Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 516 - Principles For Life

Episode Date: April 28, 2021

Today we're sharing some of the principles we live by. These principles cover nutrition, fitness and life! Subscribe to the NEW Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

You know when imagery just really gets to you, man? Yeah. You see it too vividly. Oh, my God. Are we live? Are we going? We're going. Have you seen, I don't know if you were on this, well, you were on the internet in this

era, but it was called the Pain Olympics. Oh. Ooh. Do you remember? No, I don't know anything about the Pain Olympics, but it sounds horrible. Sounds disgusting. Andrew, you know? No, I don't know. I might pain Olympics, but it sounds horrible. Andrew, you know, I know. I don't know.

I might've just missed this. Okay. So it was probably later found out that the mutilation in these videos was, I don't think all of it was real, but it was like, oh, I saw this when I was like 12, man. The internet was so dark back in the day. Um, it really was the wild west pain Olympics. That's what it was so dark back in the day um it really was the wild west bme pain olympics that's what it was called and it was yeah it was like video of just you see like mutilation of this individual's junk wiener and multiple and it's just like it looks so real and it just it was dark the reason

yeah the reason why we got on this guys is because mark mentioned chopping up meat and and you thought about me yeah your own meat uh-huh it happens chop it up with scissors so it works good not steak yeah steak yeah it works great you guys ever uh chop up your steak before you uh like like when you're putting in the pan that's the best that's the best way that's the way i do it and i know it's you do it for like speed right yeah and people get all upset about how you cook your food and everything, but. You lose all the juices. Well, you know what's great is you get to flavor each piece individually.

Yeah, that is. You know what I mean? Like the center, like no matter how good somebody is, no matter how chef-y somebody is, even the chef from South Park wouldn't be able to figure out how to get the salt and everything just perfectly inside the steak, you know? But when you chop it up, you can get it right in there. Yeah. That's very true.

Because I'm a fan of the edges, you know? So, like, that's... Edging? Yep, edging. Yep. Low-hanging fruit. I don't know what's going on with this show. As I said, I'm like, ah, don't say it that way.

Not too late. Fuck it. It's already out. By the way, guys. I'm on edge. Thanks for getting us over 1,000 ratings on Apple. I didn't pay late. Fuck it. It's already out. By the way, guys. I'm on edge. Thanks for getting us over a thousand ratings on Apple. Oh, I didn't pay attention. It must have been the sperm episode.

Damn it. Didn't seem like. If you guys haven't listened to the last part of the last episode, you should. Delete it. Did you guys hear the, I don't know if I mentioned it on the show or not, but like there was a study about like, I think I did tell you guys, there's a study about like men's like taints getting smaller and their junk getting smaller and then this woman was on joe rogan talking about it she's talking about we've had people on this show before talk

about estrogens and stuff like that and phthalates all the how do you say it yeah phthalates yeah phthalates yeah phthalates it's a weird word It's a weird word. It's a weird word, man. It's funny because people will either go all in on the th part or the th part. Yeah. Thalates or thalates. Yeah. One thing, you know, I need to listen to this show because, and stuff like that, it seems like I would need people to study a lot more than just that. You know, like I would imagine that if you're an unhealthy person, that the way that you deal with the different plastics that are in our food and in our water and stuff like that is probably a little different than the way someone who is healthier may deal with it or even just genetic potentials and things like that would i'm sure it would factor in but like if you don't sleep well you're on your phone all the time you don't move a lot

you know like i mean i think i think more plates more dates he did a video talking about and he was like hey you know we still need to talk about like lifestyle stuff so i'm interested to listen to that rogan episode and to see if that woman particularly talked about lifestyle as well but i know she like wrote a book on it and so that's her that's her like body of work you know but i mean yeah i think like that's just a given like yeah it is dangerous phthalates and all that stuff plastics but if you're also you know since you were a kid if you're not getting outside much because kids now nowadays aren't outside in the sun as much, right? They're not doing as much physical activity. You know, they're growing up and their diets are mushy foods, processed foods, et cetera. It's an, I don't think we can just say

it's the plastics. It's an additive of all of these just negative things that leads us to just not develop as well as we typically would. And maybe because you're on your phone for 12 hours a day, maybe that is having a pretty big impact on your development and on your taint. Yeah. Years of bad sleep without realizing you have bad sleep. Just messing with all of that. Taint development. Hey, I think. I don't know how far apart it's supposed to be but apparently it's getting i wonder what so

sorry for this silly question i mean i don't know if we can even answer but like what's the detriment of having a taint closer to your nutsack i think think so. That's the, one of the separations between male and female is there's less distance. They got less, less, they're less tainty than us. Women do have smaller taints than men. Yeah,

they do have smaller taints. Yeah. I mean, that's less tainty in this climate. Can we even say that nowadays? I don't think so. I think I like dainty. I think it's a misogynistic.

This has turned into a misogynistic show. For all the women that listen to this podcast. Women could potentially have smaller taints. Allegedly. Potentially, yes. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here with us, ladies. We got in trouble from Coach House's wife.

She didn't like the conversation the other day. Wait, was it the end where we talked about they were both like i can't believe you tasted it hey coach house i don't know if you listen right now man but i know you have okay i know you're a manly man but god knows that you have he's definitely a little he's definitely not his wife but he knows he has of Of course he has. Yes. No. Come on. Lock the room. Talk.

You know, that's a lie. I hate you. I hit all you men lying about this, making me out here. Just, just kicking me out. He making me seem alone.

All y'all do it. All y'all have done it. Um, but what I was actually going to say at the beginning was thank you for getting us to 1025 ratings guys. Nice. We're at 1025. If you guys want to rate and review. That's not true.

Really? Yeah. 1025. That's a lot of reviews. A lot of reviews. Yeah. We're at 1,025. If you guys want to rate and review. That's not true. Really? Yeah. 1,025. That's a lot of reviews. That's a lot of reviews. Yeah. Really stoked about that. So for all you guys who continue to listen and you dig the stuff, go do it.

We're pumping up. Go do it. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. We're blowing up. We are. We done did.

Like a Starbucks bathroom. But our last conversation probably put us down a little bit. We come and we go. Oh, God. We're going to hell oh man but i can't wait for uh element to hurry up and send me some more watermelon what happened i'm almost out i have like five packs of watermelon flavor left man this is my last one right here i can't kill those beavers fast enough yeah yeah some people don't get what you're talking about whole flavor uh-huh and people still don't know explain it please no they have to figure it out they gotta figure it out they gotta research it

they have to ruin their google search history yeah i guess so permanently what does it mean by beaver butthole but anyway guys the uh what if you again andrew you can tell them about how to get the four pack or whatever but if you guys do do what andrew's about to tell you what to do get all watermelon all their flavors are really good i really like orange raspberry it was raspberry yeah it was raspberry wasn't it raspberry that has to do with beavers yeah okay watermelon mainly raspberry mainly raspberry watermelon that was amazing so you guys got to check that out. Yeah, we'll call it like what the watermelon

challenge where you order all four boxes of Element Watermelon flavor. Watermelon salt. Yeah, so you can order four boxes of Element Watermelon salt, but you're only going to pay for three of them. And that is over at drinklmnt.com slash powerproject. You guys can check out

like, you know, a bunch of the information of why we take it, the benefits of it all. And then, of course, you can order a value bundle, which is getting four boxes for the price of three. Again, that's at DrinkLMNT.com slash PowerProject. Hit them up ASAP. I've been listening to some podcasts lately. I usually don't do that.

But I've been listening to Joe Rogan a little bit more again. You guys hot? Yeah, I'm kind of sweating. And I've been listening to joe rogan a little bit more again you guys hot yeah i'm kind of sweating and i've been listening to uh lex friedman like i always like lex friedman i catch him on youtube here and there but it just wasn't really i don't know i just don't dive into the other apps that often but anyway i listened to him uh he had uh george st pierre that was a great episode you guys should listen to it i think you'd dig it i'm gonna go well i Pierre. That was a great episode. You guys should listen to it. I think you'd dig it.

I'm going to go. I'm guessing it was a long one, right? Yeah, yeah. They talked about all kinds of shit. They talked about fasting, and they talked about aliens, and they talked about George St. Pierre's career and all that kind of stuff. It was really good. I just love how people in fitness are still just trashing fasting. I love it. It's really funny to trashing fasting i love it it's really funny

to me but hey that's cool well george saint pierre talked about how his friends think that he's an alien because he's like he doesn't eat but he's jacked you know so like what i don't understand you don't eat i remember when he was on rogan he was saying that he thought he got abducted by aliens though wait really yeah because he would like he has these like times in his life where he just can't remember what happened. Like he'll just black out and then all of a sudden it's like the next day or some shit like that. And he's like, yeah, I think, you know, I can't do his accent, but you know, Rogan makes

fun of him all the time and it'd be like, you know, I think it was aliens and he's like, what the fuck are you talking about? Damn. Yeah. I mean, Hey. Hey trip. Yeah. Well, aliens are real. They're out there. Yeah. aliens and he's like what the fuck are you talking about damn yeah i mean hey hey trip yeah well aliens are real they're out there yeah maybe that's why gsb is the greatest maybe that's why he doesn't need to eat his insides have been reorganized and he can digest air it's probably on that encema plan you know fasting be mad weird man i'm still surprised that i haven't lost so

much weight and muscle right it's it's it's so It's so crazy to me. I love it too. It feels good. If you want to get really big, just don't eat. Makes sense. No, I think that if you're getting your calories in and you're getting your protein in, there really shouldn't be a lot of reasons on why you're going to lose weight. I think people used to just think that you wouldn't be able to digest or be able to utilize those nutrients if you packed them all in at once. And I guess I could speculate that that might be true for some people, especially people

who maybe don't have a history of having a great appetite. Maybe they don't have a great appetite because when they start to eat a certain amount, their body's like, hey, you had enough. And so maybe they literally don't need more at that point. But someone that does have a great appetite Like us. Yeah, maybe their body's like, I mean, you know, you have, I think your body has needs and wants for salt and for to get certain nutrients in every day. And the amount that you would probably,

the amount that you would probably like need to consume to survive is probably different than the amount that you want. But, you know, we kind of have, we got some pretty good resources, you know, we could just cook up like two pounds of steak, three pounds of steak. And so there's, you think, considering that, there's no reason to really lose weight. If you can plow through two pounds of steak, three pounds of steak. And so there's, considering that, there's no reason to really lose weight. If you can plow through two pounds of steak, I mean, I don't really see how you're going to be losing weight. Yeah. And again, it's just like, you don't have to do it, right? But if you can get in your amount of calories in half of your day,

let's say the latter half of your day, I think you're perfectly fine. You don't have to fit in food in two or three hours. Like that's not what we're talking about here. But if you can get in all your calories within that period, I see no detriment to it. Even if you're bulking. Even if you're bulking, if you can still do that, it might be easier to spread it out and that's okay too. But if you can fit it into a smaller

window, fit it into a smaller window. Try it out. See how you feel. I like it because it's really convenient for me. I don't want to i don't want to like be eating all day and we're here at work doing shit and i feel productive and i don't want to be slowed down with food sometimes it feels good to eat food like yesterday i ate some steaks two steaks yeah while we were uh kind of kicking it for a little while but normally i just kind of keep keep plowing on through.

