   Mark England on Instagram   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   TRAINING PROGRAMS   One Ton Strong - 8 Weeks to PR your snatch, clean, jerk, squat, deadlift, and bench press   One Ton Challenge   20 REP BACK SQUAT PROGRAM   Please Support Our Sponsors   “Save $20 on High Quality Protein Powder at Momentous livemomentous.com/shrugged us code “SHRUGGED” at checkout.   US Air Force Special Operations - http://airforce.com/specialops   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   WHOOP - Save $30 on 12 or 18 month membership plan using code “SHRUGGED” at checkout   Enlifted - Save $25 using the code Shrugged   ---------------------------------------------------------------- Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs-mikeandmark ----------------------------------------------------------------   ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

Strug family, this weekend you have two opportunities to get in on the One Ton Challenge. For all my friends in the Raleigh, Durham, Triangle area, in Apex, North Carolina, CrossFit, Surmount is hosting the One Ton Challenge. And your boy is going to be emceeing it. This is my home gym. And I'm so excited to bring this fun competition to Apex, North Carolina. Also, Clinton, Indiana, Athlete Industries. They have sold out. That's 56 athletes competing at the very first one-ton challenge in Clinton, Indiana. This makes me so happy. I'm not only excited that I get to do it in my home gym here in Apex, North Carolina,

that Indiana, but we're also going to be strong New York at Pier 94 for Strong New York this year with Kenny Santucci. The fact that these events are going on is incredible. The fact that we're able to work with gyms to help them build the marketing, to sell these events, to bring strength programs to their community, to rally all of their members around strength, and for us to help you with the marketing, the back-end system support and software that you need to make this event a success. Friends, the one-time challenge is getting rolling. I'm so excited to be working with these 10 gyms

around the country right now to find out what gym owners need, what coaches need to get their athletes stronger. Give them a real fun reason to do it so you don't have to go stand out on a platform by yourself. Create a training vibe and create a very fun event that brings people together inside your gym. So if you're a gym owner, if you're a coach and you are looking to host the One Ton Challenge, please send me an email, anders at barbellshrugged.com. If you are looking to host the One Ton Challenge, get training programs, get the back-end leaderboard software system support, and the marketing materials that you need to make this event a success, please email me at anders at barbellshrug.com and just put in the subject line, One Ton Challenge. Keep it simple. Anders at barbellshrug.com. In the subject line, One Ton Challenge.

And I will get you all the information you need to host the One Ton Challenge and make it the most successful event possible. On the show today, you've heard this voice before. He is Mike Bledsoe. And we are with Mark England. And we're talking about the language of high performers. If you think and know that the way that you talk to yourself is the way you are going to succeed in the weight room and in life, you are going to love this show. Without further ado, Mark England, Mike Bledsoe, the language of high performers.

Welcome to Barbell Strug. I'm Andrew Farner, Doug Larson. Back on the Barbell Strug microphone, Mike Bledsoe, Mark England, the voice of all the talking. What's up, guys? Dude, this is so cool that I get to hang out with you right now. Finally. We talk on the phone.

We did. We hang out. We rep Thursdays. Man, we had like five, six hours, back-to-back-back weeks. It was fantastic. What's going on? And lifted athletes, cognitive fitness. Yeah, it's fantastic. What's going on? And lifted athletes. Cognitive fitness. Yeah, it's happened.

I'm excited about this. Thank you. I actually don't know very much about any of you guys' relationship. You just kind of popped into my life when Bledsoe popped into my life. You guys came together. Fair enough. These guys put us on the scene. Yeah.

When did you guys meet before even the barbell shrugged piece? The day of. Oh, it was just you rolled in. guys meet before even the barbell shrugged piece and the day of oh yeah we met yeah we uh we were introduced by a mutual friend and uh i got the uh i got information on the type of work that mark was doing and i was excited to meet him and then we met up in person to shoot the show and then i started hanging out after that yeah for people that haven't uh had not paid attention to the past show can you give a little background on when the language thing kicked in when you were chasing jits around the world? Yeah fight right on um I moved over to Thailand chasing a dream

and that dream quickly turned into a nightmare and uh I had to think and speak my way out of that. It took me about 10 years to be able to summarize it that quickly. But I created such a powerful and deeply entrenched victim mentality about what had happened to me. And I had all the proof, people to blame, and all the supporting stories. And eventually that sucked because I spent a whole year not laughing. And when I realized that, hey, man, you can keep telling yourself. It's heavy, man.

My face got stuck. I can't go ten minutes. I go nuts. I'll just make some shit up and start laughing. It's so weird, dude. When people aren't smiling, they aren't laughing. They're not breathing well. It goes hand in hand.

And so my health deteriorated. My mental health, my physical health. When I recognized that I could play that out for the next decade, 20 years, 30 years, and be that bitter old man because I was fast-tracking it, that shivered me for the right reasons.

And I started, quote-unquote, working on myself. Eventually, the story work became more and more prominent of a practice because it absolutely is. And it also turned into a fascination. That turned into a coaching practice and uh from there i've been blessed with meeting a lot of the uh of very cool and uh interesting and proactive people along the way mike was one of them um doug was one of them you know they um i'm gonna speak for both of them apparently at the time they were doing five to one right so it was five strength and conditioning podcasts something like that one mike bledsoe out there weird stuff podcast and i happen to be one of the one of the weird

out there there's a conversation about that Let's go five to one, guys. That sounds like a good ratio. It was four to one. It was a four to one. Yeah, we had a conversation. We're like, what's the right balance? What's the ratio here? How many cheeseburgers before we hit them with our special sauce?

That's right. The special sauce for me was the words. The words and the stories and the identities uh that we create out of a lack of general education general understanding about the the you know the the inside job of our stories and we go to school and we learned about spelling and grammar and definitions great and most people have no education no training about how their language is focusing them to see themselves as failures or success or success stories. And with the, with the, with a little bit of coaching around that people get to choose. And most people want to fucking, they want to feel good, man. They

want to feel good. They want to feel productive. They want to feel capable. They want to feel connected to other people and they want to breathe well. and that's what we provide in a nutshell and we also have a good time doing it man because you know after a after a certain amount of conversations the whole conversation about language story and identity gets really funny which you know adds to the the the benefit yeah you know to pump your tires real quick on the the kind of the original product that i saw which was the core language upgrade. Yeah. You know, we had everyone that I meet that this topic conversation comes up. I tell them they have to go check out that product.

So I think it's really, really good. Of all the 20% shows, so to speak, that we ever did, you know, meeting you and having gone through those concepts that were a part of that product and that we talk about on that show. It's on YouTube. You can go watch it. That stuff I still talk about pretty much every single day every day of my life with my family with my with my wife with my kids like framing things in the positives like um you know using solid talk and not soft talk all that stuff i use that stuff every day yeah well you were telling me about uh using it with your with your kid with your son right and what was what was really cool and what you were sharing about that with me a while back was

how young he is and this is going to be his normal. Whereas so many of us, you know, I started getting into this type of work, really looking at my mind and my mind that's made up of all these words and trying to go making changes in that and having to undo so much years and years and years of garbage and unloading it and then you've got uh you've got a toddler who is already learning all this stuff and uh it's going to be his normal right yeah framing things in the positive i think is a very it's conceptually easy and uh it's going to be his normal right yeah framing things in the positive i think is a very it's conceptually easy but it's it's difficult in practice if you have years of bad habits built up you know like little things like if uh if my two-year-old hits my four-year-old instead of my four-year-old saying you know get the hell away from me and whatever how our four

would say that you know he says i'd like some space please like you he frames it in what he actually wants like not you go away negative like i'd like some space please is framed more in the positive and so it just as a natural consequence of framing that statement in a positive manner the conflict that could have arisen doesn't yeah i think a lot of times people hear positivity is like oh just be positive it's like oh fuck you and it's because it's it's actually not good it's not practical right you go oh just be positive and most people don't know what that means but when we get deep into the language and what you're referring to is um what we talk about is uh affirmations versus negations and so there's the being speaking in the affirmative of what you do want versus negations of And so there's the being, speaking in the affirmative of what you do want

versus negations of what you don't want. So a lot of times people may hear, and I heard for a long time, it's like, yeah, just think positive, buddy. It's like, hey, go fuck yourself. So, and what I love about the way that we approach it is, you know, okay, that's a negation. You're focused on what you don't want, which the mind doesn't really recognize the negation part. And now your mind is, your attention is on what you don't want. And of course, what are you going to create in your world? What you don't want. If we get in a really good habit of affirmation, of translating that into something that we do want, and we start putting our attention there there and then things start unraveling and

Appearing a lot a lot faster and I mean one of the things I really oh, thanks, Sean Dr. Sean passage bring in coffee spice. I'm good Some Spartan tea World championships a three science. I was supposed to say all these things I forgot Thank you ATP Science for This beautiful Airbnb we're in right now I love that they make you

A big part of the event They give you the nice house And then you never go to the event And you stay at the house Perfect With the hot tub It's the best way to get shows done Really

Yeah Bring them to the house Yeah Circling back on the framing things in the positive, if my kids say something framed in the negative of what they don't want, they know at this point that I'm going to say, what do you want? They just know that's coming out of my mouth. And so I see my kids catch themselves.

