Mark Bell's Power Project - How To Be A Complete Person and Handle ANYTHING || MBSS Ep. 51

Episode Date: October 1, 2023

In episode 51 of Mark Bell's Saturday School, Mark Bell explains how to have a balanced mind, how to be a well rounded person and how to accomplish more and handle anything that comes your way.    New Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://drinkag1.com/powerproject Receive a year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 & 5 Travel Packs!   ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   ➢ https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off Mind Bullet!   ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box   ➢ Better Fed Beef: https://betterfedbeef.com/pages/powerproject   ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!   ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM   ➢ https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject to save 15% off Vivo Barefoot shoes!   ➢ https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori!   ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel!   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

Yo, yo, recorded live Sunday, October 24th, Saturday School with Mark Smellybell. Today we're going to talk about balance and we're going to talk about one of my favorite things is how to gain some equanimity. mind in the fray of all the distractions of life, stresses, anxiety, angst, things that you might believe to be negative and have a negative impact on you. How can you curtail yourself to balance between the negative stresses of having bills, getting yourself to be able to tread water, keep your head above water. But not only that, get yourself out of the goddamn water, learn how to get yourself dry, learn how to not only take care of yourself, but those around you and gain, I don't know, some of the wealth and some of the health that you feel that you would love to have in your life. Because you think it will bring you some riches.

And I can kind of tell you firsthand that it can. And it will. Financial freedom, fitness freedom, nutrition and health freedom are really amazing. When I no longer pay the price to have a slice of pizza here and there, it's a really wonderful thing. when, you know, something blows out in my car and I got an $800 car bill or I have an air conditioning bill. You guys ever get nabbed with one of those? It's like 2,500 bucks or something or 5,000 bucks to fix your AC and it's, you know, the summer just started. You're like, what the hell? How am I going to figure this out? So this is a lot of what we're going to talk about today on top of not just that, but how in the process to become a savage

as you're trying to navigate and traverse all of these things. I like to kind of look at this stuff as traversing the earth. You think about walking through or walking on the earth's surface. There are different shoes for different tasks. And look at how into shoes we've gotten on the Power Project. We've gotten way deep into them to the point where we're wearing Vivo barefoot shoes. We're wearing Shama sandals. We're wearing Paloovas, we're wearing a wide array of different shoes and different things. But it's for, there's not one shoe for all of it really, necessarily, right? There's going to be a certain shoe that

you're going to wear if you work in a factory. I have friends that are firefighters. They have to wear steel-toed boots. It's a requirement. I'm sure that their boots are designed and made so they're not flammable for very specific reasons. Maybe they're even water-resistant as well, right? When we're trying to traverse anything in life, we need specific tools. And rather than just buying a pair of boots or buying a pair of shoes for it,

we have to earn a skill set to be able to traverse ourselves, to be able to get ourselves across the way. You can think about this. Many, many, many years ago. Hundreds of years ago. And thousands of years ago. When people were traveling across a country. And trying to migrate into other areas. They would occasionally stumble upon. A body of water. Those that had the skill set. To swim.

And to carry their children and swim and to maybe even kind of pull their stagecoach across the water could have an opportunity to get across the water and get across the way in a much more timely fashion without it having such a negative impact, without losing anybody, without anybody dying, without losing the possessions that they may have had to get across the river or pond. The other option would be to go into hostile territory and to try traversing unknown territory

where there might be opposition, there might be enemies, there might be somebody trying to kill you. Whenever you run into somebody else and you're on their property, I would imagine that that probably wasn't always met with open arms. So you kind of see if you have a skill set, if you somehow learned you were, So you kind of see if you have a skill set, if you somehow learned you were, you know, you learned how to swim at a younger age or somebody taught you and then you pass it. If you pass it on to your children, you all have a less stressful time getting across that body of water and you don't have to walk 100 miles or 50 miles to try to get around that body of water. I think one of the things we need to look at, you know, I really like that look, that lens at traversing the earth, because when we also talk about some of these barefoot shoes that we talk about on the show, they're not always appropriate for every ground that we walk on.

Sometimes you might need another shoe with a little bit more stack height underneath it so that you can get yourself, can get yourself over some rocks, can get yourself through some shrubbery or whatever it is that you're trying to walk your way through, balance your way through. So these skill sets and these things have to be earned. And they're things that could take time to acquire. It's not always going to be quick. It's not always going to be easy.

But when we think about the biggest thing that faces us today with balance is I think that we think other people have it figured out and they don't. No one really has it figured out, nor has anyone ever actually figured anything out either. Had a whole student body, UC Davis kids walking past me. I'm at the Arboretum in Davis, California here. Beautiful. But there's kids enrolling and registering and you had a whole new class of kids coming through, I believe. So that might've been some of that background noise right there. But as I'm thinking about how do you balance? Well, who is balanced? You know, and what's the model that we're looking at? You know, if you were to look to your left or look to your right or to look into your office

or look into not just your office, but your place of work, your place of employment. If you were to look into your own home, if you were to think about your own uncle, your sister, your brother, your favorite teacher, those are probably the people that have the type of balance that you're looking for. Not the people that you see on Instagram, not the rich and the famous. Many times those people don't have good equanimity. They don't have good balance. They don't have a equanimity. They don't have good balance. They don't have a good work-life balance. And I'll explain why in a moment.

For some, it just feels good to push on that pedal and to stand on that throttle or to pull that throttle as much as they can. They go as fast as they can, as hard as they can, and to see where they end up. So that maybe later in life, they don't have to work as hard. That was kind of a little bit of my philosophy. And I'll dive into that later, I promise. But as I think about one of the biggest problems that faces us is that we,

it's an illusion. Balance is an illusion. And balance is a perspective thing as well. There was a famous guy that walked across a plank between two buildings. He walked across this plank at maybe like 100 or 200 feet in the air. And everybody was completely amazed. And the story goes is that he brought this plank down, down this elevator, or a piece of the plank anyway, and he showed everybody.

He said, this is the plank I walked across. And then he had them walk across it while it was on the ground. And he said, the only difference is, I did it from up there. And he pointed to the sky, pointed to the top of the building. And he said, the only difference is, I did it from up there. And he pointed to the sky, pointed to the top of the building. And you just did it right here.

But you had a lot of balance because this is a normal chunk of wood with some good width. It's three feet wide. You don't need something to be any wider than that to be able to balance. So his balance was kind of an illusion. It just looked harder to everybody else. So sometimes it just looks harder to be rich. Sometimes it looks harder to be this or be that,

but is it harder or is it easier? I don't know. That's kind of a tough question and probably another podcast at another time. Is it, I mean, think about it. Is it harder to be wealthy or is it hard to be broke? When you're wealthy, maybe you're not as hungry anymore. And when you're broke, you're extremely hungry all the time. Maybe you're too hungry. But you also are trying to keep your head afloat while you're also trying to keep your head afloat while you're also trying to learn.

