Modern Wisdom - #008 - Michael Cazayoux - From Childhood Addiction To Becoming The Fittest On Earth

Episode Date: March 19, 2018

Michael Cazayoux is the CEO of BruteStrengthTraining.com, 2-Times CrossFit Games Team Champion and coach behind some of the best athletes on the planet. This definitely ranks as one of the most powerful episodes so far and Michael's story is so extreme it almost sounds like fiction. From taking his first drink of alcohol at 9 years old, to drug dependency in his teens, through rehab, to relapse, to sobriety, and then to winning the CrossFit Games twice, and now having created one of the most well regarded coaching companies in the world. He is a living example of what can be done with the willpower to face and overcome our demons. Expect to find out the real costs of addiction, how living with virtue and telling the truth can literally save your life, and what it takes to go from an addict to a champion. Also find out why he's having to take showers in his friends' house at the moment! Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi friends, today I am sitting down with Michael Casu who is the CEO and founder of Brute Strength Training and two times CrossFit Games team champion. He is also the man behind Brookends, Jacob Hepner, Kara Webb and the winning team from last year's CrossFit Games, the Wasatch Brutes. What makes his story so compelling is the fact that he does not come from what you would consider to be the typical perfect environment for an elite athlete or a fantastic businessman. He's an extravagant alcoholic. He's been a rehab a number of times. It is a parent that he has suffered with some really dark places in his life, and yet

he's managed to come out the other side and be this incredibly well-balanced, very altruistic, very shrewd, intelligent, and compassionate guy who also has an unbelievable capacity as an athlete and as a coach. It's definitely one of the best conversations that I've had. I've found it incredibly empowering. A lot of the conversation isn't about sport, it's to do with his approach for how to mentally overcome obstacles within your life. He's been to a stage where he was smoking heroin and injecting cocaine, which I didn't even know that you could do and out of the other side of that he's got this fantastic life where he's flourishing and he's doing something that he really cares about and is well regarded within his field It was a wonderful chat and I feel incredibly fortunate to have been able to sit down with him.

So that's enough for intro's. Here he is, the man himself, Mr. Michael Casu. So, Mr. Michael Casu, welcome to Modern Wisdom. Thanks for having me, brother. I'm excited. Yeah, me too, me too. So CEO of Fruit Strength, two times CrossFit Games winner, an all-around good guy. How are you doing today? Doing great, man. Other than the fact that my water got shut off, they sent me like three warnings, but I

thought it was all spam. So I just threw them away and today they shut it off and my wife's family is in town. So we're having to use the bathroom and stuff. No way. That's pretty funny. That's funny. Well, I think it's a great day though. Yeah.

So I wanted to yourself to give a little bit of background. I think pretty much everybody in the CrossFit community will have heard of brute strength, brute body in one form or another. But I think it would be interesting for you to give us a little bit of a background as to what you did as an athlete when you were younger. I know that you said that you did a lot of sports when you were younger.

So, if you could try and just give us a little bit of background to begin with, that would be great. Yeah, I grew up playing as many sports as possible. I played football, baseball, soccer, basketball, golf. I did powerlifting, weightlifting. And I was above average at all of them, kind of naturally, but I never applied myself at all. I loved competing, I loved playing games, and I just didn't see the value and practicing as a kid. So, you know, I never really developed much in my younger years in high school until right before I left for Utah. I started to see that if I practiced hard,

I would get better at hitting, I would get better as an outfielder, and I started to practice really hard, and then I moved away and took a couple of years off of sports. But yeah, I was very active, loved sports, and was just not a very hard worker. Yeah, which is interesting when you've managed to make it to the elite in a sport as well as opposed to an interesting dichotomy. So the other day I had Dominic McGregor, who's the COO of social chain on and he was very candid about his problems that he'd had with substances.

And I think it's very humbling and quite eye-opening to see stories firsthand of people that you're operating at such a high level but have also had such problems, like such serious problems that would break a lot of people's spirits and yet they're still able to perform at a level that most people would consider to be. They've made it up at the hierarchy and you know they're still able to perform a level that most people would consider to be. They've made it up to hierarchy and, and you know, they're really successful. Could you take us through your problems with substances and, and how that came about? And then sort of where that, where that took you, where you ended up? What do you mean? What, what problems with substances?

If you, you, I'm just messing with you. Yeah. And, and, and I'll start out by saying it was because it broke my spirit that I've been able to have the success that I have. It's because I went so low and so deep that I have the ability to be so grounded and be so passionate about the different things that I am passionate about today. The journey kind of started at nine years old. I have my first drink of alcohol by myself on my ninth birthday.

And I remember taking a shot of whiskey and just feeling, like maybe for the first time that I was accepted and feeling really comfortable in my body. I didn't realize until much, much later that I was a very anxious kid and I wanted everyone wants to be liked, everyone wants to be cool. I really, really had to be liked and I had to be cool and I was willing to go to much greater lengths than my peers to be accepted. By the time I was 14, I was smoking weed very regularly at my house by myself every single day. That led to pain killers and benzodiazepines. I was taking those every

single day as a 15-year-old around that time. My parents started to catch wind of what I was doing. I started to fail drug tests for just about every drug on the panel. So they started taking me to AA meetings as a 15 year old. And I remember sitting in there and really, really feeling for these people. These are people that were either homeless or they had lost their families or they had gotten some kind of severe illness, you know, alcoholics. Very chronic. Very chronic. Yeah, exactly. Like really bad liver issues. And I really developed some empathy for these people, but I wasn't one of them. You know, I'm going to guess there were not very many of the 15 year olds that were in A.A. meetings. There were none. There were none. And so I thought that I didn't belong there. Yeah. And I really got

nothing out of it for myself. I was in complete denial that I had any problem. I just thought I was having fun and I was in complete control. By the time I was 16, I was using ecstasy and cocaine and By the time I was 16 I was using ecstasy and cocaine and very very serious pain killers. Will you still go into the AA meetings at this time? Still going to the AA meetings and actually I started to go more frequently and I started I Started to have these kind of different lives where I would go to AA meetings probably two or three nights a week And then another two nights a week. I would would tell my parents I was going to a meeting, but I would just go get loaded. But I really, and this doesn't have a ton to do with my story, but I think it's really interesting. And I think it's really interesting. I started to have this different life where I started to develop

these true friendships with these people, NAA, people that were roughly 10 years older than me that would that I just learned a ton from they were there were much more mature than any of my friends they they cared about a lot of different things they were really happy and care free they were having a shit load of fun completely sober. get load of fun completely sober. And I love that and I made some good friends out of it. And I was high a lot of the time that I was hanging out with them. There was, I was still in complete denial that I had any problem with it. I thought I just had to convince all of the authority figures that I had it under control or that I wasn't using drugs

and that it would all be okay. You just playing the game. Just playing the game. I'm a great, great player of the game. By the time I was 17, the first one of my good friends passed away. He went to sleep next to another one of my friends. They both took OxyCotten and Zanex that night and one of my friends woke up and the other didn't. And instead of going to this guy's funeral, I chose to shoot up OxyCotten and Cocaine

for the first time. And that really shows you that kind of person that I had become. I just, I didn't care for other people. I started to steal from every single person in my life, my peers, my family, businesses, no one and nothing was off limits. I just thought I was entitled to whatever you had. And so I stole from everyone. Where do you think that was born from?

