Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #163 Mark Bell

Episode Date: July 11, 2020

Mark Bell returns to the podcast to offer some pearls in interesting times.   Help support the podcast by visiting our sponsors: Check out www.primalfusionhealth.com/e3/kyle for a free gift and more information on Aleks and Sara's coaching. Aleks and Sara are Chek professionals who have taken a deep dive into all matter of life and can break you through whatever sticking point you may be experiencing! Check out Dry Farm Wines and get a bottle for a penny | DryFarmWines.com/Kyle Dry Farm is 100% organic and biodynamic grown wines from all over the world with about 1g of carbohydrate per bottle! Keto wine with none of the garbage- it is truly the healthiest wine on Earth and the only wine I drink.  Visit paleovalley.com and enter code word KYLE at check out for 15% off you ENTIRE ORDER. These guys made the best 100% grass fed beef sticks, ACV capsules, and much more! Ancestral Supplements - Grass-Fed intestines  https://ancestralsupplements.com/kyle Use codeword KING10  for 10% off / Only Valid through Shopify Option. For the best supplements helping you eat nose-to-tail and getting the most nutrient dense and bioavailable nutrients in your diet.  OneFarm Formally (Waayb CBD) www.onefarm.com/kyle (Get 15% off everything using code word KYLE at checkout). Check out the BRAND NEW night serums and facial creams and (as always) the best full spectrum CBD products.    Get $100 off the Chek Institute’s Holistic Lifestyle Coach Level 1 online course by using KKP100 at checkout |  https://chekinstitute.com/hlc1online/ HLC changed my life and offered a deep dive into Paul Chek's amazing wealth of knowledge.    Connect with Kyle Kingsbury on: Instagram | https://bit.ly/3asW9Vm   Subscribe to the Kyle Kingsbury Podcast Itunes | https://apple.co/2P0GEJu Stitcher | https://bit.ly/2DzUSyp Spotify | https://spoti.fi/2ybfVTY IHeartRadio | https://ihr.fm/2Ib3HCg Google Play Music | https://bit.ly/2HPdhKY  

Welcome to today's show friends. I don't have much to say other than it's with my dude Mark Bell and we play a little bit of catch up during quarantine to hear what it and he's got a wealth of knowledge. He's been on the show, I think, a couple of times before already, maybe three times. I've been on his show a couple of times. Truly someone who I've learned a lot from. A freak of nature, squatted, I think, over 1,100 pounds. Many other feats of strength. Recently, in his bright old age, young age, young body, went on stage and did very well bodybuilding competition. And way more than powerlifting and lifting weights is just some of these keys to extracting

a good life while we're living in ridiculously chaotic times. And Mark has some beautiful insights. So stay tuned for that. We are brought to you today by Ancestral Supplements. And grass-fed intestines with tripe is on the menu. These guys at Ancestral Supplements are taking New Zealand-sourced nose-to-tail organ meats, bone marrow, and intestines, and putting them in simple, convenient gelatin capsules, which is a big deal if you're talking about eating an animal's intestines.

According to the great John Fire Lame Deer, the eating of guts evolved into a contest. Quote, in the old days, we used to eat the guts of the buffalo, making a contest of it. Two fellows getting a hold of a long piece of intestines from opposite ends started chewing toward the middle, seeing who can get there first. That's eating. Those buffalo guts, full of half-fermented,

half-digested grass and herbs, you didn't need any pills and vitamins when you swallowed those, end quote. Intestines, stomach, tripe, and other gelatinous parts provided concentrated amounts of connective tissue, undenatured collagen, probiotics, and other gut-specific proteins that are now absent from the modern diet.

This goes without saying. So if you look at the modern diet and you say, all right, maybe I'm going to eliminate some processed food. Maybe I don't eliminate some of these other things that are engineered as my buddy Rob Wolf talks about in Wired to Eat, who will also be coming back on the show. It's pretty easy to kind of see that. Does it remain shelf stable?

All these other things. And of course, supplements you could put into that category. But at the same time, what's missing? I can't remember the last time in my life I ate animal innards. I have had liver. I've had raw kidney with my man, Paul Saladino, the carnivore dog. I've eaten some weird things. I talked about eating testicle with Ben Greenfield when we were on a hunting trip in in uh hawaii i think peter tia got in on that too everybody loves some nuts but um this is one i'd have trouble with you know they're just being quite frank i would have trouble eating this and the fact that these guys can still harness the nutrient density of these parts of the animal and as our ancestors did especially

the ancestors of this land utilize the entire animal nose to tail. How can we leave no waste? How can we leave nothing behind? And truly there is medicine in every part of these animals. So being able to tap into that in a way that's palatable, that's a huge win. I've spoken before about the taste of liver, the taste of kidneys, and Saladino will argue otherwise, but it's at the very least acquired. And I don't think it's something that we're accustomed to in modern society is eating something that sharp,

especially something like kidney or the sliminess that you would have to get through with intestines. But this is by far one of the best things because it's providing so much more than just collagen, which is awesome. Their living collagen is awesome. I take that as well.

So does my wife, Tosh. But again, getting into that, the half-fermented, pre-digested, half-digested grass and herbs straight from nature, a lot of the vitamins and minerals that are broken down, the enzymes and living pieces that go into that, the probiotics and other parts of connective tissue, all of that in this supplement. And all you got to do is take six pills a day.

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ACV has been shown to support with digestion, breaking down proteins, amino acids for better absorption, improving the blood sugar response, supporting with satiety and cravings. This is huge for me and my wife. As I mentioned last week, we do have the genetics for diabetes and obesity. And even though we'll never look or fulfill that part of our DNA through the epigenetic on-off switches, if I want to have a field day with carbohydrates, apple cider vinegar is a great way to curb the blood sugar response. And I'm actually

testing that right now with a CGM, which I'll be talking about a bit further with the guys who created it in an upcoming show. But anyway, I can have, and it's not even a cheat meal. You know, like if I eat white rice, I look like I'm diabetic. But if I do that with apple cider vinegar from Paleo Valley, that's not the case. Additionally, clinically proven benefits have been shown for high blood pressure, reduced heart disease risk. Chlorogenic acid component also seems to prevent LDL from oxidizing, which is a key factor in development of heart disease. All sorts of good stuff. You can check this out over at paleovalley.com. And all you got to do is enter code word Kyle at checkout, and you're going to get 20% off your entire order. That's Kyle at

checkout paleovalley.com. And these guys are also making beef sticks and a lot of other cool stuff. We are also brought to you by my good friends, Alex and Sarah, Alex Rubchinski and Sarah Gustafson, soon to be married. We're on the podcast about a month ago, and they are two very high level check practitioners that are taking a deep dive with you personally, privately in one-on-one coaching through a number of different modalities, focusing on energy and elevation of mind, pretty much body, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of living, which is more or less what the show is about. And how to expand, how do we grow? How do we grow our connection and awareness with ourselves, with the people that are closest

to us, our one-on-one relationships, our partners, our children? And then outside of that, how do we expand that further into the reaches of our community, into our purpose and direction in life? And truly, you know, no different than, than what I've hammered out on the, on this podcast is the fact that that always starts from within. It always starts with our own health. And then from there, through that mastery, we can begin to take that out into the world. And I know that one minute of talking about their high level of coaching and what they've done for me is clearly not enough, but you can check out the podcast I did with them just a few episodes back. So if you scroll back, you can really take a deeper dive into archetypes and relationships and all sorts of cool stuff, which these guys will dive into you with in their coaching.

So if you go to primalfusionhealth.com slash E3 slash Kyle, you will get three free videos about what they're all about and some more content and see if coaching with them is right for you. We're also brought to you today by One Farm. One Farm is taking the very best hemp on the planet, a 100% USDA certified farm, organic USDA certified farm out in Colorado and reducing that to the very best full spectrum CBD products on the planet using 100% CO2 extraction and nothing else. You've got organic MCTs, natural flavors like cinnamon and lemon and

unflavored for their tinctures. And they even have some awesome night serums and facial creams for ladies or raggedy old men like me who've been punched in the face too many times. All that good stuff over at onefarm.com slash Kyle, and you're going to get 15% off your entire order. And without having to go much further my man mark bell all right my brother mark bell back on the show yeah what's up my man how you doing today i'm doing pretty damn good all things considered how have you been uh you know i've i've been really good i've um you know actually uh during this during, you know, I just have, I just switched things up a little bit, you know, like, I just have taken it as a moment in time to, you that when the world unfreezes, everyone's exposed, right? Or you can decide to like advance yourself. And so that's what I've been doing. I've been just, you know, going on a lot of walks. I've been running.

I've still been lifting. I got some, a little bit of weights in the garage here. I'm in Bodega Bay, California. And what a great place to be. The sun, sunshine and then you can go and check out the ocean. Got the beach right there. And so, yeah, I, it sounds funny to say it this way, but I'm like proud of myself because I thought I would be like demoralized, you know, without having the gym. And I shut the gym down for myself too because i thought it was a selfish thing if i was going to be at super training gym then none of my team and none of my staff could go in there i was like you know what that's kind of crap so you know how it is

you know training with all the people you've trained with over the years uh you got that camaraderie and if you're the only kind of dickhead in there training every day it's it's a little bit of uh i don't know a little bit of a smack in the face, I think, to the rest of the crew. So I decided to just rough it like the rest of them, I guess you'd say. I like that. Yeah, there's that. Obviously, there's the aspect of camaraderie and you guys pushing each other. And if you're in there solo, it's not quite the same experience anyways but that would certainly feel um it certainly wouldn't feel right if you're in there just cranking it out and

everybody else is doing body weight exercises or training with one kettlebell or whatever they have at home i imagine there's not a ton of people who train there who have a really legit home gym and maybe that's just my own thought but i would i would think you don't if you don't need it why would you purchase all that shit you guys have the best one of the best gyms in the world you know that everyone has access to no one's ever experienced quarantine before and it's just like oh shit i should have had kettlebells i should have had you know my own rack i should have had whatever in anticipation but there's no way to anticipate any of this yeah it's definitely definitely uncharted territory.

But, you know, something I've been working on and I think that you have as well, like, you know, you retired from the fight game and it allowed your mind. I'm sure that your mind just especially probably even towards the end of your career, even even before you retired from MMA, you probably started, your mind probably started to wander and started to drift and you probably started to learn and probably started to open your mind to a lot of other things. And that's exactly what has been going on with me for the last few years. And so I've been very fortunate to have, it's not that I thought of every scenario, because like you said, who the heck could have figured out this one, right?

