Modern Wisdom - #426 - Ben Bergeron - Stop Living A Life Of Complacency

Episode Date: January 24, 2022

Ben Bergeron is the Owner of CrossFit New England, Founder of CompTrain and an author. Ben has tested his high-performance philosophy on the biggest stage in the world having been the coach behind 6 CrossFit Games Championships. Today we get to go through some great insights for how to take charge of your direction and reach full potential in work, sport, family and life. Expect to learn Ben's process for deciding how to make changes in life, how to turn your inner critic into a coach, why trusting your gut is a superpower, what Ben thinks about Dave Castro's recent exit from CrossFit, how you get a team to respect their leader, how Ben dealt with recent big name exits from his gym and much more... Sponsors: Join the Modern Wisdom Community to connect with me & other listeners - https://modernwisdom.locals.com/ Get 20% discount on Mission’s high performance teas at https://missionuk.com (use code MW20) Get 15% discount on the amazing 6 Minute Diary at https://bit.ly/diarywisdom (use code MW15) Extra Stuff: Buy Unlocking Potential - https://amzn.to/3rSRo1l  Follow Ben on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/benbergeron  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Ben Burjeron. He's the owner of Crossfit New England, founder of Comp Train and an author. Ben has tested his high performance philosophy on the biggest stage in the world, having been the coach behind six Crossfit Games championships. Today, we get to go through some great insights for how to take charge of your direction and reach full potential in work, sport, family, and life. Expect to learn Ben's process for deciding how to make changes in life, how to turn your inner critic into a coach, while trusting your gut is a superpower.

What Ben thinks about Dave Castro's recent exit from CrossFit, how you get a team to respect their leader, how Ben dealt with recent big name exits from his gym, and much more. I really enjoy the way that Ben speaks. I think he has a calm, assured, authoritative tone. It's obvious that he's a coach and he brings that across into his philosophy around life as well. He's very intentional, very self-reflective. There's just tons, tons and tons to take away from today. I really, really hope that you enjoy this one. In case you missed it, Jordan Peterson is coming back on Modern Wisdom.

Me and video guideine are flying out to San Antonio, Texas in a couple of weeks to record with him. In person, we have rented an entire 6K cinema camera setup. We've got a producer who's going to be on site. We've had locations, scouts, looking at locations for a a while and we've found a beautiful spot to record in. It's going to be like the ending of a Christopher Nolan movie, just disgusting drama, cinematography. I can't wait. I'm excited to sit down with Jordan and have another extended conversation with him and I'm really excited to create something that's going to look and sound and feel really special because of all of the extra effort that we've gone to to produce this.

So yeah, get ready for that one. But now, please give it up for Ben Bergeron. Benjamin, welcome back to the show. Thanks Chris, good to be here, appreciate it. I want to start with a quote from your Instagram. It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well have not lived at all, in which case you fail by default. That's a JK Rowling quote. What's that mean to you? So, if you, if you, you can play it safe, right, you can play it so safe in life that there

are no risks. You know, it's basically, it's, think of the parallel to exercise. You can live such a life that you will not get hurt exercising. What that looks like is sitting on the couch all day long. So there is an inherent risk that you will get hurt. The moment you do any form of exercise to try and get shape in any way, shape or form. And that's the parallel to life.

If you are going to try to do anything meaningful in your life, there is an inherent risk that you will not succeed. That should not stop you because if you don't try, you're, you're failing by default. You're, you're not going to Live a life of any sort of meaningfulness fulfillment or impact on anybody else and that's kind of my measure of success is Is your life meaningful fulfilled and to have impact on other people so get out there and go do it It seems to me that you make quite prudent decisions. Do you have to push yourself to take risks sometimes?

Yeah, I think that's so I'm an entrepreneur so I think I'm I'm I'm not quite as risk averse as many other people but You know, it's probably built in a beat. I'm being an entrepreneur, these probably built into my DNA a little bit that I want. I'm so, so driven to live a life that I'm proud of. So driven to live a life of meaning and joy and happiness. And I don't want to put that off for anything.

So because of that, I think I'm willing to take more risks along the way. Case in point, when after graduating from college, university, I got a really secure job doing finance, and I wasn't feeling fulfilled. So I took the big, massive risk and left the corporate ladder, the security of the paycheck, and this really nice career path. And I didn't know what I was going to do, but I just moved out to become a ski bum for a year to try to figure it out. Because to me, the risk of not living a life to its fullest meaning The risk of not living a life to its fullest meaning is essentially a nightmare. It's hell on earth. Like living it not on your terms, not taking control and not doing something

that you want to do is not the way I want to go about things. So because of that, I think that's, I don't need to say, when I'm making those decisions, I don't know necessarily saying, whoa, this is going to be really risky. It's just, is the alternative complacency. And if the alternative is complacency, I'm out. And I want the other path. What do you say to people that need that bit more of a push, that maybe feel a little bit unsatisfied with why they're at, but are struggling to take action? Well, I don't, I don't say it to them because it's their choice to make. And I'm not here to say that the risk is worth the effort because everyone has a different risk aversion

and risk willingness scale. And what I say is, like there are certain plenty of things that I don't wanna do. Like, I, you know, I don't wanna go free solo up L-capitan. Like that's not, that's too risky for me. But for somebody else, that might be totally within their wheelhouse. So for me to put my value system on what is risky

and what is not, I'm not here to do that. So if somebody's like, should I make the leap, should I make the jump? That's something you gotta listen to, and when I say listen to, it's not a matter of weighing out the pros and cons on a piece of paper. Listen, you know, one side, here's all the things

that would go right, here's all the things that could go wrong. To me, it's listen to your guts because your gut has hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years of Evolutionarily evolutionary biology built into that DNA that's helping guide that decision and if it feels Not right in your guts. It probably isn't right. So That's something that people I think you can come a little bit more in tune with is what is there got to go so You know in today's world, it influenced to be logical beings. That's what, you know, we say, like, changes us from the apes is like that we have a prefrontal