Where do you think this detachment from responsibility came from? That's a really great question. I think it just started kind of as a seed where I made one decision that, let's take, I definitely can't remember the first time this ever happened, but I'll say I started the first time I ever stole, but I'll say, I started,

the first time I ever stole, it was out of my mom's purse, and it was probably something like five or $10 to get a couple pills or maybe a dime bag. And I just, I didn't see it as if that big of a deal. I saw it, it definitely didn't line up with my values that I had been raised on, but I didn't think my mom would really miss

the money. I thought if she didn't find out, you know, no real harm done, I'm not going to do it again. And it's just a small, a small lie, like a small wrong. And so it didn't seem like that, that big of a deal. It happened again and it happened again. And sooner or later I start doing slightly bigger things. Slippery slope. Exactly, slightly bigger things. I start stealing from other people. And I just start making these compromises

where I'm acting out of line with my values. And I'm not just like someone losing weight, can't really see themselves losing the weight. I couldn't really see myself changing because it happened so slowly and over such a long period of time. So it was just one compromise after the other. I understand.

So 17, friends died, and you detached away from that, then what happens, where'd you go from that? February, later that year in February, my parents chose to send me to rehab, and I absolutely needed it. And I even knew that I needed it at this point. I knew that I was just really out of control,

and I was kind of scaring myself with some of the decisions I was making. I knew, you know, this guy had just died. Earlier that year, I had totaled a truck. I had gone, gone through four lanes of oncoming traffic and totaled a truck. And so I was kind of scaring myself. And I knew I needed it, but I thought I had just read the book, Scar Tissue, by Anthony Ketus, and in that book, he goes through like, I don't know, half a dozen short-stint rehab centers, like 30 days, and they're all in Malibu,

and he talks about like meeting some fine chicks and stuff. So I'm kind of pumped, you know, I'm going. It sounds like a holiday. Yeah, I think I'm going to a Cush rehab center. I might meet some chicks. And I'll kind of, Yeah, I think I'm going to a Kush rehab center. I might meet some chicks. Yeah. And I'll kind of, I'll just regain control over myself.

That's my thought process. My parents had a totally different idea. They sent me to not, let's see, nine or 11 months of inpatient treatment, a couple of different facilities, and then I did another nine months of a halfway house. And that was, it was absolutely crucial and it transformed my life. House so. The first two months were in a wilderness therapy center, and it was in the middle of the desert with 15 other adolescent boys. And really what that time did was it helped me to, it helped all of that chatter in my

head. I had some depression and anxiety and my mind was just chaotic. And it helped that to really chill out. It helped me to detach from a lot of the bad influences in my life. It helped me to detach from a lot of my desires and just that internal chatter that never turned off. I didn't really get much good therapy done there. That started in the next program.

This was like a lockdown facility. You don't leave for several months at all and I had a very hard-nosed therapist that called me on my shit and this treatment center in general really encouraged the A lot of the therapy to be done by the peers and again going back to me just really wanting to be done by the peers. And again, going back to me, just really wanting to be liked and accepted, that was by far the most powerful thing. Because that's not a positive influence. Exactly. And they, I mean, they had guys just saying, I would, I would be thinking, I'm sharing something really vulnerable and I'm being authentic. And they would flat out call me out. Like that's, that's fucking bullshit. You're telling us like 5% of the truth passing it off as the full truth

Yeah, and man, I just I I had to learn to go deep and for a long time I just completely shut down and I refused and I withdrew which is kind of my that was my mo If things got tough I would just withdraw at point, I got over that and I really did the work. I got vulnerable. I contributed to other people's recovery and I accepted other people to hold me accountable, to love me. And I just learned a shitload of lessons man and it really changed my life. That's fantastic. So I definitely think that it makes sense. You'd absconded from responsibility for your own actions a little bit and you were obviously

able to outwit some of the people in your life that were questioning whether or not you were actually being truthful. And I think that a lot of people can probably relate to that. It doesn't necessarily need to be with regard to drugs, but vulnerability with a partner, telling them that you actually don't feel comfortable with that guy or girl that they're talking to, or whatever, and it manifests itself in another way, in resentment, or in a level of mistrust, or whatever it might be. And I think that there's a lot of people that will withdraw in that way, play the game up until the point at which the problems out the way and then they can kind of get cracking again on their terms without

actually having to make themselves vulnerable. So I think that's an extreme example of a situation that a lot of people probably go through. So you're nine months deep now, you've gone through your nine to 11 months of rehab and then why are we? Then I start college, I go to a halfway house and immediately after I get out of that inpatient treatment, I'm rocking and rolling man. I'm so motivated, just so high on life, I start running for the first time. And real quick, I tried out for the University of Utah baseball team, couldn't quite hack it. So I start running.

And I train really, really hard for the Salt Lake City marathon. And I end up winning my age division. It really well. I'm pumped on it. And at the same time, I get really burnt out on running. So at the end of that, I suddenly don't have like a physical goal. And I also didn't have many friends yet. I was in a new city for the first time and a lot of the people in my halfway house

were actually, you know, smoking crack and drinking. And it was just not a very positive environment. So you've gone back to maybe a negative influence from the PA group again. Well, I just didn't hang out with them at all. Okay. Okay. So you've learned that you can segment your life a little bit. Absolutely. And I was definitely going ho on staying sober. And I started to meet some friends through alcoholics anonymous and narcotics anonymous. And I started to meet some friends through alcoholics anonymous and narcotics anonymous. But I didn't make any real deep connections in the first six months.

And so when that marathon was done, didn't have a goal. And I just, I really started to isolate myself. Just because I didn't have anything to really look forward to. I didn't like college at all. I didn't have any deep relationships and suddenly I don't have this physical goal and I was always really driven by physical goals. Even if it just be playing games really hard, right? I always love to play and I didn't have any of that. And so. And I didn't have any of that. And so long story short, I isolate myself for about a month, start smoking cigarettes again,

kind of get caught, well, not kind of, I get really sick, I get a really bad cold because I smoked one of my sponsors, my AA sponsors like, roll your own cigarettes and it's really harsh. And so I get sick and man, this seed of a thought gets planted in my head where I've gotten kind of depressed, didn't have any good friends

and this just seed of a thought pops in. Maybe I can go get loaded, right? I can go get some coding syrup and I can get loaded and it won't be a big deal. And I push it away and I actually, I talk to my sponsor about it, I talk to my therapist even about it and I decide I'm not gonna do it. But that seed of a thought grows really, really rapidly because I'm still sick and it feels really shitty and I'm depressed.

