Dhru Purohit Show - #226: Improve Your Focus, Energy, and Joy with This 4-Step Meditation Practice with Todd McCullough

Episode Date: July 5, 2021

Improve Your Focus, Energy, and Joy with This 4-Step Meditation Practice | This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers. We know that exercise and meditation help to boost our energy, concentration, and mood, but not many of us understand the power of combining both.   Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with Todd McCullough to talk about his unique approach to fitness and his 4-step meditation practice, which is a great way for everyone to dedicate time for their body, mind, and overall well-being. Todd also shares spiritual principles that have helped him to be present and grateful each day.  Todd McCullough (TMAC), is the founder of TMAC Fitness, a home fitness program that has helped more than 20,000 people get in shape and get their mind right.  In this episode, we dive into:   -Todd’s 4-step meditation practice (3:31)  -The importance of having a deep sense of purpose in your life (10:08) -How to get your mind right first thing in the morning (10:56)  -The importance of prioritizing your life (11:48) -Why meditating immediately post-exercise is so impactful (13:45)  -How gratitude overrides negativity bias (17:29)  -The power of visualization (23:46)  -Todd’s signature fitness program TMAC 20 (54:02) -A powerful gratitude practice (1:04:20)  For more on Todd McCullough, you can follow him on Instagram @tmacfitness, and through his website https://www.tmacfitness.com/mindright.  For more on Dhru Purohit, be sure to follow him on Instagram @dhrupurohit, on Facebook @dhruxpurohit, on Twitter @dhrupurohit, and on YouTube @dhrupurohit. You can also text Dhru at [phone] or click here https://my.community.com/dhrupurohit. Sign up for Dhru’s Try This Newsletter - https://dhrupurohit.com/newsletter. Interested in joining The Dhru Purohit Podcast Facebook Community? Submit your request to join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2819627591487473/. This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers. If I had to pick one supplement that has made the biggest difference in my overall health, it would be magnesium. I personally started taking magnesium to help with my sleep, especially when I travel, and it’s been a game changer. But I don’t take just any old magnesium, I take BiOptimizers Magnesium Breakthrough. It contains 7 different forms of magnesium, which all have different functions in the body. I haven’t found anything else like it on the market. Right now, BiOptimizers is offering my community a few special bundles, just head over to https://magbreakthrough.com/dhru, with code DHRU10. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the wellness conversation, as we're seeing that you need to have a deep sense of purpose and meaning in your life. You can eat all the right food. You can do all the burpees you won't. You can even meditate. But if you don't have a deep sense of purpose in your life, I think you're missing out. Hi, everyone, Drew Brod here. Today's guest is my dear friend, Todd McCullough. On today's podcast, we're diving into his mind right, four-step meditation practice.

That's so simple. It'll help you focus. It'll increase your performance. and also your joy in life. Stay tuned for a fascinating conversation. So if I had to pick one supplement that's made the biggest difference in my overall health, it would have to be magnesium. This super mineral is needed for over 400 different enzyme reactions in your body.

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So right now, if you're looking for magnesium, bio-optimizers is offering my community a few special bundles. Just head over to magbreakthrough.com backslash Drew with the code Drew 10. that's M-A-G-B-R-E-A-K-T-H-R-O-U-G-H dot com backslash Drew D-H-R-U with the code Drew 10, D-H-R-U-10, and get your bio-optimizers magnesium breakthrough today. Welcome to the Drew-Pero-It podcast. Each week we explore the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is Todd McCullough.

Todd, aka T-MAC, is the founder of T-MAC Fitness, a home fitness program that has helped more than 20,000 people worldwide get into shape and get their mind right. And that's what today's episode is all about. Todd is incredibly passionate about helping people get their mind right to improve their performance, joy, happiness, and focus in life. Let's dig into our wide-ranging conversation. with Todd McCullough.

Todd, welcome to the podcast. It's an honor to have you here, brother. Good to see you again, brother. Look forward to connected in person sometime soon. I know, I know. Well, I want to jump right into it because you're known for a lot of things, including fitness,

but you have this unique approach to meditation, and I'm big on diving into giving our audience value right away. And I feel like so many people struggle with meditation, and I'm so glad that in this day and age, there's so many different approaches to meditation, right? There's no one-size-fits-all when it comes to diet, when it comes to working out, when it comes to this category of meditation. We've done a lot of episodes on meditation, but I want to hear you talk and walk people through your approach. Now, that approach sits in

the larger context of this platform and this movement that you've built, which we'll get to in a second, but let's start off with meditation. Tell us your approach and how you think about it. All right. If anyone out there he thinks that this meditation thing is not for them. Hold on for one second because if my country ass from North Florida can get into meditation, so can you. So yeah, I basically found, Drew, as you know, my background's in fitness. And it's like movements always come pretty easy for me. It's part of who I was as an athlete.

But then the meditation piece was something I found that if you stack it at the end of a workout, right? You've got all this, you know, you kind of shock the system with movement. It kind of loosens things up. like a kid with a tenter tantrum, then it's easier to steal the mind and to dive into a meditation. And so I keep it really basic, really simple. There's four parts. And so I would encourage anyone out there to try this as soon as you get finished with a workout. It could be a trail run.

It could be a CrossFit class. It could be one of my workouts. But as soon as you get finished with your workout, try this brief four-part meditation. It takes just a couple minutes and you will feel amazing afterwards. So should we dive into it? Yeah, dive into it. Let's do it. All right.

So we're going to break it down into four parts. So the first part is just a moment of gratitude, right? You've got an opportunity to just be thankful for this day. You got a chance to move your body, a roof over your head, food to eat. You know, this crazy year that we've had that even during these crazy times, we can find things to be grateful for. And it sets us up to just be in a happier place for the rest of the day. So that's the first part. So really make it personal, something you're thankful for.

And then the second part we dive in is lifting up a loved one, right? imagine a glowing light hovering over a child, a family members, maybe someone who's sick or going through a tough time. Just seeing a big smile come across their face. Just poor blessings upon them. Just something, we're so interconnected, Drew, that we can actually help uplift someone else and be connected to them. It's something that's so powerful and just poor blessings.

To understand that this life is more important than just us, it's not always about Todd and Drew, right? So just taking a few moments to lift up and pour blessings upon someone else. And the third part is for really all of us in this business space of entrepreneurs is visualizing success today. What does it look like? What does it feel like? So this morning I did my meditation and I just saw what I want this podcast to be about helping people seeing them take this mind right meditation to improve their lives. So what does success look like today for everyone out there listening?

It could be as simple as a walk with your kid. it could be going to soccer practice. It could be an important sales meeting you have. What does success look like? But more importantly, step into that feeling and have that moment now. So that's the third phase. And then once you're done with that, we shift into just being present, being still. I go back to a Bible verse, Psalms 4610, says be still and know that I am God.

