Mark Bell's Power Project - Why “Alpha Males” Are Failing Men | Dave Rossi

Episode Date: April 23, 2026

Dave Rossi joins Mark Bell to break down the ideas behind his book Alphas Die Early and explain why so many young men are struggling with identity, anxiety, performance, and purpose. They dig into modern masculinity, the pressure to become an “alpha,” the damage of living performatively, and why vulnerability, self-mastery, and honesty may actually be the real forms of strength.The conversation also dives into anxiety, fear, confidence, meditation, movement, gratitude, and what it really takes to course-correct when life starts going off the rails. Dave shares how pain, failure, and self-reflection reshaped his life, and offers a different path for men who want to become stronger, calmer, and more grounded.Follow: https://www.instagram.com/daverossiglobal/https://www.daverossiglobal.com/Special perks for our listeners below!🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWER to save 20% off site wide, or code POWERPROJECT to save an additional 5% off your Build a Box Subscription!🩸 Get your BLOODWORK/TRT/PEPTIDES! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com and use code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off Self-Service Labs and Guided Optimization®.🧠 Methylene Blue: Better Focus, Sleep and Mood 🧠 Use Code POWER10 for 10% off!➢https://troscriptions.com?utm_source=affiliate&ut-m_medium=podcast&ut-m_campaign=MarkBel-I_podcastBest 5 Finger Barefoot Shoes! 👟 ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM?si=JZN09-FakTjoJuaW🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎➢https://emr-tek.com/Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!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/markbellspowerprojectFOLLOW Mark Bell➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybellFollow Nsima Inyang➢ Ropes and equipment : https://thestrongerhuman.store➢ Community & Courses: https://www.skool.com/thestrongerhuman➢ YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=e

So is this like you go to a bar, you beat up a guy, and you walk out with the cutest girl? We're done. This great podcast. You nailed it. I figure a lot of men are struggling with what to be, how to be a real man, what that looks like. For most men, the desire is to be an alpha, to be selected, to have provado, to be performative. And I think their attempts to try to be that is sending them down the wrong road. It's being taught that the value of your manhood is your presentation rather than literally behind the veneer. Anxiety is a fear of the future that hasn't happened yet. And the anxiety comes from, I fear my future is not going to be at a place that I want it to be.

What does it take to be vulnerable? Strength. Yeah. I think the best way to start off this podcast today is tell us how you got the name of the book. Alphas die early because you're thinking like, man, I don't know, man. Alphas are we're supposed to be tough and, you know, alpha are supposed to be this or that or whatever we associate with. Well, that's a great question. You know, it started out.

the book title was, stop being a real man so you could be a real man. And it was really about shedding the bullshit that came with masculinity to actually be the real strength behind being a man. And then I'm like, yeah, that's not going to sell many books. And I really wanted to help people. And so I figured, you know, the trends for men, the statistics for men are really not good. Young men today just are not thriving. And so I figure a lot of men are struggling with what to be, how to be a real man, what that looks like. And for most men, the desire is to be an alpha, to be selected, to have provado, to be performative.

And I think their attempts to try to be that is sending them down the wrong road. And so I wanted to try to help men see a new way. So is this like you go to a bar, you beat up a guy, and you walk out with the cutest girl and the next day you're hung over and you're fixing your car kind of thing? Well, did I get most of it, right?

Did I nail it? We're done. This great podcast. You nailed it. No, I mean, I think the aspect of alpha goes much farther than that. I think, you know, alphas are competitive with men, right? We want to beat other men out as much as we want to get the girl. It's beating another man out to get the girl.

It's not just getting the girl. It's to have the biggest peacock feathers, right? And I think it has a lot to do with a persona. It has to do with a lot of behavior that's now assigned to masculinity and being an alpha. It's performative. It's unemotional. It's stoic. It's keeping things in.

It's being taught that the value of your manhood is your presentation rather than literally behind the veneer. Do you mean like literally die early or more like confused that young ages? I mean the trend is that they are three or four suicides attempts are now men. Oh, wow. Book addiction for young men is up. Mental health disorders and young men is up. Professor Galloway talks a lot about some of the statistic in his book about men in relationships before 30.

More men are living with her parents at a later age in life. So it's linked to like striving. It's linked. I think it's linked. I think the confusion of where men are going is the confusion of what it means to be a man. In nature, it's very clear what it means to be a man. And in nature, it's very clear what it means.

means George Orwin, the origin of species, I'm sorry, Darwin in the origin of species, was very clear that the survival of the fittest is what propagates our species. Every animal wants that, including humans. We're still animals. And everyone wants to be the strongest in the fittest. But what is that today?

Is it money? Is it Ron? Is it who do I act like? It's gonna act more like this person or more like that person. and have success. Do I act like the guys in the new Netflix series? Do we act like Andrew Tate? Is that going to get me more fittest accolades to survive in this world? And so I think the confusion of what it means to be a man or a male in this society with this species, with humans.

And that confusion is creating all this isolation, this depression, the drug use going up, the suicides going up. Higher education for men is down. Women are now outpacing men in both medical and legal professions. So it's just men in general, young men just aren't going, they're not thriving. Where do you think it's stemming from? Just, like, just, you know, aside from people maybe not having, like, being able to identify, like, are people trying to be something that they don't want to be?

Aside from maybe a little bit of that, do you think it's stemming from, like, too much time on the phone, too much time inside? Well, I equated to Like testosterone levels Well, Well, I equated to military tactics. So there's military technology And military tactics, okay?

And so in Napoleon area, people would line up in rows And they'd stop their musket And they'd line up in a row And they'd shoot their rifles. Okay, that's a military tactic. And a machine gun came along, which is more technology.

And so, So militaries for many years, decades, would still stand in rows and use a tactic with outdated military technology. And so now it made it easy for these machine guns to gun down soldiers. And so I equate modern society a bit like that, that men have to update their technology and their tactics to deal with everything that we're experiencing, with the rapid information age, with the internet, with instant access to likes and performance and, bravado and acceptance. You get a lot of likes, you're winning.

And that may not mean anything real in reality, but for someone who's performative and that has value, I think that's what the confusion is. It's just outdated tactics with new technology. And it might be driving our emotions all over the place. You know, if you're really reliant upon, you know, social media and getting likes and getting comments,

and then you're like, uh, today's like a rough day. Like, you know, maybe you're a, having a rough day because of relationship, you know, and then on top of that, your Instagram's not popping the way you want it to be. And so on. And I can't even imagine what it'd be like to be a young man today or to be a young person. I know when I was a kid, like one of the coolest things. Like I grew up in the middle, kind of not really in the middle of nowhere, but it felt like the middle of nowhere to me. And a very, you know, rural area. And you had to like figure out

where a party was. And you had to like know somebody. Like, and then you had to try to drive there and then you really didn't know where it was sort of but it was just like you know somebody got a keg and they're in like an apple orchard or something like that right you know and sometimes you'd find it and sometimes it'd be kind of cool and sometimes it'd be some girls there and other times would be just like a bunch of guys effing around yeah lighting off fireworks doing dumb stuff or whatever whatever the heck we were getting themselves into um and I felt like there was like I don't know I felt like there was there's something to that like we're all trying to like find each other you find each other and and then you find out like a day later and you don't feel bad that you didn't get