It grows really rapidly. And within a week or two, I decided that I was going to get fucked up. And within 24 hours I made the decision that I was going to go to the hospital, the University hospital, I was going to get some coding syrup and I knew that I could lie to the doctor and say I was in a lot of back pain because I was born with a genetic back disorder. And so that's what I did. I was in a lot of back pain because I was born with a genetic back disorder. And so that's what I did. I went to the University hospital, got the drugs,

got an elevator of the pharmacy with the drugs, and by the time I reached the bottom floor, I had taken a bunch of pills, took a big ol' sip of cough syrup. Yeah, probably eight hours later, I'm smoking crack and shooting heroin all over again. And you've tumbled straight back in? Yep. Luckily for me, that only lasted a week. And some people in my halfway house told my therapist that I was using again.

And they pulled me back into the program. And I think it was June, maybe 28th, 2008, was the last day that I used heroin or smoked crap. Okay, and then was that, from there, is that full sobriety from that date? For five years, I was completely sober. And yeah, roughly five years later, I made the decision to drink occasionally and smoke weed occasionally.

And how have you found that effect on full sobriety and what a lot of people attach? Their recovery too is being T total. And it's all or nothing and it definitely sounds like that's a theme in your life as well. I did a podcast not so long ago and I brought this up with Dom with a friend who said that he didn't believe that going completely T total is conquering an addiction. He said as far as he's concerned it's being able to stop your use of the substance and then the reintroduction of the substance on your terms or A substance. There's some that are too difficult to be able to, you can't have a little bit of heroin, but specifically with alcohol, his point was that it needs to be a reintroduction on your terms and if you can then control the usage.

So how did you find having your first drink after you'd had such a long time off? And were you scared? Were you concerned that that was gonna be the beginning of something worse? Really, really great question. And I love what your friend Dom said, and I would agree to a certain point, but everyone's different.

And there are human beings that I believe are so, they've used for so long and just literally rewired their brains for so many years. It's not even safe to ever chance reintroducing anything. For me, I thought that could be the case and I thought about it for about six months and talked to my entire support system other than my parents because that would have really scared them but I talked to everyone else therapists Mentors friends, etc. And then one night a friend came over and he had a big bag weed and he went to the shower and I had been thinking about it and so I just grabbed this little this little nugget and later that night I rolled myself a joint

and it was, it was impulsive of me, right? I couldn't say for sure that nothing bad was going to happen. But I had been thinking about it for so long and I was pretty damn sure that I had overcome the issues, the challenges that led me to the place that I was in the first place. And it felt really confident. And so I made the decision and smoked some weed and nothing bad happened. And so it was really scary in the beginning. And I kept kind of like looking and waiting for things

in my mind to change, like for me to develop cravings and they just never came. But the one promise that I made to myself and I will always keep is that if I feel any kind of emotion, like negative emotion, any kind of real challenge in my life, I'm very vigilant that I can't medicate with any kind of substance. I have to deal with it healthily, like a healthy human being by doing some introspective work,

by sharing it with someone I trust, by just literally working through it. And I use, I use those things to as a, you know, to have fun with people as a, as a social event, not as a social event, not as a coping mechanism anymore. I understand, I understand completely. Were you proud of yourself? Referentially after the event,

after you'd had your first split, after you'd had your first drink, was there a sense of achievement that you knew, hang on, this was something that I used to, like I was never able to clean 140 kilos and now I finally cleaned 140 kilos. Like, was there a sense of accomplishment having done it and then not tumbled down the rabbit hole, so to speak?

No, I was, it was a feeling of relief and a feeling of guilt because for four years, I didn't tell my parents because I decided and who know I don't know what the right decision was but I felt so much guilt because I knew if I told them at a certain point they would be just so terrified and I didn't want them to feel that. I wanted to get, I wanted to have done it for long enough to where I could say, hey, I've been doing this for a year. I'm happier than I was before, right?

I've prioritized my mental health still, and I'm even happier, and I just want, I want to let you guys know that I'm okay, but I've made this decision. So I carried that guilt with me for about a year. Well, that's a heavy burden, Akari, especially when you're... For sure. Potentially using substances as well, even in moderation. Still a pretty, silly, pretty big burden to put it.

For sure. It was worth it to me, though, because one of the biggest decisions I chose to not be completely sober anymore was because I felt like I was expending a lot of energy trying to protect this sobriety that I didn't really identify with anymore. I didn't identify with this sense of being powerless anymore. So I thought I was spending energy without needing to. Does that make sense? Yeah. spending energy without needing to. Does that make sense? Yeah, will powers a finite resource?

There's an interesting study by Dr. Roy Balmeister with radishes, have you heard of this? I know of the concept, will powers, finite. I don't know if I know of that study. So basically put two people in a room. One had radishes and cookies, and the other just had cookies. The radishes group were told that they could only eat the radishes, cookies and the other just had cookies. The radishes group were told that they could only eat the radishes and the cookies group were allowed to eat the cookies.

Then after they'd both been in the room for a fixed period of time, both groups were given a tough mathematical test that I think couldn't be completed within the particular time frame and it was a long time frame. The group that had the radishes gave up 50% quicker than the group that didn't. No. That's fascinating. Because that willpower had been reduced already. So when it came to doing a cognitively demanding task, they had nothing left in the tank. Oh, they had left.

Oh, shit. Less left in the tank. That's cool. It is cool, isn't it? I think it's a big...we'll get onto it in a second, but you're a big advocate of morning routines and of taking things out of choice and into the habitual domain. And I think that definitely is, if anyone who's listening that doesn't have a good morning routine for a startup, that's all that you need to know. If you spend your time on a morning choosing

which cereal it's going to be or what, you're going to cook or whether you do meditate, I don't meditate, I do have a shower, I don't have a shower, that's a decision later in the day that you need to make, that you can't make with as much efficiency. So, you're now clean, CrossFit, how did you get into it? And what was your first ever workout? Can you remember? Oh, absolutely. So I had just run the marathon and it was actually before I relapsed.

My, a guy who would then become the best man in my wedding, you know, what, seven, eight years later, he, I met him through my chemical dependency counselor. The this gal knew that I you know, love to be active and had didn't have any friends. So she hooked me up with this guy Bryce and we started snowboarding together. He knew that I was kind of looking for some kind of fitness to do. And he said, Hey man, if you want come, come try this new thing. I'm doing. And you said this two crossfit 2008 2009 nine nine. So this is early days.

So let's see 2000. Yeah, eight. I think it was nine. So that would mean that that's the that's the year that the real apps happened. So he he brings me in and I'm thinking I'm in phenomenal shape, man. Just one my age bracket. I'm going to kick everybody's ass and it was fight gone bad.