You're trying to keep your head afloat while you're also trying to learn how to do the breaststroke, the backstroke, freestyle swim. You're learning how to, trying to learn how to dive, go off the high dive. Like you're trying to do, you're trying to do so many different things at one time. And you're also just trying to do the basics of just treading water. And that makes it really hard when you're broke, but when you're wealthy, because that hunger might be knocked out of you, some of the creativity might be let out. And there's just a lot of, when you have a lot of options, you'd be surprised you run into a lot of other things.

We can dive into that at some other time. But as I start to think about this more, I think about, you know, I want you to think about your favorite influencer or your favorite person. And I want you to really ask yourself the question, do you really think they have balance? Think about that selfie they just took. Are they really that happy? You see me taking selfies after I run and I'm ripped and sweaty or whatever. Those are fun to take and it's cool to see progress.

All right, cool. Let's show people what I got going on and everything, but also that's taken by myself. You know, I'd rather be with people. I'd rather be enjoying other things rather than just doing that. And fortunately for me, I do have balance. So I do enjoy other things, but as your favorite person that you're looking at, you're looking up to, are they doing that? My point here is that we don't really know. And it's an illusion. And our favorite people of all

time, whether it's an influencer on social media, or whether it's just someone that's famous, a celebrity. Do we know, was MJ, Michael Jordan, was he a good husband? Was he a good dad? Is he a good dad? I don't know. I'm not saying that I have any knowledge on whether he is or isn't. And I'm not saying that someone couldn't do similar things to what he did and still be a good parent. I'd imagine there's probably a lot of great examples when you go through the NBA and you go through the NFL. But it's also probably tough. It's probably tough to be that guy, that dude, to be that good, to be Tom Brady and not end up with a divorce. It's got to be, it's got to be really tough. We remember

Kobe's story. We remember some of Magic's story. And you think about these celebrities over the years, it seems like there's a lot of, a lot of red tape that goes along with them trying to have balance when they have loaded the deck into one field so hard whether it be a comedian an actor a football player they loaded the deck so hard into one thing that maybe it did get teeter-tottered the wrong way maybe that that seesaw, maybe it is, you know, maybe it is tilted to one side really, really hard. And maybe there isn't much balance. And I would say that that's okay at times in your life. The times to do that in, I'll just speak for myself, the time for me to do that was when I was young. For other people, it might come at other times. My brother and many other people, they don't always have the same story. My brother, unfortunately, alcohol and

drugs got a hold of him after it took the life of my first brother, Mike Bell. And it did the same thing to my brother, Chris. And his life got frozen and got put on pause for a long time, and now he's just getting himself to tread water again, and now he's seeing all these cool opportunities that he has. He's seeing what a wonderful, amazing, brilliant, smart person he is, and now he's like, how do I fucking get some of this back? I used to be able to swim. I used to be able to run. Not literally, you know what I'm talking about. You know what I mean? He used to have, he used to have that it factor because he had more confidence and he's getting it back as we speak. And it's really awesome to see. and he's well on his way with another movie, which is going to be absolutely incredible,

and a couple of business endeavors that I'm sure he's going to really do well with, and the coolest part is, is that whether it works out amazingly financially or it doesn't, the cool thing is, is that it's fulfilling him, and it's making him happy, and that's making him happy. And that's a really important piece of this puzzle too. But if we can go back to these celebrity people, these people that we hold in high regard, you hear it time and time again about which person, you know, did this, but they were also lacking here, right? No one's perfect. Let's take Marcus Aurelius. My boy Andrew Z is a huge fan. I'm a huge fan as well. I love stoicism. I love philosophy and an emperor that was known as the philosopher. Like how dope is that?

like how dope is that unfortunately though his son was his son Commodus I know the movie Gladiator is is fictional fictionalized and it's sensationalized and it's not all true but Marcus Aurelius's son he I'm sure he had many kids I believe he had a bunch as many people did back then. But because he was the fucking emperor, and he's spinning a lot of plates, I don't know if he got around to being with his son as much as he maybe needed to. And his son was, I think he was considered the mad emperor. That's how fucking, he was, I think it was considered like the mad emperor. That's how fucking nuts he was. Now, he was also really young, too.

So there's more tied into that than just that. But you get the idea of how it can be tough to be balanced as the stakes raise higher and higher and higher. Power Project Family, we talk about beef and meat all the time on the podcast. That's why we've partnered with Certified Piedmontese Beef. But did you know this? That 85% of all grass-fed, grass-finished beef in the United States is imported from other countries? 85%. Damn. But Certified Piedmontese is made in the U.S. of A.

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Again, cpbeef.com. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Fuck yeah! I was listening to Jordan Syatt. Jordan Syatt. If you don't follow Jordan Syatt on Instagram, please do. Incredible guy. Married.

He's got a baby. And he used to be kind of like a trainer. He's in fitness. But you'll check his page and you'll see that he's not a nutcase about fitness. He is pretty down the middle. And he likes being healthy. And he likes being strong. He did some powerlifting years ago and built up a tremendous amount of strength.

And now he's doing jiu-jitsu. He's getting some proficiency at that. But he doesn't want to just do jiu jujitsu. He's getting some proficiency at that. But he doesn't want to just do jujitsu. He doesn't just want to deadlift. He doesn't just want to count his macros. He doesn't want to do any of that. He wants to have a balanced life that has good experiences. He wants to have fun.

