Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1885: Dr. John Delony on Relationships, Mental Health & Crisis Management

Episode Date: August 22, 2022

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin speak with Dr. John Delony. From nerd to YouTuber. (2:43) How do you stay mentally healthy helping people in crisis? (4:00) What makes him good at what he does? (7:31) Knowledge vs. Wisdom. (11:12) Helping your kids navigate the instant gratification landscape. (13:41) How your body puts GPS pins in things. (16:20) Marriage takes practice and communication. (24:00) The impact of the pandemic on our children’s development. (29:11) The greatest virtue is isolation. (33:00) His opinions on social media. (42:18) The social media activist. (49:42) Why you can’t wait until there is a THING to develop a relationship with your children. (53:35) The gifts you can give your children going through a divorce. (58:49) The steps you can take to begin to work on yourself. (1:02:43) The value of therapy. (1:09:53) The importance of live events and being in touch with your community. (1:13:10) The pros and cons of psychedelics. (1:17:35) What contributes to a successful relationship? (1:23:45) What makes a good counselor and patient? (1:31:13) His take on monogamy. (1:32:50) Have we pathologized discomfort? (1:40:23) What perpetuates the next fitness machine? (1:44:50) The battle for long-form conversations. (1:49:00) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit NutriSense for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code MINDPUMP at checkout** August Special: MAPS STARTER value $97 or PRIME PRO BUNDLE value $197 you get it for HALF OFF!!! **Promo Code AUGUST50 at checkout** The Dr. John Delony Show | RamseySolutions.com Own Your Past Change Your Future: A Not-So-Complicated Approach to Relationships, Mental Health & Wellness – Book by Dr. John Delony The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma Diaphragmatic Breathing Exercises & Techniques Thinking, Fast and Slow – Book by Daniel Kahneman How Does Wearing Masks Affect Children? - NIH COVID-19 Research The Impact of Masks on Social and Emotional Development Mind Pump #872: Dr. Warren Farrell- The Boy Crisis The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort To Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self – Book by Michael Easter Depression is not caused by a ‘chemical imbalance’ in the brain | Metro News Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies - MAPS Largest ever psychedelics study maps changes of conscious awareness to neurotransmitter systems The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country’s Foremost Relationship Expert Marriage and Couples – Research | The Gottman Institute Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships Infinite Jest – Book by David Foster Wallace Mind Pump #1572: Is Tonal Worth The Money? With Aly Orady Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources Featured Guest/People Mentioned Dr. John Delony (@johndelony)  Instagram Warren Farrell, PhD (@drwarrenfarrell)  Twitter Andrew Huberman, Ph.D. (@hubermanlab)  Instagram Esther Perel (@estherperelofficial)  Instagram Jordan Peterson (@jordan.b.peterson)  Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind, hop, mind, hop with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mindpop, right in today's episode, special guest, Dr. John Deloney. This guy is brilliant and the way he communicates is so effective. And in today's episode we talk about relationships, mental health, and crisis management. He's got a very popular podcast called The Dr. John Deloney

Show. You got to check that out. It's very, very popular. You also wrote a book called Own Your Past, Change Your Future, and not so complicated approach to relationships, mental health, and wellness. You got to check it out. It's amazing, but first listen to this episode. It's really, really cool. Now, this episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Nutrisense. So this is a company that works with CGM. So this is a continual glucose monitor,

but you also work with somebody who helps you with your nutrition. So what does a CGM do? It measures your glucose in real time, helps you attach it to your behaviors, your moods, stress, and the foods that you eat. And then somebody on the other side helps coach you with your diet and nutrition to help you achieve your goal. So this is like the most accurate type of nutrition coaching

you could ever get because you have real feedback in real time. It's it's incredible. We think it's groundbreaking. Go check this company out. It's incredible. We think it's groundbreaking. Go check this company out. It's called Nutrisense.io. So Nutrisense, NUT, R-I-S-E-N-S-E.io, forward slash mine pump. And then if you use the code, mine pump, you get $30 off. Also, we got a sale going on right now. Maps Starter, this is a beginner strength training program, is 50% off, and then our prime bundle, which includes Maps Prime, Maps Prime Pro, you're good for mobility, for strengthening and correcting deviations, helping with correctional exercise, is also

50% off. So the prime bundle 50% off, and Maps Starter 50% off, you can find both of these at MapsFitnessProducts.com, but you got to use the code August 50 for the 50% off, you can find both of these at maps fitness products.com, but you got to use the code August 50 for the 50% off discount. All right, here comes the show. John, thanks for coming on. Thanks, you're welcome. I want to open by talking, because off air, we're talking a little bit about your background

fascinating. So before you became this like media personality that's exploded, what were you doing before? I was a nerd man. I was a dean of students at universities and I was working with college kids and their families and I was a professor. I was just a dude. I was a nerd. And in the evenings, my old man was a hot hostage negotiator and a homicide detective in Houston growing up. And so I always had this, when things went down in the city, he always had this little cocky grin, and he'd pull the provest on,

and he would go into what was going on. So I just kind of was raised with that. And I thought that's kind of like when your dad's, like, whatever your dad does, you think it's just the way that is, right? And so I started working crisis response with victim services units, what they call it. But I would show up in the middle of the night

and sit with people who do help with death notifications, sit with people whose kids who'd taken their life, and now you got a mother figuring out what happens next, or somebody's husband passes away or wife passed away. So just sitting with people when the wheels had fallen off. And that's been my career, and then I gave a speech at this event and here now. Now, as my son says, dad, you're not that cool.

You're a YouTuber now. I'm gonna say, I mean, how do you stay mentally healthy helping, because I've had conversations with friends and family through tough times, and it really affects me. It's really challenging. I feel it for a while. To do something like that means you simultaneously care a lot about helping people, but then you're able to also,

I mean, what do you have to compartmentalize that? How does that work? I think in the moment you've got to compartmentalize it, because you've got to show up and be with somebody. And I think this idea of distance doesn't help people. When you're hurting and somebody's with you, but they're not with you, right? Someone's sitting with you, when your spouse is with you

and they're on the phone, you know that they're not with you. Right. And so when you show up and somebody's kid is died, you got to be all in. I think it's the process on the back end, right? I have to have a process, whatever that is, and everybody's looks different, but you have to say, I'm setting that breakdown, and I got to go be with my family. Are there commonalities in people's successful processes with dealing with things like this to be able to navigate the physical the people, physical movement, you gotta get sleep.

You gotta do all the things upstream to keep your body healthy so you can show up in these hard moments and then get back out. And you can look at police officers who've been doing that for 30 years and they're overweight and they're exhausted and they eat most of their meals in their car, right? Or our buddies who come home from overseas,

you get that crew that goes straight to the gym and you get those that just kinda of dad it out, right? And then their bodies wear that. So yeah, I think you have to care yourself. But the big deal is I had a supervisor who would call every night. 2 a.m. I'm headed home, dealing with two small dead toddlers. He'd call, say, would you see, how are you,

tell me what your body's feeling, calling me tomorrow? And so it was always this human, human check-in, and then you can say it out loud. Wow. So, I mean, you were following your dad to these crisis situations, like, no, no, no, no, no, no, I was a little kid, just watching it happen.

Okay, and then that inspired you to then, that's right, make that your career. Yeah. How old were you when you decided, like, okay, is this something I want to pursue? I wanted to be a psychologist, when I was a I want pursue? I wanted to be a psychologist, when I was a little kid, and I wanted to be in the FBI.

I was told, man, it was a homicide detective and I was like, the cooler thing would be the FBI. And then in 20, it was August of 2021, I went and met with a guy, some guru, and he's like, FBI is starting this big downsizing process. They're never gonna hire you go find something else And then not 11 happened and it's been like this massive high. I mean, but I just took a different path Wow, it's good so the last for someone like you the last few years must have been

both I guess interesting because you're in this like laboratory of Insanity for sure, but also kind of like, I must have been a whirlwind, can you explain what's that been for you being an expert in mental health? Also being in the limelight and having to do that too, which is probably a little bit different than being able to handle one on one. When you say things now, you probably have that.

Okay, I've got millions of people that are gonna listen to me too when I say this. I can't go there or shut me down. Oh really? So it's a big deal for me that like, we're just four guys having a conversation. And like three cool guys that just met who were super hospitable,

we're just gonna hang out for a couple hours and talk about like I'm excited to learn from you guys, right? If I start thinking, do you know wonder how many people and I need to sit like this so that I'll go crazy. Right, and so the joke I always say is, Kelly the show producer, she's just taking what I've been doing for 20 years,

just putting those phone calls, now she just puts them on the internet. And I gotta go about my day. And so, yeah, I stay pretty disassociated from all that. I have to, I can't plug into it. What are the skills necessary you think for someone like you to do what you do? What makes you good at what you do?

God tell you, I've been wrestling with that because I've been introduced, I had no social media for I took this job. I didn't have any of it. And I've always thought it was a cancer. Like it just when I watched my students over the arc of 20 years, they just pulled their souls up from them, right? Like a mentor, like a, like a little kid's a Harry Potter thing. Like a Harry Potter character.

And so now I've been introducing the last couple of years to this thing called the Influencer, whatever that is. It's, it's, it's, it's wild. Yeah. Because I'll, like, what are you talking about? Like, and where did you get the club with that info? And so I've been trying to think like, what is wisdom?

And this, y'all, pitch in on this, it's somebody who's walked their own journey, had to look in the mirror and deal with their own demons. They've got the academic insight. They read the studies, they know what they're talking about when it comes to the info. And then I think equally important, you will walk the long side a bunch of other people doing it too, right? So I can have my own, I can go lift weights and know how my body responds to this diet

and this lifting in the morning, this evening. But if I've done it with 200 people and I've got a bigger sample size, and if I read the data, then I can, that's a wise person, right? So I think you have to have all three of them. I would add to that from the research I've done on you and listening to you talk,

I think you're a master communicator too. I think that takes, and I don't know if you're... Yeah, that's just reps. Is it just reps? I don't know if you actively are trying to be better at that or you've read a lot or that's just natural for you, but you know, the ability to talk to people in a situation like they're most of the people you get, right? You're very empathetic. You're very smart with the way you

choose the words that you choose when you're describing them. I mean, a lot of these people are in a very tense, emotional state. And so how you communicate them is so, I mean, it reminds me of being a trainer and you got somebody who is broken and they've put on all this weight and they're trying to solve this problem

and they think it's a numbers thing and you know that there's something deeper there. And to get to that, it takes a lot of skill to like navigate to pull that out. I think you do that there's something deeper there. But to get to that, it takes a lot of skill to like navigate to pull that out. I think you do that really. I appreciate that. Yeah, really, really well. To me, the two guiding words are with not at.

And so if somebody's, if I show up to somebody's house and their toddler's passed away in the next room and I can tell you, here's a good example, man. This is just me hating on myself. My wife, we had Hank and then we had a period of a couple years of just miscarriage than another one. And then the third was an ectopic pregnancy at ruptured. And I married an old, tough West Texas farm girl.

She was like, this isn't happening. And she tried to flex through it, right? And almost bled out in her house and Lucky for her she was married to a crisis expert like a trauma guy and so I had dude I would tell her this is a shameful. I would tell her what she should be feeling I would tell her what she should be thinking I would say like I mean you can cry But your body's just doing I gave her all the charging graphs, and I completely missed, right? And that was an inside of my house moment. Dude, you show up in the middle of the night,

somebody calls you on my show, you are with them. The at stuff, like I'm not giving you, you need to do 10 reps, you need to do this many sets, and that somebody's coming to you who's like, can you help me? I don't, I can't stand what I see in the mirror anymore. My mirror just fell on a part,

because of my, the way I look, I'm gonna be with you. And now I'm gonna hear what you have to like, can you help me? I don't, I can't stand what I see in the mirror anymore. My mirror just fell on a part because of my, the way I look, I'm going to be with you. And now I'm going to hear what you have to say, right? I can see it on you. You clearly know what you're talking about. Can we, can you be with me on this? And then you say, here's what, here's what we need to do. And I'll do that, right? So it's, that's the shift, I think.

Yeah, John, you mentioned wisdom. I want to go there because I remember, I mean, I'm old enough to remember when the internet went from nobody used it to, it just really exploded. In all of a sudden, we had access to, I mean, all theoretically, right? All of recorded human history at our fingertips. And I remember as a trainer talking with clients about this, and I was young, so I thought, I said, oh man, we we're gonna see incredible progress because The all of our problems are gonna be solved because we're gonna have all the knowledge right?

We're gonna have all the knowledge. It's gonna be at our fingertips and it's gonna be just this utopia and when I did a Happening is we have flat earth I'm not a fan of the way you do it. I'm not a fan of the way you do it. I'm not a fan of the way you do it. I'm not a fan of the way you do it. I'm not a fan of the way you do it. I'm not a fan of the way you do it. I'm not a fan of the way you do it.

I'm not a fan of the way you do it. I'm not a fan of the way you do it. I'm not a fan of the way you do it. I'm not a fan of the way you do it. I'm not a fan of the way you do it. I'm not a fan of the way you do it. I'm not a fan of the, I guess, what are the effects of this? Have you, am I saying anything that's accurate? Yeah, yeah. If I think about violence and pornography and things like that,

here's what shifted in all of human history, if you witnessed violence, you were there. You participated in it or you watched it. And you got to see, remember we were kids, and there'd be a fight. And you'd hear somebody get hit. It rippled through the, like, I don't want any, like it made violence very visceral and real.

