Good Life Project - Anthony Trucks | Shifting Your Identity

Episode Date: November 4, 2021

If you LOVED this episode:You’ll also love the conversations we had with Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor about how we can understand and tap our whole brains to live fuller lives.Anthony Trucks entered the foster system, along with his two siblings, when he was three years old, then spent years enduring a series of brutal experiences. Until he found a home where, after 8 years of legal battles, he became emancipated from his mom and was adopted by his then longtime foster parents. Still, a young Black man, now part of a White family who also struggled with poverty, he struggled to belong. Not so much to his family, but to the broader culture around him. He turned to football, working to rise up in the sport and, years down the road, accomplished his dream of being drafted and playing for the NFL. But, not long into his time with the Pittsburgh Steelers, a career-ending injury would bring it all tumbling down, and leave him stripped not only of his career but his very identity. And, that led to deep struggle, the demise of his family, and a season where Anthony found himself having to rediscover and redefine his sense of identity, who he was as a human being, a partner, a father, a friend, and someone driven to inspire agency and change in others. That journey led him back into the world of wellness, personal growth, speaking, training, and even competing in American Ninja Warrior. As a speaker and identity shift coach, Anthony teaches people how to design and build better lives and businesses by learning how to access the power of their identity to tap into their full potential, a methodology shared in his book, Identity Shift: Upgrade How You Operate to Elevate Your Life.You can find Anthony at: Website | InstagramMy new book Sparked!-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You have to stand in court, look at your biological mom and tell her, I no longer want you to be my mom anymore. Really difficult to do at 14 years old. So I did that and I just remember this piece of like, I know that the place that I woke up today, for sure I'm going to bed here. 14 years of my life, I'd never known that. Because in foster care, you can get picked up and moved the drop of a dime. So it was a really interesting settling in moment for me.

Hey, so my guest today, Anthony Trucks, he entered the foster system along with his two siblings when he was just three years old and then spent years enduring a series of pretty brutal experiences until he found a home where after eight years of legal battles, he became emancipated from his mom and was adopted by his then longtime foster parents. But still, a young black man now a part of a white family who also struggled with poverty, he really struggled to belong, not so much to his family, but to the broader culture around him. And he turned to football, working to rise up in the sport, and years later, accomplished his dream of being drafted and playing for the NFL. But not long into his time with the Pittsburgh Steelers, a career-ending injury would bring it

all tumbling down and leave him stripped not only of his career, but of his very identity. And that led to a sense of deep struggle, the demise of his family in a season where Anthony found himself having to completely rediscover and redefine his own sense of who he was, his identity, who he was as a human being, a partner, a father, a friend, and someone driven to inspire and change others. And that journey, it led him back into the world of wellness, personal growth, speaking, training, and even eventually competing in American Ninja Warrior. And as a speaker and identity shift coach now, Anthony teaches people how to design and build better lives and businesses by learning how to access the power of their identity to tap into their full potential,

a methodology that he shares in his book, Identity Shift. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die.

Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. I want to start out, I want to dive into just sort of like your personal journey for a little bit

because I think it really informs so much of the work that you've been doing recently. And then let's dive into a lot of the work that you've been doing around identity. You had a rough start. A little bit. around identity. You had a rough start. At a really young age, you end up in the foster care system. Do you have early memories of that time? I'm curious whether- How much I remember? What your reflection, yeah. I could draw the layout of my house at three years old still. So I remember all of it.

Unfortunately, unfortunately, but I do remember all of it, yeah. So the living room, we lived in an apartment. It was like in Concord. I don't know the exact city. I remember it was in Concord, but I could tell you where the sliding glass door was, the stairs, the kitchen, the downstairs, the bathroom, all the bed, everything.

And I was told later on that due to the trauma, kind of my brain kicked on fast. And if you ever meet foster kids, man, we have this, like a lot of us have this weird ability at a young age to communicate and kind of interact. And I found that it's mostly from this stance of survival. Like when you have to survive, you are more aware. And so a lot of us turn on at a young age. And so we're a little more charismatic, communicative. We may not be good kids. Like a lot of us are like, you know, we rebel and because we're trying to have retribution of what's being done to us. But yeah, no, I do recall all of it. It's a, it's an odd, but useful thing for my world.

Yeah. I mean, because I think, you know, there can be sort of almost like diametrically opposed responses. One is like you, you recall every little thing. And the other is that your brain effectively is trying to protect you from trauma and you recall nothing. And I've talked to so many different folks who've been through especially early life trauma and have had one of the other results, but rarely is it just sort of like the middle ground. Yeah, it's true. It's funny you say that. I think one of my siblings is kind of the opposite. Like doesn't remember much of it. It's all a blur. And I've, you know, I get that that's part of it and I've never dug deep because I don't want someone to have to dig up emotions that they don't want to experience. But yeah, it's funny you say that. Now that you

say it, I'm like, yeah, I do. I do see that in different people. Yeah, I mean, there's also, I'm curious whether this was part of your experience, sort of like the experience of hypervigilance, where like if you were in perpetually in an environment where you feel like there's a threat at any given time, you become hypervigilant. And that can become both helpful and

also harmful. Yeah. Oh yeah. Cause I think at the end of the day, if you're, you're always at edge, then you're always at edge and it's hard to be, I mean, personally, it's hard to be around people that aren't settled inside. I think it's kind of what you're talking to is like the individual is always like just neurotic and on edge and, and, you know, and curious and a little bit, you know, worried.

It's like there's something to it for security purposes and for safety, but at a certain point, like you need to be a little more peace. I think you experience life differently that way too. And I think you keep better people around you at the same time. But if it's always that person that's on edge and like, they're always worried and it's always pessimistic, it is a little bit difficult to experience a fun full life. Yeah.

So when you find yourself in this circumstance at a really young age, and as you shared, you have siblings as well. Were you actually together with your siblings or did you end up getting separated out? First house? Yes. So I remember the first home we went to, we were supposed to go to see the leprechauns at the end of the rainbow was the promise. But my brother and I, we actually were in that house together. And then my sisters were in a house together somewhere in the in-between. We ended up going home for a really short stint again, and then we were right back out. But that second time out, it was all solo homes. So we all got dispersed. And at that time, there's not social media. The families aren't aware. It's 1986, 87. So there's not much of a connection going on. So I essentially grew up without my siblings,

but we would see each other when there were visitations each month or each week. And then they would get moved because my biological mom wouldn't show up to him, that kind of stuff. But yeah, no, I was kind of aware. But we weren't together the entire time, only for a short amount of time. Yeah. What's going on in your inner life, you know, during that window of time? I mean, as you're like, you look at the outer circumstances and constant change, a constant threat. Yeah. What's happening internally with you?