And, you know, always used to wake up in the morning praying, you know, as an early Christian. I was kind of just talking to God. And what I found is that when you meditate, you're actually creating this space for God. And there's a profound difference. And so it's, you know, there's nothing special about yoga poses or nothing special about my meditation. It's just all about how do you figure out a way to instill the mind. And what I found is that when you do that movement first, there's nothing special about that.

But it helps us steal the mind. And that's where the fourth part we drop into that stillness. And that is a game changer, my friend. Man, there's so much to unpack there, which lays out the philosophy. and your approach to life. And I also just want to acknowledge you because, you know, I have different, my relationship to spirituality or, let's say, God of the universe is different than your own. But I always appreciate how you are true to where you come from.

And, you know, you're one of my closest friends. And I think this is a reminder for everybody who's listening, regardless of what path they come from, is that, you know, good people are good people. And then they all have their own individual, unique relationship to, a higher source. And for some people, that might not be a relationship to a higher source. And that's okay too. And I think in this day and age where we want to see somebody who has different beliefs as us as the other, we have to remind ourselves that the vast majority of people on earth, regardless of their approach to any topic, political, you know, religion, dietary, you know,

whatever it might be, good people are in the majority. And when we can use gratitude to connect and hear them and honor their traditions and their background and sort of applaud them for appreciating their lineage and heritage, that is how the world is a, is a better place. We don't see, you know, it's not that we don't see the differences, is that we're not using those differences as a reason to ostracize or excommunicate the other. And on the flip side, bad people, which there are bad people on earth, and sometimes those bad people have had bad things happen to them, right? So I feel for them. I have compassion for them. A lot of them have had trauma, have gone through very difficult things. You know, it's not like they were born bad. Those people are in

the minority. And if all the good people can work together, support each other, get each other healthy, lift each other up, that is how we freaking change the consciousness of the world. So just wanted to toss that in while also throwing some gratitude to you, my friend. No, man, I think you hit it spot on. There's so much there as well. It's in the sense of there's like, you know, what, 7.4 billion people on the planet. The idea that I have it all figured out, like I would never begin to think that. But, you know, after a decade, Drew, and you've been in the wellness space for as a while, you know, I started off from my journey is like, you get a sweat every day, right? Like, that's like the most important. Then I was like, oh, crap, you really got to eat healthy and eat real whole food.

Then, you know, you have to, you know, sleep seven plus hours a day. That's really important. And then now after a decade of being in this, like, there's also a huge part, which I'm super excited about in the wellness conversation is we're seeing that you need to have a deep sense of purpose and meaning in your life. life. You can eat all the right food. You can do all the burpees you won't. You can even meditate. But if you don't have a deep sense of purpose in your life, I think you're missing out. And I think for me, this mind-right daily meditation allows me and allows our community to ground and connect to a deeper sense of meaning and purpose. And that translates how you and I interact as friends, how we interact with our employees and our coworkers. It affects everything about us

because it's at a soul level. Now, for me, I would never begin to think to tell people how to find that or what that looks like for them. I can just share my journey and my experience and what that's meant to me and how it's led me to this moment and just encourage people to it. Whatever that looks like for them is I think that, you know, we call this getting your mind right every day, right, with T-MAC Fitness. And we say that move your body and connect your spiritual practice before you look at your phone

before you check your email. So it helps program you for that positivity, that moment or greatness. gratitude, that moment of connection and grounding. So you can carry your best into the world. And whatever outside stimulus comes, we can filter that in a positive way, right? So we were talking about the negative people out there, right? They seem like they're everywhere on social media, but in the real world, they're very few far in between. We can filter that in a positive mindset. If we wake up looking at our phones, looking at social media, we stimulate our, we're programming ourselves for stress, whether we realize it or not. So I think for me, the movement,

the mind right meditation just helps me start my day in a positive mindset and then that radiates and carries forward to everyone we interact with i'll share this quote a few times on the podcast recently my friend dr rungan chattery interviewed a gentleman and i believe his name is gregory mccown and he has a quote and the quote says if you don't prioritize your life someone else will when we wake up early in the morning and we go right to the news right to social media which is another version of the news, right? It ends up sort of being that way. You end up doing something that another mutual friend of ours, Light Watkins,

he calls it Insta meditation. People always tell him, I don't have time for meditation. He's like, well, you're doing an instant meditation every day. You open your phone, and whether it's Facebook or Instagram or YouTube or whatever, you're just scrolling around. And now, whoever you're following and what their priorities are and whatever they're sensationalized by, because it tends to be the most sensational stuff is what spreads according to the algorithm, right? The most extreme stuff is what spreads.

That becomes your priorities. So really, Todd, what you're doing and what you do with your TMAC platform, T-MAC fitness platform, is you are reminding people that if we do not prioritize ourselves in movement, in wellness, which includes sleep, eating well, and then the mind-right component, somebody else's priorities will become our priorities. And now you are essentially a victim. There are so many victims that are out there in the world because they're letting somebody else's narrative

control their life in terms of what they like, what they don't like, who they're upset about, what they believe instead of thinking for themselves. It's 100% spot on. I said, you control your mindset. That's the one thing that we have control over. And we've somehow forgotten that, I think, and we need to get back to that.

And so hopefully this practice of movement and mindfulness will help us bring us all together, for sure. Well, I want to get to origin stories in a minute, but just want to tease out some of those steps that you mentioned. Because even though those are four simple steps and most of us have heard of them, I feel it's the sequence that matters, right? It's kind of like when you go to a functional medicine doctor, a big part of their approach is, yes, we know that maybe for a period of time cutting out gluten and dairy or certain supplements could be beneficial or maybe some therapeutics or IVs. But what makes them an expert is knowing, first of all, what do you get the biggest bang for the buck for and what sequence do you do them in?

So this mind right component lives within this sequence. As I've seen you practice it from the outside and people going through your platform online, it lives within the sequence of first. shocking the system and I want to talk about that a little bit there's a lot of people that have tried meditation but they haven't figured out the movement piece and how movement not for everybody but for a lot of people we are under moved we are missing movement as nutrition you know movement is nutrition just like food is nutrition movement is nutrition and a lot of people are under moved if we look

back at our hunter-gather ancestors. When did you realize that when you sort of work out and you shock the system that your mind is a little bit quieter because that is a game changer for people who have never heard that before. So talk about that and how that became part of your methodology. Yeah. So like, you know, a little bit of the history as well, right? I came to new Jesus Christ at 12 years old. And I used to wake up in the morning and we'd get on my, so the first two steps of it came from my kind of prayers, early Christian, where I just kind of wake up in the morning, get on my knees and be like, God, be with me today, be with my family, poor blessings upon them. All well meaning, but I was kind of honestly half-assing it. I wasn't awake, right? I was just kind of going through

a routine. You weren't present. I wasn't present. And then it wasn't until I started learning a little bit about yoga. You do chavasa in the class. I was like, all right, this is kind of interesting. And then my injuries from football really came to where I couldn't even go to yoga. I couldn't do a push up. I couldn't jog. And so I would go sit in the cold ocean, right? And this is something that you know, Wimhoff has made really popular now, but I didn't know about him at the time. I'd go sit in the cold ocean and, you know, it would be about 55 degrees during the winter in California and Santa Monica. And I would just sit in the freezing cold. And it's essentially just kind of like a workout, right? You're shocking the system, like all this blood flows flowing through the body. And then I would sit there and

just talk to God on the beach, just be shivering cold. And I found that that intense pain, that intense, like shocking, allowed me to be more present. And so I was like, all right, well, why can't we use movement to do the same thing? So we do this hit workouts to kind of shock the system, so to speak, like the cold ocean does. And then it allows us to get out, like, when I mentioned early in the beginning, like, you have a kid who has this tincter tanger, You've got to let the kid get that out of them, and then you can talk to them. Then they can listen. But right now I feel like we had this idea of meditation.