cortex, we can think, we're the only animals that can think about our thoughts. Whereas everyone else has the lizard brain, the amygdala, and we kind of, they operate on instinct. I think we've lost a little bit of instinct, and we try to rationalize everything. And I think that the gut is the thing that can, that should guide more decision-making along the way if what we're truly looking for is to live meaningful and impactful lives. Dude, I've been thinking about this so much recently,

the fact that we pray at the altar of cognitive horsepower so much, right? We just believe that we can wrangle the world around us through just sheer cerebral weight, right? Here's a story. So halfway through last year, I got put on really, really boring normal medication. And I didn't realize, but when the doctor said you need to up the dose, I didn't know that

it was an anti-colonurgic. Do you know what that is? No. Okay, so, colon is one of the neurotransmitters that makes your brain work. Basically, when you take neutropics, many of them have colon in them. And over a little bit of time, my thoughts ended up being super muddy. Like I pride myself on having agile thoughts, right? I'm a podcast and that's my money. I need to be able to think quickly, what's in my head needs to come out of my

mouth. One day I was out for a walk and it took me 90 seconds to remember a town that I've been to 10 times. Like to remember the name of it? I'm thinking, okay, there's some sort of a problem here. And it makes you start to doubt and feel very conscious of the fact that you don't have the ability to fix the problems the same way. And then I realized what it was, dropped the dose, everything was fine, totally reversible. But what I felt for a small amount of time was basically like, kind of like a dementia type situation, just a restriction in my processing ability. And I spoke to a friend whose dad had dementia and he said, this illness has taken everything from me. It's

even taken myself. What he means by that is when we are people that rely on our brains to get us out of problems Like I know that no matter what the situation is that I get myself into I can probably think my way to a solution that will get myself out of it and there's something that's so brutal about Degenerating your ability to think because it's killing your ability to fix the problems, not just giving you problems as well. Yeah, I think so that is, I mean, so the cognitive thinking, the thinking brain, the problem

solving, that is what I don't want to diminish that at all because that's what gave us the light bulb. That's why we're able to talk across an ocean. It gave us everything that we have as human beings. So it is the most powerful thing that we have. I just believe that we've become too reliant on it. And because that, we can rationalize everything away for logical reasons. I can't quit my job because XYZ and A, B, and C. It makes no sense to quit my job.

Meanwhile, we live unfulfilled lives because we're not willing to take them step forward and do something that your gut is screaming at you going, let's go be happy. Let's find joy. Let's go for a walk in nature. I know you have those 19 emails you need to respond to, but this is, you know, it's, you know, I've been reading a lot about marketing recently. And it's, it's, we run our businesses this way. We run our businesses basically off

because you can find any data and we run, we dive into the data. Yet we can't logically explain why advertisements with animals in them do better than advertisements that don't. And we don't need to respond. We don't need to rationalize. We don't need to figure out everything logically. Some things are just magic, right?

Some things are just built so far into our biology as human beings that we're not going to be able to figure it out and put it on a spreadsheet. Not everything is, you know, able to fit into an Excel document. Some things are literally just feel and emotions. And as much as we, you know, it goes back to like the Simon Sinek thing is, people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And that goes right down to the root of everything. Well, forget about all of this,

we started this with this risk thing. Don't try to weigh and measure it. Just listen to your gut. And this is right down to people that are trying to figure out, like, should I stay with my partner or not? You know, I'm not fulfilled in my relationships. Should I stay with my end you go like, well, I should because that's how I create, you know, some sort of steadiness in my life,

whether it's financial or routine or it's what, what will my friends and family think or what will my religious group think or what would the alternative be? Is it being alone and all these things? And this is the reason people settle and become complacent and they end up living with a non-supportive what, you know, wife or husband.

It is either, in my opinion, it is either you live in an incredibly passionate, supportive, trusting relationship, or you don't have a relationship. There is no middle. It's, to me, it is binary. When people go like, well, it's okay because, you know, if I move out, it's going to be really tough to support myself and my kids. And I won't see my kids as much. And we'll say together for the kids. And this is why people live, you know, are afraid to take the leap, to leave their job, to leave their spot. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not here, you know,

promoting like people, go quit your jobs, go to get divorced. What I'm saying is don't settle. Don't live lives of complacency because there is so much out there for us. We are all, we all have the right to live incredibly fulfilled, incredibly passionate, incredibly joyful lives where you are sighted its Monday morning, where you are sighted that you're in quarantine with your family, where you are sight that you get to do what you do every single day.

And if something doesn't line up that way, don't put it off. This is your life. No one is going to come and change it for you. I think that we all kind of wait for because what we grew up with our entire lives, kind of wait for because what we grew up with our entire lives, mom and dad will do this. Then teachers will do this. Then society tells us to do this. And then it's all pre-programmed for us. And by the time we have control over our lives as functioning adults in society, we're programmed.

We're programmed to follow the script. And we go, well, the script is going to change eventually. And then the next thing that people look forward to is retirement. And by the time you're in retirement, you think that that's where you're going to kick it. That's where you're going to be in the hammock with the drink with the umbrella, and it'll be able to have fun. And by that time, you've given up your passions, you've given up your hobbies, you haven't lived a life that you want to,

and you hope that you're gonna finally get there, and it's not there for you. Don't wait, like take the risks to make it happen today. No one's coming to do it for you, at all. Absolutely not. You rely a lot on being procedural with your efforts. You've got this awareness, intention, action, framework that you follow and a lot of people that are listening are going to be intentional actors as well, personal development, self development, thinking about their

work throughout the day. How do you balance being intentional with trying to have that intuitive sense come in as well? you feel attention all that. No i think it's all it's one of the same and itself awareness. So, um, everything to me starts with awareness whether you're trying to make changes in your life for your trying to figure out your strengths and weaknesses trying to figure out what you how to become happy. It literally all so let's take that one let's we're trying to become happy because I think that truly is the shared purpose across humanity. We can call it what we want. Interchains that we're happy for, enlightened call it, finding God, call it pure consciousness, call it, whatever

you want to, that's what we all have as a shared purpose. Call it evolution, right? The evolution of our of ourselves, mind, body, and spirit. That's what we all have as a shared common purpose. Now, everyone has their own unique purposes as well, which their talents and changes based off of opportunities and where you are in your life, but that shared purpose of happiness. That's that level of awareness, just of that, like knowing that that's what we should all be chasing. That's what we all are looking for. Now if that's the case, what are the things that make me happy? And it's a simple exercise is like get out a piece of paper and I do it on my notes on

my phone. I do this every so often is make a running list that you can cross off and add to of the things that make you happy. And what you'll find is, I'm not talking like in the moment, I'm not talking about like getting high, I'm not talking like watching funny movies, although that might make the list. But what you'll find is things that make you happy, might not make you happy in the moments, but they do eventually. And my list involves things like you would expect. I like exercising, it makes me feel good.