They'll be like, I'd like to go outside, please. You know what I mean? Or whatever it is. And now that I see them catching themselves, I see how it's going to become their normal. They've just been raised like that forever. Yeah, I think the day we talked on the phone, I got the phone and I was pretty excited about it.

And one of the reasons was because I was imagining Riley getting to be 20 years old and doing his thing and getting all the things in life that he wants and people looking at him and going, how the fuck is that kid? How is he so good at that? You know, it's like, oh, well. The default. Yeah, that's his normal.

And he doesn't have all the cobwebs that other people might have. Right. Like if you look at two people in an argument, like if a husband and wife are fighting or a business partner is fighting, it's usually like, well, I don't want to fucking do do that anymore i don't want this i don't want that and it's just back and forth blame blame blame shame shame shame don't want don't want don't want and if they if they switched all that preaching the choir here of course talking to the audience like they switched all that and only talked about well moving forward in the future what i would like to

have happen is this then all of a sudden all the conflict and all the blame just kind of fades away and it's focused on what they can create, which makes any conversation much easier. And productive. Yeah, that's actually exactly what's going on. This is a productivity hack. It's a productivity conversation. This is about the things when we get into this, the results that people are going to get is be more productive, be more effective, and have more resilience.

And so the productivity comes from there's so much wasted energy happening in the mind of all these thoughts that aren't really taking you where you want to go. Start shaping the mind through language to really focus. People say the most valuable thing that we have is our time. I disagree. The most valuable thing that we have, our time. I disagree. The most valuable thing that we have, our most valuable resources are attention. And because everyone's had this experience is time gets shorter and longer depending on where your attention's at. Right?

And so you can slow time down and you can, if you really put your attention on something, a lot of shit can get done in a very short period of time simply because your attention's on it. I like to think about it as I'm obsessed without being attached. So if I can, most people would have, that sounds paradoxical, but if you can achieve obsession without attachment, and that means having your full attention on it, but without being so emotionally fucked up when it doesn't go exactly the way you want it to go. Is that kind of like saying you're obsessed with the process, but you're not attached to the outcome? Is that similar?

Yeah, in a way. And always having – it gets interesting because I also like to focus on a big-picture outcome but not be too worried about how it happens. But I am obsessed with the process and that the process is always changing so the whole word process is like it's like there there's an evolution it's always changing changing changing uh so yeah having that having that obsession is gonna that's a productivity is how much how much of your mind can you put on what you do want and then really focus it there? And then if you can, the resilience piece being how much can my mind be focused without being so attached to outcomes or how it's happening or whatever,

but being just always moving in that direction. We can have that resilience where it's like, okay, I can take a hit, but then I just pivot and keep moving, pivot, keep moving. And so this is where these things start coming in handy. So you get productivity, and then you get resilience as well. And then you just become a much more effective person. If you look at the most effective people in your life, if you go, oh, that motherfucker's effective, you'll notice. That's how I think in my head.

That was very positive. That motherfucker right there. That motherfucker over there is so positive. I get excited about someone who's really – I get excited. That's how I think in my head. That was very positive. That motherfucker right there. That motherfucker over there is so positive. I get excited about someone who's really – I get excited. I pay attention to people who are effective, people who can make a billion dollars, people who can get on the podium, people who are the best at what they do. I want to pay attention to how are they being.

And I'm looking at them, and there's usually not a lot of wasted words going on they say what they mean they mean what they say and uh they're not pussyfooting around and the way they talk is different yeah uh you found a lot of this stuff when you were being an athlete though like we have these big ideas but actually using that and when it came into your life was being an athlete charging way too hard in business charging way too hard um how does that like meeting mark and having this conversation about the way we talk to ourselves um how does that shape you know being more in the fitness scene or chasing big goals as an athlete um and in business i mean how does that really become like a tactical way that you can implement it into what you're doing?

Yeah, what I found being an athlete, I look back and I'm talking about laughing, fucking laugh at myself. It was comical. We thought we were so good. Well, here's the thing. I mean, just real. I have a chance to be great.

Yeah, real big picture is like. Genetics too matter. I had this belief like I can do, I'm a chance to be great. Yeah. Real big picture is like genetics to matter. I had this belief like I can do I'm going to do great things, which means I'm going to do more things. I'm going to do more, more, more, more. It's like, OK, let's run a gym. Let's have a podcast. Let's compete in CrossFit. Let's compete in weightlifting. Let's play.

And waking up one day and going my entire life like my body hurts. Nothing's working. i hit the ceiling in business how many times i keep hitting it and so like for me it took stacking so much shit on my plate that like ends up in surgery ends up in and being so uh my hormones so fucked up i gotta go on hormone replacement therapy for nine months to help get me back to normal because every time i go in the gym my joints hurt so bad i can't even lift a barbell yeah and so it's it's just pushing and like saying okay i can just do more do more do more and i'll do anything to do more because i gotta be the best and then hitting these ceilings and being put in timeout and sitting in timeout and going, timeout.

Sorry. Sorry, body. Yeah, the universe goes, yeah, you're in timeout now. And then sitting back and going, okay, time. We've got a limited amount of time on earth. We have to have priorities. There's this really great book called The One Thing that people should pick up. And there's this really great book called The One Thing People Should Pick Up. But the word priorities as plural didn't really exist until this past century.

It was priority. There was no such thing as priorities. That's a new concept. And so I really like that for focusing my mind on a single thing in a single moment, being fully committed to the process of what is the present moment. And what I recognize is I was not being that way. When I was an athlete in the early days of Barbell Shrugged, the answer was always, let's do more.

And it worked until it didn't work there's always that ceiling and i i imagine that people are listening to this and going fuck man i've hit a ceiling like the thing i did worked until i hit this plateau and now it's not working and then that's when i go okay me pushing more weights me drinking more coffee me doing whatever isn't going to work. I need to step back and I need to clean some shit up. And it was, it was, it's been a, I'd say it was about five, six years ago. I really started like pulling stuff out instead of stacking on. And it's been a slow process of pulling out, pulling out, becoming more and more and more and more focused. And a lot of that work, the majority of that work has had to do,

language was the basis of doing that and really looking at my mind. Most people really associate with their mind and that they think that that's who they are. But you can, and we can do this with language. We can start a practice of looking at our language, which means we're now getting to look at our mind and then start making tweaks. And it doesn't happen overnight. However, there are some major pillars, some of which Mark has identified. We hit a major pillar like negations versus affirmations, soft talk versus solid talk,

projections versus reflections, three big pillars. You hit those in a two three week period you'll for me it was a lot of little tweaks and then meeting mark and going oh shit these are such foundational pillars of language that we make this one change and a hundred things in my life change is it possible to understand what you're saying without hitting the red line and going too far because i think everyone at this table has kind of reached some level and realized you've gone down this road and you have so much going on you go Jesus what do I need to get rid of to shed all this crap that I just am just carrying

with me but is it possible to recognize you're on this path towards doomsday before you actually get there and then find you guys? Absolutely, because I'm an example of that. I did not cross the finish line to Foxville doomsday. Wait, not smiling for a year was not doomsday? No. That sounds like the bottom of hell. Could have been a year and a half. Yeah, could have been a year and a half.

I saw that 30 years from that point in time, that version of me, and it was spooky, brother. So I saw that off in the distance, and I said, anything, anything but that. And, Doug, to circle back to your point about negations and your getting your children to have a language practice. So much so that they'll likely, by the time they're 10 or 12, you'll ask them, well, when did you start the process of focusing your mind or using affirmations? They won't even be able to tell you because it'll be so much of a of a part of them yeah it's just the way it is it's the way it is and it's the way they are and it's the way that they tell themselves a story

about themselves we're not taught that there are styles of storytelling and that's exactly what we're talking about and what you're going to do is a byproduct of instilling these these psychological and emotional structures in these language structures, these story structures in your children. You're going to raise their psychological and emotional immunity. So when they get around people that are just off or negative or very victim-centric or whatever, it's just like having a strong physical immune system. They'll deal with it and move on and not get caught up in the drama.

Because like you said, Mike, the most successful people that you know, or I'm speaking for you, the most successful people I know, they're able to moderate the drama. And a lot of times they keep it down and low. They keep the story moderated and focused. And they stay, well, focused on what's important to them. And right now that's the elevator pitch for Procabulary is that it's a productivity tool that helps people organize what they think and say so they stay focused on what matters to them. And that has an influence in the people that are in their life.

