Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - The Art of Managing Fear | Tony Blauer

Episode Date: January 22, 2020

This week’s conversation is with Coach Tony Blauer, who’s been in the martial art, self-defense, defensive tactics, and combatives industry for over four decades.Tony founded Blauer Tactical Systems (BTS) in 1985 and it has grown into one of the world's leading consulting companies specializing in the research and development of performance psychology, personal safety, and close quarter tactics & scenario-based training for law enforcement, military, and professional self-defense instructors.His research on the neuroscience of fear and the startle-flinch lead to the development of the SPEAR System, a modern personal defense system based on physiology, physics, and psychology.It has been used by combative trainers all over the world for over 30 years.After decades of interviewing victims of violent encounters and studying violence, he then created the KNOW FEAR program which focuses on managing fear through self-awareness, resiliency and a 'movement' mindset.And so this conversation is about managing fear - but it extends far beyond self-defense.Managing fear is both science and skill and it directly influences the outcome of every event.In Tony's words: "Fear, impacts everything we do, from who we talk to, to whom we marry, from where we work, to where we live, from how much weight we lift to, whether or not we defend ourself... the ability to recognize, and manage fear directly impacts the quality of our life."Tony doesn't believe in the idea of "no fear", but by better understanding our fears, we can change our relationship with it and use it as both a signal and a fuel._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing. If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter, I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro today. It's just so simple. Fear is a signal. And if we used that signal in anything in life, it's our due North. It's suddenly realizing because nothing happens next. You could have, Hey, why don't you use these words? They'll help in reconciliation or rapport building. due north. It's suddenly realizing, because nothing happens next. You could have, hey, why don't you use these words? They'll help in reconciliation or rapport building. If you're afraid to say something, it doesn't matter. The technique is irrelevant. And so, you know,

when I say don't confuse technical with tactical, tactical is getting the job done, right? And so, I really believe that if we taught everybody to look at fear differently, we change everyone's life. All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais by trade and training a sport and performance psychologist, as well as the co-founder of Compete to Create. And the whole idea behind these conversations is to learn, but not only just to learn like passively, but to, in an applied way, learn from people who have committed their life efforts towards mastery.

And we want to understand how they work. And to do that, we want to understand the context, like where did they come from? How did they make sense of the world? What is their framework that they explain events and themselves and really how the world works, how events take place in their life? And then we also want to understand the mental skills that they are using to build and refine their craft. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions.

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strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Okay. This week's conversation is with Tony Blower, who's been in the martial arts, self-defense, defensive tactics, and combativeness industry for over four decades. And Tony founded the Blower Tactical Systems, BTS, back in 1985. And I first was exposed to his work when I was, and I don't want to say this really out loud, but it's just part of the story is I was doing some training and a very small

training in martial arts, one of the Kung Fu disciplines. And our teacher was just crazy for like how crystal clear Tony had made it, this guy named Tony and the Blower system and how crystal clear he had made it. And so it was just really cool. Like, oh, let me check that out. And that was a long time ago. That was like the early 2000s. And since that time, he's grown into one of the world's leading consulting companies specializing in the research and development of personal safety, close quarters tactics, and scenario-based training for law enforcement, military, and of course, professional self-defense instructors. But he's done this in a very different way. And this is where your intersection, this conversation,

I think will be intriguing, is that it is much about how the brain responds to fear, the psychological principles that cover and are encompassed in that response, and then how to adjust accordingly, and sometimes how to get ahead of those response mechanisms, those triggers. And his research is on the neuroscience of fear. And he's also got a program that we talk about in here called No Fear, and that's K-N-O-W, fear. So not that old kind of thought about no fear like i'm the

brave human no i've got no fear and no fear this is much more eloquent which is saying understand fear know your fear and you know so there's processes around self-awareness and resiliency and basically a movement-based approach to being able to understand your responses to fear. And just as a note, managing fear, you know, there's a science to it and there's also skills embedded in it. And there's also some art. And the art is that you and I have never met this moment. And so there's always an art to the way that you meet yourself in this moment. And there's an art as well when you meet yourself in the moment where your system is saying, hey, there's some danger here or I'm perceiving some danger. So yes, there's science, there's

physiology, all that good stuff, there's skills to be able to adjust, but there's always an art. That's the part about being human that I'm fascinated by. And so in Tony's words, I love how he captures this. Fear impacts everything we do from who we talk to, to whom we marry, from where we work, to where we live, from how much weight we lift, to whether or not we defend ourself, the ability to recognize and manage fear directly impacts the quality of our life. So Tony does not believe in that concept of no fear, like without fear. But by better understanding how we respond to our fears, what those fears are, then we can begin to change our relationship with it and use it as both a signal and fuel to be able to explore potential. So with that, let's jump right into this conversation with Tony Blauer.

What's up, Tony? Hey, Mike. How are you? I'm so stoked. I say that a lot, actually. But I mean it every time that I say it, but I've been following your work for a long time. And so I think it was back in two thousands, early, early two thousands for sure, where I was introduced to the systems you were creating for helping people survive. And so

I'm really looking forward to your insights in this conversation. Well, it's crazy. Cause I don't, I just discovered you and I wish I could say that I've been following you for 20 years, but I just discovered you. And I don't remember what was the first thing that, where you popped on my radar, but it had to do with the performance and the sports psychology and all of that stuff. And I'm always studying that information. And you came on, but there was something different in the way you interviewed people. And, and I was like, you're a really good listener and you asked really interesting questions. And so I started binging on your podcast. And then all of a sudden you interviewed somebody that I knew, and then you interviewed someone else I knew, and then you interviewed someone else. And I was like, like, what's going on here? And that's when I reached out to Brian. I said, Hey, make an introduction. I gotta, I gotta, I want to talk to this guy. Yeah. And I think we think about the same things a lot. And obviously I spent my career, you know, working with some of the most courageous men and women in the world

in hostile and rugged and consequential environments. And I'm not talking about stick and ball sport. I'm talking about stuff that is, um, has life and limb, you know, and I often talk about the space between hesitation and commitment and that's where people get hurt, right? That's where risk lies for me, the space between those two. And I want, and you've been spending your life efforts for the last 20, 40 years. I don't know how long, but you've been spending your life efforts for the last 20, 40 years. I don't know how long. But you've been spending your life efforts on helping people understand and know how to work with fear. And I can't wait for us to roll up our sleeves and get in it. But before we do that, where did you grow up? Montreal, Canada.

Well, actually, I grew up in a little town near Montreal, Canada called Laval, Chamonix, Laval. And I grew up as like little suburbia in the 60s. Do you have two languages that you speak? Well, if my wife were here, she'd have been laughing hysterically already because I tell people I speak English and French. And then she always, you know, interrupts conversations as Tony can't speak French. He's horrible. And she's fluently bilingual and her mom's from Paris. And, and so they make wicked fun of me when I speak French. Who's got the voice in your family? I mean, like, how are you not a DJ? You would have been a wasted talent if you were a DJ, but

you know, you know, it's so funny because I was just writing. We got a private forum for graduates, like the people who teach my system. And there's one of the guys in the forum. He's a cop. And he just did this kind of reverse engineered analysis of this famous Schwarzenegger piece talking about fear and behavior and he mentioned something about plan b that schwarzenegger said uh that having a plan b can sometimes hinder you from committing to plan a kind of like that metaphor of like burn burn the ships so there is no retreat and uh it was it was interesting because the plan B was I'll just be a DJ.

Oh, so you had that thought for a while. No, no, no. I'm making fun, but it was, but it made me think of that because the, and this is an interesting thing with the people you work with and kind of a message that I wanted there that there, that plan B is really still plan a, it's just a different path because there was a roadblock. And if you misinterpret how plan A and B are, what the metaphor is, you know, that can prevent you from committing. You said something interesting that I love is, and you use this, that the space between the lines a lot.

And, you know, I used to play guitar and remember, I think it was Dave Gilmore from Pink Floyd. He might have been quoting somebody else said music's a space between the notes. And a lot of it is that space. So what's the, what's the space between your ears and what, how does that impact what we do in life? And I like to remind people and tell people that, you know, how we think affects how we feel and how we feel affects how we think. And both of them together influence how we move. And, and over decades, I started looking at initially through the study of self-defense because that was my that was my big thing that's really you know someone said to me we're you know we've got two minutes in an elevator what do you do i go i i teach a

behaviorally based form of personal defense and usually it's enough big words in there that if we got time they'll go what does that As opposed to, because everyone thinks they teach self-defense. And, and what I, what I did is I put together what I believe is the only truly behaviorally and holistic approach that forces participants to discuss and look at an emotional arsenal, a psychological arsenal and a physical arsenal. And it's, it's counterintuitive because everyone wants to know like, oh, how do I kick a guy in the balls? Or how do I stick my fingers in his eyes? Or show me a good punch? And I tell people like, you won't do any of that stuff if you're scared shitless. Like the biggest thing at the end of the day when you peel the onion is fear. And so

the, you know, fear throttles everything we do in life. You know, who we talk to, therefore who we marry, where we work, how much money we make, whether we're going to lift that weight, how much weight we're going to lift, whether or not we're going to defend ourselves. But over the years, I've realized, and you know this, working with the people that you work with, is some people use fear as a fuel. Some people know how to absorb it and use it to supercharge, and they're not hindered by the connotation of fear. But I'll tell you this, and this is like I always, growing up, when I had a fear spike and I would get butterflies in my stomach or

sweaty palms or my breathing would change, I always associated that with lack of preparation. There was something off. No one ever said to me, you know, we'd never, when I was growing up, there was no sports psychology. No one ever said to me, this is good. And I wrote a piece recently where I said my, my ski coach, and I was a really good skier. I was good enough that people, I would hear people murmuring, Hey, Tony might make it on the Canadian Olympic team if he continues on this trajectory. I competed and I remember being on the top of Mont-Tremblant, above the tree line. My coach is rubbing my legs. I've already pissed like five times.

I want to projectile vomit. I'm so nervous. It was a big zone race. And he looks at me and he goes, how do you feel kid? And I turned to him, I'm like 15. I go, great coach. I just completely lied. Cause what are you supposed to say? Like, great. That's in how many people in life, because we, we don't have either the self-awareness or the trust as to where the conversation is going to go to go. This is what I'm really feeling. Right.