You know, like, how are you processing and experiencing sort of like that moment in time? The odd part is it's just a sheer adaptability and survival. So when I try to go back, it's hard to go back into the mind because I'm using this mind to go back into that mind. Right. So I'm seeing it a little bit different, but if I recall the emotion, that's the most I can probably go back as I can recall the emotion, which was a ton of fear, a constant fear, because you're not really told why you're at these people's house. Cause I'm a little kid. I, all I know is I don't have my mom. Who's my safety points. She's not there. The people I'm with, uh, there's like a coin term of, I'm a little kid. All I know is I don't have my mom, who's my safety point. She's not there. The people I'm with, there's like a coin term of I was a paycheck, which means as long as I don't die in this system, they get a paycheck for me. So they did everything short of killing

me, man. There's some people that starved me, put me in chicken coops and forced me to chase chickens to earn meals. If I didn't earn a meal, I wouldn't eat. So I had that kind of fear and pain. And if I was not eating in the middle of the night, I'd try to sneak out and get food. If I got caught, I got beat. If I got food, I hoarded it because I had no idea what I'd eat again. So I'd get caught for hoarding food. I'd get beat. There's families that put me in shopping carts, pushed me down hills towards traffic. I'm forced to lick the bottom of people's shoes, like really heinous stuff. And so the oddball part of it is while it was a lot of fear and anxiety and pain and just like a complete lack of self-worth, there's also this sense of this is normal because that's all I knew. And I think that's the thing that saddens me as a grown man now is that people got a child at the age of between like three and six to assume that being beaten and starved was norm for life.

Yeah, I mean, that is a brutal thing to experience. The actual fact of what was happening to you, but also, yeah, like reflecting back and thinking, like it literally reset your expectation of life, and to a certain extent, your identity. I have to imagine it affected your sense of self, your sense of worth at a really young age. Oh, yeah. It is not a sense of deserving of anything.

It took me until my early 30s to appreciate like a thank you, to take it in and be like, I received that. To my 30s, like it endured, man, because there's always this voice in the back of my head of people. You're great. You're awesome. Love you. But like, but yeah, but my mom didn't, these people didn't. And so you get settled into this, this proof you have that you're feeding onto, which is you're not worth very much. And it's hard to accept a proof opposite when it's the first proof you received. Yeah. I can't even imagine that. You know, as you're bouncing around this system, I mean, it's, you're somebody who's, and I'm curious whether this is something that's developed later in life or whether something had developed very early where it's sort of like you seem to scan any environment really rapidly and

assess the social dynamic, assess the power dynamic. And it's almost like you're figuring out how to step into it. And I wonder if that was a skill that you developed early on to be able to make it as okay as humanly possible. Yeah. Is this something where you actually saw me do this? I'm curious now because I do this. Yeah. I mean, so I'm a little bit weird in that I tend to do that also. And I had a very different upbringing than you. So it's not a trauma response for me. It's more actually an introverted social wiring response. I tend to step into social spaces really slowly and cautiously and observe. And so, so I tend like, he must've caught me doing that. I don't know that I'm doing it to jump rope into the conversation, but I do definitively have to understand my surroundings before I understand how I fit in it. I think I did it in football. I do it in many situations where I'm a pretty outgoing human, right? I'm pretty extroverted, but you'd find that if you just were around me, I'm quiet. And people would just be, why is that guy so quiet? I thought I saw him on the videos. He talks a lot and they go, I don't know. And it's like, I'm trying to figure out who you are before I understand who, who I need to express myself as. And cause he, as a kid, I think what

ended up being was I had to determine the safety of the environment before I decided how I was going to show up in it, whether it was school or home or whatever was going on. I, I think it's a learned trait for sure. Cause a lot of it, again, in foster care, it's survival. How is this person going to respond if I say this or do this? And will that result in me having physical pain or, you know, will this result in some negative situation where I can't eat if I say the wrong thing? So I kind of was taught to walk on eggshells and it's hard to break that, man. I don't know if I want to also, cause I find that allows me to, I think I studied mannerisms in people more than most people can. I did a study with Dr. Amen for the brain scan down in SoCal.

And then part of the end of his study, like they have you gauge people's emotional responses based on watching the facial expressions. And it's gauged from zero to 10. And I asked him, I said, what's the average? How do people get says usually people like at a five, maybe a six on a high level. I got a nine. He's like, I've almost never seen the average? How do people get, he says, usually people get a five, maybe a six on a high level. I got a nine. He's like, I've almost never seen like a consistent, he's like nines. He says, but it tells me that at some point you started reading people at a good level to where you can gauge just by looking at somebody, who they are, what they're thinking.

So I think that allows me to understand my environment. And for sure, I've been doing that since I was a kid. So it understands how it fits into my life now. Yeah, no, that makes so much sense. When you're going through all this when you're younger, I'm curious also whether you found an outlet in other people, in friends, in school, or was this almost like you were living two separate worlds?

Like you showed up one way with friends, you showed up one way in school, and nobody really knew what was going on behind you. I think there was a, it might be a duality to that. So I know that at home, like at my first foster dad in my final home was not the greatest guy. So I did have a different way I would show up quietly. However, at school, I think I just, I let loose, man. I was a bad little kid growing up. Like I was in school. I was a headache. I was not fun. I got in trouble on days when I wasn't there. Like, no, I'm not even

kidding. There was a time when I got blamed for something when I was not even physically at school that day. And it was the weirdest thing to come back to like a punishment. I'm like, I wasn't here. Like, yes, you were. I'm there to go look at the roll to make sure. So I didn't show up differently. But I think now, like in the way that I show up, I try to show up as consistent because there were times when I would show up, I think, differently in environments where I didn't feel like I belonged or deserved to be there. I think that was one of the heavy pieces. It's like if I didn't feel like I belonged in the gate program because I'm not that smart of a kid. I'm a foster kid.

I'm not smart. So I think I self-sabotage things as a kid. When things got good, it got awkward. Kind of like that Ricky Bobby movie where the dad gets all awkward when he's at the dinner, because it's way too good. I think I did that a lot as a kid, because it was just unsettling. I wasn't used to it. But I don't think I chose at that age to express myself different except for being at home to not get in trouble and at school to just let loose. I think that was part of what it was. Like, I felt like I had this release at school. Teachers hated it. But yeah, it's different. And then friendships,

they've always been a solid friend, man. I've always, that I can, my best friends in the world go back to third grade. Like that's how tight we are. And so for me, I think there's always been that anchor of like, I care about people real deep. And when they get close to me, like, I don't want them to leave for sure. That comes back from foster care. Yeah. So it's like, it takes time to, to get into that level, but once you're there, it's like you're there for life. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. You eventually end up, I guess, around the age 14 in a home where this becomes, it sounds like the first sort of like stable, open, loving place for you. Yeah. It was at, well, it was at six years old,

I got brought to them. Okay. I was in the home for eight years before I got adopted at 14. So 14 was when I finally was like, all right, this is my home. But yeah, for the first eight years with that household, I think it was two years with my first foster dad and then the last six and beyond with my current dad. But yeah, man, it was, it was a lot of turmoil because I was the only black kid in a really poor all white family. We were the, the people that like legitimately had, you know, rats in the pantry, cockroaches in the garage. We were the ones getting, we'd go to Goodwill and ask for clothes like that. We didn't have much, man. So I remember like, that was this, this weird in between of not only that, that they not fit, I didn't fit within them. You know, I think it was this really weird oddity,

only person that looked like me in the school. However, my mom had a really good way of navigating my black moments. And by that, I mean, I had my fair share of getting called the N word at school. The only kid that looked like me and with an entire elementary school, you're bound to have your 1% of kids who were just bad kids. And so like those kids, man, and I, we got a lot, I think I had like 16 fights in sixth grade or something crazy. Like I was just always battling. But for me, I think there was this sense of when I finally got adopted by them, I was a difference. And the difference was I finally let the family love me. That's what most people don't grasp about foster kids is when we're going through the system, the person that we want to love us doesn't. And therefore we don't have any, we don't let anybody else attach to that. That's that area. That doc has got a space

held. Nobody can go there. And when you finally realize that ship's not coming in, you finally let other people dock. And it took me 14 years to like, okay, these people eight years deep, they love me. Oddly, they're sticking through this stuff. My adoptive mom is loving me through this stuff. Like it, it settled in. I don't know, like a switch one day of like, what in the world? Why, why are they so good to me? Like, what do I, and that was it. And I was like, dad, these are my people. And so I got adopted. It was the first time I remember like after the, I remember standing in court because the way you do it, you have to stand in court, look at your biological mom and tell her I no longer want you to be my mom anymore.