There's like you have to float on some cloud and sing kumbaya. And the rest of us, our minds are too busy. We have too much anxiety, too much stress in us, whether we realize it or not. So if we can exert all that out with just a little bit of movement, first, it helps us slow down the mindset. And so that's kind of where the first two parts came about was that blending of what I knew was in our prayer as like an early Christian that was routine and then kind of heightened it with diving into shocking the system first. Let's go to gratitude because we know, and we've done a few episodes on this, is that our brain evolved. We really have three brains. We kind of have three

operating systems. You're teaching me now if we have three brains. Okay, go for it. We have one brain that has different evolutionary parts. And, you know, people usually know of the kind of the two brains that we talk about. We talk a lot about the prefrontal cortex, which is our executive function, a lot of what has made us human beings, our ability to reason and be compassionate or see things. You know, it's more than just fight or flight. And that fighter flight brain, which we often call the amygdala, the lizard brain, that is our evolutionary brain that we share with a lot of animals that are out there that is really worried on, you know, fight, flight, mate, and freeze, right? Those are the kind of key things.

Now, that brain has, just from a simplicity standpoint, because I've interviewed experts that are way more qualified to talk about this, that brain has a negativity bias. Because when we were living out in the woods or the plains or wherever we all came from originally, we had to be aware of any threat that was there. It actually did not pay to be an optimist. You actually had to be a pessimist because being a pessimist kept you alive. And that is baked into our brain still. And in our modern life, we don't always know how to turn that off.

So we don't even know that it's happening. And so scientists call this our negativity bias. We, everybody knows this. If you are somebody who is a creative or you're putting out content on social media, You can have a hundred people say positive things towards you, but one person who you don't know and have no connection to comes in and says, you don't look that great or that dress looks ugly or you know what? I thought you'd be more athletic than you are. And our mind tends to focus on that. Right. And gratitude is, I see it as a practice of you are just like we work out our muscles and you teach people about that.

I see gratitude as a workout for our mind because our normal state is negativity bias. And we actually have to train our mind out of that and use a different part of our brain. I want you to sort of expand on that a little bit. Have you seen with the clients that are on your website or even yourself personally, how do you see about the relationship of gratitude and the negativity bias or anything else you want to toss in that conversation? Yeah. And to kind of elaborate further what you're saying to help the listeners get an idea of what

you were just talking about. Let's say all of us are going on a hike right now. Me, Drew, those listening right now, we go on a hike. If you were to see a butterfly, you're like, oh, that's cool, I see a butterfly, or you see a rattlesnake. What are you going to go tell people about the rest of the day? You saw a damn rattlesnake, right? You forget about the beautiful butterfly, right? That's that kind of negativity bias that kept us alive that you're talking about. And with today's, you know, current environment with social media, news, politics, etc. That is so easy to infiltrate and dominate our mind for the whole day. And like you said, it's like to me, this mindset is like working this muscle of the mind of gratitude. And we have to be intentional about creating that during the day. And I'll

give you a recent example, Drew. So when we saw each other in Austin recently, right, like before that, I was, I mean, I've been up since 4 a.m. that day. I went to the Austin airport. I had like four flight delays, didn't make my flight. I was trying to go home to see my family. We had things planned, etc. It could totally ruin the whole day. And I'm looking at the airport, everyone around. And I used to be the same way. Don't get me wrong. I was really frustrated as well. People were freaking out. And I was pretty calm. Like I was able, all right, what can I do today? All right, I can get some work done while this flights, we're waiting on this flight, waiting on this mechanic. I've got to go see my friend Drew and Austin. He's in town.

And ended up spending the next day doing the same thing in the airport, had like four flight cancels. So I spent two days at the Austin airport, basically. And look, it wasn't ideal. It wasn't what I wanted. But I was peaceful. I was happy. I was able to focus on things I could control. And that's because my mindset, I woke up both of those mornings, did my T-Mack 20 workout, my mind right meditation. I'd program my mind for positivity. And so that's just how an everyday example, like we do not, like for those listening right now, maybe you're having a great day, maybe we're having a shitty day. You don't know what's ahead of you,

but you can program your mindset first thing every day for positivity. And just like I always say, like if trying to work, you get stronger in squats, right? You've got to train your glutes. You've got to consistently train your glutes. The mind is the same way and gratitude is the same exact way. You have to consistently program it for that,

and work that muscle to be happy. Yeah, it's well said. The interesting thing about the morning and, you know, why this works so well in the morning, and why if you don't do it, how we are subjective to other people's priorities, as I was talking about earlier, our brains are very vulnerable right when we wake up in the morning, because we're kind of getting oriented. Everybody knows this, right? You're waking up early in the morning. You're kind of getting oriented.

You're sort of warming up, so to speak, your body. And also, right at night, right at night, right before we go to sleep. In fact, the Buddhists would call, you know, right before they would call sleep of like mini-death. because there is this thing, and a lot of people notice this with their minds, especially if they haven't been practicing meditation, if they're not working out and exerting the body, that right before bed, your mind will start worrying about all the problems that are there, right? Because it feels vulnerable, and that's the ego starting to worry about, you know, this is wrong and that's wrong, and I'm about to go to sleep, and I'm not going to be able to pay attention to it. So there's a power

to doing this practice first thing in the morning when our default neural network, which sees the world in a very specific way is still kind of booting up like the operating operating system. And this takes me right into one of the next components, which is visioning, you know, setting a vision and imagining what success looks like. You're an athlete is your background. You played college football, right? You had dreams of wanting to maybe be in the NFL one day. You have been very honest in your story that you got injured and that kind of had you reevaluate which direction you wanted to go in. But you always maintained and still today, you maintain that athlete's mindset. And visioning is a big part of, you know, you will probably

not find a pro sports team that's out there that is not using some practice of visioning. Talk to us a little bit more about that. Yeah, this is this really exciting part for me with, you know, athletes and, you know, even police in these days, like people that are in super high stress environments that have to perform almost for perfection, right? And super stressful situations. And this is, you know, for those that are in a college football fans, you know, a little backstores, I played football at University of Florida. And my sophomore year, we were playing University of South Carolina. And Lou Holtz was a coach at the time. And you study film during the week, you know, your breakdown film, et cetera. And, you know,