I like being in nature. But I also like building things. I like working with teams, I like leading people, I like being creative, I like thinking about the future. I like breaking things down into frameworks. I like doing yard work. And you create these lists. And then what you do is you become where you're where you're same for. Then you create intentionality around creating those moments. No one's coming to do those things for you. If you find fulfillment,

enjoy and happiness, being going for a nature walks, then schedule those in. And schedule it in the way you schedule an adense deployment. Where when it comes, you don't push it off for something else. It's the thing that's, so now we have the awareness of truly aware of what's going to make me happy, the intentionality of, this is going to happen if I don't do this, it's not going, and then the action. Like, if you, we can talk about it all we want and talking about it does make me feel good,

just like everyone talking about it, but that's the trap. Because you talking about your goals, actually elicits the same dopamine as actually doing your goals. So it's a trick. And you have to recognize that it's the actual doing that moves us forward. It is truly not until we take the steps that we go anywhere. So that's why that 3-step process of of awareness Intentionality and action is kind of that's you know the three pillars that I think move people towards that

You know you fill in the blank Finding God pure consciousness Enlightenment or just joy like joy in their lives and And if we don't operate in that circular fashion of constant flywheel of awareness, intention, action, awareness, because when you take action, you get greater levels of awareness. Did this truly help me move me towards my goals or not? And then you move and you iterate.

It's the lean startup model. It's the build measure learn, right? Let's take action, let's just build it. We don't have to wait for perfect. Let's jump, grow wings on the way down, learn, iterate, and make adjustments along the way. And if you keep on that fly wheel, eventually you'll get to, and it's not gonna happen

immediately, but eventually you get closer and closer to that end state. And you enjoy the process along the way because you're making the adjustments with intentionality, not just getting pushed by anybody else or society. I don't know what the next book plan is, but I think that that should be one of the ones. Before you hang up the writing pen,

I think that that that framework is is worthy of a book. Noted. Good. Talking about big risks, news recently when Dave Castro was let go by CrossFit HQ, a low he might not be technically a leader, he's definitely a big figurehead in the sport in a lot of people's eyes. What were your thoughts on that?

So the first one was surprise. I actually, I was coaching the 530 AM class at the gym and I came in and started coaching and the members actually told me because I hadn't checked social or anything like that. So my first reaction was surprise and I remember it. And I was surprised mostly because I thought if it was going to happen, it would have happened. Right? As new leadership comes in, the easiest thing to do is to rip off bandage. Clean house all at once.

Yeah, just clean house. And they did that, right? They made a lot of shifts and a lot of changes, but Dave was there. So that was my initial reaction, but then with a little bit of hindsight and a little bit more perspective and a little thought, the timing of the change actually does make sense. So if we remember back when Rosa took over for Glassman, that was, it was late spring or early summer, somewhere in there. And the games were looming, right? The games were around the corner, and it was the midst of a pandemic. So this is where they had to scrape together a completely new format where they did an online qualifier, and then invited five guys and five girls

to a Romeus, California. So to do that, with complete new leadership on the game side, would have been with complete new leadership on the game side would have been Probably too risk and I think it was the smart move for Eric to Rosa not to make that move So then it puts us into that next season and I think that you know from There's a little bit of stability now so It actually makes sense from a timing perspective in my view. It was not the ship has kind of like settled a little bit, so a little bit of rocking can be withstood. And the timing does seem to make sense now. So while it was initial shock, because I

thought it would have happened, It's that dissipated fairly quickly because here's my personal opinion on it. I think Dave did a really good job running the games. I think from an organizational standpoint and from a program standpoint, the games are a phenomenal test and a terrific showcase. I don not, I don't think they would be what they are without Dave Castro. But I can see why Eric might think that a change is necessary to get the sport to where he wants it to go. Why is that?

Dave is polarizing. I mean, Dave wore shirts that said, unapologetic. That was his tagline. It's like, so unapologetic means don't take ownership in my mind. That's polarizing. Now, Dave would swear on TV. So to get to the next level, right?

To get to the next place. I think it could, I'm not saying I'm not, I don't have enough inner working knowledge of the, of how it shakes up, but I can understand the reasons for it. You know, strangely enough, you know, I've known Dave for a fairly long time and I think that the last two games, the one in a romance with five people, five guys, five girls, and the last one, Dave did as good a job as he's ever done from an athlete relations standpoint. So I actually didn't see this coming because again, if it was going to happen, I thought it was going to happen. And Dave did a really good job of being a better leader. I would say that I saw the growth of him as a leader over the last two years. So I was surprised

because I saw it moving in the right direction. I've definitely seen Dave be more cantankerous in the past than he has done recently. Yeah, it's so interesting. There's a lot of conversations in our gym about this. And I think the polarizing nature of Dave has trickled down to people as well. There seems to be sort of broadly two camps of people. People that can't believe that he's gone

and it's an absolute travesty. And people, it was overdue. Dave, you know, it doesn't fit the new vision that we have for CrossFit. Now, one of the things that's interesting is it depends on what Eric's vision, I think, for the sport is long-term. Whether or not you want to be on ESPN, whether or not you want to be able to commercialize more, whether or not you want to have that increasingly professional sort of stance, but there is still a huge, huge group of people in CrossFit that like the anti-marketing movement, the underground fitness mentality, and I think that when Greg went, that was a little bit of a

peer into a culture that maybe hadn't caught up with the modern era quite so much. And you see, you know, some of the media team went as well. They were some of the more outspoken guys as well. Okay, then they've gone. And Castro kind of was a little bit like, well, what the fuck's that guy doing there? Like how's he? How's he still there?