So part of having fun is being able to fight. Part of having fun, not literally fight. In his case, yes, literally, he can have a match against somebody and he can fight somebody in jiu-jitsu, right? But it's not so much in a literal sense that I'm talking about here. It's more in the sense of

you want to be able to battle yourself a bit for your own mental health. Because one of the best ways to get to mental health is through your physical health. And we talk a lot about mental health in this country, but we keep mixing and conflating mental health with mental illness. And mental health, when we talk about health, we're talking about being healthy we're like we're talking about like the absence of disease and and feeling not just the absence of disease but also in my opinion we want health and healthy to mean that you can go and run a mile and you don't get blown up from it you could uh uh you can lift some weights and and not have it kill you you can do some walking

lunges holding some dumbbells you can do um you could squat a barbell with a little bit of weight on each side we don't even need to have like crazy you know we don't need to have crazy goals with any of this you can lay down on the bench press and put a little weight on the bar. You know? You learn a skill set of how to do these things because, again, learning how to do these things is going to help you traverse other places in your life. You're putting on the right shoes for the right job. You're putting on the right shoe at the right time for the right situation by getting stronger because getting stronger can help with what it can help with your strength to

weight ratio which will help you out a ton as you get older because if you get older when that strength to weight ratio is fucked, your only way to combat that is to start to try to figure out how to lose weight. And how are you going to lose weight when your only option is to do it through food? That is a way to do it. That's the most powerful way to do it. But it's kind of, it sucks if it's your only way to do it

and you developed an addiction to food because it's going to be hard to shut that food because it's going to be hard to shut that down it's going to be hard to slow that down it's going to be hard to pull back against that right so you want to learn these skill sets and arm yourself with skill sets so that as these things come at you in life, they are less and less of a problem. You know, your doctor says, hey man, your cholesterol is a little high. You know, do you like to ride your bike?

Do you like to, you know, do you like to go for a run here and there? Blood pressure is a little high. You know, you probably could lose a little bit of weight. It would be great. And you don't want your only option to be a drug. You don't want your only option to be Ozampic.

You want to be able to have access to other options, right? So when your doctor gives you this news, instead of you being devastated by it, you're able to say, you know what? Okay, this is going to be simple. I'm just going to shift some gears. I'm going to go back to riding my bike. I like riding my bike.

I shouldn't have stopped doing it, but, you know, I'm going to go back to doing that. These skill sets that you learned previously, and maybe they did slip from your fingers at one point because maybe you did get a little unbalanced. Maybe work needed more attention than you thought. Maybe this and that needed more attention than you thought, right? So,

one thing I think is really important, and it's been important for me, in my ability to keep my head above water, has been looking into the future. What does three years from now look like? What does five years from now look like? How much longer do I want a podcast for? How much longer do I want to own Super Training Gym?

How much longer do I want to own Slingshot? What's the exit strategy out of there? Is there one? Is there any reason to have one? You know, it's a great company. Things work out great with it. And there's really no reason to. So, okay, we'll keep forging forward.

But still, just because it's running excellently and things are going really well, it doesn't mean we still don't have a plan. You see, I think one of the biggest things that plagues us, especially here in America, is that we think it's the things that happen to us that are devastating. Or the things that happen to us are tragic. Or even that they even happened to us in the first place. Somebody dies

and we think about how bad it's impacted us. Well, of course that fucking sucks that that person is no longer there, but that almost sounds kind of selfish, doesn't it? That it, that it impacted you. What about how much it's impacted everybody? You know, if anything's sad, it would probably be that. I've had my mother die. I had my brother die. I've had a lot of close people, a lot of friends. Shout out to Paul Childress's family, my friend Paul. He just, he just passed away recently, probably in his fifties, former powerlifter. Great lifter, great coach, great guy, big smile, huge heart. These things happen all the time, but you know what? You've got to prepare yourself.

People are going to die. The people around you, they're all going to die. They may not all die before you, but it is possible that they will all die before you. Like that's an actual possibility. The family dog that you're looking at right now, while you're taking a shit and the dogs are staring at you because, I don't know, they just want to watch you taking a dump for some reason. Little kids do that too, by the way. Get ready for that. That'll be awesome.

for that. That'll be awesome. But anything that's alive will at some point be dead. And we're surprised and shocked every time it happens. And it's understandable because it's, it's, I understand it. It's devastating. It's really, really hurtful. I can't imagine what my parents went through with losing my brother, Mike have children of my own you know I get it so you know these things they have to be difficult but it's our reaction that makes these things even more devastating how long are you going to hold on to that for how long are you going to let that paralyze you how long are you going to let that keep you down that for? How long are you going to let that paralyze you? How long are you going to let that keep you down? How long are you going to not show up to work? How long are you not going to be there for other people? How long are you going to be pissed off about it? How long are you going to

be sad about it? How long are you going to feel sorry for yourself about it? How long are you going to not be there for your family? How long? What's a reasonable time? Hey, if you said anything more than a fucking week, then, you know, I mean, fuck, a month? I don't know. Let's give you a month. I'm not going to give you 12 years. I'm not going to give you six years, four years, three years, two years, one year from getting divorced or from having some tragedy happen. It doesn't work that way. There was an NFL player today that had a family member die and he was on the field.

You know, he's still playing on the field. He's got a job to do. That's the way a lot of this shit goes sometimes. I think it's important for us to prepare and prep ourselves. And you need to, you need to personally start to prepare. What's the job that you have right now? Is that your forever job? What's the home that you live in? Is that your forever home? What's the job you got right now? What does it pay?

Is that an amount that you want to make? No? You'd like to make more? You want to have a different job? Let's start to plan. You got a plan? What's your plan? Are you reading books to help you head in a different direction? Do you have a coach? Some people do that nowadays. They have like a life coach. I don't care what you do, but there needs to be some sort of plan.

Are you listening to Andy Frisella? Are you going to seminars? Are you listening to Gary Vee? Back to my boy Jordan's side. I don't know if I ever even finished that. I was saying how balanced he is. Well, I wanted to finish off by saying that he talked about how hard Gary Vaynerchuk works.

And he said he was completely blown away by the work ethic. And what a madman this guy is. He's never seen anybody work like that before. And then he also said, followed it up by saying, I knew I didn't want that for my life. He said that on Nick Bear's podcast. You can check it out on Nick's podcast,

which is on iTunes and available everywhere else. I thought that was really powerful. I don't want that same kind of life. I don't want to be known as this competitive fucking crazy person, you know? And I'm not saying that Gary Vee is that. I'm just saying that a lot of times, And I'm not saying that Gary Vee is that. I'm just saying that a lot of times, a lot of times the Michael Jordans, the Tom Brady's, and so on, they are that way.

And what an amazing thing, you know, that they have that trait to be the best, and they can make those sacrifices. And I don't know, it's hard to know these celebrities and what they do and don't do but like i'd rather be like patrick mahomes that mother seems like he's got some that mother sucker i meant bleep that andrew he seems like he's got um some really good balance in his life he's had the same trainer since he was in eighth grade. And he's been with the same girl since like eighth grade. Bravo to him.