Or to see a naked body 150 years ago, you had to be in the vicinity of a naked body. Right, right. And so now we have, as we have a bunch of folks who are able to get data, right? I can see a photo of somebody. I can see lots of violence, I can see, you know,

Kiana Reeves running around, shooting gunside, Waze on horses with swords or whatever. And I get the inside, the picture of what that looks like, but I'm missing what that means. And so we've probably all old enough to have burned an entire movie,

trying to like reach over and like, are we gonna grab her hand like close I'm gonna get close enough but not to I don't want right and you just I don't even know what movies are like I'm trying to all that's all over there's an art to it right there's an art to intimacy there's an art to violence shut up I'm not shutting up you shut like there's an art to it and now it's just instant right it's just instant instant instant and so I think we have shot past our bodies ability to absorb this insight,

this knowledge. And by the way, it keeps going too fast, man. It's just like an, it's an avalanche. This is such a fascinating, this is a fascinating conversation because we talk about this. We all have kids, right? So thinking about our kids, and I know you have two kids, right? So you know, how do you, how do you communicate that to your kids or what are you doing right now to try and help them through that process because you know how important that was in the role of you understanding all those things. What would you communicate that to your kids right now or you just aware of how much screen time they're consuming like how do you manage that as a parent so this is awesome. So I graduated in 2010 with my big fancy education PhD at the I was y'all know that guy that like gets the letters and like has to tell her like,

oh, it's a worse. It was an alien idiot, dude. And then I had my own struggles with mental health stuff. I was watching my students melt. My marriage was hanging on by dental floss. So I ended up, I was working at a university that just gave you a free class like every semester. And so I nickel and dime my way to a second PhD in counseling I only didn't know what is happening to me wasn't to get the certificate

It was like I need to figure out what's going on Oh wow As a part of that as an old guy I had to go back and be an intern I had to be a practical and I did it with this Child psychologist who is a savant his name is Michael Gomez he worked at Brown now. He's a, I mean, his head's a hundred times faster than mine. And we were going from room to room working with traumatized kids, it's actually abuse kids. And I also had, my son was really little at the time.

And so I was asking these veiled counseling questions, but I was really asking like dad advice questions. And we were with one little boy who was saying some crazy things about women. Like I couldn't believe they were coming out of this little boy's mouth. Clearly he'd picked this up from his environment, right? And so we were walking from room to room

and I asked Dr. Gomez like, what are you supposed to say to a little boy to teach him to respect women? He's like, what do you say? And he caught on real quick and he smiled at me and he goes, I'm gonna tell him whatever you want to, but he's just gonna watch you. and he smiled at me and he goes, I'm telling him whatever you want to, but he's just going to watch you. Right. And I was putting me and he goes,

kids don't listen to you. They watch you. I was like, oh, no, right? Because I was so cast, I can be my wife always poking at each other. But and that's how my son was picking it up. So I tell you that to tell you, it's a big deal. He's got to go be involved and put his hands on stuff. Right. It's the reason why I take him hunting with me. Even though it cuts our opportunity for success,

at 90% chance we're gonna fail, because I got a seven year old banging pots and pans, like walking down a, right? We're not just gonna happen, but I want him to understand what it feels like to get up early and to work real hard and to plan for something and to honor an animal. I bring him along those things,

we bring him to funerals, I don't hide that stuff from him, and I'd rather him have interaction time with me than get it from a video game, right? Or get it from a screen. So yeah, you mentioned getting the information, but not, I guess, for lack of a better term, feeling through the body. And we've never separated the two in human history. They've always been connected. It has to be. But now they're separate. And I'm reading a book right now. I'm in the, I'm just in the beginning, I think it's called the Body Keeps the Score.

I'm not sure if it's a masterpiece. Okay, so great book. And the author talks about how processing trauma, like you can, you can try to block it off, but if you don't process it physically or go through it, or there's this process of moving through this trauma, it'll never get processed. It gets stored in the body.

Your body holds it. Is that something similar that's happening when we're doing things like you mentioned pornography, for example, separating the, you know, before I had to meet someone and I had to, you know, I had to flirt with them and then win them over and there's this whole thing that goes,

now we don't have that, we just look at pictures or videos or whatever. What's happening by separating the two? There's hormones, the chemical, like so your heart beats a little bit faster and the oxytocin releases and the dopamine, like all of that is, it's out the two. There's hormones, it's chemical, so your heart beats a little bit faster and the oxytocin releases and the dopamine. Like all of that is, it's out the window. It's a fire hose now, right?

And your brain can't keep up with it. And it's not designed to keep up with that, right? It's designed to have this slow build to it. Part about the trauma, the way I like to explain it, Vannacol is so much smarter. You know, guys, a savant. Is your body puts GPS pins and things. Like your little kid and you hear dad drive up,

you know I should probably, I'm just gonna get small, right? Or he's gonna come and swing and I gotta get between him and mom and dad. I mean, between him and mom and little brother. Your heart's just being a little faster, the cortisol starts pumping and you just start feeling that. And then you fast forward 10 years and your wife drives up in that same,

your body remembers it. It's like, okay, here comes the car, little adrenaline, and your wife comes in, you're like, I don't know why I'm tens. I don't know why I'm like, but you are, and it must be her fault. And I start looking for wisest her faults, and it could be the shoes on the floor,

and so now we're in a dance and she knows whenever I'm like this, she remembers that, right? From her, her little GPS is like when dad's shoulders go up, you better back up and get small. And so now we're in a dance that kept us alive when we were kids and now it's causing a problem here. And so I think that, yeah, that body remembers everything. And it also doesn't remember things

that it didn't have access to, right? Oh, wow. So if you don't have a to, right? Oh, wow. So you don't have relate like trauma is affirmative. It happened to you and it's also things that didn't happen that should have. Someone should have told you that you had value in that you were worth being loved when you were a kid. So is it safe to say that these are essentially survival shortcuts that are created and when I say shortcuts meaning their process and the parts of the brain that are designed to be fast. And they're scanned in 24, 7, 365. Okay.

And they're frontal low, right? That's the slow. Yeah, that's the old man. Exactly the full chain. That's the wisdom. Okay. And that's when you try to explain it afterwards, well, it must be my wife's fault.

Oh, it's probably this. Because you're trying to process this automatic, how the heck do you stop that? That's why we become so obsessed as a culture with mindfulness. All that is is listening to the slowing it down. Oh, why is my body taking off on me right now? It's just that small break of curiosity.

You've heard that thing between the stimulus and response, that gap, you call it. If I can just sit there, like my heart's beating faster, my wife's driving up. I love her, she's awesome. I can't wait till she gets home. And then you ask her, like, what was my body trying to protect me from?

And it could be, I didn't put, I threw socks on the floor, or it could be something as benign as that, or we didn't have a hard conversation that I've been avoiding, or I just need to learn that when she comes home, it's all good. And we make so much character judges,

and we get all pissed off and raged up, instead of just being curious about it, man. Interesting. So what it comes to me in terms of like one of the most challenging steps, is just to be aware that that's happened How do you other practices somebody you have is it listening to people you care about be like maybe I should believe my wife when she says I act a particular way Instead of defending myself or like what would be a good way to try to become

To me the magic is my bike like Yeah, oh gosh, it sounds so woo-woo dude like we should just gonna roll at yoga masters Yeah, oh gosh, it sounds so woo-woo dude, like we should just roll out yoga masks. That's okay. I think we have in our pursuit of info, of knowledge, wisdom is things I can read in a book, we have completely discounted what our bodies are trying to tell us. Right? Something like anxiety, like it's just your body trying to get your attention man. It's not a thing to be solved, it's just an alarm system.

And so it's listening to that smoke alarm going off, right? Why is my heart beating faster? Why am I getting pissed off all of a sudden? My wife just told me, I need you to help. Can you go down stairs and grab something? I was clearly in the middle of another project. She's like, hey, can you go with the dog food out of the car downstairs in the basement?

I got mad, like my body was like, and then I thought, why am I am I why what am I getting mad? I'm outside working on we're building this big old garden and she didn't stop and appreciate me and all the work I know in this in this Tennessee heat that's what that was about I had nothing to do with health in my wife And it took me eight point eight seconds to think through that and then go go help Like look I'm not gonna get from that. Yeah, but that's it so but that's years of practice I was just gonna say of thinking to yourself so we're disconnected from our body essentially and they go, go help them. Like, who am I gonna get from that? Yeah, but that's it. So, but that's- That's years of practice. I was just gonna say of thinking to yourself.

So, we're disconnected from our body essentially. You know what's weird, what totally came to mind when you said that is, I remember specifically, it was a moment, and then this happened a few times after. I had learned the, how to teach my clients, how to belly breathe. So, I had learned this through somebody

that I worked with who, you know, she taught meditation, and I saw value in belly breathing to get my clients to have better form with exercise at some points, okay? Because it would bring their sympathetic system, you know, you know, it would get them in this more kind of a relaxed state. And we could do mobility and stuff. And I remember, I was like, one of the first times I did this, I got this client, I had her come in, I took her in this room, I used to have a wellness studio.

And I turned the lights down because I remember that's what I learned. I turned the lights down a little bit, turned off the music. So it's quiet. And I taught her how to belly breathe. And the way I taught her was I'd have her lay on the floor,, because I remember, that's what I learned. I turned the lights down a little bit, turn off the music, so it's quiet. And I taught her how to belly breathe. And the way I taught her was I'd have her lay on the floor, went hand under belly, went hand her chest, and I said, make sure that the hand on the belly rises first before the chest, and then so I walked to this process. And we did this, and at like 10 belly breaths, and this one was totally fine, which I mean,

she started crying. Sure, crying, yeah. And I was like, what did I do? I had no idea what I did, and I had to, whatever. And so, and then that happened again, and I talked to my friend, and I said, what did I do? I had no idea what I did and how to, whatever. And so, and then that happened again. And I talked to my friend and I said, why are they crying when I'm having them belly breathing? She said, well, the processing emotions

that they stored in their body. And I thought that was the craziest weirdest thing ever, hers for sure. Yeah, so and that's kind of what happened. Is that, is what's happening there? Is that just the transition from you switching from how your brain is processing information? Like, I don't know how familiar you are.

Or letting yourself feel it familiar with like, Daniel Kennamens' work and stuff like that, like what he did with the thinking fast, thinking slow, like, is that what's happening? Is that person maybe is like always in the monkey brain of like fast thinking and then also you get them to breathe down and then they transition and then for the first time ever,

they have to like really process and think about things. Is that what's it? I don't know enough about the thinking physiology, how the like how it switches from this thinking to this thinking. I on just a basic level, I know the body holds emotions and I know that we are coached in our current culture to not let them out. And if you let them out, then you are somehow dysfunctional, you're not in control, you're a coward, you're a

weak, or whatever you want to say. And so there's something important about, important about learning how to feel feelings, right? And that sounds like the cheesiest lame is thing. But if I can't acknowledge out loud, I'm pissed off, then I can't possibly get to the other side of that and ask myself, why am I mad? Which then is going to lead me into, oh, because I'm acting like a whiny baby, because I want my wife to pat me on the back for things that, hey, I agreed to do, be where my idea, and see, I moved us to Tennessee, I know it's hot, I don't need to get an award for this. Like, I can never get there if I can't acknowledge in the first place that it's not her, but that

I'm the one, I'm the only one who can decide I'm gonna be frustrated about that. Now, how good are you once you piece that together, how good are you as a husband of coming back and communicating that? And how important is that? It was us sitting down and saying, are we gonna stay mirrored?

It took that. And then from there, it was like, okay, then this is what has to be different. And so I'm pretty good about it now, but I wasn't for the first 10 or 15 years we were made. It takes practice. Yeah, that's the magic word. And you also use that in your book, which it's if we would shift the, that dudes week or that dudes socks or that dudes superlent. We'd make these characters.

She's insane. Not that he's practicing because he didn't have a picture from what his old man gave him. He didn't have, there's no pictures in the media of what masculinity looks like in a healthy way. He's practicing this, and let's get there. And if I tell my wife, I'm practicing coming back. I used to tell my students, when I would call them in, be like,

hey, they found like a brick of hair in your room. You're selling heroin, and I would always stop and say, I just called you in here, cold, asked you a hard question, and you're probably gonna tell me, no, this doesn't mine, it's your roommates. That's cool. You get 24 hours to circle back in here and tell me the truth of what happened,

and then I'm gonna take it as though you told me the truth now. And if I find out you're being dishonest with me, we're gonna have a way bigger problem because I don't mind sitting and sit, well, if your son will break a heroin, that's a whole other thing. But I don't mind sitting in somebody out who makes a stupid 20 year old mistake. I don't want to put my university certificate on your wall

if you're not a person of integrity, different conversation. And so I'd give people 24 hours, because I know that they're 18 and they're practicing integrity, right? They're practicing telling the truth when things are hard. And so if we can shift that language to practice, manage everything, I think. Do you find differences in communicating,

generally speaking, to men and women when it comes to trauma? I mean, I think traditionally, okay, so maybe you can go into that little, what do you think? It's just, we've been given two paths, right? One is you are your feelings. It's the, we've been given two paths. Right, one is you are your feelings. It's the most important thing. However you feel on a given day is what, my favorite phrase right now,

and I say that ironically is your truth. Like that's not a thing. Right. So you are your feelings, you are whatever you feel in this moment and we're gonna go that route. The other side is equally insidious is if you have feelings, it's because you're weak, you're coward, you just suck it up, grind it and kill it.