And I did one round as hard as I possibly could. And I halfway blacked out from there. Come out with a little bit quick. Exactly. I was sore for probably 10 days after, but I absolutely loved it. I came in dead last in the whole gym. I was not naturally gifted at CrossFit at all. I fell in love with that transformation that happens throughout that hour-long class. You get your ass absolutely kicked. Everyone's doing it together. Everyone's suffering and giving all of the effort that they can. And on the other side,

they come out a stronger human being mentally, right? I loved that process. And you know, it, I did it for a couple of weeks. The relapse happened, and then I found it again probably six months later. Okay. So the class is a bit of a microcosm for you overcoming obstacles elsewhere, I suppose, as well. The classes go through something that's difficult, you come out feeling better at the end.

I suppose that's a theme that you'd been through several times back and forth over the years proceeding as well. Certainly. And I couldn't articulate that at the time. I just thought I thought it was a great work out. It was some, it was very positive people to be around. And I just loved being at that gym. What had you done before with regards to training that was similar?

How do you, obviously, you've done sports that were athletic, but who do you do anything in the way of weightlifting or something similar to that seriously? I competed in powerlifting a little bit. I did a couple weightlifting competitions and I grew up, my dad started bringing me to the gym when I was probably eight and I didn't take it very seriously, but at my school, I probably took it more seriously than any other kid. I, not, not because I wanted to get better at the sports, just because I loved, I loved to lift weights and feel like I was getting stronger.

I loved the feeling of putting 135 on the bench press for the first time, 225 for the first time. It was just a, it was just a good feeling, and I liked being in the gym. That addictive personality showing through a little bit as well, I suppose. Now we're in a positive light. So, how do you go from being dead last in the gym? Obviously, you've got a work capacity. You've completed a marathon.

So, endurance wise, I suppose there's a good... There's the beginnings of being able to grind it out, but there's not very many CrossFit workouts that take between two and three hours. So, you've got some big holes in your game. What was, when you were starting out, what were you the shitdest at? What was really bad for you? Honestly, probably my strength, because I had, I was really strong at one point in high school, but then I got really into drugs. And then I spent nearly two years without touching a weight.

And so everything was heavy for me. And I wasn't even someone that took to the gymnastics techniques very quickly. It just took a lot of practice. Was there anything you found particularly easy? Running. Right. Yeah. Okay. So if you've got, if you've got some running in it, then you sweet. And if not, at the time, at the time, I'm a completely different athlete now. Yeah. Yeah. Just like the running. Okay. So tell me how you get from there to being the number one team in CrossFit two years

in a row of the games. What's the level of work output that you needed to go through to get yourself from that guy in the first workout to standing on number one podium at the games? So for about a year, I didn't even hear, I didn't even know that like a competition, like an official CrossFit competition existed. And so I just showed up at the gym nearly every single day and just went as hard as I possibly could. And I had at different points, I just had different people that I was chasing, right? Different levels of people that I was chasing. And I said, if I can beat that person,

then I'm getting better. And over the course of the year, I worked my way up to chasing the guy that got the best time every single day. His name was Rob. He became a really, really good friend of mine. And I just started chasing him and just putting in time

in the gym. At some point, I started adding a little bit of strength work before my workouts a little bit further. I was doing a little bit of strength work and I was doing a second met con either right after the work out of the day or I would come in a second time to the gym and just put an extra work In to simply probably a year after I think it's a full year after I started I did a competition Where I competed against Tommy Hackerbrook who would later become my teammate and I was beating him for long enough in the day

I was in first place in this competition for long enough that I really got his attention. And he ends up really kicking my ass because in the beginning of the day, there were no strength events. And so after that, he just destroyed me. But after the after the event, he comes up to me and Rob, that was at my gym and he said, Hey, y'all are both, y'all are both great at this. Why don't we all come to my gym and we'll start a team. And so it was, at that time, it felt like one of the hardest decisions of my life to leave my first gym, because it felt like I was breaking up with my family.

But, you know, over the course of a couple of weeks, I made the decision to leave. And that year we had a team that went to the games and Tommy wasn't a part of it. We had a team that went to the games and Tommy wasn't a part of it. We had a team that went to the games that placed ninth. And that's the first time that I followed a structured training program. We all just followed Tommy Hackenbrook's training program. Okay.

And it was a lot of two days. There was some monostructural work like running and rowing, but not a ton, and now it actually skipped a lot of that. And it was, you know, that was the first time that I really took it seriously. So would you say that that's a lot, in terms of sophistication, the programming that you were doing that built the basis upon which most of your work time was done in the build-up to you winning the games, how would you compare that in terms of sophistication to programming that both you selves do now and I guess what is typical within the community at the moment?

What is typical in the community, I would call it as sophisticated if not better. The guy that did it, his name is Rob McDonald. He was the general manager of Jim Jones for a long time. He has, he's coached dozens of professional athletes, fighters, NFL players, NBA players. And he just really, really gets strength and conditioning at its core. He really understands the principles of strength and conditioning.

And he applied all of the work that he's done with professional athletes for so long and just added a crossfit twist to it with a little bit of Tommy's help. Yeah. So even in the infancy of the sport, you've got someone who's so far ahead of the game. And that was huge for me.

Absolutely. I started to see, I learned the correct way to train like really, really rapidly. The next year, this is really what changed for me and what had the biggest impact for me is we decided that we were going to take the best people of that team and Tommy was going to join the team. And we's three at this point. Three and three. Yeah, exactly. We decided that we were going to try to create a team that could go and win the CrossFit Games.

And so we recruited people. And at that time, people were still talking about recruiting like it was a sin. And I just laughed. I'm like, this is every single sport recruits. I'm a spotting. There's nothing absolutely nothing like ethically wrong with recruiting. And I just laughed. I'm like, this is every single sport recruits. I'm spotting. There's nothing absolutely nothing

like ethically wrong with recruiting. We literally got people from other gyms to start working out at our gym. And we got some savages. And what changed for me was seeing how a couple of my new team H trained, specifically, I'll talk about Adrian Conway, who I still work with to this day.

He did every single thing on the program. He slept eight to nine hours a day. His diet was on point. He got body work done on him several times a week. Every single thing was on point. And that's the first time I really closely observed someone training like a professional. And it inspired me to do the same. So he's not doing more and he's also not doing less. Exactly. He's doing exactly what his coach is telling him to, which is what a professional

does. He's doing everything that he can to set him up for success. And so I wasn't perfect, but I got damn near close to doing the exact same thing. And what it did is it obviously, it helped me progress physically at a level I just was not used to. I got better at everything very quickly, but it just changed my mind. It changed my mindset. I was putting in so much effort

and so much focus that it'll, it made me mentally tougher. So when I'm in the gym, you know, doing a really grinding workout, I had this new feeling of strength in me and this ability to push, because I believed in myself a little bit more. It's like an echo chamber, isn't it? Yes. And it's not a tangible thing. You have to do it and experience it to really understand what I'm saying, but it made me a mentally stronger athlete just by doing what I was told.