Like that's dope. That's cool. LeBron James doesn't seem to have a lot of bullshit around him. A lot of controversy swirling him. No matter how much the media wants to swirl controversy around him. He seems to be pretty awesome and he seems that even though he's the best and best of the best or one of the best of the best he seems to he seems to still produce on the basketball court like a mofo i hate to sound like a broken record but your sleep quality most likely sucks. It's one of the biggest things that we talked about on the podcast. So many

guests have come on and talked about how sleep can help you stick to your diet, stick to your workout plan, lose body fat, gain muscle, all the good things that you're trying to do. But it's hard to do because you might be snoring. And if you're snoring, that's why we've partnered with hostage tape, which is mouth tape that you can put over your nose, your mouth, when you're asleep to help you stop snoring and breathe through your nose. But if you have been breathing through your nose this whole time while you've been sleeping, it's going to be a little bit difficult to get air through there. That's also why hostage tape has nose strips to help open up your nasal airways and make it easier to breathe through your nose when you're asleep. Now your partner won't be having a fuck with you when you're asleep because you'll be actually breathing through your nose.

Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, that's over at hostage tape.com slash power project, where you guys will receive an entire year supply of nasal strips and mouth tape all for less than a dollar a night. Again, that's at hostage tape.com slash power project links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. So probably balance this stuff out? Well, remember I was saying, you know, look in your office and look here and look there. Look at the place that you work at.

Look inside your own household when you were a kid. And I bet you that you'll find people that are more balanced there than you'll ever find outside of that circle. Because you can be more assured that they had at least some of that balance that you're looking for. And you can plan your life and you can make a rough draft of your life based off of that. Copy and paste that shit. You like the way your dad lived his life? Awesome. Write some of those traits down.

What did he have? Did your dad leave you when you were young? And there's traits that you didn't like about him, but there's a couple things you do like about him. Write that down too. Stepdad came in. He was cool or he wasn't cool. What did that look like?

You like the religion that was brought into the house? And it seemed like it worked pretty good for everybody? Go to church. You know, like, it's pretty simple. I think it's pretty simple. I think it's pretty simple. You like the way that your dad treated your mother? Or no? You know, is it the opposite?

You're like, whoa, he yelled a lot. You know, something that's not talked about, I haven't really even heard it touched upon at all in podcasts and stuff, but people don't really talk much about anger. And that's how I stumbled upon equanimity, was I was seeing people getting wrecked by anger, sadness, and depression. You hear this, the new age of people are talking a lot about depression and anxiety and crying and being sad and stuff like that. We really don't hear a ton about people being angry and mad. I think that's pretty interesting because I know a lot of people that fly off the handle.

Not like crazy. Not completely crazy. I know people that get real pissy about a misserved drink at a restaurant, about a hot coffee instead of cold one, about somebody not calling when they were supposed to. I see people getting heated over text messages, over tweets. Like anger is not talked about enough. And one of the reasons why I started to study some of this stuff is I saw people around me falling apart.

And I was like, I don't like the way that that looks. Not literally like the people in my circle. Because I don't have a very big circle. I have a small, very small circle. My circle isn't even a circle. It's like me and my wife and that's it. That's another podcast from the other day probably. But that is something that helps me keep balance is my circle's small. So I don't have to balance much out. I got my boy Andrew and I got Nsema. I got my BFF, my big fat friend, Jesse Burdick.

I got my bro, my dad. That's it. Game over. Boom. I don't have, there's nothing else there. There's a lot of people that are like associates. There's a lot of people, but pretty much but pretty much um even Andrew and Encima are people that like I'm in business with and it's a little different than just being friends um we don't really all hang out together although I'm sure we would we we have done that before and we like that we enjoy that it's not like we don't like it it's just uh i think keeping your circle small i think both those guys realize that too is kind of where it's at and being a little bit of a homebody i mean my wife and i travel around a bunch and she's got she's more social than me so she has a bigger network of friends, but that works great for her. And she's able to juggle that. With some of what I have going on and my different goals, it works out perfectly for me to be this way.

And that's to not feel like I have so many people in a circle. This helps me keep things balanced a lot better. And so I saw a lot of people around me kind of just losing their mind and losing the balance of their mind. And I started to look into equanimity. And equanimity is just that. It's the balance of the mind. It's the balance of the mind in otherwise stressful situations that other people would view or interpret as being negative.

Remember, a negative, I've talked about this before, a negative emotion can only come from one place. A negative interpretation. So when you put something through the filter, you have to label it. You have to give it a label on what you want it to be. You put a stamp on it. It says negative, positive, or indifferent on it. And then it goes through but you

don't even really have to do that necessarily you could pause on it you could wait but you can determine that the news to make you sad to make you mad to make you happy what about the news of like weighing yourself when you're on a diet and you weigh yourself every day or once a week and you check your weight and then you check your weight, you check your weight, check your weight

and you're not losing weight. Well, it's kind of irrational to be disappointed that you're not losing weight when you're not doing the right work for it. I mean, there's a certain work requirement. There's a certain amount of work that needs to be done for you to lose the weight. Certain amount of work that needs to be done for you to gain the weight if you want to gain the weight. Or even if you don't want to gain the weight, you can recognize like that you're doing the wrong kind of work. You're heading in the wrong direction. I have always thought it was disgusting to be a hothead.

To me, it's extremely unattractive from a male or a female. I see that from someone i'm like oh gross i do not like anger i'm not talking about aggression and i'm not talking about in the right spot you know um in a sport like powerlifting you you can move a weight slow, but you can still be aggressive with it. Like just because you can also get too aggressive with a weight and then the weight moves you around

rather than you moving the weight around because you didn't have the right balance. Everything's about balance. Everything is about balance there's a yin and a yang there's a cheech and a chong all this right

every little thing that we try to do has to have balance even our taste buds need a certain balance you start to salt a stew or a chili. And what's the worst thing you can do? The worst thing you do is over salt it. There's no, no, there's like no turning back. You try to like pour more like broth or water in there and it

doesn't work. Just makes it gross. There's no turning back sometimes if something moves you off of a balanced mind. There's no turning back sometimes if something moves you off of being at baseline. You know? People ask me how I'm doing

and I usually right away say, I'm great. Like I get fired up and I'm like, I'm doing great. How are you doing? Because I partially want to trick myself into believing that I maybe feel, uh, better than what I actually feel. And what I actually feel is indifferent. I actually just feel like I'm, I'm at baseline. So when somebody says, Hey, how are you doing? That's my, that's my, in my head, I know that I'm at baseline, but I tell people that I'm great because it's more But I tell people that I'm great because it's more conversational. And as I said this one time at the airport, I said, I'm frigging great.