But then you think, well, he's a programming genius, Some of the workout, think about, was it 20.1? The wall, was that wall walks? Yep. That workout is one of the smartest workouts. Like he destroyed top level athletes with a wall. But absolutely destroyed them. And I think that his programming is beautiful. He was the third ever podcast that I did on this show

three, four years ago, the 18.0 announcement. And he's a polarizing figure, but he gave the sport character. There's an element of that edge to him. And I think that you're probably right. It's a case of where does Eric want CrossFit to be long term. So I can give my two cents into that because I've had conversations with Eric and he's told me that now this might be, this might have changed because I had this conversation with Eric

first came in. So I had a couple conversations with him in this first weeks on the job and his view. So here's, Glassman was not a fan of the CrossFit Games. He actually think it clouded the vision of what CrossFit was supposed to be. Eric is a huge fan of the CrossFit Games, like a fan boy, like he loves it. He competes in it himself. He's there. He loves it.

Eric, whereas Greg saw it as a side show and at best, and more realistically, probably a massive distraction. Erick sees it as a avenue for a huge part of the growth of CrossFit as a whole. These athletes represent the pinnacle of what we can all aspire to be. And he's looking to have a viewership of a hundred million people. That's a massive number. to have a viewership of a hundred million people.

That's a massive number. Do you know what it is? So currently? I would guess it's in the neighborhood of single digit millions. So, but even if it's 10 million, that's a 10x growth. That puts it on par with like, so I think the Super Bowl gets like 300 million

or something like that. So that puts on par with like normal NFL playoff type things. It puts it above UFC. Like it's a huge, huge number. And he's used UFC as a parallel for the sport. So in order for that to happen, and then you start to realize what his responsibilities are. Whereas glassman's responsibilities were to the legacy of CrossFit.

The methodology. The methodology. The methodology, that's what his responsibilities were, and to forge elite fitness, and to get people off the carbs and off the couch. That's basically what he was his missions. And then he took that to like this revolutionary and let's go fight Big soda and those type of things and let's try to change the world. Erick's so Erick didn't buy CrossFit. I think that's a misnomer. Erick headed up a group that he got

a bunch of people to invest in CrossFit. So he's responsible for their investments, like anybody would. Once you get backed by private equity, you have to, you're responsible for it. So he has to grow this thing. And I think that that probably is at the heart of the Dave thing as much as anything. Dave might have been part of the old guard.

I don't know this now, I'm speculating, but Dave might have been part of the old guard and like this is the way we're going to do it. Or the polarizing aspect of it didn't allow for enough upside swing of growth potential. So they might need to get somebody that is willing to completely sit in the background, again, speculation, completely not have and let somebody else be the face of this thing. Whether it's the, whether it's the athlete, you know, Roger Goudelle is not the face of the NFL, you know, and even Dana White is stepping back as the face of UFC and letting the athletes be them.

Or you have a true personality come in and be the face of it. Like a Rory McCurnen or a patcher word or something like that, somebody that, you know, again, this is me speculating in my opinions. I'd have said that Dave could have filled that Dana role quite nicely. I think he's got a little bit of edge.

He's got the rep repeatability from having been there from the very, very beginning. You see somebody like Dana that is a very, he's the fight maker, right? Or that's one of his main roles. And he's a common thread that ties together very, very early days with current days. And he's been there through the Reebok buyout, then Venom buyout and fight is coming and going and acquisitions and stuff like that. And it is nice, I think, to have that,

you know, it's Eric's decision or whatever and it'll be interesting to see what happens. As someone who doesn't have their money, based on what Dave decides to say on a microphone or the t-shirt that he wears or the hairdo that he turns up with. I would have much preferred to see Dave Castro continue to be the guy that programs the games and is there announcing and doing all of that stuff. However, from a business perspective, I can see why that wouldn't work. And it'll be interesting to see whether or not going business first leads to a better experience down the road or whether sticking to the old

school core principles would have been a more effective strategy, but I guess time will tell with stuff like that. You said recently talking about leadership and stuff like that, you said that you weren't a born leader. How so? Ooh. So, I actually, when I was younger, I would take personality tests. It would come up that I was a phenomenal follower. You give me directions, tell me what to do, and I go off marching and do it and do a pretty good job of it.

That's transformed as I've gone older. So that's the first piece. The second piece is I'm extremely introverted, still am. I'd much rather be a wallflower at a party than the center of attention and even talking to people at all. Honestly, I'd rather just listen. You know, in terms of like if you define extroverts and introverts, if being around

other people gives you energy or takes energy away from you, being around other people takes energy away from me. I'd rather be creating stuff on my own. So it's effort. It's a lot of effort for me to try to have conversations and try to communicate with people and hold people to certain levels of standards and expectations and share the vision and create common threads throughout an organization or a team. But I've learned to, honestly, being a coach has kind of helped transform that a little bit because when you're a coach, that's the job. The coach's job is to be the leader of an individual or a team.

So it's allowed me to grow my wings a little bit as I've gone through this process, but my natural inclination is probably not leader first. It's something that I've struggled with. And frankly, when I started putting myself in a leadership position as an entrepreneur, it was something I was pretty poor at. And I think that even today, 15 to 20 years into the journey, I'm mediocre at. It's something that I'm continuing to try to learn but as we talked about before That self-awareness is the big the big thing we need to start with and then we create some intention and take actions beyond that but you know if When there is a crisis I'm not the guy that's like, let's go do it, charge into the fray.

