Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - 194. Comfort Is Killing YOU: The Truth About Why You're Depressed | Ep. 0194

Episode Date: June 17, 2026

42% OFF - Get your Digital Man Up book + Audiobook + 2 Exclusive MASTERCLASSES https://bit.ly/manuptribeTruLean Supplements | https://bit.ly/trulean-bedrosGet 50% Off Trulean Subscribe & Save BundleUse Code: BEDROS Guys, listen up. We're living in the softest, most comfortable era in human history... and it's destroying us. Convenience is the enemy. Every dopamine hit you get from your phone, your food apps, your AI chatbots — it's salt water for your soul. In this episode I'm breaking down the best life advice I ever got, completely by accident, from my old rich dad Jim Franco 26 years ago at LA Fitness. I'll tell you exactly why solving problems — not avoiding them — is the cure for depression, anxiety, and that victim mentality killing so many men today. My son and I tore into his Honda S2000 last week and I'll show you what that taught us about confidence, discipline, and building a life worth talking about. Average is the enemy. Let's get to work.

Welcome to the Bedroft's Coolian show Back when Q was rolling with Lorenzo and a Benzo I was banging with a gang of instrumental. 26 years ago, I got the best life advice ever by accident, and now I'm going to share it with you here today. Guys, welcome to the Bedros, Coolie, and show. Today's episode is about the best life advice ever, and I accidentally got this, believe it or not, from someone who means a lot to me. And they got this message, let's see, 26 years ago. So I was a personal trainer at LA Fitness. Some of you that have been following me for a long time know this.

I used to be a struggling personal trainer at LA Fitness. I only had four personal training clients, right? And so because of that, I also worked at a gay bar as a bouncer because the gay bar paid more than the straight bar because the skinheads would come almost every other night. And they'd wait in the parking lot for the bar to empty like at one or two in the morning. And then these assholes would gay bash. and it was unfortunate and it was our job as bouncers and security to make sure that all the people in the club were able to get to their cars safely. And so I was like, dang, man, I got this job that I hate, you know, as a bouncer. I don't like to sleep late and I'd go to bed late at

night because, well, it's a bouncing job at a club. And then I was a fry cook and bus boy at Disneyland. And then I was also a personal trainer early mornings, three days a week at the LA fitness in La Habra, California, right out here. And one of my four personal training clients was Jim Franco. You've heard me talk about him before. If you've read my book, Man Up, I talk about my rich dad. That's Jim Franco and, of course, my poor dad, who's taught me a lot of great lessons in life, values, morals, ethics, hard work. Remember, we're immigrants to this country. This man came. My dad, my biological dad brought us here and he worked his nuts off to give me the lifestyle of an opportunity that I needed as a kid to be able to launch and become successful. But I was

exposed to a multimillionaire in the name of Jim Franco. And I always kind of saw him as my rich dad, right? And so Jim Franco was a personal training client. And in between sets, when you're working with your personal training clients, you know, you kind of make some small talk and banter. And I was like, Jim, how do I become financially successful like you? I wanted just business advice. I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to open up a gym, maybe have a whole bunch of gyms, but at least let me start off with one. I'm like, I'm tired of working like two side jobs just to make ends meet, right? And Jim accidentally gave me, well, he gave me the advice that I needed to be a great entrepreneur,

but inherently it became the best life advice ever that I want to share with you guys here. And so Jim said, look, to be an entrepreneur, you've got to figure out how to solve problems. And the more complex problems you can solve for people, the more money you can charge. if you can solve problems for a big group of people that have the money and they are looking to have the solution to the problem that they have, they're going to pay you.

But if they have a problem, but they don't have the money, then they're going to live with the problem and not pay you. So you need to learn to solve a problem for a big group of people who have the money to pay for the solution that you have. And I was like, oh, cool. Well, the problem that I can solve

is people trying to lose fat and build muscle. like everyone's fat. And even 26 years ago, I know obesity wasn't as bad as it is today, although because of the GLP drugs and ozempics and all that, you see the tide's turning on that, but I'll tell you this, mark my words, bone density issues are going to be a massive, massive issue over the next five, 10 years because you're also losing bone density when you're on these osemps and gLPs if you're not eating a high protein diet and doing resistance training, but that's a different issue. So with that in mind, let's go back to what Jim Franco told me, solve problems for people that have money and of course charge for those solutions, right? Fair enough. So I want to open up a

gym. And so he started to mentor me. And I did and I became successful. You guys know the story. I sold those five gyms in San Diego, California and then went into coaching and consulting other gym owners. And today I coach and consult all types of entrepreneurs and e-commerce and coaching, consulting, real estate, doctors. My coaching clients. just range from all types of entrepreneurs. But I also have Fit Body Boot Camp now or International Fitness franchise, Truling Supplements, and partnered with Fuel Hunt apparel.