invited to this party because no one really sort of knew about it and you had to kind of you had to be in the know to be able to find out nowadays you know you and I can post you know you and I are having a stake and we're left out our buddy of Brad Kern you know and he might see that and be like damn like they didn't tell me they were going for a steak yeah he'd be like that's right down the street from my house you can't get you can't BS why you didn't get invited anymore oh we didn't you didn't answer the phone you know they know with exactly so these kids they see like what each other's doing. I mean, they have like location on Snapchat for them to like literally see where each other is. So with everyone being up each other's ass nowadays, it's, uh, it's got to like

not make you feel great when you're, you're like, everybody else went to that party, but you know, and get a chance. It's hard to navigate, isn't it? Yeah. Must be difficult. Well, I think besides hard to navigate, um, you don't know how to act. You're not told what the answers are. So, I mean, have you ever acted some way to get something? Yeah, of course. And I think it's not just about acting with performance, it's also acting with emotion to get something. So if acting with emotion gets me likes

or gets me invited to the party with the cool keg, if I can pretend to be some way to get that, then I'm pretending to be something to get that. And that may not inherently be me. So nowadays, it's very easy to get invited to the keg, act a certain way, get 100 likes or a lot of attention. And so it's not real attention. it's not a tension that's really going to make your life better,

but you think it does. And as an animal, as a primate, when we feel like we're surviving, we do more of it. We look for the things that help us thrive. We watch and we mimic behaviors that help us thrive. We watch the 800-pound gorilla so we can be that gorilla. But nowadays, it's just too confusing.

Is it an emotional? Is it rovado? It's just too confusing for men. And I think this is about being, this is about thriving. life is about thriving it's about enjoying it's about having success and love and wealth and careers with family that's what it's all supposed to be about it shouldn't be so hard is it mental strength or like mental jiu jitsu or practicing of thinking about your thoughts and stuff that can maybe

get some men out of this situation well that's exactly what i'm trying to help them realize is first of all what does it mean to be yourself and and that's a pretty hard question in itself and i think the second thing is exactly what you had what are men supposed to do do. And you said a very important word. You said thinking about thinking, which is a great word, which is kind of another definition for metacognition, which is kind of a popular word. In the spiritual world, that would be called awareness. And so people always say, oh, I have a lot of awareness. Well, what does awareness mean? You know? And it's awareness of emotion. When you're aware of emotion, okay, I'm aware that I'm afraid. So I need to act a certain way to

combat this fear. That's the awareness of my emotion. And the question is, what do you do with that awareness? What do you do next? And so what I'm hoping, the path that I'm trying to lead men towards is authenticity. Use awareness to understand who you are. Use awareness to find sustainability and happiness and thrive, not temporary veneers, not temporary attempts to be something that you're not, but truly use authenticity to put yourself into a better position in every interaction. And that's hard to do. Do you think maybe we should sort of chase our fears a little bit,

you know, lean into some of the resistance, or is that maybe, does that pressure make things almost worse? You have some experience in this, it sounds like, Mark. I think definitely lean into your fears. I don't think there's any better practice than to lean into your fears. And I don't mean react to your fears. So what it means to be an omega, and I do think, from what I know about you, you exhibit

the behaviors of omega to me, which I call self-mastery. You have self-mastery over yourself. That doesn't mean that you're not afraid. It doesn't mean that you're not hurt. It means that you decide how to act after that. It means you have the power to choose exactly what you want to do. That is with everything. It's with love.

It's with exercise. It's with food. It's with honor. It's with morality. It's with principles. And I think for a lot of athletes, I think this is easier because they do think, they do tough things.

I don't want to work out. I'm going to do it. Okay, so use the same principle for fear. I'm really afraid to ask this girl out. Okay. So do it. Right? And it isn't easy.

And I think, you know, Scott Galloway in his book talks about having men have alcohol to help with that social anxiety, which I don't advocate. putting semi-toxic in your body to manage social anxiety. I think there are other ways. Like use your anxiety for positive energy and find the motivation just to do it

instead of having to have help doing it. You don't need crutches to be tough, right? It takes a lot of strength to beat fear. One of my friends about maybe three or four years ago, excuse me, he started a jiu-jitsu a couple years ago because he's like, I just have, he's like, I just hate confrontation. I don't like it.

And if someone was to come up and have confrontation with me and make me really nervous and scared and he just didn't like confrontation in general, like just even a conversation that was like uncomfortable. And so he thought to himself, well, maybe if I do this practice, maybe this will help get me over that. Do you advocate for maybe some things like that?

Well, I guess the question, did it help him? Oh, yeah, it's helped him a ton. The question is, how did it help him? I think it helped him by him maybe not feeling adequate physically in his life. And so there was something kind of playing in the background that he wasn't really aware of. He didn't know why he felt so uncomfortable with confronting people. So he created an underlying sense of confidence through something else, which is great. But ultimately, it was confidence.

And if you had the ability to choose everything you, want to believe in, right? If you wanted to choose whether you were comfortable or not comfortable, or whether you had high self-esteem or low self-esteem, if you had that power to choose, what would you choose? Choose the higher, yeah. Right. And so we all have that power to do that. It just doesn't happen immediately. It takes time. And so if you need something to help you like Jiu-Jitsu, to help you believe that you can make the choice of being confident, because somewhere along the line, he said, I'm confident. This activity is going to give me the belief that I can now believe and I can stand behind. I'm a confident person. But that's only because his mind at some point

said, I can believe it now. And you don't have to do those things to believe those things. You can use lots of different things or you can use nothing. You can just actually say to yourself over and over and over and over again and practice. And I always say this. So vulnerability is kind of what he's talking about, right? He felt vulnerable. I'm scared to feel defenseless in a social situation. Okay. And vulnerability, we're told is weakness, isn't it? We're told it's defenselessness. As an animal being vulnerable or defenseless is considered weak, right? Society considers vulnerability as something that's considered weak. And maybe we've been programmed as a man with our families that being vulnerable or sharing emotion is potentially weak.

And yet what does it take to be vulnerable? Strength. And when you get so good at being vulnerable and accepting the fear that comes with that uncomfortable feeling in your gut of doing the thing that you need to do even though it's uncomfortable, when you do that so often you become actually invulnerable. So the practice of that can be just as effective as someone like tutu. you're making a lot of sense right now because you know i can think of other people that they really don't have a lot of a lot of practices with exercise but they do some um and they're very confident

you know but it's just like they they've exercised that part of their brain they exercise that part of their life to uh make themselves more confident i mean these are some of these guys i'm thinking of in my head like these are people that um do really well in business and they're people that are almost kind of intimidating in some people. And I don't think they're like trying to be, but they, they kind of mastered that part, that part of the awkwardness to where people like,

oh shit, like if I know if I'm talking to this person, that they're going to just give it to me real. And that gets scary. Not everybody, yeah, not everybody always loves that, you know. Yeah. Something you said to Brad that I really liked in,

in your podcast that you guys did a while back was, you talked about like defining things. And I think, that's really important because I think that we we sometimes just don't think deeply enough about the the task at hand or the hurdle that we're trying to get over. We don't even we don't even really know if the hurdle is real or or how high it is because we don't really describe what it is. I could say like I was telling you my wife processes stuff really fast. Well really fast compared to what? Like is it fast compared to me? You know, okay. So

So it's fast compared to me, but maybe that's not fair to say that she's processing stuff fast or too fast because compared to what, compared to who. And I think that even thoughts about your social media, thoughts that your podcast isn't working, thoughts that people aren't listening to you, thoughts of, you know, this book is like, it's kind of well received, but I wish it was a little bit better, you know, defining and trying to lock in, you know, exactly. But it's tough because you see the success sometimes with other people and then you just kind of get in that comparison game and that can be brutal for a lot of people.