Really difficult to do at 14 years old when this, you know, this is the woman who's your mom. So I did that. And I just remember this piece of like, I know that the place that I woke up today, for sure, I'm going to bed here. 14 years of my life, I'd never known that because in foster care, you can get picked up and moved the drop of a dime. So it was a really interesting settling in moment for me. So the moment for you is also, it's, I mean, there's so many different things happening in that moment. I mean, you're literally sitting at, you know, looking at your biological mom and saying, you know, like, we're done. At the same time that you're then turning to this new family and realize that they're saying yes to life for you. Yeah. I mean, such powerful mixed emotions right there.

What was going on with your, with your siblings during this whole time also? And, and was there any, like, were you still tight with them? Were you sharing with them? And did they have similar experiences or profoundly different? Yeah. You know, it's the, they're profoundly different in some good, some bad. One sibling went to SoCal and was separate from the rest of us, essentially, had a different upbringing and a pretty good home. So didn't really get kind of, we'll call

it marred by the system, so to speak. And then two other siblings, one lived in my same town, one lived at a distance from my town, not too far, about an hour out, different experiences. One had some issues with one of the parents in the household and some abuse that was, you know, sexual abuse type of stuff, which was not good, but it just was one of those, you know, experiences. Unfortunately, uh, another one had a situation with a family. Once they aged of 18, they weren't going to paycheck, just left them. So they literally just disappeared and left the person there. So like the different experiences, but similarly difficult, we'll call it. And it left all of us with our own versions of instabilities, insecurities, trauma. I've, I've done a ton of Anthony work. Let's call it that in order for me to lead the capacity I do. I don't come here and

say like, I'm, I'm perfect far from it, but I am constantly at work internally. And I've done it to a level above and beyond probably what I should, but I think it allows me to be in a position where I feel comfortable and confident talking and teaching from the place that I do. Cause it's, it's hard to talk from a place to other people you've ever been, you know? But yeah, we've all, we've all had our own share of, of different crazy. It's not a, it's not abnormal either. Unfortunately, this is probably the majority of stories from people in foster care. There are definitely some shining gem families, but there's not as many as there should be. Yeah. I mean, I think about what the story

that you're sharing and the different experiences you've had, the different experiences your siblings had, the different experience so many kids have had, especially in foster care, some phenomenal and some really upsetting. There's this trope that's been floating around the personal development world for years, which is, you know, it's not about the circumstances, it's about how you respond to them. And I've often thought to myself, well, maybe, you know, that it just, that's always felt so grossly oversimplified to me, you know, because we don't all step into life with equal footing. We don't step into life with equal privilege, equal access, and to not acknowledge that that actually plays, you know, that factors into whether you are and are not, or how well or

unwell equipped you are to actually deal with those circumstances. So when I hear that, that always bugs me. I'm curious how that lands with you. Yeah. I would say something similar there. First, I think that everybody has relative difficulty, right? It's what's, what's hard for my kids now and emotional we'll call it rating scale. It's like, that would have been a one for me, you know? And what I was dealing with it, my five would have been their 10, you know? So there is relative. I do know that I always love the statement that goes a smooth sea makes not a skilled sailor right and so to say how I respond to it is the the one thing but it's like yeah you respond to an uh you know an ocean you know having some waves but like how big was a

storm was it a hurricane was a little you know so it's like I think it's kind of what you're saying is like yeah it's how you respond to it great but like the greater the greater the storm, the more difficult the storm, like there is something that comes with the individual can get out of that thing or navigate that thing. You do experience some differences, but also it's relative. So how you, when you have that, like, it's not the problem, it's how you respond to it. Well, yeah, what you're responding to is like my one, you know, that's good. I give you grace to understand that, but it gets worse, man. Like there's, there's some more depth to it. So, yeah, I think that there's, it is a simplification,

which I understand why people would do it, but I think it could be an oversimplification as well. Yeah. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman.

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Flight risk. So you end up getting adopted at the age of 14. I'm curious also, you know, you're with the family for eight years before that. Was this just a gradual evolution where it was, you know, like they felt like and you felt like it was time? Was there something that happened that led to this moment? You know what it was? So the system is funny. You can, as a parent, a biological parent, you can make adjustments to things.

And if you find just the right things to adjust, it postpones certain court processes. So my mom, biological, found out that if she changed like parts of my name or my ethnicity, the system had to reboot and go through a longer journey to get back to this point. So my family had been trying to adopt me many years prior, but the system didn't allow me to have part of it. It wasn't until I was 14 that I could actually make more choices because 14 is kind of that age of choice a little bit, especially in California at least. So like when I turned 14, that's kind of when it all was like, all right, well, we're done with the system. The kid can be involved now. But for a lot of years, she was really good at adjusting things. My name used to be Anthony Antonio Alonzo Tijon,

and it ended up becoming Anthony Antonio Alonzo Trucks. And then Anthony, and I think it was Anthony Alonzo Trucks, a whole bunch of weird stuff. And then I apparently was like Ethiopian, and I was Middle Eastern. It just bounced around. It was very odd. And so like she found little loopholes, but that was one of the things that had postponed it. Cause it took a good few years,

I think it was between eight and like around 12. I was like, ah, I'm not, I don't want to be with this woman. She, his thing most people don't get is those people who are the parents of most of these kids are not solid humans.

And they're really good at, at like, if you see the movies where the parent tells the kids kid something and you know the parent's not going to follow through. But they sell it and the kid gets excited and the kid gets all let down. That's real. Like, it's very real. I used to have her tell me that, you know, the reason she missed visitations was she owned Apple. I mean, not even kidding. She was an astronaut.

I'm dead serious. It's a thing she told me. And at one point she used to do this frequent thing where she'd say, hey, pack a bag, wait by the window. At 8 o'clock, I'm going to come pick you up. We're going to take off and live together. As a little kid, you're like, yeah, that's what I want. 100%, let's do that. So you quietly pack a bag, and you sit there, unlock the window, and you wait.