You know, you change your, you know, you learn over the years to change your mindset towards certain things. I used to be so rigid about there's this way to train. You know, if power lifters, they need to do, you know, this specific style of training. And you have to go heavier every week. And, you know, I used to start my training a lot of times with five five by five and then I would, you know, move the weight up each week and then I would lower the reps and then I would lower the sets and then I'd get kind of get down to a point where I would do like one set of one, you know, like that sort of deal. And then I might build back up one more time, then I might compete or something like that. Um, and then I later on learned about the conjugate system, which is like complete, couldn't be any more something like that. And then I later on learned about the conjugate system,

which is like complete, couldn't be any more different than that. And I was like, look at how many people are strong doing this. Like, what's the deal with this? How are these guys so strong? And how are some of these lifters?

What I was interested in with the West side stuff was not only how strong they were, but how they were surviving. There was many, many lifters that competed and that were doing Westside Barbell Method that were doing it for like a decade or longer, and they were still really healthy. And with people that I know who trained in different ways, they weren't able to do it anymore. They were banged up and stuff.

And so I was like, I think this Louie Simmons guy, I think he's got something going on. So I had to kind of change my mindset. I had to keep my mindset open. I had to change some of my principles that I had directed towards powerlifting and say, hey, I think I should be open to some of this. And I tried it, and it worked great. So this is actually the thing I want to ask you, because I think all three of us on this show, we have all these guests that come on and from different people that have come on, we have started doing different things. We've added different movements into our training. We've done different things as far as nutrition to benefit us. So we're obviously able to all take new things in and try them out.

But for your goals that you had back then when you were 330 pounds and you were focusing on powerlifting, I know there's probably things that you could have done better. So I'm curious, what do you think you could have done better at that time? But obviously, the principles that you had set for yourself at that time allowed you to reach the goals that you wanted to get to. Maybe there are some numbers that you didn't hit. But overall, eating in a way to get to 330 and lifting in a certain way allowed you to get very strong and compete while as a power Lifter and then again your principles changed for the goals that you have now. So how did that evolve for you? And what do you think you would what principles do you think you would have changed in the past to have been a better athlete? you know, there's a saying in strength and conditioning the Program that you're currently not doing is the best one.

And that's super frustrating. But what it alludes to is that as soon as you go and focus in on getting really, really strong, you're probably losing some other attribute of fitness. It doesn't always have to be true. I guess you could figure out a way to be dialed in to where you could figure it out, to where you could keep some attributes. But, like, let's just face it. If you're trying to get really, really strong, as Stu McGill pointed out and other people have pointed out in the past, you might lose a little bit

of mobility. You might lose some athleticism for at least a moment, right? You might lose some quickness and some other things and so forth. So it's kind of difficult to figure out what would be the most exact optimal thing. But I think what happens is when we're open-minded towards certain things. Um, and when,

as soon as we gravitate towards something, uh, it starts to become kind of religious, you know, it starts to get like overboard. It starts to get to a point where you're now going to church four days a week uh not only do you not cuss but you don't want anybody else around you to not cuss and anybody brings up anything and you're beating them with the bible you know the type of thing and so i think

if i was guilty of anything it was probably that it was probably like not uh i dove all in on the west side stuff i'm like this is a great way to train. This is really cool. I'm really super open-minded. But if I was being honest with myself, I was actually being closed-minded to some of those old ways of training. It didn't mean that those old ways of training were ineffective. It's almost like a fighter changing their camp. It doesn't mean the way the guy used to train is like total crap.

It just meant that he probably needed to change. He probably needed to gravitate towards something different. And maybe the new camp that he's with, maybe they have a more modern way of training, a slightly different way of training, but it doesn't mean the stuff he did previously is shitty. So progressive overload type of stuff, it's not really part of the West side barbell stuff or didn't used to be

anyway. And I think I could have utilized that. I think it would have really helped. What do you mean? Wait, what do you mean? Cause like Westside, it's not like they over time, like they are moving heavier weight. So what do you mean by that? Yeah. Well, they're not, it's not like, uh, it's not like linear periodization and it's also

not, it's not the same exercise, you know? So you go into contests and you don't like i knew every i didn't know everything i knew a lot of what each exercise meant for me personally and i knew what that would equal on the platform but because i kind of shut down um i just had to know i just had to know some stuff that was probably like unnecessary like uh I just had to know some stuff that was probably unnecessary. Like I would know if I squatted 800 pounds with a blue and green band on the bar that I could squat 1,050. But it's like why wouldn't I just squat 1,000 pounds to see that?

And Louie Simmons had explanations on why you wouldn't want to do that because you wouldn't want to beat yourself up the same way and so forth. But I still can kind of see that I was a little bit closed-minded. One thing I could take a lot of pride in, though, is if people go back and watch some of those videos, I think it's the YouTube channel's Mark Bell Super Training, go back and watch some of those old videos, and you'll see week after week after week in two from 2009 until like 2015 or whatever it was we tried everything like we really did we like i i can feel really good about that like when people are like you know what do you think you could have done differently to be better it's like man i i don't i don't really know because we literally it felt like we tried everything obviously Obviously, you can't try everything, but I'm doing good mornings with chains on the bar. I'm doing squats with bands.

I'm squatting without bands. I'm squatting in equipment. I'm squatting raw. I'm deadlifting with chains. Like, I'm doing, yeah, Zurcher harness squats as Andrew's pulling up a video. Like, just doing all kinds of different shit all the time just to try to get better. We're bench pressing off of boards. Sometimes we're bench pressing off of something that we call the man pond.

Bench pressing off of like towels or carpets or like bench pressing on the floor. I mean, fuck, man. I even did for like a long time. I did kneeling squats. Kneeling squats. Jesus, you're thick. Kneeling squats are so stupid. It's like the worst exercise ever. Kneeling squats?

Yeah. Kneeling squats are really hard. It's hard to unrack the weight. You're literally on your knees, and you actually kind of, you just push your butt back a little bit, and it's like a hip movement. But it doesn't really make sense, in my opinion, to squat that way. Good morning standing up. Good morning sitting down. Good mornings with different bars.

We used, you know, safety squat bar, cambered bar, regular bar, like just anything that was new or different that came out. It's like, all right, let's get it. Let's figure out a way to try this. And so we had this real kind of open mind when it came to some of those things. But when it came to a couple other things, we were we kind of maybe were a little closed off to some of those old principles because we just felt like maybe those weren't useful anymore. But I think we could have incorporated them and even been better than we were, which we later did when Stan Efferding came in. And that's part of the reason why Stan Efferding crushed everybody. Yeah.

I think that's, that's where it gets a little bit tough because I do think not just like when it comes to nutrition, like we can talk about like certain principles that we may have in nutrition nowadays, but those can change over time. I think that having that can make things easier when making decisions, right? So like, if you're doing a training program

and it's working for you and somebody comes to you with another training program, if your training program's currently working and you're like, I have a goal of heading towards here and what I'm doing is already pushing me towards that, it might not be a good idea to change everything, but it still might be a good idea to have an open mind on maybe a few things that you can small things that you could add in to alter what you're currently doing to make things better. Because it's not good to necessarily be like the principles that I have now are absolutely right.

And I'm not willing to change because these are my principles. Right. You can't do that because then you're not growing. But you also can't not have principles, you know, because then you're just growing but you also can't not have principles you know because then you're just like a feather in the wind and any type of thing that's coming your way you're like oh i'll try that and i'll try that and i'll do that and i'll do crack and yeah like you can't you know somebody offers you some crack you're like i'll try it because i want to learn what that feels like that escalated quickly it did escalate quickly but that's the thing it's like

there has to be a fine line because again again, with the goals you have now, you also have different nutritional principles. But maybe getting to 330, you could have done that maybe in a healthier way. But at the same time, like you had to eat like a motherfucker to get to 330. It was fun. It was a lot of fun doing it that way. And maybe that was necessary. Maybe that was needed. fun doing it that way and maybe that was necessary maybe that was needed you know in in the uh conversation that i heard lex friedman talk to uh george st pierre lex friedman said he loves

kind of chaining himself to discipline like he he enjoys that he loves um he he he's like it's his own mindset he loves saying no to delicious foods like that's like he he enjoys that george saint pierre has a completely different mindset where he actually likes sugar and he likes carbohydrates so he's like i can't see doing your diet man because this is what i enjoy so he enjoys the opposite so i think you also have to uh have principles that fit some of your mindset in a way. And for me at the time, you know, eating like eating extra and enjoying a bunch of the junk food and stuff like

that. It was all, it was all part of it. It was like part of the power lifting culture was part of the fun of it. And I've told this story before. But the first power lifting competition I ever went to, I was like, I didn't know what to do.

Cause I was just a kid. I was like 14 or something., I was like, I didn't know what to do because I was just a kid. I was like 14 or something. And I thought like, oh man, I got this competition coming up. So I got to eat really healthy for it. And like, I didn't know what to eat. So I just ate like low fat because that was like a lot of the information at the time. So I mainly ate like cereal and like skim milk and I'm drinking like protein shakes

and I'm just like farting nonstop and trying to eat like egg whites and stuff like that and bread. Egg whites are the worst. Egg whites are the worst. Oh, yeah. Disgusting. Yeah. Cottage cheese. You know, just farting all day and just being a mess, but like not knowing what I'm doing.

