Determined Society with Shawn French | Adversity & Mindset - Garrett J. White Built a $20M Life… Then Asked Himself, “For What?”

Episode Date: September 28, 2026

In this deeply vulnerable episode of The Determined Society, Shawn French sits down with Garrett White for a conversation about identity, success, marriage, fatherhood, faith, surrender, ego, and what happens when the life you built no longer fits the person you're becoming.By the time Garrett White was 30, he had built a fortune in mortgages and real estate, competed in Ironman races and ultramarathons, and created a life that looked like success from the outside.Then it all came crashing down.In 2008, his money, businesses, marriage, and identity were underwater at the same time. Instead of asking how to become more comfortable, Garrett began asking a much harder question:How do I become the strongest possible human being in every area of my life?That question eventually led to the creation of Wake Up Warrior, a system that has trained tens of thousands of men.But years later, Garrett found himself confronting an uncomfortable truth: he had spent years teaching men how to “have it all,” while realizing that having it all did not necessarily mean being free.Together, they explore: • Losing his identity after sports and searching for a new purpose • The 2008 collapse that changed everything • How money, success, and achievement became Garrett’s identity • The “never enough” mindset and the illusion that more will finally bring fulfillment • Moving from motivation to discipline, process, and doing the simple work every day • How marriage and communication forced Garrett to confront the man he had become • Building a life of prosperity that somehow still felt like a prison • The difference between having it all and actually being free • Why Garrett began pursuing peace instead of constantly fighting for more • Surrendering control and dismantling the identity of “Garrett White” piece by piece • Contraction vs. collapse, and recognizing the warnings before everything falls apart • Faith, God, surrender, and discovering what was underneath the pursuit of success • Why Wake Up Warrior may have been built to wake Garrett up • Letting go of an old identity to create something new • Garrett’s powerful definition of determination: “Nothing and everything.” This episode is about what happens when success stops being enough. It’s about the courage to question the identity you've spent years building, the willingness to surrender what no longer serves you, and the determination to keep moving when you don't even know what the destination looks like.Watch the full episode now on The Determined Society.Connect with Shawn Frenchhttps://pillar.io/theshawnfrench Subscribe to our newsletter for all updates and heavy doses of DETERMINATION:https://thedeterminedsociety.com Subscribe on Apple/Spotify:Apple- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/determined-society-with-shawn-french-adversity-mindset/id1555922064 Spotify- https://open.spotify.com/show/5kS9tkLGQLcVyRgB3mDznw?si=184c18d1b9d44f53Connect with Garrett J. White Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/garrettjwhite/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@garrett.j.white LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrett-j-white-0b8768313/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/GarrettJWhite Website: https://wakeupwarrior.com/ The Determined Society is hosted by Shawn French — a show for people who refuse to quit. Every episode goes beyond the highlight reel to explore the real stories behind resilience, reinvention, and the relentless pursuit of a life built on your own terms.Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all others.. If this episode moved you, share it with someone who needs to hear it — and leave a review. It helps more than you know. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

There was no more money that could fill this hole. But the biggest lie was to myself. And that was that I was happy. And I wasn't. What does freedom look like to you? Because my freedom is not about having anything. Freedom is a way of being. I know what it means to have it all and not be free.

Never once had I considered in all these times and all these events that I should ever experience peace. Everybody wants to run from the pain. But they don't realize that the pain is where you, grow into the person that can do the impossible shit that you couldn't do 10 years ago. But the idea of waking up the beginning of 2026 with the idea that I want peace. There's a big peace in my mind that's like you pussy. What do you mean you want peace?

We don't do peace. You've trained so many men to have it all. Meanwhile, you're fucking crumbling. Like how does a warlord who's been at war his whole life how do I, how do I let go? How do I do it without destroying everything? The pressure of life, the pressure is so intense. And in this place, you can choose to go to collapse,

or you can do the hardest one, but you choose to contract. By the time he was 30, Garrett White had built a fortune in mortgages and real estate. He was running Iron Man's and 100-mile races on the side. And in 2008, took it all. The money, the businesses, his marriage, all underwater at one time. Most people, when they hit that rock bottom, ask how they can be more comfortable. He asked a different question. He asked, how can he be the strongest possible human being in every area in his life?

And that answer led him to a system that is trained over 70,000 men. He is a founder of Wake Up Warrior and creator of Warrior Week. I have with me today, Garrett White. Welcome to the Determined Society, brother. Welcome, welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. Thank you for putting this together. And I have to agree with everybody that comes on this show with the fact that you nailed the intro. You heard that. I heard it. Watch it. Yeah. Yeah. Nailed the intro. You know, it's one of the things that I always really take pride in, but always kind of mess up at times because it's so important.

You want to give the guests their flowers and everything, man. Especially you. You know, I've been following. following you ever since I started this journey about six years ago. And it's just been such a blessing to see your stuff come up on the feed. And, you know, really showing me what a man is really supposed to be like and how they're supposed to operate in their lives. It's an interesting question. What is a man? It's loaded, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah. I know what I started down the path. I was like talking about during my collapse in 08, which I think back to it now. I'm like, dude, it was so long ago. There's still guys living off that story. So many dudes that only made money doing mortgages. You're like, everybody made money doing mortgages, dude.

We were retards. We were just aggressive dudes that could sell. Yep. That's it. And you got exposed real quick that you weren't an entrepreneur, which I wasn't. I called myself an entrepreneur. I had a lot of people around me, but I don't know anything about running a company. I knew how to sell.

That's it. And we were an industry where if you could sell and you could talk and you were aggressive and you could hustle, you could make money. And the minute the game shifted, we found out who the real entrepreneurs were. and we found out the ones that weren't. And all the hired hitmen like me, gone, gone. You know, it's funny. Because I've heard Sergio, which is one of your guys,

say, if you're a real estate agent, a mortgage broker, you are not a business owner. You are not an entrepreneur. It is not your product. You're selling something of someone else's. And it resonated with me, man. And to your point, 2007 and 2008, we did a lot of people like me out

that were just doing it because it was the way to make money. I found out really damn quickly. I wasn't cut out for that shit, man. Yeah. Just wasn't due. But let's go back. Yep.