But I have been thinking about like worst case scenarios like what happens if I die what happens if my wife dies what happens if my children get sick you know I have thought of these things I have friends my friend Jason Kalipa his daughter was diagnosed with leukemia a few years ago and fortunately they've been able to get through that as a family and they're beyond that and she's very healthy nowadays. But watching him go through that he and I have had some really good conversation. And he was like, Hey, man, like, what's what would happen with your business if you were to like drop dead? And I'm like, Hey, way to bring the room down there, buddy. You know, you know, just brought up a really good point. Like, yeah, you should

probably weigh out some bad scenarios. You know, I think before this quarantine ever happened, before COVID-19 ever happened, there are still two things that are true. Every human being gets prescribed, you know, life is basically a death sentence. You're going to die. No one gets out of this alive. I don't believe anyone's done that quite yet. No one's figured of this alive. I don't believe anyone's done that quite yet. No one's figured that out yet. The other side of it is, is that, you know, before the quarantine

happened, the only thing we had control over, the only thing we had rule over, agency over is our thoughts, you know, and what we do with our thoughts, the thoughts that come into our heads, the way that we interpret stuff, the way that we think about things. And yes, this disease sucks. I think there's over 4 million Americans that have contracted at this point. And there's around 70,000 that have died from it. And it's definitely different for everybody to go through this. But at the same time, are there things that we can still work on? Are there advancements that we can still make? The people that are healthy, the people that are in good shape, you know, they can hopefully still figure out ways to make money, still figure out ways to just, you know, get shit done. Like I said,

the only thing we've ever had rule over and that's before and after the quarantine is the thoughts and how you process what's going on. Because if we just hit the ground and start crying, um, it's not helpful. If you get pissed off, that's not, not really helping the situation either. So what I'm going to do out here in California is I I've just kind of gotten tired of what's going on around here. So I was like, well, you know what? I'm going to work on opening up California myself. So I'm going to get some people together. We're going to go down just to downtown Davis. And I'm going to ask everybody, this is something I just thought of this yesterday. And I was just going to get, I started texting some friends and things like that. And I said, hey, let's all just get together and let's go to downtown Davis and order a bunch of food from whatever restaurants allow you to have takeout.

Let's bring lawn chairs. Let's clean up after ourselves, of course. And let's just, you know, make a little ruckus. Nothing violent, nothing, nothing illegal. Just a statement of like, hey, let's, let's figure out a way to get this shit back together again. Because, you know, I'm not I'm not a very like politically driven person. I try not to get too wrapped up in whatever. But I do like to be aware of what's going on.

And I just don't think there's a reason to wait. I want to start to search for the answer of what's the reason to wait? Like, why are we waiting? Because are we waiting for a cure? There is no cure for viruses. Are we waiting for a vaccine? Vaccines can definitely be helpful, but that's not a cure either, right? I mean, so, you know, what, that, that's my question that I, that I would like to be in search of for the next few weeks here. So that's what we're going to do out here in NorCal.

I like that. That's a good plan. You know, it's, it's the moderate assembly, maybe not the mass assembly, but you know, some form of statement of bringing people back together, being out in nature and community. You build community through food. You break bread with one another. We had Paul Saladino on the podcast recently who took a deep dive into the statistics. And one of the things he was talking about is these two cruise ships that had confirmed outbreaks on,

the Princess and then a naval ship. And an interesting thing to pay attention to in all of this, as we look back on, on however, this thing pans out is which cultures that we study, what statistics they had, and were they healthy to begin with, like an Iceland or a Finland, and then, or a Sweden, and then we look at other cultures. And, you know, amongst the cruise ships, you have typically a larger overweight population of elderly people that are not necessarily taking care of themselves, generally speaking. And then obviously the Navy ship, completely different ballgame. People are healthy.

They're in shape. And one of the things they found was, and I'm just paraphrasing here, but of the people who were, everyone was tested on the shit, only 20% tested positive and yet everyone's exposed. So the first thing we have to do is say, if everyone's exposed and only 20% contract this, that's one statistic we need to pay attention to because not everybody's going to be, you might have exposure and not just get it plain and simple of the 20 20 of the people who get it 60 were asymptomatic meaning they had zero signs of any symptoms whatsoever right and then that really takes the death number down it doesn't it's not to say that people aren't dying but um another another lens to look through is are the people who actually die healthy or not well across, across the board, we see preexisting conditions.

And then what happens if somebody dies, like Rogan was just talking about this. If somebody dies from a heart attack while they have tested positive for COVID, they die of COVID. They don't die of the heart attack. They die of COVID related illness. Well, they were going to fucking die

of a heart attack anyways, right? If you're not taking care of yourself and you're going to die of a preexisting condition, regardless, just like we're all going to die no matter what, and you start lumping them into COVID numbers, that's going to boost those COVID stats, right? So how do we intelligently look at this and say, maybe the death toll is far less than we thought it would be. Maybe everyone who's dying has something going on pre-existing, whether it's age-related, illness-related, cancer-related, the list goes on and on. And maybe the populations where we see the largest amounts of deaths, like Northern Italy, maybe they're not so healthy to begin with. Large percentage of smokers, lots of pollution in Wuhan, things like that. So if we start to

factor all these things into the equation, I think there's good reason why we see a lot of these more right, red states starting to usher people back into work. Like, hey, we still wear masks and all that, but let's not completely tank the economy in some type of overreaction to something that's potentially going to kill us. I don't think it's going to wipe us all out. And maybe this is a good trial run for the super bug that does come along. But as of, as of this point right now, there's really no reason, you know, I mean, you listen to everybody, whether they're, you know, down the line or their alternative medicine. Um, everyone's been saying this thing survives in the cold and here we are entering the summer months. It's time to fucking come back out. I couldn't agree more. And, um, you know, hopefully, you know, I'm,

I'm hopeful that, uh, you know, more people will protest and more people will voice their opinion. I think, I think a lot of times we don't feel like we got much of a voice, even though, you know, we do, do live in a, uh, in a free country. I feel like, um, a lot of times we don't think you can make a difference. You know, I'll hear people, you know, a lot of times they'll complain about the president and then you'll ask them if they voted and they didn't vote because they just feel like they don't, they feel like it doesn't matter, you know, and maybe it doesn't matter.

Like maybe the votes are fudged and maybe they always been. Maybe the news has always been fake. You know, like I think, you know, people have to give Donald Trump credit, at least for one thing. He brought the world fake news and he kind of showed the world that you can't trust the media. And no one has ever really exposed that before. I mean, there's kind of been some exposés on it and stuff here and there, but I don't think anybody ever bought it. I don't think anybody ever bought it i don't think anybody ever believed it now you look at how far off you know like fox news will go versus cnn like they're they're completely divided the information is um not only slightly different but it's opposite

a lot of times and it's like wow that's really confusing and then you have other uh you've got other media trying to do maybe a little bit better job of bringing you the news. But again, you know, if we go back to, you know, the answer usually lies in the middle. We hear that all the time, right? It doesn't, it doesn't probably make any sense for us to go back to 100% completely the way things were before. We should probably have some concern. It should probably be at least a little bit. We don't want the elderly to get sick. The people with comorbidities, we don't want to see them die.

So the people that are sick, the people that don't feel well, the people that are nervous or scared about getting outside and getting around other people or congregating or going to a stadium and stuff like that you know unfortunately those people would have to figure out whatever ways they think is best for them to stay protected they need to do so but you know as far as everybody else goes you know washing your hands not being a not being a dirty mofo and, you know, practicing some social distancing and then just kind of like seeing kind of what happens.

But people dying, you know, it's nothing new. I mean, you know, if you look at, you know, from a war perspective, you know, a lot of people have died for the freedom that we have, you know, and now we have it. Like I think, you know, in terms of like equal rights and freedom and stuff it's not it's you know by no means is it perfect but it might be the best that it's ever been in this country you know it might be about the best i know there's still a lot of racism and there's still a lot of inequalities and there's still a lot of disgusting things that happen that just suck. Um, but I, I think that we've finally gotten to a point where it's like, wow, things seem to be, things seem to be pretty good. Uh, we hear people arguing about politics and fighting about politics and religion and stuff just like they have in the

past, but at least people are talking about it. But now it's like we, we, it's almost as if the American public doesn't really care. Like, Oh, it's getting on. We got to stay inside and stay inside and wash my hands, you know, and be, be, be, sit on our hands. And I think, you know, if my grandfather did that and other people's grandparents did that we wouldn't be anywhere. We wouldn't even have a free country in the first place. So I can't really think of a lot of

cases where, you know, I know that people are like, oh, it's being smart, but I don't think it's smart. I think it's being ignorant to the fact that this virus is not nearly as dangerous as we originally thought. And it's time to move on, I think. Yeah, it is time to move on. And there's a lot of people that talk. Eric Weinstein has been on Rogan's a number of times. He did an excellent YouTube video, and I think it got released on his podcast with his wife,

where they are PhD biologistsologists and even though they're not virologists they go into the nature of viruses and really talk about the fact that viruses want to make their way into the future and one of the ways they do that is by adapting and changing and one of the ways they adapt and change for the most part is to become easier on the host that it infects. It's not to become more deadly because if it only survives within the host, it does not survive. It only carries on whether it's alive or not. I know that's debated strongly on both sides of the argument,

but it only makes its way into the future when the hosts are alive to spread it. So if we consider that factor, that's one of the reasons why, and maybe it's just human adaptability. Maybe that when we pass this thing on to one another, it's changing in a way that makes it more tolerable for the next. Or you look at, you know, Graham Hancock's, or not Graham Hancock, Rupert Sheldrake's hundredth monkey theory and morphic resonance, maybe the collective consciousness rises to a level where it's less deadly. Still, there will always be a population of people who are under threat. Those are population of people that don't necessarily take care of themselves. And I think through the lens that you're talking about, you can always look through, you can always look through two angles of one coin. And that is what's in my control and what's

not in my control. And for the large control and what's not in my control. And for the large part, it's not in our control to just march back into work and say, I'm opening up business. I don't give a shit about the law. Like, no, probably not a lot of people can do that right now. But you always have control over how you spend your time. And now we have an abundance of that, right? There's always this teeter-totter. When you talk about the economy and you talk about wealth and abundance there's two forms to that there is time an abundance of time and an abundance of finance and most people have been sacrificing their time for money and now we have what less money but more time so how do we spend that time in an effort to better ourselves and I think you

you've hit it the nail on the head. You can walk more. You can be outside in nature. You can lift weights. And if you don't have weights at your house and kettlebells are on back order or something like that, you can do any basic body weight exercises that you could look up on YouTube and something is better than nothing. But all of which promote health. Sunlight promotes health. Vitamin D promotes health. Getting in nature promotes health. I mean, you go down the list of things that we have access to. Everybody, I mean, as far as I know, it doesn't matter which state you're living in or which country, you couldn't throw on a mask and go for a walk