Let's go take this like, dang. Oh man, this is gonna require a lot. Like that's my, that's my, into it, that's my gut. That's who I am as a person. You know, I avoid conflicts massively. I'd much rather have people like me than kind of like jump into it. It's a lot of work for me to have tax full conflict resolution. It's a lot of work for me to

pick up the phone and have a phone call. It's so much easier for me to sit on the sidelines and hope it all works out. I've learned that's not the best method. Have you just tumbled into this position then? Because all of these things are reasons why you should absolutely suck at doing your job. You shouldn't be the leader of a team. You shouldn't be the leader of a business. You shouldn't have an online platform that thousands and thousands of people follow and try to make the best crossfit or fitness gym in the world and stuff.

How the fuck did you get here? I stumbled and knew it. Yeah. Yeah. I opened up a gym because I was super passionate about fitness as a means to get people to become the best versions of themselves. You know, if we are that same shared purpose we all have. So here's, I believe that our training methodology, training really hard is as worthy a means to enlightenment as anything that's ever existed. Meaning, people can choose any one of these tools, whether it's meditating, journaling,

going to church, AA, like dance music. Like art, like all of those things are ways for people to find pure consciousness, to find themselves and find joy, to find awareness about self-awareness about who they are. I believe that hard training, not jazz or size, but what we do, because what we do, the greatest

abtitation, and yeah, we get ripped, and you get lean, and you lower triglycerides, and you increase your longevity and your functionality, the biggest adaptation is between the ears. You're a different human being in your brain from having experienced this path. And that's what I believe from day one. That's why I wanted to open up a gym was because I believed I could help change people from the inside out to leave more purpose driven lives.

And when I opened up a gym, I was, even before that, I was a personal trainer and doing a personal training safe point, that's kind of my sweet spot. One-on-one, build a relationship, and we can do that. And then from there, things kind of went really well. And I got a little following and it made sense to open up a gym. So I opened up a gym. And then it becomes this thing, we're, okay, now this is going well, and we need to hire coaches. And that's where the thing starts. Once you have to lead other employees,

the thing changes. And then we created a team that competed at the CrossFit Games. And okay, now you have to lead that team, and we win the CrossFit Games. Oh my gosh, now people want to follow you so you create an online platform and that starts a snowball

and then it turns into a revenue stream and now you have a business underneath you. So yeah, it was, I wouldn't say reluctantly because I've enjoyed all the steps, but it was organically. It just kind of, I didn't seek out a leadership position and it doesn't, it's not part of who I am

on a molecular level. It seems like a career, a series of stumbling down a set of stairs and at each step that you've arrived at, it's just been another challenge that you've needed to do. It's like, well, I'm the guy. It looks like I'm the guy. I much prefer that sort of a story when it comes to entrepreneurialism, athleticism, building a team, creating an organization or a movement or a culture or a podcast or whatever it is.

I much prefer that sort of story because I think to on average, far more people end up in positions like that by following their passion, not really being able to predict the future that much, maybe just kind of knowing one or two steps in front of them. And then before they know it, they look back after five or ten years and go, holy shit, look at all of this stuff that we've built. And it creates anxiety, they sort of ambient anxiety, amongst people that don't have a plan, when they don't have a plan. And they think, oh, well look, what Ben got to the stage with the online and the gym

and the team and the CrossFit Games and the stuff he must have laid all out and you go, you can get through this by just doing your best as challenges arise and taking opportunities as they arise. And then in retrospect, anybody can piece together some bullshit story about how I knew it was going to be this. And I division with originally start off with the personal training.

And I knew at that moment I was going to take a team to the CrossFit. No, horseshit. The vast vast vast majority of people stumble into their success, like falling down a set of stairs. There's a dichotomy with that though, because on a personal level, yes and sort of, and then once you have a team, no. So here's what I mean by that, is from a personal level,

I think it really helps to have a vision of what it is you're chasing, but it doesn't need the, you don't have to have the steps built out. You can just have the North Star, right? And the North Star, there's a reason it's a North Star because you can purposely go off track. When a plane leaves New York City headed for San Francisco, it's off track 99% of the time. It can be tens and dozens and dozens of miles off track.

But as you get closer and closer, it gets more narrow and narrow and narrow. And certainly when you go to landing time, you want to be right on the button. And that's much like starting a business. When I started a business, I didn't know what I was trying to create. I couldn't have told you,

we're gonna have comp train and we're gonna have, you know, six different gyms around, but I knew what I wanted this gets back to what we originally started the conversation with. I knew what I wanted from a feel. I knew what the feeling I wanted was. And that is when we get done running a class at our gym, I don't want people to leave. That was the feeling. And if we create this place where

people feel like once they leave, they're going to have this FOMO, this fear of missing out, this is truly the best hour of their day and they don't want to end. So when the workout ends, they're hanging out. Then we've created a transformational experience for them. Now transformational is the opposite of transactional. Transational is, I pay you, you pay me, I provide a service, and then we, we, we, we shake hands and it's over. Most businesses are transactional. You hire someone to paint your house, they paint your house, you pay them, and it's gone. What I wanted to do was not be a transactional coach. And a transactional coach, if we're coaching basketball, they teach you how to do

if we're coaching basketball, they teach you how to do a triangle offense, run a full core press, how to square up your shoulders when you shoot a basketball and how to defend a pick and roll. And when you're done playing basketball, they haven't done much for you. Whereas a transactional coach makes you a better person. They teach you discipline. They teach you how to work through adversities. They teach you how to be more humble and a better teammate. And what I wanted to do was to create a business that was not transactional but

transformative. That changed people so when they were no longer a part of our business, whether that was when they went home, and they spent the other 23 hours of their day, they were different people. Or after they moved out of the state, and they were no longer able to come to our gym, they were different people for having experienced our services. I knew from day one that I wanted that. And the ability to as then a leader to share that vision is a necessity. You have to be able to share that with your team. If you don't have that aspect of what we're trying to create, you're at a loss because you're going to default to making sure that the things on the scoreboard

are happening. Because the only thing you can't do is say that the measurables are in place. And that's what everyone's running their businesses now. Because there's more data than there's ever been. So what people are doing is they're going, okay, do we make X number of calls? Did that lead to X number of conversions? Did those conversions lead to this many sale onboarding sessions. To those onboarding sessions lead to this much of a churn rate that lead to this much of an average client lifetime value. Okay, let's spin that back up to what is our customer acquisition cost, average lifetime value versus customer acquisition cost. Here we go. We're in the positive. Let's pour more fuel on the fire and they think that's how to run a business.