And then every car drives by, your heart rate spikes and goes down. By 9 o'clock, I'm a crying mess because she didn't do it. She didn't come. And I would wet the bed that night up until the age of like 12, 13. I wet the bed, I was told. And it was a constant thing. So when it got to the point of realizing how much pain she'd kind of, you know, made me endure at a certain point, I was like, I'm just done with this. It was just like, I was tired. It was emotionally tired. And so that kind of emotional set setting kind of popped in, but I couldn't do very much until I turned 14. Yeah. So it's part logistics and part like

literally legal wrangling to be able to get to that place. It sounds like sports becomes sort of like part expression, part coping mechanism, part refuge for you. And you know, you start to devote yourself to it at a pretty high level. Tell me more about how, how it becomes more than something, which is just kind of like fun to do. Yeah. Well, at first I wanted to have something that, that I could do that felt cool. Right. So I always watch my classmates come to school on Friday with their Jersey for the Saturday football game. And it's like, I want to do that. But in foster care, my adoptive mom was cool with it. They were fine. But my biological mom, she would fight it simply because they wanted

me to just out of spite. So I never got to play. I was really good at recess though. Really good at recess. And so I was like, the moment I got a chance, I'm like, I want to play football. In fact, I recall my biological mom making a statement at the court case when I was, you know, at the court hearing, whenever I got separated and ended the parental rights of like, it's just because he wants to play football. I was like, well, that's part of it. So it was one thing, but it was the whole thing. It was, I wanted to be able to give into something and feel like I mattered. And it was it, right. It was, I wanted to, I wanted to feel like I belonged in this world because I didn't really feel that I died. It was an outcast at school. You know, I didn't really have a, I literally didn't look like anybody else didn't

fit in. I was the poor kid on top of that. was just a mess and so when I tried football for the first time it was like this chance to be able to go and like yeah let some some things out get a sense of self no one told you to slow down only to speed up it could be loud rambunctious all that good stuff and it was great man except for the fact that I sucked like that was that was the one part that wasn't so much fun is like, there's, there's an emotional feeling you have when you want to do something, you try it out and you were not good at it. You go, man, that sucks. And what the joy was, it kind of dissipates pretty quickly when you're not only like not good at the routes and doing things to be a good performer, but you also getting hit. So physical pain too, with the emotional pain of it all,

but it did, it became this thing where I, even though I wasn't enjoying it, I was loving it. You know, I don't know if that makes sense. Like it was a chance for me to go and put a helmet on and just release. And so it did become a thing. And I think a lot of people go, well, was it because you had a lot of pent up aggression? I didn't have pent up aggression. And when I look back and I don't remember doing it because I was angry at the world, that was the weirdest thing. Like I don't, I do this day. I don't recall that. I recall it as more of like the kid with a smile on his face, running free in a field kind of feeling seriously. That was what it was. Now it worked that I was like, I was really good on defense. Give me a direction. I would go shoot through a line because I had a reckless abandonment.

I didn't care about my body. I still don't to this day. It's a weird thing I do, but I just went through it. So it did give me that sense of like refuge, a place to go, a place to be, a place to be accepted for being the crazy me. And it sounds like, yeah, like that also, like you said in the beginning, not good at it, but over time, like that changes in a pretty big way. And, you know, and I think so often we start to associate competence with identity, you know, like if, if we get really, really, really good at something and, and, and then people like the, the world starts to recognize us for it. They say you are a dot, dot, dot, because it's the thing that you're good at, which I think it's, if it's the thing that is a genuine expression of something deeper. And I, and I know we're going to talk a lot more about this can be a

fantastic thing, but if it's, if it's not, it can also sort of like distract you from stepping into what that deeper thing is. I'm curious how that lands with you. Yeah, it does. It's like golden handcuffs, right? You get good at something and then it's, it's all you do. And then people see it as all you do. And then your self-worth and acceptance by humans is attached to this thing. And you might not like doing it anymore. I had a little bit of that later in life when I had a business that was in an industry where I was like, I don't love this industry anymore. But people love that I did it. Writing books and getting booked to go speak on stages.

Really good at it. But it felt like oddly disconnected from my heart. So yeah, I definitely know what you mean there. It's when you start doing something, building into something and you've done enough to get the return of the investment of energy of this is who I am. And it doesn't fill you up anymore. It's a dark place to be. And then the problem is people go, well, I don't want to, you know, not do this. Cause people look at me like I'm crazy. Cause why would someone become a doctor and say, I want to now go and windsurf for a living?

Like, why would I do that? It's like, I don't know, because you want to? Like, that's okay. You know, it's 100% okay to go do something else, but I think we get so deep and identified into an area as something that we think that we can't be anything else. And as one statement I love is,

you can be anything, but you can't be everything. I love that statement, but the truth of it is, you can also anything, but you can't be everything. I love that statement, but the truth of it is you can also go back and try anything again. I added that on my own, but there's something where I think we just need to realize that living life is supposed to be open-ended and you shouldn't be locked into an identity for the rest of your life. Yeah, no, I love the notion that, you know, life can be a series of seasons and experiments. You know, you're constantly learning and growing. Like, so for you, you build on your skill in football. You end up going to U of Oregon and

then eventually stepping into the NFL. But in almost the blink of an eye, what seems to be the golden ticket changes really quickly for you. Really quick. Yeah, man. All came tumbling down, right? Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall. So yeah, I go to Oregon, man. I have a kid at 20 years old, meet my biological dad. And then I get a chance to play in the NFL in three seasons. I tore my shoulder in the last season, came home, had two more kids in my high school, sweetheart. We were cutest couple in the yearbook. Still are, I guess, if you will call it that. And yeah, man, then all of a sudden I hit this massive crisis, this identity crisis of, well, who was Anthony without the game of football? Cause that was who, I mean,

I built that guy from what, 13 years of building from the age of 14, you know? So I, I leave this game and there's a massive gaping hole. You know, Viktor Frankl calls the existential vacuum of what do I do? And so I Victor Frankl calls the existential vacuum of, what do I do? And so I remember that there was this focal point of, I got to get that feeling back. It's like if you lost the job, I got to get that feeling back, get the job.

Or I lost the girl, got to get that feeling back. Let me go chase girls again. I've got out of shape. Let me go get back in shape. Whatever that thing is that you had before, you identify with, we got to go do it again. And I think for me, I couldn't go play football. So I was like, what's the next best thing? My degrees in kinesiology, let me open a gym. So I opened a gym and the gym became my new family, my new wife, my new kids. Like I was there from 6am to 10pm. I had just had newborn twins.

So my new wife is at the house with a four-year-old and newborn twins. Like it's not indicative of having any kind of great life to be quite honest. But from the outside looking in, look at Anthony. He got this gym, he's leading, you know, it's good. And it looks good, but it's not good. So fast forward nine months in that business, I'm looking at bankruptcy

because I had no idea how to run a business. My wife and I are at odds. She ends up stepping out of the marriage and I get divorced, not a present father. I'm out of shape. I have no football. Quite literally, everything that made me me in that confident level was just gone, gone. And when you have this feeling like here was the worst part about it, Jonathan, it's one thing to have it be gone and you sit there quietly calm with nothing there.

But I would have to go to a gym where people were relying upon me to be their happy and their motivation. And I had none, but I gave them more than I had before. And it's like this, I don't even know where I was pulling it from. I kid you not, no idea where the energy was coming from for like a good six to eight hour days. And I would get in the car at the end of the night and I wouldn't even, I couldn't even bring my hands at a steering wheel to like turn it on and drive the car away. I was so drained. And I endured that for a lot of months. And eventually I was like, I don't want to do it anymore. And this is life after the game. Like I'm cool, man. And I remember after a night where I got to watch the UFC game and like, hadn't talked to anybody. I was just in a complete fog. I just, I sent a text, my friends and family

said, please tell my kids that her father was and drove off looking for rat poison, man. It was like, I'm done with this. And thankfully, there was no stores open, but that was legitimate, like the rock bottom. I can't to this day remember a deeper, darker space that my heart and my mind has been than that of like, this all sucks.