the night before and that you're in the hotel, you know, you kind of play the game, so to speak, in your head, right? But you're also like 19 years old. You're texting your girlfriend. You're doing all this stuff. But for whatever reason, I kept seeing this one play in shortyarded situation that Coach Holtz liked to run. And for whatever reason, you know, it's fourth quarter, fourth and one, games on the line. There's 93,000 people screaming in the stands. And so it's hard for people to imagine what that feels like, but 93,000 people and you're in this bowl. The ground is shaking, right? Like, I could be me to you disclose and you don't hear anything. Everything, all of a sudden, they come out in this formation I'd seen and kind of played

and visualized the week ahead. And everything went still, Drew. Everything went absolutely. You could hear a pin drop. I could see the blades of grass in the, in front of me. I could see the finger, like the blood vessel, like as the tied in kind of leaned on his four fingers. I saw the pupil. of the fullback. And I knew what was happening before it happened. Ball was snapped. I jumped through the line of scrimmage, hit the ball carrying the backfield. Crowd goes wild.

We win the game. We come into meetings the next day. My linebacker coach was like, I had no idea how the hell you knew that was going to happen, but I totally took credit for it. Great job. How did you know that was going to happen? I was like, I saw it happen before it happened. I didn't really know how to articulate it at the time.

But I had visualized that play the night before in the hotel. hotel room. And so I've been able to take that with me now as an entrepreneur. It's like, what does success look like today? How do I step into that moment? What is that moment of 93,000 people streaming and yelling? Can I step into that moment now? And that to me is just such a powerful thing for all of those in the entrepreneurial spaces that there's so many peaks in valleys, right? There's good months. There's good quarters. There's bad quarters. Being able to stay positive in that mindset. And so that's really where that third part comes in is that, you know, you pull a little bit from your Christian background, you pull a little bit from your sports background, you pull a little bit

from yoga. And that's how that four-part meditation kind of came about. What I love about visioning is also, too, it's another version of sometimes the priorities of society, whether they're implicit or explicit, end up becoming beliefs that we think we want, but we don't actually maybe really want. A perfect example is the idea of if somebody is an entrepreneur or even if you have a regular nine to five job or somebody staying at home, we're all familiar with the idea of keeping up with the Joneses, right? You live in a neighborhood. You start seeing everybody around you maybe upgrading their cars, upgrading their

houses, maybe buying fancy jewelry. And then if you don't question it, you may think that that's the natural step for you. Now, there's nothing wrong with those material possessions. there's nothing wrong with wanting to enjoy a nice car, but often when we don't question it, we're driven towards those things, thinking that they will actually make us happier, just the same way,

social media version of that, right? The social media version of having a fancy car is all of a sudden just having more followers just because you want more followers, right? Not focusing on necessarily that we want to make a difference, want to make an impact. So visioning is so powerful because it helps us separate what is our own beliefs and our own wants and what do we actually really care about and what was

just something that we inherited? It could been the voice of a parent who said, you're never going to be successful, right? I had a friend of mine who said that his dad said, you know, a real sign of success is when you have that MX platinum card. And so his whole life growing up, he thought like, great, what are all the things that I need to do to get to that place where I have that? And it's like, What the hell does that have to do with anything? Unless if, okay, unless if you actually think, I got a question for you in this, in this ramp that I'm on, have there been things in your journey that you thought, you know, just because you grew up with that belief, and it may not have been a bad belief.

Could have been from society, your parents, just the general, you know, community. Was there something that you thought that you wanted that was going to make you happy? and then through your own journey of faith and spirituality, you realize that actually, no, I don't want this thing anymore. Absolutely. There's probably a few that come to mind. The first one that comes to mind is, so after playing football in Florida, I became a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch.

I always joke, I'm probably the only personal trainer I know with the Series 7. And I come from a real, rural environment. Dad was a police officer. My mom was a teacher. And we had, I never had to worry about money. Like it was always had a roof over my head and food to eat. But I got a chance to go to this private school to go play football in high school. It's amazing private school.

And I saw what real wealth looked like. And I was like, well, you know, I'm going to college. I was like, I don't want to be broke. That's for damn sure. I don't want to work at the local mill. That's some hard work. And so I was like, all right, well, success. You know, once I get done playing, whatever that looks like, I want to make six figures.

That was like my number. I just want to make six figures, whatever that looks like. And so I knew someone who had that private school that, you know, they made great money. They played a lot of golf. It looked like a successful, happy life. I didn't know a damn thing about the stock market, Drew. Not the first fucking thing, right? Like, I didn't grow up looking at the Wall Street Journal.

We looked at like the local newspaper who killed the biggest white-tail buck, right? Or who caught the biggest bass that weekend. That was kind of the newspaper we read. And all of a sudden now, I find myself working, I mean, a suit and tight Merrill Lynch. and there's a huge golf tournament there in northeast, you know, in Jacksonville in Pontevideo called the TPC. It's a big professional golf tournament. And so, you know, it's a huge deal in Jacksonville. And all these people are there and the mutual fund people are taking out all this financial advisors.

Ruth Chris Ditters, nice steaks, nice scotch. Everyone's in their suit and ties. And I've got one of our best buds, right, Chris, is like people that really are in finance for the right. reasons that want to help people. And I just looked around. I was just like, this isn't me. This is not my idea of happiness. And I don't know what that looks like. But, you know, I drove an old pickup truck and everyone in the parking lot had like, you know, Porsches and, you know, Jaguars. And I was coming out in this suit and I had an old pickup truck and just, it didn't feel right. And so that was one of those moments to me. It was just like, all right,

Well, money's not the answer. I didn't know what was going to fulfill me at the time, but I knew money wasn't the answer. And what I didn't realize is I just happened to be wired that I don't mind working hard, but it has to be something I believe in, a higher mission, a higher purpose. And football was that for me for the first half of my life. And I had to kind of go on this journey, discover what I was willing to dedicate the rest of my life to, Drew. And then I found that through creating this platform that, you know, I always say that even though it started as personal training, at a clear mission statement.

It was to assist in creating a culture that's conscious of the body and the world in which we live in. And that's been the mission from T-MAC Fitness since 2009. And it's navigated over the years through personal training to this online platform. But yeah, that helped me find meaning and purpose in life was using the gifts God's given me to be of service to my fellow brothers and sisters.

And that money, don't get me wrong, I want to make a shit ton of money. I haven't lost the drive to build to provide for a family you do those things, but I realized that was not the source of happiness. Yeah, totally. And, you know, for anybody who's listening, of course, there's a lot of studies that are out there that like, you know, once you hit a particular threshold, money doesn't matter anymore.

But if you're below that threshold and you're just struggling to put food on the table, you definitely, money will solve your money problems. So if you can't put food on the table, you know, if you're struggling to pay the bills or get health insurance or other things, obviously money is going to be a crucial factor and can improve the quality of life. Anyone that says it's not important, it's never been broke.