Let's go back to childhood. By the time you were in middle school, you had moved six times. Yeah. Right? So how does a young man that's always the new kid first realize that he can be

anybody he wanted to be and then go be that person? I just built a character. I found out right now with sports. I was the only thing got attention. with quickly from the first crack of a bat in the league remember right when it happened my mom somehow back in the day took the photo of my first in the park home run back in the day like captured this shot i have this picture with me in the little red uniform and a bat orange louisle's little slugger bat

metal one she somehow caught the hit with the ball only two feet off the bat that moment though started a whole trend of building characters i'm not even saying it's healthy i'm saying we all do it and I built a character, which was I could fit in immediately in sports. If you were the most aggressive, violent, and you played football, no matter where I went, I immediately had friends, I immediately had enemies, I immediately had attention to girls, and so sports became my drug. It's only a matter to me. Play, play, play, play, play.

Too white, too slow. Played at Boise State. Played in the arena leagues. Just never got there. But that was a vision. Everything for me became character. The only way I could survive the movement, the place, the trailer homes, everything I was in was just sports. That's it.

I grew up with Stockton, you play football, you play. That's it. You had a pathway. Immediate friends, no matter where you went. They weren't real friends. But you got attention, and tension became my drug. Wait a second, back up. Where did you grow up?

Stockton. California. I grew up when Concord. Now what? I swear, this is freaking wild, dude. We're from the same area. So what high school did you go do? I ended up moving to Washington high school.

So I was a Pacific junior high and then, or Lincoln Junior High School, of Rad Cross Street from Lincoln High School. I would have gone to Lincoln. We moved to Central Washington from my high school. Dude, that's freaking insane, dude. Stockton. Wow. Wow. You mentioned character. And I can relate to that because I was Sean French, the baseball player. I played baseball at LSU. That was my identity. Yeah. What was it like for you when all of a sudden, the one thing you were billed for in sports, like football was taken from you? What did that identity shift look like? That was easy. I was sitting at a championship game arena football. You know, it was on the sideline. I'm looking around at 10,000 people screaming.

I'm playing ball. I'm not good enough to go to the league. Too slow. And I had a moment. I was like, I'm done. Like I said, like, I'm done. I'm sitting at halftime. I'm looking around.

I'm like, I'm done. This is not, there's nothing here for me anymore. But then you're lost. But it's the same thing I went through in the first round of my companies and mortgages. You lose. All I knew how to do was make money selling mortgages. I wasn't, I was a pitch man.

I was a wholesaler. Now, I played entrepreneur, a red rich shot port. I just like everybody else. And they inspired me to go pursue. money. So my addiction of sports, my identity and sports became an identity and money. Okay, well, if I can't make it this way, then I'll just do money. And money became a god.

Just like sports have been a god. Like, who am I in this transition? Everybody shit that. And this is happening right now. AI is destroying the game the way that most entrepreneurs experience it and all wholesalers and real estate, etc. We're watching this thing is decimating entire industries, vertical, shifting the way that we look at life. I believe God sent this. My experience is not here on accident.

We've gotten off course as human beings. We have no idea what the hell we're doing. We've become addicted to consumption. We've become addicted to dealing with this game of illusions every single day. It happens in marriage. It happens in business. It happens in life. We've built these characters and the universe is shaking this shit.

I say, hey, are you going to wake up to the truth of what you're here for? Or you're just going to be man horrors. You're going to be money horrors. You're going to be a duff. addicted to all these things that in the end never, ever satisfy. You can't get enough of them. It's interesting because, I mean, we can talk about AI and what it's doing to our world all day long. And it is actually scary.

It is actually scary what it's doing. But before we get into all that, I want to go back to that moment. You said you were lost. You knew you were done. Well, that moment for me was 2003 in Rightfield Corner, College World Series. we got beat twice We two in barbecue We were going home

And everybody was crying So was I They were crying because the season Was over when we Get to play with each other Ever again I was Decimated because

I didn't know who the fuck I was anymore Yeah How did you find yourself I didn't man I remember sitting in the back of the bus And boys were partying Going to strip club after the game I'm reading Richard poured out

In the back seat Sitting on the bus You're reading his book in the back everybody's hammered bringing girls back i was interested in any of it i was like i got to find something else but i had a moment reading richette border like so many entrepreneurs that's how i ended up in real estate too not because i knew anything about real estate or even cared about it just that's what robert kiosaki talked about yeah sorry i'm reading this book i'm so grateful that he had marketing skills and he had sales skills and he had author skills and he was willing to publish

a book because the book itself completely transformed me i didn't read anything in college maybe read i didn't read anything i already shit dude five books and I graduated from college total. I didn't give a shit. And there I'm reading this book and a new world opened up to me. Like a possibility. I was like,

you could be rich and not be an athlete. Like, how do you do this? I didn't have any entrepreneurs in my family. There was nobody that had any money in my family. There was no one knew anything. In any direction, I knew anybody that did it.

Only people I knew were guys who made it in sports. And even then I didn't really know. And so there was a moment of shift. And this pivot that happens inside of all of us, there's a moment where your consciousness wakes up to a reality inside of you that was not fundamentally available to you before. And you see something about what's possible in you.

And we use the outside things around us to pull us forward. For us, for you, me, sports was one of those hooks. It allowed us to see a piece of us. That's why anybody hasn't played team sports at a high level doesn't get it. No. It's a different game, man. It's a different.

It's a different game. You can go to high school. You can go high school and play. You can even play at a smaller school in college. and you won't have the experience of a bigger or even a mid-major collegiate program. Yeah. It's a different vibe, man. Yeah.

And everything is lost when that is over. But I want to go dig into that moment when you shifted when you read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Because I think there's a huge epidemic that goes on. Everybody reads something. Everybody gets this motivation and they fucking hate that word. Yeah. Right? I used to rely on it.

I used to rely on the YouTube video to get me pumped up to go sell payroll. and HR. I needed it. But then I realized, man, I need to lay on discipline. I need to lay on a process and activity and do that every fucking day.

And not worry about what the scoreboard says, right? Because the middle is the gift. Yeah. But when you shifted, were there any thoughts in your mind? Because there's someone listening right now that's going,

you know, I have this idea and I want to do this. But I'm afraid I don't have what I need. I don't have X. I don't have Y. I don't have Z. and they sit there and they wait and they sit there miserable.