I think that's what we're in right now is that people are often comparing themselves to other people and then they're also comparing stuff that they never defined. Yeah. Boy, if I compare myself to a lot of people, I really suck. I mean, I have endless reams of complaints about my own. own success if I compare myself to a lot of different people. And so that really isn't going to work. I mean, I'm not going to look in the mirror every day and say how much I suck comparing my book cells to Oprah or something. I mean, right? So, I mean, I think there are a lot of layers to

these behaviors. And I think they're all tied to, again, moving our own body towards success. And what I call success might be different than what somebody else does. And I imagine you as a power lifter or even whatever you do for yourself, and I said this quote to Ryan earlier, if you really love to walk, you're going to walk longer and farther than if you are walking to a destination. And so I think if you're defining a level of success

because of that goal, you're really not doing it for that goal. You're doing it just for that goal, not because you love doing it. I love writing books. Like I don't care how much many books this thing sells. I mean, I don't really care. I would write it again.

I can't wait to write the next book. I don't know how this is sold. I haven't asked my publisher. It isn't my primary source of income. And I don't look at it that way. I've heard people say before, it's really hard to beat someone that really just thinks it's fun.

Yeah, and the definition of fun is, I think, also a little bit slippery, but I enjoy it. You're right. I just flat out enjoy it. And no one's going to take me off doing it. And low sales or high sales is not going to make a difference

because I really just enjoy doing it. And there is a survival component to life. I do have to survive. So I do have another form of income that lets me do these things that I enjoy. I do like writing books more than that. But that doesn't mean that I can't do both. So I balance both. I'm still an animal that has to survive.

I got to have food. I got to have a shelter. But I also have a life to live. And I want to move it in another direction and do things that are more intrinsically deeper. And I think that balance is where I think a lot of people struggle is they don't pull their selves out of the survival mode and enrich their lives. in other ways. And so definitions can definitely hurt you because you box yourself in. I think you can almost say too that you enjoy writing so much that you kind of have set your

life up to where you get to play writer. Exactly. You know what I mean? Like I get to play a fitness person. Like because I kind of navigated and set my life up in a way that affords me and buys me the time to be able to put whatever I feel is appropriate into the things that I enjoy. Yeah, I have a balance in your life. And I think even with my construction company, because I believe so much in the success of self-mastery, right, the success of being sovereign, the success of being able to be vulnerable because I know it pays off rather than being afraid of it. Even in my business, I don't take projects for money. I take them if they fit a model that I know is going to be successful. So I don't have situational morality or situational goals or situational,

principles. I do things based on principles alone objectively or not. And that and that is defies survivability a bit. So my my business even in construction still has a model of let's not get swept away from money or do things for the wrong reasons. Make sure it's the right model with the right client and the right setting and the right team. Other than that, I'm not going to get swept away by money and make a mistake looking at those things. What about like energy? Like I kind of have this theory that everybody needs to spend and it's not it's not necessarily it doesn't mean you need to go this far but i think that everyone needs to spend around five to seven miles worth of walking every day like whatever amount of calories that would equal whatever amount of exercise that would equal because i think

it's i think it's like within us i think it's inside of us and maybe you could argue at certain ages it changes a little bit you know um but i think that Without movement, without doing things that are strenuous, you mentioned having a construction company, I can't help but think, like, that's automatically defining, you know, defining manhood, you know, like, can you fix this thing? Do you know how to use a hammer type of thing?

And I just wonder, like, you know, in owning construction company and navigating all this and writing books about these kinds of things, is it kind of important for us to pick up a hammer? I mean metaphorically, I'm not saying like I actually pick one up but I actually think there might be something literal to like actually picking one up.

No, I agree with you. I think you're on the right track. I think movement's really important. Again, we are still living in a physical body. Okay, we have these thoughts that are not physical. We don't know where thoughts come from. They just kind of come from everywhere. But we still are in a physical body and you know this probably more than anybody.

You move, your physical body responds. You do things and you train and it's responsive. And I think walking is a critical thing because it breaks, it allows you to decompress and kind of stop surviving. See, for a lot of people, we're constantly trying to survive. Anxiety about not being successful enough. Anxiety about not being where we think we should be. Anxiety about a definition of success we think we should have. And so as humans, we're constantly trying to survive.

And I think the balance of movement that isn't related to survival is really, really important because it breaks that. It's like if I hold this water up off to the side of my hand for like 10 minutes, no big deal. But what if it held it up for like two years or like 10 years, right? It starts getting really, really heavy. And the point is when you're always pushing your mind to just survive and not let the gas off and let it loosen up and soften up and have new contemplations. or new ideas of thinking, then you don't open those channels to do that. Yeah, I think for me personally, if I don't move, then I have a tendency to like just almost overthink.

Yeah. And, you know, overthinking isn't necessarily a dangerous practice because you can overthink for the best. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, you can overthink for the better. But most of the time, you're starting to kind of pick things apart too much where you're, you know, heading down the wrong path. I think a lot of people worry about stuff that they don't have.

Definitely. And they think they need it. And you think, I mean, that's kind of like, I guess, comparison again a little bit. It falls into that category. But I do think that, I personally just think that movement really helps a lot of things. But I also think that sometimes, as you were mentioning with the example of my friend

doing jiu-jitsu, maybe be a little bit careful that you're not just, like sweeping something under the rug. Like it would be great if you were doing this practice. And along with that practice, you're kind of paying attention with how it's making you feel and potentially what hurdles. Did it actually help you jump over? Well, I think the example of your friend is a good one because he did set out with a goal and he did think about what would get him to that goal and he achieved that goal.

He may not have known the dynamics from his psyche perspective, how that occurred. But it still was for the right reasons. I don't think he did it to go fight people, right? Right. But again, not knowing he still achieved that. And knowing this gives you maybe a shortcut and not having to do jiu-jitsu to do it. But I do also still agree with you

that movement is really, really critical. And I think the thing about overthinking that's important is that your lungs pump air for one reason to keep you alive. And it's air. And your heart pumps blood for one reason to keep you alive and it's blood. And your brain does one thing to keep you alive

and it's thinking that's it and the thinking isn't necessarily rational the thinking is rational to you because it's what's happening in your life at that moment that your brain starts rattling around data and stimulus and what happens here and what happened there and what if I do this and what if I don't do this and so your brain is thinking for one reason and that's a save your life and the reason why it's not always rational is because it's your filters with your belief structures your fears your upbringings you have two older brothers. Everything about your thinking is wrapped around that. And you're not in that environment anymore.

You have to break out of that thinking and try to implement a more objective type of thinking. And I think what movement does is it turns down some noises and it lets other noises turn up a little bit louder. As long as you can like sift through them properly, I 100% agree with you. About some of these words that we hear, you know, thrown around these days,

people talking about, you know, gratitude and things of that nature. It sounds like you're somebody that's a fan of some of those practices and also a fan of meditation. Because, you know, as we're kind of mentioning, walking can kind of fall into that meditative category, although just sitting there and not doing nothing can be a wonderful practice too, but it's difficult for a lot of people. But yeah, what are your thoughts on gratitude? Well, I think both those topics are really important to me gratitude and meditation and probably for different reasons than you think. gratitude is training your brain to feel sovereign is train your brain to be happy with what you have and to stop the cycle of of the hamster wheel of what I need and so gratitude is a emotion of

safety it's a motion of I have so much I can give and when you truly believe that and when you really believe you have everything that you need or want you might make different choices day to day, right? You might not work an extra hour at the office and get an extra hour of exercise in. Because you have everything you need. I can afford to be balanced. I can afford to take care of my body,

but also make a career out of myself. And so gratitude is just a word that people use that they think it means, oh, just go say, thank you a lot to people. And just, oh, I'm so thankful. I have so much gratitude you're here. It really has to be something that you embody, They can't just be the words that go with gratitude.