And so for me, it's a third path, which is you got to feel this stuff and then you have to go act, right? You still got to go do what's right, right? So it's a context, not an excuse. And so, yes, I'm talking to men, it's if I have a feeling, my wife doesn't want to hear me have feelings and I'm like, dude, that's all she wants you to have. And the other side of it is, is like, I just need to keep, I can't get up and do anything because I'm just so, I don't feel it, I'm not motivated, I don't feel, okay, cool, you don't feel motivated, awesome. You said you were going to get to work out in the day, you said you're going to tell

your wife you're sorry, you said you're going to go apologize to child for being to address, like, go do what you gotta do. Even if you don't feel like it, right? So it's both am, man. Yeah, this is my wife and I do this a lot, and we learn a lot from each other. Tell me the other. Oh, same thing. I mean, I am much better at it now,

but I didn't even know I had certain feelings, like, need me to acknowledge that I had certain feelings and she'd bring it up, and I'm like, no, that doesn't even acknowledge that I had certain feelings, and she'd bring it up, and like, nah, that doesn't bother me, I'm fine. She's like, are you sure? We'll see. Let's see if it if you really do you don't, but here's your behaviors.

And so, did your wife ever have a thing like where, maybe when you were dating her first mood, you all would be out of the club or out with friends, whatever, and she would just gently put her hand on your arm and say, we need to go. And my wife, I come to find out years later,

she's like, I could tell by your jaw, like the way you're holding your mouth, there was about to be a problem. Or that I saw somebody do a thing that I saw you see it, we should probably go. And I was like, no, man, why are you, but she's like, I could feel your sadness, I could feel your anger, I could feel your frustration

on you before you didn't even know what it is. And I could feel it on you. And then she's acting like my conscience, like we should probably go. And that's taking me 20 years to develop that voice in my own head. You know, there's a test that, maybe this is, I don't know if it's true or false,

but I remember reading about this test, where they have a picture of just eyes. So it's a face, but they just show the eyes, and you have to try to guess the emotion, and man apparently are notoriously terrible at it. And women are really, really good at being able to guess the emotion, and man apparently are notoriously terrible at it. And women are really, really good at being able to read the emotion. Okay, but think about that, think about that. Like, evolutionarily.

Like, we got bigger, like, it makes sense to me. I've read that. Paul Eckman's work, remember the face reader, there was like a TV show about it. Okay. We're as real good about reading, like, the whole psychology of the face and emotions. But it makes sense to me that if you kids are notoriously good at, especially kids from

abused households at reading body language. Interesting. Because they have to. I got to get out of here, or this isn't safe, or he's about to hit little Suzy and I got to get between them. And so it doesn't make, it doesn't surprise me that over eons women Who are smaller don't have as big of muscles and have to protect themselves and so they get really good at? Hmm. I got to know from just from your eyes whether I'm safe or not. That makes sense.

Interesting speaking of reading faces and you talked about kids here and obviously we know children's brains or I mean our brains are always plastic But they're very very plastic when we're little. I mean they just, they grow and change so rapidly based on their environments, based off the research that I've, they're right, big time. We just recently went through a period where, and I, this is my opinion, okay, but I think I'm, I think I'm right on this, that we had some knee jerk fear-based reactions to a pandemic where we forced children, really young children, to wear masks over their faces. And I was very vocal about this on our show. And I said, I don't think it's a good idea.

First off, four-year-old, it's hard to keep a four-year-old, to keep their socks on, let alone a mask properly. But also, like, they're around other kids, they can't read facial expressions that probably is going to have some effects mentally or socially. Are we seeing any of that? or what are your opinions on that? I think, so I like to take the, the emotion part out of it. Even if it was the greatest right thing to do, meaning, if I'm driving down the highway in a semi-scoming at me,

and there's a Volkswagen Beetle next to me, I'm gonna swerve and hit that Volkswagen Beetle and we're gonna come to a crashing stop. It's not a good thing. It was better than getting hit head on by a semi, right? So taking out whether it was right or wrong or super ever, we did it, right? And I think the fact that we did it's gonna be

a hundred year issue because you got kids development, you've got brain development and we don't know. It's just a dice roll. I haven't been able to parse through the literature that doesn't just feel partisan to me. And so where I go whenever that happens, is back to the wisdom conversation, is just teachers. And that's, I was a high school teacher for a few years before I worked in higher ed. My wife was a researcher for on teachers and education and pedagogy. So that's our world of teachers.

And they're the ones telling me language development is different, auditory stuff that not being able to hear and see words and things in mouth form. Kids that got comfortable behind that mask, right? You see that now it's wild. I see areas where you're doing at the wearer mask. I see this all time now where I'll see it. The kid feels less safe. And the kid's still wearing a mask.

And then the parents aren't in like, and then I remember salting. Oh, and then having my daughter. So my two, one two. Okay. I had to tell her you have to take this off. And it wasn't a mean thing. It was she had developed.

It was just like if the kid who wears their hair in front of their face, right? As a way of protecting himself from the world, you have to face this. Right? And so, yeah, we had to do that. Yeah, same thing because it was, I mean, the form of it all years. My daughter was in, I think, with a fifth grade, a fourth or fifth grade when it started. And so, you know, a fifth, sixth, right?

Then they took off the, man, they weren't here in California, so they lasted for a long time here. Then they took, but all of them continued to wear them. And I could tell that it was like she was hiding almost. Like how do I, you know, and hopefully when they go back, they'll take them off. It feels like to me that we were actually heading for the Volkswagen and we might have swerved into the semi. But we may have served so hard to hit the Volkswagen

and we both went off the side of the bridge, right? That's what I feel like. I mean, I get the analogy. I think it's such a great way to put it, but I think what we're gonna find out down the road is that we missed the Volkswagen. Here's the bigger thing for me has been watching, we'll figure out what we did to their neurology. We'll figure that out, right?

And I also don't want to discount kids or an notoriously resilient, right? If they're if, and here's the magic part, if they're surrounded by mature adults, and that I'm way more concerned about the last two years, kids absorbing their parents' tension, or rage and anger, that stuff sets long-term traumatrends that their bodies will be trying to solve

for years and years and years, right? Yeah. It's just adults acting like children over the last couple of years. Yeah, you know what else, John, that I saw, and again, I'd love your input on this. And I noticed this as a trainer. At one point, I started training a lot of clients in advanced age. And I would see some of this with them as well. But I saw some of my grandparents.

So when everything first happened, my grandfather's 90, my grandmother's mid 80s. And I come from a big Italian family. We're very social. We meet with each other quite often and we're always together. But when everything happened, everybody's like, okay, we can't visit grandma and grandpa. We got to stay away to keep them safe.

So what we did is we buy him groceries, drop him off at the door, but we didn't see them. And it was about, I would say it was at least a year, maybe a little less than a year before we finally said, you know what, we need to go and be with them physically, not FaceTime, but actually be with them physically. Their health declined. And that it was like a 10 month period more than in the previous, like 10 years. And it really highlighted to me how valuable, how important us as humans,

just being, I mean, we're social creatures. Did we totally just discredit that? Like, oh, that's not a big deal. Well, I just became the greatest virtue as isolation. And so it would be like if it became a virtue to not drink water. Like, I just became the coolest, like the way you can love your community the best

is have no water. It's like, okay man, cool. And we would all be crawling around on the floor because we're dehydrated and our bodies can't function. And so yes, we cannot, that's where initially I was all good with masks because it put people back in the same room at least. If that's what it's gonna take for us to get back,

cool, man, I'll wear a Darth Vader suit if I can be around other people because I know what that does to my physiology, right? So that does surprise me at all. And when I talk about the hundred year arc, there's gonna be hell to pay as a culture that we let that many people who are elderly die alone. That's wrong, that's wrong.

That we let mothers and sons and fathers sit in hospital beds with nobody, right, for weeks on end. Man, that's a character statement of who we were, right, and who we were. So who we restricted a bit of facial recognition, but we also, you know, really removed ourselves from human physical contact as well. Right. So what- And our bodies are co-regulated, right?

Right. And the value of touch, like how much of touch like goes into our human psychology. Everything. I, one of my professors, she used to work with sexually traumatized kids that were infants. And she would, it was genius, but they were reintroducing,

they have to reintroduce touch in a positive way. So it's like a kid who was drowning, they stuffed the drink water, right? So if they've developed this water phobia, they got it, I got to reintroduce touch in a positive way. So it's like a kid who was drowning, they stuffed the drink water, right? So if they've developed this water phobia, I got to reintroduce it. So they would take these little young, young kids, and they would just rub their feet with lotion. And what they were doing is taking

I am a safe caregiver, and here's what good touch feels like. I got to reintroduce it, because it's everything. And then fast forward 15 years later, I was working at one university in the HR onboarding process. You got to go filling They recommended the air high five to avoid any any confusion. I remember sitting there going No, this is where we are this is where we are we are taking oxygen out of human contact and then say and go to your best And you can't man. Yeah, well, what was that study? So you shared it a long time ago

It was that so Sal, you shared it a long time ago? It was... Yes, the Soviets. The babies, the babies. The babies. They were just... Yeah, so maybe we got it. So what happened in that study? So they took kids, maybe explain it. They gave them all the nutrients, and they gave them all like the warmth and all comfort. They just took away...

Human touch. Yeah, they divided the group too. They took one group that they actually hugged them and held them. The other group, they just fed them. And they failed to thrive. Yeah, they just, their body's quit. There's a fascinating study I was just reading the other day about. And it's an old study about showing, so they have these mirror things.

They'll have a screen up with a baby's mom, but it's being videoed. And so mom is responding in real time to what this baby's doing. The baby can actually hang. It's when they took a picture of a mom smiling face, put it on the screen, and just left it frozen. And so the baby's seeing mom in her most love, like her most connected and loving, but it wasn't responding. Because there's no baby gets starts rocking and because it's, it's not right. I'm not connected, right? And there's just not this co-regulation there, man. It was powerful. But you got to be in a room with other people.

We got to figure that out. Wow. Wow. Yeah. I remember reading to of the value of Rough House for fathers and daughters. Yes. Because and I remember who was it that we had on the show? I can't believe I forgot his name. He's the one that we ran the Feminist Act. He was part of them early on and can't think of his

doctor. Doug will pull it up and I'm early on. And can't think of his doctor. Doug will pull it up. And I'm really upset that I can't remember the thing. The feminist act? No, no, no. He was part of this feminist movement. He was part of the feminist movement early on. And then his whole book is

Warren Farr. Warren Farr. Yeah, Warren Farr. So, and he's really talks about the role of fathers and how important they are with children. And one thing that he said was, it's important for fathers to rough house with their daughters because they can help some learn that it's okay

that a man touches you is so long as it's safe and it's in a particular way. So it's not like you're no don't touch. They gotta know that they can also be touched but also know to discern safe, not safe. Yeah. And I thought that was upside down to my mind. Well, yeah, validated a lot of,

I mean, my sons are very energetic you know, energetic and rough house. Like we, all the time, but what's interesting is the dynamic with like some of their friends that don't get a lot of rough house. You could see it right away in the way they interact. And so they're, they're kind of wrestling and their friends don't really know that line. They don't know that line of like where they cross. They go too hard and they throttle down. They hurt and then, and so so and then they also feel like

My sons are are maybe threatening them and so they begin like Response to that. I've got it's just I've got an awesome wife by the way I'll just caveat this but we've got a rolled up Olympic wrestling mat in our Up there and we'll roll it out and my daughter six and my son's 12 and now he's getting a little bit bigger where I have to like Try a little man Yeah, it's kind of annoying But yeah, I think that that's like that's a critical part of our everyday life is that rough house in that play I had this experience with my daughter. You if daughters. I do you yeah, so

So my son is real affectionate loves hugs from dad and my old man and I this isn't the bad mouth And but he side hugged me at our wedding My wedding like that was that general that was our yesterday And so I one of the things is I'm gonna tell my kids I love my everyday and I'm gonna Reiner who's touch into my kids life. I want my son to feel that I love him right and that man sometimes nice 12 He smells he's got hairy leg like I've got to lean into that, like I'm hugging myself, so now we're in it, right? And again, it's I'm practicing,

God, I didn't see it done. My daughter would come in and she learned really quick dead loves hugs and so like a great young daughter, she wanted to weaponize that, right? And so I would say, like she was three or four and I'd say, hey, her name's Josephine, I'd say Josephine, could you give me hug? And she'd look at me and go, no, no. And when she was three or four, I would say, hey, her name is Josephine. I'd say, Josephine, couldn't be hug, and she'd look at me and go, no, no.

And when she was three or four, I'd say, I'm your dad, you have to do what I say, and I got bigger muscles in you. We're doing this hug, and she would get real rigid and be like, and it was my wife that said, what are you teaching her? That at some point, some man is gonna say, I want your body, and I got bigger muscles in you, who do I say? And I was like, same thing happened to me.

And so then I had to go through, it was a year of, hey, come give me a hug, no daddy. All right, I love you, and that'd go in my room and be like, oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. But, this is cell stories, right? But now, it is, the switch is flipped, and now, man, it's like I've got like an extra arm.