outside, whether you have a dog or not, whether it's with your family or not, you can get your ass outside and that's going to do wonders for health that uh asu kyle kingsbury uh 290 pound defensive end uh probably wouldn't have done very well if uh if the weight room was taken away and stuff do you feel like the things you've been doing for the last several years have kind of again no one's really truly prepped for this and who knows how long it will go on and who knows what it'll maybe even spawn into or whatever. But you feel like a lot of the things that you've learned over the last several years have really kind of prepped you from a mental standpoint for what's going on? Yeah, without question, you know, and you're to

your point, you're exactly correct. You know, know i mean i would have lost my fucking mind if this happened back when i was in college i didn't have any of the tools right and i think that's you know podcasts like yours and mine are about giving people tools it's not self-help it's empowerment you know and it's empowerment through um you know the tracks we've taken there are many paths up the mountain um and there's no one right single way you know one of my favorite quotes from yours that i've said uh probably tell them blue in the face on this podcast was uh when people ask you you know what's the best way to train is it bodybuilding powerlifting crossfit is it body weight is it mma is it this or that and you always tell them it's

the thing you're not doing, right? Because of adaptability and change, right? And so it's not to say that anyone is better. It's just to say the more tools I have, the more access I have. If I've learned some degree of CrossFit format, WODs and things like that, I can bridge together my own exercises to make a workout of the day. If I've done a power lifting program with Burdick or some of these different guys, I can build on that. If I've done a, on it, six body weight programming, I know how to do, you know, some yoga and some integrated body weight exercises and maybe some plyometrics and I can do that shit anywhere in the world.

So, and this is strictly on the physical, you know, when we start talking about different practices of calming the mind from meditation and some of the, some of the stuff that maybe mindfulness, maybe it's a little harder for some people to grasp. Certainly, if you haven't had a practice of that and you just try to jump right in, at least there's apps now. You know, I mean, what's the guy's name who's been on Rogan's a Bunch? Super smart neuroscientist. I know, I've seen him.cientist and i've seen sam harris commercial sam harris yeah sam harris yeah he's got a brilliant app um you know there's there's

there's there's many great apps there but just going for a walk you know like that's that's the low-hanging fruit when you talk about that 10 minute walk um you know in anything you want to you want to bridge the gap, whatever tool it is. And, you know, talking to many of the experts who have been on the show with regard to habit change, you don't just jump headfirst into the deep end. You don't say, all right, I'm going to start walking. I'm going to go keto. I'm going to fucking get to bed on time. I'm going to intermittent fast 16 hours a day. And you just go down this list of everything you want to add. That's a hard thing to chew on.

You start adding all those in. But if you add them in one by one and keep the habit and really feel the difference from that habit, then you know the why behind it. Well, then it's going to stick. If you understand the why behind it, you'll figure out any how. And I think of that, you know, all these tools that I've learned to help me navigate equanimity in my own mind and my own perception really do pan out. But, you know, to be perfectly honest, I'm no different

than anyone else. When this thing started, I was fucking fried. I was like, this went from a one week spring break for Bear. And mind you, this is his first year in school. It's not like we've been accustomed to him being in school, but we got accustomed to him being in school somewhat. And all of a sudden it goes from that to two weeks to, all right, this is the extended summer and we don't know if they're going back in 2020. And with a baby on the way and a lot of other things to figure out,

it was pretty nerve wracking. But at the same time, we would have had to sort that shit out anyways. School was going to end May 28th. And then we only would have had to sort that shit out anyways. School was going to end May 28th. And then we only would have had a month to figure out how do we be with our son? How do we co-parent and do some type of homeschooling where we can create routine and a schedule that fulfills each one of us and at the same time creates space so every one of us doesn't feel claustrophobic within our own

family unit. But we each have time for ourselves. We each have time as a couple. We each have time as a collective group. And I think in really sorting through that and wading through the shit of stuff that needed to be sorted anyways, we've now had the time and the impetus to make that happen. And I think that having those tools really did make all the difference in the world and being able to cultivate a pretty rad experience in quarantine. I have a 12-year-old daughter and a 16-year-old son, as you know, and seeing them with this kind of new challenge that's going on of figuring out how to do homeschool, figuring out how to do it on the computer and things like that you know and i think that you would probably

be in full agreement with me i mean it's it's sort of ridiculous that school has never really changed you know it's been the same for i you know i i don't even know how long um and school is kind of like a daycare system like it it sort of only exists just to like put your children somewhere when they're certain ages. Um, I, I'm not a huge fan of our education system and I, and I,

I would love for something like to come out of this where there's a lot of advancements, but I, I doubt that'll happen. I'm sure we'll probably just go back to the same, uh, the same old song and dance that they've, they've had before.

But, you know, it's, it's interesting to watch them go through the process. And as much as I didn't like school and as awful as I was of a student, you know, I was talking to my wife about it yesterday. And I said, you know, I always bash school and I bash public education a lot because I had a hard time and because I was called a retard and I was put in special classes and things of that nature. But really, if I think about it, it really helped shape me anyway, because it's a lot of the, it wasn't the actual school, you know, it wasn't just like, you know,

what I was learning in math class and those kinds of things. All the other stuff, hanging out with your friends, trying to figure out, you know, in between class, you know, how you're going to go and see your buddies for a couple minutes and screw around and then you know barely make it to the next class um all the all the uh extra activities after school playing football uh playing basketball and just you know playing a lot of track and field um all the track all the uh different trips that i went on you know with track and field i don't know if anybody listening has you know uh done some track and field but it's like uh it's like almost like a swim meet or something like it just takes forever you know it takes all day

and we would drive you know two hours to go to go somewhere and then we'd be there for the entire uh saturday you know and everyone's got to do all their events. And then we'd all, you know, we'd all go on a bus and we'd all go home. But like, you know, now all that stuff is, it's just gone. You know, I don't think that, you know, sports are the only reason you go to school, but there's, there's just so many other things that happen trying to figure out how, like, you got your math teacher, you got your history teacher, and each person you have to kind of figure out a way to interact with them differently. You know, maybe your history teacher, you get along with a little bit so you can you can kind of screw off a little bit more. But you learn those things in school. And these are things that you carry out into the workforce.

Like it like like, you know, this from managing a lot of people and working at the different places you've worked at in the past, you're dealing with how everyone grew up. And you're dealing with how everyone behaved in school, it's kind of just a, they're just kind of doing the same, you know, the same thing that as they've always been, you know, the pop, you can spot them from a mile away, the kids that were popular in school, the kids that weren't popular in school, the kids that were kind of always nervous, the kids that were worried about someone like eating their ass. I mean, you can, you can see those, you can see that in adults, you know, but now, you know, watching my old children going through this process, I'm like, man, they're kind of like, I mean, I remember being, you know, 12 or

13 and being like, man, that's the last thing I want to do is go to school. I'm going to fake, you know, a cough or something so I don't have to go. And then I would kind of think about it. I'd be like, well, my friends are going to be there. I got football practice. Like, that would be pretty cool. And then, you know, second period, there's this hot chick in my class or whatever. And I would love to see her, even though there's no chance that I'm ever going to say two words to her,

you know, just, just seeing that person, like it was, it was a big deal. And now like all that's gone. So it's an interesting time. Yeah, it is interesting. And it, you know, it's, I mean, for us, it's a weird situation because I too, I fucking hated school. I went to a really, really, you know, I don't know how each grade and all that. And kids learn at different paces and, and all the things, you know, and, um, I just, I didn't like it at all. I fucking hated it, you know? And it's one of the reasons why we looked outside the box. We considered homeschooling and, um, you know, through talking with guys like Paul check and

learning from Rudolph Steiner's work, we got Baron to Waldorf. And I realized when people hear that, they're like, Oh, good for you. You fucking send your kid to the rich kid school. It's like, hey, I prioritize a couple of things. And after talking with Ramit Sethi, who wrote the book, I will teach you to be rich. When I posted about that book on Instagram, everybody's like, well, what the fuck is that? Life's not all about being rich, you know? And then here's this guy with his asshole title of his book. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.

If you read the book, he will explain that his rich life is different from my rich life. And it's different from your rich life. Right. And so it really is about how we set the priorities of what matters to us most and funnel our wealth into those things. And the two highest priorities for me outside of Maslow's hierarchy are eating the highest quality food I can put in our bodies, providing that for my family, and getting the best education to my son. You know, and largely, I don't give a flying fuck if he goes to college or not. If he wants to play sports in college, cool. If he wants to just attend school and go to art, we'll try to help him with that as best we can. But this introductory stage is, in my opinion, an important piece. And if he can do it differently than how I had to do it, that's awesome.

But even now in quarantine, they're trying to set up Zoom calls for kindergartners. And I'm like, you're missing the fucking point. This whole deal at this age is about social interaction. It's about learning from someone other than their parents. Can they be coached from someone else? Because like most energetic boys, and I'm sure you were this way, you probably gravitated towards a few people as coaches and mentors. And there was probably a lot more that you did not gravitate towards that you would not want to learn from. And that's really where Bear's at. He doesn't like learning from us

and he's pretty anti-authority. And then he's a perfect angel when he's at school, which is great to hear because he's learning from his teachers. But the whole idea that I would shell out that kind of cheese for private school and have a fucking Zoom call once a week, it's like, no, no, no, you guys are missing the boat here.

So I'm in a weird position because it's like, I don't want to the boat here so you know i'm in a weird position because it's like i don't want to pull him out and not have the opportunity for him to go back and at the same time if this goes on much longer i'm not paying for that i'm not shelling out that kind of money that's more than fucking two car payments for him to go to that school and not attend it's just not worth me like would be would be a decent idea and this would take some coordination but it would be uh great to communicate with the parents you know get on a zoom call with the parents you know the teachers the authorities at baldorf or whatever your kid goes to school and say hey you know what's your

son into you know what does he like and you're like oh he likes wrestling like i throw him into the couch he loves smashing his head you know, against the couch pillows or whatever. You know, and they run down a list of a couple other things like, oh, well, you know, we teach our son about, you know, nutrition. We teach him about exercise. Like, okay, well, that'd be great. Like, make sure he exercises every day. Oh, you said he loves to go on a trampoline? How about you go on a trampoline with him?