It's, I'm comfortable with where I am. And if I'm comfortable with where I am, then I don't need anything. And that's not the main charge for my behaviors anymore. And I think the reason why meditation is an important segue into that is that meditation works for everybody. They think something's supposed to happen and it's not. You need to look at meditation like reps. It's like a rep.

It's like a tennis ball and a tennis racket. I'm going to hit the ball against the wall a thousand times. Okay. And nothing's supposed to happen except getting good at hitting the ball against the wall with the tennis record. When you meditate, nothing's supposed to happen except you get really good at ignoring shit. You just say, I'm going to ignore. I'm afraid. I'm going to ignore that.

And I don't mean repress because repression is a different thing. I mean, I'm afraid. And all of a sudden your brain floods with all of these bad things that could happen if you step into this situation of fear. And meditation is, I'm a meditation. for 10 years, I've been ignoring thoughts for 10 years, 20 minutes a day. I can ignore the contemplation of doomsday of what's going to happen. I can ignore the anger of this guy that's cutting me off in the road. I can ignore what I thought I just heard my wife say and be aware of what emotion I'm feeling and slow it down a bit and get a bit more in control or self-control and not repression

and not not suppression, not holding things in, but literally processing the information of your brain. Meditation is just a practice to do that. You're not supposed to go into bliss. You're not supposed to, I mean, it can't happen, but you're not supposed to float off the floor. You're not going to go run and get dreds and wear tie-dye shirts.

You're literally just going to get really good at ignoring thoughts that don't serve you. And that's all it is. And so gratitude is a great practice to implement with meditation. Meditation almost sounds like a drug, you know, except without the negative side effects. Well, again, I was a football player.

I played Lionbacker. I was a pretty intense guy. I, if you told me, you're going to meditate every day for the rest of your life. I'd say you're absolutely crazy. You know, where's the next extra large pizza and keg? I think we can go put down, right?

But I cannot imagine life without meditation in my life right now. Yeah, just putting everything on pause, you know, and I think about like, I mentioned this before, I think alcohol does that, you know, it kind of, you have a bunch of worries. You have a bunch of things going on in your life and then you drink some alcohol and some of those things are, they don't go away. They kind of feel like they went away. Yeah. That's why alcohol is so great.

It, like, actually works. I actually feel that, but the problem is you still have those problems the next day. And same thing with lifting or same thing with becoming an endurance athlete. Like a lot of endurance athletes are just, you know, running themselves nearly to death because of suppressed feelings and emotional issues and all kinds of other things. And a lot of lifters do the same thing. Yeah. A lot of people are, there are a lot of people who are mentally, they're mentally broken,

almost to the point where they have, they're like running from like mental health disorders or they've kind of become disorders and they exercise so much that it does put them into this feeling of bliss and they get to kind of sweep stuff under the rug but that stuff is still there. They never really went into like actually processing it. And for some people, maybe they don't know.

And I think other people know and they're just like, I'm just never going to look there. I don't want to. Well, I think you're right. I think, you know, alcohol can be like meditation, so can lifting or so could gambling, so could a lot of things, except all those things don't equip you to beat it, where meditation equips you to beat it. Meditation allows you to be coherent and put a break in the cycle and then decide what to do next, where alcohol, you're kind of on autopilot. Like you really

lose a lot of choices in that state. But I think ultimately, you're right, people do not know that they're broken. I didn't know I was broken. I mean, I lost my whole life. I lost my house. I lost, got divorced, lost my business. I chose a good divorce to change my life. And my wife and I at the time owned a business together, 130 employees. And I said, will you buy my half? And she said, nope. I said, well, I'll buy your half. It's not for sale. And it goes with the marriage. Shut it down. And that secured the debt. Our house secured the debt against the loan of the business. So I lost my house. And this is all my doing. and I'm happy I made those choices,

but I also had to accept that my life sucked. I had to actually be real and say that I was in a bad spot. And I don't think a lot of people actually reflect on their lives and see objective reality. I'm in a bad spot. I'm responsible for X, Y, and Z. Maybe I'm responsible for A, B, C, D, and E, but I'm responsible for something, right?

And I need to figure out a way to get myself out of this. I mean, you know a lot of power lifters or bodybuilders, how many of them you'd think we'd still choose that profession if they had a really healthy psyche or image of themselves? They probably just would have never gone down the rabbit hole so deep that they ended up where they ended up. Right. There could have been a different path. And so it might have lifted a little bit and felt pretty good and just didn't really need to

right, you know, have 20 inch arms or something. Yeah. I'm not saying anything wrong with any of those, those, I call those coping mechanisms, right? That's coping. but but there's something very different well they can buy you some time you know for some people it's a nice vehicle and buy you time until you can figure out how to mature or become self-aware you know i started researching like self-actualization and um equanimity a lot of this kind of stuff yeah equanimity i started research that stuff like luckily for me like about a decade ago but

before that i didn't really know a lot of the things we're talking about here today and it was nice It was nice not knowing because I could like, I wasn't an angry person, but I could just kind of like rage and just go bananas or go berserk in a particular way. Now I have a lot more, a lot more, not necessarily thought, but. Sovereignty. Yeah, where. You can choose. You're choosing your behavior.

I'm not just going to like, I don't really feel like I need to, I guess, is like that desperation I had before. Well, Copeland. good for what I was doing. And coping is important, but I'm advocating coping and healing at the same time. Yes. And healing is different than coping. You have to heal and you have to cope as well. You just can't not cope or you just crash and burn.

And I think what you've come to grips with is there's these forces that keep pushing you. Do this. Do this. Do this. You need this. And we're very reactive for those forces. And those forces are biology. I need to be an alpha.

I need to get the girl. I need to be a better person. I need to have a bigger car. I saw that guy get this hot check because he had a great car. I need a great car too, right? We start mimicking what we think works, and we start having these things push us to do things. And so what you're talking about, when I say sovereign,

you're not affected by the push anymore. You can look and say, stop pushing me, you know, my mind or my psyche or my insecurities or my fears or my traumas or my wounds or whatever it is. Just take a seat. Let me figure out what I want to do that's best for me, not what you're pushing me to do. And that's the difference.

That's a big difference. And that's a difference of getting off the couch and getting to the gym, right? That's a difference of putting down the burrito and having something that's more sustainable for your diet. That's a difference in everything. It's, you know, it's like, I look at men who cheat on their wives or girl for anything. Like, at the time, it seemed like a good idea, right? And then you look back on it and it's drawn from some kind of weakness or some kind of push. Someone's pushing you.

You can't really do something to hurt yourself consciously. And so at that moment, someone's acting and behaving in a way that they think is good for them and they do it. And they look back and think that was a really stupid thing to do. In your book, do you have some steps almost? Like, do you have steps to, I guess, course correct? Oh, absolutely. So at first I have what's called the basics. There's some basics you need, awareness, authenticity, vulnerability.

These are like, like, if you're going to be a soccer player, you got to run, right? So vulnerability and these basics are really, really key. It's like if you're a water polo player, you got to swim. These are like the basics that help you with your sport. And then I have these plays, 15 plays, that really help you focus on what's important. And then after that, we have challenges. What's going to challenge you and how are you going to get by these challenges? And one of the biggest challenges is everybody else.