Exactly. There's a, you know, to quote Kanye West, there's a lyric in one of his songs, not having money's not everything, not having it is, right?

When there's no money, all you can think about it is money. Yeah. When you have at least enough of it, that's there, then that's if you have the right vision for what you want to create in life and how you want to use money as a tool, then you can pay attention to everything else that you love and just use money for leverage to spend more time with family, to have maybe a little bit more space, to eat healthy, you know, all the beautiful things that are part of that.

You know, inside of that, I wanted to tell you a story and kind of ask you a question. I had a mentor of mine. He passed away a few years of. ago, his name was Gurdiv Chitubanji. And Guru Dev just means teacher, right? It's not like he was some, you know, like nowadays, you know, guru is usually associated with like an omniscient person who's telling everybody what to do. It's been a lot of gurus that have gotten, you know, themselves caught up in all sorts of random scandals and stuff. But this guy was through and through a really incredible gentleman. He actually became well known because he was part of Gandhi's

movement in India to bring freedom through nonviolent action, right? This term that we use in India called Ahimsa. And Grudev Chitrabhanji was from the Jain tradition. It's less of a religion and it's more of a way of life, right? Practicing a hymsa nonviolence. So in that period of working with, you know, Gandhi, he decided, because he was a monk at the time, he was a monk in the Jain tradition. He said, you know what, I don't want to just be a monk in India.

I want to take these teachings that are here that we are learning like yoga and I want to bring them to the world. So the same time, he got an invitation from Harvard Divinity School to come out to America. This is in the 60s. And they were hearing about this thing called yoga and seeing people in India doing breathing exercises. And they invited them here. And as crazy as it sounds, there was a rule in the Jane community, even though they were all about nonviolence and sort of acceptance. other things, they didn't want their monks traveling overseas because they felt that they would get corrupted, right? That they would then, they were traditionally vegetarian. So they said, you can't go to

America because then you're going to start eating meat. You're going to start having temptation of there's, you know, there's going to be women around. There's other stuff. There's alcohol. Whatever it might be. So the society actually turned on him. And when he went and left for the airport, they were throwing stones at him. I mean, these people that were, you know, again, this just shows you, regardless of what tribe or group that's out there, whatever they believe in preach, it comes down to how you actually treating another human being. And he said, I still need to go. I need to go to, I need to take these teachings. And he really brought yoga to the Harvard Divinity School and started teaching people there. And he was one of many other teachers that started coming to

America and started teaching it. And that's had all sorts of implications. you know, and made yoga more accessible and people can make their own version of yoga. I would love if you could tell your story of how you got into yoga and especially from a Christian background, maybe even some of the concerns that you had yourself or concerns from other people around you who were saying like, what is this guy doing? Yeah. So to pick up on where you left off real quick about your teacher friend, your mentor, so to speak, I would say that what he did was very much Christ-like.

One of the reasons I always loved, if you read the Gospels, Christ was, you know, he ate and drank with the sinners. He hung out with the tax collectors, the prostitutes. Like, he hung out with people in society that people are like, don't be around them. And Christ interact with them. To me, that's the beauty of what your teacher did. It's like, you should be able, don't get me wrong,

I think you should put yourself around positive, uplifting people, but you can't sit around and I don't think and go, you know, meditate in some Buddhist monastery necessarily and not interact with society. Like if you had these gifts and you have this divine being inside you, you should be able to go share that with other people. And so I just want to applaud to, you know, your teacher who passed away. Like what he did was very much what Christ did was to take that divine presence and to be a blessing to those who are hurting in the world. We always have this idea that, like, you know,

those of us that go to church every day or, you know, pray every day, somehow that we are the good ones and everyone else is the bad ones. And to me, I think it's just completely opposite of what Christ has taught me is that these gifts and this blessings of Christ being in you is to go share that with everyone, not just people who believe like you believe. I think that's the ultimate test of our faith is how do we interact with people who think. different, believe different. Can we still show them love and compassion? We can still stand for what we believe.

But if you can't show people love and compassion who disagree with you, then I would say that your faith is quite honestly bullshit, to be honest. You know, I think that's where I would go with that or just isn't very strong. And so where I can remember going back to, so Christianity and yoga, I can remember going, I can't win a yoga class for two reasons. One, there was a hot girl wearing little lemon pants that invited me to a yoga class, um, if I'm being completely honest. And two, I had five surgeries from football, so I couldn't lift weights and run anymore. So I was looking for a way to heal my body. And I remember going to Vinnie Marino's class on Main Street in Santa Monica.

Shout out to the one and only Vinnie. Um, and all of a sudden, like, there was this like Buddha thing, statue in there. There's people started like, you know, doing some weird. ass sounds. I was like, holy shit, is this, is this like sacrilegious? Like, that was, that was my initial feeling, right? Like, I came here because it was a hot chick, but now I'm like, holy shit, am I doing something like wrong? And I got to know the community and got to see that, like, you know, for example, the end of every yoga class, they always say namestate, the light within me sees the, the honors the light within you. You start to understand the meaning behind this. And I did my yoga training and you read, I believe it's the

yoga sutras by Patiana. I believe it's a pronounce his name. It's very much just like the book of Proverbs by King Solomon. And there's so much intertwined in that. And I think that sometimes we have this idea that because I believe this, or I was taught this way, and this is I think one of the things that I differ with a lot of our Christian brothers and sisters is that it's very, hey, I'm right, you're wrong, so to speak. Like, I love you, but I'm right, you're wrong. I've never really bought into that a whole lot. I think there has to be a lot of humility that we're trying to conceptualize the creator of this amazing universe. That's why you hear me talk about.

It's like, hey, come up, come surf with me. Like, I'm not a good surfer, but just sitting on a surfboard at sunrise, looking at the vast Pacific Ocean, it helps put you in a place that you're just in the presence of something so much bigger than yourself that is very grounding. It's beautifully said. and there's so many themes inside of there. And I think on that theme of, you know, Christ or whether we're talking about as an example and a parallel, that mentor of mine that I had, grew the truth of monagy, it's another reminder for all of us that, you know, why do we eat well? Why do we take care of ourselves and sleep well?

Why do we try to get our mind right? You know, we do these things so that we can give love and attention to everything that matters in our lives. Now, in the traditional, in Greek philosophy and sort of the stoicism and also in sort of of the Indian tradition, that first means, and a lot of actually traditions, is you got to take care of your own household, right? You got to take care of your own household. You got to make sure that you can provide for them that everybody's there. And these deep family ties, you know, having a sense of relationship because we have to look out for one another. It's so hard to be out there in the world, even in our modern day and age, from a mental

health standpoint, people who don't have strong family ties. And by the way, family doesn't have to be blood family. It could be community. But we need community. We needed community to survive, but now we actually need it to thrive. Depression is going up. Anxiety is going up. We need people around us.