Like she's on me, but it took, it's got safe. This guy's safe. And I want to teach her, when you say no, you mean no. And so I don't care what dude it is, including your dad, they're gonna say that. That's the same thing with my daughter. As I would just say, no, give me a kiss. Come on, I don't wanna know whatever.

And then my wife was like, she needs to know that her body, she could say no. And I, it's like, it's like that light bulb, right? Oh my God, I was like, I got kicked in the groin. Yeah, dude. Shit, you're right. So then she says, no, I'm like, you know what, your body, you could say no whenever you want,

but I love you. And then she's saying things, she'd come find me afterwards and give me a, well here's the other switch. I realized I was giving, I was giving a six year old permission to hurt my feelings. Six. We don't let them drink, we don't let them drive, Here's the other switch. I realized I was giving a six year old permission to hurt my feelings. Six.

We don't let them drink, we don't let them drive, we don't let them buy lottery tickets. Yet I was giving a six year old who has no executive function inside, so it was like a light switch for me. You don't have permission to hurt my feelings here. Like you're my kid, and if you feel responsible for the emotional regulation that dulls in your life, no kid can carry that weight. It's too much.

And so I got to be responsible for my grown up feelings. And so if my daughter says no dad, then I can think, okay. And occasionally I'm like, that sucks, man, she should love her dad. She does. And also she's sick. And so she's pulling a move, dude. It's fine.

I'm not going to lose it. And I'm not going to create long-term trauma over something so still is that engagement. No, you know what's interesting, but so the way I grew up, we're all very affectionate. Man, women, whatever. And I, till this day, I mean, these guys have seen my dad, you'll walk in. We kiss each other.

I love it, man. I love it. And I do that to my son, my son works for us. He's one of the editors, and he's 17. And I'll go up to him and get him a headlock and give him five or 10 kisses. And I'll do it on purpose, because I want him to know it's okay to be affectionate.

You brought up social media earlier. I want to go there a little bit because it's like people talk about it quite a bit. It hasn't been around long enough to where we can really see some of the effects, but I think we're starting to see data now that because one of the challenges is, okay, depressed, anxious people use social media more.

Is it because of depressed and anxious that they're escaping or is a social media contributing to the depression and anxiety as well, or is it both like what's the deal? What are your opinions on social media? Having seen that come into the phrase so much, what about its effects on kids and what do you think's going on with that and what do we need to look out for?

Is there a no? I know they got me. Like I never had it, I never had it. I never had it. And I've got a lot of addiction in my family. Like, down the line. And so, I know I've got some natural bent that way, but they got me.

Like, I agreed taking this job, I'll never tweet anything. I don't even want to be in that world. I opened up Facebook and had a seizure. I was like, what is all, what is happening with Facebook? So I said, I'll do one Instagram post a day. Like that'll be a part of my job. That's the agreement I made. And it was about six months in dude. I'm I literally was in my closet in my bedroom with a door shut. It was quiet. My kids are running around it. And I was just and I remember smiling going, oh no, they got me. Right. And to this day, I have to set some pretty hard boundaries with myself that I don't do

a good job of holding up. So I've experienced the addictive nature of this. I don't fully adhere to the dopamine this and the way they withhold it and all find it good. I've just experienced it. And then when I watch the arc of my students less and less ability to, like we were talking about earlier, to deal with real world, with problems in the real world, it used to blow my students minds when I would tell them,

like when Martin was marching across the bridge, Martin Luther King was, he understood, he's probably gonna die. Like this is what that, it's not a thumbs down. That is not a, you are not invested in this thing. Just because you thumbs down or you post like a well-written, like you're not putting your body on the line here. And so we have this disassociated,

here's what it means to, and so our feelings get overwhelmed when someone's mean to us. And so I'm going into the Dean of Students office. So I'm going into my parents. It's a complete dissociation from the real world. I have to believe it's not healthy. I think back to my grandad when they used to give him his, they gave him cigarettes when he was a child, that because of calm kids down. And they're like, just give him a cigarette. It did. It worked great. It worked great. And that stimulated the economy.

Did all these things. And, right? And so, it sounds so rimmless into that. Like, yeah, we know it's killing everybody, and they're more likely to have eating disorders and suicide, but it helps the economy, and it's helping all these small businesses, and so it sounds like that to me. The other side, I always wanna be open-minded. It does allow people to connect all over the place,

in some unique way that we've never had before. And so I wanna be open to that, and not just throw it all out, and be like, let's go back to the old days and some unique way that we've never had before. And so I wanna be open to that, and not just throw it all out, and be like, let's go back to the old days and pass pigeons back and forth. That's not the answer, but I got me. You sound like you're describing it the way I think we do, which is it's a powerful tool.

It's a tool. And a tool can be used to kill somebody and hurt somebody. It's not just a chainsaw mask, right? You can build a home, or it can make a great story. It's a story of mankind mankind is we discover fire, fire, you know, nuclear power and you know, things that just they have the potential for so much,

but it could go any the direct, you don't remind me of, we grew up, I'm 43, so I grew up in an era when heavily processed foods went from not really being a part of our daily diet to in the 80s, if you look at the charts charts of heavily like it went from like, ah, you ate some to you eat breakfast lunch dinner all the time. And parents at that point really didn't understand the the dangers. It was like, oh yeah, everybody let's eat it all the time.

It's not a big deal. And now we're starting to look back and go, oh, this is probably why we have this obesity epidemic, but it's decades later, lots of damage. I feel like social media is like that. You talked about parameters. I agree. I think, like heavily processed foods, there's values. It's got long shelf life.

I could ship it across the world and feed people. I could produce calories for very inexpensive, which has got some value, but you got to put parameters around it because it's also very addictive. You can over eat it. you will overeat it. So I feel like that's what social media is, and we don't have any of that because it's so new. So it's like, this is, I think this is an popular opinion, like grief for it.

Kids on phones. And like, how do you do that with your kids, by the way, because all the friends. Honestly, I've just held line, and my 12 year old is, I mean, he's got two parents who are in nerds, he's pretty articulate kid and he's pretty thoughtful. And he came to us once, like, came to me once this year, on two different age, came just twice, but once. And he was pretty choked up.

And he said, you used to have a phone with that little spirally cord on it where your friends could call you and you were in middle school. Now they text, and I'm missing birthday parties, I'm missing, get together, and I'm like, it was a knife. And it feels personal. Oh, he's crazy. He nailed his little man to the wall.

But he's like, I have no way to communicate with other human beings. And we live out on some acreage out in the woods and I mean, dude, it was a knife. It was like, because he was right. He was right. And I still couldn't hand him a loaded weapon and say make good choices. Because he's 12, right? And so what it's my job to do is to curate with other parents and say,

hey, y'all are all welcome at our house. And so I had me, my wife had to say, okay, we've got to get very active about inviting kids over all the time, providing some things that they would want to do around here. Because the other one was video games. I was like, dude, no, you just don't go on that rabbit hole. And so when he's like, what am I supposed to do, man? And so we had, we got a foosball table and a little cheap air hockey table. I had to give him some other, and that was fair. As a fair criticism, man, I'm just like, there's a big gym downstairs in the basement.

Go work out. And he's like, dad, I'm a loving man. I could've been doing that. And so, and also, I had to go be active with him. I had to go take his buddies and we're all going fishing. We're all gonna go run around on the woods behind our house. I had to put my crap down.

Instead of reading one more article, and one more nerdy book, I had to go be involved in my kid. And so it was challenged me, but what's cool now is to see when kids come over, my wife was just telling me their dates, a group of guys came over and they all go run playing the woods. They love being off the games group of guys came over and they all go run play in the woods. They love being off the games and ours is a house that they can go run play in the woods

and go playing creeks or whatever. Hey, this is how nerdy my kids are. I said, what'd y'all do down there? It's my son's response. I told my wife, like, oh no, we're creating that kid. He's like, well, we made an economy. And I was like, what? He's like, I was fashioning weapons, and this guy was making like herbs and potions for healthcare. I was like, oh no dude, I gotta get you. It's awesome. No, it's dead.

I'm coming. Oh no, no. Shooting, creating bone arrows or something man. Like, set some on fire. But some kids walked in, and when they all walked in, they just instantly handed their phones to my wife And they know that when they come over like their parents have told them make sure you give us to Yeah, oh, oh, which comes up. So we just create a home and then they love coming over. So it's hard. It's hard

Yeah, plus again, it's my wife's got some some serious wisdom on some of that. She's like they can be bored Oh my God, it's the best. I'm guess you're right I said I can board all time. I'm guessing you're not. Look what you thought through. Yeah, I'm serious. You said something, I want to go back to the Martin Luther King because you said something really quick that actually brought up something for me

that I thought about and I think you're a perfect person to talk to this about. But it feels like, and I don't know if this is because of social media or not, I'd love to hear your opinion, that we have so many more people that feel this need to be like an activist in things. And I know off air, I think we've told, I don't know if we talk about this on air,

where, you know, sales made some points. It's just like, you know, no, you wouldn't. If you were back in Hitler times and you were part of that group and stuff like that, you act like you would stand up and do something like that, but you probably wouldn't, statistically speaking, you wouldn't. 99% of us would not be shinlar. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And so, but yeah, I feel like we're in this time now where everybody is this hard-correct. And if you're not, then you get shame for not being that way. Is this the thing of social media? Is this something new that's happening? Like what do you see when you're working with people? It's a, I don't call it virtue signaling,

it's just, but there's just now this platform to scan everybody almost instantaneously and make sure we're all on the same team. And it used to be, I just had to assume we're all on the same team, because we're all on the same team. Just tribalism. And now I can just scan through and say, do you believe all the same things I believe?

If not, I can just easily cut you out and cut this group now. And so it's a natural, I think it's a natural tribal instinct that has just gone horribly awry. I learned, like talking about my wife and the miscarriage stuff, I learned sitting with Hugging a Dad,

whose wife had just passed away. He may be 85 and she's 90, right? And she lived a long, great life. It wasn't a tragedy, she's passed away. No words, no words is the best thing, right? True story, when my wife finally, when she went to the hospital, among crisis responders, it can be a crazy situation. There's blood and brain, but you look across the room

at another crisis responder, and I call it crazy eyes or wild eyes, they'll look at you in everything's chaotic and loud, but you can see this situation's under control. Right, the threat is over. Now we're in figuring out what comes next mode. And I walked, my wife had just called and she was weeping, she's like, I'm on the way to the hospital. I'm like, whoa, so I picked up my son and we went over there.

I didn't think it was that big of a, I didn't know what it was, but I didn't, I thought she was pregnant, she's going to hospital. I saw the director of the OBGYN in my wife's in a wheelchair and I saw her eyes and I'll never forget, I grabbed my son's hand because my first thought was, this last time I'm gonna go see her. I got saw it, right?

And there was this, what was I telling you that? I just lost it. We were talking about the activism that everybody seems to be. Oh yeah, yeah. So we go into the hospital room, someone comes and picks up my son, a buddy of mine who's a rancher, big tall skinny West Texas rancher,

comes with a cowboy hat on, and he sits right here, and he said no words, none. And I just sat there, and I was good to see him. I was like, man, good to see you. He's nodded, he sat there with me, sat there with me, sat there with me. Dr. Cumm says, we lost the baby. Your wife's gonna be all right and I just kind of and I had my foot crossed like this

and I just like and he reached over and grabbed my foot and then he started crying and I remember thinking Passing he cried tears. I didn't have yet and it was he showed up and he said no words He could have lectured me on what was happening in the surgery room on the on the percentages of her being okay He said nothing because that when somebody's hurting when somebody's when there's a crazy situation going Shut your mouth. Just be with right so it goes back to you know Where wisdom is doesn't comment on everything wisdom Wisdom comments on very, very few things. The few hills you're going to die on, that I'm going to speak on it.

Otherwise, I'd rather just be with you. Does that make sense? There's a lot of old wise quotes that have say something like, you shut up. Yeah, fools speak a lot. Yeah. Something along those lines. So I think wisdom is, say something about everything.

That's foolish, man. Foolish. Speaking of words and not words So I you know not using words to express how you feel so I have I have three kids got one on the way So I'm gonna have four soon really too. Thank you very much I got one that's 17 one that's about to turn 13 And this is a big gap. Yeah, and I got a baby and then I'm gonna have a new one and I noticed with the teenagers it gets harder and harder To read or to kind of understand what's going on.

And it's natural, they're growing up and the less and less they need to communicate with mom and dad. And are there signs and things for parents to pick up on when it's time to press and when it's okay to not press? Like for example, if your kid is like, hanging out in the room a lot, which it's kind of a natural thing,

I think for teenagers want to, or changes in moods. Like are there red flags, if you will, that aren't so obvious, where okay, now maybe it's a time to sit down and kind of push, because you ask a teenager, hey what's wrong, well I'm fine. Nothing. Yeah, so are the things to look out for?

Yeah, I think there's, yeah, that's a great question. I think there's two answers to that. One is, you can't wait until there's a thing to try to develop a relationship with the kids. And so there's something about, we were talking about Off-Air, my son's 12, and so I'm entering in, I've never seen this done, so I'm kind of winging this, but we're going to have some weekly, like I finished the comfort crisis. Michael Easter's new book, because it's fantastic.