Here's an example from three nights ago, four nights ago. We were out to dinner. I was out with a girl I'm dating, and we finish, and I'm on the outside aisle. I get up, and I walk straight out. I've got something on my mind. I'm thinking about Spartan. This is good stuff, man. I'm going home to see my family soon very cool and so i walk out and she comes up behind me afterwards and she goes i like

it when you wait for me and i defend and i'm like well you know uh i didn't i was coming out here to you know just wanted to get outside and things like that and she she repeated it she did it right she she put a spell on me, man. And then she said the same thing again. She goes, I like it when you wait for me. Dude, she didn't take the bait. And Mike dropped it. I didn't even know I was arguing.

I didn't know I was defending. But she said the same thing twice in the affirmative. She stated what she liked and then dropped the mic. There was only one place for my mind to go, which was visualizing me waiting for her. So we were literally on the same page. And then she goes, you taught me that. And I'm like, this is fucking cool.

And you know what else is cool? To listen to you guys explain this stuff better than I can. That's rad. This is the conversation coming very full circle. We all have the vocabulary base. They are. One thing that's super cool and that actually happened this week is when we have business calls, because everybody has taken the course and has this,

we will have conversations that are sometimes more heated, more elevated, whatever it is. And I will just call Doug right after after and be like did we say all that right did all that come out in the in the positive did did we use the right words to get the right message to the right people so that we're not just hating on what's happening and we're just leadership creating where we're going in the future and how we handle this problem going forward because i mean you talk about the drama. That's the easiest thing. One thing that I've really noticed in just my life is whenever there's the fact or the story and the thing that happened, and then all of everyone's feelings and emotions surrounding

that and recognizing, like, let's just block all the feelings and emotions out and just handle the thing that's in the middle that caused all of this it'll save us a lot of the problems that arise of just how you feel about things let's just handle that problem and it really gets everybody focused on a singular path of where we're going versus all the millions of different ways that you can feel about a situation right if you frame something in the negative the unspoken assumption is that when i tell you hey don't do that that you will know by default exactly what i prefer you do instead yeah which is it's easy i know what i want in my own mind so i just assume you obviously know the right answer quote unquote but especially if you're talking to a two-year-old

or five-year-old or whatever like i have kids, they don't automatically know what I want at all. So I have to tell them what I do want. How do they not know those five-year-olds? I don't know, Mark, if you had this analogy. I'm going to the grocery store. What do you want me to get? And you would say, whatever you do, don't get the hot dogs. I know exactly what to get, Mark, now.

Don't get the hot dogs, no watermelons. I can't stand mac and cheese, and I will never eat Funyuns again. And don't pick up any Skittles. So now I'm just twiddling my thumbs. And then get mad at the person

for not bringing home the right stuff. Yeah, exactly. You didn't get lasagna? Well, your example that you just gave about I like it when you wait for me happens in my house

all the time where I try to win the argument until I realize what the fuck where I try to win the argument until I realize what the fuck am I trying to win? Why would I want to win an argument against my wife? That's the dumbest thing in the world. I like massages. There's no winning. I like massages

at night. Well, I'm tired and I have to do this tomorrow and I've got to wake up early and then you catch yourself like, and I'm an idiot for trying to win an argument about something you just would prefer that would make our marriage right way smoother that's right you got you got a yes and in that situation i want to take a break in the action to talk about our good friends over at Momentous. So we had Sarah Hendershot on the podcast two weeks ago.

We were talking about protein powders and it blew my mind. I never knew there was gangsters in the protein powder industry. When I talk about gangsters, I'm talking about people that cut corners, put really bad product into a container, sell it as protein powder. And the next thing you know, people are getting popped. People are having health issues and they don't really understand why. And the truth is, is that you need to be aware of what's going into your body. So that's why we started working with Momentous because Momentous has a really high quality protein. Everything's grass fed, even their vegan protein, the plant-based one, delicious for you. Tastes great. They've got four different types from endurance to strength, to post-workout, to pre-workout. And you can get into their website over at live momentous.com forward slash shrugged L I V E

M O M E N T O U S forward slash shrugged. You're going to save $20 on your order of protein. I've been taking this stuff. I love it. I have been taking protein powder since I was 13 years old, and it's finally time in my life. I've gotten to the point where I get to talk to the people that actually make the really high quality protein so I don't have to stop. So I can stop taking the stuff that I just see at the store and actually make a really conscious decision on the type of protein powders that I'm getting. So get over to livemomentous.com forward slash drug, save $20 on your order. And we have to talk about our friends over at the air force, airforce.com forward slash special ops. We have been working with these

guys for the past three months. Every time I talk to them, they're reaching out about the coolest stuff that they're doing. I'm hoping to be able to get onto base and actually go through a lot of the training that the special Ops guys are going through. And this isn't because they are trying to kill me. They want everybody to make Special Ops something that is achievable for everyone. They want you to be going through the programs.

They want to find the healthiest, strongest people. And that's why we've partnered with them because our audience and the people that listen to this show are at the peak of physical prowess. Our country's sick, our country's addicted to drugs and our audience and the people that listen to this show are in that top 1%. There's a reason that we want you to go to airforce.com forward slash special ops or talk to a recruiter. It's because every single person that's in the Air Force special ops units has their own basically strength coach, PT, Cairo, the entire works to make you the highest level athlete possible.

And I love them. They're amazing. I love when they send me texts. I love when we get to create videos with them. I love talking to them, hearing about their training, and I can't wait to do so much more in 2020. So get over to airforce.com forward slash special ops or go see a recruiter today.

Back to the show. We're working on that too. We're like, oh, okay, I would love to give you a massage, and I want to be in bed by 8.15. You know what I mean? Can we do both? Yeah. That type of thing.

That right there, that ability to pivot, to use Mike's word from earlier, in the story, that is a skill that anyone can learn. Yeah. And as far as productivity is concerned, it's up there, man. I've saved myself so much time and emotional investment and energy and mental real estate in the practice of stopping myself from creating a story about something. Somebody did something to me and I'm like, ah, aha. And that pivot could take 30 minutes to talk myself.

It's called amygdala hijack. I have jacked myself up in my mind, created a big drama story, emotionalized the whole thing, ramped up my heart rate. I'm tense. I'm not breathing very well. I recognize those red flags now. I understand the language that's involved in that and i talk myself down pretty damn quickly now yeah am i 100 no do i need to be no not at all

and most of the time i'm out of that those situations uh lickety split man 20 minutes 30 minutes if it's a really sticky story i I write it down. Okay? And I've saved myself weekends, man. Weeks. Months. Because you can only focus on one thing or a couple of things at the same time. Yeah. And if it's just the big Technicolor 3D Cinemax video of what I don't want to have happen or what that person shouldn't have said to me

or you know sometimes so right now I just moved to the east coast again and it's been very interesting because I've cleared all of the last decade of relationships and obligations and feelings

like I need to do things. And now I have this blank slate on the East coast of relatively no friends and I have a new baby and it's given me this super clarity to what do I need to be doing right now? It's like husband, dad, business training, and those four things have to happen every day and if you notice none of that said friends and i've had to make a conscious decision in a way of like i'm not in the market for new friends right now because i can't bring in something that's going to take me away and have to deal with emotional stuff and committing myself to things that just distract me from what is the most important thing which is the priority at the time, at the moment. And you were talking about earlier, and I just wanted to jump in and be like,

you need a kid because there's nothing in my life that has made me or forced me. Like I thought I was busy or I thought I was up against time demands. And now that I have a child that has to be at daycare and then has to be home and then has to be in bed. And if I am not there on the bookends of that day at daycare, like I just am not a dad. Like there just isn't enough time to be a dad. So your whole day, which I could work for 12, 14, 16 hours a day, no problem. Just keep slugging the coffee and we'll just be fine. And now it's, no, it's be present, be focused.

Right now it's dad time. As soon as she goes down, now it's husband time. And no work gets into that. And it's really freeing. I think people, when they think about losing or shedding the unnecessary or the extra stuff, they feel like they're losing this big piece of them. Like, well, what am I going to do without all of this stuff? And they don't realize the freedom that comes in only focusing on three, four things that

are the most important. Well, if you're doing it right, you're shedding low priority items and you have more time for high priority items. I think everybody prioritizes things equally. Easier said than done. And the reason is because people, their identity is tied to those things. So it may not, like the largest part of their identity, we like to section identity off in the, well, sections.

And we become schizophrenic. And, yeah, if you don't think you're schizophrenic, just how many voices are running around in the room? Come on, come on now. Hopefully you've only got two or three clear ones. So it's like first thing in the morning, that part of my identity is I'm rested. I'm feeling super strong. I know what my priorities are.