Or, you know, make sure he goes on a trampoline, you know go on a trampoline with him or you you know how to make sure he goes on the trampoline you know twice a day or something just giving you obviously i don't need to give you exercise advice but you know they would walk through this with each person and say like you know does he like this subject does he like that subject and whatever the heck it is that he likes maybe he thinks police officers are cool and like okay well you know find some things to communicate with them about you know you can just you can kind well, you know, find some things to communicate with them about. You know, you can just, you can kind of, you know, ad lib it. It doesn't have to be, you know, this structured thing. Because even a lot of people that will homeschool, you're still just getting a curriculum.

It's just taking school and like inserting it into your house kind of. And I think it's great. I think that people should be heavily exploring different options for their children, you know, within whatever means they can afford and whatever means they can figure out, you know. I think that most of the stuff when it comes to the actual education system of this country, most of the things when you bring up to people the different problems, they're like, yeah, but like, you know, some kids, you know, their only good meal is the lunch they get at school. And it's like, well, that's not, okay, that's a logistical problem, but that has nothing to do with what they've learned. It doesn't really have a lot to do with their education, you know.

And then every time you go to mention something else, they'll throw something else at you again. They're like, well, who's going to watch the kids? And you're like, okay, again, that's a logistical thing that could probably be figured out in some other means or some other way. But, you know, I think it's important for people to understand that the reason why kids, the reason why kids are such,

are so great at being such sponges is that they fail fast. You know, they, they they fall they hit their head they um they do stuff where because we have more knowledge because we understand more things we're like that's dumb like what are they doing like sometimes you'll kind of even like think to yourself like wow my kid's an idiot like what what in the heck did he do that for but it's just because we have more knowledge because we either failed or we saw our brother or sister fail, or we saw somebody else fail or someone else told us like, that's not a good idea. You know, hey, don't go running in the middle of the

street, you know, or whatever the whatever the case is, but all knowledge is created from errors, you know, error correction, correcting mistakes, correcting things that you messed up. And I don't really, they don't talk about that in school. They don't, in public school, like I never learned anything about philosophy. Like I never learned anything about stoic philosophy. No one ever really, I'm very fortunate because I had really good parents. My parents literally would tell me on a daily basis, you know, I'd be super upset from school. And my parents would tell me all the time, they're like, you know what, Mark, you can still like it does, you know, you're at school and

you're trying to get these good grades because you're trying to be like a lot of these other kids. But you can still go out and do whatever you like, you can go out and do whatever you put your mind to, because you're going put your mind to because you're going to figure it out because you're going to be interested in enough. I've never had anybody say anything remotely close to that to me in school. I never had anybody tell me that, you know, life is what you make of it.

I've never had anybody like you hear it out of school. I didn't hear it in school. Everything is to do with interpretations and your reinterpretations of the things that you hear. You can't really always control your thoughts because like weird stuff will hit you when you're taking a shit or when you're in the shower or something like that. But you can control your emotions that are tied to those thoughts. And you can work on reinterpretation of the things that you hear, the things that you see, the things that you do. And I mean, those are the things that are going to keep people strong.

Those are going to be the things that help advance people. And I didn't even know that I could really learn until I was probably, man, I was probably like about 30. You know, it's not like if you were to ask me, hey, can you learn anything? I would be like, oh, yeah, well, I know all these stats, like if you were to ask me, Hey, can you learn anything? I would be like, Oh yeah, well, I know that all these stats about like Bo Jackson or something or whatever I was interested in. I knew information about, uh, lifting weights, things like that. Um, so it wasn't like I, it wasn't like I wasn't aware that I could learn. Um, but it was kind of pounded into me that I wasn't smart. And so I was just like, well, I don't know if I'll ever be able to really advance or I would never be able to understand anything in physics or something like that.

Right. And now, like instead of me listening in like Pantera, when I go and exercise, I'm listening to like David Deutsch, who's a physicist, you know, like just different things like that. I didn't know that, you know, I guess I'll just kind of finish with saying this is that no one can tell you what you can learn and know or how much you can learn and know. And no one can tell you really what you're capable of or you're not capable of. You can have the best well-meaning scientist or the best geneticist, but they really can't. I mean, there's some physical limitations that you may have, how high you could jump or how fast you can run or something to that effect. But when it comes to your mental capacity, everyone possesses the ability to learn and grow. And from what I've seen in, you know, coaching a lot of people in like lifting and things of that nature, everyone possesses the ability to get stronger, you know?

And so I didn't kind of realize these things until I was like about 30 years old. I started to coach other people and I would coach someone who was a real sack of shit. I would coach someone who was really, really just a piece of shit. You i'm like oh my god like this is going to be rough every time i try to teach this guy to squat knees are caving in like he uh looks like a baby giraffe you know the guy's just falling apart and then sure enough a couple weeks go by and this guy you know is he's there on time all the time he's doing all the extra stuff that i showed him and there he is and he gets a 20 pound pr and then a 40 pound pr and then a 60 you know and it's just it's unbelievable but we all possess

the ability uh to get better and these are just these are some really massive things that i just you know i wish that those things were taught in school yeah there that that and again that just goes back to the self-empowerment but you don't really have the ability if you're not testing yourself you don't have the ability to know what you're capable of without testing yourself and without failure so that just loops back into what you're talking about all of which happen through experience you know and i think so much of what we see right now globally with quarantine and so much of what we've seen, even predating any quarantine, was people are frozen at the fucking plate. And the only way you have a chance at hitting the ball is to swing the bat. That's it.

The opportunity to make it on a base, I mean, obviously you can get walked in baseball, but you know, bottom line is you, you will fail every time without taking the chance. The only way you get the chance to, to succeed is through the experience of trying. And that's the only way you really gain the knowledge and wisdom of what worked and what didn't, you know, we're reading these warrior kid books from Jocko Willink to bear and they're fucking exceptional. And that's one of the concepts he really, yeah, they're so good. and that's just one of the things you know he can't read yet we're reading them to him and when he's old enough to read i'm gonna have him reread the books but again he just gets into that like you know he talks it through the lens of jujitsu uh the kid in the book mark he doesn't want to do a jujitsu tournament even though he's really

good in class and the reason for that is he doesn't want to lose he doesn't want to do a jujitsu tournament, even though he's really good in class. And the reason for that is he doesn't want to lose. He doesn't want to fail. And it's like, you either win or you learn. And if you just reframe that whole thing, you either win or you learn, you either succeed or you learn, then in that you're always succeeding, you know, because you get the opportunity to get the W or you get the opportunity to go back to the drawing board and fine tune and figure out what worked, what didn't. And that applies to every aspect of life. It even applies to something like meditation. You know, like you could have the deep, harsh inner critic say, you fucking idiot. You just wasted 20 minutes of your life by sitting here and thinking through of all your problems and you didn't meditate or have quiet mind for

one minute. And a lot of people do that. And that's why I think these apps are so beneficial because they give you the lens of, of really forgiving yourself first. Like don't, if you go down the rabbit hole, quickly shift back to no mind, there's no judgment there. But I mean, in, in any, in any possible lens we look through, whether it's any of these tools that we've discussed from the physical to the mental, emotional, the ability to gather information and just take data from a witness standpoint rather than from a, did I do well? Did I do good? And I think that's in part one of the issues of what's being seeded in school is the constant comparing ourselves to where we should be. What are the rest of the kids in class doing? I'm not smart because I hit D's and the best grades I've had are like a C plus.

That was me, right? And so again, I looked through that lens and it's like, you can have a pretty poor self-image if you're not succeeding elsewhere. I didn't have a poor self-image because I was doing really well in football and wrestling. But for a lot of people who don't have the physical attributes and aren't into sports and they live and die on their grades, that can be a really harsh way to live. And then we just carry that inner judge and inner critic based on how we view the world of comparison, comparison to everyone else. And if we're doing that our entire lives, there's no freedom in that. There's no sovereignty in that. And there's no inner peace when it comes to that. I think it's important that you, you know, compare yourself to yourself,

you know, and you improve yourself for yourself, which can be really hard. You know, that's like, you know, sometimes you hear someone say certain things and you're like, okay, that actually is some pretty good advice. And you're like, damn, that's hard. You know, it's actually like very difficult to not compare yourself to other people. You know, it's kind of in our nature. And who knows, maybe it's, you know, intertwined with some sort of evolutionary trait.

You know, if you can run faster or throw something harder or whatever, you know, maybe that's supposed to chip at me a maybe it maybe maybe that's supposed to chip at me a little bit maybe that's supposed to make me go how can i do what kyle just did right there and then maybe it's also supposed to chip it chip away at me a little bit and uh allow me to recognize all right well i can't do that shit that kyle's doing because i don't know how to do that that well but i can do this Kyle can't match me on that you know and I think I think that's that's you know my mom says it in bigger stronger

faster to my brother my mom says uh how do you know someone doesn't want to be the next Chris Bell and direct you know direct movies that impact a lot of people that that help a lot of people and it's like holy shit like that's you know how do you know that that uh someone doesn't want to be the next bear or someone doesn't want to be the next kyle kingsbury someone doesn't want to be the next uh uh mark bell and that's it's you know it's trying to compare yourself to other people i think sometimes can be very healthy like to be inspired by somebody like you mentioned jocko willing it's like man who doesn't want to be a little somebody like you mentioned, Jocko Willink. It's like, man, who doesn't want to be a little bit like Jocko Willink, you know, like, like he's, he's awesome. But to be, to be like, you know,

jealous of him or to just say to yourself, I'll never, you know, I'll never, I'll never be, I'll never be able to be like that. You know? I don't think anybody's asking you to you know this is from Mr. Rogers he says you know you don't have to do anything spectacular in this world to be loved when you think about your child you know like what a great message to share with Bear you know Bear's

going to try to do all this cool stuff as he gets older and maybe he'll play baseball and get involved in some different sports and he strikes out and he's real upset and it's bare dude like nothing's changed bro like we're still homies like you're still my buddy you're still my son i still love you i still care about you you know you missed you missed the ball a couple times but you'll get you'll get back up there again you know those kinds of things and i think that uh a lot of these things are are just they're kind of missing in our society you know and I don't

think anybody ever talks about even people talk about happiness and they talk about like self-love but they don't even talk about where happiness comes from happiness just comes from one comes from one spot comes from one place comes from one thing it comes comes from problem solving now if you try to try to you know 100 of the time that'll probably be the statistic that you come up with is that whenever you solve problems for yourself you're a little happier you're a little more excited oh i was weak and so i decided to go in the gym because i was a skinny i was a skinny guy and i i you know get my ass kicked all the time well i got a got a little bit bigger. I looked a little bit scarier, even though I still didn't know how to fight. I looked a little scarier until people picked on me less. Or I decided to go to jujitsu and I solved the problem

there. Or I decided that, you know what, I'm a multi-billionaire and I rocked it and I did all this cool stuff. I ended up going down a deep dark path and now I'm doing yoga and now I'm meditating. You know, it's again, it's just a problem solving, which isn't easy to do because you have to have a lot of, um, you gotta be able to be extremely self-aware. But again, there's another thing that's not, that's not taught, taught in school. And I love listening to your podcast. I love listening to the people that you've interacted with, especially like Paul Cech.