And I wasn't even trying to make a particular weight class. I was just like, oh, this is going to give me strength for the competitions. I'm like eating like fruit and drinking orange. I don't know. Orange juice always made me feel like Superman for some reason. I don't know the vitamin C you think you're going to get all jacked or something. I don't know what it was, but I was doing all that. And, um, and then it's competition day and my brother's like, oh, we got to, you know, pick up, uh, we got to pick up mad dog's friend. He's going to compete with us too. And it was this guy named Rob Constance and Rob Constance was probably about,

I don't know. He's probably about two 70. You know, when he got in the car, he took up the whole fucking front seat guy was jacked as hell. And, uh, and he's like,

boys, he's like, this is going to be a great trip. We were driving down from Poughkeepsie, New York to white Plains, which is like about two hours. And he's like, this is he's like, this is going to be a great trip. We were driving down from Poughkeepsie, New York to White Plains, which is like about two hours. And he's like, this is the best thing about powerlifting. He whips out a big thing of sticky buns out of his bag. And we're like, holy shit.

And then he goes, hey, if we finish this off, he's like, there's more where that came from. And I was like, this is the greatest sport in the world. I'm like, this is how you get to eat. And so that's kind of like some of the stuff i i grew up kind of seeing and a lot of the guys in the gym they didn't care about uh i mean they ate protein you know they kind of knew about protein and stuff but they didn't give a fuck you know they were sitting there like eating m&ms in between their sets and shit like that they didn't care and they were huge so i was like oh this i kind of thought like

that's the way that you did it. When I later got into powerlifting and when I got like deep into it and went to Westside Barbell, those guys are walking in with like McDonald's. Tilt, who was a lifter there, he was 500 pounds. He is 500 pounds? He was 500 pounds. Please explain the nickname Tilt. The nickname Tilt was because he he like I think he got like hit by a car or something when he was young and so he walked sideways.

I don't want to laugh. I know. Louie's a mean bastard. I think it was something like that. Or he's born with one leg longer than the other. Either way, it's mean. It's so mean. Don't call this man tilt. Tilt is Oh, there's a lot of good nicknames there till is uh on the uh lap pull down machine and of course he's not using it for lap pull downs

he's just sitting there sweating to death in the middle of the winter in a columbus ohio yeah and i was like hey man uh using that and i kind of know that he's not using it he's like yep and i'm like well fuck i got no chance of moving him and i kind of know that he's not using it he's like yep and i'm like well fuck i got no chance of moving him so i'll just wait till he he's gonna get up at some point like 20 minutes later he like shuffles off and there's a snicker king-size snickers bar on the ground i'm like i wonder who dropped it i wonder whose pocket that fell out so i i kind of saw i saw a lot of that and then when it was time for me to power lift and get big i was like all right i know how to do this yeah and i know what this is about this is going to

be a lot of fun and i ate i ate foods that would promote muscle growth but on top of that i'd eat junk food as well okay yeah i remember uh my first introduction to all of that was um it was at uh csa before it was the location it is now walking into record breakers for the first time and there's all you know team st in a circle and there's everyone's food there's like uncrustables and donuts and all kinds of stuff like is that like what they eat like for lunch like what is i just didn't get it i'm like is that for like the whole team like what is that like nobody knew who the hell i was so it was like kind of awkward but i was just like wow that's seems interesting yeah because i didn't know shit about power lifting really trying to see if there's any video of tilt but uh it's not coming up with much but we'll see

i don't know but you know i do think that the sport, especially since the social media started getting more involved in powerlifting, the sport has changed to where now more powerlifters are caring and aware of their body composition. Like, they want to get heavy, but they don't want to get heavy just because they can be heavy, right? They want to get heavy, have a good amount of lean lean body mass and maybe not have their body fat so high so they're developing better like there's still a lot of like trash in the diet and i i think when i look back to when i got myself to 275 i could have probably done a little bit better, but the Ben and Jerry's four times a week, I don't know if I'd change it. That was fun. It's kind of fun, right?

It's really bad for me, but it was fun, and it got me heavy. I think some people could say that, too, about relationships. When they get in relationships, sometimes people gain some weight, and I think people could look back and say, you know what? I could have probably done a better job with my nutrition at that point. But at the same time, like those are probably some fun times that you had together, you know, and you get to enjoy food together, a couple of drinks together. Um, there's nothing worse than, you know, somebody like walking around with their Tupperware all the time or weighing their food at a restaurant, shit like that. That's a little, that's a little weird, especially early on.

But now the fact that you bring that up, that makes me say this. I think that you having gone through that, me getting myself to 275, you getting yourself to 330, coming down from it and seeing what you're doing now, I think that you understand and your advice to people in terms of maybe getting bigger or healthier ways of getting bigger is even that much more important because you can, you can understand what you could have done better. Right. So yeah, you had a lot of fun doing a lot of things, but you definitely know, Hey, I look back at this and all of these are things that I could have changed to do this much better and maybe even be a better athlete. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Uh, there's definitely a difference between doing what you think is right and doing what's optimal. And then also, too, with my usage of drugs and combination of getting that big,

it wouldn't surprise me if I don't live to be 95 years old. So when someone else wants to walk down that same path, I can say, Hey, you know what? I, it might be something you want to be cautious of because at some point you'll

care about it. Like you might not care about it now, but if you're a 65 and you're in the hospital, you know what I mean? Like, these are things like CT Fletcher and other people shit. Like you wish you didn't eat that cheeseburger. You wish you didn't eat those French fries.

And who knows whether he could have changed any of those things or not like we don't have any way of telling but um i can understand his point like that must be a scary time when you're literally like on your deathbed you're probably like i'm sorry about all the power of the thing i did yeah yeah you know what i mean and so it's important for people to know uh up front like what that cost could potentially be. And that's another thing. I think that like, as you, you know, as you're going through this, you, you can, we can take a lot of things from other people's nutritional principles, right? But it seems that a lot of individuals, first off, I think it would be necessary to develop

that for your, like to develop some for yourself to make your decision making easier but it seems that a lot of the time you have to see and you you typically are going to make certain mistakes that then has you look back at them and be like okay i'm definitely not going to do this again and you develop a principle behind that like i look back on for example i think the strongest thing for me with this comes to looking back on like past relationships and seeing maybe the things that I did wrong or the things that like that I shouldn't have maybe continued to deal with that now have me develop new principles for the future. So to be like, okay,

if this doesn't meet up with like this principle, right? If, if growth isn't a big part of somebody's life, maybe I don't deal with that. Maybe that that's something that I don't waver on. Right. And that's something that a big part of somebody's life, maybe I don't deal with that. Maybe that that's something that I don't waver on. Right. And that's something that a non-negotiable thing. It's a non-negotiable thing.

If you if you if you like acting that way, if you like being that way, you I'm probably not the right person. Probably not. Right. So we need to talk through it now or I need to disappear. Exactly. But like, but having that principle like that will make the decision. Like it doesn't meet the principle. And this is what me and Tom were talking about the other day. It doesn't fit in line with that. Okay.

Let's don't even need to make that decision. Don't need to go down that path. Right. And that could play a big part in terms of just your growth as an individual, your growth in terms of relationships, life, business,

nutrition. If you can sit down and write down some things that are going to help you be able to actually get towards those goals and develop like an outline, like a decision-making matrix to make everything easier. You have to make less decisions. You have to think less and all of that can be so much easier for you to get towards that goal. I agree a hundred percent.

I think, uh, I think this can be taken on like the micro level all the way down to like something as simple as a nutrition protocol, a new nutrition principle, a principle for me that has been around for a pretty long time is like that. I don't quote unquote need carbohydrates. Yeah. I just, I don't necessarily need them. Does it mean that I don't eat them? No, it doesn't mean that I don't eat them. And it doesn't mean that I abstain from, you know, eating like ice cream and stuff like that.

I still enjoy those things. But what it means is like that's dialogue that's in my head that helps me make decisions every single day. Another principle is protein first. You know, just seek out protein first. Let's just be on a mission to get protein. So when you do eat, let's get some protein. Another principle is that I don't have to eat. I can go many hours without eating. I don't need to be overly concerned with it. I'm not worried or have any concern about like losing a bunch of muscle or feeling so fatigued

that I'm not going to be able to do a great podcast or perform well in the gym or whatever else it is that I'm trying to do. I feel good. I feel comfortable. So I will get to food at some point in the day. And the principle is on that is just you're going to be okay without eating food. But before that, my principle used to be, and I think you had a similar principle, was, hey, man, like you better eat every two or three hours. Otherwise, you're going to be screwed up. And having that principle and having that mindset would actually mess you up for workouts sometimes, right?

Yeah, because you'd get in your like if you if you don't eat, you'd get in your head about, oh, I didn't eat. And then you think that, oh, my performance is going to be kind of messed up because I didn't have that food two hours before my workout. Right. But then again, this is where it gets kind of tricky because later on when I was like trying out these fast workouts and seeing how I felt and understanding, oh, okay, I can just get some electrolytes in and I can still perform extremely well. I was like, huh, so maybe it doesn't matter that much and I can adjust. You know what I mean? So like, that's the thing. There are still some days where I will eat sometimes before I work out if I decide not to fast during the day. But if I don't eat or if I have a fast workout, it doesn't affect me. It doesn't affect me at all. And I think that that's a much stronger thing for myself and my goals moving forward.

I remember, uh, like kissing my wife goodnight, like at bedtime. And, um, she's like, oh, you're not coming to bed. I'm like, I still got to eat. And I go back downstairs and I'd eat more. Cause that was my principle. Those were the principles I was tied to at that time. I was like, I ate dinner. I probably ate a little bit after dinner too. And it was like, I don't know.