I start getting tired. And then the old identities, the things that were formed early in life, they come online. And they're the ones that were fed ice cream and put in front of a movie by their parents because they wanted them to chill the fuck out. And now they're like, why am I doing this? It was because a part of their identity is actually tied up in that. And so it's a lot, it's really easy to say, well, you know, you just got to like change your priorities. And when you bring in a heavy identity like father, then it does start to overshadow that other stuff for sure. So, and you can do it from a place of choice.

You can start choosing identity and all that rest inside of language again. So the way to work on identity and let go of identities and take on new identities. You don't have to have a kit. Well, that's a tricky. You can do it with your language. Well, it's a tricky you can you can do it with your language well there's a tricky thing too and compartmentalizing like business owner dad your kid doesn't care about dad your wife doesn't care about business owner like there's there's pieces when you go into that of being focused and actually being comfortable with who you are in that position to those people that's an entire process of self-work that goes into like

well what makes you a good dad which comes down to language and how you talk about and and kind of the language that you've had with your parents as well 100 yeah i i what makes you a good dad i think that if you're a father and you haven't journaled about that yet then i think that's a really good idea if you can keep it all in the affirmative, stay away from what a good dad is not, but stick with what a good dad is, that would be really, really valuable. I've actually gone through that exercise and I have no kids.

Yeah. Because I know that that could creep up on me. How often do you think you... Do you journal? Do you guys journal daily and what does that process look like to you? It's all a personal practice, but what does that process look like to you guys?

You want to go first? Talk about your journaling and then I'll talk about what I do. I journal every day, sometimes multiple times a day. I remember going to conferences where I was learning from people who were very successful and everyone is holding up a journal and saying, you got a journal. And I go, I don't know what the fuck that means, but I'm going to do it. So I got a journal and I just started writing down whatever came to my mind i was like this is what happened to me today i wake up in the morning this is what's

on my mind today i lifted the weight yeah yeah you know people are like what do i do what do i do with this so i got to a place where i i started calling stream of consciousness where i literally if it came to my mind i started writing it, which was a better step than what I was, you know, just writing about my day. Um, and then, um, I started, uh, writing down, I would, I would sit and if something had an emotional charge, anything that I was like, oh, this, this thought is dominating my mind. I go, okay, I'm going to write that thought down. Oh, there's another thought. Oh, there's another thought.

Oh, these have a theme. Interesting. Okay, there's a theme today, which usually happens. And what I do now that makes it so powerful, and before, when I didn't know how to journal, when I didn't have a process or a system for journaling, I didn't do it as often because I didn't see the results of journaling but now my journaling process is that of I'll call it transformational journaling uh but what I'm doing is I'm taking my thoughts and I'm shaping them little by little by little into what it is that I actually want my day to look like and so uh I imagine a lot of people have this experience

of they wake up in the morning like, oh, shoot, there's all this stuff I got to do. I got to pay the bills. There's not enough money in the bank. I'm behind on my training. I didn't eat enough. I didn't sleep good enough. These are really, really common. But write all of that down. And then what I use is I use the vocabulary system. And so we use, we have our, I take any negations that are in there and I translate the sentences into, okay, if there's, and I allow myself to speak freely, like what really is coming through. So if negations are coming in my mind, I go ahead and put them down. But I get to translate them into affirmations. It's like, okay, this is what I do want. Boom.

I translate that. Then I go back through and I go pull out all the soft talk. Pull all the soft talk out. Everything gets tighter. Ooh, that actually feels these statements feel stronger than before. Now I'm taking all the negations out and putting in affirmations.

What I do want, ooh, I'm making a stronger statement. I can feel it in my body. I can feel it in my breath. My body relaxes into it. By the way, for people that don't know what soft talk and solid talk is, can you give us like a two-second overview? Sure. I think it would probably be.

Then I want you to finish. Yep. A good idea for us to possibly get on a podcast. I have to stop you right now. You literally started and you were like, I think it would kind of – and I was like, no, slow down. You're doing it. I almost stopped him.

I was like, wait a minute. I'll do it. Okay, hold on. I was like, you missed the point of the question. It's something at the same time that's happening. I was like, it's so awkward right now. How do I stop him And that's another bonus

We all just got chilled Mark was showing us Mark was showing us what soft talk looks like It's the worst It's the worst It makes solid dudes Cringe I was cringing inside.

That's right. I was cringing inside. I really only got, like, Anders, he touched me on the shoulder when I had three pieces of soft talk in the sentence. It was horrible. Listen, people. As soon as you said, I think, I was like, oh, no, he did it. Stop him. Yeah.

We need an intervention. Some people need soft talk interventions. Listen, when we start the conversation about language and the pillars and what we're talking about, very frequently we go for soft talk first because it is a fun, funny conversation, and it's one that people get immediately. I'll give an example. I'm like, ladies, what would you do if a guy came up to you and said, you know, I probably would like to potentially ask you out on a date one day.

Oh, if you want to. Perhaps. And they all do the same thing. They just go, make the worst noises. And then everybody gets it. They're like, oh, I see what that is. There are key words. One of the pillars of conflict language is called soft talk.

It is a scourge, to quote myself from the Strong Coach Summit, soft talk is a motherfucker. It keeps people in a state of indecision. Indecision is a particular flavor of stress. It makes focusing on what you want to do or even could do. Very hard, if not impossible. It is a major turnoff for both men and women, both personally and professionally. You want to, here's an example, a good friend of mine, he is literally world class at what he does.

He might be the best in the world. And we were in a room, Guy was talking about booking him. And he said, I'm open to sorting something out at some time, I think. That's what he said verbatim when the guy was like, would you like to come and do a presentation for us? I'm open to sort of sorting something out at some time. I made note of it. And guess what happened? Do you think that that presentation got booked? No, it didn't. And the guy goes, oh, okay. And the conversation went somewhere else. That is an example of someone accidentally

talking themselves out of opportunity. Instead of saying a solid yes, I am available this time, this time, this time. Here are my rates, and these are the particulars. Would you like me to put you in touch with our booking agent? Now we've got framework. Otherwise, you're basically pouring water into a wiffle ball. It just doesn't work, man. Great analogy. Yeah, yeah.

And it's an addiction. People get addicted to being soft. It's very strange. It's strange on a lot of levels. One of them is that I create a second me in the conversation. I think I want to go to Tahoe for the Spartan Challenge, for Spartan Worlds. I think I. There are two I's in that. So now I've got two me's making decisions. I only need one. One's enough. One's hard enough. One's hard enough. I'm not, why do

I need another? Yeah. And, and. Why do I want to think about the other outside of me's issues as well? Right. This is all very similar to what they teach in assertiveness training. You say, I want, I need, I feel, and you just say exactly what you want with no fluff. Yes. Yes. And April Flatton, she's doing the Strong Coach podcast right now. She says soft talk, taking out soft talk is like a punch in the face

because it forces us to get into a position of deciding yeah and you have to know there's a reason why there is assertiveness training doug is because that's one of the many things we most people don't get taught a lot a lot of people want to be a lot everybody wants to be liked yeah and a lot of people use soft talk as their way of being liked. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to make sure everyone likes me. So I'm not going to assert myself. And women say, I don't want people to think I'm a bitch.

Yeah, well, you brought up the strong coach. And I think that this is a massive piece to coaching is coaches think that they teach fitness. And that's a piece of it. But one of their biggest jobs is they have to go make sales. it's really hard for a fitness person fitness coach to get very comfortable saying like i am worth this if you pay this or when you pay this you are going to get this and you are going to reach the goals that we put forward because they're like oh like i love fitness i'd like you to like it i'd like you to want it to do i just want to help me yeah like you got really here for I'd like you to want it to do it with me. I just want to help people. Yeah, like you got really here for money. And like, you know, if you wanted to train with me, that'd be cool.

There's other options. And they don't know how to get through that process. It's so awkward because you're saying like, you are going to do this and you're going to get this result. All you have to do is pay. I am the coach for you. And here's why. I am the one, yeah.

You'll actually think you're, get your shirt on under here. Your concept of being unreasonable really helps out with – Fuck. You forgot the hashtag. It's not unreasonable. It's not unreasonable. It's a bleef. Unreasonable leaf.

I'm trying to come up with a good leaf at the end here. I read – Unreasonable leaf. He's like, you're ruining my hashtag. Shut up. Fuck you, Andrew. Well, I think that ties into the soft

talk piece. People want to be reasonable, which means they want to leave options for other people. Like, well, if you want to do it, that's

cool, and if you don't want to, that's fine, too. I feel it's reasonable to kind of let it be up to them instead of saying, no, I want you to come out here at

9 o'clock tomorrow, we're going to do a show, or whatever it is. Reason is a concept, and it's different for every single person yeah it's an opinion and so people a lot of times are like well i want to do something that's reasonable i go what the fuck does that mean right that doesn't mean anything you just made that up you just you skirted all of the responsibility that goes along with exactly well like when we were on the airplane yesterday, I was asking those guys,

hey, do you want to move from that seat to the middle seat? And I asked two people directly, face-to-face, I'd like you to move from that seat to this seat so I can say, that's my friend. I just fucking stared at them. That was me being unreasonable. Let them make the choice for themselves. And what did they do?