I love listening to Paul, especially when you've talked to him or when Aubrey Marcus has talked to him, because I still think a lot of people are so fascinated by all the different things Paul knows about from like a workout perspective, which is intertwined with everything else that he talks about. But I think they're kind of, I think sometimes they're missing the point. You know, I think they're missing the bigger overall picture. It's like, man, this guy really has a lot of great things to share just with how to live your life in general, more so than just how to lift. Yeah, no doubt about it. No doubt about it.

And to your point, for sure, there's an evolutionary model of why we compare. You know, like the status and hierarchy within a tribe or a small group of people, it did matter because if you fall out of the grace of the group, you might find yourself in exile and you're not going to live solo out in the pre-modern world. It's hard to do it solo right now. You know, I think some of the people that are struggling the most with quarantine are the ones that are home alone, you know, and really not having any human interaction, any touch, any sense of what is something that feeds the soul, that feeds us from within. But where we go awry is taking the benefits of comparing and the benefits of being able to learn from others,

and the harsh inner critic is constantly chatting. That constant inner monkey mind is the hardest critic out of anybody we know. And the inner judge, the judge not the judge lot, not less DV judged. It applies to us just as much as it applies to other people. You know, one of these concepts that, that check has talked about, and obviously he's not the fucking first guy to say it, but you can't love someone else as much as you love yourself. Um, you know, as that rate limiting factor of self-love to how much you really can love someone else. It applies to compassion. It complies to judgment as well. You look at, is it the people who are judging other people on a regular basis?

They're likely the harshest critic of themselves. They're likely constantly on their own ass over any mistake they made rather than letting go of it and quickly working to a solution. Like, oh, hey, I fucked this up. How do I figure that out rather than just beating yourself up over and over again, over a simple mistake that usually can be remedied. I absolutely love watching the last dance. I don't know if you had an opportunity to watch any of it, the Michael Jordan Chicago bulls documentary.

You get a chance to see any of that. I haven't, I haven't, we don't have a, I mean, we have ESPN+, but I don't have a – I've not been tuning into it. I've seen the trailers for it when we watched the UFC fights the other night, and I was like, damn, that looks pretty cool. Tell me about it. Yeah, I think you'd like it a lot. I mean, you learn a lot about Jordan.

I mean, he kind of seems like the most amazing person to ever walk the face of the earth, and then he also seems like a complete maniac. But he just wants to win. He really just wants to win. He's kind of a win at all costs. And then also, he talks about how he feels he earned the opportunity to be that way. And it's because he did take the team on his back. And he did take the team through all these playoffs. And he was the guy getting the team through all these playoffs and he did get

he was the guy getting the shit beat out of him he was the guy uh getting all this criticism but ultimately what it came down to is exactly what you just said right there is that the number one critic of michael jordan was always himself and he was so hypercritical of himself he put so much pressure on himself that when he made fun of you in practice and when he talks shit i mean he tries to start fights with with other athletes that are on his own team and he i i think the i think you know in part part of the reason why he's doing that is because the inner dialogue that he has to himself is nothing compared to what he's dishing out to these other players so he's just thinking

like dude i deal with something like this times a thousand every day and for me just to throw some shit at you and say that you're lazy it's really nothing you know and he's just he's constantly like on these guys uh all the time but so also to your point when you said you know yeah losing is losing and it sometimes you're like i was a loser in mentality to be like yeah at least i learned something but but if you look at it as like winning and learning i think that that's really effective because you know i've asked a lot of fighters i've had a bunch of fighters on the show i've asked them hey what's easier winning or losing you know what's easier you know when when you you go through a fight camp you spend a lot of time

you have time away from the fam and then you get in the ring get in the cage you have the fight like think about it for a second what's what's easier what's harder is it harder to is it harder to win and get back to training and to keep climbing that ladder or is it kind of harder to have a loss and i think most of them when they thought about it in retrospect i mean it was about 50 50 people love to love the way the the wind feels but i know for myself whenever i had a good power lifting meet um it was kind of harder it was it was harder to like get back in the gym and be focused and like hell yeah you know i went i went uh nine for nine on everything and i benched over 800 pounds i squatted over a thousand it was just the sickest uh me ever or whatever and then i get back into

training it's like what am i training for but it's like messing up getting injured um you know just i don't know for whatever reason, like not having good form or technique or starting out too heavy, having poor strategy, any of it. You know this, like in the fight game, you come out, you know, too fast. I'm sure you're blown up, you're exhausted, and the guy clocks in, catches you with a good shot, and it's game over. Then you have to like re-strategize, but it's actually kind of fun like not getting that's not fun but thinking about the whole process for a while is fun and that's what that's what they show in this documentary you really need to check it out because there's stuff that burns Michael Jordan for like

it's ridiculous how long it bothers him for they lose to the Charlotte Hornets in a playoff game. And so when he first came back, he just wasn't in shape. He just, he couldn't hang. He just couldn't make it through the season because he was just coming back from baseball. And so, you know, towards the end of the year, he's kind of beat up. They end up losing to the Hornets. And he is like, he's so frustrated. But the entire year, he devotes to like kicking their

ass you know and then they they meet him in the playoffs and i i think they uh they just swept him i mean this absolutely destroyed them but um he or i'm sorry it was the orlando magic is who it was um what he did was when he was on the set of Space Jam, he had like a weight set up, you know, like the Rocks Iron Paradise. Like Michael Jordan had an Iron Paradise before Iron Paradise was even invented. And it was like a super Iron Paradise because it had weights and it had a full length basketball court. But, you know, you were mentioning earlier about like what we do with our time. Here's what Michael Jordan decided to do with his spare time he would film for 10 hours every day and when they were done he would play basketball for about three or four hours and he invited all the top nba players

of that time to come there and so he was having like a um he was having like a like a camp like a like a fighter almost where he's inviting you know the best people in the world like he was having like a, like a camp, like a, like a fighter almost where he's inviting, you know, the best people in the world. Like he was getting better practices there than he would ever get with just being with only the Chicago bulls. He's with Reggie Miller and he's with Patrick Ewing. And he's with,

you know, these guys that were selected to like the dream team and stuff. I mean, he's with the best of the best. That's what he decided to do with his free time. And it's just, it's, it's amazing to watch how he's like you know what I'm gonna whatever way I need to figure this out I'm gonna get this figured out and I'm gonna I'm gonna come out on top but at any time that he had a loss or I think he may be also viewed things as a loss that weren't even really a loss.

So if you were to, like, let's say that I competed and Jesse Burdick competed as well. And, like, I walk past you, you don't say anything, and you're like, Burdick, great meet. Then if I was Michael Jordan, like the way that Michael Jordan would turn this, he would turn that into fuel right there. He'd be like, oh, Kyle, all right, you think Burdick's good? You think he had a good contest? Watch what I'm able to do next time. And he would let that burn in his system for forever long and needed to fuel him for. Yeah. And I think, you know, another critical differentiation is like, if it, if it lights a fire under your ass to be better, if it, if it somehow creates change in your life going forward, then it's hard to argue what's good and bad. What's hard to argue what's right

and wrong, right? Because they're still taking somebody to the excellence of their goals, the thing that they want to make to manifest, you know, really. And, you know, it's, it's, it's when it is so it's when the inner critic becomes so prevalent that it actually paralyzes you, that it actually prevents you from trying again, that it, that it prevents you from getting better and it doesn't light the fire, it puts the fire out. And that's, that's in part what I've seen with a lot of people who kind of throw in the towel on health. They're like,

Oh, you know, I used to be thin. I used to do this. I used to do that. And you know, then I got married and then I had a kid and then I have fucking fill in the blank X,

Y, and Z excuses on why they don't take care of themselves anymore. And again, all you have to do is look around you and say, do I want to die of old age or do I want to die from the next fucking bug or viral wave that hits us? Do I want to have some degree of when I leave this planet

or is it just up for grabs? And well, I'm going to go anyway, so might as well smoke cigarettes and not touch weights and not do shit for myself and eat this fucking garbage pizza that I know is going to fucking run me in the grave. Saladino was talking about the fact that, and obviously this has to do with, you know, I mean, grocery stores are still open. So I really don't think there's much excuse here. But junk food is at an all time high in sales.

You know, a lot of these shitty restaurants through DoorDash are still doing better than ever. People are doing takeout all the time. And it's not to say that I don't eat bad on occasion. For Bear's birthday, we flew in Lou Malnati's deep dish from Chicago, which is the greatest deep dish ever made. And I'm going to throw caution to the wind and have probably a whole fucking deep dish on his birthday. But I've also paid my dues. I'm under 10% body fat. I can get away with that. I've got different digestive enzymes and things to help me break it down. And even though I'm going to have some inflammation and probably gain some fat from it, 99% of the time I'm taking care of myself. So again, it's looking at that and just understanding you can't let it paralyze you. You can't let it say,

I give up. I'm not going to take care of myself. I'm not going to go for this job that I want. The relationship that I'm in is too difficult. So I'm going to leave this woman or leave this man and just go back to the drawing board and try again and think that the grass is always greener. It's like, no, all relationships take work. The relationship with yourself takes work. The relationship you have with your employer takes work. Fucking how you treat your body takes work. Everything takes work.

You still have multiple relationships going on over there? Kind of, you know, I'm kind of closed for business. You know, Christian's still in the mix, my wife's boyfriend, and we're very happy with him. He's family. You know, I love him dear the mix, my wife's boyfriend, and we're very happy with him. He's family. You know, I love him dearly. Bear loves him dearly. And, you know, I imagine he's going to be with us for a very long time.

He's in it for as long as he wants to be. As far as I'm concerned, you know, we have our little girl on the way, and anybody who's become a parent understands what that takes. And she's the only extra woman that I will be bringing into the relationship for the foreseeable future. You know, that's, I mean, fuck, just in the first, just in dealing with a pregnant woman, I'm not bringing any women around. But, you know, you add in the fact that we're not going to be sleeping, we'll be up all night changing diapers, We still have a five-year-old boy who is just nonstop energy and also is a priority over any extracurriculars I would attend to. So, you know, it's nice to have the freedom. And certainly if I'm out of town podcasting, I'm not going to say no when the opportunity presents itself and it feels right for me. But in terms of relationship, you know,

the relationship with my daughter matters more than anything else. I'm sure the people listening to the show can relate. Anytime you get into a Kyle Kingsbury or like an Aubrey Marcus conversation with your old lady at home, just be very careful. It's a trap, you know, you got to really tiptoe around the situation. It was funny because my wife was asking me all these questions about, uh, like your relationship and stuff. I'm like,

you know, I said, we talked about so much of it on the podcast. And really all I remember from anything that Aubrey's ever told me or anything that Kyle's ever told me is that it's, um, it's just, it's just still difficult.