I blocked out all the F words and uh, because he's still, and I said, this is your next book you got to read. And he's like, I don't really dump science books. He buzzed through it because there's like a hunting over tongue. And so then we went out to breakfast at some awful, I don't waffle house or something just and, but we ate stupid and we talked about the book. What'd you get out of it? And what did you think? He's like, man, I'm glad I don't have video games and I was like, Michael Easter coming through. But I can't was this. I'm gonna set up a context so that when it comes, whatever comes in his life, when he's feeling down, he's feeling depressed,

when he's in over his head, he's gotten a fight. What? That I'm a safe place for him to come to, not in that crazy moment. So what we talk about sex all the time in my house, there's not gonna be a, God, a big talk, you know, when I awkwardly drive and I look straight ahead and tell my kids about sex, like they're just know about it all the time, so that when they have real questions,

it's not a weird thing to come, right? So that's number one, it's building a context. The second thing is, yes, parents are really good at stuff in their like duct tape and over their gut feeling, they know. And it's often like my son's like, you know, your teenage son's going his room, won't come out, won't come out, come out. You know, like something doesn't feel, but I just need to back off, right? I just need to back off.

I don't want to be that guy, but, and I would tell parents, go be that guy. Okay. I go get involved in your kid. That is never going to be the moment. It's, hey, we're going to get dinner tonight, just you and guy. Like go get involved in your kid. That is never gonna be the moment. It's, hey, we're going to get dinner tonight. Just you and me, we're gonna hang out. I might do that second night and be like, do you been in your room a lot?

What's going on? And I'm gonna build a relational context so that we can have that conversation. So really, it's just trust your gut, man. Little things, like if you see your kid never come out of the room, you can say things like, hey, we eat dinner at this table. So if you're gonna eat, you need here. You can choose to not eat, but we serve food here.

Right. I'm going to set some boundaries in my home. That, the whole phrase, like, you know, kids are just being kid. I don't fully buy all that. Like kids, teenagers, they're, like they stay up later naturally because of their sleep. That, that stuff's real. But when it comes to like, well, you know, teenagers, they just talk trash to their parents. I don't mean, if you allow that in your home or you say, well, you know, teenagers, they just talk trash to their parents. I don't. If you allow that in your home or you say, well, that's just teenagers, then that's a whole other thing. I'm going to create boundaries in my home where my kids feel safe.

And then we're going to give them the appropriate distance as they grow up and form their own identity, of course. Well, you said something that I think is important. You sounds like you said too that you would, you would take them out the first night and probably give him that space to come to you first. And then you take him out another night and then the following night, you'd be more a little prodding, a little bit more.

So still giving him that boundary of like, let's see if I just being here being dad and having a good time, see if he opens up and shares with me. Going back to the original, like I don't want his cortisol in a drill and running when we're talking, because we're gonna have a conversation. Cause his body's trying to defend himself.

Right, then he'll connect every time he dad takes me out. Oh, this must be a talk. He's just taking, he's gonna be defending himself from me. I want him to come in and go through the defense process and then be like, oh, there's nothing. Oh, great dinner, great dinner with dad. Yeah, yeah, it's awesome. And then we're gonna show up the next time.

And then I'm gonna get, you know, because my kid always told me about how healthy I eat. I'm gonna get the big Mac or with some stupid meal. And he's gonna be like, oh, now we've completely changed the dynamic of this interaction. And be like, dude, you've been here in a lot. What's going on? And now we're gonna have a different conversation.

I had a weird, I had a, this is just personal, but I had a, you know, interesting period. So with my older kids, I'm divorced from their mom, right? So we haven't been married now for about seven years. And that was a tough transition because I went, I wanted them to be happy all the time when they were with me, right? Cause I want to protect them from the challenges

of the worst. And so getting them to do things they don't want to do is, okay, we don't have to do it. Okay, we don't have to do it. And I remember at one point, I said, you know, this can't be, like this is obviously me. This is my problem. And so I forced them to do certain things.

Now we're gonna need dinner now. Now we're not gonna put on electronics. And they would him and Ha Han be a pain in the ass for about 30 to 40 minutes. And then they'd start to open up. And then I had this realization like, okay, like I gotta be the parent and not their friend. Right, right.

What about other challenges with like divorced but involved parents or blended families? Like what are some of the challenges you see with that or things of pain? Or is it just the same thing you just got to work a little harder because? No, I think it comes to divorce. I think we, I think it's so common that we minimize, that's a big trauma for kids. That's a big challenge. When mom and dad hurt or mom and dad

are anxious or mom and dad are spun up, a kid's natural inclination is to say, I cause this, what did I do? And how do I fix this? And so I think an important conversation to have with your kids long term over and over is my issue. This is not, you didn't participate in this. This isn't because of something you did or didn't do, right? And kids have that fantasy that mom and dad are getting back together. So they live with this stuff in their bodies, right?

When's the next person gonna leave? When's my norm gonna get blown up? And so I think it's always pulling them back to, um, no, we're okay now. And like you and me are good. Yeah. You said, I read a, I read an article on kind of what you said where when something traumatic or bad happens to a child, like a parent is just a shitty parent, that the part of the survival mechanism for the kid is that their choices are either my caretaker is evil and terrible, in which case I'm screwed

because I have no one else. Or I have to internalize it and make it my fault or I did some so that I can continue to be worse. It's worse. It's worse than that. That kid knows half of him is me. And so if I demonized dad who beat up mom and then cheated on him and took off,

half of me is bad. And so I have to be okay with it. I've got to make peace with that. In fact, I've got to make dad the hero of this story. Mom, why'd you kick out, right? And so I've got to make peace with this thing. It's not so much as I'm going to be on my own. It's that part of me is dysfunctional.

So you got a kid trying to toggle back and forth between these two parents, and it becomes a mess, right? Or I gotta solve it. And then you got kids trying to take care of their parents. Don't say this man, because dad flies off the handle or mom gets really pissed if you say this, so let's all be cool. You got kids emotionally regulating their parents, man.

That's a burden of choc. Yeah, I understood part of that, which where I- that's my story. I never said anything negative about ever, about my kids mom, them. That's beautiful. Because I knew that I intuitively said, they were gonna internalize that.

That's their mom. And it's also another business. It's not their issue, this is mine. So I made sure to never do that. And I think that was a very good decision among other bad decisions. That's it. Another gift you can give your kids,

like if you're going through a divorce, let them know that you're sad. And parents were taught to protect their kids, right? We don't want them to. And when they get sad about stuff, and we look like we're all got it all together, going to the gym, going to get it done, they think they're crazy.

Oh, I see. I'm weak, I'm dysfunctional. I need to figure out how to get over this so I can be like him or I can be like her. The greatest gift you can give your kid is, so we talk about, how do I talk about stuff with my kids? I'll tell my son, like, that's for in diet.

I'm real sad today. And I don't want to go fishing today. I just want to settle in couch and what, read a book. And it's not good for me. We'll go for a walk later, but I'm real sad right now. And I tell my kids I'm sad. Whenever the, whenever the Ukraine thing set off, I brought my son up and said, this is a grown up conversation I'm having with you. Tell him what you know about Russian Ukraine. He knew, hey, way more than I thought he did

from just middle schoolers talking and B, some of it was all skewed, right? Like, this is nuclear. He just assumed we're going to be dead soon. Like, nuclear wars happened in order. And I told him, I'm scared about this. There's a history arc here that I don't like. It's, you know, I walk through, here's how your dad's feeling, and then it was, here's what I'm gonna do about it. So, click the phone off.

Me and you're gonna go hang out. We're gonna go for a walk. I'm gonna go be around, so I'm teaching him. So, can I be scared? So, can I be frustrated? So, can I check the news? And then you gotta put that stupid thing down, and now we gotta go about doing life.

So I want him to see his old man feelin' these things, and then go into do anyway. Oh, that's great. All right, let's give people some, I guess some takeaways who are listening right now, who, you know, I mean, just listening to you, like Adam said earlier, you're such a good communicator. I'm sure some people, like, man, I got some stuff

I wanna work through or whatever, maybe I need to become more aware of some of my behaviors. What are some some easy, and I know it's not an easy process, so I don't want to simplify, make it sound like it's a simple thing, but what are some steps that people can take when they're like, okay, I need to work on myself, or this is an issue that I have that I've just kind of been put in the background. What are some steps people can take to kind of get through some of that? I've changed my tune on this the last few years. I normally would have started with goals

and habits and those kind of things. I don't anymore because I think if I look at the arc of all the science and all of my personal experience and just wisdom, there is no long-term behavior change done in isolation. So if somebody is ready to make some changes in their life, I think you got to get some people in your corner. So whether that's a friend, whether that's a therapist, whether that's a personal trainer, whether that's a coach, whether that's calling some buddies that you haven't been with in a while, but I think you have to establish relationship with people. So you're anchored into a thing so that you can repel off and do that hard work. Now how important though is it how you choose

that relationship right? Because you know, everybody has that friend that is, you know, you come to that and you're venting or you're sharing what's going on with you. And instead of them probably helping you get to the root cause of the bottom there, they're probably making it worse,

pilot, like let's say I come and I'm, you know, venting about my wife or something and I'm, oh, fuck her. I can't believe you know, that's not a good, probably, person. So how does someone feel numb about it? Yeah, how does someone have the awareness to know like, okay, who are these people?

Who should you, what should you look for? Who should I be trying to foster these relationships? Because those I would think would be unhealthy in a situation. So my answer to that is going to be a screwy one. I think you have to put that question on the back burner and go. Because I think that's the question that we look around. I think if we have one epidemic, it's loneliness.

As people are just dying. Oh wow, so at this point, you're saying like, go. Human connection and that is better than nothing. You're going to be in a room like this and you'd be like, that dude just will not shut up about Sasquatch's man. Like, let's think, not a guy I'm gonna call with my wife's struggle.

Yeah, it was just deal. But I know, man, we did lay it on the moon. But also, but I really connected it with you. And I'm a holoc just, you know what I mean? And so it naturally happens that way, right? And we're just not good with, we just avoid relationships so much or we outsource it all to digital stuff, right? It naturally happens that way. Right. And we're just not good with, we just avoid relationships so much

or we outsource at all to digital stuff, right? And talking about social media earlier, I can text my wife all day long. I love you, I love you, I love you. I'm giving her info, but part of her brain, the brain that feels safe because she's in relation with me, does not register until she sees me, right?

And so I don't say I love you. I've said it 40 times via text today. I sent you some fun emojis, right? You know, I'm in. Her body isn't registering that, right? So I'm gonna get with people and just say, I'm struggling with this. We have a rule in our relationship with I love you.

Like I don't say it very often. When I do say it, when I see here I have to explain what I was thinking about. So we don't do the, oh, love you and hang up the phone. I think it has no weight, no value at all like that. If I text even and say I love you, then there's something that was going on in my mind that made me do that. And I have to be able to express that when I see you. Will you do a 38 challenge for me? What's that? Make some sort of physical skin-is-kin contact

because we need to do it next time. Yeah, there it is. So that's what happened. I touched. So that's what happened. You did it all the time. I know it does. So after my 10 years, I got to be in person and she'll normally

come over and grab me and be like, what were you thinking about today? And then what's that? Okay, so it happens that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's how it goes down. Up to, okay, so you're gonna connect with people? Yes. I'm gonna, the great David Kessler, the grief expert says, grief demands a witness.

I gotta sit down and tell somebody, I'm hurting like this, or I don't like what I see in the mirror, or I drink too much, or I'm addicted to pornography, whatever's going on in your life. I'm gonna say it out loud, and then I'm gonna be about changing my thoughts and changing my actions,. I'm gonna say it out loud, and then I'm gonna be about changing my thoughts and changing my actions, and I'm gonna get after it.

I've gotta change my behavior, and then I gotta change what I'm thinking here. And I think psychology, modern psychology is not done a great job. We've convinced people that if you get your thoughts in the right order, then you're well. Yeah. And I don't think that's right.

I think you gotta go do. I think you gotta do. You gotta act differently. And this thoughts become solidified in who you are. That makes sense. You know, there's a study that now is making its rounds. That's questioning the serotonin model of depression, the chemical imbalance, you know, depression and anxiety.

It's all about a chemical imbalance. And if we just balance out your chemicals with medications and we'll solve the problem, what do you think about all of that? Because it really changed the trajectory of mental health. It was like all therapy and then it turned into like lots of prescriptions, the pro-Zach revolution and all that stuff. Like what are your thoughts about? I'm being honest here and you'll feel free to edit this out, if it's just a weekend, you're gonna know.

We don't edit a shim, bro, go for it. Go for it. Like, when you saw Pina Sillin come on the scene, you saw infections fall off. Right. And what we've seen as we've added more and more and more psychotropic medications, is the data's gone the other way.

Yeah. And so I don't know why. Cool. Get into the molecular structures. There's an importance there. And I'll leave that to the Hebrew and minds. There's minds are way faster than mine. You can just look at the charts and graphs, man.

Like it's clearly not a if-then proposition here when it comes to medication. Does medication help? Yes. Here's the way I like to think of it. Like, take something like anxiety. I'm gonna take major depression. That's a whole other world. Take something like anxiety. If I look at anxiety as an identity, like I'm broken,

I've got a thing, like I have a thing that's always gonna be a part of me and I'm gonna have to be versus, no, it's just an alarm system. Just my body, get my attention, letting me know that, hey, I'm not safe, I'm disconnected, I don't have autonomy. Then, medications like climbing up in my living room

when I've got a fire in my house and the smoke detectors going off and taking the batteries out. But then, fix the fire, it turns the alarm off, man, and we've made the alarm the issue. It's not the problem, we're the great knowledge. And so I want to set back and go, look, if my relationships are solid, I'm not safe. I don't owe a bunch of people a bunch of money.