We're in the positive. Let's pour more fuel on the fire and they think that's how to run a business When it is Except that's not the totality of it It has to start with me which what is the vision for the feel? What we're trying to create because as we said in the beginning People do things based off of feel not off of logic We have we are still emotional beings. The example of that is the parable of the elephant and the rider. The elephant represents the amygdala brain, the feelings in the emotions. Whereas the rider is the calculator, the rider is the human being on top that actually knows how

to get from point A to point B in the most efficient way to do that. The rider is in control for part of the time except for once the MIGDLE kicks in, which it happens in every single buying purchase, that's the reason people are staying with your business or leaving it. It's not because of your price. It's not because of the, it's because it is gut feeling that they have. And as a leaders, we have to understand that that gut feeling thing is the most important thing that we have. And that's why our driving mantra for our team

is to build a tribe, build a tribe by making dope shit that creates a feeling. That's what we're trying to do. Now, what that, and from there is we find the opportunities that come and present themselves to us, and we figure out that this isn't a lie with what we're trying to do. Is this dope? Is this going to help us build a tribe? Is this going to create a feeling?

If it's not going to do those things, if I create a feeling, it's transactional. Push it to the side. That's things like making better bells and whistles and all this other stuff. It's the things that are really gonna tug at heartstrings. That to me is the way you lead. You lead from the front, from the beginning,

is create an understanding of what is it that we're trying to create? Not from a 5,000 users, 10% churn, 23% profitability, and 10% growth. Like cool, cool, but let's target the real things that move the needle, which is the emotion. Are you familiar with Good Heart Law? Do you know what that is? I'm not.

Okay, that is exactly what you're describing. Good Heart Law is an adage often stated as when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. It's named after a British economist, Charles Goodheart, who advanced the idea in 1975. So an example of that might be a target I want to achieve is a measure I want to achieve to base a target on

is the number of email subscribers that I get. So I'm going to maximize the number of email subscribers. The way I'm going to do that is I'm going to say put your email in here and I will send you a million pounds. Thousands of people submit their email address, but you don't give them a million pounds. You have achieved the target that you wanted, but what you've actually, what you genuinely meant was I want people to willingly give me that email address so that they are glad to receive emails from me on a weekly basis. That was the feel that you wanted.

When you're relying on good heart slow, when you're looking at a measure, becoming a target, it ceases to be a good measure. For sure. So like a great example of that is your churn rate, right? How many members are leaving every month versus how many did you start with at the beginning of the month? If you have 1,000 members, 100 leaves during the month, your

turn rate is 10%. Well, obviously, that's lower the turn rate. Well, if that becomes, you can actually hack it, right? If you cut your price down to 10%, more people are going to stay because there's just, it's, but to your point, that wasn't the intention. The intention of churn is to get people to want to stay. It's what Einstein said is that not everything that can be measured matters and not everything that matters can be measured. And that's why we can't get caught up in this data-driven world that we have. And I'm not saying data is not important, use every bit of it that you can. Just don't put blinders on because it's not the thing that only thing that matters.

There are things that happen that we can not rationalize. This is one of the problems with dashboards for online businesses, for podcasts, for YouTube channels, stuff like that. Again, with YouTube, you could clickbait your way to maximizing views, retention, but really what are you trying to achieve? Do you want to sell your soul to get to 500,000 subs? Well, probably not. That you're going to arrive at the subscriber number that you said was the target and realize that actually it wasn't the outcome that your intention meant. So yeah, I think this, this applies to a lot of things, right? You know, you could get yourself to, I want to look good in the mirror. Okay,

I'm going to run it 500 calories for the next six months and dial myself down to some ridiculous body fat level. Again, like, yes, I've achieved the thing that I wanted. But what did I really mean? I probably meant I want to look and feel great and confident in my body. I want to feel powerful and mobile and fit and strong and attractive and all that stuff. Okay, is the solution that I've got over simplified? And if it's over simplified, I haven't actually got the outcome that I meant.

Right. Yeah, this is, it kind of speaks to brand building, right? So in business, brand buildings are really popular thing right now and people are chasing white rabbits and they think that brand building is brand awareness. And brand awareness is not the key measure. It's brand relevance and resonance. It's like, what does it mean and how relevant are you in that person's life? And when you start to pull back that way a little bit, it's not just about how many people can become aware, you know, the top of the funnel awareness, how many, how can we make that bigger?

It becomes, you get, you start to understand which to your point is like, let's put it more banner ads. Let's do more digital. Let's put more, you are starting to recognize that that's not the means to the end, what we're actually trying to do is get people to feel better about our brand. And that happens through the sum of everything that we do, every single thing that you do for your podcast, everything, it matters. Even the intangibles, the way that's your, the things that you can't measure, right? Which is

the tonality of which you speak, the beautiful accent that you have. Like those can't be measured, but those are the things that drive the needle more than anything else that can be measured. I'm not saying that I'm not pooping because we have a scoreboard, we have a dashboard. I'm not saying being ignorant ignorant to that, but don't use that as the sole way to make decisions. Are there any unique advantages that you think you have as an introvert and as someone who was a not unwilling leader, but an unlikely leader, maybe. Are there any advantages that you think that you have from that position? There

might be introverts that are listening who have to lead a team or be part of a team or take over decision making at some point. Is there a way that you look at that and see it as an advantage at all? Yeah, I think that maybe I, I don't have to backtrack on my words as much as like some of my outspoken friends do because they'll just like without any filter system whatsoever just comes out, right? So that may be one and I think it's I'm I try to be very intentional. But this isn't an introvert thing. This is something I've learned along the way is early days and my being a leader in the business. They used to call it my team used to call them Ben Bombs.