The lady at the checkout at this like newsstand type thing where I was getting some snacks for the plane. She was like, I haven't heard that response before. And my daughter was laughing because she's like, you didn't really say anything that crazy or unique. I said, yeah, she's probably not, you know, she probably used to run into people that are stressed the hell out all the time. And, uh, I'm in the airport just like them. I'm going somewhere just like them. I got a job to do just like them. I got kids just like they do. I got a job to do just like them I got kids just like they do I got obligations but I've learned and trained myself to be cooler than the other side of the pillow as they say now look everyone has different temperance everyone has different genetics people grow up differently, so it's not as easy. But you know what your weaknesses are, and you know that you can work on them. And if one of your weaknesses is that you are

very emotional, how do you start to work on that? Well, start to train yourself. how do you start to work on that? Well, start to train yourself. One way to train yourself is to go on social media and use that as a 15-minute training session. Say, you know, set your alarm on your phone for 15 minutes from now and literally only spend 15 minutes on there and see if you can not get moved off of baseline.

Like, utilize it as a training tool. As soon as you check something out, and it quote-unquote makes you go one way or the other, work on your equanimity and the balance of your mind. Even if something makes you happy, think about it for a moment and pause. And I'm not saying to be unhappy from it. I'm not saying to shut down that emotion or stuff it down.

I'm saying, think about it. What do you think is causing that? Negative interpretation, negative emotions, right? Negative emotions come from a negative interpretation. A positive emotion comes from positive interpretations. Now, one of the reasons why we don't have to overthink the positive is because it doesn't have negative consequences to it usually when we're talking about the balance of the mind. So you could throw in a lot of positive because the negative, just to show you how balanced this world is, the negative takes care of itself. It's there already because even what I'm saying right now has a negative tone to

it. So I'm getting you to believe that the default of your mind is negative. It doesn't necessarily, it's not necessarily true. But the default of the mind in our modern society seems to be that it wants us to relax. It wants us to not do the difficult thing. It wants to protect you a bit. And those aren't negatives. Those are all actually positives. It's actually really smart to be scared that you can't, uh, um, it makes sense to be scared if you're going to cliff dive, right? Like that's like, if you're not scared, I mean, maybe you're super experienced and you don't have any problem thinking about it, but sometimes if you're not scared for certain things, it just probably means that you're kind of dumb. I mean, you should be scared. It's a nice protective mechanism that we have. So I think really working on the mind and training it.

And next time someone gives you news, next time someone in your group or your circle starts saying negative stuff about somebody, are you going to jump on top of that and throw on more negative stuff? Or are you going to think about it a little bit more? I wonder what's triggering that. I wonder where that's coming from. Well, how does some of this have anything to do with balancing out the rest of your mind? Well, or balancing, you know, how does some of this have anything to do with balancing out the rest of your mind? Well, or balancing out the rest of your life? Well, to me, it has everything to do with it. Because once I started to go through my closet, go through the closet of my mind, and start to clear out the thoughts that I thought were on the right path,

and I started to redirect them to the right thing. And started to bring about more peace, equanimity, and joy. It made everything else a joke. Made everything else so much easier to handle. If you have knee pain or lower back pain, the initial thought is that it's probably coming from the knee or the lower back. But have you ever thought that it could actually be coming from your feet? Most people wear shoes like this. They are narrow. They are not flat. They are inflexible. So it's almost like your feet are stuck in casts all day long. And if you imagine that your hand was stuck in

a cast all day, well, your fingers are going to become weak, but then your elbows might start feeling a little bit wonky because your fingers don't move and then it might travel up your shoulder. That's the same thing that happens with your feet when you put them in normal, inflexible shoes. That's why you want to throw those out and start using some Vivo barefoot shoes. They have shoes for hiking on their website, working out in the gym. They have casual shoes like these Novuses right here. But the difference with Vivo is that they have a wide toe box so that your feet, like my wide-ass feet, can spread and move within the shoe. feet can spread and move within the shoe. They're flat so that your feet are doing the work when you're walking and they are flexible so your feet have the freedom to move the way they need to move

so that they can be strong feet. That's why you want to get yourself some of these. And Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, that's over at vivo barefoot dot com slash power project. When you guys get there, you'll see a code across the top. Make sure you enter that code at checkout for 15 percent off your entire order. Again, that's at vivo barefoot.com slash power project links in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. Guys, look at this. I could stick that in my mouth. I'm not going to do this. It's disgusting. When life tries to take you down, goes for a double leg or goes for a single leg, to take you down goes for a double leg or goes for a single leg you have to know how to sprawl

you have to know how to switch legs spread the legs wide hit the ground and not allow someone to pick up your leg some of you wrestlers right now are like doesn't sound like smelly knows what he's talking about i don't really know what i'm talking about. I know the very, very basics and I've seen some stuff, but that's about it. But you have to learn. Again, I'm not literally talking about fighting. Okay. I'm talking about having a skill set. I mean, if I was walking down the street, the streets of Davis here, and someone took me down every day and put me on my back, I would go learn it. I'd go learn how do I not get put on my back again? How do I defend my, I hate that. The guy keeps putting me on the ground, tying me up like a pretzel. It's super annoying. I get out of breath. He laughs, right? I would, I would go and learn it. Life is knocking people down left and right. It's

picking people off left and right. It's making people sick. It's making people fat. It's making people, it's quote unquote making people. It's not making people do anything, but because people are so under powered and not empowered, they're not strong enough to figure out a way to deal with it. I'm rubber, you're glue. Everything you say bounces off of me and sticks to you. That's like the greatest quote of all time. That should be the name of this podcast. That should be the title of this podcast. That's the greatest quote of all time. Because it's making a joke at somebody throwing shade at you. And it's going to literally, it's not going to have no impact on you at all. As a matter of fact, that negative energy that you cast my way is not only going to come towards me,

but it's going to ricochet and it's going to have energy right back at you and it's going to have energy right back at you. And it's going to stick to you. And I think that as funny or as silly as that might sound, I think that's a really great way to look at how you're going to balance your mind. Your boss doesn't think you work that hard. Your boss doesn't think you work that hard. Your boss doesn't think you work hard enough. Well, you've got to either figure out a way to show him that you work harder than he thinks by keeping record. Or you just might have to recognize, you know what, he's kind of negative like that with everybody.

And I'm rubber and he's glue. And so maybe he's the one that's lazy. Maybe he's lazy in his description of what it is that he needs from you. Maybe you need him to be more descriptive or her more descriptive, right? We'll go to them and communicate that. But there's going to have to be, you can't just sit around and not do anything about these things. And I think that's what we see in our society today is a lot of us, you know, we're all guilty of these things. A lot of us have these things that we need to do or take care of, and they get swept under the rug each day, seemingly longer than the next sometimes. Even that's a negative connotation. You know, when someone says, hey, how you doing?