So he helped me figure out the business model. Find a problem that people have, make sure they have money, and then solve their problem. Check, and it's served me well. Well, what I realize is that's also the best life advice you could have. Guys, quick interruption to the Bedroskoolian show. I want to tell you about the Man Up bundle that I have for you for $29 and 100% of it.

it goes to Shriner's Children's Hospital where we're going to do a lot of good and you're going to build an awesome business and have a great life because of it. You not only get the digital version of my international bestselling book, Man Up, you also get the audiobook version of it and two very exclusive masterclass recordings that I did just earlier this month that is focused specifically on scaling your business and having breakthroughs. Scale strategies masterclass is all about how to scale your business in marketing, sales, systems, automation, and leadership. and the breakthrough blueprint masterclass is all about breaking through your limiting beliefs, breaking through uncertainties, and breaking through to get to the next level of happiness

and success in business and life. Best of all, you get all of this for 29 bucks because you watch and listen to the Bedros-Colian show. And I'm donating 100% of that money to Shrinas Children's Hospital where they do a lot of good and give a lot of surgeries and medical services to kids whose families can't afford that. So go to manuptribe.com and get the Bedros-Culian man-up bundle before it all sells out. in life if you want to be happy, if you want to have a sense of fulfillment, I've realized that you've got to solve problems. Like look for problems and solve them, right? And here's the weird thing,

man. We live in a time of so much comfort and convenience. We live in a time that you could literally take your phone and find your favorite restaurant on any one of those food apps and literally custom make your burrito or burger or salad. whatever it is that you're making, and then order it, and it'll come to your door. You don't even have to get in your car and drive and wait in line and order, pay and pick up and drive back. All that is gone. We live in a time of instant convenience.

You've got, you know, Claude and Chat GPT and all the other AI platforms that can instantly give you access to any information that you need, answer any questions that you want, make you sound like a thespian, you know, even though you can't talk and communicate and articulate. well, this apps like Chat, GPT, and Cloud will help you craft captions and copy and write a book and do your research and all these things, right? Like pretty freaking incredible, the convenience that we have today. And then you talk about like you want access to any kind of entertainment. Well, between TikTok, Instagram and, you know, what do you got the YouTube's?

You got the podcast. Like it's endless entertainment, never mind the streaming services out there, right? all of which you can watch on your phone, on your iPad, on your television, et cetera. And so so much comfort and convenience lends us to not wanting to find problems to solve. And I believe that is the cause, the comfort and convenience that we have today is the cause of so much depression and sadness and victim mentality and anxiety that people are dealing with. Because we are inherently made to solve problems. It is in our DNA.

It is factory installed for us to find. problems and solve them. Yet everything around you is designed to keep you comfortable, entertained, keep everything convenient, and you get those dopamine hits that you would have gotten by solving problems. You get them through entertainment and fast access to food and knowledge and videos and social media and all this stuff, right? But see, that's like drinking salt water when you're thirsty. The moment you're drinking it, your palate gets wet and you feel satisfied. But because of salt water, it's going to dehydrate you further. That's what these comfort and convenience factors do. And what I found is if you want a great life, a life that gives

you a sense of purpose and meaning and significance, you want not only dopamine hits that are high quality, but serotonin, like the real happy hormone, the hormone of accomplishment, you're going to want to find problems and solve them. I didn't say create problems and solve them. so many of you out there will also go and create problems in your life when there are no problems only to then try and solve them and create more problems and then get stuck in this hamster wheel of problem creation and solution that is not a good life that is not a life that I would want to model but if you want to have a life of happiness and purpose and service and significance You want to be respected.