Like whether you have one person to have a relationship with or, or whether you have multiple people, uh, it's always hard there's always um there's always gonna be some pain there's always gonna be some problem or issue that arises um either way but she was she like um she was saying she was she was saying oh she's like i know she goes, I know for men that it's called a certain thing. I don't even know what these different things are called. But when men have two or more wives, it's called something. She's like, but I don't know if they have a name for when a girl does. So what's the deal?

Is there a name for it? Yeah. Well, it's funny. There's, you know, polygamy is what you're alluding to a man has multiple wives and that typically, that typically doesn't go two ways. It's not a two way street. Polyamory is more than one love. If we were to label what we're doing, that's, that's probably it. It's certainly the case for Tosh. What I would be doing right now is just living in an open relationship. So I have the ability to have sex with other people, but through my own choice and my own knowing of what's most important,

which is my family, I won't be entertaining more than one love, if that makes sense. So I have some parameters and shit like that over how I made that decision, and that took a long time to come up with. But, you know, you're exactly right. Paul Chex said it on this podcast. If you can't juggle, uh, two balls, what makes you think you're going to add a third and fucking be able to juggle it, right? Like you,

you cannot, you, if you, if you cannot successfully navigate monogamy, how on earth are you going to navigate open relationship or polyamory? You know, and that's, that's the truth. Most people don't have any idea of the triggers and things that come up in relationship as as are really fuel to learn and to grow they're not you know don miguel ruiz said that in the mastery of love if i get triggered in any relationship it's not the other person that causes the trigger it's my fucking trigger to own that right and it's and if we're mirrors to each other and reflections of ourselves there's some inner work that i can do to figure out why I'm being triggered by any particular situation. And, you know, you circle back to the four agreements. Be impeccable with your word. It matters more than ever, you know, especially

in our circumstances. Not taking it personally. That's a big one for anybody, monogamous or not. Don't take it personally. And certainly don't take it personally when someone's pregnant because, you know, the hormones are like the stock market right now. They're up, they're down, they're every which way but loose. And so don't take it personal is a big one. You know, and you just go down the list, like there's a lot of wisdom there. And I think, you talk about like Jordan's mentality of lighting a fire under his ass because he had those internal impetuses and drivers that were causing him to be that way, that's really the gift of what opening our relationship did for me. They made me a better person. They made me better at relationships with my wife because of the fact that I had a burning desire to know how to communicate better.

I had a burning desire to understand what love actually is and how do you cultivate that love in the face of external challenges and stressors. And I think you can do that, you know, in a monogamous relationship for sure. You don't have to walk the same path that I did. And it probably would be, you know, in many ways more beneficial to not do what I did. But at the same time, I have complete gratitude for all the firewalks that we've done and all the, the ways that we've chosen to learn in our experience. Do you think that, um,

you could have, uh, like learned a lot of the same things that you've learned, um, without some of your experiences of like psychedelics and things like that? It's, it's hard to say, you know, it's like chicken or the egg conversation. It was like, you told me before that you had a conversation, I think with your, or you had a conversation,

maybe as your wife to yourself. And I think you had a conversation as your mom to, to yourself or something like that. And I would just imagine like, those are things that maybe um, it may, maybe you can have some observation of, uh, without psychedelics, but I don't think it would be the same. Yeah. And, you know, you know, to that, that was my very first ayahuasca experience, you know, and I became Tosh.

I relived every argument we had ever had at that point as her. And I remember being shorter. I had the curly hair and the boobs and I'm just looking up at Kyle yelling at him. But as I was yelling at Kyle, the words coming out were in a way that I, actual Kyle, could perceive. And it just completely reframed. In the beginning of this conversation, we're talking about perspective and the way we view the world. And instead of seeing her as this nagging archetype of every relationship ever had i understood she was speaking from a place of love every time she was you know and in particular about me drinking with my friends or going out and wanting to party you know like

knowing i was running myself into the ground and even even though I wasn't an angry drunk, it still wasn't, you know, helpful to me from a health and wellness standpoint. It wasn't helpful to me from a mental emotional standpoint. And oftentimes our partners can see the things we cannot. Everyone has a blind spot. And through the practices of expanding our awareness, whether that's through meditation, weightlifting, anything that helps us know ourselves a little bit deeper, you know, we can start to shrink that blind spot.

But it's often the ones that we're closest to that can see the shit we can't see. And so that reframe really helped me understand that she did love me and that she wasn't just being a nag and that she didn't represent every person I had ever dated before. And that, you know, all of our experience, that one in particular and many of the shared experiences that we have, have helped us to not just grow as individuals but grow together. And so that's, in my opinion, it's irreplaceable and certainly for what we've done. And the one with my mom, there was no conversation. I was just her and I watched my belly grow with me in it in time lapse. And I could feel her nervousness as a

mother being a mom, like she's going to be a mom for the first time. I don't want to fuck this up and all of her internal judgments and her internal criticism of herself and my father coming over and kissing my belly. And I could feel like shockwaves of love just go through my belly into this baby that I'm creating. And, and, you know, your parents will always say, you'll never know how much I love you until you have a kid of your own. And it's true, you know, but in that experience, I understood it, you know, and that really just quieted the noise that happened while I was still living in my mom's detached garage. We're still butting heads. There's still a lot of childhood shit that I haven't figured out and sorted through and communication that's left unsaid. And to have that experience was a real gift because it allowed me to truly love my mom and to kind of take off my expectations of what I want to see in her and how I want her to behave. And, and, you know, it just, it just calmed the noise. And so I think

any practices we have that calm the noise are beneficial. And of course, there are many, there are many, but I think the plants and some of these psychedelic experiences that I've had are truly, you know, they're, they're unreplaceable. They've given me things that I have not gained from meditation. I have not gained from yoga. I have not gained from the 10-minute walk or anything else that I do. And I hold them in high regard for that reason. Yeah, I think reframing, reinterpretation, I think are massive tools that can really help. You know, people get triggered. They get mad.

They get upset about certain things. And when you're able to start to reinterpret what's going on, you know, like, I mean, I don't really, I'm not really emotional. I don't go like way up, I don't go way down. I just, I've always, for myself personally, I like to try to stay pretty even keel, you know, I don't get, even if it's, even if we have some enormous sales with slingshot or something and things are going really well from that perspective, maybe workouts are going really well and a bunch of things are going really well. I'm not like, you know, overly like pumped about it. And if things kind of start swaying the other way on a downward swing, I'm not super, super

upset about it. I try to stay relatively, you know, kind of, I guess you'd say like even, I try to keep my emotions kind of even, but just over the last couple of years, I've recognized how powerful it is to be able to reframe and reinterpret stuff. For example, let's say, you know, let's say something at work kind of fell through the cracks and it just didn't work out the way that I was expecting. Number one is you want to be careful with expectations because they can pretty much always lead to disappointment

or it just happened the way that you expected it to so you don't care about it. You're like, yeah, I expected expected it to be that way but a lot of times their expectations can be really disappointing so I've learned to just live a low expectation life on one end and on the other end I've learned that really just about every single thing that I could possibly think of as being problematic that I got upset about is is is I can't even really think of scenarios where it's not my fault in some way you know I don't mean like yeah I thought it's my fault I'm gonna beat myself up over it I mean it's my fault in terms of you know maybe there was like a misunderstanding

maybe there wasn't good communication like I'm not a great communicator. Like I just, you know, when I, when I think about like stuff for slingshot in particular, um, I might tell someone just don't ever show me anything that sucks, you know, but like, that's not good direction. That's not really good. That's not really good leadership because their interpretation of like, they might, they might have done the best well-meaning thing that they could. And I just might think it sucks. Or maybe I'm in a different mood that day and I think it sucks, you know. So when I start to kind of think about the things that I've gotten frustrated over the years, I could always just kind of, you know, have that self-evaluation and that self-observation of like,

yeah, you know, if I can just take a couple steps back, I can look and I can identify like where the real problem is. Okay. Maybe that person didn't do kind of what you said, but maybe you didn't really spell it out, you know, in a way that was understandable for them. Maybe it's their first time doing it. And I've also found too, that a lot of times we're living in the experience of stuff. And times we're living in the experience of stuff. And when you're living in the experience of stuff, it's hard to see the full picture. And something that I've been kind of leaning into more recently is it's almost as if you and I were to go to an art museum. And you're like, Smelly, I love this art museum.

This place is sick. I'm going to show you around. We're going to show you my favorite painting. I can't wait to show you my favorite painting. You're looking around. You're like, oh, man, there it is. And you're like, isn't it awesome? And you kind of turn.

You look at me. And by the time you look at me, I'm dead center. My nose is right to the painting. I'm like, Kyle, this shit's stupid, man. You're like, no, dude, you need to take a couple steps back to be able to see the full picture but you take a couple steps back and you kind of see the full picture and I think you know what you said was was amazing like I've never tried psychedelics to that degree tried some mushrooms before but never tried anything quite like what

you're talking about my brother has uh has done some ibogaine as well i've never had that experience of like being that far like zoomed out you know and i i would just imagine that you can kind of get there through some different practices and through some meditations and through some different things but i don't think you could really get to that next level um you know without without the use of of uh some psychedelics but i just found that to be really helpful is to you know just reframe stuff like even death like how bad is death like i don't know i never done it before you know you know these are all things to, uh, there's things to kind of think about, you know, um, I think that everyone, everyone's very fearful of death, but maybe death is cool.