We can't just do it on our. our own. So once you take care of your household and you look after people and lift them up and be there for them in the best way that you can, and let's say you have enough money, maybe you don't have plenty to do all the extra things that you want to do, but you have enough to put food on the table, take care of stuff, feel like you have dignity in life, which is why I'm so pro-entrepreneurship and why I know you're so pro-entreanship because that is part of the way that you get control and create that dignity for yourself and your life. If that's a path that you want to pursue, then the next component is you start asking questions.

Think Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You start asking questions of why am I here? What do I want to do? How do I want to make the world a little bit of a better place in this unique sliver that I can see? You know, your background, your upbringing, maybe your race, your culture, your, you know, things that you've seen, your gender. My fiance, who you know very well, you know, she's always felt from a young age because she's heard so many great stories. from her dad of how women who are in control of their finances, whether it's through their job or can create companies, are much more in control of their life destiny. Then if they're an abusive

relationship with a man, they don't have to stay in because they have the ability, you know, to go. So she, her entire mission is around getting women and supporting them on the journey of seeing more women entrepreneurs that are out there. That's a beautiful mission. And I think anybody who's listening here, we have to zoom out and say as much as we're struggling sometimes to figure out the right diet for us or trying to sleep a little bit better. And we don't feel like we're putting as much attention into it. This goes back to the hashtag mind right, which is actually you may not be dialing into these things. And it's not about being perfect. It's about dialing into them for you and your personal journey because you don't have that

sense of purpose. What is your why and why are you here? And I love the fact that that's weaved into everything that you do and you talk about. Yeah, and this kind of brings us full circle from the beginning of the conversation, right? It was like, after a decade of helping people reach their fitness goals, that's just kind of what I've learned is that we can do the workouts, you can eat all the right food, you can get all the sleep, but you need this deep sense of meaning and purpose in your life. And for me, my work is about giving people the tools to move and connect each day. and whatever that connection looks like is totally up to them.

But it is extremely important. What you talked about is giving that sense of meaning and purpose to your life. What do you do when you have a challenging week or projects not working out? And you feel like your connection is to that purpose. You still know intellectually it's there, but you feel like that connection isn't as strong. What does T-MAC do on a human level? How do you navigate that? So let me sure I understand it.

So something you've been working on that you feel is aligned with your purpose, but it's not working out. Is that the question you're asking? Yeah, you maybe feel like you're not making as much traction as you want to. Maybe you have a set pack that's there. How do you handle and how do you get yourself back to being focused when you feel that, at least in the short term, life's goals and events that you're you're making progress on aren't happening the way that you want them to. So two things the way I approach it is one is the immediate short term and then the second is the long term. The immediate short term again, which I think is so much about the meditation

is learning to be present. Like in this moment, for example, I just got back from visiting my family and I was a little frustrated like we don't have Wi-Fi. I can't get all my work done that I need to get done. But what can I do in that moment? And I got a chance with my niece. Like I'm trying to work out. She's jumping all over me. But I had a moment with my niece where we just got to sit there and play. And I got to see her smile. I didn't get in my workout like I wanted. I wasn't able to get off as much work that in that day or before that. But I was able to have a moment there. Just that ability of being present. And I think kids have a way of doing this or reminding us. Can you be present in that moment? Like let's say you have a partner later.

You and Yasmin are there and you may have had a shitty day, Drew, but you have a moment there with you. You're actually in her presence and she's in your presence for that day. And that's a beautiful thing. I think that we don't, we have this, you know, this entrepreneur's thing like we're going to go change the world,

right? I think we need those bold missions, but ultimately it's the every day in the moment. Like going back to the airport story, right? And we're in, I'm in Austin. I've been in the airport now for two days. And I see the lady working up there at the front desk.

The line is all the way down the hallway of people that are just pissed off, angry. Their flights have been canceled. Rightfully so. And this poor woman, God knows how stressful is. Who knows what she's got going on in her personal life? She may have kids. She may be, who knows? And just going to her and just say, hey, how are you?

I know this is a tough time for you. Like, thank you. I know this is tough. Whatever you can do to help. And just in that moment, like, yes, you didn't, things may not be great for you right now, but you can still put positivity into someone else's life by being just present and acknowledging them in that moment. And I think that often our minds, this is where the meditation comes in, is that we're so worried about down the road. And don't get me wrong, I think big term planning is important,

but we forget that in that moment, like that cash register, can you, who's checking out your groceries, can you call them by first name, right? They usually have their name tag. Can you call them by first name and say, thank you, John. Thank you. Like, they never get that. So I think that's the short term, right? Is can I find those moments of being absolute present and acknowledge that how beautiful that present moment is? Because that's all we have. We don't, we make it hit by a car later today, right? We have no idea, that present moment. And the second term, or it's like, all right, let's say I have a bad quarter, right? Or a bad year. This is why to me, it's the long-term mission of what I'm doing, I'll be doing some form of wellness of helping people move and connect for the

rest of my life. Like, I'm clear on that mission, right? Like, Team Mac Fitness has gravitated from personal training to online fitness. A decade from now, Drew, like, we may be on a different platform talking. We may be doing different things. But the long-term vision, this is what I'm committed in my life to. And so I'm happy to pivot if it's switching strategies or, you know, living in a smaller house, driving, you know, modifying my life. style. These are things I'm happy to do. May it be comfortable in the moment because I'm committed to the long-term journey that this is the gifts that I've been given and I'm going to continue to work on that craft and learn, but ultimately to share and help with people. And whatever that

looks like down the road, we'll have to see how that unfolds. It reminds me of a quote from a friend of mine, Reverend Michael Beckwith from the Agape Center in Los Angeles. And he says, people all wrapped up in themselves makes for a mighty small package. And I think what I'm hearing from you is that when you're connected to your why, your larger why, which is also about making a difference for other people, you're not so wrapped up in your own world and your own problems. So you have a tough day. You can do this gratitude.

You can do these workouts. And you can get a chance to reset and say, why am I really here? It's not just about me, right? It's not just about me. It's about these other individuals that I want to also get a chance to make a difference for. And that's my why. That's my driver. That keeps me going. And the question is, for anybody who's listening that's working on an audacious project, and audacious is all relative, are you committed to making that impact or are you committed to something else? So if you're committed to making that impact, right, and that can pivot. We can change our minds and we can have different versions.

of what that impact looks like, then, okay, it doesn't matter if it's five years, if it's 10 years, if it's 15 years, if that thing that you ultimately want to do for the world and also for yourself, because it's both for the world, it's selfless, but it's also selfish and it should be, that thing will, you know that if you just keep on working on it, you're going to make progress and there's a sense of surrender that's in that, right? There's a sense of surrender and joy that comes from it that no matter how bad things are in this moment right now, I'm committed to making the world a better place. I'm committing to putting this project out. I'm committing to making an impact in this nonprofit or supporting my kids with whatever goal it is and whatever

I'm going to, this two shall pass, right? This two shall pass. And I think it's something we often have to be careful of as entrepreneurs. Again, we got this grain vision. But if this grain vision, even for good purposes, if you're an asshole to the purchase and your groceries, you're missing the whole point. You truly are missing the whole point. And I think it's just something we have to be reminded of. And I think that two being, you know, there's obviously that reminder and check in the moment, like again, at the airport on what third flight getting canceled of coming back to your breath and being mindful. But honestly, at that point, if you're waiting for it, you're just too late. you have to program your mind, I think first thing, and you have to be consistent.