You want to build confidence. What I found is the more problems you can solve, the better, right? Guys, quick interruption to the Bedroskoolion show. If you want better health, more energy, you want to fight off inflammation, and you want to boost your immune system, then you are probably taking a lot of supplements like I used to. I say used to because I stopped taking all these different supplements. And you can now throw away your vitamin C, throw away your zinc, throw away your vitamin D3,

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problems, but in a world of convenience and access and comfort, you're no longer interested in doing that because it's easier to get the cheaper dopamine hits. So why do we want to solve problems in the first place? Well, each time you solve a problem, any kind of problem, right? You get a dopamine hit. But on top of that, you get a little boost of confidence, don't you? Because I'll give you a great example. Just last week, my son and I decided that we're going to do a oil change and transmission fluid change on his car. Now, I haven't done a oil change and transmission fluid change on a car in probably three decades.

I used to have a 79 Toyota pickup in the early 90s, and as a young man, it was really easy to crawl under there with an oil pan, right? a pan and a wrench and take that drain valve out, empty the oil, put the valve back in, take the filter off, put a new filter on, and then put five quarts of oil in. Easy. The engine is not complicated.

There is no electronic anything. It was a 79 Toyota pickup. With the modern cars, very different. But I knew that we could do this. And my son was like, Dad, do you think we can pull it off? I'm like, bro, we've got the garage. We've got the tools and equipment.

and we've got YouTube that can walk us through a tutorial for your exact car. And over the next three hours, now his car sits kind of low. It's a Honda S-2000. It's a beautiful car. And it sits kind of low. And the jack that I have, we couldn't even slide under because the bumper sits too low. So we realized thing number one to solve is we've got to drive the car up on two-by-fours to get the front end of it up high enough to get the jack under.

Then we've got to figure out where to jack the car up from without smashing anything under there. And then we've got to make sure to put the jack stands in and the right part of the frame so you don't crumple the frame. And then when you do that, what is the tools that we need, the equipment we need, the pan we need to drain the fluids, right? And it was such a cool process to do that as a team together. And each time we'd have a little win, we would high five each other. And then if you've ever worked the torque wrench, you know that it's like, what? Was it left, Lucy, right, tidy? and is this left or is it that left?

And we spent like five to eight minutes trying to figure out which way to turn the wrench to take the filter off. And those are the fun moments that we have that got us those dopamine hits because through process of problem solving and figuring things out and tinkering, we were able to get it done

and then safely lower the car, drive it around town, and it was freaking awesome, right? I share this with you because you, my friend, are designed to solve problems, to figure things out. It was so cool to see how both me and my son immediately, we both felt the confidence go up.

Like you can just tell. Like we both lit up like, dude, I think we did this. We pulled this off, right? Like pretty rad. What if we do the differential next week and we do a break job on it that same day as well? So that's our next task on it. And we're going to learn new skills.

Why? Because the car is giving us problems. Yes, we can take it to the mechanic and we can certainly afford that. But what a great thing to do together. to problem solve and to get those dopamine hits and serotonin hits knowing that you accomplish something because when you problem solve you not only build your confidence because you acquire new skills but you also start developing a level of discipline because

when you start something like that right whether it's a oil change transmission fluid break job you have to finish it and discipline built over time through problem solving is one of the greatest traits you can have because a person who's disciplined and a person who has high levels of confidence because they decided to learn a new skill. Like maybe the problem that you're dealing with today is, dude, I realize the world is getting more and more dangerous and I'm a sitting duck. I don't have any way of protecting myself. That's a problem. I can't know how to protect my honey. I don't know how to protect my family. I don't know how to protect myself. I need to learn some kind of combatives. That's a problem.

Now imagine the resistance that you're feeling, right? By the way, there's always going to be resistance. See, the answer to a great life, the best life advice I can give you is that you have to push through the resistance. Each time you don't push through resistance, you begin to erode confidence, which is like, imagine if your reputation with yourself, which is confidence, was your credit score. Each time you commit to doing something and you do it and you finish it through discipline and problem solving and figuring it out, you increase your credit score. Each time you want to do something, I'm going to give an oil change on my car. Ah, you know what?

Fuck it. I might screw it up, so I'm just going to go and take it to a mechanic. Well, guess what? You lowered your credit score. Because you know you probably have the ability to do it if you watch a YouTube video, get the right tools, get under that car, and do it, right? And so it's same thing with Jiu-Jitsu.

Let's say whether it's Jiu-Jitsu or Moutai or boxing, you want to get into some kind of combatives. There's a lot of resistance you're going to feel. Like, what if I get hurt? What happens if I'm the new guy on the mats and it's embarrassing? which you're going to be. You're going to be the newest guy on the mats, and it's going to be embarrassing.