And we're not supposed to say I'm scared because in that moment you're supposed to be all together. And so you did what the social conditioning told you to do. Correct. Yeah. And it's a funny thing. And it's great that you bring that up because I, when we start any type of, any type of workshop or class, I say, Hey, there's no such thing as a stupid question. What's stupid is not asking a question. Right. And if your question is stupid, I'll let you know in front of everybody. So please ask it. Right. And it's, you know, everyone giggles. I'm trying to break the ice. But what ends up happening is as soon as we take a break, two or three people will come up to me and go hey i got a question i go why didn't you ask it and then i i bring everyone back i go social conditioning is because when you at some point you put your hand up in class and your teacher said weren't you listening and you were trained not to put your hand up you don't want to get embarrassed you know you want you know i want to add to that is that i think you're spot on with it and one of the things that

i'm starting to spend some time in business and enterprise working with some extraordinary creative, critical thinkers. I think right now, the number one choke point, the number one constrictor for human potential is this thing that we're talking about called FOPO, fear of other people's opinions. It's not the dark alley. It's not the dangerous human, you know, that has a knife or a gun. While I'm not minimizing how real those are and how traumatizing that type of experience can be, they're really rare compared to the pervasiveness of FOPO and FOPO fear of other people's opinions will constrict your ability to explore I would like to drop the last three letters and just say fear yeah I knew you was here's the thing because it uses thing like and honestly is you and I like we might not care about other people's opinions, but, but we're,

and I'm speaking for myself and I'm just guessing because, you know, I've listened to so many of your podcasts. I think, like you said earlier, you know, we're looking at things and we're use similar words and ideas and stuff is there's lots of things that I never finish because I want it to be better. You know, I started a book in the 80s. You know, I don't know how many years ago that was. Like, right? And people are saying, when's your book coming out? I'm writing three now.

You know, go to my blog, go to Facebook. I write all the time. But so it's not, I'm not afraid of other people's opinion. I'm more being held back by my own opinion so if i drop what would instead of fear of other people's opinion instead of instead of other people's it's fear of my own it's like man i don't like this i'm gonna you know and and i remember reading years ago and it's gotten me through some some it's not procrastination because i'm i create I'm always writing and

doing shit. Uh, but I remember reading this and I got to maybe, you know, get a, a picture of it up over my desk and it's art is never finished. And it was like, okay, when am I going to finish this? And it's like, just, you know, get it out, get it done. Uh, so it's really, uh, and I agree, and I agree with you. Like that's a, that's a huge thing, but we can help people navigate fear by helping them identify fear. And then it doesn't matter, am I afraid of being attacked? Is I'm afraid of that other person's opinion? Am I afraid that I got imposter syndrome?

If I can, again, teach people to peel that onion and recognize that they're afraid. I just, you know, my mom's going in for some scary tests and she sent me a text the other morning and she said, I'm really scared. And I said, you're supposed to be scared. This is scary, but you're going to be brave because you are brave and you can't be brave if you're not scared that if you're not scared of something there's no bravery it's big deal you're just an adrenaline junkie or there's something wrong with a part of your brain and you're just you're just not scared and and she was so blown away by the simplicity of that that and i think we forget that it's like we've been taught and there's like this joke i make about the no fear company right the no fear N-O, fear. And where 20 years ago, we wrote the letters K and W on a whiteboard beside the word no fear, explaining to people there's no such thing as no fear.

So, you know, it's a breath of fresh air because those who operate without fear, they die young. They're reckless. They die early. And we know that in the, on the edges of human potential, those that don't have fear, we don't want to be around them. So the ones that are changing an industry, maybe their family legacy, maybe it is an industry, maybe the human potential landscape is that they understand how to work with it. And they've invested so much time in their craft, their body, their technical skills, their mind, that they know how to work with it. And they've invested so much time in their craft, their body,

their technical skills, their mind, that they know how to work and operate in the amphitheater of consequence and risk. So can we do something really quickly before we go back to your Montreal ski story? Can we go back or can we get on the same page for some definitions? And so when you say fear, how are you operationalizing that? Because this is not easy for most people to know the difference between fear and fear responses. So how are you talking about fear? Right. I, I look at it. So I like big words and shit like that, but I'm, I'm in, in all of my stuff is intuitively derived. I'm not, I don't have any degrees after my name. I did not finish most schools. Um, art is a work in progress. Yeah. And, and, uh, but I was bored.

I was like, I don't, this doesn't, I don't, I don't like this. And I went and did my thing. And, uh, and I've had in, we've worked with some, you know, very special organizations and units where they've sent in, like, you know, I remember this one group we were working with in the United Kingdom, and they sent in the Britain's top forensic psychologist specialist he had every acronym after his name and and i was a little bit more defensive back when i was younger i was like what's this why is this guy here and it was like we're using you too much so they want to evaluate they were using my company too much right uh so it was like why why do you keep going back to blower tactical why are you like and so they wanted like a third party independent review. And I walked up to the guy and he was, you know, about five foot eight, long beard, like related character out of a movie. And I said, just so you know, I don't really care what you think of my program.

I know that it works because we've been using it for 25 years and guys doing like, like from soccer moms to direct action, this shit works. So I'm really only interested in I pronouncing big words incorrectly. That's what I want to know from you. And he kind of looked at me and I was like, it was, it was, it was defensive of me, but I wanted to let him know that he wasn't going to, right, you know, influence what I do. And I said, I would also respect your opinion, whatever you write, a lot more if you put down the clipboard and jumped in the class. And he said, I can do that in a British accent, which I can't do. And I said, yeah. And he did the class

and he wrote this like 90 page report saying, this is the shit. Uh, but you know, so to answer your question, I always answer questions with stories and, and, and to answer your question is, is when I started creating the type of force on force training I was doing in the eighties, there was no neurotransmitter myelinization understanding and MRIs and shit like this. And then all of the understanding the brain as a hard drive metaphors and how to improve perception speed and decrease reaction time. I was doing that intuitively because I cared so much about my students and and and i would see the shift from fear to focus to execution and and and i somehow intuitively knew back in the 80s that the mistake was focusing on technique and that and we created a little a little maxim meme for i said don't confuse technical with

tactical in a real violent encounter you need to be tactical and that your fixation on your favorite move or the go-to move or the, you know, the move that you like could actually change your real situational awareness. So my, my, my focus on these couple of seconds of the scariest moment in anyone's life gave birth to this whole approach to understanding fear and so in these seminars i did in the 80s and we did like 10 years of them so this is like years before the 10 hour 10 000 hours 10 like we did decades of this stuff where i'd have street fighters uh black belts instructors all these people from different arts and we would say to them like if you were encroached in the street and this happened what would you do like and they belts, instructors, all these people from different arts. And we would say to them, like,

if you were encroached in the street and this happened, what would you do? Like, and they would write down an index card, what they would do. And none of them did it. Like when we put them in the scenario, cause we had role players in gear, none of them were able to do it. And what we saw was, was this like a doubt and hesitation. And then suddenly it was primal gross motor it just looked like two young hockey players fighting right like grabbing jerseys and wailing on each other and it was like uh where's your jiu-jitsu where's your taekwondo where's your you know there was no mma back then but it just devolved into this and so and this is believe me i'm I'm getting to some succinct answer to your question. I'm with you. This is what was fascinating to me.

I was like, wow, like, why can't they get to, and I got fancier words now, but what I was trying to say back then was, why has their executive function and their cognitive skills where they learned if then go to their their internal you know the the dos metaphor when he does this i'll do that and why is that being hijacked by the reptilian brain the survival brain and and so that was what i was intensely looking at for like two decades before neuroscience started to explain like what was going on. So I'd read a book like the talent code and some other books and go, and now I had language to explain like, why could somebody train with me and get so good at practical shit? And because there was a, a, uh, what's the word I'm looking for here? Um, there was a congruency between the emotional, psychological, physical skill set that we were teaching. And it's that interaction that separates your work from, let's say, basic work, right? Basic work in the arts. There's no real basic structure in the arts, but more self-defense.

Yeah. So, you know, the, I mean, the difference between, let's say a block training protocol versus brain-based and, and so everything we did, it was like, why are you doing this? It was always intuitively Socratic. It was like, well, why would, you know, force must parallel danger. So what type of danger and what's going on here? Say that again. Force, force must parallel danger. Like in terms of like, uh, you've, you've got to defend yourself. You just can't just cause you, you're in the martial art that said, you know, we're going to teach you how to break people. You just can't, just because you're in the martial art that said, you know, we're going to teach you how to break people's necks, doesn't mean you can just break people's necks, right? It just, so the force, your use of force must be justified.

And I like to tell people like our systems emotionally, psychologically, and legally sound. And what I noticed uh, it, it, what I noticed was in the, doing those early seminars, when we were doing these, we, we, I lovingly referred to them as the panic attack seminar with Panther productions came out with a video series in 1986 called the panic attack drill. I've since dropped the name, you know, because of how much anxiety there is in the world. But, but the, um, the idea was like, I was like, like, like a mad scientist. I go, it wasn't like, wow, my role players are so good. You can't use your art. Right. It was like, cause we, we, we have some role playing, uh, drills and models. We said, never make your partner look good, but never make them look bad.

We know what's going on. This is just realistic fake training. Like this isn't a real fight. So it was very astutely humble. You know, it was like, I'd say, guys, remember we're wearing gear. It's dangerous. And, but you want to, you want to find out who, how close is too close and how deep is too deep when we're doing stuff. And then you do your own after action. What is, what is an after action? Like a, like a debrief. How'd we do that? like a murder board what you know what let's whiteboard this and i would slowly get people to like we used to do one exercise on my weekend seminar where i'd give them a ton of information and then they had to write an essay the next morning and read it for the class of a self-defense situation where they didn't take the threat seriously. They, I wanted people to have a thinking, writing, speaking relationship with the penalty

of inaction. What would happen if I didn't take this? And this could be extrapolated to any of the, you know, amazing extreme athletes and people you've worked with, like the penalty of inaction is not taking preparation seriously. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentous. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday, what you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentus.