What would you tell them? Well, here's a challenge. Like, no matter what the idea is you get, you want to pivot something in your marriage, you want to pivot something in money, you want to pivot something with your body. I got a pivot because you're on a trajectory,

you're going a certain direction, you have momentum going that direction, that momentum is encouraging everything around you, the people that you run with, the situations you're in, the home you live, live in is encouraging it to stay on that path. Like you are going to stay on this default path, even if it's leading you to hell, even if it's leading you to a place that does not work.

And there's a moment where the pivot opens up and there's this idea that you could be something else. But it is impossible. This destination you see, that's why we live in a world on cell phones, you can see everything around you comparing to yourself. No matter who you are, there is someone more Jack. There is somebody with more money. There's somebody with a hotter wife with better tits.

there's something going on perpetually telling you you're not enough. And so there's this thing that opens up and we see this impossibility out in front of us that we couldn't see from where we were before. But then seeing that place is this massive gap. I call it impossible game because it is fundamentally impossible. Who you are right now running this show. Impossible 10 years ago. Oh, dude.

Impossible six years ago. Yet here you are because you made decision after decision after decision to pursue what was impossible. by doing the simple possible shit required every single day to get there. But this is hard because people don't want to work. They don't want to hurt. They don't want to suffer to make the decision. So it's a lot easier to make love to the idea. Make love to the idea.

Yeah. Jeez. You know, because when you do something, there's a lot of pain involved. I don't give a shit what it is. If you're transforming your body, it hurts. Physically, you wake up in the morning, you're in pain. Intralift, you're in pain because you're weak, right? And there's financial pain too.

There's so much pain involved. And everybody wants to run from the pain. But they don't realize that the pain is where you grow into the person that can do the impossible shit that you couldn't do 10 years ago. Yep. Did you have any moments like that that you had to sit with yourself and go, you know what? I've got to be honest with me. This is where I'm struggling and this is what I need to do. I'm having those moments right now.

I have those moments every day. I wake up every morning in a fucking shithole My brain wants to quit, cancel Run away from my wife, run away from my family Be done with the fucking pressure This doesn't ever end And when I came to terms of fact I'm going to wake up in a shithole every fucking morning

Then I got a decision to make Hope for the moment Hope that a Celsius will pump me up Hope that I could watch the YouTube video To get me inspired Or I can go into the darkness of my my own soul and have a conversation with God, get myself realigned and make a new decision today. Tomorrow, it'll be shitty again. But today I have a choice. I can access the depth of my

darkness and my light and point myself in a direction of production that God has given me the power to do to activate the kingdom in me or I can sit around and make love to ideas. I'm going to hurt either way. You want to turn your marriage? It's going to hurt. You've been in a pattern with your wife for 20 years, and you want to ship this marriage, divorce is not going to be easier. The number of guys I know get divorced and now we're in a shithole of a chaos in dating now. It's not better.

Yeah, they got their bender for six to nine months. They slept with 14 women here in Miami. Got a whole bunch of hot Latinas that were using them for their money. And then they're right back in the same place. Like, it's a devastating reality to recognize the fact that you will never be happier until you find yourself and find God in you.

There's nothing to keep. satisfied. This was the most horrific outcome I could have ever arrived to. And I arrived there about a year ago. Tell me about that. There was no more money that could fill this hole. There wasn't another car, another stage,

another arena vent I could put on, not another client I could bring in, not another room of guys I could put in the room, not another orgasm with my wife. There was fucking nothing. Nothing. And when it gets to this place, you hit this numb place where you're watching the baguades and the

Ferrari's Ambig, you're like, what the fuck is all this? Who gives a fuck? We become a society and I was sucked into it too, driven by a $20 million house, $500,000 cars. For what? For what? Because I've seen on the other side of that, not just in my life,

in thousands of other men's lives, we live in this fucking illusion. But it's so tempting. It's so tempting because we think it would just get one more hit. If this is the one, when I get this hit, then I'll feel this way. If this, then what, right? If this happens, then I will feel this way.

For you, I think it comes from a lot of different places for a lot of people. Where did that come from from you? Dude, who knows? I don't know. The exact moment, who knows? I was raised in a family. My mother was driven by scarcity, driven by fear. She came from a horrible situation as a child.

She did her best. My dad was weak and soft, unavailable, never around. I didn't have a father raised me. My mother did the best she could to raise me as a woman trying to teach her son how to be a man. I was the oldest. So she taught me work, but I was also taught scarcity and fear and doubt and worry and obligation and guilt and shame. So I lived in this paradox. No matter what I did, it was never enough.

No matter how big it was, it was never enough. how much he applause, it was never enough. No matter how much I created, it was never enough. I had a never enough fucking button written in the code of my DNA from a mother who never felt enough either because of the way she was raised.

And her mother, my grandmother, passed away. She was a bitter woman. She didn't know enough. Went through seven different husbands who all died. She lived through seven husbands. Seven husbands. I'm like, what the fuck? So this ends up on my plate.

The one side, you can do anything that you want if you're willing to work hard enough, so anything that was hard became holy to me. If it wasn't hard, why the fuck are we doing this? The only way I could measure that it was worthy of my cause was if it was heavy and it was hard. So I spent 25 years as an entrepreneur up until last year, a year ago, June 2025, living in this narrative that if it's heavy and it's hard, it must be holy. Damn. But easy, not holy.

If it's simple, not holy. If it's flow, not holy. So I would subconsciously sabotage everything. This is too easy. I'm going to have to fuck this up. We're not to do something different to make this hard because it can't possibly be easy. It can't possibly be simple.

It's got to be complex and heavy and hard. That way I know I'm on path. Well, God, that's the path. Only to wake up to a world of living that way for decades. and recognizing it was never true. How'd you fix it? I'm still fixing it. How are you fixing it?

That's a great question. Number one is getting the truth. That's been true for me for the last 15 years. That was a magic pill I found. But unless I could get honest, there was no hope. What's the most honest you've had to give with yourself? Like there was a lie you were telling yourself. Everything.

I fucking lied about everything. There was words I said to the world and then there were the lies I told to myself. Do you have an example? Yeah. I'm fucking everything I told myself I was was a lie. Like when you wake up to a world where you realize that you've been lying to the whole fucking world, you're most of your life, that you've been too scared to actually speak about what you want.