It's going to be humbling. It's going to give you a gut check, whether it's strikes or grappling. You are going to realize that the person across from you who might only have a year or two of experience, your grappling partner that you're going against, might have a year or two of experience, and they might have 30 or 40 pounds deficit on you.

They're lighter than you with just a year or two experience and they are manhandling you. It's like it's voodoo. It's like they have some kind of witchcraft where they can contort your body in ways to get you to want to submit and tap. But then you realize if I stay through this long enough, I can problem solve through whatever position that he's trying to get into. I can learn to defend my neck and my limbs. I can learn to counter his attacks and find myself in a better position. And then when I'm in that position, I can begin to go through my rolodex of submissions that I've been taught and deploy one of them. If all goes right, one of those submissions are going to work and you're going to get a tap

from your grappling buddy or your striking buddy. And now you got that dopamine hit. You had a boost of confidence, right? Discipline just got even stronger within you because you're now more excited to come back next time, right? But building up to that, there was so much resistance. then that's what I'm here to tell you, that one of the best life advices I can tell you, if you are sad, depressed,

feeling like the world has it out for you, you're overwhelmed, you're anxious, you don't know what to do, start doing the things that you know you should do. Start solving the problems. Look, you got fat around your waistline, right? You know, it looks like you've got a fucking giant trash bag

of jello gelatin hanging around your waistline with stretch marks on it. it. Maybe now would be a good time to solve the problem of your diet. Use chat GPT to figure out what your macro should be based on your height, weight, and your goals, and start eating the right amount of proteins, fats, and carbs. And think about this. Each time you're hungry throughout the day, three, four, five times, that's a new problem that you have to solve. Think how many times you have to solve that problem the right way to get the results that you want, which means you're exercising willpower, you're exercising discipline, you're exercising, you're building confidence.

And then you do that long enough after a week you've lost a pound or two. And then you want to accelerate that. You go into the gym and you start lifting. But again, the gym gives you resistance. Why? It's scary. It's new. People are clanging and banging the weights.

But everyone in there, male or female, who's jacked and looks fucking scary and big and intimidating, every single one of them are some of the kindest, sweetest souls because 99% of gymgoers who actually have seen great results are people like you and me that started off with poor confidence. Maybe there were skinny twerps. Or maybe like me, there were fat little fuchs with boy tits that I had that I needed to solve for, right? Because no girl wanted to talk to me in elementary school

or junior high or high school. And it was scary to step into a gym the first time. but the problem I wanted to solve was so painful that I was willing to. And I got to tell you, I didn't have all of the comfort and conveniences that you have today. I didn't have social media 25, 30 years ago to distract me. Like, if I wanted to watch TV, just whatever's on TV is what I watch. But if I wanted attention from a girl, well, I knew that I need to start working out, getting in shape, build my confidence, build myself worth and self-esteem.

steam so that I can have the ability to communicate with them. So I'm here to tell you, man, the best life advice I can give you if you want fulfillment, you want a sense of purpose, you want happiness is not to be selfishly invested in yourself and do what makes you happy, which is probably to consume food, consume alcohol, consume weed, consume social media, consume pornography, to consume television, to consume sporting events all weekend long on TV, to play all these video games, sitting in your mama's basement with Cheeto dust in the belly button and gelatinous titties that I could milk and these little turkey jowls hanging off your throat that you think that if you just grow a light beard on it that it's going to be hidden. It's not your giant turkey waddle

that hangs under there, bro. I could see it. I don't know where your chin is. I don't know where your neck is. It goes from this like lower lip right to an upper sloppy chest. And I want you to fix that that's a great problem to start fixing fix the problems that you have fix the problems that other people have and when you serve yourself and others through problem solving you realize you start stacking confidence you start stacking wins you build discipline you start stacking momentum and you become curious what more can i do how many more things can i solve what is the next adventure i can take because after all life my friend is an adventure and you're either going to be a spectator and watch everyone else living an adventurous, beautiful life,

or you're going to start solving problems in your life and in the lives of others so you can make money and have fulfillment and get on that fucking playing field and live a life worth telling the world about. This way, on social media, you're going to be no longer a consumer of content, but you will be a creator of content

that serves and inspires, motivates. And if you're willing to do that, I bet you will have an awesome life. Guys, thanks for watching this episode of the Bedros-Culian show. And remember this, that average is the enemy. Success is your responsibility. And change can take place in an instant if you are willing to flip the switch. I'll see you next time.