I've got good relationships. My job is stable. My home is stable. Your anxiety alarm's not going to go off. Or when they do, you know there's a problem, right? I can actually hear them. They're not just going off all the time. But we've all been in that hotel room where the, you know, you got the hot water on and

it sets off the smoke detector like, dude, there's something wrong with the detector. That was me, right? I burned through it for years so hard that anxiety meds helped me turn the alarm down so that I could hear a therapist, so that I could go, start exercising and be with people, because I couldn't hear anything.

Man, I was crazy, I couldn't hear a thing. And so it's got value, but it's not the solution. Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Let's talk about therapy because, you know, we're in this interesting generation here where there was a shift from I mean like when I was younger therapy was a bit Like you didn't talk about it. You wouldn't stop you go tell people like I'm seeing somebody it was almost like You like having somebody on the side dude. It was like yeah, you went to it on Tuesday nights at seven you told no

Yeah, especially if you were a guy. Yes, especially if you were a man You just you didn't do that because it's like, oh, I got this big problem, I can't fix that, but now it seems to be much more expected, you know, accepted. What do you think about therapy and its value for people? And is it something you should go get just when you have a problem or do you think therapy is good to have anyway? Not a professor that said the problem with therapy is that most people wait until they are,

they're out of it, until they're trying to survive. And you can't hear or learn when you're trying to survive. She likened it to waiting until you wake up with the flu to start a new weight loss program at the gym. That's a worse time to go workout, right? Because you're sick, you don't feel good. It does help in critical care. So if you're struggling, if you're thinking

about hurting yourself, of course, go see it there. If you're married, just don't rock, it's course, go see somebody. I look at counseling as just to set a skills, man. It's tools I don't have. It's me practicing how to be in a relationship with somebody. And then me practicing hearing somebody tell me the truth. And when my body gets pissed, a good counselor will say, I just told you that it sounds like you're the one

as the person who cheated on your spouse. You're the one who brought this and you look mad. Tell me about that, right? So, you're learning, the things we talked about at the very beginning, I'm learning how to be in a relationship with somebody. cheated on your spouse, you're the one who brought this and you look mad. Tell me about that, right? So your learning is the things we talked about at the very beginning. I'm learning how to be in relationship with somebody. So then I can go apply that at work. I can apply that with my kids.

I can apply that with my wife. And it's just I they just set a set of set of skills or tools. We wouldn't think twice about going to get handgun training or go to MMA training. I wouldn't think twice about hiring any of you all that helped me get in shape. Why would I think twice about helping somebody teach me some relational skills that I clearly don't have because me and my wife fight all the time or my kids don't like me.

It's a simple tools and relationship proposition. Yeah, so I guess the question, if it was positioned like when's the best time to hire a trainer, they're like, well, right out the gates. Before you're a hundred pounds overweight. So, and you're gonna have different things. If I'm an hire trainer, if I've got goals, because I wanna go be a professional lifter,

if I've got a competition coming up. And I used to always tell folks, Michael Jordan had, he had a nutritionist, he had a weightlifting guy, he had a basketball coach. All the greats have coaches, man. So go get some help. Right, go learn some new skills. Do you think, so what does that look like for,

people getting married, new couple, and they're happy, obviously they're in love. Like what, once a week, twice a month, what is that, what is going on? What is going on here for everybody? Okay. Again, it goes back to like the personality thing. I think if you're struggling with bipolar disorder

and you're regulating your meds and you're having, or borderline personality, that's a tough one, right? Because you're having to, your body feels these things and I have to learn how to operate in the real world, sometimes in opposition to my feelings. It's getting, you need a couple of times a week, man, it's hard, that's hard work you have to do.

If I'm trying to learn a new person, I'm gonna get married to, now we can do once a week, once every two weeks and we're gonna do home work, when we get home, we're gonna read books together, we're gonna learn, we're gonna do a budget together, we're gonna know learn, we're going to do a budget together, we're going to know all those things like that. And so it just depends on the couple in the person. I wouldn't let the train to figure that out on the front. And how many times should I go to the gym?

Five times three times? Just go, go, and then we'll figure that out as we go. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. We overthink it. Yeah, so let's talk about you for a second. The difference because we all experience this as trainers. We all train people and manage gyms for decades. And then we start this podcast.

And similar, we're helping people, but different because I don't know who I'm, I don't see who I'm helping. And I remember we did these, these live events before the pandemic, we would go and meet with these live and they weren't profitable. It made us no money. We just did it just to connect with people. And I remember all of us left the first one going. That's what was missing.

We all feel grounded again. Like we got to see people's faces and get the reactions. Did you go through something similar from working with people to now you're on media and kind of just, so when I was trying to deconstruct this influencer thing, I try to figure out, what is, what world have I just entered? Right?

I thought very early on, like first month, the moment I go from talking with people to talking with people who talk to people, I'm going to be out of touch. I'm going to be missing why I got in this in the first place. And so yeah, for me, live events, staying connected, and then honestly, it's volunteering my local community. Like, I got to go be involved behind closed doors with people. I cannot lose that. Um, if I lose that, what it actually feels like

to be in a room with somebody who's hurting, I'm not gonna be, I'm not gonna be a factual when I'm talking to somebody. So what has been your favorite part of this transition in your career and what has been your least favorite part of this transition? The best part has been, I listen to like three podcasts, like I just not in that world. And I didn't realize, here's a good example. We were in

a meeting about six months in. And there's a big flat screen up there. And they were going through data. And then they pulled something up and had my face and all these little thumbnails. I was like, what is that? No, that's your YouTube channel. And I was like, what? Like YouTube channel. A, I don't know what a, I Like that's your YouTube channel. And I was like, what? Like YouTube channel, A, I never heard of a YouTube channel. I thought a YouTube channel was like where you watched old Raging some machine videos and where you needed to fix your car. Like I didn't know there was channels,

I didn't know anything about that. I had one, right? And it was doing great. I just, I knew that camera was it. I didn't know what that was, right? And so I have to always remember that end person, right? So the best part of this has been somebody in Alaska calling and saying, I said, I don't have a hard conversation with my wife last night

and told her how I'm actually feeling for the first time. And she wept. And now we're going to start having a hard conversation once to exit. I can't just sit. We're going to start doing this weird thing that only our marriage does, but it's going to work for us. Yeah. that the reach has been something that caught me off guard I just got my mom was buying books and she was like clicking over We got a hundred reviews is like my mom's after it. Man. It's not people are

Pooning in the hardest part is Man, y'all probably appreciate this more than anybody and coming from Higher education coming from higher education, coming from just my whole career is working with scientists, just nerds, right? And they were, the goal of science was to be less wrong. And so, like, take COVID for instance, I think, I don't remember, I think it's King's College,

some college puts down right when COVID kicks off. We think 15 million people are gonna die. This news channel reported it this way, this politician said it this way, for science people across the world, they went, game on, sweet. And they took their models and their brains and they, within two weeks, we think it's gonna be 12 million. And then more data's coming in and then a few months, we think it's gonna be 8 million. And so science was all about being less wrong. And I've come to believe there's only two mediums that don't have a reset button.

And that's politics and media. And so the thing I don't like about it is, if I learned some new thing next week that said, no dude, there's a new medication that will literally control all delete your anxiety, your parts of your brain that kick off anxiety, we fix it. We solve it.

I have to come back and say, dude, I learned something new. This is fantastic. And then I get the media mob, like flip flop or change your mind. And I was talking about, and still there's a steady arc that I'm used to, that I feel like I feel myself saying more and more. I got to put a stick in the ground and this this is just gonna have to be that stick forever. And so I'm trying to model what that looks like, to say, no, man, I learned more about my wife.

We just celebrated 20 years of marriage last week. And I've learned more about her in the last two years, and I did, you know what I mean? That's the goal, but it's hard to feel like I need you gotta say the thing forever. And that's new to me. What do you think about all this crazy research? There's a lot of old research,

but more recently we've had some incredible research on psychedelic assisted talk therapy, you know, MDMA, and side of cyber and ketamine. What do you think about that? I mean, A, you can't argue with the data right now. It looks extraordinary. And anything that people are circling back on that's been a part of cultures for thousands of years,

nature just got a great way of working itself out. And so I always wanna look at that. I'm interested in the mechanism by which it does it. Like, what is, that's one that actually, the mechanics of it matter to me. Can I get that way with deep empathetic relationships? Could I as a parent teach my kids how to be that in touch with themselves?

Or man, is this just a great same as with like penicillin? Oh man, you get a cut, it's gonna change civilization forever, it's one of those moments, that'd be awesome. Have you experimented with it yet? No, I haven't. It's interesting I have, and I'm be awesome. Have you experimented with it yet? No, I haven't. It's interesting. I have. And I have in, I'm forward to going to be 41 years old. And you got, you got a pretty traumatic background.

Right. And, and I used it for our, our relationship. So both my wife and I neither, neither one of us had ever experimented with whatever it was the, the, the research and stuff that was coming out that made me curious. Yeah. Both of us don't have the background of drugs or dictionaries with that. So it was definitely new territory.

We went to a very safe place. We're on the beach. I've now experienced it three times with her every time there has been a breakthrough in the relationship. It's been fascinating. And I think we communicate really, really well and very open to talk. But there has been moments in that.

And the best way I can explain it and put words to it is it almost like it opens up a new pathway in the brain. Like see, there's a way that she has thought or I have thought about the relationship that, oh, she does things this way for that. I'm in her brain trying to figure that out. And there is actually nothing she can say or do that will convince me otherwise because I have decided that path. So it's like solidified. And then you get in that in that space and it almost like breaks

that down. And then all of a sudden you see her different. And when she explains it, it all sudden that it makes the new pathway. And you're like, oh my God, I get it. I get why you do that now. It makes total sense to me. It's been, it's been, it makes me new pathway and you're like, oh my God, I get it. I get why you do that. Now it makes total sense to me. It's been, it makes me, it makes me also wonder and I know there's data on this as well that it could go either direction. Well, it's a tool.

I feel like it's another, it's another tool that we obviously, it's been around for a very, very long time and it's been used in cultures and I think that it can be abused. Like in the else, we see that we talked, we talked early on in the podcast space. One of the things we became really fascinated as we started to grow, and we started networking with other fitness minds.

There's actually a big movement in the fitness space around psychedelics, and we got to hang out with a lot of these people, and you could definitely see the abuse side. You can see someone take a little bit of science and the positive benefits of it, to justify their weekly behaviors around it. And I just think that I

don't think that's how you I personally don't think that's a smart way to do it. I'd also be afraid from what I've read that the because it can open you up if you don't have a trained therapist or counselor in front of you. It can be dangerous. Yeah. Oh, I could imagine that you could probably create more true. Well, yeah, think about. Plus, think about. It's a history of psychosis in your family. You know, you need to really make sure you go through all that process.

Yeah, no, I definitely think, I mean, think of like we talk on the show about my experience with bodybuilding, you know, experiencing it at 30 years old. If I experienced that at 20 years old, it would have fucked me up. Yeah, I would. I would be too. If this had happened when I was 28, did I be a wreck? Yeah, I'm a wreck. Yeah, I wasn me up. I would have- I would have- I would have- I would have-

I would have- Yeah, I was it ready, I wasn't mentally ready for it, I wasn't self-aware enough to take myself through a process like that. Probably the same thing with those psychedelics. I mean, I'm almost 40 years old, experimenting with it at, I think, 38 when I did it or whatever. You guys already have a good relationship.

Yeah, already had it, we already have a 10 year relationship, we have solid. And it wasn't even like a deal breaker type of thing that we broke through, it was literally just a small thing that we just didn't see eye to eye, everyone. I was like, oh, Greta, disagree. You think this way? I think that way about it, and we still love each other,

get by it, but then all of a sudden, for the first time, was like, she saw me. And I was like, whoa, that was so crazy. And it's happened three times, all three times, we've had some sort of crazy breakthrough like that. So my question that I love the work that I do over the maps and that crew is, it was real important when I realized I was making up stories about other people and you getting pissed at them about the story I'd created.

It was like an awareness, like when that dude cuts you off in the highway. Yeah. You'll probably heard that like, drug use in ADA is trying to kill everybody on the highway, he's got no regard for life or wife is in the hospital and the kids dying. I get to pick the story and just say to my wife, right? You left those shoes there just to, like if I can stop right then and go, do we just talk about this last night? If those shoes are there, her day must have sucked.

I'm gonna grab those, I'm gonna go knock the dishes out too. Like my curiosity is, can I get there? I believe you can't without that. Without it. I believe you can. Or is this a safe alternative just to, dude, save me eight years of, I'm gonna blow up my marriage up to get there quick.