You're like, oh, it's Monday. It's like, what the fuck is that? What a shit ass, I haven't had my coffee yet. Jesus Christ. Sorry for all the profanity, but my God. You sound like such a wuss. It's pathetic. You don't need coffee.

You need a shot of enthusiasm into your life to be able to balance your mind out so you're not waking up every day wrecked. Waking up every day exhausted. A lot of times you're, you know, people will say, I, this, this one drives me nuts and see, it shouldn't, I should have better equanimity with it. Right. But when someone says they're a perfectionist and they're like 50 pounds overweight, I'm like, okay, let's just, you know, let's, uh, let's just back this up a little bit. Let's just back this up a little bit. You're not necessarily a perfectionist in everything. Right?

There are people that are perfectionists. And they have to have the perfect smile and the perfect this and perfect that. But most of the time, in my opinion, people are not taking the time to dial in the small details on stuff so they get things right. So they can get from one thing to the next. When you can get from one thing to the next more efficiently and more proficiently and you have the correct skill set, it's not hard to spin a lot of plates. Because you're not even spinning that many plates. And you don't have to get back to those plates as quickly as maybe you otherwise would if you were less efficient. There are certain things that I do every single day that I think are important

so that I can keep balance. And one of them is to exercise every day. I exercise every day. I give myself proper nutrition every single day. I tell my kids I love them every single day. I show my kids that I love them every single day by spending time with them, doing something with them. And now I think about it. It's not always every day where I'm literally doing much with them, but I'm there. They see me. Sometimes I'm away. So I'm not always literally there, but I'll shoot him a text. Hey, thinking of you. Hey, this is cool. You know, I'll send him a picture of something or whatever, get in conversation with them. There's things that I have like a hygiene with that I do every day. Same thing with my wife, spend time with my wife, communicate with my wife, talk with my wife, Same thing with my wife. Spend time with my wife.

Communicate with my wife. Talk with my wife. Love on my wife. Kiss her. Hug her. Tell her I love her. My wife and I joke around all the time. We joke around all the time.

You know, I'll say, I don't know, I'll come home from the store or something and I'll put something in the fridge. and she'll be like, Oh, somebody bought yogurt. She's like, awesome. I'm like, yeah, I, I told you, but you don't ever listen to me. And just say this kidding around. She's like, no, you don't listen to me. You know? And we just like, we just mess around like that. Or we'll joke and say, uh, like, I love you. And she'll say, I love you too. And I say, yeah, but I, but my love's for re it's like, that's actually real, you know, like you, you got some fake bullshit love for me, but I have real, like, we just do stuff like that just to have fun, just to poke jokes at each other. And we're always grabbing each other and just, um, like innocent stuff, not anything real, not anything real weird. Um, shit like that. Just, and it, it's, um, it's, it's what you would expect of almost like,

almost like a brother sister kind of thing. Sometimes can I get a, Hey now, almost like a, um, like a, like a siblings type of thing rather than just, uh, like a marriage. Cause like, we just, we just fuck around. Like I'll just punch her on the arm or she'll come, she'll grab me or whatever, you know? And, uh, we just screw around in that way. And it's, again, it's just a way, it's a way to have a hygiene with all the different things that I do in a given day. Um, trying to think of like, you know, when it comes to, when it comes to work, I'm very fortunate that I created an invention that allowed me to step away from working. And that was a huge thing. But that's because I constantly thought about it.

I was always thinking about lifting. I was always thinking about how to get better at it. How to improve on it. And if you continue to think. You can continue to think your way out of all kinds of different things. You can think yourself into being able to make more money. You can think yourself

out of the current, maybe crappy situation that you're in. You can gain more control the more thought that you put towards stuff and the more confidence that you have as well. Having confidence is a great way to be balanced because you're confident that you did it right the first time and that you got it right and that what you're going to do is going to be a home run. And when you think that way, you don't have to overthink stuff. I don't overthink anything.

So I'm like, yeah, it's totally going to work. It'll be fine. Yep, I got it. Then I have my wife to back me up too because we do stuff together. We're in business together. My kids are not really in my business or part of my business, not really part of Slingshot within you or any of that stuff.

My son kind of does some stuff for us here and there, some editing, stuff like that. But they're very much part of the company because they know all the people that work there. They know all the people that used to work there. They know the people that I have on the podcast. They know of some of the people I wish to have on the podcast.

They know when I'm in Austin, Texas that I'm with Nick Bear and all these different, you know, they, Zach Bitter. Like they know, they know about these people. They know about this stuff because, again, I have good hygiene with it where I communicate this out to them. So they, they, they've seen it. They've seen everything. They've seen the rise of the company. They've seen, when they were younger, I was 330 pounds. The company was just starting. We were just, Andy and I were, my wife and I, we were just starting

Slingshot. We were just, Andy and I were, my wife and I were just starting Slingshot we were just starting Power Magazine and there was no Mind Bullet at the time, there was no Within You brand and we just basically had one product and it was a Slingshot and that balance back then was a different kind of balance it was a different kind of balance. It was a... I literally only had so much time to do stuff in a day

with two small children and a couple of jobs. One of my jobs was to be the best power lifter I could be to build the brand. So I had something behind it because Mark Bell wasn't Mark Bell yet. I didn't squat 1,080 and bench 85 54 yet. I didn't do all those things yet.

Those things didn't happen yet. I had, I was still working for those things. So in the beginning I talked about treading water, but you're also trying to dive and learn all these other swimming techniques, swimming strokes. That was me learning how to try to do all those different things at one time. But none of it happened. When I say I was able to step away from like a real job five years ago or so, that didn't happen by mistake. It happened with a lot of thought. that didn't happen by mistake. It happened with a lot of thought.

It took a long time. It was intentional. Even the very act of stepping away from some of the day-to-day duties was intentional. Because I recognized that it was going to be hard to have equanimity and balance in my mind. If I didn't have balance in my mind, what did I have?

I was going to probably be unbalanced in other places in my life. And so, as I was building stuff up with two small kids and still lifting, trying to get bigger and trying to get stronger, it was a different type of balance. Like, your kids just need a certain amount of, like I couldn't, I didn't have an option in terms of like not spending time with Jake, my firstborn son. I didn't have an option of, uh, you know, not spending time with my daughter, Quinn and not spending time with both of them and not spending time with grandma coming over because it's a birthday or the grant, you know,

all the grandparents coming over because there's a birthday. It wasn't an option. It was just like, that's what we did. So all that stuff went down. All that stuff was going to be part of the story. All that stuff was going to be part of the story. And if that meant that I had to lift less than some of the people I competed against, then so be it. Then so be it. So then I wasn't the Michael Jordan. I wasn't the Gary V. I wasn't maybe the best, the best, the best, best, best, best.