You can't confront it in marriage. I couldn't confront it in business. I couldn't come. I never felt enough. So everything had to be more. I give you example. I did ultra running for three years. I go on a training run for 34 miles one morning. I come to breakfast with everybody.

I just ran 34 miles in the morning. Exactly 34 miles. They said, how long did you run? I said 36 miles. Oh, embellishing. But it didn't matter. None of these people at the table could comprehend running 34 miles. They're all glider people that sit on the fucking glider at the gym.

Running 32, 34 is outside their comprehension. But it didn't matter because no matter what I did, it was not enough. So if it was 34 miles, I had to lie and say it was 36. If I made $2 million, I had to say $2.5. It didn't matter. If I had sex twice a week, I had to say three times a week. I became a perpetual liar about everything to everyone. But the biggest lie was to myself.

And that was that I was happy. And I wasn't. This is what every man needs to hear. Because I'm listening to you. And I'm like, how are we the exact same person? How in the fuck is that even possible? You know, I mean, in theory, right? Nothing was ever good enough for me.

And to this point, it's still not. It is still not. I can look at the analytics. I can look at who's been on the show. And I'm like, still got to go more. Still got to go more. And at what point is God going to bless me with that if I can't be grateful to where he delivered me at to right now?

I mean, if I look at things a year ago, if I look at things six months ago, three years of improvement in six months, that's pretty badass. But yet, I'm empty because I haven't had made peace with myself for my past failures. And so there's men out there that are just stuck, that are nothing is too good enough. And the thing that's dangerous about that, Garrett, is when their wife does something for them. and they don't appreciate it because it's just not good enough. How dangerous is that? To what Marrows are Barry.

Sex was a problem for my wife and I for a long time. I've been with my life for 25 years. What was the problem with sex? She said? Sex. It was just the way we were raised in Mormonism and we had a bunch of fucked up beliefs about how sex is. She did too as a young woman.

I met her when she was 18. She got married to me at 20. That five children, granddaughter. Like, we've lived the game. Up and now and for a long time. And it was a struggle for us. and i'm gonna get into a point where in 2016 i've told her i said listen either we course correct this situation with us or i'm done like i can't play this game anymore i'm not an unattractive man

i'm showing up the best i know how like this shit's got to be fixed in you or me i don't know now to her credit i was a reactive asshole like a high level level 10 out of 10 reactive asshole so it wasn't ever safe for her to share shit with me anyways because i would just reframe and make her wrong for what she was sharing so i's been a whole bunch of time in the first 15 years we were married creating conditions for her not to feel safe to share anything with me because if she did i would go nuclear what that's a hard proposition hey let me fuck this guy who's a total asshole to me all the time i didn't try to be it's just what i was came to find that was a problem for a lot of guys too we'd run the same intensity we'd get

valued for in the marketplace the same intensity as wholesale salesman or pitchman or entrepreneur the aggressive energy and attitude bring that to the bedroom bring out to the bedroom bring out home it doesn't work. So I put it on the line there. So she made it a session. We're they going to fix this or we're not. Either way, I'm too, I'm done. I'm not going to keep playing this game with you.

But you were a beautiful woman. Obviously, I'm the wrong formula. There's a guy out there that will crack this code with you and I want you to be happy. I want to be happy. I can't keep doing this shit. She made a decision. I made a decision. Okay, we're going to do this.

She improved. Then she went to stripper mode with me. She became incredible in a bedroom. She went beyond her own to comfort. She became a fitness bikini competitor. She found comfort in her own body. And we had the sexual expose that happened, like beyond anything I could imagine.

My own porn star stripper in my bedroom to the point she was wanting to put a strip pole a stripper pole in her master bedroom in her house. I was ecstatic, but it still wasn't enough. Because then I was saying, well, you don't, you don't use your words to validate me enough. And this is when she said. She's like, I'm done.

Yeah. Like, I'm done playing this performance with you. She didn't call performance, but that's what it was. And I didn't call performance, but that's what it was. I'd built an entire world based on performance. It was like a huge transaction. You do this, Sean, and then I'll do this. But Sean, if you don't do that and I do this, fuck you, Sean.

It's a constant quid pro quo, always. It's dangerous, man. My whole life was that way. Everything. My marriage was a transaction. My kids were a transaction. my teams were a transaction my clients were a transaction

God was a transaction everything was a transaction you said something that really resonated with me about being a reactive asshole you know a lot of times to this day and I've gotten a lot better but I'm saying here we go

still not good enough my wife comes to me with a concern right low level stuff we don't have a ton of problems. We just miscommunicate. I get defensive. I react. I don't listen. And it's so hard because now she doesn't feel safe, you know, in those moments to where now she buries shit.

I'm not saying she's actively burying shit. I'm just saying for the audience, listen and watch, and like, that's what men create in their wives. And women can do that to men too. what was the moment and how was it for you when you decided, okay, I am that reactive asshole how did you make steps to fix that? Because I'm still trying to fix it, bro. Yeah.

So she came to me in the, in 2020, we had everything. I thought. I remember her putting her in my chest for standing down this. I mean, this is gorgeous. It's beautiful. We have like all the shit.

And she puts her hand or her chest She says, I can't feel you. Oh, shit. And I don't give a shit about any of this. My soul is dying. And if you don't figure your shit out, I'm too good of a woman to cheat on you. But my mind is already fantasizing about being with somebody else.

How did that feel as a man? Fucking horrible. I was spiraling for three months. Scared, right? Terrified. Look around this world I built, and I said, I've built all of this, but I did it for you, I thought. And yet, I built you a prison in prosperity.