So that, I think, yes and yes. I think you're right both ways. I think that it's, I think it is a bit of a hack intervention. Yeah, or a way to kind of disrupt that pattern maybe that, maybe it's something that's, that was keeping us is childhood buried stuff that I'm not even, oh, socially aware, or self-aware about myself, her too, it was a small block,

and it was just enough to break that and go, ah. Yeah, that what I, what I read about the data is that, it's like, it helps people face certain things so they can talk about it. Yeah. Cause otherwise they couldn't even talk about it. I can't even bring this up. I can't even, cause my body is so protected. Well, and what we've, what we found was a, when we went in,

it wasn't like, Hey, we're going in this. We need to work on relation. We were already in a good place. It was just, I think it's probably the best time to do that. Yeah, we were just enjoying each other and having conversation and then the conversation led to an area where we didn't always see eye to eye and then also it was like, oh my God, I see you.

It was so wild that speaking of relationships, this is really cool topic. So when I would train people in advance days, like I said earlier, I had a lot of clients at one point. I used to love asking them relationship questions because they were married for 30, 40, 50 years. I thought there was so much wisdom there. Is there anything you've picked up working with people with people who've been together for a long time versus people who have met? Like, what helps lead to some of the success? And

why do some people not- I think it all comes down to ego, man. Like say, you're sorry, go do the dishes for God's sake. I wish it was more sophisticated than that. Like be a person of integrity and say you're sorry. Well, that's simple, but it isn't that easy. No, it's like, yeah, how do you always wait? Dignity size, man, it's not art, right? It's like, yeah. Yeah, but it goes back to what you originally said,

you're practice. I think that's also something I picked up on your communication skills is you, you read. Yeah, you've practiced someone says something, you humble yourself always, you're careful and you just be proud to then become second nature. Or you flat the handle. You storm out of the house and you come back.

You come back and say, I just acted like a child and I'm sorry. Parents would deposit their kids and model what that looks like. I mean, you could change generation in 15 years, right? If a group of people would just act different. I can talk to my son about how to treat women all day long. He's watching how, well, I tip that waitress and he's watching how I talk to the, the woman of the registry.

He watches how I talk to his sister and to mom, to his mom. That's just like that, man. But I think it comes down to ego. I just put it down, man. And the stories we tell ourselves. Are there certain things when you are talking to somebody and you're kind of like evaluating their relationship or their struggle they're going through and you

kind of like know like this is for example John Gottman, right? I believe talks about having contempt for the partner, right? It's like like he knows. That's the worst one. It's like 90 resentment. That's and we're probably some antics, but resentment. Once you get to the place that I despise being in connection with you, like you are the reason my life is fill in the blank, that's real hard to come back from. Yeah, what do you, what? It's an ask.

Because you're on the phone, right? So, is there certain language that they're saying for you to pick up on that and sense that, like, oh, this person is, and you almost kind of know, like, it's cool. It's almost intuitive, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I've seen you already do it. I've seen you kind of like,

this is why don't you leave me for a question. Why don't you get out? It's, it's, I think it's usually this, when you start cycling into blame, when you have outsourced your feelings to somebody else, outside of a, like a clearly abusive context, right? But I'm always angry because he just comes home and gets on the couch.

Now you're angry because you're immature. You're angry because you want to have a hard conversation. You're angry at yourself because you've, you have thought so little of your own needs that you have. Right? So anger is something you're deciding within you. Right. Yeah.

But I think when I guess, I don't know, there's a tone. There's a particular way somebody talks about somebody else. It's like, oh, that's disdain. Like you don't want that person in your life, right? Here's the other magic about like any good counselor with a soul or the show is I'm not tied into an answer. So a lot of like advice shows are about, I need to show

you I'm right. Like if I ask a quote, like, oh, you hate that, dude. And she says, no, I hate him. I love him. I want to stay with him, but that's just data for me. That's not me being wrong, right? And so I'm able to lob questions and you get you get good at it over time, right? But You know when somebody comes in it's like dude, I've been eating 1500 calories and working out five times a week

And I can't lose it you can go no, you're not I was talking to Lane, the Northern, the other day, and I was like, I've been doing this and this, and he just goes, what you've just said is physiologically impossible. So I don't know what you're doing, you're not doing that. I had a caller do that.

I was like, oh no. I had a woman call in and said that she needs to lose, like, it was like 50 pounds. No, I don't, I don't know. But you know, eating healthy is so expensive. So, like, how do I do this? And all of us are sitting under the listening and I don't want to make the person feel bad.

And if you're listening now, I apologize. It's just, we've done this for so long and I just said to her, well, you can also just eat what you're eating now and eat less of it. So, you'll save money. Yeah. And lose what you said. It's just like that.

It's just one of those, you know, one of those things. But, it's something about it that that I don't know what it is. It was explaining, was it, we call it, I call it Asprey Math. It was like, I was eating four or five hundred calories. Asprey. I let that go. I was like, man, I need to start mainline and bacon grease, man, because I, there's a secret way that math and, uh, thermodynamics don't work if you just do it.

And it's like, no, it's not a real thing. You know what I mean? It's like just basic. So I don't know, man. Like, it's amazing. I mean, I guess maybe there is some parallels there because what just tracking and the new awareness of that, like, and I'm sure the conversation you had,

you're probably telling Lane, like, I'm eating this and I'm doing this and I'm doing that. And he's going, no, you're probably not. I promise you're not and I'm doing this I'm doing that he's going no you're probably not I promise and just like what I would say back is you know show me you know Let me see and then I'll then I'll break it down to you why you're not and I remember the first that the first time I had that realization so we've all been doing this long enough that all the cool tech wasn't there You know we had to do it long for Yeah, I guess you know that's about this much or this and you know and I had the same thing

I actually believed it was steroids I thought like the only thing that separates me from that guy is like, he's on all kinds of steroids. And that's why I can't have that body. It's like, and then all of a sudden this tool came out. It was like in 2004 or whatever. It was called the body bug. It was like the first like, you know, semi accurate metabolism reader. You can get track how many calories my body with pretty good accuracy, like 90 something percent.

And it blew my mind like holy cow, I am burning so much because I'm moving all day long. I'm training a libasca ball. I love snowboard, I love weight. I'm doing all these active things. And I'm not eating enough. And I think because I'm forced feeding myself and I'm pounding shakes afterwards and I'm not building any more muscle. But then when I actually sat down and did the math,

it was like, whoa, yeah, okay, so I had three days of good surplus. Like, I need to be if I want to gain and build, but then I had two days where I was dramatically, I don't know, that was enough to cancel out the average. So. And I had the reverse. And, man, it was like I had the kind of morning for a minute, a grief for a second,

but it's been like a time machine. The amount I was consuming versus what I was, the time I was putting in the gym, it's like, just stop eating so much, man. And you actually get an hour of your life back to go be with your family. It was this, oh my, it was a time machine. I don't have to run the gym.

I don't have to, like, like, oh, my pants are getting tired of you. And I sure didn't fit. I gotta start on another six weeks of working on like an idiot. I don't have to run. I don't have to like, like, like, oh, my pants are getting tired of you. And I sure didn't fit. I got to start on another six weeks of working on like an idiot. Or, right, have no donuts. Yeah. And tada, it was the reverse of that.

Well, I mean, I have that same story too. That was the 30 plus version. We were just telling the story of the 20 to 30 version of me of like trying to build and get them to come. I was a skinny kid who tried to build and couldn't for the life of me And then I couldn't make that connection and then later and then I have more people did house chores and active things around their house They would never have to jump on treadmill. It's right. You just get busy be active all that. Yeah, go lift weights for sure But that to me is like one of those things like like why are you wasting all this time, running nowhere?

Yeah, buyers. I had one of those straps once and I had it for about six weeks. And I remember doing the yard. Like I live on some weird moan and doing all kinds of stuff. And it was like, and my boy just worked out ever. Yeah, exactly.

Just doing Saturday stuff. Yeah, John. And after it. John, what makes a good, a really good effective counselor and therapist? And what makes a really effective client or patient? Dude, that's a good one. One of the things that, like, we'll make you a good counselor and also we'll make you a good,

somebody who can go to a counselor and get good results for. A good counselor is somebody who knows, out the gate, I'm not your friend, like you've hired me, is a professional, and who is invested in you getting well, not me trying to pass along one of my techniques to you. Got you, right? And a good client is somebody who shows up. Number one, out of the gate, don't go to counseling if you're not gonna tell the truth.

If you're not gonna talk about, here's what my week looks like, here's the addictions that I have, here's some of the people I've slept with, even though I married somebody, if you're not gonna be honest, don't go. You're wasting everybody's time to get to the core of some of the people I've slept with even on marriage. But if you're not gonna be honest, don't go. You're wasting everybody's time to get to the core of some of those issues. So show up until the truth and then be on time

and then whatever homework assignments like model this, journal this, it's the same as keeping up with Cal. Like do the work. It's literally what work means. It's literally what makes a good trainer and a good client. Exactly. I'm quite asked that question. It's almost the same thing.

I wanted to see if it was the same thing. It's almost verbated, totally. So when somebody goes to counseling or sees a therapist because they're forced, like spouse says, you better go or I'm leave you or the order to probably weigh less effective. It's just as effective as the spouse who sends the husband to go loose 30 pounds.

You know that. Well, the other way, right? I cheat on you, I, well, I'm attracted to uni more. uni loose. Well, the other way, right? I cheated on you. I'm not attracted anymore. You need to lose 30 pounds or I'm out of here. That guy's not going to be a good client or maybe you will. But she's going to leave it anyway.

That's not why I'm. And it even only be a temporary fix. Even if you do fix it. It's not the issue. What do you see with, because there's been this, I mean, and this may be happened a little bit during the sexual revolution, but you're seeing it happen a lot more now where people are trying to make the argument that monogamy staying loyal to somebody,

like, oh, that's because of the agricultural revolution. And that's not humans, we need to get on the nogamy. Yeah, and if you really love your spouse, like you want them to have pleasure and we love the people. And we've heard all those, like is that, what is that? Is that your business?

Okay, is it madness? Is it really? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, yeah, it's madness. What is the data, what is the data show on? I mean, I look very, very little. It's, I'm trying to think,

I'll step on some toes here probably. I looked early on at Bitcoin, and it wasn't until very, very late in that deal that seemed to lab and weren't buffet, right? Both of them were like, if you just chart it, it ends in zero. It's not a thing. It was buffet right before it crashed. It came out and said, I wouldn't buy it, it ends in zero. It's not a thing. It was bought at right before it crashed. It came out and said, I wouldn't buy all of it

for 25 bucks because to be able to use it, I would have to turn and sell it back to you. And so it's not a thing. I invest in things like gas and railroad. Like I invest in things that create things. And so this feels very much like I am unable to, I have created a set of feelings or emotions that I've attached to the word right or that feels good. And if you stop meeting my feel good, I've got to go get that somebody else.

If you really love me, you would want me to write. And it's like, okay, I mean, it's this weird A plus B equals R equals T equals, it's just the math doesn't work in it. So we can look at the data all day long and the studies, you can just step back and say, yeah, that's madness, it's madness, right? Yeah, I mean, sex and dawn tries to make the case that we, this was our natural evolution to be that way,

but we've progressed from that. And we've talked, I don't think we've talked on air about this, but we've talked off air for sure. And I actually think it was you who brought it up that I think was one of the more brilliant ways to explain it, because you talked about, you know, in a society where everyone is okay to sleep with everyone, what ends up happening is a small percentage of men get all the women. And that ends up causing an uprising from the men that aren't getting any,

that they can't have families, can't have blood, you can't have, and they end up killing off. And then you turn into this society of everyone's killing each other because a very small percentage of men are getting all of the women and we would not evolve as a society. There's also value I think,

and like I could make the case that it's in our nature to eat whatever tastes good in front of us. Dopamine, right? You can read a Judd Brewer stuff, right? Dopamine evolved when we walked under an apple tree and it put a GPS pin, there's an apple tree down that path. And so we just, yes, we have evolved to eat everything we see. And now there's everything.

And so we have to develop. Same evolved to eat everything we see. Right. And now there's everything. Right. And so we have to develop. Same with pornography, right? Yes. Exactly. So that's what I would say. And also, being married and being monogamous, I think there's, are there trade-offs?

I mean, I guess you could call it a trade-off. I can't just go sleep with whoever I want, but I think the trade-offs worth it. I mean, the growth you get from committing to somebody, like that's tremendous. Well, what value, John, what value does abstaining and sacrifice give to us? That's, I never thought of that, but it's the intermittent fasting community

combined with the ethical nominogamy. It's like, my body really grows from restriction and restraint and boundaries, but I need to have no boundaries in root. It's not an intellectually congruent argument. Yeah, you grow, you grow from boundaries. And at the end of the day, this is not a popular psychological sentiment,

but our bodies craze boundaries. What's our kids especially? But it's all suit to, right? When you tell your employee, like, Stu, good job. That's not helpful, man. And then you come home and you get kids the office and it's pissed, it's not cleaned up like you wanted it

and the videos aren't edited like you want. The greatest thing you can give your employees clarity, right? The greatest thing I can give my wife is, here's what I need right now. And here's how I can help meet your needs and you help meet my needs, right? We get in this dance. The challenge is, is hard, man.