Because the world doesn't reward you for being vulnerable. It just doesn't. Like, I mean, you can line up 10 people and ask them to be vulnerable. and they're going to say, I don't really want to. Right. And so, you know, one of the biggest challenges is that everything about this path is going to go against the grain. And I talk about the crab study where if you put a bucket of crabs in this bucket, the crabs are going to climb out. Well, the other crabs will pull the top crab back down.

And that's just the way our society is. And so you're going to have to fight that challenge to live an omega life. When you were going through your divorce, is that when you started to. kind of dive into something. Oh yeah, yeah, 100% yeah. I, I, I completely misunderstood life before I got divorced. I mean, I married this woman because she was a PhD from Princeton and pretty and a great athlete and, you know. Those are all sound like pretty compelling ideas to me. Right. And but they were all for the reasons that I thought she'd elevate me. I see. And so, you know, it really wasn't because I loved her. I thought I loved her and the idea of, um, um, attachment to accolades.

which I thought meant love, right? I was swept away with her. If I feel this, this woman was great, I love this woman. But it was really the confusion of what I thought she did for my life that I thought was a bond or attraction or a connection, right? And then when I look back and I realized,

wow, all this, I miss so much and all this information was out there. I'm not inventing any of this stuff. This stuff goes back to a lot of other philosophers and a lot of other studies, Eastern philosophies, Western philosophies, modern day, thought leaders. I didn't invent this. I just packaged it in a way to help people understand it

differently. And a lot of reading and stuff and diving into people that had different experiences. A lot of pain, a lot of my own losses, a lot of climbing to the back walking. I walked a lot in those days when I was going through my divorce. There's a Ultimate Warrior video. I don't know if you ever seen like Ultimate Warrior has like these motivational videos when he was long done with wrestling. but he has his speech and he's like you can't find yourself you're not sure where you're at he goes walk and then he goes and he pauses and he goes all fucking day you know just walk and walk and in the rain and it's great it's a great speech i mean it's you know it's coming from you know a former crazy pro wrestler but yeah uh i was like he's got a good point man if you just if you go out there

and you start walking for maybe hour two hours three hours you really do you really do start to learn a lot about yourself. Well, we live in the mountains. We built this beautiful house in South Bay at Silicon Valley, you know, 6,000 square feet on six acres, you know, butts up against the mountains. And I'm like, looking at this completely failed life, right? I'm like, how did I work so hard to fail so miserably? All those talents had great work ethics. Interesting language. Like you probably wouldn't use the same language today or do you think that that language still applies to? Well, I mean, or was it a feeling? Well, it was a feeling that I realized. It doesn't sound like you were a failure.

Well, at the moment, I'm like, I'm losing, well, that was back then. I'm like, how did I lose my house? How did I be so unhappy? How did I get so overweight? I was 50 pounds heavier. I was on blood pressure medication. How did I get here? Like, I'm better than this, right?

And then I would just go out and walk. And then it was through these painful experiences and reading through being in pain. that had me just start dealing with reality. And so I go to the back of this mountain, I'd hike. And I remember in the rain, just like crying. Like, oh my God, like my life absolutely sucks. Like I have to be honest. But there's this great thing I read that there's hope.

Like there's more. Like this is great. Like there's more for me. And so in the same moments, I'm transitioning out of one life and transitioning into another shedding the skin of all of the mistakes that I'd made that became lessons and returned to me and this motivation to live, of a new life and bounce back and come from nothing at 46.

And there was a lot of walking, a lot of walking in the rain and a lot of self-contemplation. It's wild how different you can feel from one moment to the next and how different your thoughts can be. Oh my God, like almost nothing can make me upset now. Like, oh, you lost this big deal. Okay, I guess the other ones are on the corner.

Just wait for that one to come. Like, you know, the attachment to things and the holding on to the future, the predictive income, the predictive outcomes that we make as humans have really mostly dissolved for me. So life is very easy. I'm a completely different person. There's a movie about a spy.

I think he's like a Russian spy. And I think Tom Hanks might be. And I can't remember the name of the movie. But they asked the guy like in front of the court, you don't even seem to care. It seemed to be emotionless about this death of this guy. And he's like, would it help? You know, would it be helpful?

And I know death is like, you know, okay. But that is an interesting thing. Like is this emotion, is this mode that I'm going to go into? Is this appropriate? But is it helpful at all? Well, I mean, for me, it was belief modification. So for me to hold on to life and hold on to success and hold on to all those aspects of what I thought meant success, was a belief structure

that I have systematically changed over the last 10 years and is emotion helpful? Yes, it's very helpful. Emotions, you cannot stop emotions. They happen on their own. It's not that emotions help or hurt. It's what you do with them

that makes a difference. I first started hearing about transcriptions from Thomas to Lauer. And, you know, Thomas is somebody that's an animal with working out. You got a chance to work out with him. I worked out with him. And he's kind of always on the front lines

of like, you know, finding out about these new companies that have cool things. But I didn't really realize that Transcriptions was the first company to put out Methylene Blue. Now look at Methylene Blue. It's so popular. It's everywhere. It's one of those things. If you guys listen to this podcast, you know, I'm very iffy with the supplements that I take because there's a lot of shady stuff out there. You've got to be careful. The great thing about Troscriptions is that when people want to get Methylene Blue, usually they'll go on Amazon, they're going on with these other sites. It's not third-party testing.

and it's not dosed. A lot of people end up with toxicity from the blue that they get because there's no testing of it. Transcriptions, they have third-party testing for their products. It's a dose so you know easily what exact dose of methylene blue you're getting in each troki. So you're not making some type of mistake. There's not going to be anything in it. It's safe.

You can have it dissolve and you can turn your whole world blue if you want or you can just swallow it. They have two different types of methylene blue. They have one that is, I believe, dosed at 16 milligrams. and they have another one that's dosed at 50 milligrams. So make sure you check the milligrams. I don't recommend anybody start at 50 milligrams, but the 16, I feel, is very safe. You can also score the trokies

and you can break them up into smaller bits. Yeah, so I do. And in addition to that, on top of the methylene blue, they have a lot of other great products of stuff as well. They got stuff for sleep. They got stuff for calming down, all kinds of things. I got to say, I use it about two or three times a week. I use it before Jiu-Jitsu,

and the cool thing that I've noticed, and I've paid attention to this over the past few months, is that after sessions, I don't feel as tired. So it's almost like I've become more efficient with just the way I use my body in these hard sessions of grappling. And it's like, cool, that means that, I mean, I could go for longer if I wanted to, and my recovery is better affected. It's pretty great.

I know Dr. Scott, sure, we had him on the podcast, and he talked quite a bit about how he recommends Methylene Blue to a lot of the athletes, he works with. Yeah. And they're seeing some profound impacts. And one of the things I've heard about it is that it can enhance red light. So those are you doing red light therapy or those of you that have some opportunities to get out into some good sunlight. It might be a good idea to try some methylene blue before you go out on your walk or run outside or whatever activity is that you're going to do outside. And this stuff is great, but please, like first off, they have stuff for staying calm. They have stuff

for sleep. But remember, this stuff isn't a substitution for sleep. This isn't a substitution for sleep. is this in a substitution for taking care of nutrition. This is supposed to be an add-on to all the things that we already should be doing, and it's going to make things so much better if you're doing everything else too. And I think this is just a little different, too, than just adding some magnesium to your diet. I think this is a little different than, you know, treat these things appropriately. Make sure you do some of your own research, but. Oh, if you're taking medications.