Well, I have the middle. I like an aisle. They soft-talked through the whole fucking thing. Well, here's the thing. Not one of them said, no, I want my seat. Nobody said that because they don't want conflict to arise. Yeah. It's an invitation.

So many, how many times are everyone listening, think about this. I want you to just close your eyes and watch your driving. And I want you to go back. Might have a Tesla. And think about all the times you did not make an invitation what i mean an invitation is you didn't put a request in you didn't ask for what you wanted or there's a lot of times i left uh we can talk about sales here there's a lot of things i didn't i there's a lot of sales i didn't close at certain points. These are coach, every coach has to sell.

Because I didn't, I made up reasons why the person wouldn't buy. And I know most coaches that are selling their services, that's one of the big things they struggle with is they go, oh, this is a mom,

three kids, she probably doesn't have any money. I don't know what her husband does. People love it. So they start. People love spending money. You know why? I know this because I love spending money.

And I watch other people, and they love spending money too. People do it all the time. Everyone has shit everywhere. They're just looking for a good reason. You got a house. You got shit in your house. You got a car. Oh, my God.

You fucking buy food. You got clothes. You love spending money. You got shit in your house. You got a car. Oh, my God. You fucking buy food. You got clothes. You love spending money. People fucking love it. They're looking at people with the bodies they want. They want that body. Help them get it. Take the money.

This bumps into the identity conversation. Yeah, you're trading money for their dreams. Yes. Give it to them. Yes, help them. They want help. This goes straight into the identity piece of the conversation i told this story at the strong coach summit doug so when we uh when we did barbell business and you opened

with so what's your take on identity and i drew straws dude i went blank man and i saw i i it was it was spooky use that word again i saw it coming and i felt it coming It was spooky. Use that word again. I saw it coming, and I felt it coming. Like, you got half of that sentence out, half of the question, and I said, I know where he's going, and I have no access to this information. I was like, that's fucking weird. And it got awkward real fast. One second, two seconds, three seconds of dead air is a thing. We got to five, and Bledsoe goes, this better be good. And then I threw the flags.

I threw a flag. I'm like, fuck this. I was like, we have to stop. Thank God it wasn't live. You just gave everyone enough time to turn their phone off. Yeah, yeah. I said, we have to stop. I don't have a good answer for this right now.

Hunter, we started over and went for it. Three months later, I'm on stage at TEDx giving a presentation exactly about identity. So when people start to tweak their language, they're going to bump up against parts of them that are comfortable with the status quo, their status quo. And when it comes to soft talk, if someone is comfortable being noncommittal or backing out of basically valuing themselves, they're comfortable with the value that they've convinced themselves they're worth, then part of them will resist. It will fight back. Okay, so what we're talking about, everything we're talking about here, people, is very valuable. It's very practical, and there will be challenges on that path for sure. Here's an example. I was

giving a presentation in London. This was three years ago to a group of yogis and we were setting goals and one woman she was charging 65 pounds for a one hour yoga private and she wanted to increase her rates and so we wrote down 80 pounds i want to charge 80 pounds next year she we we talked it through, she started crying because she added 15 pounds to her rate because it was so much of a leap for her. Okay. That's like 25 bucks. Okay. And whether it's 25 bucks or $25,000, something along those lines, or saying yes to something that, you know, at the time when i did that uh did the the tedx presentation i had spoken in front of 400 people okay this is now 1800 people in my hometown on the red dot i

have got one shot at this okay and if i had when i got the opportunity and it came through i said yes immediately and part of me goes oh fuck sure fuck. Sure. Yeah, totally. And I will take, I will take that flavor of, of uncomfortability and, and stress then. Well, you know, um, let me think about it. Let me think about it is if I give myself a couple of days to, to, to think about what have I, what have I got to think about? Right. Okay? Just to get more nervous and worry. Exactly.

Thanks. And then say no. I think that when you voice it to somebody, it becomes an actual entity of its own that you have to go chase. And one of my favorite examples, I mentioned him in that tiny little intro I did last night for the Spartan Up podcast dinner but charlie angle just had this funky idea that he was going to go run the sahara

desert and he told somebody about it and he was like fuck now i have to go do it yes like it becomes a thing and your brain is telling you to do it for some reason like i can do this i can go conquer this and now i've just made it a thing i told somebody what it is now it's out in now it's out in the universe and i have to go follow that path and start working backwards too like okay well how do i get how do i get to the sahara like how do i put two marathons together a day and for like a half a year yeah when we were interviewing them last year that was like the pivotal moment was just like the yoga teacher. I just added 25 or 15 pounds to my rate.

As soon as you say it, now if you go back and say, oh, it's 60, now you know you're letting yourself down. You're not owning the idea that you think you're worth more. For Charlie, it was like, well, now I have to go see if I can run all these marathons back to back to back to back and you put it out in the universe and your body then it's almost like your your life is propelled in that direction and you start to see how things stack up to get where you're going i think it's a a process that people really need to understand and that's i guess what you guys are teaching to coaches through the strong coach and through Unlifted. Yes.

Yeah, the money conversation is step by step. The first conversation is charging what you're worth and then having a conversation around your self-worth. But it eventually evolves into completely detaching your personal self-worth and the amount of money coming in and out of the bank. And so trying to get someone to move all the way there overnight, never seen it happen. But I've definitely seen there's a stair step. Boom, boom, boom. And the light at the end of the tunnel, if you do the work and you go all the way, is your bank account can be zero or there could be $100,000 in it and you feel the same. And most people checking their bank account is one of the worst things they could do to start their day. If you can't check your bank account every day for a month and feel great, then your relationship to money could use some work.

And if you don't do that work, you're going to live the rest of your life with it. Because it's not going to change just because you got older. Money has to be one of the hardest conversations to unravel in your brain. I feel like our parents, I don't want to speak for all of the parents that are in their 60s now, but money is a... In my family, money...

It wasn't like we had an abundance of money all the time, even though I always had everything I needed. But the conversation that I have about money is very different than the conversation that was in my household. I don't check my bank account, but maybe like once a month. Yeah. It's just there. Something that I assume will grow in the direction because that's where I'm headed. Imagine this.

If you were a kid and you ever saw your parents argue about money, that's going to anchor in that feeling with money. So there's, even if, you know, I would say I was, I grew up middle class, but my dad ran his own business and there were good months and there were shitty months. And there was, I had to unwind a lot around money because there was arguments in the house about it and just all sorts of shit. Nothing extraordinary.

I didn't have any major trauma around it. But, yeah, we have an emotional responsibility. And money is a part of our entire lives. We're spending it every day. I could go to my bank account and find out a day i didn't have an expense come out of my account that would be tough yeah like i'm buying something almost every day most people are you might find a day or two in the month where you're not it's it's part of your daily routine every time you swipe that card you're thinking oh there's money coming out is there enough money

is you know whatever there's there's a lot going on there. And then the whole self-worth conversation, too. It's like everyone believes they should have more money than they actually do. I should have more money in my account. It's like, really? Well, you're living in a fantasy. Money is a lagging indicator for value. Why isn't it there?

Yeah. You're not doing anything. You're worrying about why it's not there yeah you're following that path if you think there should be more in there than there is then you're in a fantasy yeah yeah uh yo referencing the the unreasonable concept again i've actually combined that on i've journaled a little bit myself lately over the last month or so and uh as a part of journaling, I've kind of really been refining my core values lately. And one of the first core values I put down as I have redone the core value thing for the millionth time, I seem to keep going back to further refine it. It's really core.

Well, yeah, it does evolve with how I wordsmith it all. But, like, the ideas are the same. How do I write them down? And this is a good idea on that topic. I took concepts from both of you, the unreasonable piece and then the positive piece. And so one of my core values now is to be unreasonably positive. And I feel like that is anchored in my mind so strongly these days that it's like the number one thing I think about day to day,

back to the conversation from the beginning of the show. But I like the unreasonable piece. The core values is an interesting conversation. Doug, you and I have known each other since 2007. 06? It was 06. Holy shit. 06.

Business changed in the last 14 years. We were business partners for a decade. We had so many conversations around core values and values in general. And over the last couple of years, I've done a lot of work around that myself. And where I've gotten is I think of values and boundaries as the same thing. And so that's given me a way better view of values. It's like, I value this, this and this. It's like, okay, that's what you say, but how are you behaving? All that kind of stuff. So I think

about boundaries as values and that this is where I'm not willing to do these things or if you're going to be a part of my life, these are the types of things that I want to be present. And identifying my boundaries has gotten down to how do I feel. So if I'm doing something and it just, every time I do it, I'm like, my body is rejecting. I feel a contraction in my body. I go, okay, there's a part of me that's saying, get me out of here. Like, let's not do this. And I go, okay, why is that? And a boundary can be like what I don't want and then flipping that into an affirmation of, well, what is it that I do want in that case?