And now nine o'clock or 10 o'clock. And I was like, I had a pretty hard workout today. Like, I think I just need more fuel. So I just go downstairs. I eat more food. Yeah. Sometimes it just feels that way. But that was the principles I was tied to at that time that I needed to eat frequently in order to keep my nutrition high.

my nutrition high. And I think you could take some of these principles that we're talking about, and you can, you know, you want to put them on a micro level into your nutrition or into some principles that you develop through training. You know, maybe some people just think they should never do more than five sets of a particular exercise. That's fine. It's just a, it's, it's your interpretation of what you think is best for you. And, but what I would say is be open to interpretation of what you think is best for you. And, but what I would say is be open to changing that and having a very flexible mind rather than a fixed mindset. Uh,

one principle that I have kind of, it's more in general than anything else. And this is kind of an overarching thing that I, oftentimes I forget, but it's, it's something I do my best to stay connected to. And that's just like, don't take life so seriously, you like, don't take life so seriously.

Don't take life too seriously. Don't take yourself too seriously. Don't take anything that you're doing too seriously. And that doesn't mean like not to take it seriously at all, but it means be lighthearted about it. Have some fucking fun. In the end, no one really cares. And we don't know why we're here, how we're here.

Like we don't know any of these things. So knowing that for me, my interpretation of that is like, fuck it, man. We might as well have some fun while we're here. So just try not to get your feelings hurt. You hurt someone else's feelings. Like all these different things will happen. Um, they're part of life. There's, there's, we can't always do anything about them. We can't always like attend to them. You can't fix everything. So fuck it, man. Yeah. You know you can't fix everything so fuck it man yeah you know don't take life so seriously so that's for me that's that's actually a helpful principle whenever i'm thinking about when something goes like wrong or something's kind of uh not heading the right direction i can almost just kind of laugh about it and be like well of course it's

not going in the right direction look at all these other things that are fucked too you know i wish everybody knew how fucked like all these other things were too it'd be even funnier i what i what i take from that personally like don't take things too seriously is don't let things bother you on a deep emotional level because like for example if if someone were to take that at face value like you just go to work and you don't give a fuck about what you do right that's what some people are hearing right i don't give a fuck about what you do. Right. That's what some people are hearing. Right. I don't give a fuck about work.

I'm not going to make videos today. I'm not going to, it doesn't matter. Don't take it too seriously. Don't matter. But like what I take from that is don't let things that happen, you know, affect me on a deep emotional level and,

and like, like interpret things in a different way. Like my interpretation of things has to be in a way, um, where it's not that big of a deal. If things aren't going my way, necessarily I can look at it. I can assess,

but I'm not going to let that be the thing that I focus on for days or weeks or months. Here's one of the, one of the ways I like to view it is you're, you're prepared for shit. So you're not overwhelmed by anything. Um, if you went to, if you went to jujitsu and you worked with three black belts,

and then you came over here two hours later, after you went home, took a shower, we wouldn't even know it. You know what I mean? But if, but if I went, because I'm not prepared for it,

you'd be like, yo, like what? Say, Mark, what happened? Why are you'd be like, yo, like, what happened? Like, Mark, what happened? Why are you limping in here? Yeah, Mark, what happened today, dude? Like, you okay? You need a wheelchair?

Like, what's going on? But that's, I see people like that every day. They're kind of like, they're wearing it on their body. They're wearing it in their eyes. They're wearing it in the way that they walk. They're wearing it in the way that they dress. They're wearing it in just their actions a lot of times. And you're like, man, like what, you know, what, what the fuck happened to this person?

And it's understandable to not be on your A game every single day and not be, you know, full of life and super fired up every single day. But I like to be able to, anything that's coming at me, I like to be able to Bruce Lee it like Bruce Lee is my, Bruce Lee is my symbol. Yeah. You know? coming at me i like to be able to bruce lee it like bruce lee is my bruce lee is my symbol yeah you know and whenever i feel like overwhelmed like he used to fuck a fuck up like eight people in a row you know and it didn't matter how many different people came at him so i kind of always like to have the mindset of like uh you know we can just avoid a lot of conflict which is something i

probably do too often but you can you can conflict, right? Or you can just have the skill set to take it on and like, what feels better? It feels amazing. It feels so good to have the skill set to be able to handle any sort of situation. You walk into a situation and if you were Bruce Lee and eight people did surround you and want to beat you up, you'd be like, this is awesome. This is the greatest day of my life. I've been training for this moment, and then you roundhouse kick everybody the face yeah Bruce Lee everything I like that a lot being able to Bruce Lee everything karate chop yeah Yeah, all about being prepared like today's photo shoot. I was nervous

Oh really I haven't done a shoot like that in a while like where it's like I'm controlling like you feel you were lean enough No, I was not. Yeah, that's why I was on the other side of the camera. Oh, okay. But I did the same thing. I just walked over to the studio and I started cleaning up and I started making sure that it was ready for, you know, the models, the talent. And, yeah, I just kind of did my thing.

But after, I don't know, a couple seconds of moving shit around and realizing, like, wait, now I know what I'm doing. I was fine. So hopefully that didn't show during the shoot. But, no, it was pretty cool just being able to do all that and kind of get back into that photography mode. For me personally, because I wrote down a list of some things that like I would say are like sets for me right now like for example nutrition other than like the occasional glass of wine at night uh I don't really have liquid calories white wine or red bread thank god breads who do you think I am I'm not trash I know I have to tell I have to wife every night, I'm like, when she's drinking white

wine, I'm like, you're so low budget. I thought you were classy, Andy. That's what I'm saying. Jeez. Yeah, low rent. Get that low rent bullshit out there. At least it wasn't out of a box, right? I know. She has improved. She's improved over the years, yeah. But really, in general, like, no

liquid calories. I don't snack really. Like, there are really no snacks for me. Um, when I eat, I eat meals at meals. I walk every single day. I make sure to do that. And I have some type of real physical activity every single day. What'd you say about meals? Oh, meals at meals.

What's meals at meals? I love that restaurant. My favorite place to eat. Like, so it kind of goes along with staffing. I'm not carrying around food to be munching on during the day. When I eat, I eat. And it's not like I'm not going to have something random that I eat. When I eat, it's like, okay, I have this meal and I have this meal.

That's it. I don't really eat anything afterwards. That's just general how I operate. Whereas in the past, when it was harder for me to maintain a good body composition, I'd always have something in my mouth. If you know what I'm saying. If you know what I'm saying. But yeah, I'd really be just be eating too much or eating too often or always responding to the feeling of hunger like we talked about before. And yeah, like real physical activity each day.

So either if it's jujitsu or getting in some type of lifting or if I don't have access to either, I'll maybe do some jump roping or some kettlebell stuff. I always got to get some, for me personally, some type of physical activity that's exercise in each day. Could be 20 minutes on a certain day, but it has to be something. And that's something I didn't always used to do. Like when I, when I was focusing on like powerlifting or bodybuilding training, maybe it'd be four or five days of training and then other two days are like off. I don't, I don't do that anymore. I like what you said too about, I think you said you

had something on there about snacking as well. In addition to the meals at meals that you said, which I think is actually great. But I think, uh, so some people, you know, when you start to deliver them a message about what you believe they should do, they hire you for coaching, for nutrition, and you communicate to them, like, hey, we're going to have to figure out something with these snacks. You know, I'm not a big fan of snacks, and we'd like to work you into this principle or work you into this thing that I found helpful for me over the years.

Well, one way to look at it is, oh, man, I don't get any snacks. But there's another way to look at it is I get to eat. When it's time to eat, I get to actually eat. And especially if you're utilizing like intermittent fasting. So the meals at meals thing is an opposite viewpoint or just a different vantage point of saying, hey, you don't get to snack. But it sounds like more of an add-on than it does subtracting something out of someone's lives because some people would be like, man, like I don't get an opportunity to snack.

And what I would say to people is I would actually still say that you can snack. But first of all, I would do it way less frequently. Secondly, I would just put the snack when you're done with dinner and try to work your way into better snacks healthier snacks like I did it last night I ate some chicken I ate some steak

my wife made some chicken thingy I ate some broccoli and then after that I had a tasty pastry ooh listen to this a tasty pastry dipped in some chocolate shake, steak shake protein powder. You evil genius.

It was amazing. That sounds great. It was incredible. You see, but this is why I'm going to say that. I don't even look at that tasty pastry as a snack. That is part of the meal. Yeah, it's part of the meal. Because you ate it, like that's what I do too.

I will have all of that stuff at one time. Yep. It's not like at 3 p.m. then I eat again at 5. No, it's all with it. Do what you're supposed to do first. Get that shit done and then you can play afterwards. Yeah, I dig it. Yesterday I ate from like 4 p.m. to like 7 p.m.

I just didn't stop eating it because I didn't eat as much as I wanted to here. So I was like way behind on calories. And then my dumb ass, I'm always way low on fats. So I'm like, shit, I have to figure out. So I had Piedmontese crowned beef, which is delicious. That's what happens when you walk around with fat-free cheese all the time. Yeah, I know. When you were explaining all the fat-free stuff that you ate, I'm like,

that's me every day. I do eat a lot of egg whites. But, yeah, I was just laughing because, like, we had company over and, like, I was eating, they left, and I was eating again, and then I ate dinner, and then, what's the matter with you? Okay. Are you taking clothes off? Oh, it's switching.

Anyway, so, yeah, But by the end of the night I had a big old protein shake And Change of clothes over there Who does? It's cold Yeah, it is It did get cold in here

Okay Yeah, it is kind of cold This is an interesting room It's so It can be 4,000 degrees in here And then all of a sudden It can be It's the definition of bipolar

Bro, I was That was good That was good. That was good. I started shivering over here, so I had to change the shirt, man. I thought you were just getting excited. Those nipples were popping. No, I got cold.

And now he turns it off, and I'm going to start sweating in this shirt. Yeah, now you're going to be dying. Oh, my goodness. We'll see what happens. How are you liking that shirt? Oh, the thermal? Dude, that's a that shirt? Oh, the Sturmo? Dude, that's a nice shirt

Yeah, it fits well Pulled the sleeves a little bit The STG I like it Yeah It's hard for like anything to look Like bad on him But like that shirt looks really good

That's what we should work on We should work on something else Trying to find shit that looks awful on him Right? Y'all have some dicks Like here, put this on Like nope, that didn't work either Yeah,'all have some dicks like here put this on like no yeah we'll mess up and be like ha here put on this singlet and i'm like oh shit put him in a short skirt and just be like damn his legs look good

oh yeah flexing i don't know we'll think of something let me ask you guys something what do you are there any like life principles that you think that you go about by, like you mentioned, um, how you don't let things necessarily, you don't take life too seriously. Right. And you try to,

you try to get yourself to remember that. Um, but what else, what else comes to mind for you guys as far as like life or business or whatever that you think people would really get something from, from, from me. Oh, go ahead. I was going to say doing, doing the things that you say that you're going to do, I think can be really helpful. Um, I obviously, I don't, I don't know if you can do that all the time. Um, and when I say do the things that you say that you're going to do, I'm not necessarily talking about commitments to other people,

but that could be part of it as well. Yeah. But the things that you say to yourself, you know, make sure you follow through on those as much as you possibly can. And my little example that I give all the time is just like when I'm doing my run walks or when I walk in here with the sled, I just touched the wall when I touched the wall and I touched it.