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Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. One of the prime drivers for some of the most extraordinary folks, you know, talent wise and execution of that talent on the world stage is that they have this underlying obsessiveness, anxiousness, perfectionism, OCD thing, which is, I'm not saying it's healthy, but it's this underlying fear that is driving the relentless approach towards something. And that something is usually a relief. And while it sounds twisted, it is complicated. You know, the tip of the air performers, um, if you, I want to say this with all the regard for people that I love and I work

with is that you might not want to have them over for dinner. Right? Like there's, they're, they, they are different. The tip of the arrow people there, they occupy their space in a different way. And now if we pull back from that and we're talking about the two percenters, they tend to be a little bit more like, oh, okay. You know, like I get that. And if you come down to like the five, 10 percenters, which are still world-class that it's like, oh, I, I see, I see

exactly what's happening here. Right. And what I'm trying to share in, in not so eloquent ways is that those folks that have that relentless, unsettled, scratchy, you know, way about themselves will go to the edges. Right. And not everyone is willing to do what greatness is required to do. And I'm not suggesting even greatness is important, you know and it's something that i just wrote about you and you and you commented on like a lot of the studies on on i don't like the term peak performance but like on this world on this world class like like we do these studies and then people write books about them

and they do movies about them and they're inspiring to people who are in that, you know, 10, five, three, 2%. And they're like, wow, I'm going to model that. I'm going to mirror that. And what have you. Um, but at the end of the day, like everyone wants to do better. Everyone wants to be a little happier. Everyone wants to be a little bit, you know, smarter, a little bit more wealthy, a little bit better shape. Everyone wants more. Nobody wants less. You wouldn't walk up to somebody and go, Hey, would you like less of, of the good stuff? And so I think they're the, you know, the, the, the message is that method that you need to find a way to look at stuff. And this is what I kind of concluded after like decades of working with people that I'd bump into someone and they go, oh, you teach self-defense.

I always want to learn to defend myself. I go, well, you know, here's my card. And they wouldn't show up. Well, why wouldn't somebody who always wanted to learn to defend themselves not show up? Fear. I bump into somebody and, and, you know, I'm happily married, but, you know, let's say before I was married and I go, Hey, why don't you call me? Here's my phone number. And we think, why didn't she phone? Why didn't I phone? Fear, right? It's not going to work out. I'm going to get rejected, you know, whatever it is. And there's, and I think there's a more subtle part of the

operation of fear is that, cause I see this with character development all the time and core principles that people say they want to live by. And so if I were to ask you, and maybe we can get to this about you, like what are the three to five principles or words, if we could distill them down to like words that are at the center of the man you want to be. And many people will say things like, well, I want to, I want to love, I want to be kind. I want to be strong. Like there's some similar words that people will have around. And then when you deconstruct, like, okay, how are you working on developing those skills so that you can be about them in any condition? Because it's not okay to say, I want to love when it's easy. That's not what

it's about. It's like love is tested when it's tested. And then are you about it? And the ancient warriors like samurai included in this analogy is that they would take the core principles that they want to live by deconstruct how to live and die by those. So at the moment of death, and I don't want to romanticize a group of noble warriors, but I do have that romantic sense about them. And I also understand the, um, the complications of the samurai traditions and some of the, uh, compromised, um, behaviors that they had. But back to the point is that the idea that I want to, I can identify my core principles to live by, my guiding principles, and I'm going to construct my life to make sure that I'm able to live consistently in life and death about them

requires an introspective nature. And it also requires a psychological skill development without it we're relying on what we're relying on hopes and wishes and technical talent or alone it's not enough it will not carry you through the difficult situations just caring i care about fill in the blank it's not enough we have to deconstruct our life to be able to be about it in any environment. And this is why your work has been really interesting and fascinating to me, is that you're taking self-defense and then you are offering a complete approach towards being a true, well, I don't know if master is the right word, but somebody who is truly skilled in the ability to defend themselves. This is a long way of me saying is that when people give you, when you give them their card and they say, I want to do the work with you, there's another subtle fear, which is

I'm busy. And it's part of our vernacular of success. Like, oh, are you busy? It's like, no, man, that is not what i'm trying to do i'm not trying to be busy i'm trying to be purposeful i'm trying to be aligned i'm trying to be potent in you know my words and my efforts and the reason they might not be showing up is fear of something but fear of not being able to let go of all the activities that are keeping them busy yeah i i i would respectfully argue that after doing that for decades. And the reason I say that is, you know, my wife will say to me, hey, we got to go over some life insurance stuff and go over the will.

And I'm like, I'm busy. Because I don't want to, I'm not good with dying and getting old. It hadn't occurred to me, right? Oh, so are you saying more denial? Yeah. Nothing will change your life faster than sudden violence and so you know you could have a guitar collection a car collection uh your wife your amazing kids all that and if i said to you you know you can keep all your materialistic stuff but you got to give up your family to a violent encounter, or you can keep your family in your life, but you got to give up, you know, your coin collection,

your stamp collection, your, your business. Most sane people are going to go, okay, I can, I can rebuild that. I can't, this is my family. This is my, and, and so when somebody is actually talking about self-defense and they don't show up, I don't think it's because they're busy doing other shit. I think it's the conversation of like, I got a stomach ache, I got to go to the doctor, but I'm going to wait and see if it goes away on its own because I'm in denial. I don't want to, you know, you don't, the moment your tooth hurts, you don't run to the dentist going, I hope it's root canal. I never, I wanted to experience that. I've never had that. You wait and you wait and you wait. And it's the same thing. I think people, we live in a bubble. We want it to happen to somebody else. You know, we've been domesticated. It wasn't that long ago

that everyone knew something about survival. If you lived, you know, in the wild, wild west, and this is interesting because, you know, we've romanticized Westerns and stuff like that. But if you and I were out hunting and, you know, some outlaws came on our property, I'm not going to stereotype here so nobody lose their shit, but if my wife is on the porch with her, you know, black powder rifle and the kids are hiding the door and she's going, you know, get off our property, I'll shoot. This isn't a movie. she's scared shitless like and then so you know and i'm kind of off on like 97 tangents but we all know we knew don't eat that shit that's poisonous if you don't if you don't catch a fish or catch an animal you're gonna die die you know there was a there was a point when we all knew and now it's been we've outsourced our safety and and we are domesticated thinking

oh shit like you know i always tell people remind them hey you're the first responder in your fight you know the person you're calling who you think is the first responder is not the first responder like this is happening. It's happening now. You don't have time to dial 911. That's really inspiring to me. You know, you put a sharp point to the stick here, which is like violence will change your life and you are responsible for the response. Yeah.

Yeah. And so we need skills. So, okay. So hold on. Let me interrupt this by asking. Let's go back. How do you define or think about fear and either tight definition is cool or if you want to move this to the fear loop you know fear is a i'm trying to think of like the the no one's ever said to me because i'm always lecturing so so I explained fear like over

five days or five hours, but it's, it's when I'm visualizing, uh, my failure in the present, but it's a future event. So it's impacting what I need to do in the present. So I'm right now I'm visualizing my pain, my doom, destruction, failure about a future event. And it's impacting what I need to do right now in the present. So it's creating the fear spike creates doubt and doubt creates hesitation. And then a movie starts in not my mind, but your mind, anybody listening to this, when you get a fear spike and it could be, you know, you got up a little bit late, you're on your way to work, you have an important meeting, you got some shit to do, you got to get your presentation and all of a sudden, you know, there's traffic. Unsolicited,

a movie starts playing in your mind. Oh, can I swear? Oh yeah. Oh fuck. Right. Now I'm going to be late and so-and-so, and it's our important customer. And none of this has happened, but you've got this negative movie that's changing cortisol production, changing how you breathe. Now you're vertically breathing. You're in your mouth. And now it's contagious.

You're calling up and going, you know, let me speak to Bob. I'm running late. What's going on? Shut up. You know, like that's what fear does. Okay. So you're describing fear as a

psychological phenomenon it's a thought that leads to thought pattern that leads to images and those images create an emotional experience of real a physiological experience and the combined of those two impact performance whether it's a phone call or it is whatever fill fill in the blank. So for you, the fear spike is the moment to recognize, right? It's almost like the fork in the road. What are you going to do with the fear spike? And then I would say, we're not going to be able to get to the good stuff unless we're aware. And so awareness is my lead off batter, you know, like increasing awareness of our internal state, whether that's our psychology or our physiology or our emotional state. Like we have to become better aware and that is a, we can train it. You know, mindfulness is one way.

Wise conversations with wise. And here's an interesting thing. And I, and I, and I always come back to this and it's been in the last couple of years where if you said to me, so people don't know me just listening here, but I've been a martial artist since I'm seven, I'm 59. Right. So 52 years, I've been doing some sort of, you know, wrestling, boxing, Taekwondo, Wing Chun, Kung Fu, Jeet Kune Do, grappling. I was doing MMA before there was MMA. You know, we would just beat the shit out of each other, right? Videotaping stuff and analyzing it, doing multiple sale and like crazy stuff. And if you said to me now, because I've been doing that more of my life than anything else. Tony, you can only teach a no fear seminar that's just talking or, and, and you'd have to give up all your other physical stuff or continue doing self-defense. I would pick the no fear. My epiphany the last couple of years was that,

you know, what's the number one fear in the world for most people? Public speaking. Right. Right. And it's like, it's, it's, you know, worrying about it. And, but, and you can easily draw a connection between public speaking and worrying about what people are thinking. That's right. Cause if there's no audience, you're up, you're up there early on the stage. You're going, yeah, you're tapping on the mic going on and then you get out there telling bad jokes i yeah i remember after there was a um an air rage incident you know we did some stuff with the air marshals and and uh before 9-11 after 9-11 and uh they brought me into a conference and they asked me to come speak at this conference on air rage and passenger safety many, many years ago. And they said, you know, a bunch of our team are going to be there.

There's about 45 people. I misunderstood conference and team. I thought it was a conference for 45 people, but there were like 500 people in the audience and it was on live TV and I'm okay with talking, but I get there and I meet the 45 people who are like the advisory board and all the instructors and all that. And then they go and then the conference is later and Fox and CNN and all the big things. And then it's like 500 people. And I remember calling my wife and going, I can't do this. Like I'd never. And so it's like your first fight, you're nervous, your 10th fight, you're nervous. But the, the, the nervousness that you experience is different. And then you're 20 and there's no place that, you know, you get complacent if you're a pro, but every new arena introduces another level of stress. And so I always come back to this idea where like, I was okay talking to a hundred people, but to jump up to 500 people and then have like an earpiece on with like live

where somebody is talking, it was, I mean, it was, it was, I didn't even remember any of it. People told me I was good, but I, like I, I was, you know, and so part of this is, and this is an interesting thing is I did this, uh, here's a tangent for you, this five hour seminar on fear management in New York city. And I'm sharing a cab back to the east side. Uh, and, uh, guy turns to me in the car and we're in a yellow car, yellow cab driving. And he goes, wow, that was, that was, that was, that blew my mind. I said, thanks, man. He goes, what's it like to have no fear?

And I go, you talking to me? You talking to me? And I'm doing a De Niro joke there because we were in a yellow cab at the time and nobody got it. He didn't get it. And I said, De Niro? And he goes, oh, taxi cab. Yeah.