Yeah. You better talk to your doctor first. Don't, don't be popping these things. And if you're taking any medications at all, it would be good to double triple, quadruple. check and make sure that you're safe. Transcriptions has a lot of great things that you need. So go and check out their website when you have the opportunity. Strength is never a weakness,

weakness, weakness, never strength, catch you guys later. Right. So if I feel afraid, what do I do with that? Am I really in danger?

Like I'll never forget taking my kids to Sun River, jumping off this bridge and the river and we all jump and my kids are jumped. They've jumped for years and my daughter who was like six, you know, she's jumping off and her cousin, my nephew, my brother's son, very uptight kid, raised in a very uptight family,

and he does not want to jump off this bridge, right? And you see the fear in his eyes. To him, it's the most dangerous thing in the world. And yet his cousin, who's the same age, who's jumping off this bridge, so clearly it's not dangerous, but to him it is. And so is emotion helpful?

Well, it is if you can start processing and using logic and reason to process out of it and say, wait a minute, I can act beyond my fear. This does look, safe enough to overcome my fear. And this is just an example that people should bring into any emotions. And same with happiness,

happiness is just as dangerous as fear. We think we're happy and we think that that's, you know, or releases dopamine or release of serotonin. It could be a trauma bond. It could be the worst person that you should be with because you're happy and you feel exhilarated about them.

But it's really a trauma bond that makes the worst set of conditions for a relationship than a positive one. So any emotion is not bad. That's what you do with it. that's important. And I get fooled by it, which is even more important. I think getting fooled by it's the, maybe the most challenging part. I think something like anxiety, you hear people say, man, I got a ton of anxiety. And then it's like, you know, it's, I got a ton of anxiety, period.

But it should probably be more like, you know, I think a lot of statements should end in a question mark. Yeah. Yeah. Because then it's like, well, and what's the anxiety over? Like, is it real? Like, that's a real fear, like jumping off a bridge and being a six-year-old kid and being like small and this thing is very large and you've never tried it before like that makes a lot of sense like i could potentially get hurt and if i don't jump the way my cousin jumped i don't jump in the right spot maybe you know like a lot of that actually seems fairly intelligent to kind of walk yourself through that but you know does iran have nuclear weapons or whatever the heck's going on in our modern day times um those things are probably better to sort of calm yourself down about and say like

I don't have any, I have no power or control over any of those things. Well, anxiety, you know, what may make someone else anxious and not me or vice versa, it really has nothing to do with the situation that you're looking at. So anxiety is a fear of the future that hasn't happened yet. And the anxiety comes from, I fear my future is not going to be at a place that I want it to be. That's basically anxiety. I'm afraid that my future that I think I should have or that I want I'm not going to reach. And what's happening today is a sign, information, stimulus, that I'm actually not going to be in that place in 10 years or 5 years or whatever this time period is.

It's a little stepping stone. I'm missing the step. And that's anxiety. Well, where did the standard come from of what success is in five years or four years that is even creating the anxiety? And that's our background and our belief structure. and our programming and whatever got us there, we have a belief that only we have. And we set the standard for that, and it creates anxiety.

Anxiety really does not help. That's an emotion that really should be analyzed very, very quickly. If you're anxious, literally just start thinking about it and start working on it and start understanding, read books, talk to people because it is very crippling that emotion. It cripples a lot of people, and none of it's real. it's just a belief that the future and the step that you're on aren't going to align and there's no truth to that it's one of those things that's a real bitch because it's like hey i'm gonna you know stuff you into this

closet and you're not supposed to be claustrophobic but you have you know maybe you have claustrophobia and maybe you have a fear of this thing hey you're gonna be totally fine like there's plenty of air in there like you know it's just going to be dark and you're going to be in there for eight minutes you know well well well shit like i you know some people are scared of that well well well well well Well, anxiety help you get out of that room. Probably not. No. I mean, it only...

You can make your experience in there worse. Probably. Well, I mean, speak about sports for a second. I tell this to my daughter, you know, she has a little bit of anxiety now and again. She's a water polo player. And I'll say, look, every skill that you've made before you play this game, you have. You're not going to get faster in warm-ups. You're not going to learn a new skill in warm-ups.

You're not going to learn a new shot in warm-ups. So anything that you do, your mind will only hold you. you back from the skills you already have. You already have your skills. Whatever skills you're going to bring into this competition, you have them. The only thing that will not allow you to access those skills is anxiety or fear or doubt or pressure. All of those emotions will do is literally remove your ability to access those skills. And that in Carl Jung speak is flow or synchronicity. A lot of the really great athletes get into that state where they're just performing because their skills or they're allowed to access their skills and they come out and that's flow state and

anxiety is the same thing it just literally removes your abilities or hampers them greatly what are some things you think i can help people kind of get through or or maybe help people realize that realize that anxiety is not real or give them something else to like attach to you well you know i think it's probably different for everybody i think some of the early advice i could give is accept that it's anxiety. Tell yourself, I'm anxious. Just accept it. Like, I have to accept that I'm anxious. I think the second thing is understanding the dynamics of what it is. I'm comparing today to a future and I don't see them happening. So I need to accept that I'm anxious and I need to accept the mechanism that is creating that belief. And now after that is probably a lot

of different people who have different techniques that could help them. But ultimately, it's practice. You have to practice stepping into fear and say, okay, this isn't going to help me. This anxiety is real and I feel it and it's okay. But I don't want to, I don't want to let it control my choices. And almost view it as like a training session. Training session for anxiety. Like put your headband on and let's go. You know, every time you, you are able to act above anxiety and put it at and again, don't repress it. Because accepting it and saying it's a name doesn't repress it. it doesn't let you hide it. You're bringing it up. Feel the ugliness. Feel the pain that comes with it. We talked about it earlier doing things that are hard. Feel that pain. Pull it in. Tell someone if you

have to. I'm really anxious right now. And then take I can work through this. I know I can work through this. I try to change some of the wording around it maybe say I'm dealing with anxiety or dealing with some anxiety which kind of just sounds like less of a giant mountain to climb. Well that's I'm an overachiever but yes you're right. I'm processing and I'm going through it. You know, Yeah, I think that's a great step. I'm going through anxiety, you know, because then that's basically telling somebody else, like, I'm experiencing it right now, but I'm going to make it to the other side. That is a great baby step, yes.

I like that. But no, I think you have to acknowledge it. My son has called me with anxiety too, and I've helped talk him through that, that you're hooked on a future that you don't think you're going to meet. And you have to contextualize that that isn't going to help you. Your future is what you make every single moment. moment, not five years out. And I think a lot of us plan our future so intently that we map it so closely that we see one misstep. We're not going to meet it. So you have to be kind to yourself.

You have to give yourself a break. You have to, and I want to use the word faith because that's a really important word, is have faith that things are actually going to work out. Now, where most people fail is they want immediate results. They want absolutely immediate results. And faith doesn't come because you beat anxiety once or you talk to yourself differently once with anxiety. Faith comes when you repeatedly do things and when it's really hard

and when you really feel let down and you really feel like your practice hasn't paid off. You have to keep doing it. And that's where faith pays off. Faith is what gets you through those really rough times because eventually you will break through and us as humans, us as animals, we want immediate gratification.

We want to, you know, kill a deer, sling it, need it, and we've done. We want to do it immediately. That's just what we want to do. And to wait and to deal with things that are uncomfortable is one of the best and most important things anybody can do. Yeah, I think just reframing, reinterpretation of anxiety and what you think it is. It now can be something that you can manage. You can manage. You could utilize it as like, all right, well, here it comes.