And what's good is I had the time for everything to kind of pass. Because I think as guys, and I know this, I didn't talk about my stuff back then. I didn't share none of this with anybody. I'm a former NFL linebacker. I don't do that. And I think that was the thing is I was so internal with it that I never let it out. And so because I just compounded, compounded, and then I got to this point of like, it was just too much to bear. So I think that the passing of the emotion that just spiked up in a wave, because I was bearing it for so much and so long, it finally came out in conversations where I got to release it a little bit. And it was a huge turning point for my life. Yeah. I mean, how did those conversations happen?

I'm curious, because when you literally spend your lifetime not going there, and then you go through this calamitous moment where literally everything is falling apart. You're injured. The career or the pursuit that defined you since you were age 13 and then the career, you actually couldn't step back into. So it's not like you were jettisoned from the career. You were jettisoned from this central thing, a piece of your identity, who you were. And there was no opportunity to go back to it. It was like that door was closing. And so you step into something new

and then that doesn't work, but you're devoting yourself to it. And that devotion effectively, completely makes you absent from being in the family. And that falls apart. Like when all of these things are happening and your practice up until that point in your life is keep it in, just like put your head down, work through it. You've been able to figure it out in the past and you like just deal with it.

And you get to a point where you can't anymore. I'm curious what happens internally where your mind says, no, actually I need to change the way that I'm stepping into this moment. And actually for the, you know, like I need to talk to somebody else. I need to stop basically bottling this up. You know, was it that darkest moment where you're literally considering ending your life? You know, I'm curious what the process was in your mind where the switch flipped and you said, I need help. Yeah, it wasn't by my choice, to be honest. It wasn't my own volition to go and actually talk to people. So, but the GPS on my phone allowed the police to find me.

So they, you know, pull up, hey, sir, we got a report. I'm like, oh, they're just crazy. Like, you know, I can talk. So I can, you know, use my words to get myself out of the situation. Like, we'll just head home. Like, all right, let's head home. So I head home and little did I know, like everyone was searching for me. So when I rolled

up to the house, it was like 35 people out in front of my house from different walks of life, you know? And it's like, now I got more shame, you know, it's even more compounding. And I remember that there was an ambulance there. Cause you know, they 5150 you, if everything's crazy and they're like, Hey sir, obviously you don't need us we're aware we can see you're fine but do you want to go i was like uh i looked at everybody else i was like yeah let me go so like it was the first time like it's the first time someone willingly did a 5150 and got in the car and took off like that was i just didn't want to see anybody faced him talked to anybody it was just this wave of shame man and i remember getting to the hospital my wife

she she came to pick me up and brought me back to the house. And it was, I remember we just sat and cried for a while. Like it was a tough one because it was the middle of just a lot. I think she had guilt because of what had happened with the marriage and how she was, you know, operating in and what she had done. I had guilt from the actions not taught. It was just a lot, man. We were young kids with kids, dude. It was just a tornado of crazy and statistics unraveling, you know? And I remember there was like Monday rolls around. So it's on a Saturday, Monday rolls around. And this is where your question will get answered. And I go, cause there's no playbook for when you

go back to work after this takes place. There's no like step-by-step process. So I was like, I'm just gonna go back to work. I'm just gonna go back to work and act like it didn't happen. And I go back to work and act like it didn't happen. Everybody else also acted like it didn't happen. But one guy didn't. And one guy grabs me. He's like, hey, let's go to the back real quick. So we go to the back office. He goes, hey, first off, don't you ever in your life do this again or even consider it? I go, what do you mean? He goes, when I found out, well, I didn't say, what do you mean? I said, I know. And he says, when I found out, I threw up in the toilet. Like, what do you mean you threw up in a toilet? Like, well, I'm sorry, man.

What happened? He goes, well, I thought I'd lost a hero. And that was the thing. I was like, it just unsettled me in a good way. He says, at the end of the day, like you may not know it, but people in this community, we know what you've been through,

what you've gone through, what you've accomplished. Dude, you're an incredible inspiration to a lot of people and you just don't even know it. And that was the moment when I like, I realized that there was something when I like, I realized that there was something my life was, I guess, was doing for people without, you know, me sharing it

because they only knew parts of it. They didn't really know the depth of it. They just knew kind of like foster kid, but nobody knew the depths of it. And that was the catalyst to me, like realizing how good it felt just to have somebody see me, to have a conversation. And then it led to more conversations and really unpacking like what was going on, what people saw and how they did things. And I think that was where I, it's like I started feeling good just by having conversations. I think that was it. It wasn't this flipping of a switch cognitively of like, let's talk to people here. Let's check in their box. It was just, it started coming out and the more it came out, it was cathartic.

It was the first time people really got a chance to see behind the scenes and get to know me and i got to know them i think that was also cool because when you share dark other people share dark they feel like they have a little permission i think that was the big thing that moved me out of my place and that's why when people ask me now what do you do when everything's going wrong i say you got to go around people and borrow joy that That's what I did, man. I'd say borrow because it's not take. Borrow means I give it back someday. But I would, I'll bet you if you go around happy people in a bad mood that you don't walk away still unhappy, you know, like, cause they find a way like, come on, stop. We're going to go to the bar, hang out. We're going to go to the beach and get out. You know, there's, they'll just drag you to go do stuff, but you're

around it and it kind of seeps into you. And I think that's what I was doing those moments. I was just borrowing people's joy. I have more conversations, had more lunches, had more talks and just, and it started making me feel more connected to humanity again. Cause I think that was the reason why I got to that dark places. I felt disconnected from the rest of my humanity. I thought I was the only one going through it. Nobody gets this. I'm less than it's I'm ashamed and embarrassed and guilty because I'm not playing football anymore. I lost a sense of me and talking to people gave me a sense of normalcy and connectedness again. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, I have to imagine also part of that realization. Tell me if this is true is, you know, when you're showing up every day at the gym and you're

serving people in a specific way, people come there and they're like, I have a problem. I'm signing up or I'm working with a personal trainer to try and fix it. So there's a specific reason they show up and a purpose and a defined outcome, whether you hit that or not. That's the nature of the relationship. It's very transactional. It sounds like this was also a moment for you where something happened that allowed you to zoom the lens out and kind of say, there's actually another reason people are showing up. There's something else going on here. There's an exchange here,

which is actually less transactional and more consistent. There's a bigger thread of, there's a narrative around the way that I'm showing up, interacting with, affecting people, the way that I'm living and making choices is affecting people. The ideas I'm sharing are affecting people, which lets you pull yourself out of sort of like the microcosm of the experience and get more of like a metal lens on what's really going on. I mean, from the outside looking in, it seems like that was the experience. I'm curious from the inside out, whether it felt anything like that. I think at the time, no, not the time in hindsight. Yes.