I go, what do you mean? What's it like to have no fear? And he goes, well, you know, like, cause I just did a five hour seminar on how to manage fear, how to look at fear. And there was this assumption that because I wrote all this shit that I'm beyond it. And I want to share that with you and your audience that you don't get to a place where there's no fear. If you have passion, then you're excited. You've got this anxiety. I want to, you know, I was, I was, I wasn't nervous to meet you, but I was excited to meet you.

But if I didn't understand that enough, maybe I'd be talking like this because my voice, right? My voice is quavering. I'm not breathing properly. And I looked at the guy and I said, what makes you think I have no fear? He goes, well, you just, the way you talked and everything you explained. voice right my voice is quavering i'm not breathing properly and i looked at the guy and i said what makes you think i have no fear he goes well you just the way you talked and everything you explained i said you know like you see those three guys on the street corner there he goes yeah we're

stalked the light i said if you were walking down the street and they took their cigarettes and you know clearly in an aggressive fashion put them out on the ground and kind of leaned off the wall and started moving towards you would you get a fear spike? Would you go, shit, I'm about to get mugged? He'd go, yeah. I'd go, me too. I'd go, the difference between you and I is that you might feel fear for too long that got you in more trouble. And I would recognize the fear spike and do something with it. And so I look at that fear spike and we could talk. Like if I said, Mike, explain to the audience what the fear spike is. You might download something that you memorize.

So it's fear as like who came up with arousal as a term for fear, right? It never really goes well. It doesn't make any sense. Arousal regulation. Yeah, I don't really feel aroused right now. In fact, I'm hiding in the bathroom with my thumb in my mouth. Right. So, right.

But so what I try to do is demystify the whole thing. And I make this joke. And when I'm talking to people, I go, listen, I love words like pedantic, but I'm going to try and share this with you as if Ernie and Bert from Sesame Street are helping me teach. And so we're going to get the big, the big words. So, you know, we, we educate our brain and we're all Street are helping me teach. And so we're going to get the big words. So, you know, we educate our brain and we're all cerebral and all that shit.

But if something happens at three in the morning, if something happens suddenly, you just want Ernie and Bert going, hey, don't be in front of the little hole, right? You know, like that's the first thing I teach people when we do weapon defense. Don't be in front of the hole. And if I teach you some like gun disarms yeah you'll be going where to put my hand what do i do this and i'll go don't be in front of the hole you'll always remember that and you will grab on that and go and you know it's amazing when you just get in somebody's head it changed we've there's so many people in

martial arts in education in business that have complicated shit um and and it it it needs to be so simple because at the end of the day when a stimulus is introduced too quickly the reptilian components of the brain including limbic system amygdala and everything you know the relationship between intuition and instincts hijacks executive function and now we go into this and people go fight or flight and all i go yeah but like let's get rid of that because that's not that's not a useful in my opinion humbly it's not useful i get asked that at like every conference is this like fight or flight and freeze and i go yeah but that's stuff that scientists coined after studying something that's not useful when you're the subject in the event.

Right. I don't have like a I don't have a physiology button on my hip going. I need a little bit more adrenaline here. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft. And what surprised me the most is how much it actually helps regulate temperature. I tend to run warm at night and these sheets have helped me sleep cooler and more consistently, which has made a meaningful difference in how I show up the next day for myself, my family and our team here at Finding Mastery.

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I've been using Caldera Lab for years now. And what keeps me coming back, it's really simple. Their products are simple and they reflect the kind of intentional living that I want to build into every part of my day. And they make my morning routine really easy. They've got some great new products I think you'll be interested in. A shampoo, conditioner, and a hair serum. With Calderdera lab it's not about adding more it's about choosing better and when your day demands clarity and energy and presence the way you prepare for it matters if you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate

your routine without complicating it i'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. The fight, flight, freeze, submit, flow, those responses, I would say it's nice to bucket them, but it's not useful as a response. It's like, oh, this is freeze. If that's the case, you might be hurt. Right. Well, if you're able to say where you are, then you are not flowing. That's for sure. And I love the insight you made about 15 minutes ago about technique is the wrong thing to focus on minutes ago about, um, technique is the

wrong thing to focus on in the cadence of, of action, right? Focus on your elbow being in, if you're going to shoot a basketball, no, no, no, no. Focus on, focus on something outside of you. That's narrow and specific is way better, but that's almost impossible to do. If your brain, your amygdala is hijacking your thinking brain because all of the information really becomes internal rather than external oh shit oh no what happened and then we when we lock out externally all we see is the big hole right or the big hands that this man's about to put on on my neck or whatever yeah so knowing how to focus properly is a function of being able to have some awareness and then if you can have some sort of controls around the response to fear is it way better

a lot of it and i come back to and it was you know in the in the late 80s i was listening to howard gardner uh you know and he just released i, Frames of Mind and he was on a PBS talk show and I'm driving and he says, they asked him a question, he goes, I've been studying athletes and he was studying like different types of genius, athletic genius, mathematical genius, whatever it was. And he said, you know, he goes, after studying this, however many hours and people, he said that he's concluded that 80% of our motivation is derived from our expectations. And I'm driving and I'm like, I didn't like spending years thinking about stuff. And that was almost like, like, like he had just put something in the ground that I could build something on because it was

like, it was a stat and two cool words, motivation, expectation. And when he said it, I actually said out loud in the car, I went, cause I was driving. Right. I was like, what, what was that? Like, and then he paused and actually repeated it to the interviewer as if I had asked him the question. It kind of blew my mind. So it was this magic moment. I went back to my office, no whiteboards, blotter on my desk, and I wrote down expectation, motivation, 80-20. And I sat there and literally within 10 minutes, I wrote out this thing that has lovingly been referred to as the neural circuitry of fear is just this little strip map of it starts off with a scenario and then most of us think we're going to be fine and then a new stimulus gets introduced right we're going to open up a restaurant we're going to get married and live happily ever after i'm going to be a pro athlete you know and and and this is an interesting

thing and and somehow it got lost in one of my tangents, but most of the people that we study and write books about are those five, 10, three, two percenters in the world. And they see things different. They've got, whether it's, it's, you know, and you could look at and go, well, no, the reason Mozart was Mozart because his parents were musicians and they gave him a piano. No, I get but that's just not it there's something also like a little freaky going on with some with some of you like like wayne i just watched a um an interview with wayne gretzky and he was talking about how he used to watch games with a pen and a paper and watch the games and track where, have you heard the story? It's like an early day heat map of where the puck goes. Yeah.

And like there's a lot of amazing hockey players, but nobody did an intuitive heat map with the puck and then looked down and went, these lines represent where the puck will be in all future games. Like that's genius. That's like, that's insane. Right. When I look, I get goosebumps right now, you know, thinking about that. And, you know, I'm on a flight back from wherever I was watching this documentary and like making notes on my phone and stuff. I can't wait to get in front of people and teach and talk about that. And what's, what's that got to do with self-defense? It's about metacognition it's about understanding if i understand how i think about thinking that changes everything and most people are lazy about that and this was something that comes back to we talked about that like path to mastery which is what i love about your i've emailed so many people uh different shows that i'll listen to. I'll go, this person needs to hear this of yours.

Oh, cool. Because what I'm hoping through Osmosis is the message is I'm real human and this is what I'm doing to be better at being present and successful in business, my life, and my family life. And that comes through in every talk. And every time, this is why I'm so excited to talk to you is because every one of them has uh with with the exception of maybe a couple of like the masters you interviewed but even then i would i bet i could find a fear and go but if you look at it like this you you can like what we're trying to do

is improve perception speed and decrease reaction time that's the magic epiphany in the training is like if i go like i read body language really well because of my training and it drives people crazy because i'll be with my son or my daughters or my wife or somebody else and i'll go what's up and they're like nothing like they have no self-awareness that I know in two days from now, there's going to be a problem that they knew about two days earlier that I could see percolating, but they didn't have the self-awareness. And it comes down to like, you brought this up, how important awareness is. But if you have more fear about digging deep exploring talking emoting then you can't create greater self-awareness it's this vicious it is a cycle and micro expressions are telling the tale

people will tell you who they are all the time and And there's macro expressions, there's gross body movements, you know, that will tell, give you information, but micro expressions are nearly impossible to trick and to fool. And so when you're really feeling something, there are micro expressions. Now the other person like me across from you right now, if I'm consumed with me, I can't get in touch with the small micro expressions that you're presenting. And so then we really do miss each other when that happens, which is a very common scenario. Did you ever read the book Einstein's Dreams? I did.

So do you remember the scene with the two ships passing in the boat where he wants to tell her, I love you and we should be together? And she bites her lip. And, and I, and I remember extrapolating on that and, and telling somebody like, you know, I'm about to say something important to you and you bite your lip, but is it because you have like a canker sore that's bugging you? And then I see you bite your lip. And then I go, she just said, don't get too intimate with me. Right. And now, and we, we miss everything, but Mike, that, you know, that's, that's, that's, that's a great way to, I would, I just generically say, Hey, body language is 60% of your communication. Words are 10, 30, sorry, tone is 30 words are 10.

And, and, uh, you know, in self-defense that's, you know, that's, that's huge, but all of this, and I forget where I went with this is like, if i had a choice right now to teach thousands of people the the the system that i spent decades creating or just talked about managing fear i would just teach them managing fear because i believe that when you manage fear you can get in the fight any fight the fight for your business the fight for relationship the fight for self-defense. Statistically, and you alluded to this earlier, you know, if we're in our, in our, if we're not 15 or 16 anymore, the chances of us getting into a fight are so, so slim. But I like to remind people, violence doesn't care what martial art you study and violence doesn't care whether you're a Republican or Democrat or a pacifist or whatever.

It just happens. Now, it doesn't randomly just happen. There's like, and this is an amazing study that I've done interviewing from tier one operators down to, you know, women who are living in rape shelters, that everybody who lived to tell the tale said that a bad feeling before something happened. A hundred percent of people. Yeah. I've read that. Um, I haven't done any original research, but the idea that there is some sort of spidey sense or intuition, this feedback loop, and then back to the social programming is that what I've read is, and I've heard this numerous times, is that I just didn't want to be the weird one to run. Or I didn't want to scream because there was people around. Can I share something on that? Yeah, please.