Like, this has taken years for me to develop this mindset. Don't get me wrong. I still have my shortcomings in bad days. And I think that we have to acknowledge those, but I was already prepared before that moment happened. Does that make sense? And so you can't just wait for the shit to hit the fan in your personal relationship or your work or whatever it may be.

And I'm like, all right, well, now all of a sudden I'm going to be happy. It doesn't work that way. It's a muscle just like everything. If you were to go run against someone who runs every day, you're like, oh, I'm going to be mentally tough today. But you haven't trained? Bullshit. You're going to get you ass kicked. I don't care how mentally tough you are.

If you haven't trained for that moment, you can get you ass kicked. Same way with gratitude. Like you have to consistently work that muscle. It's so true. And it changes your perspective. You know, it makes me think that a lot of people are secretly waiting for an eviction. notice in their life, not on their house, but just in something. It could be you go to your doctor's office for the routine physical and they tell you that your arteries are clogged or that you're

developing breast cancer. Now, my hope is that that isn't you, but sometimes people are waiting because they feel stuck in life that, you know what, maybe something bad will finally get me to pop out and actually has something to stand for. And okay, You could wait for the universe or God to kind of kick you in the butt, but why not take that opportunity to kick yourself in the butt right now because that is ultimately a better driver and you can get, you can make a difference in your life and others before it, you know, sometimes it is too late. Sometimes it is too late to tell somebody that you love them or that they meant something

to you because they might have passed away. Sometimes it is too, a little too, I mean, as long as you're breathing, you still have a shot. But sometimes it's tougher to start or write that book or to do that thing that you wanted to do. So it's all about how can you kick your butt? How can you kick yourself in the butt right now and practice these tiny little things that build up these great habits long term? So I want to pivot here. We started with the mind right component, but just wanted you to get a chance to be able to talk a little bit about the platform you've built and how it, really started off with these these simple workouts for individuals who were busy in their life.

So just wanted you to have an opportunity to chat about how you ended up creating T-MAC Fitness and the catalyst in addition to your story of how it evolved into what it is. Yeah. And there's kind of like all of it, right? It's pulling a little bit from everything, right? So I was training people in L.A. And typically you work out with your trainer maybe three days a week or et cetera. And then the other days that people were just sitting on their ass, right?

Like a lot of my clients were bi-coastal. They were traveling a lot. They had families. They had kids. They were running businesses. And I was like, I was trying to get them to do something on those other days. And they're like, Todd, this is all the time I have. I give you three days a week.

And I just knew that you need to move your body every day, right? It doesn't have to be hard every day. But I needed something for them to move every day. And so I started creating these 20-minute workouts for them to do on the days we didn't train. Right. And so that, I merged it with what I knew as an athlete, which from what we took hit training, right, which is basically high intensity interval training, which is the shortest, most effective bang for your buck, so to speak, when it comes to training, right? And then I merged at what I knew with yoga, right, to help lengthen the body, help stabilize all the muscles to help protect your lower back, rotator cuff muscles, etc, to prevent injuries. And then we added that meditation at the end. And so essentially it was kind of like to help my personal clients one-on-one. and then that eventually, like, they started sharing, I started putting videos on you, like I put them on YouTube for free, just put them up there for my clients to use,

and they started sharing it with their friends. And so I was like, all right, well, there's something there to this. And that eventually led to a subscription business, et cetera. And now we've got people, you know, from the U.S. to the UK, around the world, doing our waking up every morning, doing their 20-minute workouts and getting their mind right. I love it. And you also have an element of community and group challenges. And I'm a big fan of community. And I think it's when we don't often feel motivated by ourselves

individually, we get ourselves in the right community. And then we get, you know, that extra little push. We can always go further together, right? You might go faster alone. That's sort of old saying, but you can go further together. So talk about these group challenges and the community component that you have. Yeah. And so much of it is based around behavioral change, right? So like we take people on these 20 day challenges a couple times a year, right? And it starts off right. It's like getting clear on your why. Literally on day, you get 20 days of 20 minute workouts, right? Hit workouts. They all in the meditation and prayer, right? You get a meal plan. But we also do have a daily mind right challenge. This is what I love, right? And so day one, kind of to sum up,

we talked about in the beginning is why are you doing this? What is the number one goal that you want to get this? You want to lose 10 pounds? Great. Why do you want to lose 10 pounds? Is it want to improve your sex life with your partner, is it to be healthier so you can play with more energy to play with your kids? Getting really clear on the why because you're going to want to quit at some point and you need to be clear on that why to give you that extra motivation. The second part, right, is like this is where the accountability comes into the group and behavioral change is you basically find an accountability partner each day of the 20-day challenge.

You check in with them every single day, right? So if Drew's not feeling like getting his workout today, I'm texting him, hey, bro, let's get in our workout, right? So that community support to help with the behavioral change. And the third part, again, I always say it's important. It's just finding a program that meets you where you are right now. So the workouts, we have a kick-ass advanced workouts, but I also noticed that a lot of people had moved in a while. So I got two amazing trainers and we developed a whole beginner platform. So now regardless, like true, we've got people that are parents' age, to people that are fit like you and I, all moving and connecting to their

spiritual practice for 20 days. And it's such a beautiful thing. And at the end of the 20 days, Joe, you like this is we have them to decide on how they can volunteer one hour a week in their local community. And that's the my right challenge on day 20, right? And again, a lot of people are like, hey, I came here to lose 10 pounds. I lost 10 pounds in 20 days, which is amazing.

But now I'm also going to mentor a kid in my local community. And that goes back to that deeper sense of purpose, that deeper sense of why. And again, that's for me, I think that while we're all here. to help our brothers and sisters. I love that component. And in this day and age, it's almost like when people have very extreme political views, you know,

one of the first questions I want to ask them, besides, what are you grateful for? Okay, great. You might have opinions about other people's lives, how they should live, what they should do, again, on both sides of the spectrum.

But first, tell me what you're grateful for so that I know that you actually have the ability to be grateful for something, right? Then let's talk about something else. And the next follow-up question, And if I could ask people, would be, what the fuck have you done for people in your community? Before you talk about anything else, let me just know what you've done in your local community to make the lives better of any group that you care about.

Any group, whether it's a faith-based, whether it's disenfranchised youth, whether it's whatever. I just want to know before I hear all your opinions of how things should be that there's an element of you that can see gratitude and that can actually make a difference or is making a difference in the lives of the people because that just goes back to the victim mentality. Other people are controlling our world and we can't do anything. And if the politicians could finally or the corporations could finally figure it out, then our lives will be better. No, we got to figure it out. We got to step up. We got to make a difference. It's the whole, you know, start within your home and then work out from there into your local community.