In what I do now. Yes. There's a ton of that because it's, I think there's the, the way that the world works for all of us is we, we learn, I don't want to say we learn, we experience them and we don't learn till later, right? We experience things. We don't actually talk about it, feel, we just kind of go through the motions and press on to the next thing. But I think the conversations forced me to look at life and learn, right? I think that's kind of what I did with these people and these conversations and learn that there, yeah, there is, there's a depth to us as humans, but if we got to tap into the depth that we don't get into that depth. And so, yeah, I agree, man. Yeah. I know you write, um, there's a sentence, uh, what if instead of inspiring people by action

and I did it on purpose. A hundred percent. That was, that was my, that was the thought at the time that definitely wasn't the time for me to act on, you know, that was cause it, when I was, I mean, I literally, a couple of days ago, I was like, I don't want to be here. So I'm not, I'm not the place to be telling you how to live your life joyously. However, it did give me this sense of like, man, maybe there was something to all this. I'm a man of faith, and I believe that there are very few things that happen by accident. It's just an odd turn of events how life seems to unfold if you don't mess it up, right? And I realize that there's a certain level of Anthony that statistically I don't exist on like a piece of paper. Like if you look at any prison in America, 75% of the

inmates are former foster kids, half our homeless population, former foster kids, less than 1% of us graduate from college 0.0002% of college athletes play in the NFL. Most businesses, they die off in the first, you know, year or two years. Mine, I sold it 10 years, the first one. So like there's all these weird statistics and numerics that float around my life. Right. On top of that, like marriages, we'll call it, we haven't got to this point yet, but like there you're 50% more likely to get divorced if your parents were divorced. While I'm of a divorced, multiple divorced families will call it as, as my wife. And then multiple, you have multiples more likely for divorce, right? Because if you had multiple, I don't know what it is, like 47% more likely to get divorced if you have twins. So I had twins, but all this stuff kind of ties

together. But at this point, like I've done all that stuff and I'm remarried to my ex-wife five years deep in an amazing marriage. Like I will die with this woman by my side. Just all these, these things. And it's like, statistically, I look at all that and go, it's not an accident. And the stuff I went through, I was given the ability to go through it for some reason, but I was given the ability to strength, whatever it is. Then I was given the opportunities, which didn't seem like at the time to get to a human dark bottom. Cause if I can't go, if I haven't gone there, I can't talk to people about what it's like to be there. So there's that. But then at the other side of the coin, I was given a voice and a, and a,

a certain aspect of compassion and forgiveness and weird human emotional, like navigational skill sets. And then to be able to talk about it. So for me, like, yeah, I, I look back and go, you know, I could have done it. Like it could have been forever, but like, there's a true purpose to it. Like I genuinely didn't let the bones, my bones believe like, this is why I was created for this place to go through this weird stuff, figure it out in my own way and share it. Now, is everybody going to agree? Am I for everybody? Absolutely not. I am human. I am far from perfect. Ask my wife. He'll tell you. But the idea of it is like I have a certain level of things I've gone through that most people don't have to go

through alone now or feel like they're an outcast. No one's experienced it. Like at least I have, and I can give you a couple little nuggets of ways to navigate that. So at the end of the day, man, yeah, it turned into this thing where like, maybe it wasn't by accident. And if I at least choose to believe it wasn't, it allows me to do a lot more for the world than the world did for me. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. You know, I think we process so much of what happens to us in hindsight, but then the ability to sort of like leverage that and to develop thoughts and ideas and experiences moving forward for people to interact with. That's also a pretty big difference maker.

So when you start to reassemble the pieces, you know, when you start to say, okay, so there are people around me who love me, there's like, let me step back into my life, but do it differently. And you start to understand that there may be a different reason that you're here and a way for you to reassemble an identity that actually will carry you forward in life. How do you even decide what that looks like? You know, because as we're having this conversation right now, I don't know how you would actually describe yourself if somebody asks you. But you know, from my experience of you, you know, like you're a deep thinker, incredibly inspiring.

You speak, you write books, you lead trainings, you coach. And I'm always curious how you go from that place you were into this space. How do you start to, because you're not just talking about changing behavior. I know this is one of the things you talk about. You're literally talking about building a new identity from the ground up. Shifting into it. The best metaphor I can have come up with in my head, and it could get better over time,

but I look at it kind of like we've all built this identity. We have brick by brick. It's a house we all live in, right? This is who I am. It's that home feeling of like, this is me. Now, the funny thing, if you read like Michael Singer's Untethered Soul, it's like, you're not really you. You're the person watching you, so to speak.

It's a little, if you read the book, you'll get it. I'm doing a poor job of making it make sense. But there's this sense of you when you talk to you, that's really the you behind the scenes. And what I've looked at is like, yeah, there's a certain house I built brick by brick. The kid that went to school every day and got in trouble. The kid that, you know, didn't get loved on. There's a brick laid there. The kid that, you know, had to stand up in front of his mom.

The kid that wasn't good at football was good. Whatever it was, I built these, this life brick by brick of who I see myself to be based on what I've done. That's all of us. Unfortunately, it is all of us. We, we look at the fruits of our labor and go, that's, I'm that fruit. And we built this thing brick by brick. And then what happens is we look and we go, man, I don't like this house. I don't like this house, but I don't want to be homeless. So I'll fight to stay in this house because the other option is homeless right now. And what ends up happening, you say, how do you become that guy? It's by going out of this house I'm in and doing whatever I got to do, which is typically out of character actions, but it's out

of character actions. I'm going across the street and laying a brick on a new house. And then I go back to my house and I do my thing and I'll go lay a brick. So it looks like me going out and you know what? I, I don't usually work out, but let me go work out today. Still the same guy. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go work out. And so I go lay a brick of a workout, right? Or, you know what? I I've had this job for a while, but I really want to go and become a painter. So I'm going to go out. I'm going to get some paint supplies. I'm gonna try to, to, you know, test out and make my first painting, right? It's going across street, laying a brick. And we do this little by little. You lay a brick. And eventually, when you think of leaving the house you're in, this identity you are, that you don't like,

that the drapes suck and the carpet's torn off and the place stinks and it's got smoke in the walls, right? That's where you feel like you belong because that's the only home you have to live in. Eventually, you go, you know what? I spent enough time building that house. I'm going to go live in that other one. And now there's no fear of being homeless. There's no fear of being left out in the cold or, you know, separate. You had a nice new house to go into, but that is a job. It's just as long and arduous as it took to build the first one. The problem is mostly we don't go and do that. They figure like, this is my house. There's nowhere to go. I can't move. Like now you can move at all times. And when you ask like, how did I become this guy? It was laying bricks of well,

six foot two, you know, African-American man, three or 230 pounds played linebacker in the fell. Like he doesn't talk about his emotion. That's not what we do. How many guys, you know, guys peer that talk about the things I talk, nobody does. I'm like, let me go lay that brick because I was just a brick. I'm going to tell the story once. And then you tell it again, you tell it again. And now I got that room built and it's like, you know, I wasn't a good dad, man. And I was like, I need to go out of this house and stop protecting the house that says I'm too busy at work. Uh, the back and forth with the kids or whatever, maybe I got to build this thing and support the kids. So I got to do this to make money. Like now I'm gonna go build the brick of the guy who sits down and plays a video game with

them or does a board game. So I laid that brick, the marriage thing. I had to take a look and say, well, how come this master bedroom in this house sucks? Why this marriage fall apart? Well, you know, it wasn't built structurally. Let me go over there and what does a good husband do? You know, how does he show up? What does he do? Where does he compromise? What are the things that are asked of him, right? And I laid those bricks. So little by little, I built that house over there and then I just moved into it. And so now I'm just, I'm upkeeping and I'm updating the counters in the kitchen little by little, you know, but I find new ways to improve this home, but I love this home. And if I go back to, you know, when I was first a kid, like this isn't a house I thought

I'd live in. I mean, like if you call it that, like when you're like a poor kid, you don't think about living in a mansion, you dream about it, but you don't think you'll actually live there. For me as a kid, I didn't think I'd have a house and a family and a home and people that love me, but I built it. And that's what everybody can do. It just takes time. Yeah. If you're at a point in life when you're ready to lead with purpose, we can get you there. The University of Victoria's MBA in Sustainable Innovation is not like other MBA programs.