It's just because I tell myself like, you're going to go all the way to the wall. And then when I get to the wall, I touch it. I, I did it. You know, I actually,

I told myself I was going to do something. I actually followed through with it. I go back the other way and do the same thing. If I'm going to rest in between, I'll walk outside to the tree and I'll go and touch the tree. When I've been doing my run walks more recently, the light poles out here, I'll just touch them.

And it's like, I just literally told myself something five seconds ago that I was going to run to this particular destination. And when I got there, I was going to like make contact with something. And so I think that, I think that does something for you. And I think that helps build a lot of self-esteem.

And I think it helps build a lot of self-respect. You're like, I did that. Like I told myself I was going to do that and I did it. When you tell yourself, maybe before you go to bed, that you're going to have a 10 out of 10 day the next day with your nutrition, which I think is a good way to practice good nutrition and a good way to practice good exercises to think about it in a day in advance. If you tell yourself that you're going to have a 10 out of 10 day, do your best to follow through with that because you're going to feel when you

look at, look back at that day or if you're keeping a journal or writing anything down, you could say, you know what? I wanted to have a 10 out of 10 day. Everything that I ate today was on plan on point 10 out of 10. Give yourself a little star. I mean,

there's a reason why, you know, when you're a kid, they give you like stickers and shit like that, but we stop patting ourselves on the back at some point, and people think, I think, that it's, you're not being humble. But, you know, I think there's certain times to be humble, but if it's with yourself, I don't think you should be humble with yourself at all. I think you should be really prideful and really excited about who you are and the opportunities that you have each and every day to get better. So a big thing for me is just following through, you know, try to do your best. Like I said, it's not always going to happen,

but do your fucking best that you possibly can to follow through on the things that you say you're going to do yeah i i love that thank you um one thing i don't know if i've never really considered it a principle and it's of course stuff i learned from learn from mark but um like asking if something like how does it hurt or how does it help how does it help how does it hurt that's a principle so you know um just a quick example like yesterday we podcasted about the same time. Thankfully, I didn't have to do as much to it, but there's been times where I will have to edit an entire show. And it's like, okay, do I want to do that right now or do I pack up and do it at home? If I do it right now, how does it help? Like, okay, I get done.

When I get home, I'm home. How does it hurt? I'm not at home as fast as I should be, you know, but then you flip that around. It's like, okay, how does it help? How does it hurt the opposite? Like, okay, I leave quicker, but when I get home, I'm not going to be like present. So which one's the better option? And then, so like in yesterday's case, I just finished work here before I left.

So that way, when I got home, it's like, and thankfully I did. Cause I, like I said, I ate for for like four hours but that's like huge and i i use that for a lot of things like with training like i want to go heavier how is this going to help how's it going to hurt like it's going to help maybe i might develop a little bit more muscle here maybe uh is it how does it hurt like i could throw my back out and be done for another two months. Like, you know, when you look at it that way, it's like, I'll just rip out a couple more reps instead. We'll go that route. With food, I think it's very black and white there. Like, how does this, you know, another eight ounces of chicken help versus how does, you know, even a, you know, like a Quest bar or something.

Like, okay, it's probably not going to hurt that bad, but maybe my stomach might be jacked up a little bit later and I, you know, just don't feel good. Versus, you know, how does this cake, you know, help? It doesn't help really much at all, in my opinion. And how does it hurt? It hurts a lot. So, I use that quite a bit, you know, as often as I can. And this goes with, like, everything, like finances, stuff for the house. Like, you know, often as i can and this goes with like everything like finances um stuff for the house like you know we got the the ninja grill yeah it's like okay how does this help how

does it hurt it's like well fuck it helps a ton yeah how does it hurt like yeah okay it is it was like 250 you know 250 dollars which isn't cheap but it's like man the time that's saved and the meals i'm able to cook on that thing it It's like, dude, yeah. Thankfully now the weather's getting better. I can be outside with the pit boss. But yeah, dude, it was, yeah. I think it's really easy to use that. And it is very helpful. I keep forgetting.

You told me about the Ninja Foodi. I need to pick that up. I really need to pick that up. You'll love it. It's kind of getting a pain to clean though. Like once the, like the grease and stuff gets caked on it's like i need like a pressure washer i think uh there's there's quite a few but the one the one thing that i always try to make sure is that i'm always open to criticism um because i

feel like if you're if if you're not open criticism, like if you're someone who takes a lot of things too personally, when someone's like, you could do this better, or hey, I was listening to this and maybe you could have tried stripped or getting ripped or whatever, I thought that all the core principles that I had set up at that time were the best thing or whatever. Right. But when I became open to new things, different ideas, trying new things, I saw much better ways for myself to do things. It doesn't even necessarily mean that what I did at that time was wrong. There was just a better way for myself because I was open to having a totally different viewpoint. And even now, like I'm always open to criticism from others. Doesn't mean that I'm automatically going to change my mind on something, if somebody, whatever, but I will be open to hearing it out, seeing how it is applied and seeing if it's better than what I'm

doing currently. And that will allow me to make a change. And that's what I think. That's a big thing we're talking about here. Like we're always quick to change something if we know it's actually going to be better. I at least try something for a little bit and see if it ends up being better for us, because that's going to ensure that you're always growing as an individual and that you're not staying stagnant and doing the same shit all the time because you think you're always right. I think a hard part about being open to criticism is if you're frustrated about something so you you say something that you're frustrated with like man i really want to get better sleep and then someone makes a suggestion to you and there you are with your fucking semi-automatic weapon shooting that shit down right away when they have a suggestion.

So it's a great principle to adopt to be open to criticism, but do your best to do it when you're in a frustrating moment. You know, I wish this thing was in or when you're out of a frustration. When you're in a frustrating moment, that's the hardest time to be open to the criticism because it's weird because you just vented to somebody else. You told them what your problem is. They try to interject your problem.

And then you're like, well, the problem with that is this. Or I tried that already. You know, how many times you do that? I tried that already. And it's like, yeah, you didn't really try it probably that much. Try it all day. Yeah. Did you really try it probably that much. Try it all day. Yeah. Did you really, you know, did you really try it, you know, so, or did you really do it?

Right. Yeah. And so that, that can be, I think that is very difficult to do. And I think that just being open to criticism in general is, is huge, but it's, it's hard sometimes because maybe it is an area that you recognize is weak. And maybe that area, a lot of times those weak areas are like really protected. You know, you got some like security in that area. And once somebody breaches the security, you're like, oh, my God, can't believe you said that to me. But sometimes you need even criticism that could be really hurtful like

i think we're normally looking for um we're normally looking for constructive criticism but you know we think about the term constructive like you can you can build great things off of even bad criticism you know like i would say the only bad criticism would be if something's not true that they're saying to you. But if even if someone was to say that you're fat and you're actually fat, as bad as that hurts, you can use that as constructive criticism and try to turn that your best way into a positive. You don't want to be hanging out with people that are going to be negative like that and, and, uh, try to make fun of you and talk shit about you like that. It's different if somebody is saying, hey, I'd like to see you be more healthy. That's a totally

different conversation, right? But even something that could be viewed as bad could turn out being good. A lot of times we see people make huge changes. Oh, that guy, he's nothing but a drunk. And then the guy hears it, that stings. Not a fucking drunk anymore, right? Yeah, it's tough if whatever they're critiquing is one of your principles. Like, let's just say, you know, oh, I want to get better sleep. It's like, oh, it's probably because you work out real early, so you're not sleeping in enough.

It's like, no, we don't understand. Like, that's my thing. I work out early in the morning like well like okay well fine well if you get two hours of sleep like me like yeah deal yeah but what if somebody was like and see imagine how much better you'd be on four hours of sleep you just need to not sleep and not eat something i learned more recently that i think is huge that people could they can write this one down. I think this is a good one. You can cash this one in at the bank. Really move away from criticizing people and move towards criticizing ideas.

You know, like don't criticize like a person for kind of who they are, how they act in particular, but you can definitely be critical and you can be judgy if you want, if you want to call it that. a person for kind of who they are, how they act in particular. But you can definitely be critical and you can be judgy if you want, if you want to call it that. You can be judgy of their ideas and just kind of think to yourself, I don't know if that's a great idea to do that. But that's way different, right? So it doesn't cut as deep as really, you know, criticizing, you know, a person. But a lot of times I think if you are to criticize someone's idea, depending on how you did it,

they're going to feel like you might be criticizing them as a person as well. Yeah. That's the interpretation. Yeah. The two might blend together. Yeah. But, you know, using like today's photo shoot, for example, which I didn't really get a chance to see, but, you know, using like photography as an example like there could be

uh like i don't know anything about photography so it's hard for me to be critical of a particular photography technique but you would probably be able to uh interject like someone could have said hey uh andrew have you ever considered to try this other principle or this other concept or idea now instead of them like shitting on a particular way that you were shooting they're just they're they're they are critical of your idea of your concept but they're wording in a really good way and you can say oh yeah i've used that on a couple other shoots before but i don't have the right software on my computer to make it work the right the way that I wanted it to come out or something like that. Right.

And then it's like, you didn't, you didn't, uh, you weren't negatively impacted by that guy at all saying that to you. Cause you were like, Oh, that's cool.

He's trying to give me an idea. Yeah, no, I like that a lot. I think, an aspect that like, uh, I take from that personally and it comes into me when it,

for me, when it comes to social situations or or whatever i i don't shit talk people and i don't like it when i hear like people shit talking people right because you know you've gone to situations where you just hear people are talking about one person that person's not there and it's just not like like what the fuck's going on here so that's something that like if I've been in groups or I've seen that happening, I just kind of dip. Because I don't want to be around groups that take that type of idea of shit talking or talking trash on people. That's not productive. That's not fruitful.