Right where they be chugging away, doing their thing, working hard, and I would come in with this new idea, this new great thing, and I'd be like, so excited and pumped up to talk to about it, and be like, guys, this is listening to this. And not realizing the ramifications that me kind of leaving that grenade there would have. Because as the leader of the business, when I say, hey guys, this is so exciting,

they go, okay, this is where we're going. And as a person that has lots of those thoughts, I've realized I've had to curtail that a bit. So this is kind of the opposite of like the injured, but being an introvert to me, I'm in my head quite a bit. And I create the space purposefully because it gives me energy. And when I create the space, I have lots of thoughts on how to improve the business, on how to move the needle, on how people are reacting to the business of what I feel like the gut thing is that's going to drive people forward. of what I feel like the gut thing is that's going to drive people forward.

That kind of like As an introvert growing up and not being the center of attention I would sit on the fringe of the circles and look and listen dude. That's that's exactly what I had in my head and listen to the way that words and body language and topics would resonate with people in the group and and topics would resonate with people in the group. And I think it gave me a little bit of insight into a sensitivity to sort of like a, an EQ type thing, emotional intelligence sort of thing.

I think also maybe even more so than the lack of willingness to be loud in front of people was my the way I went through school and being dyslexic and being dyslexic I had to find workarounds they like like being dyslexic, I had to find workarounds. Solutions weren't necessarily school and learning wasn't easy for me. And because of that, when I would read, I had to read so slowly to comprehend. I couldn't do what everyone else did, which is just, you know, read a chapter or a night. Like, it wasn't even a possibility. So I had to figure out how to read a lot slower for comprehension.

And now that I'm reading things that I'm passionate about, I think that there's a comprehension. I, that to me is the goal of reading is to comprehend. And then be able to either apply or teach others. There's nothing else. There's no other reason for it. So every time that I'm reading something and I read a lot now, I'm constantly trying to figure out, like, do I own this? Could I talk to somebody else about this or could I own this in the business? As opposed to,

I've found books that I don't feel like that with and I realize that I find that the goal is to finish the book. And there's a dopamine thing of like finishing a book like I accomplish things, I get things done and that can't be the goal. So I think that that learning aspect of the only reason to do this and probably because like I never finished a book when I was in high school. So that wasn't even a goal anyways. It was like, you got to get some comprehension out of this and try to. I think that's kind of giving me a little bit more. You know, I think that that dyslexic is giving me an advantage.

Whereas in school, man, it was really, really challenging. You know, it's such a big thing in when you're school, at least the way that I went is like you're one of three things. Like you're either good looking in popular, you're an athlete and a jock and a stud or you're smart and you get yourself worth out of that thing. And I wasn't super popular. I wasn't the star athlete.

And I wasn't, and man, I was the opposite of what smart was, the way smart was defined in academia, which is, hey Ben, could you read the next page to the class out loud? And holy crap, that's my nightmare, because the word was just go fuzzy blank, stumbling on words, and I would label myself as not smart, but what I realized as I started getting to business was I had a huge advantage. My dad was also challenged, but incredibly good leader in business.

CEO of multiple different companies and then helped take companies public. And I learned a lot watching him navigate the workplace, both from a worthy, ethics standpoint, and how much common sense business is. I think business is more common sense than is academic. If you had such a critical inner voice when you were a kid, how have you got yourself to the stage now where you're talking about turning that critic into a coach, that what have you done to move yourself talk from what sounds like a pretty shitty place to a much more positive place. So it's it's not binary, it's meaning that it's not like I was terrible then and I'm great now.

Yeah, right. So I'm certainly had negative self-talk in terms of academics and other things. Then and I certainly don't have it all figured out right now. I still have the inner voice and continue to work on it, but the words that you use there is exactly the way that I try to reframe it is coach versus critic. And the critic sits on the sidelines, doesn't get their hands dirty, and just points out all the faults. I think we all have, I shouldn't say all, a lot of us have that built into us

for any number one of different reasons, right? Parents, teachers, coaches, upbringing, whatever it might have been, and I certainly do as well. And I think that the goal for most of us is first and foremost, become aware of the voice. 50% of people don't even believe that there's a voice in their head. Like that's staggering to me because as an introvert,

that's all I listen to. That shit blows my mind, yeah, exactly. My voice is in my head saying fucking barbershop together. Yeah, exactly. So the first thing is becoming aware of the voice. And then the next one is just in understanding that you don't need to try to control it. The awareness on just by itself, just the awareness of that voice is massive. And that awareness, the more you become aware of it, when you just,

because if you try to change it, you just get frustrated, and you get depressed, and you beat yourself up and the critic comes on top of the critic, where you go like, they don't like what I'm saying right now, and they become aware of that, and you go, oh my God, look at you, you're complaining. They go, oh my God, that says they don't like what I'm saying right now.

You spin on that. You spin on that. And this is where you see people melt down in public speaking, right? They're giving a talk and also they fumble on their words and they go, oh my God, you fumble on your words. Oh my God, you're fumbling on your words. And it's spin. So that's actually, to me me that is the path, awareness,

and then the next step is awareness without judgment. And when you create awareness without judgment, all of a sudden, now you start to realize the root causes. You figure out the triggers that set those things off. And now what you do is the next time that happens, you start to realize how you are pre-programmed. We are all running our scripts that is pre-programmed into us from our childhood,

and it is guiding our every action decision and behavior. Unnecessarily, it's a faulty script that doesn't actually exist. But your reality is different than my reality based off the script that we've experienced in the programming. Meaning, you are walking down the street and you hear a dog bark and you grew up with a dog, a golden retriever that was super fuzzy and used to play with it in the park and imp to you dog a dog barking is a sign of affection. That was your dog used to do before you when you hear you come home and fumble with the keys.