And now I'm going to train my way through it, whatever strategies you start to adopt. And self-talk. I mean, how much of you self-talk to yourself about lifting weights? Yeah, it's all self-time. And positive self-talk is how you get through this. And, you know, and this is again where meditation comes in, right? So negative self-talk creeps in for me. But meditation helps me change it to positive self-talk, right? I'm practiced at letting go of emotions and meditation. I'm practiced at letting go of thoughts and meditation. So now I can steer my thoughts away from negative thoughts instead of positive thoughts. Not because I'm trying to whitewash myself

or tell myself a pile of lies, but to change a trend of thinking is what I'm trying to do, not necessarily tell myself I'm great, but it's stopping negative talk and turn into positive talk. That's the practice. And maybe sometimes turning your anxiety into tears,

you know, because I think that, like, for some reason, the sad, like sadness, you're not always crying because you're like, particularly sad, but you're like definitely upset. That seems to work your way through something. Like it feels like you get to that other side from that one. Maybe almost like laughter. Maybe somebody tells you something really, really funny.

And you just, you know, you keep laughing and laughing. You're kind of like when you're done with the laughter and you're done, you know, maybe it's an old friend that's always funny or something. You hung out with them for half an hour and you just had a great time. Sometimes you're like, man, I kind of needed that. Yeah. They feel similar after you cry. Yeah, definitely.

I kind of needed that. Well, I mean, you know, I used to cry when I first started meditating, I would cry. Like, we literally just tears pulling out of my eyes. And I'm like, why am I so sad? I have no idea. I'm just crying. I think we hold in a lot of emotion. We hold in a lot of energy.

And eventually that energy has to come out. And some people release it through anger or lifting or different things, alcohol. They release it different ways. You know, a healthy release of emotions should happen every moment they come up. You know, everything we see. is light bouncing off of an object into our eyes. That's energy. Everything we hear is vibrating sound into our head, and that's energy.

And our heads fill up with all of this energy. And then the brain interprets it into a thought and into an emotion, which is more energy. So we amplify the energy. I just thought I heard them say, XYZ. That is bad. So now you have things you heard that you interpreted is bad.

Now emotions that's bad. And then you start tripping on those. Oh, maybe am I going to pay my rent because of that now like what happens next so now you create a more and more energy and if there's no way to let that out it stays there and that's essentially trauma and a form of trauma and your system at some point can only handle so much of that so definitely you know in the book i'm trying to really push a lot of honest conversations with yourself at the time so these emotions don't eventually build up and make it worse and worse for yourself and then with faith um do you attach religion to much of this uh or for yourself

Like has religion been helpful or useful to you? Or is that something you don't talk about much? Well, you know, yes and no. I think if you, if you, from my perspective, and I respect everyone's perspectives on religion, it's a sensitive topic because of the way society treats people's positions. Like everyone's allowed to have their own favorite color

and I should be able to like my own favorite food and like whatever God I want to pray to. It's just like, why would you want to kill someone because they like to eat steak and not chicken? Like it's just bizarre, like how people fight over opinions. But for me personally, I think from what I've studied, most religions all say about the same thing. A lot of my book talks about there are quotes from the Bible

and there are quotes from Eastern religions in there. The quote from the Bible is that my strength is made perfect by my weakness, which is to me it's a Bible quote in a verse. And it talks about being vulnerable. And there's quotes from Eastern religion as well. And I think they all talk about ascension or enlightenment or self-mastery or sovereignty. All of these religions, Buddhism, they all want you to be separate from your body.

They want you to beat the body. They want you to beat the urges of the body, urges of anger or fear or seduction or lust or whatever word you want to use with it. All religions are trying to steer you in a better way and have a better life, an easier life. and usually it's the body that sabotages you the fears the programs the lust the foods the hedonism you know whatever it is and so in terms of my religion i i kind of believe in all of them in a way like i don't i don't exclude i think you could be a christian and be a buddhist at the same time buddhism is really about understanding how your brain works more so than a religion you know so i kind of believe in most religions in a way i think temptation is an interesting thing

is like it, yeah, like it seems like such a great idea, whatever that is, thing is that you're tempted towards. But the abstaining can really make you a powerful person. Well, abstention through discipline is different than abstention through choice. I think, you know, people can do a lot of things with discipline. And I think you're invoking willpower, which is much more difficult than choice. I imagine for you, the life you live is much easier. because you don't fight willpower.

It's probably very easy for you. You're doing what you want to do. Willpower and discipline come in when you don't want to do that and you're fighting it. And so when you're aligned with what you want to do, it's very easy to live that life. And so if you really want to be tempted

and do something that's, you know, has potential to be seducted, whether it's food or gambling or alcohol or, you know, the opposite sex or whatever, if you really want to do that, it's harder to fight. But if you understand the futility in it from an intrinsic sovereign or self-mastery or enlightenment

or progress for your life perspective and you realize it's not really going to get you any farther, then your goals are aligned, your thoughts are aligned, and your behaviors are aligned. And that also doesn't happen in one second. It also happens with practice. What do we do with anger? Remember, it's not events that make you anger.

It's your belief in them that does. So that's a powerful one. because when I had my anger issues, which were plenty, it was a belief, usually I lost my temper around my parents for when I was younger. And the belief was that my parents shouldn't treat me that way. So, you know, you look at someone you're married to and they leave a towel on the floor all the time. And maybe you get mad at that. And you say, mad that you leave a towel on the floor. Well, why do you believe it shouldn't be there in the first place? There's a belief that she shouldn't do that is what makes you angry.

And so people are always fighting over their beliefs and angry over their beliefs. And so whenever I feel angry, it's my opportunity to decide what I need to change in myself. So anger is now never to blame somebody else. It's never someone's fault because they left a towel on the floor.

It's for me to figure out why I still believe that that I shouldn't happen. Now, it doesn't mean I have to live with it. If it's really a deal breaker, then I say, I don't want to be here. That's my accountability. What I'm thinking is just light the towel on fire every time.

whatever it is. See, we got no more towels and it's your fault. Well, if it's done in anger, that's one way. But if it's done to resolve it, it's different. If it's conscious, right? No, I think anger is a very powerful emotion and it can provide a lot of energy and motivation. But again, it needs to come with accountability.

It needs to come with understanding that it's a belief, not someone else's fault. Someone didn't make me angry because they cut me off. It's that I believe it shouldn't happen that made me angry. right and so I don't even know anything about this person cutting me out they could be racing to a funeral or the kids I don't have any idea but to believe that that shouldn't didn't see you whatever it doesn't matter to believe that it shouldn't happen is an irrational belief and that's the basis of all anger

that that quote came from epicetus who was a Greek philosopher and that was the basis for dr. Albert Ellis he's a psychologist who created modern-day cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, and that is the most used therapy today. And so Albert Ellis created that form of therapy centered around irrational beliefs. You believe there are seven irrational beliefs that all people have that create anger. And that came from that one quote from Epicetus. Irrational is just a really interesting word because, you know, if you're thinking like politically, right, or if you're thinking about somebody's beliefs in particular laws and things like that it's really easy to have a belief that kind of pigeonholes you into thinking that the other

side is so ridiculous that what they're saying is completely irrational. Right. And then we end up with like 50% of the countries here and 50% of the country is there. And it's weird because like how do we get there? How do we how do we end up thinking that if half the people think one way and half the people think the other way, then it would be rational to think that. maybe we're both kind of right. Well, or we're both kind of wrong.