And it started getting better, but I still wasn't getting it. So we sell all our shit in Southern California. My wife says, we need to move. We need to change. We need to do something different. It's like, I agree. sell our salons We sell our homes

Sell everything We moved to Miami 2024 And I get here And I get sucked Into the fucking vortex again The line up with the Cardones Don't have anything against Grant

He's amazing Nothing against Elena She's amazing Nothing against 10X But you know what to do To a guy who has a cocaine habit You got two choices You either stop the cocaine

Or take him to overdose Okay you don't want to stop Then we'll take you to overdose To where you almost die me hooking up with 10x was like giving a cocaine addict more cocaine I was already performance driven then you would bed me at the core of 10x which is the epitome of never enough

oh absolutely because no matter what the number is it should be 10x bigger you did 10 million pussy 10x you did this pussy 10x don't be a bitch 10x my fucking performance mode thrived on this shit I was like I have come to cocaine heaven holy shit let's 10x this shit so i did and for six months i got sucked into the miami vortex

fucking people come to my house every other day for podcasts i'm on this y'all i'm doing this we're working these deals i'm doing all of this and by june i'd been here nine months i'm sitting in mexico with my wife and i'm saying what the fuck am i doing she's like we came here to like slow down and we got here and you are going more intense than you've gone ever literally like a cocaine addict who said i'm done only to find a few friends who have eight balls for me every tuesday and every wednesday and every thursday and every friday and every saturday i'm just getting high as fucking balls and then coming on like i got trapped man i got trapped and by june last year like i just got to this place i was like i can't i can't keep i can't keep doing

this. What was your first move at that point? Sit. Say that again for the audience. Sit. I sat. We were Mexico. My wife goes with the kids. She's like, what are you doing? I was like, I'm just going to sit here. Like, what do you mean? I was like, I just need some time. Can you take the kids? Just let me sit. What was going to your mind and your soul when you were sitting? Fucking hell, Tornewall. What are the things you were saying to yourself, though? What the fuck are you doing? I was all over the blazing side. That's rooted in so much shame.

Tons. I understand like I have been leading 91,000 men in the last 14 years to one outcome. Have it all. That was a message. Have it all. Body, weaponized. Being connected, certain. Balance, marriage, communication, sex, intimacy, children, leadership.

business scale of the thousands of men to this place only to arrive at a place where we were not free you know one thing is resonating me resonating with me at all this and it's not a judgment it's actually comforting to me

you've trained so many men to have it all meanwhile you're fucking crumbling yeah how do you carry that Well, I had it all. The thing that I missed that never once registered in 15 years run away aboard

was freedom. What does freedom look like to you? Oh, freedom is not a looking. Freedom is a feeling. Because my freedom is not about having anything. Freedom is a way of being. For the last 14 months, this has been my pursuit. What does it mean to be free?

I know what it means to have it all and not be free. Never once had I considered in all these times and all these events that I should ever experience peace. It says warrior on a fucking chest for 15 years. My whole world has been war. I thrive on it. I thrive on conflict. Confusion, chaos, battling, dominating.

This has been my world. So the idea of waking up the beginning of 2020, with the idea that I want peace. There's a big peace in my mind that's like you pussy. There it is. What do you mean you want peace? We don't do peace. We do the hard shit.

Joy? What's that? The fuck is your happiness? That's for people in meditation retreat centers and pussies that run psychedelic camps. Let them be in peace and their ketamine and their ayahuasca. Let me go back. Let me go build some shit.

Let me go to war. Let me battle. But dude, I turn 50. I have a grandchild. Call it age. Call it wisdom. Call it retarded. Behavior.

Call it whatever. I got to a place where for the first time, I want peace. I want joy. I want to feel something different. Have you found peace? Have you found joy? deal something different starting to find it. But the challenge within it is we live in a world that completely compels all of us to more.

You know, your programs. Teach men that they should never have to sacrifice their body for business and their marriage for ambition. Yeah. All four. What is the one that you're so afraid of? won't stick for you. Surrender to Christ. You're afraid that won't stick.

It hasn't stuck. I have interviewed hundreds of guys in the last seven months, pastors, men who say they walk with Christ. I say, what does it mean to surrender to Christ? And they will tell me something that sounds neat. I said, now how do you know? How do you know you're surrendered to Christ? What evidence would you have that you are surrendered to Christ besides saying it?

I've sat with pastor run very large churches and asked the same question. It sounds great from a pulpit and from a sermon on stage on Sunday. But what does surrender actually mean? What does surrender to God actually feel like? And my experience is that for a man like myself, that has built a monument unto himself, that the only way for this surrender to occur is for the collapse of the monument that I built,

to collapse the prison I've created for myself. And so I've been dissecting the monument I built onto Gary J. White. And how are you doing that? Peace by piece. Dismantling the companies, dismantling the way I operate, selling shit,

getting rid of things, cutting away. The only way you can see something is to get clear and the only way to get clear is to get rid of the chaos around you. So over the last 14 months, I've just been shooting shit.

Gone. Gone. Until I could get to a place where I could actually start to see. It's too hard to see. Man and Arena tours. Yep. Big conferences.

So I just stopped doing it. When you're, snipering off pieces of you. Yeah. The man in the arena. Because, you know, it's funny because I didn't realize you had stopped. I just thought you were on a break because I was used to seeing it. Now it's making sense.

I stopped this year. It's beautiful. I just unplugged. Fucking beautiful. When you shoot each specific thing, do you feel like a part of you was dying? Yes. How does that feel? Horrible.

It feels horrible. There's nothing good about it. doesn't feel good at all. Is there panic? Yes. Anxiety. Yes. But you have to trust and surrender to.

This is the process I'm in. I've not arrived there. Dude, I love this so much, man. Fuck, dude. I might arrive there. Maybe I'll never arrive there. I don't know. But that's okay.

Yeah. Because you're consciously making that move. You're in the middle of it. In the middle of it. In the middle of it. And the destination doesn't freaking matter. I don't even know where the destination is. I truly don't even know where the hell I'm going. What I do know is that what I have done, and this is the fuck all of the brain, because there's a piece of me that feels like a horrific fucking liar.

A man who built a movement based on truth looks back at the 15 years of leadership and goes, was I fucking lying the whole time? And I didn't even know it? Did I leave? 91,000 men to a cliff, to our own fucking deaths? And then my mind goes crazy, you fucking piece of shit. What the fuck is wrong with you? Beats me up in my brain, and then the guilt and the shame come baptizing in like I'm a fucking wretched piece of shit.

And then this other piece starts to speak. Sit, breathe. And then more considerations come in. I did the very best I could with what I knew at the time. And this is what I've been committed to from the beginning. Whatever I know right now, Sean, I'm going to do that. Two years from now, it might be very different than what I know right now. And then I'm going to do that.