Now that's a value. So for me, I like to really listen to what my body is telling me. So I'm tuning in, tuning in. I keep finding a contraction in my body when there's this person present or this thing present. Or when I do this type of project or whatever, it's like I'm getting a contraction. Okay, these are boundaries in my values. So it's become, I think a lot of times for me, I'll say this, I had a hard time solidifying goals, values, a lot of things in the past because I thought that I was going to have to, if I wrote it down one time, it was never going to change. And it actually caused me to have a lack of commitment. And when I realized that my values, my boundaries, my goals, I can change my mind, and that's okay, when I started living from that place,

my ability to commit fully went through the roof. It's like, oh, I can commit all of my attention in this moment to this thing because I know that I don't have to do this for the rest of my life. And if I change my mind, that's okay. It all depends on how you frame it. Back to the positivity piece. Like if you, if you frame, I changed my mind as like, I can't commit to anything. You're framing it in the negative. If you frame, I changed my mind as in I learned something new and now I have a new perspective because I learned something. Then now, now it's framed in the positive. And it's a good thing that you changed your mind because now I have a new perspective because I learned something, then now it's framed in the positive. It's a good thing you changed your mind because now you have new information

and a new way of seeing the world. Well, my idea of commitment now is different. I used to view commitment as like, until the day we die, that type of thing. Sometime in the future that's undefined. Yeah, but now when I look at commitment, how committed am I to this moment? And how committed am I, if moment? And how committed am I?

If I'm with another human being, am I giving them my full attention? How committed am I to them right now? And for me, that's commitment. Because maybe we want to get all Eckhart Tolle on this shit. You know, all we have is now, right? And so if you are drifting off to somewhere else, away from this present moment, then that is a lack of commitment. You're not committed to whatever it is you're doing right now. And being in a place where I am experiencing full commitment to the process of what's happening

right now is very satisfying. Very, very satisfying. And to experience a sense of purpose from that place is very, very easy. And I know people are seeking purpose, and it's right under your nose. I was talking to Joe DeSena yesterday, and we were talking about how you build a culture around the lowest level of acceptable behavior. So when you have that contraction, that's your body, that's your mind, that's your body that's your mind that's everything saying that's below the level of accepted behavior whether it's internally with what you're doing or with your team or your relationships there's something in your body that says we just crossed the barrier of we don't accept that and we we now understand what the bottom is. You don't really know until you've kind of overextended yourself so many times.

Yeah, I've coached a lot of people around boundaries or, you know, the standards in which they're willing, a lot of business owners, the standards in which they're willing to, you know, do their shit. What do you accept? And I was talking to a friend recently and actually coached her up at burning man a bit she goes back and fires off three people and creates a new standard inside the business and it was um it it that that standard conversation just landed so hard but we were using the word boundaries it was like oh yeah i want my business to be doing this which means the boundaries have to be this and these people are out and so it it becomes it's a practice though you got to keep practicing notice that the con that for me there's a lot of

times there's the body telling me one thing and the mind trying to make up all the again reasons trying to make up all these reasons on why i you know oh there's still a good idea because of all these reasons and my body's going no fuck this yeah i'm having a hard time making sense of it so there's this conflict and then when i get when i pull myself into alignment and i go okay what's really going on here i sit meditate journal and i go okay my body and mind when they're aligned aligned, what's actually happening? Oh, I have to go have a really hard conversation. This is a conversation I'm avoiding because I know that it's going to be really uncomfortable, but on the other side of it is really amazing results.

I heard a good quote the other day that said that your level of success in life is directly proportional to the number of uncomfortable conversations you're willing to have. I was like, fuck, I think they're on to something. I'm crushing. Yeah, Mark, we haven't really dug into the projections and reflections concept. Can you dig into that a little bit? Sure. Everybody loves a good victim-villain drama story.

When it's time for a good victim-villain drama story. They're the best. They're awesome, man. They're super seductive and quite common. And as far as people's stories are concerned, and there's a linguistic component to that. So negations, they give you the worry. They give you the worst-case scenario.

That's what you paint in your imagination. That's when you're framing things in the negative. Yes. The soft talk, that delivers the indecision. Again, flavors of stress, of conflict, of constriction. And then we get to the bitterness, the blame game, the poison. And it's when we say things like you always disrespect me. Or we think that in our mind.

They never let me do what I really want to do. You're always talking over me. She made me think we needed to get married. He puts so much pressure on me you you really really embarrassed me last night all of those statements right there are you hit everybody with all that dagger through the heart through the heart. I got a strong pimp hand when it comes to this conversation. It creates. I'm forcing myself to create a victim and villain picture or little mental movie. I'm in there.

The villain's in there. They're doing something to me. I have to wait for them to change their behavior in order for me to feel better about the situation. And I go into massive constriction. One of the reasons that we approached you all about coming on the show two and a half years ago was that, and I was confident I had something to bring to the table for the fitness industry about the conversation of language, words and stories and identities. Is because we have and we show this very easily is that there's a connection between what we think and say and how well we breathe. ways for someone to trap their breathing and royally fuck their breathing mechanics is to create these kinds of stories especially projection stories those for whatever reason seem to be the

most the most impactful and the strongest and the most venom venomcing stories that we have. Someone's taking advantage of us. And it traps our breathing. We go into sympathetic nervous system response. The breathing gets trapped in the upper chest. And from there, you all are experts in fitness. When someone has compromised breathing mechanics, that is a recipe for disaster on a lot of different levels. Take longevity and whatever they want. That's why I got hurt, man.

That's why I got jacked my knee up a couple times and sprung something out in my neck. It's because I was mad as hell at the world when really it was just an issue I had, an ongoing issue I had with myself about myself. I didn't know that. Okay? And I'm a I exercise very differently now because I catch these stories before they turn into monsters in my mind.

And so the projection so it's projection keywords are you, they, he, she, people's first names. Okay? You throw the government in there. You know? The government just there's... Other people you don't have control over. Yeah, exactly.

Which is everybody. Which is everybody. I teach my kids. A lot of people say don't complain, but then there's no strong definition that's tangible for what complaining really is. What I teach my kids is that complaining is a combination of two things.

It's something that's framed in the negative and is outside of your control. So I feel like in many ways, this ties into what you're saying. You want things framed in the positive and to only focus on you and what you can control, which is the reflections as opposed to the projections on other people. Sure. Sure. So I really embarrassed me last night. At the end of the day, who's feeling my feelings? Who's creating my feelings? Me. Did he make me think we needed to get married? Or did I make me think we needed to get married? He could have said whatever he wanted.

At the end of the day, I make my own decisions. They never let me think for myself. i never let me think for myself and this is it's the best of news and it's the worst of news it's the best news because we put ourselves in the driver's seat okay and we can change directions it's the worst of news because that means that we have to get in the driver's seat and change directions. So, once again, there is a well-placed, well-timed reflection in the heat of the moment. Challenging. Challenging.

And super liberating. So, like Mike said, what are we showing people how to do initially have uncomfortable conversations with ourselves and on the other side to use his uh in in my opinion accurate description massive growth massive success massive opportunity to change because until I tell myself a a uh until I stop creating versions of the victim mentality I have an uphill battle on my hands the definition of the victim mentality I I bring this up a lot because it it's a valuable thing to think about. It's valuable for me to repeat and hear. The definition of the victim mentality is an acquired personality trait

where a person tends to regard himself or herself as the victim of the negative actions of others, even in the absence of clear evidence. The victim mentality depends on a habitual thought process and attributions. It's dependent as it has to have on a habitual, which accurately implies duration, time, and addiction. People, this, stories are addictive, man. And we're helping people break their addiction to being victims in the story of themselves. And in that, it's the hero's journey. It's everything that anyone ever wanted,

plus, plus, plus, on the other side of cracking that code. And like Mike said, it's not a weekend seminar. You're not going to do it in a weekend. It's an ongoing practice, which goes back to the conversation about identity. The current definition of identity, it's the identity, Webster's definition, it's the fact of being who or what a person is. Okay, wonderful.

Now, I did this in the TED Talk. Do you see yourself, Doug Larson, any differently than when you were five? Of course you do. We all do. So our identities aren't facts. They're fluid. They're they're ongoing fluid flexible processes and we participate this is the conversation how much am i participating in my life very little if i keep telling myself that people are fucking me over and that there's no opportunity out there and nothing ever works out for me and maybe one day I'll hopefully be able to make some big moves perhaps. That's turning the volume way down on my capacity to develop my talents.