But we're somehow similar, more similar than we're thinking because why would there be such a division sometimes in that? Well, to me, that just shows where people are programmed rather than having true opinions. Because you didn't pick your favorite food. You probably thought you did, but you didn't. It was your family. It was epigenetic.

It was ancestors. Where you grow up. Right. So you're like, oh, I love pizza. Well, I'm Italian. Or I hate pizza because you had so much from your kid as an Italian, you hate pizza. Like something had an effect of why love or hate pizza. And it's usually programming.

And so if you take like a really conservative, politically viewed person and you put them as a baby in a very liberal home, they would probably be a liberal. They could also be staunchly conservative as well because they're anti what they were exposed with. The point is the exposure made them think that. And so as an animal, you know, to have an opinion or to share somebody else's opinion doesn't help with their survivability, right? Your ability to jump across a ravine is more important as an animal than to think what that person thinks about to jump, right? But as humans, close-mindedness is for survival. To be close-minded, says, I'm going to, the ego wants to find comfort in stability. It finds comfort in predictive outcomes. It's sole purpose. It's sole purpose.

is to take your body to the next predictive, safe outcome. That doesn't mean it's helpful. It means it's predictively safe. And so to have an opinion and to be closed-minded is a predictively safe things to do. In fact, people will hold on to irrational beliefs and opinions and beliefs more than the logic it takes to talk them out of that. They just hold on to things. And so to be open-minded to me is a very spiritual practice.

And I think people think that they have to agree with somebody. because they stay open-minded. And I think that's a really, really big mistake for people's growth to not allow someone to at least explain their position and understand it and not fight it. Oh, yeah, and every once in a while you're just like, well, I guess we're different people.

And that's okay. We were exposed to different things. You believe different, yeah, this idea that I got to get all wound up about it. Or that you have to believe what I believe. I mean, I catch myself at times commenting on different political views And I find that my, my responses are more about people being more open than it is about the view itself. I don't care people believe.

I don't care who they vote for what religion they have or what food they eat or I don't, doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is that they become better humans. And part of being a better human is letting others have their views as well. Have your views. But don't make everyone have them also. It's okay that people have different views. Yeah, don't infringe.

I don't, you know. But they're safe. in that for a lot of people. And I think if you, you know, you're, when you're trying to explain yourself, I think it's a good idea just to not even bother to try to convince anybody really anything. Just communicate. Just talk and just say, here's, here's what I think. Here's what I, here's what I know, loosely know. And I think that's pretty advanced to Mark. I always said, my first book, I said, don't argue, don't defend. Because defending is a, is a backwards way of arguing. And arguing is changing somebody's mind.

So when you don't argue, you don't defend with anybody. You can disagree, especially with a spouse, right? If you really love this person, why would you argue with them? Or why would you defend yourself? You don't agree, okay, you said four o'clock to pick up the kids. I said three o'clock, okay, I'm stuck on three, you're stuck on four. What do you want to do now? Like, I'm not going to convince you that I said.

We're still late. Right. Exactly. Right. And so you want to be a partner and say, hey, what do we do now? let's compromise on a solution rather than trying to get. No, you said four. No, I said three.

You said four. Remember that? Remember we were doing this? Then you said three. No, I said four. Like, there's just no use in that. I love saying, hey, that's in the past. It's the same thing.

It's like it was only a second ago. It doesn't matter. It's still back there. Right. And people still want to be right too. Don't think they want to fight truth or nail. Why do you think it's important for people to be right? I don't think it's important.

I think it's just the way we're wired. All these things we've talked about go are based on one basic premise that we are and still have animal aspects in us. There are tendencies that the DNA, the primate, the mammalian aspects of us have hijacked cognition, which humans got about 45,000 years ago. And this animal side that sole purpose is to live has hijacked a higher level of intelligence and it uses it in a rudimentary form. And so all of these things about being open-minded or being lazy or being afraid or being vulnerable or comparing yourself. We're all based on that survival instincts of those remnant aspects of us.

So it's not whether it's good or bad. It's the fact we're just wired that way. And to be right says I'm surviving. To be right says I'm winning. To be right says I'm in a fight and I'm going to win. And the difference between some people's and I'm sure you've seen different people fight to be right more than others. And that's just their programming of where people give up and where others don't give

And it says a little bit about where they are in their evolution as well. Are you kind of grateful for being, for being like humbled in your life? You know, like you had a great level of success. And then as you were putting it, you felt like you had some failures and he had to kind of rebuild. Yeah. And it's kind of led you down this path. And it looks to me like you seem very healthy and vibrant. You seem super excited and passionate about all this.

And maybe you didn't have, maybe you didn't have this to think upon a few years ago. go. So it seems like an awesome gift in some way. Absolutely, it's a gift, yeah. Well, I have my crash in like 2017, 16 maybe. And yeah, no, I couldn't use any other word than humble. And one of the plays in the book is to live every day like, what do you learn at a funeral? It's called a funeral lesson, right?

We've opened to funerals, especially someone close. And you all say, oh, life is so short. And I'm going to miss this person. and life is so short and oh i'm not going to sweat the small stuff anymore and then the next day or that afternoon you completely forgot everything you've lost right from the from the funeral and if you carry that into your life and that that's to me what you call humility humility to me is you could die walk it out this back door and get by car and humility is being grateful for the life that you have walking from here to there because you really don't know when it's going to happen and humility

is legitimately living life every day the way you learn it from a funeral when you're at someone close and I think it's an important lesson. Did you feel like that you had everything figured out? Oh, before this, of course. Yeah, I think so. I didn't know what these problems. And I didn't think I had these problems because there were no answers for them.

So why I looked for problems where answers didn't exist? They just didn't materialize. I had no idea that I missed so much. Not at all. No, I was, I just thought that before I changed, it was I didn't have a good enough manager in this position. or, you know, something happened to.

Somebody else's fault. Circumstances fall. Right. You know, the economy could be better or we shouldn't have taken that project because that guy's a real jerk or, no, I thought it was something other than me, of course. How do both of your kids end up being water polo players? I have three kids.

My oldest is a musician. You plays a trumpet, which is kind of cool. And my middle son plays water polo and so is my daughter. They were swimmers and they hated swimming. It was very boring to them. And they're like, we don't want to swim anymore. We're like, well, you have to do something. the school had this like outdoor water polo program like well, I guess do that. And so they did that

and they loved it and they were talented. Water polo is pretty brutal. Really brutal. Yeah, like it like pulling each other down. It's like, seems exhausting. Oh, so I was playing catch with my daughter and she's like, come in the water and play with me. And so start treading water and like I got up a ball and I throw it. It's kind of like when you run and left weight at the same time. A couple throws into this, treading water. I'm like, I got to stop. I'm a whole time. Like I need to grab the actual here. She's like, we started. We're doing warmups. I say, well, there's a warmups for me.

No, the treading water and then throwing is like. Like pull each other down with their legs and stuff and all kinds of tactics. I remember my daughter scored this goal or something and she's like, oh, that was a good goal. I was swimming, dad, and I grabbed the girl's strings from her from her cap. And I grabbed him and I pulled her head underwater. And the ref didn't see it. And then I dunked her, so I got a clean shot off at the goal. And she was proud of that.

I'm like, what a great girl, good job. It's pretty funny. That's great. Where can people find you? Where can they find your book? The book's on Amazon. It's also on my website and Dave RossiGlobal.com. I'm on Instagram, Dave Rossi Global, and on TikTok at Dave Rossi Global.

Thank you so much for your time today. Appreciate it. Yeah, Mark, thank you for having me. It's been a great time. Thank you. Strength is never weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch you guys later.

Bye.