But that's hard because people identify you as this. And then they see you doing this and they go, what is this? And you're like, yeah, that was me and this is me also. But that was me then. Yeah, but why were you doing this over here? But you're now doing this. I said, because I couldn't see shit over there. I could only see level three.

Now I can see level five. so at level five level three shit doesn't make sense anymore so i'm gonna do level five yeah but that's weird dude i knew you was level three you're like yeah but i'm not level three i mean i was level three because that's where i was and that was the best i had a level three but now i'm level five and your wife's confused and your kids are confused and your teams are confused and your clients are confused and everybody's confused and now i'm confused that's a lot of weight to carry man oh shit fuck man it's like all these people are confused because I'm supposed to be this for that

motherfucker. Yeah. Well, I am. Right. They're at level one, trying to get to level two. I've done level two, level three, level four, level five. So they're stuck at one, trying to get to two. I'm like, yeah, I know the path of two. I can get you to two. And I get you to three and a four and a five. And by the time you get to five, I'll be at eight. And what I thought was true of five

will be different at eight. How many levels are there? I have no idea. You don't know, man. Infinite level. You just keep counting, right? No. Who even knows these numbers? I'm making up right now. They're just bullshit. They're just examples. But this is the thing that I love about this conversation. It's because it's real. Yeah. Because there's too many people out there

that won't admit what you're admitting right now because they're afraid of the collapse. But to your point, the collapse has to happen and you have to be free. You have to have peace. You don't have to have it. Most of them won't. Most men won't.

Most men will never experience peace and happiness. Never. most men are so committed to just trying to get their penis in the vagina of their wife and make sure they got enough money in a couple trophies and because that's so difficult to keep that going wife gets older my wife's 43 she's very different than she was even at 40 bodies changing she has different attitudes and energy around sex we got the toddlers and the teenagers and like we got all the things going on at once it's a lot like what most of us will never experience even the

opportunity for this because it is too tempting and too difficult to just try to stay in abundance in the core things in life. How do I not fall apart physically? 50. How do I not fall apart? Okay. How do I make sure I keep making money? How do I make enough money? Now shit, hey, I see it. Now it's changing the game. Now I'm going to figure out to go this direction. Now I'm going to make more money. Okay, shit, now we're losing money. Okay, great. Now I'm losing my body. Shit, I'm going back to the gym. Wait a second. My wife says I'm not paying attention to me. Okay, let me take my wife out. All right, I'm going to my wife. Shit, now the business is going again.

Dude, it's a circus. Dude, that right there, because I was thinking before the show, what is the first thing for you that falls when shit gets real? First thing that falls for me when shit gets real. I think it just depends on what area it gets real. I mean, for me, I'm at a place now where, like, I just don't let any area slide. I like that. Like, everything is, like, a giant failings for me.

Like, every day, I've been living this way for 15 years. Like it's just my body gets trained every day. My meditation, I use a tool called stacking that we created, the thousands of many is every single morning. It's a mental God-connecting tool. We built it into a software tool called One Pivot. All of this is about helping myself and other men figure this game out. The only thing, that challenge, though, that we came to is not how do I keep my body moving?

How do we keep my being and my connection to God and my certainty moving? How do we keep my marriage moving and balance with my kids? How do I keep my money moving? Once you figure that out, the opportunity. to pursue freedom becomes available. You can't pursue freedom in scarcity. No. No. And most of us are in and out of scarcity every other day.

Well, I mean, to your point, I mean, you grew up in scarcity. Tunt. So did I. It was always yes, but I can't because. And so I fight this battle all the time, Garrett, of, yes, I fucking can, but what if I can't? And when that what if I can't comes, I go here like you, warrior, I fight. And that I pull myself to two extremes and I break, right? That's when I'm impatient.

That's when I get frustrated with my wife for asking a simple fucking question. At what point is it okay for me or any man to get frustrated at the wife because she asks the same question four times? You're always going to be frustrated by asking four times. The only thing is what are you going to do about the frustration? Yeah. How do you react to it? Now I laugh at her.

Now I laugh at her. I think she's funny. This morning she was pissed off because I was snoring. She thinks I should get a sleep apnea machine. I was like, I sleep just fine. She's like, you need a sleep apnea machine to help me with your sleep. I was like, I don't have a problem with sleeping. And she's like, yeah, but I have a problem to sleep with you in Nevada.

I's like, well, I'll sleep in the other room then. You're only sleeping there? She's like, why don't you just get the sleep apnea machine? I was like, I'm not doing a sleep apnea machine. But then I'm asking myself, do I really care about a sleep apnea machine? I'm like, no, I got a story about a sleep apnea machine. Do I actually need a sleep apnea machine? I don't know.

So I texted my doctor's one. I said, do I need a sleep apnea machine? We'll find out what he says. There's things my wife says all the time. My wife, if you look at my narrative of my wife, I was like, my wife is a beautiful Barbie doll who's a critical bitch. This is my story forever.

Her words were fierce. She's very direct. She's everything about black and white. Everything is like, doon, I can look perfect. And she'll see a little zit right here above my eyebrow. From across the room, she can only see it. That's why she's good in beauty and fashion because she just has the eye for things.

the only thing it changed with me and her was me. You know, I'm laughing because in my wife listens to this show and baby, I'm edifying you, not criticizing you. Same. Yeah. Same. Almost a point I think that's their mission here.

It's their job. Yeah. To show us that we can always be better with the family and for them. For sure. them, the thing that always makes me feel, or I choose to feel, really pissed off that, is like, I do feel, again, it plays on that program for my childhood, no matter what I do, just not fucking good enough.

Yeah. Like, how do I get this to a point where my children don't misread my energy? How do I get to a point where my wife doesn't misread my frustrations level? I think it's okay to be frustrated. Yeah. is it a death sentence? Why can't I be frustrated? But I just think that, man, like, when you're saying that, you know, you're talking about pimple. But it could be maybe you folded a towel incorrectly, or maybe your reaction to one of the children wasn't as favorable as it needed to be.

Yeah. It's like, fuck. Yeah. What do I need to do? I'm trying here. Yeah. What does the new Garrett do to move through those moments because I know I want to know. And I know millions of men want to know too. Agree. This is one thing I did. Examples, morning sleep happening machine. You should get a sleep happening machine. I was like, you're right.