But I didn't care about that. That wasn't my focus. My focus was to improve. My focus was to improve. My focus was to get better. And my focus was to feel amazing about myself. And I didn't really get too lost in what other people were doing. Although I did see what other people were doing. I'm not completely blind to it. I did see what other people were doing. And I saw how they were executing. And yes, occasionally, just like everybody else, I would, uh, occasionally just like everybody else, I would pause and go, shit, I wonder if I, you know, should I just found that jealousy just doesn't really have much utility or use.

I'd rather say, hey, good for them, or think like, oh, that's not really me or my style. But when I get a chance, I'm going to ask that person how they did that, because that seems really cool. Because I realize that it's a skill acquisition. When somebody acquired something, I understand it takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of effort. So the balance when I was younger, and while you guys are coming up, it's going to be a little more difficult.

You're going to have to be organized. And I used to think that I wasn't organized. But I'm actually extremely organized. But I'm not like putting stuff in a computer. I don't even use a computer. I only use my phone. And I don't really use email unless I really have to. Kind of weird. But that's the way I organized it. So I'm organized in my own way. I used to think I'm not organized until I saw how other people operate, and I'm like, well, way more organized than those guys. You know? Certainly have my shit together a lot better than them. So that was something that was kind of cool to learn, is that even though I didn't think I was organized,

I was at least able to handle some stuff to be efficient enough at certain things. But being organized is really critical. I think as I'm trying to think through this, I'm trying to think if there's other stuff to still go over and discuss. You know, I do think that there's things that people say about themselves. And I used to say, I used to kind of believe I was dumb. I used to believe I was stupid.

And those are, those are things you want to definitely avoid because they can handicap you and prevent you from doing certain other types of things. So if you're listening to this, you're like, oh shit, I'm not organized. Well, you have the ability to be organized. You definitely have the ability of the capacity to be more organized than you are now. And being organized does not necessarily mean that you're neat. You know what I mean? Like being organized doesn't necessarily mean that you keep everything in a folder and that your socks are never on the ground. I just mean figuring out a way to be organized with your thoughts enough to where you can be efficient and proficient. You know, just figuring out a way to be organized with your thoughts enough to where you can be efficient and proficient.

You know, just figure out a way to get to that spot. Because that's going to be critical in organizing and trying to figure out how to balance. But, you know, I think it's interesting because people have the hardest time balancing out the smallest stuff. Like how to go to jiu-jitsu and how to lift at the same time. It's like, well, there's seven days in a week, maybe go to jujitsu three times and lift twice a week. And I think that's five. And then you have two days that you can still have off if you wanted to, you know, the next week you'd flip it, you know, and you can lift three times and go to jujitsu twice. If you, you know, if you really wanted to, or, you know, if you wanted to have a six day a

week schedule, you can make some arrangements and some changes that way. So it's, it's an interesting question. I always like it. I like talking about this topic. But the people that say that they're doing stuff for their family and that they're trying to build a legacy, it's kind of stupid sometimes because they're saying this while they're not with the people that they want to sometimes pass some of this stuff along to. It's like you're just taking away more time from you and your family.

And before you know it, your kids are grown. My son is 19. My daughter is 16. So before you know it, they're gone. And that doesn't mean you spend all the time with them too, because that's not even good for them, for you to spend too much time with them and for you to figure out too much stuff for them.

You don't want to do that either. But you do want to be there as much as you possibly can. You don't want to miss. You don't want to miss any of the good stuff. But you also just want to be there for them. Just so they have a good. Like people's lives.

This is an interesting thing. I think we hear the stories. Of some of the David Goggins. And some people like that. And we think that everyone has to have this like. Horrible. Backstory. They need to have like this backstory. They need to have this superhero story to be an amazing person.

And you hear it with Elon Musk. He was abused as a kid. Vince McMahon. You hear these different stories of these different people. But then there's also people like Kobe. There's also people like... There's all different kinds of people that have had great Jordan. Jordan's a good example. Um, you know, his parents really wanted him to, they wanted to support, support him. Shaquille O'Neal is kind of interesting because

he had his dad, um, get his dad walk away from him, I believe his real dad, but then his stepdad was literally like a drill sergeant, and that guy came into his life and helped change his life and give him structure and help turn him into Shaq, which is kind of amazing. So yeah, sad that his biological dad wasn't there, but he had someone else come in and step in and help. And I think, you know, Tom Brady is another example of a guy that, you know, had a good family structure.

I had a great family structure. I had a great upbringing. Nothing tragic happened in my childhood. You know, just some issues with my brothers. He got older, but I was more like a teenager when I saw some of that. He had some mental illness and, uh, you know, I definitely, there's definitely, uh, I definitely impacted me. Um, but it didn't like shape me. It didn't like, um, but it didn't like shape me. It didn't like, um, I shouldn't say it didn't shape me because it may have, it may have had an impact in that way. Um, I'll just say it wasn't tragic. I don't view it

as being tragic. I don't even view my brother's death as being tragic or my mother's death as being tragic. My mother was obese, so she was playing with fire my brother was a drug addict and he was doing the same thing so um they in both cases neither one of them were doing neither neither one of them were really taking steps to move themselves in a different direction than uh what the result was. And I always thought they could die. I planned for it. As I mentioned earlier, my dad now is 75.

My dad is like the most amazing dad I could ever ask for. But it's totally unreasonable for me to not think that he's going to die. He's going to die. He's going to die at some point. Who knows? He might live to 95. But he also going to die. He's going to die. You know, he's going to die at some point. He might, who knows, he might live to 95, but he also might die tomorrow. You don't, you don't really know. You just don't really know. And so I'm not saying that preparing for it somehow makes it like it's

not happening, makes you numb to it. And I'm not saying that I'm numb. Just because you don't, you know, act or react the same way everybody else does, doesn't mean that you don't care. And I think that's what people think it means, what it means, but that's not true. It just means that you interpret it in a different way. And for me, learning that I have a choice on how I interpret every single thing has been masterful, has been amazing. It helped change my life forever. And it will forever make me feel like my life is amazing. I've never had a bad day. And some people might say, well, how could you say that?