You can tell me all day long, like you'll feel better and you'll look good. If you lift weights and you lose weight and you do things, I've got to trust you because I've not been there, right? Celebrating 20 years of marriage, we went out, we took a week and went and did some cool stuff and went hiking and have fun My 25 year old me would have never believed in a million years. You're not gonna believe Kind of fun. You're gonna have on your 20th anniversary my 35 year old me for sure wouldn't have believed that my 40 year old Was what I thought I was kind of sketchy, right? We had to go through some hard, hard stuff to get to this place. And so that meant sacrificing feelings, I mean, putting some of that nonsense aside and doing the hard work, move forward. So it just feels like

we're obsessed with hacks. I just don't think they, I don't think there's hacks. I mean, I'd be more interested as a counselor. If you feel like you need to go, you're married to this person. And you feel like you need to go sleep with other people. Let's have that conversation. What is it that's missing here? What is this person? What do you bring into this? I want to have that conversation more than.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, traditionally, those people have learned that through spiritual practices, religion, it's traditionally taught us these types of things, but that's on the big decline. Yeah, Esther Peralt talks about that. She does a phenomenal job of talking about right wrong or different, religion gave all of us an anchor. You talked about it, like it gave us an anchor. Y'all wear this, y'all don't wear this,

here's your role, here's your roles, and often those are abused, right? So let's call that out. But everybody could breathe, are abused, right? So let's, sure, let's call that out. But everybody could breathe. Everybody knew, right? And now we've taken all that, it's fallen off the map. We've pulled the plug on all the, whether they were combining myths,

whether they're religion, or whatever you believe. We pulled the thread on all of that, and now everybody's untethered. And that's when you get a culture that chases its feelings, when you're not tethered into a central story that we're all part of. Right. That's a scary proposition.

I was just going to say, what's that quote? Before you tear down a fence, you got to figure out why it was up in the first place. There you go. Yeah, yeah. And I like this the, I don't know, I saw this other day, but instead of burning everything down, what if you built new things over time that made those old things obsolete? That's a harder, more challenging and ultimately better way. Anybody can burn something. More productive.

That's easy. Yeah. That's not lasting. Yeah. And there were some famous psychologists who predicted some of the rises of totalitarian superpowers and whatever because of the decline of religion. People start worshiping other things. So I think it's very interesting. Yeah. What's the it's the Oh gosh, she's lost him the great author You're an infinite just no

Who wrote infinite just? Oh, I can't think of it. And he gave the great speech. This is water. They foster walls. Okay There's no such thing as an atheist. You worship something. Yeah. You worship something. And so you get to pick, but if you worship feelings, that bar moves for you all the time. You can never chase that. Are you seeing more of that now?

Oh my gosh, yeah. Cause that's the, that's the, if you, we have pathologized discomfort, right? We've made it the enemy. Wow, that's a great, that's so true. In an effort to, like, there's no value in discomfort. It's the thing to be solved. Like, if you are uncomfortable, it means there's a problem.

We're trying to solve aging now, right? As though it's a glitch in the matrix, instead of as a boundary, as an operating, it's part of the sidewalk that we walk on. It's like, now we can solve that. We can fix that too. I don't want to solve that, man. I want to ride out and call it good. My granddad, he was a World War II vet,

had four kids, great man worked at the same Houston Power and Light for however many years. He just, I think I'm a gold watch the whole thing. Great human, he showed up to my punk rock shows on his kid, stood in the back like this and just, I mean, in a suit, like he was just awesome, man. 93, he was in his retirement home with my grandmother. 72 years there, married.

He got up to go to another room and just died. He got to, was it, assistance, he got to fall down dead. And I was talking to somebody and they were talking about like what a tragedy. And I stopped him and said, no man, he was 93. He was an incredible life. He has great kids. My little boy got to crawl up on his casket

and put a rose there, like four generations of Deloni. Like, it wasn't a tragedy, it's the way it is. Right, and we have to stop pathologizing. Everything is uncomfortable. We're gonna end up, what's that Pixar movie? We're gonna end up like just, oh, oh gosh. Wally? Yeah, man.

Oh my God, as we referenced that, I think we're heading that direction. As a fitness and health expert watching that, I remember getting the chills and being like, oh, this is incredible. Oh, this is it. Yeah, it's too spot on. Yeah, it's interesting. We have this conversation about aging because you know, there's people in our space.

We can solve it. We can fix it. I'm like, man, we are playing with, we don't even know. Humans have never lived forever. We have no idea what effects they'll have on our psyche and if it'll make us crazy or make us, who knows? We have no idea. I'm interested in that.

I think in our lifetime, we talked about this in the show not that long ago. In our lifetime, I think we are going to see a time where you can, everyone will have almost everything they want. 3D printers are not that far around the corner. And before you know it, everyone's gonna end the irony of that is I predict that we will be more depressed, more anxiety, more suits, more than we've ever had, and yet we'll have all the things that we all, we'll have.

A hundred percent of the anecdotal data, the more comfortable our cars get, the faster they are, the quicker our internet connections, everything globally suggests that we're getting more, more depressed and anxious. This is, we're getting fried. This is also why we theorize the rise of races like Spartan and obstacle races because we are human instinct because we want that.

We want, if you could just be, could you imagine being 200 years ago, someone down your family tree, you dropped into this time and then see that people are paying to crawl under Bob wire and the swimming-free same as having to create gyms. I'm being back in the day, they just had hard labor to get through.

I wouldn't have fought my granddad at 75. You know what I mean? And he moved fence posts. Like, you didn't go to a gym one single day in his life. But we've had to create it to keep up with our lives. And I want to bag, I don't want to go back to 1800s. Right, right. I think it comes back to you talking about

with ethical non-monogamy, you can go down this thing of what feels good, what feels good, and pathologize, just comfort. It's really uncomfortable to sit across from your wife and say, I screwed up, I'm sorry. Or I'm not attracted to you anymore, and that's a me problem and your contribute. Like, that's hard, man.

It's gut wrenching. And if it goes sideways, you lose, Christmas's are different, right? You lose your faith community, you lose your, like your friends have to split up, right? It's a mess, it's hard, and that doesn't mean it's wrong. Right.

And so lean into that discomfort. That's become the thing in our house is, let's take the most uncomfortable path. My wife's like, do we gotta be on time? Can we please be on time? Okay. She's right. But there's something about seeking it now. I'm almost pathological the other way.

This is why we think that when they finally because they will I'm sure invent exercise in a pill. I didn't gonna give people all the benefits of exercise Maybe they'll lose weight and they'll get fit. It would be gay people relationships on a little box Yeah, yeah, and it's making us lonely than ever. Yeah, you're not gonna get exactly. You're not gonna get okay So let me ask you guys this You all work in a space where Conceivably I can go pick up a rock and I can run on my neighborhood and I can just quit eating.

Sure. Right. And you're in a multi-billion dollar industry, right? Is it be what perpetuates the next fitness machine? I was in the hotel gym this morning and I was like, I don't even know what this machine is. It was okay. What'll perpetuate it. But is it this idea that...

It's money. That's what I mean. It's money. There's no, it doesn't seem to be any. We're praying on insecurities of people and by selling them new ideas, it's like one of the motivations behind the show. Listen, we have...

So that's ethical on monogamy, right? That's almost like, you'll find it over there. Oh, we have this. that's ethical on monogamy, right? That's almost like, yeah. That's put on like, you'll find you'll find it over there. Over there. We had, oh, you'll find it right here. We had a equipment manufacturer. I don't want to call them out because we did so much already on the show, but they could create this advanced piece of exercise equipment. It goes in your house. They got this billion dollar valuation all of us laughed because we're like, no, it ain't going to be worth that much. And he came in and tells us how it's going to change. No, you don't understand. This is how people stick to this way longer

than either form an exercise, because they got data and technology and it's great and it's convenient. And all of us who've been doing this forever, like, no, it's gonna follow the same path, dumbbells, bands, machines, and sure enough, it's not the root cause. It's not the root cause, yeah.

So what's the root cause? Oh boy, you know, I know I'm supposed to be on your show, yeah, yeah. So I'll get into this, but we are, we're looking at things like its numbers and forgetting that we're behavior based emotional creatures. So it's relational.

That's it, it's not just do this, do that. If it was that easy, I would have, I would have been a successful trainer year one when I gave people meal plans and exercise programs. And I would have been the most successful trainer of all time, it doesn't work that way. And it's also not motivation, motivation ain't it because that comes to the conclusion.

So what the fitness space does is they take your insecurities, get your team ready, and I'm gonna hype and motivate you because everybody loves that feeling, and then buy my product and then we're done. And it just doesn't work. That is literally the model in our space is gain a network, whether that be through, you know, you were famous on TV, on radio, on magazines.

Or you look hot or whatever. Yeah, get gain the attention. That's the one I lean into. Yeah, gain the attention and then you sell a product. And most ideally, it's consumable. So supplements are the go to. Okay, what's the mechanism, and I'm sure this obviously is behavioral and psychological in origin,

what's, I knew better. But yet you still do. I'll be there, I had two PhDs, I know how to read data, I know how to read science, and I was the guy like, putting two cups of MCT oil in my coffee, and I couldn't bake in and pour the grease in. It's because the science still gets you because there is some, it's rooted in some truth.

There is some like, and that's how we, this is how we talk about supplementation on the show. I mean, we're, we have partnerships and sponsors that, sponsors show that are that, but we're very careful about how we talk about that. It's not the big rock. It's not during the miners. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Exactly. So it's, and we we and we'll tell people more answering questions like listen, if you got shitty relationships, you ain't sleeping good, you eat like shit and you don't drink it's as if what the fuck are you doing taking MCT oil? Yeah. Like what are you doing? Like it's like putting a spoiler on a 1987 year. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I ain't gonna do much. I'm not gonna go faster. But yeah, and it does get, it does get some of us science nerds. We're all, because we all went through our stuff. Yeah, yeah.

Because, you know, you read this and, oh man, it gives you 5% edge. And it's like, all I do is throw it in my mouth. I get 5% more or something. But it's like, when you really think about it, I'm not working on the root cause, which is a long, you know why we chose podcasting? It's our number one medium. It's a conversation.

Yeah, human interaction. It's a conversation. Yeah, yeah. It's a conversation. I gotta talk about, I used to have to talk about fat loss with a client for years before they really developed a relationship with it where they do it forever. It was a constant conversation. It would take different forms. It wasn't a blog or an Instagram article.

So, because we're in a new space with podcasts because they're brand new Yeah, and that goes back to the thing we're talking about violence and pornography the idea that I could be Have access to this conversation without being in the room has never existed before right? Yeah, right and now somebody is Mo on their yard or vacuuming their house or going for a run with headphones as those are sitting right here and part of their brain going for a run with headphones as those are sitting right here. And part of their brain, acknowledges are sitting right here. You probably meet people and they're like,

what's up? And they know like we're. That was a wild tragedy. It's just you know that. Yeah, yeah, I should have mentioned that earlier. Like that was been weird. I'm going to the bathroom in the airport and someone asked me about my son.

I'm like, whoa, that's kind of weird. But, I was going with that. Well, you know, you know, you change your world, but you know, you, of course. Jordan Peterson said it really well about that. In the past, media was limited. The bandwidth was limited. We had channels and you had to be fast, get people's attention and there were only so many channels.

The bandwidth is unlimited now. And so what it's done is it's made, so books have always been very powerful because you could convey it. Like, you know, hard as to take a movie and Take a book and turn it into a movie. It's never the same. Yeah, because with a book you could really paint an incredible story But more important my wife is a She teaches reader response theory, right? Teachers kid. She teaches teachers how to teach kids how to read so her things literacy What she taught me was you bring your story to a book sure Sure. And it becomes a personal conversation between you and the author, right?

Right. Which is different. And here's what I was saying about podcasting. You guys have given people access to relationship. Even though it's not full, they're not in here, right? There's a pseudo relationship. And because they're in relationship with you guys, they trust you. And when they trust you, then I'll, I cool.

And it's also, you know, I'll stop you. It's also an hour, two hours of a conversation, and we get to have this conversation five days a week, and you can listen, and it's a process. I'm not gonna tell you in a blog or an article in a picture what it is you need to know or understand to go from, I'm 30 pounds overweight,

to I figured this out forever. Right. It ain't gonna happen. It's a conversation, it's a process. We're in a bit of a war though because I feel like there's two extremes here because as the bandwidth extends and we have the ability to do this long conversation,

then you have the other complete opposite side, which is TikTok, which is now catching Google as far as the number one search, that it is 15 seconds. And so you've got... It's both. Yeah, you have a split audience of people that consume their information in this long form.

But kind of like you guys were talking about looking at that at that exercise equipment, like I don't care what your evaluation is, it's not gonna last. It was back in 2012, I think, 2013, when it kind of quietly came out of this community that the CEOs, the major players just when these big tech companies weren't letting their kids touch the stuff. Yeah, yeah, and that was the old RJ rental stuff like we don't smoke. It's so crazy. Yeah, but we're selling it and that tells me that I don't care

How big it is now the arc on it is failure. Yeah, It can't, until it becomes something that I would give my kid. And you know it when the creators of it are, like dude, I'm not letting my kids play on this. Or when the home country cuts it off at a certain time at night, because we know what this does to you, right? Yeah. The arc on it is an ash, right?

It can't be. Yeah, 100%. Well, you're great to talk to you. I have. If you go, yeah, great to talk to you. I have. You're going to be great. Yeah. It's such great conversation. I love talking to you.

You got great. I mean, I appreciate y'all hanging out, man. Your content is so valuable. Like I'm sure I'm honest. I needed a right now. Check out. Check this guy out. You communicate so well, you hit on topics.

I think that can affect almost anybody. And I appreciate coming on. It's been very valuable. Yeah. Great time, little grateful, guys. Thank you, man. Right on. Thanks.

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