You probably should get a sleep happening machine. No, no. Seriously, you probably should. I was like, I don't need a sleep happening machine. Yeah, but sure you get one. I agree. I probably should. Hey, Vib, why are you late?

I'm not sure. Had to handle some stuff at the office. okay i agree with you babe that's not how you should handle that or my wife's favor statement that's not how i would do it which makes my mind always going to it woman you have a vagina have a penis

of course you would not handle it the way I handled this of course you will never there's not one time in history or in the future you will ever handle a situation way I do ever that's not the point that's what my mind wants to say and that's what I spent all this time trying to be right I was committed to being right

so we'd get into conversation she would say shit and my mode was like, be right. I'm going to be right and you're going to be wrong. And then you're probably going to have sex with me. No. You're going to not want to have sex with me. So then the first and I started shift and going, wait a second. What if I just didn't care?

Not from the sense of I don't care about you. What if I just didn't care about anything you were saying? And I just started listening for what I feel when you're saying. So now she just says things and I'll be like, yeah. Okay. I agree. Where's she from? She's from Utah.

She grew up in a holiday, Utah. Okay. Yeah. I'm always from Kito, Ecuador. Okay. And I, uh, and, and she taught herself to speak English, you know, when she came to the States for college, she went to Florida State. And, um, the one thing she always said to me is, I typically do it this way. And I need to do better of being like, thank you.

Yeah, you're like, no, you just lean in. It's like, judo. just lean it and so it's more than to like agree it's like you're right see for me when i hear that fuck when i hear that though yeah and and me and this individual my father we have reconciled but it reminds me of me perceiving that i'm not good enough for him yeah and i know how hurtful that was for me all these years and so it just brings up it just rips the scabble off and I start fucking bleeding again. Yeah.

And that's why I don't have the most favorable responses. It's usually a reaction based on ego and wanting to win and wanting to be right. But if I win and I'm right, then she's wrong and she loses, but I win. And now she feels like shit and she ain't going to want to touch me at all. Of course not.

I mean, we're not having any we're not having naked run around the bedroom fun if I have to be right. If there is, it's all forced and compulsion, which means now it's obligatory. Yeah. So there's a piece like across the board of life, though, that has shifted for me in a radical way in the last 18 months, where I've just realized how much in war mode I have to be right about everything. My way, my plan, my idea.

And what's inserted into that is God's plan has started to insert into my world in a new way. And it's interesting because as it starts to come deeper into my world, I stop having an opinion about a lot of people in their lives. I'm like, okay. Do you know why? Because nobody really gives a fuck about you, Jean. and nobody cares about me. Not really. You and I both died.

This studio blows up. We're gone. Guess what? We're a faint memory. Your show irrelevant. Wake up where you're moving irrelevant. How do your kids? I have a 7, 10, and a 13.

You know, Grace shit about your 7-year-old? I got a 4 and a 7-year-old, 15, 19, and 27. My 4- and 7-year-old, if I died today, would hardly have any memories of me. And your 7-year-old would hardly have any memories. I think about that all the time, No, literally our way to go on be with another dude and our youngest children. My four-year-old will remember videos, pictures, and ideas,

not backtickles singing to her last night. Sure, I remember this shit. Like, when we get to a place we're realized, and this has been hard for me because I think I'm a big deal. I'm like, I'm a big deal. Dude, I'm the initiator, the industry of masculinity. Like, Ron Berg in New York, but look at me. I'm the standard of man.

That's been my narrative. And I got this place 18 months ago where I'm like, dude, you are not really as, you're really not as cool as you think you are. And by the way, the only person who's thinking about how cool you are is you. And most people don't give a shit about you. And by the way, all the cool impact changed the world you think you're doing. The world is a big place. Yeah, you've done some things.

Guess what? In the grand scheme of things, you haven't done anything. So can we kind of pipe this down a little bit and which I believe is all this process of surrender, realizing that God, the infinite creator of the universe and the architect of this AI that you and I have called our bodies in my mind and the fact that I can eat Taco Bell not dying somehow my body knows how to shit it out. We are nothing.

This is hard for a guy and a guy who's an LSU baseball player and a boys' state football player who run podcasts and speak on stage in Philip Arenas to be like, Sean, good news, bro, really love you. We're both worthless of shit, meaning we are not, we don't matter. In the universe of things, we don't matter. but in who we are as individuals,

in our connection to God, it mattered. To think that I have any control over this world, control of my wife, control of my teenagers, my kids are going to do what they're going to do. My four-year-old has the most intense potty mouth of all time. My seven-year-old does.

God. I wasn't what the fuck she gets at fun. her mother hey hey funny you want your funny story why are your funny story yeah so my wife's at the gym

yeah right and we dropped her off because she had a training session and me and the three kids were in the car I was like let's just wait and we'll go get dinner we'll listen to Camp Rock 3

or some bullshit which I fucking love all right then my seven year old goes hey daddy when this song is over can you play pink fucking perfect

turn right I go, what did you say? She goes the song, fucking perfect. I'm like, paralyzed. I'm like, it's perfect. And she goes, no, it's fucking, I go, can you stop? Can you stop? And it drives Jackie crazy.

It drives my wife crazy. But like, for me, I do kind of chuckle at it. Yeah. You know, I don't egg her on, but she's the one. Like, she is so much like me. Like, I feel. her reactions to things. When she escalates like that,

it frustrates me to know in. But it's like, yo dude, that's you. Yeah. Like that's you, motherfucker. She was sent here to show you

what you do to your wife. Yeah. What you have done to people ever since you've been created. Zero to 100. Like that. Yeah. That's my opportunity to heal.