And a lot of the times people are doing that because maybe they're jealous of something about an individual. That is something that I live by. If there's there's ever people or groups, I notice that they do that a lot. I just distance myself from them. I'm kind of that way in general, like just I think maybe the way I grew up, like the people are doing shit that like just doesn't fly with me. I'm out, you know, like they're doing something and something. doesn't fly with me, I'm out. You know, like they're doing something and something,

something just seems off and things seem like they're going to like, people are going to do a bunch of weird drugs or do something just different than what I'm used to. I'm just kind of uncomfortable and I'll usually move away from that, but it's kind of the same idea. Like people tend to pile on in those situations and they kind of keep piling on and piling on. And you see this a lot with, you know, this happens a lot in families. You know, when you start talking about a family member, a lot of times it's starting out in a place of love and care where you do want to assist somebody and help somebody.

But one person starts talking about them. Another person starts, like, you know, kind of talking poorly about them. And it just gets worse and worse. And you're like, man, how do we, we're kind of of like, if this person ever heard this, they would be super upset. And so sometimes it goes down that, down that rabbit hole and a great way to avoid it is to get the hell away from it, not participate in it. Yeah. If you're listening to this episode, I think it'd be something really fruitful for you to take some time afterwards or whenever you want to and just write down some maybe potential principles that you'll have for yourself. Because you guys know who Ray Dalio is?

Yeah. Yeah. Genius investor. He had his book was called Principles, right? Where he like laid out all of his like big financial principles. And the reason why it did so well is it gave you a big idea of the way that he went about making decisions and the way he about like went about that right if you can understand somebody's principles you can kind of probably understand what big decisions they'll make in certain situations so i think for this like if

you guys want to take something away from this go and maybe listen to some of the things that we mentioned here but just try to maybe outline some of your own life principles for yourself as far as your nutrition as far as your fitness as far as your nutrition, as far as your fitness, as far as maybe your life, your relationships, your social interaction. Maybe outline some of that for yourself. Because I think that'll also help you understand the things that you really value. Like for me myself, I personally value peace. I don't like chaos. I don't like drama. If that shit's near me, I'm out. So when I find myself in situations with individuals or people where like there is not peace, I will be gone. I don't do well like that. So that's a big part of my decision making matrix when it comes to dealing with people and dealing with individuals. What about, let's see, how would somebody navigate this scenario or just this whole situation period where we'll just use nutrition because it's easy. But like, you know, like my one of my principles is like, I'm not going to eat certain foods or whatever. But then it starts impacting like my wife and my family or something, you know, like how can you be very um uh not strict what's the word uh disciplined on

your principles without it you know negatively affecting you know family friends etc sometimes these things are complicated situations but i think if you're to normally these things don't completely come out of nowhere so that's a opportunity for education i think and you can say to your kids or your wife you can say hey uh you know i've been like pretty embarrassed about the way that i look for a long time and i i was made fun of as a kid and like you've heard me talk about all these things. Oh, it's hard to talk. It's not easy to talk that way. Not easy to be like so transparent.

But you know how hurtful it's been for me, you know, to go through that when I was a kid and so on. And these are the changes that I really love to make. And it would be, I actually, I kind of need you. I actually, I actually, I kind of need you. I need, I need your assistance on this because this is going to be something that, you know, I talked to my coach and he said like, it's kind of a 24 seven plan, you know? So I need, I'm going to need your assistance. I'm going to have moments of weakness where I'm probably not doing so good. So like, I just think like, yeah,

there could be a lot of like give and take on that over time. But I think if you're just real transparent and open with people and have a conversation, I think, you know, one of my favorite quotes is like one of the worst things about communication is thinking that it ever happened. And so you just kind of you assume that because you're walking around with Tupperware and you're weighing your food, that your family understands this commitment that you have now. You know, but you could say like, you know, that maybe they don't even know how into lifting you are. Like maybe they're just not even, they're not like at the gym with you. You could say it's a real passion for me. It makes me feel great. I want to pursue it further.

Maybe potentially you want to compete. And just as much information as you can give somebody, I think is the most important thing. Because if you're to say, hey, I'm going to do a bodybuilding show within the next year and, you know, it's going to be it's going to consume a couple of months. going to be, it's going to consume a couple of months. But even during, even like during this whole year, I'm going to make a pretty big commitment to getting leaner and getting bigger. And these are the, you know, I want to shift gears to do some of these things. I think much like somebody trying to make more money and being gone from the household a lot more, which that conversation probably never happens either, but those are all good things to communicate about. I mean, to tell your spouse, say, Hey, I'm, I'm 30 years old, you know? And so when I'm, when I leave in

the morning, like I'm fucking gone for the day because I'm trying to work my way up the ladder and I'm trying to, I want to be a management position or whatever the hell job it is that you have. Even if you're not necessarily not going to be home, you're just going to be fucking busy all day. I want to be a black belt in jujitsu. I don't want to help all these people with my online business. Like you're going to be pretty fucking busy. And I might be this way until I'm 40, you know, but my goal is to be that way until I'm 40 and then be able to, uh, you know, move on to some other things that aren't as time consuming or whatever the conversation is. So I think just trying your best to be upfront with it. I think most of the time you'll find that people are going to be supportive.

That's a big aspect of it. Being able to communicate that. Cause I, a lot of reasons why people do have problems with that is cause it's not clear. Like that's why it took me a second to understand that quote. You said half the problem with communication is that it's thinking that it ever happened.

It's thinking that it ever happened. I was like, I happened i was like i was thinking about i was like oh shit that makes a lot of sense because you don't usually talk about the hard things you just kind of sometimes expect them to know when they really have no clue yeah a lot of times you're like why didn't this person do this thing and then it it may have been like you didn't maybe even tell them like when or where or and your feelings are all hurt. Your mind's racing. You know, you got all this anxiety over it and shit. And then you talk to them and then everything's totally fine because they're like, oh, I didn't I didn't know where I didn't know we're going to do that this Saturday. Did we talk about I mean, sometimes guys fuck that up, right?

Yeah. We don't remember anything. Yeah. We're not listening very good. Yeah. We need to work on that. This is what I look at when it, when it comes to the whole listening thing. Okay.

When it comes to the listening thing, I remember the important things. That can get dark real quick. Yeah. It depends on yeah what you so my mom's birthday is not important whatever it is the mind just deletes things that it doesn't think is useful keep digging my wife she doesn't even really tell me anything anymore really yeah she's just like i'm like oh

where are you going she's like oh doing this i'm like she'll tell me like right then she just doesn't even bother anymore you know nice because she just thinks you won't remember yeah and she's probably right right she's like are you ready to go i'm like where are we going she's like it's easter going over to my going over to my mom's house or whatever that's great i'm like where are we going she's like it's easter going over to my going over to my mom's house or whatever that's great i'm like all right i'm with it cool it's a great thing when you learn that a person doesn't listen to certain things you adapt right so yeah so she's done she's adapted yeah she's had to adapt she knows my principles are shitty about the whole not caring about anything you know what what i've okay so let's let's talk to the men real quick what i've learned that i think is

super useful is use the notes app on the phone whenever you think your lady says something that you you think you probably should remember just open up your notes app and put it in there real quick like if she says that cotton candy is her favorite candy oh god you're gonna forget something like that like i'm gonna forget that i'm gonna forget your favorite color i'm gonna forget your favorite flowers but if it's on my notes that's under your name i can always reference it don't get the name i was gonna say don't don't mix it up with the other pages just just code the note whatever just put in the notes so that like you don't have to keep it up here because we know it's not going to stay up here it's not important like why does it say

that bill likes daisies i'm confused favorite color is yellow aren't you saying bill's kind of fat like hold on wait who is this guy like how do we have the same color and like the same things you can also do this with your seats let the same things? You can also do this with your seats. Let me tell you this. You can also do this with your seats. She says something that you think is fishy or weird and you need to keep that. Put in the notes. Make a note titled fishy.

Got it. Write it down. And then you can write the date. And then you know, hey, on this day, at this time, you said this. What do you mean? Hey, man. These are tactics. Tactics. I'm giving y'all gold tactics over principles yeah the notes app

is pretty powerful that's great josh settledge has taught us a lot about yeah but like you could also like communicate on the notes app like on the dl it's dangerous stuff wait what do you mean means shared notes yeah shared notes yeah like oh this is my grocery list and it's like why is what you want a lot of eggplants when you go to this grocery store maybe it's an organic vegetable yeah yeah or is it eggplant lots of peaches in here and all kinds of anyways i was joking about the receipt thing guys okay okay but i was serious about like the things that she thinks is important put that in your notes because you're gonna forget if you're like me you guys know about the 80 20 principle yeah the perino principle yeah yeah

the 80 20 principle it's like uh you like it's really weird with clothes it's really annoying because you you you you most of your most of your clothes never wear you know oh yeah you only wear like 20 of it and i think for a lot of people it's like way less you know you just get comfortable with certain things and certain style and then you're like why'd i ever buy that well you look at that thing you're like that color never worked on me what was i thinking there's also different seasons though i have thought about that like there's a bunch of clothes i'm just not wearing right now but you're right there are a lot of clothes that i just haven't put on in a long time that are spring and summer ready yeah if if my clothes don't get like rotated out i'll wear the same shit every week like uh

you know like clean shirt goes on top okay i'll wear that shirt and that gets cleaned again so that goes back on top i keep wearing the same shit and then but on top of that i'll wear that shirt and that gets cleaned again so that goes back on top i just keep wearing the same shit and then but on top of that i just wear like black and gray stuff all the time anyway so yeah it doesn't really matter for me that could be another useful principle is to just try to uh eliminate how many choices you have to make every single day you know um so you know do your best to kind of like clean out your closet do your best best to, um, for me, it's helpful just to know, like, I don't eat that many different foods. Like I don't have it. It makes it way less complicated.

I'm not like, should I go eat Chinese food, Mexican food? Should I have pizza? Should I have Italian food? Like they're none of those things are really options at all. So I just, I don't have to think about it every once in a while. If I want to just eat whatever, um, sometimes that comes into play, but,

uh, just having a schedule, you know, being someone that being somebody that, uh, learns to schedule stuff. I think people listening right now, they probably have way more principles than they give themselves credit for.