There's no shortage of talents. There's so much talent sitting at this table, it would take us seven lifetimes to even scratch the surface on it you know next time around you could become a one of the best violin players ever uh a chef you could learn to speak five languages travel the world and then just pick whatever i mean truth be told what what i i really like the quote from a Bronx tale. So Robert De Niro, he's telling his son, he said, the greatest tragedy on earth is wasted talent. So we're helping people tap into that, get themselves,

get these versions of them out of the way. And, Andrews, you mentioned it earlier. We inherit this stuff. our language is an inheritance yeah we inherit the way that the the our parents told themselves stories about the world and the emotional uh uh the the the the weight of the emotional uh the emotions and feelings they created for themselves and then we go and and play these things out ourselves. I mean, we inherit more from our parents than I color. I think that what you're talking about in kind of shedding identity and moving into new identities

or creating the new identity, everyone at this table has probably been through that process really well recently or better recently and very poorly in the past. And one of the things that I have learned from doing it very poorly and doing it better is that there creates such an opportunity in the void of having that old identity run your life because you get to create the new person that you would like to be and i don't if you become good at moving forward instead of focusing on all the things that you have to carry with you you can become anything that you would like to be and you it just there's a process to it like everything of figuring out in each scenario, what is the best version of yourself that you would like to be? How do I carry that forward? How do I apply that to the relationships? And what are the outcomes that are they favorable to where I would like to be? But there's a massive pro questions, man, uh, step and experience and that you just have to go through and recognizing kind

of the lines that you draw through your life and how you can carry the the important lessons forward from past identities into the new ones of you're just exchanging widgets and which widgets work to get you to the place that you'd like to be versus the widgets that didn't serve you at that time um i think that that's a in in leaving some of the older identities and stages of my life, I'm very comfortable now doing it better, realizing that I don't have to play by anybody else's rules. I can just keep some core values that I think are important and we get to move forward and create the next version.

Mike, 100%. Mike mentioned it earlier that the global advice, the general advice, the vague advice people get, it's what I got. You know, just have a good attitude or be more positive. That will crumble in the face of adversity. I remember very clearly, and my dad's cool, man, one of my heroes. This particular day, I called bullshit on it. We were walking down on a walk at the farm, and he said, Mark, in life, good things happen and bad things happen,

and you just have to hope that the good things outweigh the bad. I'm like, I'm not taking that. Bad advice, Dad. I'm not taking that. Bad advice, Dad. Sorry. No, no. There's got to be a better formula than that. And that's what we're talking about. When people get, when we get granular in the conversation about what keywords, so negation keywords, can'ts, won'ts, isn'ts, don'ts, haven'ts, nots, shouldn'ts. Soft talk keywords, thinks, likes, maybes, it's almost ifs. It's almost ifs. Perhaps is, one days, hopes, tries.

Projection keywords, you, they, he, she, mom, dad, the government. Those keywords, if we know to use less of those, then we make the conversation practical until you have that granular piece about the words then mindset is very vague it's hard to put into use and it's very hard to deconstruct these old stories and identities that are at literal war with us succeeding in and we're in our second certification within lifted we have a group of 12 coaches going through this and they've they've they've with us succeeding. And we're in our second certification within Lifted, and we have a group of 12 coaches going through this. And they've called out, written out the story of their evil inner workout partner, the partner that trains when they shouldn't,

that eats what they know is going to make them feel bad, is in comparison hell, always shit-talking them through workouts. A couple paragraphs, they wrote about this. They named him. Mike went first in the skits and Billy. And so we have them read this out in a variety of different ways. Those are hilarious, by the way. Thank you.

Yeah, they're serious. Mike goes into character in Enlifted by this person named Billy. We came up with this concept, and we threw it around like, should we do it? Should we not do it? I was 50-50. You and Adam loved it. I'm like, good enough for me. Sounds like 66% of the world. So glad we did.

We put it in. It made the course. It made the course. Yeah, it's one of those things where it was just an idea that turned into something that we use heavily now. Heavily. Sorry. So go ahead. No, yeah, exactly.

So people were reading out their Billy stories. We're on call five. The first call, they're reading out their Billy stories, and it was a task for them to write it out. Okay, that's enough of an emotional challenge. Back up real quick. What is the Billy story again? The Billy story is they name their evil inner workout partner, and they describe them.

This is the part of them that uses all the negations, the soft talk, the projections, the asshole inside of all of us. The inner asshole, and they say things about themselves like this one guy, his Billy is named seamus you know seamus drinks too much seamus overeats seamus is obsessed with who's on the top of the the the number of board seamus looks at himself in the mirror and says the worst things about how his his body looks and that things should be different and seamus does this and seamus and and just just writing that down is a. And then we have them verbalize it. Challenge.

People's faces are like. Dude, steam coming out of there. Tording as they're reading them. And then once we get into these later calls, we have them change things up. Okay. So I was talking about a part of us being at odds with our success. Okay. And this last call, we had them read these out with a big smile so dude's smiling as big

as he can Seamus drinks too much Seamus overeats Seamus is obsessed with other people in the way he looks in the mirror and so it's it's it's it's different it's strange to say these kinds of things with a big smile and people get hot because there's friction. They're just burning up. They literally are like, I am sweating over here. This is weird. My face wants to go back into the meh, meh, meh. We're throwing monkey wrenches in this whole story

mechanism process. On the other end of it, they're already getting massive breakthroughs. Story work, here it is in a nutshell, everyone. Story work equals productivity. If you want to become more productive in areas of your life, dig into the stories you tell yourself about yourself. And go in there with some tools.

Go in there with some understandings about what words are doing what. And that your identity is not a fucking rock solid fact this is just the way up no it's just the way you've been thinking about yourself that's flexible and we're proving that in these calls it's one of the reasons why we're doing we're doing but anyway that's another story and and go in there and make some changes okay because most of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, they're not facts. They're opinions. I don't deserve to be happy because. That's not on the periodic table of elements.

That's just somebody. That's my opinion of myself that I created at some point in time. Yeah. Regarding the positivity piece related to telling yourself a story, you don't have to just totally fabricate ridiculous lies to yourself. If you crash your bike and you break your leg, you't you don't need to be like oh this is so great do you guys see how i crashed my bike i broke my leg that was so funny this is awesome that's like not what we're talking about here like if you do happen to do that like you can

you can acknowledge that you didn't want that to happen to yourself and say okay well like what what are the positives of this like moving forward like i want to have my leg get fixed. I want to go to physical therapy. And in the meantime, there's all these other things I can do. If I'm an athlete, I can, I can work on my upper body strength or whatever it is. Like you just focus, focus on whatever it is moving forward that you actually have control over that is positive. A hundred percent, as opposed to what I've done in the past is, is let the story just ride, ride roughshod over me okay i just i just took a back seat and and and and and let the thing go i didn't know i had a choice um bringing up the the elbow conversation so uh i did at one point in time train jujitsu and uh it's been it's been a long

time since i have my jujitsu is very antiquated. So last year, a year and a half ago, Mike and I finish up one of these weird things that we do from time to time. And we're in Sedona. We drive to Phoenix, Arizona. Doug's like, that could be absolutely. That was very soft talk. Intentional soft talk. We possibly go to Sedona and do things

all the people that have been to Sedona are like nodding their heads it's a very spiritual place all the other people that don't know Sedona are like googling Sedona like what the hell is that we were doing it is gorgeous out there combo

frog venom it's a cleanse. It's intense. And there's definitely something to it anyway. We finish up three days there, and we've got a night in Phoenix. So I'm like, hey, man, there's a 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu school there. Let's go. So we go in there.

We take two classes. Mike's like, I'm done. I'm like, man, let's roll. We do two classes, doing drills. He's like, yeah, let's live roll. I'm like, that's a recipe for disaster. Yeah, see, he's a smart one. That's why.

Sounds awfully negative, Mike. Yeah. I did it to him. That's what happened. I'll put a spell on you. I go with one of their dudes. He puts me in a Kimura from the half guard. I didn't know what I was in at the moment.

And I'm struggling, and my elbow, snap city, ripped it up. And I knew it was jacked immediately, popped, ripped. I mean, you roll, dude. Like, there's only one thing that makes those kinds of noises. Half the room looked over, okay? And I look at my elbow he let go he didn't he was he was just he was he was cool i look at my elbow i look at him i look at my elbow and i go straight to my calendar of all fucking things and i'm like okay cool that kettlebell certification

and on it we're gonna take that off because this thing is probably soft talk acknowledged jacked up um i i likely will be able to do paleo effects uh we had a booth there uh and mike we got to get in the car because i'm the only one on the insurance and i don't know what this thing's gonna do anyway i ended up having a tommy john surgery and i kept the story small man as opposed to making it proof that there was something wrong with me and buying into that story and once someone locks into that man the the the story will run thought train after and just it's it's fucks bill you get run over yeah when you read the the buddha's brain they talk about the arrows all the time you Arrow one is you broke your arm. Yeah. Arrow two is something else.