Yeah, the slippery slope runs up and down, doesn't it? When you break the discipline in one direction, look at what happens. You've got a number of years of examples of that, and then when you break the discipline in the opposite direction and you start pushing beyond what you thought was capable, then you benefit. Exactly. It's all about integrity. As a drug addict, I had zero integrity with myself.

When I would tell myself, I want to accomplish X-goal. I didn't believe it because I could not be trusted. When I started to do everything that I was told, when I started keeping promises to myself, I started to really believe in the things that I was doing. I started to really believe in myself and workouts, and it was a very powerful experience. I agree.

Each step that you make is built on top of the previous one. Exactly. Do you think that you would like to coach yourself? If you'd had the mic as you athlete in 2011, and you were the coach now, do you think that you would like to coach yourself as an athlete? I think I would, actually. At that time. By the time I was on that team, yes, I would

do anything that my coach told me, all of the things in and out of the gym. And I think it would have been fun for me and intellectually stimulating to be challenged so much, because I always wanted to know why we were doing what we were doing, not to call them out and argue with them, but I just wanted to understand. I wanted to understand how the body worked and how kinesiology exercise science worked. So I think it would have been fun for me. Yeah, that's a good question. I love that.

Yeah, that hunger for information. I guess that's laid to the foundations for you to be able to make what is as far as I can see one of the premier programming outfits that's in the community at the moment. So to give you a little bit of information from my side, I started the Brute Body Programme, what do we start? Week five, this week five day one or two today. And I'd started that at the beginning of the year, some friends have given me some really good feedback on that. And for anybody who's listening who doesn't know what brute body is,

it's, I would describe it and I might do this wrongly as a physique-focused CrossFit program, I suppose. What's interesting for me, seeing someone who has been to the pinnacle of the sport stood on the podium twice at the CrossFit Games. And typically the, I think, physique and aesthetics in CrossFit can be considered a little bit of a dirty word. Sometimes I think that fitness comes first and the over the tribalism that occurs between the global side and

the CrossFit side sometimes means that if you see someone who's doing bench press or is doing some extra curls in the gym you know that that's very unlikely going to be for functional reasons and I think it's really really interesting to see you guys having set up a program which is aesthetics conscious. So let's fast forward and let's talk about brute strength and what you guys do. Can I actually comment on that? Absolutely. Because I think that's a really interesting point and I want to be clear that I so believe

in the CrossFit ethos and that every human being should strive for fitness. At the same time, brute body is not meant to be done for one's lifetime. It's meant to be done for like three to 12 months. Some people choose to do it longer, but it's to be done for a short period of time and to teach you a new way to train and to add to your training vocabulary.

We've had so many people that have been doing CrossFit for seven plus years that come in and say, I've never felt better or I've never been this strong or I'm having so much fun with all of these new movements. So it just, it exposes people to things that they're not already doing. Yeah. And it, all of the accessory work in it has an amazing effect on people's bodies

that they're able to go back to their regular, you know, CrossFit programming later and then add in some of this stuff on the side to keep themselves healthy, to just keep things spicy and entertaining and exciting, right? Isn't it interesting that you've got people that have been doing CrossFit as a sport,

and you're having to teach them things like one in a quarter incline DB curls, and like, zircher curls and stuff like that. Like the typical approach to gym, bro lifting would be coming the other way. It would be, I can do supinated bicep curls and tricep extensions for days, but I don't know how a clean and jerk, I don't know how a snatch. And I think it speaks to the dominance of CrossFit as a methodology and a functional fitness that you can actually, you can teach people, there's a eight to 14,

it's an acceptable number of reps to try and do. Right, right. And you may not do that every day, but that's a great way to train sometimes. I think you can get some great adaptations that way. Okay, so I think from, what's interesting is that you see the guys in the gym, especially in the CrossFit gym we've got a gym in Newcastle, there's split in half, so there's one side that's the global side and there's one side that's the CrossFit side and

I'm definitely seeing an evolution, I think of CrossFit in that there is complete fluidity between both There's the guys that tend to spend more time on one side and tend to spend more time on the other, but there is a lot more movement between the two. Do you think moving forward that we're going to see more of that? Do you think that you can see CrossFit is going to become increasingly focused or less focused on being able to work capacity and more focused on aesthetics as the sport becomes more inclusive and wider, or do you still think that it's all moving in the same direction and it's kind of just extra arms and extra

armory being added in to an existing body of knowledge, so to speak? That's an interesting question. I think for sure, the only thing I know for sure is that CrossFit coaches are becoming very, very competent. They are learning all types of different methodologies. And so I think what we will see is a lot of gyms with just a lot more variety of movements and a lot more variety of even methodologies, right? We might see people go through different phases or we might just see a lot of different movements that you're not used to seeing mixed in your training either before, during or after your workouts.

As far as the camp that people are a part of, I think people just love to be a part of a camp, so I think they're going to remain a little bit divided so that they can call themselves a meathead or call themselves a hardcore cross-fitter. People just love to feel stirdally a part of a certain tribe of people. I agree. No, I couldn't agree more. The identity, the group identity that's fed through from training methodologyology is absolutely correct. We've got Thursday nights at six o'clock, his gun club, which is an hour of amrap curls and superset bench press with plank rolls and stuff like that. And that's really, really cool. And seeing some of the guys' eyes open up, if they come in and they've done

They've done bro lifting for a while and then they come across to the CrossFit side and they kind of suck everything Pretty much the same way as everyone did and then they see the Thursday six o'clock class and they look at that and they think I can actually this is this is my jam again I can go in and I can show everyone that all of this training has been for something and it's between eight and 14 reps usually. Right, and through that, I love that. Through that experience, you're able to have like a,

able to be on another level of consciousness where you all of a sudden see, okay, CrossFit may be like the best way, but you can also add in these other things and it's not bad. What's bad is focusing solely on isolation exercises. That's just not a functional way to train your body and it's not good for your health long term.