Because we'll create a, hey, you're in an elevator. It's a sealed vault. You got a bad vibe. Guy looks over and he presses emergency stop. I want you to be like on him right away. And you're like, well, yeah, but what if, you know, like what if he pushed the wrong button? I go, have you ever been in an elevator in the history of your life where somebody pushed emergency stop by accident? No. And no and people argue because fear it all comes back to fear and fear of being the weirdo fear of you know his cognitive dissonance i was afraid of you know i live in a bubble all the different

things uh that it could be um we you know i was i was having this really interesting talk with Greg Glassman. And he says to me one day. Greg is the founder of? The founder of CrossFit. Right. And just genius, so inspired by the side of him that I know. And I'm not protecting it. It's like CrossFit's got a lot of controversy in the world and always has. But the, the, the man I know is a fricking genius and a mentor.

And he's sitting at dinner and, or we're at lunch and he says, he goes, he calls me T, he goes, T, why do you think some people won't fight? And like, I want to say something really smart because Greg's really smart. So I'm going, well, Greg, you know, there are so many knee interrupts. He goes, isn't it just because they're afraid to lose? And I was like, holy shit, I was about to do like a 10 minute speech, but that's the answer. Why won't that person compete? Like the coach who's really not a coach, he's a trainer. And I differentiate the difference between coaches and trainers.

I have this trajectory called technician, trainer, coach. And everyone who calls themselves, not everyone who calls themselves a coach, some of them are just technicians and trainers. And the coach is all about reading those micro cues and going okay what's that nothing no you tied your shoes differently and i noticed that and you tied them a little too tight and a little you're a little angry but yeah i had a fight with my girlfriend this morning okay hold on a second she's not on the field with you like you gotta you gotta deal with that i got so many amazing stories about pre-fight talks with fighters where they share stuff and I would never, if I was just like a generic coach going, remember this, move to the left,

do this, remember he's going to come at you, like they would have lost the fight. It was creating a relation. So that's what a technician does. The technician and the trainer, the technician is like, remember how to make your fist. Remember, keep your head down, keep your hands up. The technician is all about the cues. In this loose trajectory, the technician is all about the biomechanics. The trainer is all about the strength, the endurance, the stamina, the reps you did.

You're ready for this. You did your road work. But the coach is in your head. And he's your mentor, your guide. And what I try to do, and this is like where I want to go with my life's work, is how do we, if we could teach kids to look at fear differently, we change the trajectory of their life. If we could teach husbands and wives to look at fear differently, we change the health of their life. If we could teach husbands and wives to look at fear differently, we change the health

of their relationship. Let's do that right now. Like, let's go through your stimulus response model. And when there is a stimulus that creates a spike, and we're talking about a physiological spike, you know, breathing changes, heart rate changes, sweaty palms, whatever. Think it impacts thinking. And then there's a cycle walk us through this loop that that you're well versed in that you innovated on walk us through the stages of that loop or the main stages of that loop to maybe give people young people alike a way to understand where they are and a way to exit or way to work with that cycle more efficiently. And what I'll do is I'll get you a graphic and maybe stick it in the

show notes. We will have a map. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Um, so the, the way I laid it out is like, I say, everything in life is a scenario. So I got a flat tire scenario. I've got a prepare for an exam scenario. I've got to tell somebody, we need to get divorced scenario. We need to get married scenario. And so I need to be motivated to do that. Right? So the first block is motivation. If I ask somebody, you know, and I'm asking you, Mike, do you like running? Like as a form of fitness? Right. There's something wrong with people who like running, right? So except for the people that like running, they think there's something wrong with us. But if you said to me, hey, let's work out, let's go for a 10 mile run. I'd be like, oh, I'm super busy. Well, what are you

doing? I'm busy. And like, I'm not a big runner either. I like sprinting. I like super busy. Well, what are you doing? Um, I'm busy. I'm like, I'm not a big runner either. I like sprinting. I like short stuff. But what happened was when I said to you, let's go for a run, your brain immediately started a little movie. I don't like running. Last time I did that, my shins hurt, my back hurts. I'm shitty at running. And so this, what starts is this negative or positive cascade of thoughts and ideas in your head. So we next block after I, okay, I need to, I need to attack this scenario. It's mode. I, right away, I start with Gardner's motivation expectation that for me to be positively motivated, I need to be, I need to have positive expectations. If I don't, I'm not going to support

it. I'm going to come up with excuses. So what did when i wrote this out as i said okay motivation expectation what happens to the expectation where's that getting fuel from what's and that's what i'm visualizing and most people there are some people who think they don't visualize everyone does it's just it's how we work it's yeah it's semantics it's definition i remember having a woman at one of my seminars going yeah that won't work for me because i don't visualize and and i said really i said okay let me help you out here um did you have breakfast today she goes yeah i go what'd you eat she's at bacon eggs i said how do you know she goes because i remember i go you don't see yourself eating in your mind she goes no i remembered i said okay do you drive yeah it took me about two minutes but it was like finally what was your first car

in college and she went and I said do you see what you're doing right now like you're reliving a scene where you saw yourself parking and you got out of your car and you're remembering the color of your first shit box and she goes and she and she was like, oh my God, I visualized. Like she had no clues, right? It's just that. And so what we have is your scenario, expectations, motivation, expectation, visualization. The things that inspire how we visualize are our beliefs. Like if you grew up and your dad or mom said,

you'll never amount to anything or you can do anything. That's huge, right? Uh, you might, you might in the world of self-defense, all martial artists are taught, you know, if somebody has a knife, just give him what he wants. And I, I, in the eighties, I said, what if he wants your, your body or your life? Everyone just assumed it was a mugging. I was like, well, what if he's taking you to a secondary crime scene? And you've got, now you've, now you're not even looking for chances to fight because you had some erroneous belief system that somebody planted in your head, right? And so, you know, women who grew up with Victorian values, you're not the strongest guys.

You can't do this. It's a man's world that changes how they're going to defend themselves and influence everything. So inside, this is what we call the fear loop. So this next block in the fear loop is made up of beliefs, neural associations, big fancy way to say how your brain links up a symbol, right? So if I look at somebody now in this day and age, I bump into somebody at a bar and I turn around, I'm about to go, hey, asshole, watch yourself. And he's got cauliflower ears and a busted nose and he's wearing a tap out shirt. What am I visualizing right away? A fighter. Yeah. He's an MMA fighter. He's going to dump me on my head and ground and pound me. And so this comes back

to when you asked me, how do I define fear? It's when I'm visualizing a future event that hasn't even happened and it's impacting how I think and feel in the present. It's ruining this one second, one minute, one day of my life. You got to recognize the fear loop and to get through the fear loop, I use two acronyms that I love. One is false evidence appearing real and false expectations appearing real. Generally, and the evidence comes first because usually we see something that creates the movie, that person or that individual or that. You could go, you know, you're entering a jiu-jitsu tournament and you're favored to win and then you know you you show up and you're everyone's high-fiving you and then bj pen walks in the room and signs up to compete and you go are you kidding me the prodigy and you're going well i guess i can i'm going to take second right and then uh is that is that the expectations false expectations yeah false Yeah, false evidence. Creating false expectations.

Like if you thought you were going to win and then one of the best grapplers in the world showed up. And then if two more of the best grapplers in the world showed up, your hopes of getting on the podium. But nothing's even happened. You haven't even fought them yet. And you're already going, I'm done. Walk us through the Dan Millman quote that inspired you. Yeah, so I love this quote. Dan Millman said, if you face just one opponent and you doubt yourself, you're outnumbered. So good. You face just one opponent and you doubt yourself here. And that's what we do,

right? Like, you know, we, we, how am I going to do today? Is this going to turn out? Okay. And so once you recognize that you've, you're in this fear loop, you've had a spike, you're caught in a weird little self-belief, you know, thing that you're trying to find a reason why these thoughts are evident and, and you're protecting yourself from future danger of, you know, being let down or looking stupid or being hurt, whatever. And you've got some real evidence now. It seems real at least. What then? Yeah. So I'll try to get through it a little bit quicker and just and just keep it superficial and then give some examples

so we've got motivation expectation visualization now something happens there's a fear spike and everything goes into the fear loop and the fear the fear spike can happen uh at any point. What's beautiful about this chart is like, I get a lot of people that are academics that go, yes, but technically I go, this is a Lego block. You know, if you're having a Michael Jordan moment, you can be, you have the flu and it's the last game.

You're still going to be better than everyone else. You're not thinking, it's just Lego. It's just organic. It's flowing. You know, something happens last game you're still going to be better than everyone else you're not thinking it's just lego it's just organic it's flowing you know something happens and now you're out of the situation because you're going man i don't even know what i did there but holy shit i'm safe right and um so that's our big mantra i tell people like always choose safety in life that's not the same as playing it safe it's interesting because there's always one or two people when i say choose safety in violence, choose safety in business, choose safety in relationships. There's always one or two people who goes like, yeah, but do you really want to play it safe in life?

Like I'm not saying playing it safe. The safest thing in an active shooter situation might be charging the bad guy. Right? Like think about that. The safest thing might be doing the most dangerous thing. Right. There you go. Right. So the safest thing is mitigating the future danger right is that what you're talking about

yeah just going well if i hide under the desk while he's walking around shooting people under the desk that's not very safe what am i maybe i could throw the desk at him maybe i could charge maybe i could you know there's there's people that have done this and survived and taken the guy out. And I'm giving it like a, like a very black and white, this binary example here. But the, the, you know, you said earlier, and I'm going to loop back around for people when you mentioned, you know, why some people won't defend themselves or where they're worried about being the person, right? And I go, well, I always run, just choose safety. The safest thing you can do here is

expose the potential danger threat because somebody who isn't a risk to you will be earnestly embarrassed by so if i if i look at you and i go hey mike are you about to sucker punch me like if you were your behavior gets weird you ever you ever see on the news like somebody who did it saying they didn't do it it's pretty this goes back to body language like it's pretty obvious yeah right yeah and so if i say to somebody if i like i'll give you an example i tell this to women all the time uh you know they're out on a walk or a trail and they think they're being followed i go turn around at the greatest distance possible and in a very assertive voice go hey are you following me and in class they'll we get the same answers you said someone will go but what if

he's not why do i don't want to be like i don't want to listen i said if i were following you i teach self-defense if i were following you and you turned around because i was on the same trail as you just by fluke and you turned around and went, Hey, what the fuck do you think you're doing? Are you following me? I wouldn't suddenly decide to become a rapist just because you accused me of that, right? Like good, honest people will be mortified in their body language or be like, Whoa, no. Oh my God. And you would know you're safe. And people are like, but what if he is following me? Then you want to know at the greatest distance. So you have the max amount of time. It's this, and again, what does it come down to? People start going, yeah, but what if he is following me? Then you want to know at the greatest distance. So you have the max amount of time. It's just, and again, what does it come down to?