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charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg.

You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him them y'all need a pilot flight risk it's been interesting also because you know part of it's almost like as you're figuring this out yourself you're documenting the process you're you're running experiments you're testing you're optimizing refining it to literally become a methodology that you then turn around and share with the world. Part of your lens on creating what you call an identity shift also involves almost looking at life as a computer system.

And so it's almost like you've deconstructed the parts of it. You're like, well, what's the hardware? What's the operating system. Walk me through the model. Cause I think it's kind of fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. So I started to find ways to get the metaphor of it to work for someone like to get like, Oh, I get it. Right. We all have computers and iPhones and all these kinds of things. And the best way to explain it, it's kind of like we, we have the hardware of the phone. The phone has the programs that you want to play. I want to play music, right? I want to use the file of music, which is the information. I want to use the program iTunes so I can actually play the file, we'll call it. And what happens is I'm going through it. All of a sudden it says,

oh, can't open this. Like you can't use this thing. So you got to update and you go, ah, snooze. I don't feel like updating. I'm busy right now. So we keep on pressing with life and we do our thing. And after a while, the phone stops. It just starts freezing or the computer starts freezing at that spinning wheel of death. You know, so eventually you go, fine, I will up. I will download this update. So you download the software takes forever. You'll update it. You load it in, let the thing spin. But then all of a sudden programs work. You can play the files. It's amazing. It's fast. It's smooth. It's enjoyable. Again, you actually get to use a computer. And so what I look at is we are all like these computers and realistically a deeper level than just like, Oh, I'm an operating system.

Yeah. Well, if you think about it, your hardware is your body. That's the same as the screen that could keyboard, right? All that kind of stuff. And you have files, the books you've read, the courses you've taken, the information that you consume as the files. And you have programs that play it, right? If I read a book on relationships, I need a program of a relationship in my life. Or if I read a book on a career, I should have a program of a career in my life. So those are the programs where you get to experience those. The foundational piece that no one's looking at that's invisible runs at all on a computer or a phone, right? It's going to be Mac OS X or iOS or Linux or Windows. These are operating systems. Without the operating system, you can't utilize the

hardware because it can't connect to their program or play the file. In our lives, it's our identity. That's the operating system. It's invisible, but it controls everything. So if I don't actually think about, well, what program am I choosing to run? And then those spinning wheels of death are your wife or your colleagues going, hey, you got to be better. Can you be a better dad? Can you be a better husband? Can you be a better coworker? No, no, I'm good. I don't need that.

You snooze it. And then eventually you lose your job because no one likes you. You got to go back and download. Okay, what should I do? All right, I got to be better here. Upload the actions. And then lo and behold, it runs smooth again, right? So for us as human beings, the best thing we can do is stop snoozing the updates.

Like actually see the update go, can you get that now so I don't have a problem later? And then now what happens is you can actually increase the capacity of your processor, which is your brain. I can take on more. I can have a better capacity. I can run more things. Life becomes way more fun and more experience. But not if you're trying to use a new computer with, you know, Windows 95, it's just not going to work. Yeah. It's funny when I first heard this model, you know, like the way

you described it, I had this interest. I'm like, when do I update my computer operating systems? And I'm like, you know, for years I wouldn't do it until I literally got that notice that said, you know, like your current operating system will no longer be supported as of X date. And I'm like, that's basically like, it's, and it's literally, it's, you know, it's the drop dead date on your operating system. And I'm like, how many of us reach that exact same point with our lives? Like we know it's there to update and we keep getting the notices saying like ready to download and install. And we just like, nah, like you said, snooze, snooze, snooze. And the only time we finally actually do something about it is when we get that notice that says like the current operation says

we'll no longer be supported, which in life very often happens as this big traumatic crisis or event. And yet, you know, if you just sit there and you're like, I'm going to let it download like tonight and just hit the button that says install in the morning on a regular basis, it's no big deal. But if you do it, if it happens, if you allow it to get to that just serious crisis point where you actually have to, like, it's not a question, you're being forced because it's literally like, you know, if you get the message

that says your current operating system is no longer going to be supported, you know, like as a human being, that means like you're no longer be supported. And that's where I think so much mental illness, physical illness, just relational illness and crisis happens. And yet that's the place that so many of us live from. Yeah, I agree, man. All day, every day, consistently. And then we wonder why we don't do much or achieve much. I've recently had this thought in this conversation that we're talking about expanding upon in a discussion of the aspect of guilt. Because people ask, what is it you do, Anthony? And I'm like, well, I help people make an identity shift. And that's not really clear sometimes or desirable without a whole podcast to cover it. I was like, by the end of the day, what I really do is I help people eliminate guilt.

Tell me more. Yeah. There's a guilt that we carry in a lot of ways, some good, some bad, right? My guilt of not being a great husband back before, it drives me to be a great husband now. There's positive parts, but there's also the guilt of, you know, I'm working on something and I know my wife and my kids want me around,

but like I'm working on this. So I'm working with a guilty, heavy heart. Or if I'm at home with my kids and I'm thinking of work, I have a guilty heart there. And so I'm never really showing up to each of those with full heart and expression. Or I feel guilty because I have this vision, this dream, this passion to do something, but then people aren't, they're not giving it to

the world. So you go to bed every single day going, I'm not serving my heart, my purpose very well. Or I mean, even small little guilts of like people in business are like, they don't do a good job of growing the business because, well, what if I have somebody pay me money and I can't deliver, right? There's that future guilt of what if that, so these little nuances. And what I've found is the individuals that like we're in cahoots with, we'll call it, like they operate at such a level at a core of a knowing of who they are and how they show up. They don't have that. Like not at the same level. It's like the sense of my identity knows how I'm going to love people. It knows how I'm going to show up.

It knows I'm going to run my life. I know I'm not going to let you down. I know I'm going to be with my kids when I'm with my kids mentally, right? So when you shift to that identity, you actually eliminate a lot of that guilt. And so there's this space where I think, you said we all have this kind of these things going on

and a shift isn't just a shift to accomplish more because you will accomplish a lot more. But I bet if you were to go back and say, who were you 10 years ago, 15 years ago, right? Different human. It's hard to probably get into the headspace of that human. Cause you're like, I don't know. I thought different. I care different. I, I speak different. I let different things like there's a whole vast different human. And that's not just random. That's like a different identity. It's a shift. But in doing so, I'm sure you've eliminated the guilts that might've carried. I ate too much and drank too much and whatever it might be, right? That's, I at one point was a gym owner drinking

beers in the middle of the day, like a six pack dude, like little, and we live with these consistently. And it's like those updates, we're just living with guilt. We're like, you know, hey, it's cool. I'm going to, I can, I can bear this guilt. It's enough to handle. It's not, it's not, it's not painful enough. And so people live in it all day, every day. And my goal is like to stop living in it, man, to make the updates, to eliminate that guilt and live in a space of like, like full ability to achieve at a high level and not feel like you're seeing that show up, you know, last year and a half, two years for a lot of people, it's been really tough. And a lot of what we feel like, or felt like, or believe we had control over, we're realizing, oh, so there are other factors at play here. I'm curious when you think of this notion of grappling with guilt, and it's sort of like relationship to identity and circumstance. How do you think about in the context of the last year and a half? Of the guilt aspect?