Some isolation exercises sprinkled into your programming can be a phenomenal thing. I agree. So moving forwards, brute strength, to me, it doesn't sound like, it doesn't sound like, naturally, you've had a massive amount of opportunity to develop a business acumen, maybe apart from when you're trying to negotiate the price of drugs. Right, you're running your life. It doesn't seem like you would be top of the list as

someone who would become a clever businessman and will be able to move forward very quickly with that. So can you explain about how you commercialized your passion? So I was really lucky to be a part of the very first barbell shrug mastermind. I went into that event literally knowing nothing about business. And I'm not even exaggerating. I was about to buy a gym from Tommy and I was about to start brewed. I knew both of those were happening and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing and I went into that event knowing nothing and I came out with just my mind exploded with different ideas so first off I was very lucky to have

Mike bled so and Doug Larson and those guys as some mentors and they've continued to mentor me throughout the years. And I think one of the biggest gifts I was given and skills that I created through my time in rehab was the ability to just ask for help and not be afraid of looking like I don't know anything. I have always, like since I got out of rehab, I have just been such a sponge for information and just always asking for feedback, asking how I'm doing, where I can improve, what other people are doing,

and just really being vulnerable in the sense that some people might think, some people might think that's a sign of weakness or they might think I'm, you know, I really don't know what I'm talking about and I'm fine with that and it's allowed me to learn at a really rapid rate and, you know, steal a lot of ideas. Absolutely, you know what I mean? One of my favorite YouTubers, anyone who's listening or know who I'm about to quote, Jordan Peterson, one of his rules for life, he's got 40 rules for life. And one of them is assume the person you are speaking to knows something that you don't

and listen to them hard enough so that they will tell you. And I think that that is so many of the things that we've brought up today. Number one is tell the truth. Number three is act in a way so that you can tell the truth about your actions. And you know, so many of the things that we've gone through today are principles that appear to manifest themselves in different walks of life. It's interesting that you say that you're showing vulnerability now, whereas the first portion of your life where you were struggling, you were hyper unvulverable

or at least externally whilst interning the same. So speaking the truth forward definitely appears to have done wonders for yourself. So you know that Brute Barbell at the time? What was the first brand? Bruce Barbell. Bruce Barbell. Oh, it was So my partner Matt Bruce He just had to have his name in there somewhere and then in the rebrand and so we combine Bruce with you crossfit

Brute Kazoo Bob. Oh might have been a night. Yeah, some people to pronounce. Yeah, right So where does it go from that? From right right when we started. Let's see. We start programming for people that want to compete at a very, very high level in CrossFit. I guess we start the access. Yeah, exactly. So, I start basically giving people the type of programming that I was given tailored to their weaknesses. Somewhere along the way, actually very quickly, I learned the concept of in business, you don't really want to work on your weaknesses. Instead, you want to highlight your strengths and then hire people where you are weak. And so I started to create this team to that really complimented me.

And so, I had people that paid attention to detail, people that were processed, oriented, people that could create systems. What are your strengths and weaknesses in business? My strengths are getting ideas, right, making new ideas, or taking an idea and getting it started rapidly fast. I don't need hardly any information to have the confidence to start moving forward.

That's also a real big problem sometimes, because I don't quite get enough information. So one of my intentions this year is to take like a 60 second pause before every decision I make. And I'm going to be way more accurate because of that. What some of my weaknesses are, it's really painful for me to pay attention to any level of detail. I hate that. I hate doing anything more than once. I hate repetitive tasks. Those are by far the biggest.

Oh, and organization in general. It takes me a lot of energy to keep schedules in place and different people in place and managing people. Those are just not in my wheelhouse. And so over time, we just hired people that love to do it and are great at it. Yeah, it's weird, isn't it? Because the same way as a football team or a crossfit team needs guys who bring different strengths

and weaknesses in, you can be even more specific with business and have such a tight mandate for a particular employee or business partner to look after. I think you're really correct. Doubling down on your strengths in any sort of commercial pursuit is the best way to do it because being okay at everything means that you're not really very great at anything. there's loads of people out there that aren't tremendously great at anything, but there's very few people that are particularly great at something. So I think you've definitely stumbled across something that is a really common route to business success that.

So you're now dealing with, I wouldn't like to guess how many clients globally, it'll be tens of countries, thousands of clients, and you're now dealing with some of the best athletes in the planet as well. So we're talking about hypertrophy-based training where you're taking people who maybe just want to look better, and then you're also taking people to the games as well, right? Exactly. For sure. So you're going from bottom to top. Can you name some of the top level athletes that you're working with at the moment?

We work with Jacob Heppner, Brook Ants, Cara Webb, Christine Andali, George Sanchez, Adrian Conway, who is on my team. We had the winning team from last year. The Wasatch Brutes. So those are some of our heavy hitters. Some big names in there. So one thing that I wanted to move on to was, I've heard you talk in an awful lot about you hitting rock bottom allowed you to spring back out

in terms of your development and your motivation. I think the people who hit absolutely rock bottom up by the very definition, they are in the minority. There's a lot more people who are wallowing around in this kind of two-thirds bottom of a squat, so to speak, to use the squat analogy. And we all know that if you're there, it's a lot more difficult to spring back out because the beginning energy that it takes for you to see everything has gone, this is a real life-changing epiphany moment, allowed you to say, right, this is enough, I'm knocking it on the head. Are there any things that you think that any principles or any advice that you think you could

give to people who maybe don't have it that bad, but also kind of don't have it that good? Does that make sense that it's a little bit of a no man's land where it's not bad enough to make it super bad to spring you back out to the bottom, but it's also nowhere near really where you want to be. And there might be people who suffer with depression a couple of days a month and they have anxiety and they have problems that are left unchecked, but it's not chronic severe life-stopping. They're not in an extreme amount of pain that almost forces them to change. I totally get that. It is a survival mode. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, a lot of those people, they aren't even aware

that they're in any pain. And so they're not even going to hear this. But it's all, it's really all relative. Like I could have gone so much deeper and so much further. I could have kept digging, kept digging, kept digging. The best way to get out of a hole, the first step, is literally just put down the shovel, stop digging further and decide that you want to change. For the people that just aren't stoked about their life, maybe they're a little bit sad, maybe they're a lot sad, but nothing horrible is going on. You're literally, your life is at stake right now. You have, you know, maybe 60 years left,

70 years left, and then it's just all done. And you're not gonna have another chance. And so your entire life is at stake, and the only way that you're going to have a positive experience in your one chance on earth is if you take a massive action towards a different type of existence. So first off, identify and accept that you are in a place you don't want to be and realize that acceptance is not weakness, is actually courage. And even vocalizing that is courageous because you're letting people see

the real you and that's just an act of courage. So first off, reframe it from a sign of weakness to a sign of courage. And then a couple helpful things are don't be afraid to ask for help. Ask, you know, if you see a person living the life you want to live, ask them what the basic principles, the most important principles are to follow that they use in their life.

And then just focus on trying to know yourself better and better. Through becoming more self-aware, you're going to intuitively know what the right decisions are for you. And it takes time, it takes consistency, and it takes hard work to really know what's underneath all of the layers and the ways that offense mechanisms that we've cultivated over the years. But it's possibly the most important work that we can possibly do. Well, you've only got that one life, right? And I think, yeah, one of the one of the big things I think that to come out of this is taking responsibility for your actions. I think that you do have two choices.