You know, the day your mom died must have been bad. The day your brother died must have been bad. I don't even view those days as bad. That's just part of life. So I'm not even going to put a negative stamp on it. And also it was the end of a lot of pain for both of them. Yeah, my brother, he struggled, so his death, you can kind of just view it as he had a lot of pain, wasn't sure how to fit in in this world and make things work the way he wanted,

so that's the end of that suffering. Same thing with my mother. She wasn't really going to be able to make the changes she needed to make anyway she was not she was becoming more and more uh like she couldn't really move around much she was using a um a walker and then a wheelchair. And it was just going to get worse. Like, it's no way to live. It's no way to die either. You know?

I'd rather have both of them dead than have them dying. Let's just kind of put it that way. Because I think it just drags everything on. And everyone just gets dragged through the mud, suffering through that. No one gets to really choose some of that. But I feel fortunate that those situations ended the way they ended. Rather than dragged on. So you see how you can flip the script on how negative or positive you want to try to look at it.

It doesn't always have to be negative so hopefully you know one of the big lessons you learned today was that if you're going to have a balanced work life ratio along with your fitness, along with all the other things that you want to do, your entrepreneurship, then you're going to have to be able to have a balanced mind. You're going to have to be able to have some equanimity, a balance of the mind in what otherwise people might interpret as negative. Just because news was negative in the past, that it's raining,

doesn't mean that it has to be negative moving forward. From this point onward, you don't have to view the rain as being negative. You can just put on a raincoat or you can use an umbrella or you can run out in the rain like a little kid and be like, yeah, this is great. Bleep that, Andrew. F yeah, this is great. I I'm gonna jump in this puddle right there's different ways to kinda view it in my opinion

the more that you learn that more that you understand I'm rubber and you're glue the easier every situation in life will become. And last but not least, having your fitness touched up a lot and your nutrition touched up a lot is just as important as equanimity and having a balanced mind.

If your diet and your fitness sucks, it's going to be hard to make it to where you want to make it to. Look at how many entrepreneur people now are in shape and how many of them lift. Do you see obese? Do you see rich? You don't see rich, obese people. I mean, every once in a while.

And I know that that probably used to be the case. But it's more rare. It's kind of like, you know, when somebody's wealthy, you're kind of like, well, why don't they just take care? Like, they got this one last thing they could take care of so easily. care like they got this one last thing they could take care of so easily but then on the other side of it's like well they don't have to really do as much anymore for that money so maybe they're not on the hustle as much but usually people that have those mindsets they want to kind of hustle in every area of their life and that personally that's what's made me feel good. It doesn't feel like a strain. It doesn't feel hard. It doesn't feel like too much. Like I ran, I ran a half marathon this morning,

as ridiculous as that sounds. Um, yesterday I didn't run yesterday. I lifted. See, there you go. There's some balance right there. Um, I just got back from Hawaii as well. So I was on a vacation with my wife. And rather than, so I had those, I had that gym session. I had that run this morning. That was like three hours. Now I'm out on a walk. But I also spent a bunch of time at home with the kids, my wife, my mother-in-law, my brother. Like I did all that because I saw everybody because most of us work out and or I had dinner with them at the house. And being, you know, being inclusive and like I said earlier, including my children in my business and in like the stuff I talk about and in fitness and stuff, it's been really helpful. My son knows all the fitness people.

My daughter knows some of them. So they know like when I'm talking about Michael Hearn or Greg Doucette, like they are involved. And they're like, oh, that guy. OK. you know, and then we start talking about it. But that's been really impactful in terms of having balance because now they're, they got skin in the game a little bit too and they understand who these people are. They also understand how important it is for me

to spend time with these people. These are exceptional people in my space and it's important for me to collaborate with them. The fans, the people that, you listeners, you want to see me rub elbows with these people. You want to see these people on the podcast and all that stuff's important. But if you want to have the energy to do this, and you want to be able to push like this day in and day out, and have balance all the while with the wife, the kids, and whatever the hell else you got going on business, then you're going to have to have the material. You need the material. You need the nutrients to be able to do it.

And when you know how to utilize nutrients efficiently and you know how to save and spend nutrients efficiently, this whole process will be easier. So you have to figure out a way to have some sort of fitness in your life. Running, cycling, hopping on a bike, rucking, hiking, jiu-jitsu, lifting. Like, pick a thing. Start doing that. And once you do that, see if you can, over a period of time,

start doing more of that. And see if you can get more into it and more involved as the weeks and months and years go by. You can keep getting more proficient at it. And as that exercise seems less and less, then you can move into other things. Like my wife is a swimmer. And we've been talking a lot about her balancing everything out with some lifting.

She swims like four or five days a week. But now we're just talking about implementing. Let's implement two lifting sessions a week. Like what's that going to look like over the next two years? Well, now you'll have a more balanced body. You know, she's done a great job recently of losing some body fat. She looks absolutely incredible. But then we're like, Hey, let's see if we can work on a little bit of a recomp too. And let's see if we can have you and not so much build a lot of muscle, but like maintain the

muscle and, uh, and yeah, maybe even put on, maybe even get, get a little more jacked, put on a little more muscle. So there's always areas to improve. And for myself, that was the calling too, was that's why I started running. Let me get some equanimity with this. Let me balance this out. Like I don't need to lift another weight ever again. I'm not about to don't need to lift another weight ever again, but I don't need to lift them the way I lifted them ever again. I don't need to feel a thousand pounds on my back ever again.

I don't miss it. I put everything I had into it. When it was time to be a power lifter, I shoved every possible thing into it that you could possibly imagine. And I did it to the best of my ability. But even while I was doing that, I only think that I occasionally got off balance here and there. And that was just getting lost a little bit in staying at the gym too long and a couple things like that where I can look back at it now and say you know what I could have just gone home

but who knows maybe I wouldn't have reached the heights that I did if I didn't stay like glued to the gym I mean my wife started to learn that like if she told me certain hours that she had to change that so that I would be on time for stuff. Not that I was trying to be late or disrespectful, but you know, she would say, Hey, we got to go to this thing at 12 and I would just be getting back to the house at 1145, you know, stuff like that. But I also would communicate with her and I would tell her we would, we would share comments back and forth. It was an open conversation. I'd say, look, this is really important to me. This is what I'm doing. Like I have this meat coming up or my team has this meat coming up and she knew it was important to me. So, um, we, we ended up seeing eye to eye on

stuff like that and we worked worked that out and worked our way through it but it has to be talked about it has to be thought about and the same thing with you trying to balance out your life your work your job all these things you're going to have to think about them and you have to think about them and you have to think about them. You're going to think about them a lot and then even some more to get to where you want to be. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. Thank you all for listening to yet another Saturday School. Bye!