Yeah. In a lot of ways. I think for me, people, so here's been my notice of myself and people around me. I think there's this aspect of people are now feeling guilty in some aspects of looking at who they were before the pandemic and then finding out who they were during. Right? I was, like people are like, I was at home and I was stuck and I got to spend time with my wife and I really had some hard, there's a lot of divorces because people realize like what they were doing. And it's like, whether

there's guilt or blame or shame or whatever it was, there's that aspect to it. I think there's also the fact that people were forced to have to go. I think there's a lot of people that we went back to the drawing board, the whole world kind of got a reset. Some people are now looking back going, man, I missed my opportunity. I could have built, could have done, could have X, Y, Z. And I didn't. Right. There's guilt. I got a lot of clients that are coming in like, man, a year ago you told me I just I was like, I just was holding off on doing I know what I did. I didn't take the action. I'm like, I know. And I told you to. Right. So it's that kind of guilt. And then I think there's also the guilt of like when you're sitting there and you're no longer going to work in the fast paced treadmill, I think you stop and settle in and reflect upon the life you've been living. I think a lot of people did that. We started reflecting, because whenever there's not that motion, that pace, that speed, you can't be distracted anymore. Right? If you think about driving a car, when I'm driving a car really, really fast, all I notice is I'm on the road, my hands, I can't, I got to see stop signs, everything.

I got to see cars. I'm focused. When I slow down, my mind wanders. I see things around me differently. I can be, I can see the street and I can look up the mountain hill and I'm driving. And I think people started doing that and go, oh my gosh, not a great person, man. And I think the guilt turned into some shame for some people. Not just I did a bad thing, but I am a bad thing. And so I've seen a lot of this go on and people think it's the end. Like it's, that can't fix it. I'm like, no man, like you're aware of it now. Beautiful. Like,

you now have a gift. You've actually become aware of it. You've, you've seen behind the wizard of Oz curtain, right? You get it. So now go do something like that's the cool thing. You have an opportunity to go make a shift in some capacity to do it in a reason, understand why. But I think we're all battling this stuff, man. There's the mom guilt, dad guilt, business guilt, health guilt, financial guilt. Oh man, that's a big one too. Like people feel guilty for not saving, not preparing properly, right? Like there's a lot of things that people are running into or, you know, shame of like the guilt of saying that they had this and they didn't have this. And then they lost that house because now that, you know, like all these weird little things that pop in. So there is a lot that we as humans are experiencing and settling with every single day. And I don't think enough people are trying to

eliminate it. They're just trying to bury it and hide it. Yeah, I think that's so true. And like you said, when you're moving so quickly, you don't have the time to actually let your mind process so many truths of your reality. And I think sometimes we say yes to living at that pace inadvertently, you know, and we'll blame it on, oh, it's the job. It's this, is that it requires that. And yes, sure. Maybe, maybe part of it does, you know, like, but part of the reason we said yes to it, knowing that that would be part of the process and part of the experience, I think deep down, sometimes it also, we kind of know that we won't have the space to sit with our stuff. If we say yes to this, and if that yes goes on for years or decades, and that stuff keeps building,

it doesn't go away. And like you said, like I've had a really similar observation. There's been a forced slowing down, a forced pause. And a lot of people are really, really uncomfortable. And your observation that, you know, like folks think, well, it is what it is. I screwed up. It's just, no, no. You know, it was what it was, but that doesn't mean it has to be, you know, like what it has to be. It means like we're in a moment where you can either choose to step into it more intentionally or not. At least this is part of your methodology, right? Like this first part, like C, like the C phase, right? Like you see your blind spots for the first time and you have this opportunity to say, okay, so like, this is the bargain that I made up until now. But like, what would the bargain be that I'm going to make from this

point forward if I had this opportunity to reimagine it, which is a great opportunity, man, and people, they, oh, I, like, I want to get in people's hearts, climb in and like, let me unplug this and plug this in over here for you. Let me, let me clear this out real quick. I'll sweep this floor, like get light, man. Cause the beautiful thing is I think there's also this, um, this fear of if they go and do different things that are out of character, they'll be judged in a negative way. And the way I look at it, it's like the guy who did something wrong and the person who he wronged, they want to keep shaming him, which I get. That person wants retribution. But the people in your life that may look at you doing something

different, like maybe you do decide to start working out, maybe you're in a little heavy set and they want you to work out, they're not going to make fun of you when you do. And if they do, then they're not the people for your life, right? Because the people who love you, when you start doing that out of character thing, that's different than the identity you've locked yourself into, man, like the right people make your heart swell. They support, they cheer, they build, they grow. And you start feeling a different person quite literally. Because here's what, what at the end of it all is, I think we're investment-biased humans. We invest in something, get a return. The thing is, you've been investing in a bad stock. You've been investing in the wrong stock, man. And so your return on that thing is you've lost money, right? So go invest in a new

stock. That's it. Invest in a new area. Build that new brick house. Like just go and invest because what happens is the more you invest in the actions that are out of character in a positive way, the more the return of this new sense of self comes to you. So it's never an end all, man. I don't care what you've done or how you've done it or what's going on. There's always people

and there's always a place for you to actually build into positively. I love that. Possibility has never left the building, but so often we think it has. This feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So hanging out here in this container of a good life project,

if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? To live a good life. Ooh. Now at the end of my podcast, I ask a question and it's actually a difficult one and yours is, is amazingly difficult too. Although it's so simple, man, I think to live a good life, it's to have more good experiences than bad. I think that's even like in my head, the purpose

of life. Cause I don't know what we're supposed to do here, why we're supposed to be here, but I do know that everything's an experience, right? And, and so for me, I think if I can create more good and yes, it could be relative, right? For a Satanist to be good to go and murder goats, right? That's not, I'm saying in the collective view of the, we'll call it the norm of what's good for people. I think it means just having more good experiences, like spending more time with loved ones. I don't care who you are, what you do, the best and worst part of this world is people. So experience both. So it juxtaposes each other, right? But man, like everything we do should be, in my opinion, done

with humans, with people. And that human could be you sometimes by yourself, right? It's okay. But I think there's, I think if you can create more good experiences with great people, it fills up life. It has way more event horizons, those moments where you recall, because I think there's not enough of them for people's life. I think that we have, we've solidified our brains onto this little pattern I go through and that's it. And then I think that's life and it's not because if you can do the same thing for 10 years, like it feels consistent and great. But if I asked you on the 11th year, tell me about the last 10 years, they meld together because you didn't go and do enough Event Horizon,

different nuance things with different people and experience the craziness of this amazing world. Because we now more than ever have the ability to do what no one could before. We can go and see the places we have on pictures in our school books for a couple bucks on Groupon. Like go hit a flight, man. Go see the world.

Go talk to people. Go up and up. Go connect. Humanity has never been able to do this before. And so I think living a good life is experiencing more good than bad. Thank you. Hey, before you leave, if you'd love this episode safe, but you'll also love the conversation we had with Jill Balti-Teller about how we can understand and tap our whole brains to really see who we are and live

fuller lives. You'll find a link to Jill's episode in the show notes. And even if you don't listen now, go ahead and click and download so it's ready to play when you're on the go. And of course, if you haven't already done so, go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. And if you appreciate the work that we've been doing here on Good Life Project, go check out my new book, Sparked. It'll reveal some incredibly eye-opening things about maybe one of your favorite subjects, you, and then show you how to tap these insights to reimagine and reinvent work as a source of meaning, purpose, and joy. You'll find a link in the show notes, or you can also find it at your favorite bookseller now. Until next time,

I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk.

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