People start going, yeah, but what if, what if? And that's all fear, fear, fear. So back to the fear loop, my scenario could be I'm out on a run, right? I'm motivated to run. I've got positive expectations. And then all of a sudden, you know, I roll an ankle on a trail. I see bear tracks. Somebody's following me. That puts me in the fear loop.

I'm not going to, we know that when someone goes and you articulated this perfectly before, someone puts you in the fear loop. What does that do? It changes your breathing. Breathing, now you're not getting oxygen to the brain. You're vertically breathing. You're cortisol production. You're not thinking clearly, right? So you need to recognize all that stuff to get control of your physiology. But more importantly, and this is the big, the big leap in logic that I made is I told people when it's happening, the physiology of fear is irrelevant to me. All that's relevant is the psychology of fear. How am I thinking about this fear? Because now I am the only coach I have. And if my inner coach is going, you're fucking dead here,

right? Or my inner coach is going, you got to move, you got to move, get up, pick up that rock. You're okay. Take a deep breath here. Talk to that guy there, right? Like, you know, like sometimes like people like doing a presentation and they're super, super nervous. I go, listen, people are going to yawn while you're talking. It's not because you're boring. It's because they're tired, right? Someone's going to get up and leave. It's because he's got a small bladder. It's not because your speech was shit. Find somebody. There's always two or three people in the audience that are geeks about what you're talking about. And they're leaning forward just to a private lesson to that person don't talk to the whole room right and so what it is it's like i

don't like to run a mile so what i'll do is i'll run four four hundreds right it's breaking down if you'll defend yourself against one person and you're confronted by three what the fear movie does is oh it's three people That's three times 200 pounds. It's six arms versus two. What we need to do is break it down and go, okay, this is one person times three. Yeah. So you're using the art of reframing. And so that's a scientific term, but it's an art of how to see something differently. And you can get ahead. You can go upstream on, this is how I'm going to think about it. And it's way better. We call that front loading, right? Front loading your thinking patterns, as opposed to trying to sort it out while you're on stage or while you're in the, you know,

the fight. Well, here's the thing is that when people see the map and they get the fear spike, so the fear spike, I tell people the fear spike is like is like if if we're uh in the military and we're in charge of reading radar the blip is the fear spike you don't wait to go yeah that's a missile right like you're like you want to be way to left to bang way to left of the ambush so i tell people your intuition sends a fear spike and it's we we all have like this intuitive gps system okay i'm breathing my breathings then we just agree that self-awareness my breathing's off what's up okay what am i thinking like oh i'm going to be late and then and then this meeting is going to go bad and oh shit this day is turning

off or like and we start this movie as soon as you can stop it you realize i'm in the fear loop and that's the magic of this map it's so simple the magic of the you realize I'm in the fear loop. And that's the magic of this map. It's so simple. The magic of the map is I'm in the fear loop. How do I get out of the fear loop? And I tell people there's, there's a door that you get out of. It's called challenge or threatened door. That's right. Challenge or threatened. And then recognize it. And you determine. Right. You determine that. Right. So you say to people like, Hey, I would like to continue sabotaging the day by staying in the fear loop. No one does that. Right. Yeah. Right. But they don't do it if they know there's an escape hatch. Right.

So that's what the map has done for people where, where, and this is kind of what was exciting about connecting with you and stuff, because when I was 20, I asked what I want to do. And I said, I want to make the world safer. And this individual said to me, well, how are you going to do that? That sounds a little grandiose. And I said, well, there should be as many self-defense systems as there are humans because we are all different personalities and body types so what if we taught people how to be human

weapons what if we taught them how to trust their intuition trust their instincts and move how they move what if we demystified range of motion and mechanics what if i told you that every time you put your seat belt on your elbow is tracking the same uh kinetic chain as an elbow across the face that if every time you scratched your back your arm came up and that was a vertical elbow that could clip somebody in the neck or the chin in a close quarter attack that every time you tied your shoelace your hip flexor is moving in the same, you know, range of motion connect a chain. And so you've done your 10,000 reps of knees and elbows. And, and, you know, every time you checked if a melon was ripe, that's sticking your thumb in someone's eyes. And when I do this, like the people who aren't

martial artists, it's like this weight of fear comes off the mic they're like oh my god i can do that now what's missing is understanding more about situational awareness and then the last ingredient when i say to a middle-aged mom a girl who's about to go away to college some guy who never learned you know how to fight and defend himself protect his family i go they're doing these drills, they're all empowered. And I go, you're in an elevator and the door closes and somebody pushes emergency stop. What are you going to do? You're in a sealed vault. Well, but how do I know if it's a real attack? I go, well, it's a real attack. Yeah, but like this is happening.

And what's happening is they're in the fear loop and so what i recognize after decades of doing this that the single concept or principle for that on off switch is understanding fear and the psychology of fear and telling people like i told my mom in the earlier story you know like i've told fighters, I had a fighter once, hey coach, I'm really nervous. You're supposed to be nervous. You're about to get in a fight. The guy's going to try and kick you and punch you in the face. I'd be nervous too. Right. And he's like, and he smiles and he goes, thanks coach. Right. And he loosens up and he's hitting. And I sat down and something started to nag at me. And this is back in the eighties where I'm still trying to work out like, what is the next step?

And so now I have the next step to give people. So I'm like, something's nagging at me. So I'm trusting self-awareness. I don't feel, for a moment, I felt like Customato and Tyson saying, hey, the difference between a hero and a coward is what they do with their fear. They both feel it. Right? Because I gave him my layperson's version of that. You're supposed to be nervous, but you're going to fight.

You're right. Thanks for reminding me. He's shadowboxing. He's moving around. I'm sitting there and person's version of that. You're supposed to be nervous, but you're going to fight. You're right. Thanks for reminding me. He's shadow boxing. He's moving around. I'm sitting there and something's bugging me. And then I went deep and I went, okay, what's going on? Okay. And I looked, I looked at this kid and I said, Hey dude, he's fighting for a title fight

that night. And, uh, it was a four-round kickboxing match and uh i said to him hey man i gotta apologize for my answer he goes no it's great it chilled me out man i loved it thanks coach i go no but i didn't ask you what you're afraid of i gave you the you know technician answer because i memorized something that customato said and said in my own words. He's like, what? I go, what are you afraid of? He goes, it's stupid. I go, no, it's not stupid. Tell me what it is. He said, well, I can go 10 rounds. I've done 10 rounds preparing for this, but all amateur fights were three rounds. And this is my first title fight. It's four rounds and it's stupid. Like

I'm thinking, I keep thinking over and over again, you know, can I do four rounds in a real fight? And I looked at him and I said, can you do two rounds? He goes, yeah. I said, so just do two rounds twice. And he smiles. And at the end of the second round, you know, in the 16 foot ring, so it's a foot on each side. So you're 14 feet away from the other corner. At the end of the second round, I said to him, can you do two rounds? He goes, yes, coach. Squirt some water in his mouth.

And we hear the other guy in the other corner go, coach, what round is it? You know, there's a, so it was so perfect. And he won the title that night. But here's the thing that as a coach, I realized if in, and everyone listening to this, like, had he gone in there worrying about whether he could do four rounds, that might impact his rhythm and cadence in round one, two, three. And then he might have missed his eight kick minimum and it changes everything because he's thinking about the end of the fight. He's not thinking about flowing through the fight. Yeah. So we see this in sport often is this idea that it is not unreasonable and uncommon that a coach trying to get the best out of their athlete will push too hard. And in doing so, we start to see micro breaks, right? Whether it's soft tissue or whatever, and it's an under recovery over training syndrome. It's not uncommon, right?

We're getting better at it, um, with the advent of sports science and objective data that we can measure. And if it's not uncommon, unreasonable, then the other part of that is an athlete knows that. And so there's a holding back in practice for the savvy or the feared or the fearful athlete that knows that, and if I'm doing what they asked me to do, I'm going to hurt myself. Like I'm not going to properly recover. And so what ends up taking place is that holding back mechanism. Okay. So we're not going to become our very best if we're holding back, but what you've done is you have created a reframe again, back to that phrase, but your reframing breaks it down into chunkable doable actions. Right. And if athletes are not able to take a look at the whole and deconstruct the parts and figure out ways to map their, their previous life experiences to the thing that they're going to do now or about to do and figure out a real hardened, true built on bedrock approach to it then we become light we become

easily drifted off from the sand or the oceans that are kind of pulling apart the bedrock i'm mixing metaphors in here but the idea is it needs to be hardened and true and real and so one of the ways that we help people do that and i'd love to hear your thought about it is we increase their awareness of what is the story that they're telling themselves, what is the physiology, and how is the unfolding environment impacting both, or the imagination of what's coming next. And with that great awareness, hopefully we can live in the present moment more often. And when we stitch together the present moment, this moment with this moment with this moment moment we get glimpses of potential but at a deeper level we reveal wisdom we reveal what is true and it feels to me as though you become a mechanism for folks to borrow some

wisdom so that they can which is the reframe you're making something simple and then if they can borrow that wisdom from you because you spent so much time on awareness building that they can work with something in a more simple fashion that is true and that's available to all of us i thought you were going to take the story to what was wrong in my gut is i gave him the answer and what you actually went back and asked him a question is that you asked him to examine the true nature of his fear rather than giving him a patch or a band-aid which gave him the answer and then that gave him the answer and you helped him actually link together so here's an interesting thing and and you know when that athlete gets some advice from a coach like my ski

coach and we got to, before we run out of time, I got to tell you the end of that ski story. But, you know, my coach told me, remember, hey, gate 50, it's getting icy there. Take that way outside there. People are losing control through that, you know? And so what he did is he inserted a, like, let's like getting up on a tee and seeing water and going to yourself, don't hit in the water. Where does the ball go automatically? Right. Um, so, you know, Dennis Waitley saying don't motivate through a negative.