Like maybe death is like sick. Maybe it's super fun. I've, like I said, I don't know. I haven't, I haven't done it, but think about this. How many people, you know, that say they died or they, or they felt like they died or they flatlined or something like that i have never heard one person say that my life was a living hell after i thought i died they usually say the exact opposite right they usually say you know it changed everything you

know a couple years ago i got in a bad wreck thought i was dead thought that was it ct fletcher you know comes to mind My dad comes to mind. My dad was really sick years ago and he died twice. And my dad was a good man before that happened and he's still a good man today, but it really changed a lot of perspective for him. And now he spends every single moment that he possibly can with his grandkids because, you know, he recognized the value. So all it did is it just increased the value of the time that he does have while he's here. And now he's not fearful at all about dying, which is something else that can sometimes happen with psychedelics. Yeah. Yeah. Truly important. Right. I think that's just, it's just it, you

know, the, the, the, the two things that are coming to mind are what skill set do we have to push pause on the monkey mind chatter? It could be a max effort squat. It could be a 10 minute walk. It could be breath work. It could be yoga. It could be meditation. It could be just a simple reflection in nature while you sit by a tree. It could be any of those things. But if we can pause this, then that's what allows us to take the steps back. Obviously, those bigger tools like plant medicines and psychedelics, they tend to work a lot better when we have some degree of turning the mind off. They can be very challenging if you're constantly in the experience of that as opposed to, oh, wow, my mind keeps having these thoughts. Let me quiet

the noise and return to stillness. You know, all of these tools flow and work synergistically. But, you know, I think it is the reframe. The ultimate reframe is how do I get the most out of every minute I'm here on this planet? And even if we just look through that lens right now in our current situation, there's a lot of shit that's out of our control. When do we go back to work? What is the new normal? Because it's not going to be the same as it was. And also, what does the economy look like going forward? A lot of that shit's out of our hands. What's in my hands? What's in my control? And how do I want to use this time that I have here today to make today the best day that I possibly can with the means that I have? And a lot of the shit we're talking about is free. I feel better when I do yoga. I feel better when I go for a walk. I feel better when

I go for a run. I feel better if I do any of these things with some degree of mindfulness. Obviously, if I go beat my ass on the trail and I'm sore all week and I hurt my ankle or something like that, that's going to take out more than it puts in. But if you think of through the lens of whatever I do, I want it to make me more whole than when I started. And even from a running and lifting weight standpoint, I want to do just enough to stimulate growth, to stimulate a response. But I also want to have more energy in the tank than when I finished,

you know, and, and it's cool to push yourself to the extremes. I mean, I certainly lived that as a fighter and I lived that in, you know, training for PRS. I know you've done that as well,

you know, squatting over a thousand pounds, you push yourself past whatever your limits are, and then you regroup and you recover. But that always pans out better when you have the recovery interval. That always pans out better when you give yourself space and time to recover and actually get better. And so, you know, when we think of those things from a life standpoint, what practices do we get to add now that will survive quarantine, right? What are the ways we can change our life on a day-to-day basis that live long

after whatever this new normal comes back to being? Yeah, I couldn't agree more. It reminds me a little bit of nutrition too. Like if you try to just take so much from your nutrition, you're going to feel like you're not ever recovering from that either. And then, you know, a lot of people do fasting, fasting you know and i'm a big fan of intermittent fasting i'm a big fan of utilizing fasting as a tool here and there um but you can fast too much you can eat too little and if you eat too little you're going to go through a period of time where you all of a sudden eat too

much you know you and i've had our body weights go up and down. And, you know, I've been all the way up to 330 pounds, some of it was purpose, purposeful for powerlifting to be as big and as strong as I could be. But I also got lost along the way. And then as my as my goal to, you know, drop weight from 330, I ended up coming down to about 230. And I'm about 235 ish nowadays. But along that path, you know, there's a lot of ups and a lot of downs, and I would get things right, and I would do things well. But then I would try to do them too. Well, I'd get too obsessed about it, I would weigh myself too often and really, you know, try to restrict calories and try to exercise more. And then you just get beat all

the hell from that you can't really recover from that mentally or physically it just doesn't feel good and so there you are you know a few days later you know eating a pint of ben and jerry's and i see this very often with a lot of people so the people that are listening to the show like if you utilize fasting that's awesome i'm a big proponent of it but i would judge whether your fasting's working by whether it's working really well over the long term and i'd also judge it off of what are you doing three to five days later because i don't think your body really recognizes it that much your body doesn't really care too much until you really start to screw it over then it says says, hey, wait a second.

You've been a real dick. You better start to give us the nutrients. You better start to give us the fuel that we need, or we're going to start burning up muscle, or we're going to demand that you give us more calories. That's when someone's like, yeah, man, I was doing great for three weeks, and then I was doing shitty for three months. I know like I know

I think a while back you you gained some body fat and I've never seen I mean I personally haven't seen you uh heavier I've always seen you in uh in really good shape what led to that kind of upward downward and now you're looking all jacked and tan again well yeah I mean we play with extremes right we we push ourselves to to different layers just to simply find what the middle is you know and so that that can be you know all right i'm going to gain weight and i'm going to see how strong i can get all the way down to all right i'm going to really lean out i think i think the key component in that is what is the actual goal right uh dr andy galpin who's a friend of ours, talked about that too. Like,

if you are a professional athlete and you're training twice a day, you likely don't need intermittent fasting. And even if you're going to sauna to create heat shock proteins, 15 minutes post-workout is probably plenty because you've already generated heat shock proteins in your fucking workout. Like, so why do 45 minutes afterwards? It's simply going to be too taxing. You know, so I mean, I think, again, we circle back if we're looking through the lens of truly knowing ourselves and knowing our why, what is the purpose behind it? If everything's driven towards longevity, that's cool.

You want to live longer. You want to have your health when you die, but you don't want to sacrifice the things that you love right now. And if you have a lot of requirements physically through the exercise that you die, but you don't want to sacrifice the things that you love right now. And if you have a lot of requirements physically through the exercise that you do, a lot of these longevity practices might dampen what your performance looks like, right? And truth be told, working out is a longevity practice. You know, you listen to these David Sinclairs and people like that who are taking statins and working out once a week and trying to solve the riddle of longevity through resveratrol and whatever the fucking next thing they can dream up in a lab is it's like yeah working out and getting sunlight and eating clean actually

matters and that's going to lead to longevity and better quality of life probably better than the next drug y'all come up with you know there's no two ways about that now if you're doing all those things and your ducks are in a row from a health and wellness standpoint, you're looking at things holistically as Paul Cech does, and you want to add in the resveratrol and, you know, on your day off on Saturday or Sunday, you want to intermittent fast and do the warrior diet for one day a week. That's probably cool. Probably not going to overdo it. But again, it just circles back to why are you doing it in the first place? And I think as we live in the information age and we have so much access to all these different tools, it's like, which one can I do next? Where's the magic bullet?

Where's the next supplement? Where's the next meditation practice? And it's always in the searching that we have the thing that we're shooting for just out in front of us. And it's always, it's never within us. It's always out in front of us. And you can fill in every variable, every diet, every form of training. But if it's always outside of yourself is the next great thing. You're never really embodying the thing you wish to embody, you know? So through knowing the why behind it, you can begin to decipher what's right for you, You know, and that may be different for everybody. It may be that, hey, nine months out of the year, I actually like powerlifting and balancing that with some form of yoga. And every now and then I'm going to do

some hypertrophy and things like that, just because I know it's good for me to get a break. Or somebody who likes running may just like running. And they may find that weight training actually makes them a better runner, even though they don't like weight training, they know the why because it's going to make them a better runner, right? So you start to piggyback and layer based on those things, always circling back to why you're doing it in the first place. But if you're haphazardly grabbing on to whatever the latest shit is, typically that leads to a lot of experimentation and not a ton of, you know, gaining, not a ton of embodiment,

not a ton of stuff that you actually take home and gain from. I love talking to you because I think you have like the ultimate perspective of it just because I don't think, I don't think a lot of people have ever experienced, you know, what it's like to be inside a UFC cage, you know? And I think that that's like, it's just such a, it's like to be inside a ufc cage you know and i think that that's like um it's just such a it's just such a it's just such a different battle you know it's like a literal it's a literal fight you know and you are fighting against the guy across the uh ring but you got to

fight so many other battles just to even just even get there in the first place and then to try to figure out you know how to get uh satisfaction to to try to figure out how to have a lot of fulfillment um after you train so hard for something like that and you go in and you execute really well and you just blast the guy and everything went awesome i mean you see the exhilaration that these guys have when they jump on top of the cage, when they do a backflip off of the cage. Um, it's,

it, it seems like kind of like the, the ultimate thing to like do slash overcome. But then, and then what, you know, they, they talk about this was astronauts.

Um, you know, when, when they, there hasn't been that many people that have gone to the moon, but the people that have gone to the moon, they're like, well, what type of, you know when when they there hasn't been that many people that have gone to the moon but the people that have gone to the moon they're like well what you know what am i gonna do now you know and obviously like you know stepping inside of a cage isn't the same exact thing as like going to the moon but it still is rare territory and i think it's it's neat you know um

my own experiences with power lifting you know it, it's like, that was my thing. That was what I love to do. And then how do you find, how do you find things that are gratifying, satisfying? And the answer is kind of, you know, getting back to what we were talking about earlier,

it was taking a lot of satisfaction in, in the things that are like free, you know, the best things in life are free, you know, loving yourself, loving life are free, you know, loving yourself, loving the people around you, figuring out ways, just how simple is this? Like, there's a lot of people that do this. There's a lot of art, a lot of starving artists. There's a lot of people that, you know, a lot of people, I know a lot of people are just happy. They're

just figuring out a way to be happy every day. You know, and that's a great thing to solve. That's a great thing to kind of just figure out. And they're always smiling. They always got a joke. They're always super, super excited about stuff. And I think that's like a real key to life is, you know, I know everyone's striving so hard to be better than they were yesterday and or to be the best or to be better than this person, quote unquote, better than that person. But in the end, if you do get there, you might be really screwed because then trying to figure out how to still be happy and still try to figure out,

I think that's, you know, guys like yourself and guys like me, like we've been kind of, not that we've done everything. I'm not even saying that. It's just that we've done some things that are pretty cool and they were really, they were of high value to us. And we went in there and we, and we did it and we got it done and we felt amazing about it. And then it's like, and now, and I have seen so many lifters.

I know you've seen so many fighters. It's like, man, that's all i ever had and you're like oh man like i think you missed a lot buddy like you there's so much there's so much more out there for you other than just the fighting or other than just the lift yeah 100 no there's no there's no doubt about that and so i i don't you look at these happy people and and the people who always have a joke like like every time we're around Jesse Burdick, he's got a fucking smile on his face. He's making us laugh. He's cracking jokes.