You can presume that nothing you do matters and that every decision that you make is whether there's someone watching or there's someone not, whether the coach in front of you or whether the coach isn't even there and you're training on your own, whether you're in rehab or out of rehab, however it might be, that the decision is ultimately meaningless or the alternative, that's good, right? Because it means, well, I don't have to take responsibility for anything, I guess that's quite a,

that's not a tremendously bad price to pay, but the alternative is everything you do matters, every single decision that you make, whether you make your bed or you don't make your bed, whether you wash the dishes up or you don't wash the dishes up, whether you keep a promise to yourself or someone else or whether you break it. And I think that the echo chamber, the self-referential building, one brick at a time, mentality that you've definitely had and appears to have worked in, you know, bounds for yourself. Certainly, it's certainly an

inspiring story for other people to hear. And I know that, like you say, it is all relative. And for someone to hear this kind of a story and think, well, that's not me. I don't have it that bad. You know, if it's not unbelievably good, then it can be better. If it's not absolutely perfect, then there's more work to be done. And I think that hopefully some people will hear and think, well, actually, yeah, I could make that bit over there, that bit of my life does need a little bit of work. I shouldn't leave it by the wayside.

So, what I want to finish with is some discussion on meditation. And I've heard you talk about it for a while, and I'd be really interested to know what your typical practice is at the moment. Super, super simple. I sit down in a chair, I sit at a 20 minute timer, and I focus on my breath. Every single time I catch myself lost in thought, I just bring myself back to my breath. That's my sitting meditation practice.

And I've been really, really consistent with it for a while now. And what I've noticed more than ever, and I've had this insight over the years, but I'm really, I'm seeing this on a very frequent basis now, where I am just the watcher of my thoughts and the watcher of my feelings, rather than being my thoughts and being my feelings. So, somebody cuts me off in traffic, my untrained mind, I am just immediately

pissed, I maybe throw them the bird, I speed up, I get in front of them and slam on the brakes. I am just, I am angry, right? Through the consistent practice of meditation, I've come to understand that the real me is just the watcher of those things. And if I can develop the more I am that watch that watcher the better my life is right the more I have the choice of which Thought to believe and and I have control over my thoughts and my feelings So it basically creates like the circumstances in our lives Don't change. They're going to happen to us, right? That's just life

But what happens in between the time that that circumstance happens and you have a thought? That's where the magic is. And consistent meditation can create this gap between the circumstance and the thought. And the bigger that gap, the more choice you have. So it goes circumstance, happens in life, triggers a thought, triggers an emotion, triggers a behavior, and gives you a result. That result at the end is always directly related to that original thought that you have. So if you have a result that you keep getting in life that you're not happy with, then reverse engineer it, figure out a thought that you need to think to trigger the right emotion and behavior and then result.

And then notice that you're just in control of which thoughts you believe, right? One thought in relation to getting cut off in traffic is that motherfucker is such an asshole. Like he probably does that to every person I've got to teach him a lesson. Yeah. That is believable. Like that could that could be the case, right? believable but not beneficial. Right. One that serves me is something like man, like that kind of pissed me off, but he's probably having a bad day. I really have no idea what's going on in his life. Maybe he's actually in the middle of an emergency. That triggers a very different type of emotion, which triggers a different

behavior, which results in me just chilling, having a good day. Yeah. No, I can't. And we are, we are, we have access to that in every single area of our lives. So you're doing at the moment mostly unguided meditation? Yeah, all unguided. Have you done any formal practice? Have you gone away and been coached by anyone

or ever had a meditation teacher? Yes, I've done a lot of different things with teachers. I've done actually a lot of guided meditations. I did headspace for a long time and I think for beginners, that's hands down the best way to learn. It's phenomenal, it's very cheap and it's the most kind of like compassionate way to learn, right? Where you don't beat yourself up for being quote unquote bad at meditation.

He takes that away from you. Andy is the nicest guy ever. Yeah. That voice is the most comforting thing. I actually bought my mum a year of headspace yesterday. It's a birthday, it's not for like two months, but she managed to download the app. I've got no idea how, because her iPad usually defeats her, but yeah, she managed to download the app and it's done the 10 day, and I was out right. You've got this far, like I'm going to get you the rest of it. I mentioned this on one of the life hacks podcasts that we did, but you might be interested as well. Aubrey Marcus, who owns on it, he has a fantastic guided meditation series and it's complete with binaural beats that come along with it. And

that course is called release into now in it six weeks, half an hour a day, and some of the stuff that he does in there. So you're talking about detachment from thoughts and watching the watcher. There's an exercise in that where he asks you to visualize a video camera three feet away and two feet up in the air, and then you watch yourself through the video camera. The inside reduces to leave the outline of the body and then the outline of the body reduces to leave nothing. And that exercise, that's only on week two, and that exercise for me was so difficult to do. It's a very different kind of meditation. It's not emptying the mind. It's a very different kind of meditation. It's not Emptching the mind. It's very focused. So rather than it being floodlight. It's spotlight. But some of the

some of the ways of thinking that that developed me that that forced me to develop were The way that you feel after doing those is very very Distinct in the same way that I'd say working up to a one rep marked back squat is very distinct from going and running a 10k. Right. Right. It's still physically exerting fascinating. Fascinating.

I'll check it out. You should do. It's really, really interesting. So I think the meditation side of stuff definitely appears to match in with your desire for bettering yourself all the time. And I think it's really inspiring to hear a story from someone. I said this to Dom, you hear this all the time

from people in the news that too much too soon and the stories of people who go from rock bottom and do manage to make it to a place where they feel valued, but to hear it firsthand from somebody who is part of a community. Do you still coach a box? Are you? I don't.

I travel too much to commit to coaching in person, and I actually don't coach anyone remotely anymore as well. Okay. We have coaches for all of our programs now. Okay. Do you miss that? A part of me does, for sure sure and I think I'll probably revisit I'll probably go back to it at some point in my life but I feel really energized and

challenged by working on the business rather than working in the business as much. Yeah, and so I'm I'm just really enjoying it for now. Well, there's only 24 hours in your day But when you when you write a program that can be distributed by however many coaches that can reach more people, right? Right. Just to finish, am I right in saying that you competed in the open last year? Was that the first time in a little while?

It was. So I had a back surgery in 2013. I had a Lumbar fusion done. And I thought I was done forever. And then this past year, I started going to this really kick ass jam called CrossFit Yucar, who just phenomenal competitive environment. And it really just fired me up.

So I started in January and I went to their level two class. So they have three levels. Their level two is like sport, which is like a regular CrossFit class. And then level three is like your competitor class. I just wanted to do regular CrossFit classes, and I went in there and just went all out. And I ended up getting in really, really good shape for me, relative to my best. And I decided to compete in the open and ended up getting in really, really good shape for me, right, relative to my best.