100% agree with you. Is there any person that was doing, was there anything unique that you saw that people were doing or a standout story from somebody that you had in your group of something that they did, maybe something meaningful that you want to share with our audience for how they decided to do or spend that one or two hours in their local community?

So a couple of come to mind is, let's see here, a couple of come to my, was there was a good. girl and I forgot the country that she was involved she was in but she decided to give uh blood to her local community so on her way of being of service was that she went and gave blood in her local community something that she didn't want to do wasn't really she never would have had them like she didn't want to be around needles or do those things and she it was a big move for her that she went and she gave blood to her local community and again I think it's that that small act right it doesn't

sound like a huge one, but for this individual, that was a huge moment for her. Was it she took time out of her workday. She went to a blood bank or whatever they're calling, and she gave blood, a simple act. She may not know who that's going to affect, how it's going to positively affect someone else's life. But that came to mind to me just recently, you know, off the cuff was, I thought that was special because this is someone that, again, we talk about all these big changes in the world. Like if this side got their stuff together, if this side believes what I believe, no, it's the, what are you doing today? It's going to make a positive impact.

Again, helping, smiling at a person bagging their groceries, going to give blood. These are the little things that I think that has that ripple effect that changed the world. It's a, it's a beautiful reminder because you never know how that might come back and pay dividends to you as well too, right? Like you're not present to these small things looking after individuals who might be going through, you know, homelessness, giving blood, whatever it is, that small act. It reminds me if I recently heard an interview with Sebastian Younger, who has written a lot of books on sort of the military and tribes and brotherhood and how when people leave the military, there's a deep sense of loss of purpose. And he was kind of writing about that in his books, tribe. And he had a

story recently where he was at home and something happened and he started like bleeding out. And by the time that he got to the hospital, he lost about all the blood that he could have lost, and he was only a few minutes away from dying. And having that experience when he left and the doctors and modern medicine was able to save him, he left and he said, you know, one of the first things that I'm going to do on a regular basis, I'm going to give blood because I was alive because of what the work is that other people did. So sometimes we're not as present to things until we push ourselves to that place to ask.

you know, even thinking about our own lives. What's somebody or someone that made a difference for us? Who's somebody that did something for us, no matter how big or small, how can I keep that legacy alive if it was that fourth grade teacher that finally got you into reading? Okay. There's plenty of opportunities to volunteer and get involved and start reading to other kids, right? And so I'm much more like, I say by nature, Drew, I'm a selfish person, right?

I think a lot of this are like an entrepreneur space sometimes that's like kind of, it's easy for me to be all about me, right? And so again, part of these challenges where I have to like build in. So on Fridays during the challenge, we call it thank you card Fridays based on what you just talked about. It's every day on Fridays during the 20 day challenges, you have to write a thank you card to someone who's made a positive impact on your life. It could be that third grade teacher.

It could be that mentor. It could be a friend going through a hard time. but for me taking the time like on my calendar today on Friday like I list five things to do every day right like this podcast is like number two workout was number one this is number two got a podcast later number three number four is another team act assignment number five today is to write a thank you card to someone that made a positive impact on my life and I think that we have all these ideas people are listening to this podcast it feels good etc don't be afraid to build it in your calendar, moments of gratitude.

And even if you've never written a car before, you'd think on a very small level, like sometimes our friends are like, I don't even have stamps or I don't have this or that. It's like, okay, how about a voice note of gratitude to somebody that you haven't talked in a while that you just thought of? Flip through your photo album,

because our photo albums often tend to be the documentation of our lives. Flip through a couple years. End up on a random photo. And go to that person. Hopefully they're not an ex-girlfriend or boy. because you don't want to stir up the mix. And send them a little voice note and just say,

I know this sound, even if it sounds weird, right? Hey, I was listening to a podcast and I heard these two guys, these two crazy dudes talking about how we need to give a little bit of love and gratitude to people in our lives that we maybe even haven't talked to in a little while that deserve it.

And I thought of you today. And so I just wanted to send you this voice note that I appreciate you. I remember that time in college that you were there for me. I remember that time that I was going through a difficult time in work. I remember that time that I didn't have anybody to talk to. I remember that time that you just did something nice for me. I remember that time that you just even were a friend to me, whatever it might be, or a solid loving family member to me. And I just wanted to say thank you.

Oh my gosh, you will make their day. How many people receive something like that from somebody that they're not expecting? It completely makes their day, but even better, it'll make your day as well. It's such a practical take home from this podcast. I mean, that's actually something that, what if everyone listening to this podcast, it went and did that today? How amazing would that be? It would have ripple effects.

It would have ripple effects and it would be something so small, but yet something so big. Todd, it's been a pleasure to have you on. give us the rundown of all the great ways that people can find you, keep in touch, connect, go deeper down the rabbit hole of the membership website and be part of your amazing community. Yeah. So for everyone interested at this interested at all, go to TMAC Fitness, which is TMAC Fitness.com. You can get 10 free days of our TMAC 20 workouts, which are 20-minute workouts, no equipment, no excuses. And each workout ends in meditation and prayer.

You don't think of your credit cards. It's just our gift to you to get, you know, to get, you know, to get. familiar to the work that we do. And that'll put you on our email list. We run these challenges a couple of times a year. You'll get an invitation to join us for one of these challenges. And if you do Instagram, I'm also on Instagram at Team Act Fitness. You can say hello on there.

Shoot me a DM. So you listen to the podcast with Drew. And yeah, that's the best way to find out. It's beautiful, brother. Well, I'm so happy that you were open to the, you know, the journey that God, the universe, you know, had for you and the unique amalgamation that you've created in your life because the truth is there's a lot of people that will get into meditation because they hear about it from somebody that looks and sounds with your southern twang like you, right? Somebody that played

football. Maybe there's somebody listening here because I know my podcast is mostly a female audience that their husband or partner who traditionally might have not been as open, right? Because we all know stereotypically, women tend to be. They're more in touch with their bodies. They have periods. They have their cycle. They're more aware of themselves. So they tend to be a little bit more open to the wellness, the meditation side of things,

although that's changing very rapidly. But you'll finally say, you know what? I think you might like hearing from this guy, this macho individual who got into yoga because he saw a hot girl wearing yoga pants, but that's what got him there, but he obviously stayed for other reasons. So I just want to acknowledge you for being somebody who's spoken up, because I know you've also gotten, you know,

criticism from people that feel like, you know, maybe some of the things that you're talking about may not be, you know, in alignment with your faith, and you've stuck true to, you know, your message, just like my teacher who came from India over here when everybody told him that it wasn't a good idea. So I just want to acknowledge you for that and for being a really incredible voice in this space.

Appreciate you, man, to create this awesome platform for us to come out there and share. And to everyone listening, I hope you have an amazing day.