Right. Right. And, and, and so there's all these like little, these little cool hacks, but it comes down to my fighter. Sean was afraid to tell me what was really bothering him. And it was only through the intuition of introspection that I realized that I just gave him a Zen fortune cookie answer and didn't really, you know, we just assumed, like the coach comes in, like my coach saying, you got this kid, go kill it, right? And so... Which can help. it can definitely yeah there's a and so yeah my future book of mine which i'll never write um but but uh just because i love

the cover and i'll never but it's it's the the cover is called cheering isn't coaching there's a time to yell but most coaching coaching, you're like at that point there, like that's not real coaching. If you look at, let's say Greg Jackson, uh, coaching MMA is, that's a study of true coaching. Like he's in there and he's like whispering to his fighter, like between, you know, fights, how are you feeling? Good. Take a breath. You're doing good. Remember our plan, right? And the guy's guy's like like in the other corner is going you got to do something you want this bad man you know this is all on the line now and it's like no that's hysterical in that context yeah i love those the the contrast that you there have there i want to share with you a quick little story as well before we get back to skiing and then i want

to get to like your big mission and and how it can help and how we can be more aligned with what you're doing because it's right at ground zero of the way that I think and the systems that I value. People in our community would say, man, Mike, this sounds like a perfect match for something because of my appreciation for the arts, my appreciation for people that operate

in consequential environments and how all of us can learn those systems to be better from those courageous men and women, how we can all be better in our own efforts. So it was about six, eight months ago, and then I'm doing an ultra and it's a standup paddle across the ocean, 30 miles, eight and a half hours is how long it took. And I was ranging between somewhere between 70 and 99% effort. And so I got to a place that was dangerous and I was depleted, um, delusional, and I was having some hallucinations and I got sucked into a headwind, uh, with a current and I was standing still for 47 minutes at mile 21. And the boat captain swings around and, uh, he says, um,

Hey man, I can't come get you. We got kelp, we got issues. And I didn't realize it at the time, but he, when he swung around to try to give me this Intel and throw me a little bit of water is he blew out an engine. There was two on his boat. And so it was, it was an interesting time for me. Like I'd never been in that scenario before. And I'm as depleted as a human can be as I've ever been period. Right. And each, each stroke was a decision and I'm using all of the tactics and strategies I have. I'm using sadness and fear and anger and, uh, you know, observation and trying to do everything I can to make one stroke at a time and have as much power when I'm exhausted and I see him in the distance and I'm still in the current I'm this is probably about 30 minutes in and so I'm not I don't know if I'm gonna ever break

out of this thing and I had this insight and it was when purpose is bigger than pain purpose wins so I go back what's my purpose because I knew that pain was so large that it was smothering purpose and right about that moment I hear from the captain who's again maybe three football two football fields away and he says to me stand up I went to my knees I didn't quite realize it I was down on my knees which is the exact wrong thing to do when you're in a in a rip that's you know headwind on it and then i'm like oh yeah yeah what am i doing and i hear from the boat again stand up that's all he said and it was so clear that his understanding of what I needed in that moment, it was one of the greatest coaching moments I've ever had in my life.

And it wasn't called for the art of coaching. It wasn't called for to say, hey, Mike, how you doing? I couldn't have managed that. Remember the game plan? I couldn't have managed that. While that was a great choice for the coach that you just described, I was not able to manage it and he knew it. And so he screamed a directive at me that was action-based and in doing so he hijacked so many of my internal systems and made it so simple just to stand up and i was like oh

and i stood up thank god and he says um one paddle i said well i can do that that was it yeah you know and it's like oh yeah yeah but that's if i can let me hijack this that's great coaching great coaching so so uh i was i you know i've been in fight rooms people ask me like rituals i go you got to find your own and that's intelligent coaching like you know the other day i was in the garage i hooked up a new a new speaker blue one of my daughter's blue speaker to put a new bluetooth speaker and i'm putting some stuff on and and uh um testing it and i put on metallica song enter sandman and i don't know what generation everyone listening is this but when that thing

starts kicking it should change your physiology a little bit I start I start yeah I'm here like this next thing I know I'm moving around and start shadow boxing and next thing I know I'm working out was not I did not right and so but if you hate Metallica and I go I'm your coach we're listening to Metallica I change your physiology. So I remember Maurice Smith who won a UFC, K1 fighter, Thai boxer. I interview fighters. I interview victims of violence. I interview war fighters. And I'm always trying to pick their brain because I'm looking for threads. And I found a bunch of them, right? And so one of these things here about rituals and when I say cheering is in coaching, and I agree with you 100%, you know, that there's a time where you might smack an athlete, right?

You might do a patent on him going like, get up now. And maybe not in this day and age, but you need to. And so I remember asking Maurice, he goes, I got to tell you another story about him real quick. I go, hey, I study fear. I just met him. I got questions for you. I go, are you afraid before a fight? So he goes, let me ask you a question.

I go, okay. He goes, do you have a job? I go, yeah, I do. He goes, are you afraid to go to work? I go, no, not really. He goes, are you afraid to go to work? I go, no, not really. He goes, me either. I was like, whoa. Now, when I tell that to like when I'm coaching fighters, they're like, whoa. And I go, if you try that, you're going to lose your next fight. Maybe. He listens to R&B. When I saw him pre-fight, he's listening to R&B lying down on a

massage table, like eyes closed, doing this. Where another fighter is listening to heavy metal, bouncing around. Another guy's punching his face. Another guy's pounding a lot. Each one of them is at a different stage in their career. And I just tell athletes, anybody, your rituals will change. And you've got to have, it comes back to awareness. This isn't working for me.

This song is not working for me. This song is not working for me. This diet's not working for me. Yeah, it's so good. And so you said something earlier, like we're going back like 15, 20 minutes where you talked about athletes getting injured because their coaches, that was, you guys can't see this, so I did air quotes around coaches, went, hey, why aren't you doing this? Well, he's just a trainer saying go harder because, and if he had the self-awareness, he'd go, I'm pushing these guys too hard because why in two years from now, I want you doing this. Well, he's just the trainer saying, go harder because, and if he had the self-awareness, he'd go, I'm pushing these guys too hard because why in two years from now, I want

to be the, you know, uh, the coach who wins the thing. And we don't understand the movie that's impacting the day-to-day right now, this future movie playing in our, in our, in our, in our mind. And so to be present when you go okay let's like hey stand up one paddle and you know that's you know i've done that like with fighters you know you're worried about your eight kicks like do one kick and then do another kick and now pretty soon just i always tell people don't let the math beat you but the why doesn't the fighter who knows that what his coach is asking him to do feels wrong say anything? Fear. Everything comes down to, so with this coming back to my strip map, it's metaphorically,

and you guys listening to this, if you're still listening to the show and you haven't fallen asleep, there'll be a map somewhere. Just Google Tony Blauer cycle behavior. You'll see the map somewhere just google tony blauer cycle behavior you'll see the map we'll for sure have it on the show notes but but i want everyone to envision that like this is a hologram that you're always walking on in life and your whole life is a scenario and you know it's it's i'm driving hopefully you'll you'll laugh at this i'm driving with my wife she says you should fill up i go i got enough gas right guys always have enough gas right and i've run out of gas sometimes because i'm going i wonder if like how much is too little or can you relate to this at all right and so what are

you doing so but that's the scenario is like okay and it doesn't have to be when we say fear loop folks it could be a discomfort uh you know, I'm not really good with that. That's fear. I was at Fort Bragg working with some tier one guys years ago. I get in a couple of days early. We're meeting at a coffee shop. One of the guys says, hey, we're going to go jumping this afternoon. Do you want to come?

I go, no, I'm good. He goes, come on. You're like a fear management expert. We're doing all sorts of other shit, but they know my shtick, right? And I go, no, I'm good. I'm not a big fan of jumping out of airplanes. And they go, oh, Mr. Fear Management, like, I thought you're like the fear management guru. I go, I am. I'm managing my fear by not jumping out of an airplane. And they all laugh. And I go, you don't feel fear? He goes, man, I jump anytime I can. I said, well, I know people who don't like jumping in airplanes that are qualified too. And if you're not afraid to jump in an airplane, there's no fear management

requirement. If you're afraid of it and you do it because you want to be on the team, that's managing fear. Right. And he looks at me, I go, so you don't have fear? He goes, no. I go, this might be a semantics thing, but let's explore. He looks at me, I go, do you mind if I pack your chute for you today? And he looks at me and I go, by the way, I have no clue what I'm doing. And he goes, fuck that. I go, that's fear, my friend. Right. And so suddenly if I change his ability to control risk, I introduce fear to him. And that changed the whole, the whole ritual. So sometimes everyone everyone listening is like depending on what your exposure to the language of fear is like i don't have any fear just don't bother me before i gotta go talk and i gotta have like only green m&ms in the room and and you know i need uh where's my where's my lucky shoes like that's all fear yeah right right i try to

try to control what's not ultimately i love telling athletes when they they get attached to like lucky stuff i go you know your your socks have nothing to do with your skill level right and i'm i'm i mean all athletes are superstitious right but i but i love making making that and i do that too i'll catch myself i'll go hey last time i put this watch on when i did this and then i got that call what if i do that and then i'm like laughing at myself like how stupid what are some basic belief systems that you hold and i can ask you some like yes knows you know maybe this will be easier but like is the world dangerous or safe it's so you're never going to get a yes no answer out of me but the but the the um it's so it's so

it's so interesting because i'm such a romantic that my objective brain says it's both it's yin and yang it's you know one day you're like it's everything's amazing and then all of a sudden shit right a stimulus gets introduced too quickly and you're in the fear loop. So I'm not trying to be like, skip the question. Like it's, it's both. And you just need to be like detached and aware. It all comes down to choosing safety. If we're talking about self-defense, if we're talking about self-defense if we're talking about for me uh it's authenticity it's authenticity cascades into uh uh managing fear being transparent integrity honor trust truth if if i'm if i'm not truthful and and i'm and i'm not managing fear and i'm not doing that then i can't be authentic.