And I decided to compete in the open and ended up doing really well. You came 327th. Was it three top 300? I'm not sure in the world, but I got like 19th in the region. Yeah. So having had a disc fusion in your back and that was the reason that you exited sort of full competitive CrossFit a few years ago and you still managed to get so high up the rankings in the open. I mean, does that tempt you? Do you hear the CrossFit, do you hear Dave Castro on your shoulder,

just sort of teasing you to come back in? Definitely, definitely. It's very, very tempting. But I had this really powerful realization a few months ago that the only reason I still want to stick around and compete is because I think other people will like it and I will get attention for it. I really am not passionate about competing in CrossFit anymore. I love doing the regular CrossFit classes with a big mixture of people, just like I started doing in the beginning,

but I just lost the passion for competing. So, and at the same time, I've been really, really wanting to get into Jiu-Jitsu and kind of like dipping my toes in the past few years and just not sticking to it because I keep kind of getting back into CrossFit. And so I've decided this year I'm not gonna do the open,

I'm going to put my ego aside and not go for that thing that I know I'll get my ego stroke. You're gonna do well, isn't it? Right, and you're gonna, and it's almost definite that you're gonna know I'll get my ego stroke. You're gonna do well, right? And it's almost definite that you're gonna suck at jujitsu. Exactly, exactly. And by making that,

I haven't been more proud of a decision in a while because it really is so tempting to wanna do that thing that I think people really like. And I'm gonna suck at juJitsu for a long time. I might never be good at it, but I really love it, and I love the feeling of striving for mastery. And I just kinda lost that in CrossFit.

And so now I'm just using CrossFit as a way to stay in great shape and just getting passionate about this new thing. Fantastic. Michael, I've really, really enjoyed this, man. Can you tell us where we can find you online? You can find me. Our website is brutestrengthtraining.com.

I am completely off of all social media for the time being, so you won't find me there. That's really interesting. Why is that? Yeah. Uh, I recently read a book called Deep Work by Cal Newport. Yeah, have you heard of it? Yes, I have. Have you read it? Yeah. I recently read a book called Deep Work by Cal Newport. Have you heard of it? Yes, I have. Have you read it? Yeah. So just for the listeners, it basically explains that most of us spend maybe all of our time, if not the vast majority of our time, spent in shallow work, which is not cognitively demanding, not very meaningful

work. And although I wasn't spending a significant amount of time over the course of a week, and I tracked it, I wasn't spending that much time on social media, but I was spending it in the times where I was getting uncomfortable and I was starting to do deep work, and I would just just want to distract myself. Full back again. Yeah, so when I was like really getting into preparing for a really big podcast or I was writing an article for a manual that we were working on, I just found myself wanting

to distract and I don't like feeling controlled by social media. I also realize that I don't really use it for much positive. I don't post much. We have a social media team that does our social media for the company. I wasn't posting much personally, and I was just spending my time looking at people and kind of feeling shitty about myself because I'm seeing all of the best of everyone's week

or of everyone's day. And I could always find someone in one like social media session that I could say, oh my God, he or she is better than me. And I would really like, it wouldn't be anything significant, but it would be this little sting of, I'm not doing enough or he or she is better than me.

And I found myself, like kind of wishing, not wishing poor, poor, poor, absolutely. It's difficult. Don't want people to succeed, right? And I don't like that. That's contrary to what we've literally just discussed. We're talking about compassion, virtue, integrity, wanting the best for everybody else. Exactly. And in the same hand, it's so strange that on your footnote for this podcast that we've stumbled upon this.

So I did 10 minutes DOM from social chain. These guys have 400 million reach on social media, which is a significant proportion of the globe. Right? And I asked him about the ethics of technology about whether or not he feels that people need to be more mindful with the use of tech. I'm not sure if you have done, I know that you're a fan of Sam Harris.

Do you follow his podcast? I don't, man. I'm dying to get into it. So, episode, I think it's episode 71. I keep on drilling this. I promise I'm not on a referral code for Sam Harris' podcast. But Tristan Harris, from Time Well Spent, 71 I keep on drilling this I promise I'm not on a referral code for Sam Harris's podcast, but Tristan Harris from Time Well Spent

This podcast basically talks about how cognitive biases and persuasion techniques are used by companies like Twitter and Google and Facebook and Instagram the dopamine release the reason that candy crush was so Successful all of that sort of stuff and you've stumbled across everything there. The fact of the matter is that on social media, we see the best of everybody else's lives, whilst only in our eyes, through a lens of resentment and complete awareness of our own cowardice and stupidity on a daily basis. We only get to see the worst of our own. We compare the best of everyone else's lives with the worst of our own and it inevitably leads to feelings of resentment. We track the wrong things. Absolutely. If you do get back on your phone, download an app called Moment, which will track it.

You've got it. That's all you need. So Tristan, when you listen to that podcast, you will think. You will thank the fact that you decided to put the phone down. And I think it's so interesting that that's something that you've come across. I've also gone, man.

And I do wanna note that I don't judge anyone for using it. I just realized that for me, it wasn't serving me. Right? And I wanna regain control. I want to be more mindful in my life. And what I've, what I've noticed is that I am significantly more present in every single thing that I do, because I don't have, you know, I could open, I could open my, my email or open Google, but there's not that many like fun things that I want to go do on my phone

anymore, right? So I don't, I spend like a tenth of the time on there. It's awesome. What's the strategy? Have you just gone up free? Have you just deleted everything? Social media app free. Yep, yep, yep. So nothing except for stuff that you need to work

and I message and what's up and stuff like that. Exactly, and I'm very, I'm not perfect with this, but I am careful about when I check and respond to email, and I try to do it in windows throughout the day. So even email is limited. Fantastic. Well, I've got, coming up soon, I've got the CEO of thelightphone.com, which is a really interesting device, which is discussed by Tristan. And he basically it's a phone which allows you to call nine numbers and it forwards on from, it forwards on from your other phone. It tells you the time and who's ringing you if they ring. You don't need a new SIM card, you don't need anything, you leave your phone at home and you

take that one out. And it's if you're doing a weekend away with a family, it'll last for four days because it doesn't do anything. Wow. And yeah, I think mindful tech is definitely going to be an emerging field. I think it's really, really cool that you've stumbled upon it yourself. I think that's definitely very admirable. So we got halfway through you saying what your Instagram handle is, that you will check at some point in the future probably.

Yeah, probably, but the, but as it says in the book, if nothing bad happens as a result of you stopping, just stop all together. But it's, it's my full name. It's at Michael Casu that C a Z a Y O U X, send me a direct message. If I, if I open it and there's a bunch of them, I'll probably answer them all. You can also find my wife's company at working against gravity. I am also a team member on that company as well. That's a nutrition consultant company. Fantastic. Mike, thank you so much for your time.

I really appreciate it, dude. Good luck with you, Jiu Jitsu, as you chase me over. Thank you, Alex. You're welcome. Thanks for your looks and good luck to your athletes as well. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it.

I appreciate it. Yeah, this is a real pleasure. I love how conversational it is and how you just go deep. It's awesome. Thank you very much. Cheers, dude. of that