They probably don't even know like that. You know, journaling is like, it's a principle, it's a habit. It's something that you decided, uh, that's in your best interest.

And, you know, just with whatever principles it is that you have, I'd say, you know, hold them close to you, keep them, but also be open to,

uh, potentially looking at some other ways of doing things a little bit better, figure out ways to optimize and keep tweaking and tweaking over, over time, you'll end up with some things that are like, I just better and better for yourself. Yeah. In easy, like example. So like here at ST, like we have a company calendar. I was horrible at looking at this calendar and i'd say here yeah

you'll get what you know well now we know like like things literally don't happen unless they end up on the calendar right yeah i'll i gotta remind uh remind me to show you how to get emails from the calendar every day so that way you're not surprised like trust me i always check the company oh god yeah you need to um fuck me so one of the habits that turned into i guess a principle Like, trust me, that was huge. Oh, I always check the company email. Oh, God. Yeah. Me too. Fuck me. So, one of the habits that turned into, I guess, a principle is checking our company calendar every day. And, like, without that thing, I kind of don't know what the fuck I'm doing. So, Stephanie would tell me about something. And, like, a dude, I'd be like, what?

Like, what do you mean? Like, I told you about this the other day. Like, ugh. dude. I'd be like, what? Like, what do you mean? Like, I told you about this the other day. Like, so we've kind of implemented the same thing where like, she will put stuff on my calendar that shows up on my phone without me knowing. And then I'll look and be like, oh, dope. There it is. So that's been gigantic for us. See, women need to listen to this show to understand what men think, because you see that right there. Let me tell you what a typical woman response to

that is i don't want to have to put me in your calendar like you're some businessman well it's definitely not that but we should be spontaneous oh well i mean yeah you can but like also if you know that my calendar is kind of full that you definitely can't be spontaneous today at one thirty because I'm podcasting. That's very true. Oh, man. I've had to tell Andy that before, too. I'm like, check the calendar. It's like we're doing this on Thursday.

I'm like, I don't think so. I think I think something else is in the way. Oh, my God. You know that I like that a lot. like that a lot i'm gonna use that next time um but today like schedule that shit the 80 20 thing you were mentioning you know how the tim ferris based off the whole initial thing on the tim ferris experience off the 80 20 rule like when he was like learning jujitsu or you remember his whole challenge thing when say i'm gonna learn jujitsu in a week and then challenge black belt.

You know, he, he would look at what are the biggest things that are important in terms of jujitsu? Like what, what are the, like for him, I think he was learning the guillotine choke and cause the guillotine was like a very high percentage choke that he could learn very quickly and perfecting that. And that would help him be able to tap a majority of people. very quickly and perfecting that. And that would help them be able to tap a majority of people. So with the 80, 20, it's like figure out what are the biggest important things that are going to help you get the most results.

Initially, you might not, that might not mean that you're a master at whatever, but that might mean that you understand a majority of things to get yourself from point A to point B. And then you can fill in the details later on rather than worrying about all the little details right now. I think we may have talked about this on a previous show when you were talking about

going through that website and doing a lot of that self work. Yeah. Uh, self authoring. There we go. Um, you know, I think another, uh, thing from a principal's perspective is to have a principle of awareness of just like, you know, why you're doing certain things, you know, go a couple questions deep on yourself. Even like I even do that with guests that we have on the show. Like I want to I want to learn how much they know about a particular topic.

You go a couple questions deep, sometimes only two questions, but usually like three. Go three questions deep on somebody on a particular topic. And you can see either how passionate they are about it, how much they believe in it and, or how knowledgeable they are. If you say, if someone, you know,

says that I, you know, they think that carbs are bad. You say, why? And you're going to start to probably find that their ideas will dwindle down if they really, truly don't believe it, but you'll find their their ideas will dwindle down if they really truly don't believe it. But you'll find their ideas actually might get a little stronger if they're super knowledgeable about that or passionate about that topic.

Yeah, absolutely. That also help you figure out like, I think when you're looking at, let's say your belief about something, you should do that to yourself. You know, as much as you can like question other people, you should question yourself on why do I think this training style works so well? Okay. Well, uh, poke holes in the stuff that you're doing because if you poke holes in your ideas or you figure out where other people may differ from you, then that can either allow you to understand more about what you're doing, why, what you're doing works and you can strengthen it. Or that'll be the thing that allows you to maybe change your mind and take up something else because you see that okay that is a big hole that i need to fill and this idea will help me fill said hole yeah you can um hey now like

yeah fill that hole there you go but you can uh approach it like from like the uh the youtube comment side you know be like what are people gonna think about whatever this principle whatever it may be yeah um anyway but it was funny i this just popped in my head about um you know like why things are like what you were talking about mark but like my aunt came over and she was talking about how she's trying to cut back carbs sorry i love you uh and she's like yeah so i have a banana with like this and i'm like well you know bananas carbs and she was shocked and she was like you know and like i i kept you know question after question it was like yeah it's like 100 carbs and then i was like well actually wait no because she asked me again and i'm like no there's fiber

in it so like you're it's like not all carbs but it was funny like because i'm just thinking about that like she went just like two questions in and i'm like actually i don't know what the fuck i'm talking about like but i can tell you that yes that's a carb but okay so that that that that is an aspect of it like as you get to get better at something you'll understand the general idea behind it. That'll get you somewhere. Yeah. And then over time, you can get yourself to understand the details about why the things are the way they are.

You know what I mean? So it's tricky. But like, if you're trying to, you know, if you're someone who's not a trainer or whatever, and you're trying to get in better shape, I think it would be good to have a practice of not getting bogged down by all the details. Because I think that's one thing that stops a lot of people from moving forward. They'll try to take in way too much information that'll stop them from trying to take action on whatever goals they're doing because they don't feel that they know enough to start working out or to start, you know, jujitsu or like that's that's a great example. I always find a wild when people are like, I need to get in better shape to start jujitsu.

The only way you're going to be able to start jujitsu is by starting jujitsu. There's so much there that the little things that you're doing here are going to play no part in you improving in that realm. Same thing when it comes to going to the gym. There's nothing that's going to help you into going to the gym other than going to the gym and just starting doing something rather than trying to get all these things set up first before you go ahead and do it. Where do you guys think that comes from? I was just thinking like, you know, you can't get good at brain surgery by just diving right into someone's head, right? Like you had to go to school for it.

So maybe that's where this all started. But yeah, what do you think? Self-doubt. Got it. Okay. You know, there was a brain surgeon at some point that did that. You know, that just was like, I'm going to crack that dude's head open and I'm going to fix it. And, you know, we did have a lot of deaths from shit like that.

But there's, you know, people figured things out over the years. My dad knows somebody that this is really interesting. My dad knows somebody that, this is really interesting, and I don't know if other people do it, but the guy that saved my dad's life, he practiced on eggs. And he would, with little tiny tools and little tiny things, he would practice picking up like an egg yolk, pulling an egg yolk away from an egg white. Because an egg yolk is like, it's like tied in there pretty strongly. Like like you know how if you ever separate them out it's actually kind of hard yeah you can't get the whole thing separated yeah it's really really tough guess i'm having that one yeah so he would be able to he would practice and practice and practice that was a way for him to practice before he would work on someone's body and he was like super skilled and he'd like teach himself to

like really be super calm and he'd like teach himself to like really be super calm and he'd had to pay attention to like you know what he drank beforehand what he ate beforehand his blood sugar couldn't be low his he couldn't have caffeine beforehand like yeah there's kind of a lot of things in you know in order for him to keep a steady hand but yeah it's i mean that's an interesting thing is yeah how do you how do you go do something that you just haven't done before? Or how do you brave enough to do it? I think a lot of it has to do with just a lot of self doubt. Like you don't think that you can do it, but I also think that that's totally fine.

You can't do it because you don't know it because you have never done it before so if you're gonna go and and you're gonna start taking uh taking up some art and you want to like paint well uh you should be ready for sucking at it really bad and that's that's okay like and maybe um something i always took pride in that that helped me a lot in lifting was to get my ass kicked by people. Like I remember when, when Eric's photo came in and just crushed me on the bench, um, it was great for me. I was like, that's awesome. Like I,

I was appreciative of it. I'm like, I'm, I'm glad this mutant just came in here and just walked all over me. I had similar things happen in, in professional wrestling. Like when I, I wrestled John Cena for like an hour

and I was totally dead after the match and he was totally fine. He looked like he could go run around the block a couple of times if he, if he wanted to, like, it's, it's exciting to me to, to like, you know, know that there's, there's some different levels of these things and I could strive for those same things too. We all have the right, we all have the right to, to strive for those things and to aim for those things. But I think a lot of times our self-doubt kind of gets in the way from us ever even starting in the first place. You know, I think what you, cause the other day, I don't remember what episode we were talking about, but we were talking about how, you know, Stu McGill talked about the density of neural drive, right. And taking yourself right to that

place where where you know typically you'd fail but not not but brushing up so it's hard enough where you can make progress but not too easy where you don't um and it's cool to set things up in that way generally it's necessary too but what you just said there as far as like you know getting crushed by spoto and training with cena and he was like he wasn't winded i think that right there takes a very like you need to be someone who can change your mindset about things like that because a lot of people get into those situations and initially when they they see this person who's so much better there's a level of just like defeat right it's just like okay well i'm out i don't need to come back to

the gym right like uh there's no reason i should be doing what i'm doing now because everyone is so much better but there's also the mindset of okay i see what i can achieve there right there's someone actually hakeem posted about this and i thought it was really interesting there's this guy his name is hakeem white he's an awesome guy he helped me with like learning certain things about my business and improving um but he posted this thing about dark energy right you know a lot of people are like don't be envious of other people he posted this thing on facebook where he was like be jealous and be envious because dark energy can somewhat be a lot stronger than you know whatever light energy it it it does make sense i do understand it because like when you see someone who's doing

something so awesome, sometimes people are like, Oh, don't be jealous. But being a little bit jealous of that can actually allow you to try to figure out things that can help you get there. Like when I was getting murked, my black belts as a white belt, I was fucking jealous and envious about their, of their skill. I was absolutely, I wanted that. And because I wanted that, that gave me kind of this drive to just want to train and train and train and get my ass beat over and over and over again to try to develop that kind of skill, right? So I think you have to have that mindset of seeing things that are so much better than yourself, knowing that you're not there and it's going to take you a long ass time to get there. And then going back the next day and doing it again and again and again.