Yeah. That's my opportunity to lead her. I think that's what's most important in life. I don't see all my black. I can find to actually feel peaceful. You remember, too, like, if the energy and tone we've been running with has been this intense and this hot for so long,

I've been burning people out my whole life. The challenge was I've been burning my wife out. I mean, this beautiful woman, this tiny little 5'3, 105-pound little queen, she wrote a book called God is my ghostwriter. A couple years ago, she said, I want to write my story. and people say I can't wrap my story because I'm not old enough I said fuck them you want to write

to your story read your story so we got an author support she published this book god is my ghostwriter and I hadn't read it she wouldn't let me read it until it was published and so the published edition came out and I'm laying in bed with her in our condo and I'm reading chapter one reading chapter two I'm reading a chapter every night with her out loud these are her words and her story from the first 25 years, 24 years of us being together. Times from my mortgage days. I'm working 12, 14 hours a day. I'm working six days a week. She's young. Like just all the things we went through. And I'm reading, weeping in bed with her. Night after night for 14, 15 straight nights reading this book, chapter by chapter,

because it's the first time my wife has expressed the visceral soul-level pain of what it was to be married. to me what it was to be her the story behind Wake up Warrior the journey before Warrior began the journey during Warrior

and I'm already done with this book with her and I'm like how I had no idea like in the fact that I couldn't be a container for you to even share this with me is sickening to me

because that's not what I wanted Did you feel like you failed at that point? Not now. I feel like I did the best I could and I failed based upon my standard today. At the time, I didn't know. I didn't know. I was just doing the thing I thought I was supposed to do. That's it.

And now I'm doing the best again, doing the thing I'm supposed to do right now. And that's different than what it was a year ago. And it's different than what it was two years ago. There's just a desire that's shifting in me. And it's God for sure. It's God for sure. Like I just start asking these questions. I'm like, God, what is the path to peace?

Like how does a warlord who's been at war his whole life, how do I let go? How do I do it without destroying everything? Because my experience is only two choices and I have. When God comes knocking and says it's time to pivot. One, you'll go to your knees and collapse. which was us in the mortgage crisis. I was getting whispers and warnings for a year before.

Oh, absolutely. Mentos were telling me to move, and I didn't listen to anything. Well, guess what? Last year, I started getting the same whispers and warnings I got in 2007. Only this time I listened. I said, I'm not going to collapse. You're going to watch. You're going to watch this happen.

Over the next six to 12 months, you're going to watch entrepreneurs. that you and I have looked up to for a long time collapse. Businesses are going to collapse. I'm watching dudes fall fucking apart around me every day. Big name brands and guys calling me going out. They're falling apart. The pressure over day after day after day, the pressure of social media, the pressure of life.

The pressure is so intense. And in this place, you can choose to go to collapse or you can do the hardest one, which is choose to contract. Contraction and collapse look the same because they both go off the cliff. One stops halfway down and allows you to retain life

if we pivot. Collapse requires you to your knees. And unfortunately for most of us and most of my life, the only way I could listen to God's pivot in my life was collapse. It required the loss of everything. While most men cannot pivot in their attitudes

and behaviors in marriage until their wife leaves them, has an affair, cheats on them, they get fucked. They can't make a pivot in business. It's too hard until they go bankrupt. They can't make the shifts in their body until the doctor says you're going to die. We are just bent and coded as men to go to the ground before we will turn.

That's why I'm me dudes every year. Every year, I'ma dudes every month. They'll share with them your situation. I was like, I'll tell you we're going. You're going to collapse. And it may not happen this month. But within the next 12 to 18 months, this whole thing that you have built will be gone.

This woman you're with will be gone. Your world will implode. Some of them listen. Most of them don't. And then I get the phone calls. The text message from the broken guy at the bottom of the pit. 12 months to 18 months later. Wife is gone.

Companies collapsed. Addiction running rampant. Like Garrett, I wish I'd have listened I said dude I don't need you to listen I was as sent as a warning I'm not here to save you I'm not here to save your life

I am not Jesus Christ but I have seen the patterns of man for 15 years in a very unique way and they are predictable I am predictable you are predictable we look different though we're predictable

and inside of this, God I believe is creating a new awakening. New revival. A savages from the front line. A generation of Saul's to Paul. Men that aren't scared to talk. Men that aren't afraid of money. Men they're not afraid of the topic of sex. They're not moved by strip clubs.

They're not lured. They don't buy into it as they were all of it. In that place, God's asking men to speak a new generation of men, called to speak his truth into the world in a new way, unsaid the church. Church has its role, the pastors have their roles. But even that if it had worked, we would not be where we are. And so you're seeing it happen, entrepreneurs all over the globe, being called to the front lines of a voice, a tone that God is speaking through men, speaking to you, speaking to me, you're one of those voices.

Because why this platform and the things you've built, we build all the things we have, Sean, because we think this is what we're supposed to do, only to get them built and recognize. The ultimate intention of it might be radically different than what we thought when we started. Warrior was built for one reason, to wake me up.

And you thought it was a different reason. I thought it was to help men. I built a system. I just gave me chills. To wake my soul up. And after 15 years of running it, the training wheels of Warrior are no longer necessary for me.

And all the men that I've gotten to help, it's been amazing. I'm grateful that God was able to use me and the system to help them. But to keep wake-up warrior the way it's been, but to keep me in prison, while I've enjoyed 15 years of leave, leading men.

I'm being called into something new, which is always hard. Yeah. Just like leaving sports. That's a feeling, dude, that destroyed me. You know, do you thank you so much, bro, for coming in. Appreciate you.

This has been such an amazing conversation. Like, I'm just blown the fuck away right now. I knew it was going to be good. I didn't know it was going to be this vulnerable. And I appreciate it. This has been one of my favorites, dude. Got one more question for you. I need you to finish this sentence.

Determination is. Say it again. Determination is. What does it mean to you? Listen, I could put some fancy words in the box. My mind is very good at that. I'm a linguistic master in communication. I could put them in words.

No, I get nothing and everything. Determination is nothing. It is everything. at the same time. The only thing I can compare it to, I've never answered the question that way. I've never been asked what is determination. But when I think at all I see, I see nothing, I see everything. It's like my very first psychedelic journey. I was nothing and I was everything. Determination is nothing and it is everything. Our determination is nothing in comparison to God's plan for us. And yet it is everything because it's what gives us purpose and drive to move.

without a determination we go nowhere and yet our determination in the contrast to God's power is nothing it's one of the best fucking answers I've ever because I never looked at it like that neither as far as I've went with it for me

is everything it is the basis of this show but in the big scheme of things it is nothing Gary White man thank you so much brother I've been on the show man it was amazing

All right, y'all, hey, share this show with someone you know, love, and trust. And until next time, stay determined.