I'd always self-actualize. When you think about what people can do to become better, where would you start them? And obviously you've got a system, you know, that I want to encourage people to understand and check out. But where do people start? Where would you hope they start? I don't want to sound like i'm selling anything it like it really

please do no i i mean that because you you spend your life yeah listen um so where do they go like maybe that make it super pedantic yeah that way like you know i'm i'm i have a program online it's a digital digital download it's 90 minutes it's called called no fear, K-N-O-W fear. The metaphor here is basically that like fear is either a fuel in your life where you look at it, you've got a fear spike, what I have to learn here. And this isn't about being cavalier and doing dangerous shit. It's not about adrenaline. It's, it's about, okay. You know, like I'll talk to somebody who, who, you know, it took them a year to quit a job and become an entrepreneur. I'll go, why didn't you do it? The moment you had the idea, ignition, I'm going to do this. What took you so long? It's fear. You know, why did it take you so long to ask that girl or guy

out? It's fear. You know, why did it take you so long to go to the doctor? It's fear. Why do you like everything that if we can, I got an email from a guy I never met who bought an audio tape that I produced in 1993 called Cerebral Salt Defense. 10 years later, he wrote me an email thanking me for helping raise his kids. And he went on to explain that he taught them how to look at fear based on the audio tape and that they're now in their twenties, one's married, this and that. And he says, the way they handle life and everything they do is completely different than their peers and i say this to you mike like because like and again goosebumps because

like that was my contention in in everything like had then i can finish the my my ski story really quick is so i'm above the tree line it It's freezing there. I'm freezing. I've already pissed five times. I want to projectile vomit. I'm so nervous about this race. I haven't said I'm nervous to anybody, not even one of my, my guys on the team. My coach is rubbing my knees, trying to keep me warm. Next skew goes next. He says, watch out for gate 52 or 50, whatever the ice, take it on upside. Of course he asked me first, how'd you feel, kid? I went, great coach. I went down. I caught my tip, the third gate, giant slalom race, third gate from the bottom. I fell so hard that I went through the finish line and disqualified because I missed a gate. You know, they got different timers, different stages

in the course. Somebody comes up to me after the race and says, man, kid, like you were killing it on the course. He said, you said you were about a second ahead when, uh, when you passed me, then the guy who ultimately won the race. And that was the story of my life. I was one of the best skiers on the team. One of the best skiers in my zone, never won a race, almost never finished a race. I was always, but it was never like the sabotage guy that didn't show up you couldn't see that i was sabotaging the experience because i had i was athletic i had the smile i had the right equipment let's go i i did uh freestyle competition slalom down style mogul so i could ski like like a son of a gun

so you just go man he's going too hard oh he's going too hard. And you know this as a coach and as someone who studies that, like the people that win know the razor's edge, right? And so there's something going on. You probably would have, I wouldn't have been a self-defense instructor if you were my coach. You would have done this. And this is what I tell people when I'm telling the story. I go, imagine if my coach had asked me 15 minutes earlier instead of five minutes before. Hey, how do you feel, kid? I'd have looked at him and lied. Great coach. And what if he would have said, hey, come here a second and put his arm around me and said, I've been coaching you for five years now and I've noticed something. You do all the exercise, you do all the workouts, you kill it in practice. Have you noticed that you don't ever finish races i'd have probably looked at him and went no i hadn't really noticed that hey well yeah well it does so like what's going on i don't know what you're talking about coach yeah hey i don't want you to try and win today i want you to do the fucking snow plow and your victory today is don't wipe out just once it's going to be embarrassing to me heart but i want you to finish because you've never finished nothing breeds success like success snowplow down the course today right that's coaching because i my parents were on the ski patrol i grew up i was on skis and i was from canada you're the skier skater as a skier i was on skis at three years old

right and so i just got that in my head where everyone said oh he's going to be this good he is this good you know and i was like am i going to let my parents down am i really that good and here's the question that i tell people and i end this talk with this i go here's what i was thinking all the time as an athlete if i'm so good. How come I'm so scared? You can't flow if you're scared. There's no zone at that point. And I've had the zone many times, but the voice of fear, the movie of fear in my head was always louder. It was Dolby before Dolby came out, you know? I love it. It's so recognizable. And I understand exactly what you're talking about. It's the reason I got into this craft to be a psychologist in consequential environments. I grew up surfing and there was a

noticeable difference between free surfing where I could get it and competition surfing where I felt like I couldn't even feel my board. And it was because not my physical not my technical it was one thing the way i was thinking about the situation and the expectations i had of what other people were thinking of me fill in the blank fill in the blank and so it becomes a constrictor you know like i've said it before it just it choked off all the access so i i where can people find you like where so can they sign up for your course? You've got an online program and a physical program. So the, the no fear, like everyone wants to get to this no fear place. So I go in order to, to do that, you got to no fear, K or W. So we, we ended up

like, uh, uh, whether it's somebody's geography, finances, travel, they couldn't get to a live seminar or couldn't bring me in. Uh, and so, uh, about a year and a half ago, I, I, I just took the keynote that I was doing and I digitally did my audio over it. And, uh, and it's available for download online. What's the URL? If, if they just, if they go Google Tony Blower, they'll find it. We'll put it in there, but the, I don't know the exact URL. It's on Vimeo on demand right now. Uh, so if go to uh my there's so many urls they're my my fighting system my self-defense system is called spear and spear is an acronym for spontaneous protection enabling accelerated response because it's all based around the start of flinch response where if someone goes to attack you you're going

to flinch and bypass his cognition right and so if so if you go to Spear University, you'll, you'll find it there. And that's a physical training seminar that you can take to. Yeah. Yeah. So we do, we do everything from my, most of my work is done with military law enforcement. We've got four different divisions. We've got one division that just focus on professional protectors. We've got another division that just focuses on professional protectors. We've got another one that trains martial arts instructors on how to inject our research on fear, mindset, and scenario design. We've got another program called Bureau Bodyguard, which is a, it's a, it's my favorite course. It's a one day course for the general public,

for people who go, look, I don't really want to go get a black belt in anything. And I teach self-defense the way a paramedic might teach first aid and medicine. And it's funny because when a martial artist hears like self-defense in a day, they go, that's bullshit. Because they're unconsciously assuming I'm saying you're going to learn jujitsu in a day or boxing in a day or talking you can't do that but you can learn the principles of uh situational awareness verbal de-escalation and some simple primal gross motor uh movement we call that detect diffuse defend the three d's so it's it's it's it's taught in a day it's freaking amazing and it's it's predicated on this true safety thing that if you understand how to improve your situational awareness and verbal de-escalation like mathematically you're away from almost anything that's ever going to happen to you i love it and no fear so go to tonyblower.com

yeah you know and you can find the no fear as well yeah tonyblower.com blower spear.com they all point to the same place we've we're we've we've been around for since before the internet you know the public internet so i've got way too many urls and all the experts are going you got too many sites can we just have one so we'll get that done soon but if they just google tony blauer and we'll we'll put some contact info on your show twitter and instagram twitter i i don't like twitter uh just because of how you know political and negative all of it is but i am on twitter if you if you want to message me there at tony blauer instagram uh at tony blauer uh at spear dot system if more more technical we got the bureau and bodyguard site uh we've got an uh we've got an equipment

division we've got scenario based equipment we've been doing a lot of shit for for 40 years man i want to encourage yeah i want to encourage people to go get lost in your universe you know to go better understand a response mechanism to fear and so i want to thank you for your commitment to helping humans be better and you know you know, what a great conversation. I'm looking forward to figuring out how we can lay over some intersections. Yeah. I want to, I, I, you know, I've been binging on your shows. I, like I said, you know, earlier, I don't know if I said it on the show or when we were

talking earlier, I've shared episodes with different people going, I got to listen to this, got to listen to this, got to listen to that. I think at the end of the day, there's, it's just so simple. Fear is a signal. And if we used that signal in anything in life, it's our due north. It's suddenly realizing, because nothing happens next. You could have, hey, why don't you use these words? They'll help in

reconciliation or rapport building. If you're afraid to say something, it doesn't matter. The technique is irrelevant. And so, you know, when I say don't confuse technical tactical, tactical is getting the job done. Right. And so I really believe that if we taught everybody to look at fear differently, we change everyone's life. Awesome. And I forgot one of the big questions is how do you think about mastery? I love that. And I've been, cause I've listened to like 30 of your shows in the last 28 days. I was like, how am I going to answer that? And there's so many great answers. So I want to say so-and-so said this, I'm copying that i there's there's i answer it like anything else there's layers to it i could be in a room with a hundred people and i'm talking to

somebody and go hold on a second but remember this jill remember this then like i see all this stuff and there's this like and i'm detached i go wow how did i pick up like all of those things and say those things one could say and this is you know i'm not saying oh look tony's a master coach it's you just like people who don't think about what they're doing and just know what to do next and know what to say have achieved a certain mastery of the elements in that relationship. The guy who saved your life on your paddleboard, he was a master of disaster, of the ocean. You're not the first life he saved.

Yeah, appreciate you, Mace. He knew exactly what to say. A technician or trainer would have said, did you take some salt, drink some water? Like he'd have been panicking. I interviewed a cop who'd been shot 16 times. And he showed me a video that nobody sees inside the cop car. He's being pulled in.

They've killed the terrorist. They're pulling him in the car. And he showed me this video that like it's not the dashboard video that went out for the general public and he's lying there right and the guy that's saving him that's got to cut his vest off and stuff like that this guy brian murphy the guy that was shot you hear him going hey breathe man take a breath and he's talking to the guy that's trying to save him to calm him down right yeah you guys listening to this understand how profound that is he was like okay if i freak out i'm gonna die i've just been shot this guy's saving me but if he freaks out i might die and that's contagious too yeah it is right yeah so you know learn how to breathe mine and we didn't talk about meditation and mindfulness and stuff like that that's it you're on the show yeah yeah yeah how long what does your normal practice look like

so um i always took breathing for granted because i've been doing scenarios for so long and an athlete for so long my aerobic capacity was always pretty intense i would do you know multiple fights and they wouldn't be they weren't rhythmic fighting like like sparring and kickboxing these were like multiple sale and things and stuff like that where it's totally anaerobic so um about uh two years ago i got a neck injury that triggered uh damage to my facial nerve trigeminal nerve and impacted shit on my vagus nerve where i'd be sitting here cool and all of a sudden, panic attack. I'd have to jump out of a car. I'd have to, like, just, like, imagine that at 50, you know, seven years old, teaching fear where it was freaking me out.

I actually called Brian McKenzie because I knew he was doing research on this stuff. I said, dude, something bad happened to me. I had a neck injury from 86. So, um, it, you know, he got me on a breathing protocol and, uh, within four days, my life wasn't back to normal, but it was so drastically changed. I wrote a bunch of pieces on where like, I'd like, if you don't breathe properly, like you're done. Right. In, in so many aspects. So two years ago became religious breathing.

Uh, you know, now like, like every morning and night I'll do, I'll do some stuff, but I've got the self-awareness to, and I'm still healing from the injury. I got the self-awareness that I can feel something change in my body. My brain immediately goes to this map. It says you're in the fear loop here. You need to regulate your, you know, change your state, regulate your breathing, do this. And it's huge, but everyone can do it. You don't have to get injured to do it.

Like do it before you get injured. Front loading. Tony, thank you for your insights and sharing your experiences and, you know, the go-tos and the how-tos. And your life efforts are not lost on me. So I just want to say thank you for the conversation. Thank you for the life efforts. Thank you, man. Thank you for inspiring me and giving me this opportunity.

And I look forward to finishing the rest of your podcast. Let's go. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify.

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