And that's a characteristic of somebody who's embodying their own medicine. And really, that just boils down to what do those people do? What makes them that way? What do they do with their time? You know, and it's quite likely they find fulfillment in the things that they choose to do each day. And, you know, one of the beautiful things about us, you know, getting put on time out by Mother Earth right now is to actually reflect upon that. What are the things that I do each day that actually make me happy in the fucking experience of it and it's not just chasing those right like hey i feel great doing yoga i'm not

going to do it fucking 16 hours a day and neglect my son and not eat and all that other shit but you know can i sprinkle in a little bit from these different categories that really do make me feel good and can i do them often enough that I'm not overdoing or underdoing? Can I find balance and equanimity in those experiences? And, you know, trying new shit is one of the ways we figure that out. You know, some people try to do yoga and they're like, I fucking hate this. Or they go for a run and they hurt their knee and they're like, I'm not going to do that again. But there is, you know, there are ways that we can fine tune and make any of those things work for us and work in the way that we, you know, really do gain the most from it without injury and without consequence.

You know, and I think the more we get better at figuring out ourselves and what's right for us and what are the ways that we can start to co-inhabit those spaces with other people like can i can i have a gym where i have amazing fucking people that i want to talk to in between sets and can we have this group workout can i make it you know can i teach bear how to ride a bike and hit the trails with them and ride around ladybird lake and then jump in the water to cool off when it's 97 degrees outside like yeah that's that's there's medicine in that experience it's it's 97 degrees outside. Like, yeah, that's, that's, there's medicine in that experience. It's, it's filling my cup. And the more often I can do things like that while still obviously taking care of the shit that needs to be taken care of, paying the bills on time, you know, fucking turning in taxes, doing all that shit that has to be done. How much time in the day

do I actually fill my cup for me and fill the cup for my family's needs that isn't just you know dotting the i's and crossing the t's with paperwork and and whatever job that takes care of that maslow's hierarchy of needs like can i can i really have balance between those two things the work that needs to be done and the work that i want to have done and and i think that really is the missing ingredient that we all get to reflect upon right now. You know, like where are we at? Where have we been running along through life, constantly in a state of doing, and we've been taking no breaks to evaluate all this. We have a time right now where we really can reflect upon all the things that we've done, all the things that we've done by habit and reframe that, restructure it, you know, and really look at that.

And that's something that obviously brought me joy. You know, when I reached out, I was like, oh, hell yeah, dude. Let's do it, buddy. And seeing you guys are out in Bodega Bay, I remember going out there for a camping trip once and they have some of the best oysters ever there in bodega bay you know just it's just a fucking beautiful spot in california you know and you're out there with your family you got a gym you're getting in nature like all that's in your control you know that's that's all in your control so just looking at that um there's not a place on this planet that isn't awesome you know you go to even even like the harshest deserts have beauty in them.

There's everywhere on this earth when you connect to nature, there's some degree of, wow, this is a fucking cool spot. You know, this is a really beautiful place to be in. And if we shift the lens to maybe I want to spend a little bit more time in nature. Maybe I want to spend a little bit more time dropping out of my constant thinking, chattering mind into just a space of stillness. That leads and bleeds into everything else we do. It makes you better at being a dad. It makes you better in your relationships. And it gives you a greater perspective on what is the track leading forward. About, I think about two years ago, I started, um, about five years ago, I started walking and, uh, I started trying just to make sure I walk, you know, about two miles

every day or so. And I did a lot of 10 minute walks. And then one day I was walking and, uh, I was just like, Oh, I actually feel pretty good. Like knees feel pretty good. Ankles feel pretty good. This is once I've kind of stopped lifting as heavy. And I was like, I think I can like run. So I'm just going to like, I don't know, just try it. I'm going to run from here and I'll run to the end of the street. And I tried it and it felt good. And I was like, I think I can actually just run home.

So I ran home. And then, you know, more recently, recently I've just I'm not like a I like having I like having like I guess more broad long-term goals I'm not really like I don't set up a ton of I don't set up a ton of goals I kind of more or less have like a to-do list so i'll be like all right well i'm gonna get out and i'm gonna do like a run walk today and i i um i'll i'll try to get prs i'll try to west side barbell it a little bit where uh louis simmons has these like he calls them mini maxes so you have a bench press you know that you you did with bands you have a bench press that you

did with chains you have a bench press max that you did with a close grip you had a bench press max you did with a wide grip you have a bench press max you did with board so for me out here in bodega i'll just kind of like i'll say okay i'm going to time myself running from this spot to this spot it's just like i don't know just me doing it on my phone and i'll screen capture it and And then I go on IG story, and I write over top of it, like, you know, where I was running or whatever, and save it to my phone. And then I try to beat the PR the next time I go out there. So it's like, it's just a lot of fun for me. You know, it's like, it's like, just trying to find things that you can do and things that are uh that are different and so for me it's been it's been amazing to you know really shift gears i have a little bit of weight here i have like a

i have these triad um things from a company called havoc they're they're a little bit similar to kettlebells and then i have a couple of dumbbells here i don't have like a bench or like a lat pull-down machine or a pull-up bar or anything like that i just have a couple of dumbbells here, but I don't have like a bench or like a lat pull down machine or a pull up bar or anything like that. I just have a couple of real basic things. I got a weight vest. And there's some stairs here, so I'll throw the weight vest on. I'll go run the stairs. But it's just super random.

It's super fun. It's just like whatever kind of calls to me for the day. I might go out and I might walk and uh i might be like oh wow i don't feel like crap today i'm not i don't feel super energetic well let me see how i feel after this you know about two mile walk or so and then oftentimes i'm like oh yeah you know i i'll just sprint this hill you know i'll sprint 10 hills or something like that it's just um it's been really it's been really awesome to have this extra time to figure out what the hell is it that you enjoy doing what do you what do you like to do what do you want to do you can kind of ponder it whereas before you had to do

you had places to be so you couldn't really sit around and think about it so now i can think about wow how much stuff was I doing before that was really forced? You know, like I do love going to super training gym. I do love doing those. I love doing those workouts, but am I doing them because I have a camera there? Cause I'm doing it for Instagram or because I'm doing it because this is what everyone thinks I should be doing all the time. Or do I, or do I really love doing it like everybody just thinks that I'm going to be there at this time and so because of that I'm going to be there at that time that's that's what I that's what I normally do but I think you you kind of see what

I'm saying here is that like we don't really have a certain time to wake up anymore I mean some people have scheduled that for themselves we don't have a certain time to go to bed so I've been kind of just figuring all this out and I I'm somebody that loves starting out the starting out my mornings early but you know a lot of times I would wake up at like 3 30 and you know try to get something going by like 4 o'clock now it's more it's more reasonable you know now it's a little bit like four o'clock now it's more it's more reasonable you know now it's a little bit more in line with the sun it's a little bit more in line you know when the sun's going down at night i'm starting to shut things down uh in my household as well and so it

it's it's an interesting thing uh it's an interesting opportunity that we have right now to kind of figure out yeah what does call to call to you? What do you enjoy doing? And the people that have lost their jobs, like, you know, I know that that's, it's, it's horrible. Like it's a, it's a real shitty thing, but maybe you're going to land on something better. You know, maybe this is an opportunity for you to learn and grow. Maybe you have an opportunity to read some books, listen to some podcasts, educate yourself in a different way. Like maybe it's a way out for you. You know, maybe you're 30, 35 years old, and you weren't sure what you're going to be doing or 40. You weren't sure what you're going to be doing for the next three to five years. And you didn't really see yourself doing the thing you were doing anyway, for the next

three to five years. Maybe this is a time for you to really expand and really go out and use this as like almost like an excuse. Now I'm not going, I'm not even going to go back in that line of work because of the coronavirus, like blame it on that. They went on the quarantine and you end up just completely shifting gears and doing something totally different. Like I'm doing with my,

with my running. I would have never thought that I, I would be running, but it's, it's been fun for me. Fuck yeah, brother. That's beautiful, man. It's been so good having you on the show here. We definitely got to do it again.

Yep, you gave a little teaser trailer for your brother Chris who's going to come on and talk about his experience with Ibogaine and I absolutely can't wait for that. I absolutely love you. I love chatting with you every time we get an opportunity to. Much love to you and your family. Where can people find you online?

The podcast, the Instagram, all that good shit. I'm blowing up over here, man. I'm just kidding. I love saying that. It's a weird thing. I've had people tell me that before. And then I'm like, I think you have the same phone that I have. I think you have access to YouTube.

I think you have access to Facebook. I think you have access to Facebook. I think you have access to Instagram. Like we're all on the same damn platforms, you know? Anyway, you can find me at Mark Smelly Bell. I have a YouTube channel, which is at Mark Smelly Bell. I have an Instagram, which is at Mark Smelly Bell. I have a Twitter, which is at Mark Smelly Bell. And then if you want to check out some slingshot products, I invented a product 10 years ago, called the Slingshot. It's a supportive upper body device for bench press, pushups, and dips. And in addition to that, we also have wrist wraps, knee sleeves, knee wraps, elbow sleeves, anything that you need to mummify yourself during a workout,

because sometimes the workouts get to be quite painful. We have everything to protect you over at markbellslingshot.com. And then in addition to that, I know you've talked highly about Kratom in the past on this podcast. I also have a product called MindBullet. And if you get a chance, go over to mindbullet.com and check out what we have to offer over there in my opinion it's some of the best I personally like it a lot for pre-workout I like to take some kratom in the morning as well so if you got any bumps bruises got a little pain or you just want to be a little extra creative next time you are meditating you might want to pop some mindBullet and go

check it out at mindbullet.com. Thanks, man. I really appreciate it. Love being on the show. I love you. I love your family. Always great to get in conversation with you. And I'm pumped, man. I'm pumped up to see you again sometime in the near future. And then I know that I'm going to be that old guy in Bear's life that sees him every like four or five years and I'll be like man I remember you're this tall and you used to jump off the Swiss ball so I'm looking forward to seeing you and your family sometime in the near future yeah you got it brother thanks the show today with my dude, Mark Bell. Please check out our sponsors.

They make this show possible. And also check out my dude, Mark Bell. He's got a phenomenal podcast that I've been on a couple of times. His social media is one of the favorite things that I would look at because he at because he doesn't mind. He doesn't mind poking the Rhino. You know, he's, he's made some posts on education and obviously when you get to a following as big as his,

you're getting a lot of pushback and that's okay. But he's just a, he's just a fantastic dude. He's always thinking outside the box. Really hope you guys enjoyed this one. We've got some big episodes coming up here that I'm super excited about. And that's about it. Oh,

also, yes, just had a baby wolf posted that on Instagram, even though I'm super excited about. And that's about it. Oh, also, yes, just had a baby wolf posted that on Instagram, even though I'm not on there much. And so we got our first little girl. So I'm, um, even though I feel energized and good to do these intros and outros, uh, definitely limping through the days right now. So yes, congratulations, Kyle and Natasha and congratulations, wolf and bear. We got a little girl now in the house love you guys see you next week you Thank you.