Negativity is extremely powerful in a lot of ways. And think about like sometimes the stuff that we even bring up on the show. A lot of times it kind of comes from like a negative side, you know, maybe we're talking about Biden charging more money for people to eat meat or whatever. Whatever that thing is we might you know but like what else are we gonna are we gonna talk about him doing something real positive like i don't i don't even i don't really follow the news anyway so i'm unaware of like anything he does i just know from like sean baker and from stuff that we talked about around here um but no one told me anything positive you know so, so I don't, I don't have a

pause. And if they did, I probably shrugged it off cause I did, it wasn't alarming to me in any way. It didn't, it didn't make any like bells or whistles go off. But this thing about meat, I'm like, Oh, that now it's something to talk about. And so a lot of times these negative things, they have a strong and powerful charge and they really, uh, it's easy for them to survive and and to move forward about the meat thing so i did some google searches so people be people got trolled by daily mail this it wasn't real like biden never said it yeah yeah yeah i initially i saw baker's post too i saw some stuff from saladino i was like oh shit really but yeah apparently the daily mail put out an article saying that biden was going to do that and it looks like that's biden never said it cool yeah

so it looked like it never happened we're not going to get a meat tax which is nice um but yeah like i agree with i like i agree with the negativity thing you know it's like it's i guess it can that type of idea can quickly go south if you don't have the right mindset with it, right? Like you can then start doing some pretty murky things because you're envious and jealous, right? But you can also use that as a power. Well, I think most people aren't in the positions that they're in because they completely made it up. Like you're not built the way you're built because you made it up in your own head that you were going to be, have this particular physique. There's probably other physiques that you envied when you were young where you're like, I would love to be built like that someday.

Same thing with me with making money. You know, I didn't make this up of owning my own business. Other people have done it before me where I've been like, man, like that, that guy's got, that guy's got a bunch of shit that i would love to be able to do someday but i you know i never really looked at it as like i hope that guy falls apart you know i never looked at it that way i was always more like looking looking at these kind of things like i'm pretty sure i can figure a lot of that out maybe not all of it it. Maybe not all at the same time. Maybe not the same level. But I think I could figure a bunch of it out and end up being pretty good and end up being pretty happy about it because the journey is the most exciting part anyway. So I kind of

always felt that way. Yeah, I think one way that I look at it, and I never really thought of it as an envious way, but we had Jimmy from Super Coffee on and like he's like literally like working as he's doing the podcast um i always look at it as like damn that guy makes me feel lazy like and i i mean i don't love that but i kind of like i do love that like uh someone like um uh todd abrams right that's his name? Yeah. Icon male. He has a hell of kids. And he's fucking crushing business. And it's so great.

And he talks about all the books he's read and shit. Yeah. And then on top of... How do you have time for all this shit? Yeah. And then he goes and trains hard with Mark and he takes his shirt off and it's like, oh, shit. Jacked.

Fuck. Dude, what the... Like, what am I doing over here? Yeah. yeah so like that that stuff really motivates me but it does kind of come from like damn dude i do want that and i don't have that and so it's like how the fucker made me feel lazy so then like i kind of want to get off my ass and go do something and this i think is where it comes to uh it all comes down to to giving everybody their individual responsibility because we talk like there's this whole narrative about social media it's like it there are detrimental effects of social media especially on young people in terms of like maybe the way

that they look at themselves or what they don't have like when you see really like wealthy individuals doing their thing standing by their ferrari it can make people feel very self like they don't have as much self-worth or they don't feel as, I guess they don't feel as confident in themselves because there are just certain things that they don't have. Right. And I understand that. I understand that. But I think on a deeper level for the individual, you should more so look at like, okay, do you, do you really value the wealth that that person have? Is that like, is that something that like you really value? And if you value what they're doing, right, if you truly do, then instead of, you know, letting that get you down, figure out ways to get there. But I think a lot of people also see things on social media that are cool, but they don't really value it.

And then they attribute a lot of importance to something they don't value. Do you get what I'm saying here? A hundred percent. Yeah. yeah and you want to you want to be those things for what they can make of you not necessarily just be those things randomly like yeah you don't want to like hand it to you like if uh cassio gave you a black belt and was like you're one of the best guys in the school so we're going to give you you'd be like oh man kind of like kind of ruined it man like i thought i needed to do i thought you had this other criteria it's like i changed my mind you're like wait no man like like really like i know i wanted to earn it the way that you

said you know originally i had to earn it and same thing is true with money like yeah it would be cool if someone handed you some money but uh figuring out a way to earn it yourself is even more amazing. Like that journey of figuring that out and then just understanding that you don't have to really ever have any concern about money ever again because you know that you have a bunch of different ways you can figure out how to make it. Like that's, it feels like a superpower in some weird way. And so I think, you know, when people are, you know, when people are kind of going through their, their day to day, and they're thinking

about wanting to be this person, that person, or wanting to strive to be more like that person, I think they should ask themselves why, you know, what's the reason why, like, what do you, what do you believe that will do for you? And any answer will do. But you should have an answer. You should have some sort of answer on that. And then you might actually come to the conclusion that it what you felt there was just an emotion. And you don't really actually value that because when you ask yourself why and you can't write down any legitimate reason why you actually want that, like it's not going to like then you'll realize. So I was feeling this way for nothing.

Or you'll figure out why you really do want it and that'll drive you even more i remember talking to my son about his grades and he had like d's and f's and i said you know i don't i think that you're smarter than like a d and an f and and uh i said what grade do you think you can get and he was and i said all right actually i said what grade if you could pick any grade would you think you can get? And he was, and I said, all right, actually I said, what grade, if you could pick any grade, would you like the teacher to give to you? And he was like an A. I said,

okay, well, what if the A meant that even though they handed it to you, what if the A meant that you couldn't hang out with your friends as much as you'd like, you couldn't play the video games that you like. I was like, would you still want an A?

And he's like, no. I was like, okay, well, what would you want? He's like, would you still want to A? And he's like, no. I was like, well, okay, well, what would you want? He's like, probably like a B or a C.

Like, get your shit together and get a B or a C and still play your video games, still hang out with your friends. You know, so I think that's what we're talking about right here. Like, if you're aiming to be the rock, well,

there might be so many things that are compromised in that, in that path. Like, do you know how many things the rock had to like, you know, he had to go through a lot of bullshit to be who he is and still he still has to go through. It must be impossible to be that guy. Meanwhile, everybody wants to be that guy, but they don't know what all that entails. I remember Mike Tyson talking about people think they want to be me. He's like, this is fucked.

I wake up at 3.30 every and i run for like two hours it's like you don't you don't want anything to do with this life that i have and then plus he was like i mean he was uh raised under really weird circumstances he was abused um i mean it just sound like it sounds like his life was very difficult uh even with his own fighting himself all the time. I mean, it sounds like that was the hardest opponent he's ever had to deal with, is his own kind of internal battle. So I think ask yourself who you want to be like and what you want to be like, but also why. And then I also think that you have examples probably a lot closer to you than you think. Just like I did in my household, I always thought it was about like Bo

Jackson and people like that. It was my, you know, my dad was a great mole model. I think your mother seemed like, I still haven't been able to match my mom's work ethic. It pisses me off. You're never going to catch up to her.

Dang, man. Never going to catch up to me. Dude, you buy her something nice for her birthday or what? Yeah. All right, good.

Yeah. She, she loves using, you know what the Vitamix is? Oh shit. Yeah. Yeah. Those are great. Yeah. She, she, she, you know what the Vitamix is? Oh shit. Yeah. Yeah. Those are great.

Yeah. She, she, she's been using, she's been using the same Vitamix since I was like 15. She must've been pumped. Yeah. She liked it. That's great. She liked it. Oh yeah.

So yeah. All right, Andrew. Hey, you want to get us out of here? I can. Yeah, I can do that. Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. Everyone on the live chat. You guys are fucking awesome. out of here i can yeah i can do that thank you everybody for checking out today's episode everyone on the live chat you guys are fucking awesome appreciate you guys being here especially the

25 of you that hit like while we were live so there should have been more but we'll we'll accept what we can get probably just coach house oh yeah him and his well maybe not coach house admit to your sin man admit to what you i know you did it yeah i think we have like one thumbs down maybe you did it that was mrs coach house you know what i'm talking about man oh you did it oh yeah oh my god i can't see my uh drink lmnt.com slash power project uh i'm gonna challenge you to get four boxes of the watermelon salt because it's that damn good uh links down in the uh youtube description as well as the podcast show notes. Don't sleep on the chocolate. Okay, yeah.

Don't sleep on it. I put the chocolate in my protein shakes a lot, and I also throw it in my coffee. It's amazing. It is really good. Still, I will have it as a little treat after dinner sometimes. Now, I'm definitely going to have a protein shake. I'm definitely going to make a protein shake when I get home, too. Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, yeah. Links down for that in the YouTube description and podcast show notes. Please make sure you find the podcast at Mark Bell's power, power project on Instagram, uh, at MB power project on Tik TOK and Twitter. Uh,

my Instagram and Twitter is at, I am Andrew Z. And, uh, again, along with all that, all the, uh,

uh, links for everything we're about to say right now and just said is all down in the, uh, YouTube description and podcast show notes. And again, along with all that, all the links for everything we're about to say right now, and just said is all down in the YouTube description and podcast show notes. And SEMA, where are you at? At Nsema Nyang on Instagram, YouTube, Clubhouse,

TikTok, Nsema Nyang on Twitter. Don't forget, rate and view us on Apple. Yes. We rolling. And the newsletter. Sorry,

I keep forgetting. We just, just sent out a fresh new issue of the newsletter. Gave you a cool formula on how to find your macros and how to find your daily intake of calories. And hopefully you guys can hang out and party with us as we shred down to the 4th of July. You guys have like 60-something days at this point. But, yeah, there's some information for Mark in there regarding how you guys can join in on that,

that experience. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch you guys later.