Arrow three, and you just keep taking arrows over this one freaking system. That's a good analogy. Or one thing that happened, and now it's like I have got 75 problems to worry about, and it's just keep pelting yourself. I've got a mental picture of somebody with like 150 arrows just sticking out.

And that's kind of like what the book, it's like, no, just keep the story small. Keep it small. I saw somebody with like 150 arrows just sticking out. And that's kind of like what the book. It's like, no, just keep the story small. Keep it small. I broke my arm. Another quick break to talk about our friends over at Whoop. Whoop.com. Use the code shrug. Save $30 on a 12 or 18 month membership.

You know that you need to know about your recovery, how you can tailor your intensity to your workout. Whoops. Whoops. The best of the game. That's why everybody in CrossFit, that's why everybody you see has their whoop on because it is giving you up to the second. It's checking your heart rate and your HRV like a billion times a minute. I don't even know what a billionth of a second is, but it's a lot. Every morning, check out, see how well you slept, see where your REM sleep was, check out your deep sleep. If you're in the green, it's time to hit the gas. If you're in the yellow, you're doing it right.

That means your training and your recovery are doing very well. If you're in the red, slow it down a little bit. Hit a cardio day, take a day off. Maybe go to a yoga class, meditate a little bit. The Whoop band gives you all the information you need to optimize your training and recovery and you can save 30 on a 12 or 18 month membership by going to whoop.com and using the coupon code shrugged and then of course our friends over at organifi two plus years been hanging out with Organifi and that's because our people love them. You can go to Organifi.com forward slash shrugged right now to save 20% on the greens, reds, and golds, the micro vitamins or micronutrients, the vitamins and minerals that you need for proper

digestion, proper health, all the things that you're not getting during your day because you're sitting in an office or you're too stressed, whatever it is, and you're not getting the vitamins and minerals that you need. So get over to Organifi.com forward slash shrugged, save 20%, back to the show. I broke my arm. That's it. And mic drop it. It's so refreshing. I just pictured somebody walking into like a sliding glass door and just being like, damn it. Slamming their head into it over and over afterward. It's so refreshing. I just pictured somebody walking into a sliding glass door and just being like, boom, damn it. Go, go, go, go. Just slamming their head into it over and over afterward.

Yeah, Buddha's brain does a great job of only take one arrow. How do you minimize the story that goes along with the bad circumstance that in a way you couldn't control? Because they're coming, man. Life throws curveballs. Things get strange. Things get weird. Things get amazing.

Things get tough. get you know flat it's you know um mindset and identity in in my world are the same thing and i know this the fact because i did it when i only have mental toughness that's sitting on top of an entrenched victim mentality, I'm going to hurt myself because there's no flexibility there. There's no flexibility there. So we help people add gears to their story so when things like that happen, they can go with it

because I had to go with it. Well, I didn't have to go with it. I could have fought it. I've fought injuries in the past and just suffered immensely and stopped fucking smiling. I went over there with my girlfriend. She was over to Thailand. She was so fun, hottest girl in school,

just an absolute blast of a person to be around, and I stopped laughing with her. And when I saw that i was like the clock's ticking man the clock's ticking and and she she that i was right yeah but uh you know thank god for the thank god for neuroplasticity cheers to that fellas because um, you can change any story. Enlifted, Strong Coach. Where can people find all this?

What do you guys got going on? Because these products have kind of, or these courses have combined themselves into one big vision of where you guys are headed. Yeah. So with Enlifted, if you enjoyed this conversation we're having right here, you want to dig in deeper, go to enlifted.me. That's spelled E-N-L-I-F-T-E-D dot M-E. And you'll save 50 bucks on the course. We have a 21-day course, 10 minutes a day. It's super simple. It's really well done. Very practical. Thank you. And you're going to be entertained. You'll start your day off with it, laugh, do the journal exercise. When you do that, you're going to start seeing your day-to-day shift.

It's going to be fun. Go to inlifted.me. Use the code SHRUGGED. You're going to save $50 on that course. Now, for the coaches, if you want to start implementing this deeper level of language, story, identity work with your clients and Lifted has a certification. So we certify people every quarter. We spend 90 days together and we dissect everything. We dissect your stories and then we teach you how to dissect the stories and set goals with your clients. It's going to make you a much better coach. So in lifted. dot me check that out get the course start

there and then we can talk about certification after that for the coaches out there that want to build their coaching business if you want to where I've gotten when I look at the coaching industry there's there's two categories there's the coaches that are making $20 an hour. It's their side gig. They wish they could make it full-time, but they just don't know how. And then you have the coaches who are fucking crushing it. They have an online coaching business, or they're running a gym really well,

and they're doing six figures, maybe seven figures. And so when I look at coaching, I've been in entrepreneurship for 12 years now. I go, every coach has the potential to make six figures working part-time. I can build a coaching business that I spend 20 hours a week and make six figures. Every coach can do that if they have the right approach. So that's the point of the strong coach is we look at your life and we go, what kind of life do you want to live? And then we build a business around that. Instead of what most people do is they look at the status quo. They go, Oh, this is the business I want to have. Uh, they go after the business and then

realize that their entire personal life is fucked and burnout and don't like it. So the strong coach is the answer to that. So if you really want to focus on your business, the strong coach, if you want to really focus on, uh, becoming a better coach around language, story, identity, you have Enlifted. So yeah, check those out. So we have Enlifted.me and we have thestrongcoach.com. And both of those things, we have free resources when you go there, put your email in and we'll send you some really cool stuff within lifted.me we have a free uh cognitive fitness assessment you know with physical fitness but if you want to check out your cognitive fit uh cognitive fitness where that level is you can take that assessment to get started um and then we have a bunch of free coaching resources over

the strong coach beautiful yeah and by the way if you if the audience couldn't tell from my excitement with this conversation how much i was contributing and just enjoying talking about everything we did today, to say one more time that I highly recommend both the Strong Coach and Enlifted and the Core Language Upgrade through Procrabular and everything you guys do. So definitely check out these products. I still think about it every day. I've said that multiple times. I really think they're very, very good.

So highly recommended. Thanks, Doug. And your barbell code for core language upgrade is still valid, man. We had a sale come in last month. I love that. From that show we did two and a half years ago. Yeah, go to

Procabulary.org, click on courses and if you want to save a hundred bucks put in barbell and you will. It was very cool coming on the show, guys. I've been looking forward to this a lot and listening to the stories that you're sharing from how this work is influencing your family. That means a whole lot to us.

Love it. Yeah, Anders, pleasure meeting you yesterday for the first time. This is great. And thank you for having us on the show. Oh, I didn't realize it was that fresh. I know, dude. Super fresh. We had some calls, man, good calls.

And this was first. Yeah. It's been fantastic. You guys have social media and all that too? Mark England 2020 on Instagram. Yep. And Mike underscore Bledsoe on Instagram. And, yeah, I've got my podcast too.

Keep on talking. It's just running. Yeah, The Bledsoe Show. You can go find that. Yeah, Instagram is my favorite. Obviously, podcasting is my favorite thing to do. Instagram is my favorite place to interact with people. So if you have questions or whatever, hit me up over there.

Beautiful. We'll have a good time. Doug Larson. Me too. I love Instagram. You can find me on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson. I need to get you on Instagram more. Dude, I've really gotten away from it.

Yeah. It's probably significantly healthier for your life. I need to get back. I took a little Instagram break. Yeah. Which was great for my just mental health. I feel like for a while Instagram was not good for me. You say you take a break, but the more you take a break, the more it's just not a part of your life. Yeah. I feel like for a while Instagram was not good for me. You say you take a break,

but the more you take a break, the more it's just not a part of your life. Yeah. You just continually take a longer break. I find I'm happier the last time I spent

on social media. But it's important for business and whatnot. Unless you're following one of us, you're wasting your fucking time. I'm Anders Varner

at Anders Varner. We're the Shrug Collective at Shrug Collective. Snatch, clean, jerks squat that bench one ton challenge dot com get over there put your PR's in come hang out with us

and we'll see you guys next Wednesday awesome thanks guys that's a wrap my friends shoot me an email Anders at barbell shrug dot com and you can put in the subject line one ton challenge if you are interested in the subject line one-ton challenge.

If you are interested in hosting a one-ton challenge event at your gym, program software support, all the marketing materials you need to run a successful event at your gym. Also, want to thank our sponsors, Organifi.com, forward slash shrug, saving 20% on all the greens, the reds, the golds, and all the things at their store. Whoop.com, use the code SHRUG to save $30 on a 12- or 18-month membership. Airforce.com, forward slash special ops

for everything special operations at the Air Force, and then our friends at Momentus for all the high-quality protein needs, livemomentous.com, L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S.com, forward slash shrugged to save $20 on your purchase. We'll see you guys next week.