They used to bark and you go, I know when I open this door, my lovable, four-legged friend is going to give me so much of this feelings of oxytocin and all the stuff. So dog barking to you is warm and fuzzy. I was bit by a dog as a kid, so I hear dog barking and the opposite happens, anxiety stress. The reality is a dog barking. Neither one of those to believe systems are actual reality. But we believe certain realities only because of our past. When you start to sit quietly and have awareness of your thoughts, not judging, you start

to recognize these triggers. And you start to question them. You go, huh, that's just a, so you're here at Dog Bark. I feel a gut thing in my stomach starts to turn and flip upside down. And instead of judging it, I just go, that's weird. Why did that happen? Ah, the dog barks, that happened. The dog's not going to attack me. He's behind a closed door. Like, what the heck did that? And also, you start to melt these paradigms. And you start to be able to navigate life without these triggers sending you into these fear loops, anxiety loops, or otherwise. Now, let's bring that to another example. Your wife, after dinner, asks if you can do the dishes.

You grew up with a very, very, very controlling mother. And when you wife asks you to do that, it sets off a trigger. They go, freaking wife trying to control me, telling me to do the dishes. Like, like, what? No, she just asks you to do the dishes. But you have this program built into you

that when somebody asks, it's a trigger. It said when wife asks you to you the dishes, but you have this program built into you that would somebody ask it's a trigger It said when wife asked you the dishes and you feel that thing without you go whoa awareness Whoa, that was weird. I felt resentment towards my wife right when she said that What's the reality of the situation right now? She's just asking if I can do the dishes She's not trying to control me that is actually built into me from my upbringing. It's the programming that I have. It's the software I'm running on. I have the opportunity to rewrite that software. This is that level of awareness that we can all navigate life through. We don't need to be the pre-programmed past. We have control over the way we navigate the future.

If we bring a level of awareness and non-judgment to that present moment. Going back to the team thing, how do you get team members to respect the leader? One thing that I've realized throughout running businesses is that the leader often needs to show throughout running businesses is that the leader often needs to show degrees of outstanding competence in order to get respect from the team. So we run nightclubs and we have junior managers, normal managers, senior managers, city managers, right. All of the guys that are effective at being any of the senior levels, they have to be performing well week in week out and their performance is so transparent because everyone can see how many entries they've got into all of our different events. The guys that had the most

respect weren't the ones that were the sternest leaders, they weren't the ones that were even necessarily the best team leaders, they got buy-in from the people below them because they knew that they had talent and competence, but when you get to more complicated organizations, more specialized decision-making situations like CEO of a big online business or coaching a team, it's not your job to be fitter than your athletes, it's your job to be the guy that knows exactly what to tell them. So how do teams, how do you get team members to respect the leader and then talk about this sort of competence dynamic that plays into that?

Yeah, absolutely. So competence is absolutely one of the pieces. Where's not the only piece. And the reason competence helps a leader lead is because when someone shows competence, the people that they're leading will trust that person more. Because if you show that you're making the right decisions and then it, things turn out well, or you give some career advice, people take it and then they run with it. That just brings some level of trust. But trust is a three-faceted piece, competence being one of them. It's not the first one. The first thing you have to show, it's a three-seize of trust. The first one is showing that you care. Because even the competent leader will not get everything they can out of them, like the Bobby Knights, the guy that like yells and screams at his players,

you know, but doesn't show any sort of level of care for them whatsoever, but he's very competent. He knows the exes knows of his sport as well as anybody else. We'll not get every ounce of potential out of his athletes or employees or family or whatever it might be. The first thing we have to show is that we care about people at an individual basis. And this is why the saying know, the saying is, it takes 40 hours just to get past a acquaintance level.

It takes time. It takes a lot of time to actually get to the level where somebody goes like, I can trust that person because they care about me. And this is built into our evolutionary biology. If you were a tribe of 150 that lived around a certain huge cave and you had campfires, you had certain hunters, you had certain warriors, you had certain people that cooked the food and certain people that tanned the hides and certain people that took care of the kids,

you needed to know that the person next to you cared about you. If they didn't care about you, no matter how good of a warrior they were, no matter how good, now competent they were in their skill set, it didn't create the total package. Because you go like, listen, that person's really good when they talk to me about warrior stuff, I'll listen, but I'm not gonna turn my back on that person. It's not total trust,

because they might have bigger higher goals than they might knock me off. So it has to start with care. Then the next one is exactly you said, competence. You have to know your stuff. You have to be good at what you do. And the next one is consistency. You have to show up every day. You have to be through, you have to have a through line, just as what you were saying, it was kind of nice having Dana White there, that consistency level. That just in self brings some trust to the organization because you know that some of the past is going to be present in the future is probably going to be fairly stable because of what

they've shown you. It's been consistent. If there was a different leader in place every single year of UFC, your trust in UFC would not be what it is today. So that three headed monster of care, consistency, and trust is how you start leading groups. Then when you're introduced to the groups, that's kind of like the macro overarching thing. Then there's a step-by-step process to when you are inserted as the leader. And some people come in and flip over the poker table and they go,

this is the way we're doing it my way, the highway, and they totally throw everything in. Like, that doesn't bring as much trust because people don't know if you care. They don't know if you're competent. And there's no consistency. So what do you do instead when you come in? Step one is you listen. This is what helps introverts and leadership positions. Is you don't come in, don't let your ego take over. Literally come in, even if you are the most senior position,

you're the CEO of the business, come in and spend your first two weeks just listening. Listening to people, understanding them, what makes them tick, understanding their roles and responsibilities, understanding everything that you possibly can so that you can step to learn. Listen and learn. If you are in my position, what changes would you make?

How would you do your job differently? What are you seeing as inefficiencies? What are you seeing as things that we should be doing going forward? Step three is help. It help in any which small way, right? So an example of this is Ted Lazo. Is he a Ted Lazo? No, who's that? Oh my gosh. It's a show on Apple TV. He's a coach that comes in to run a English Premier of Soccer League. He has no idea what he's doing. But right away, he just comes in. And the first, what he does is he listens to people, learns what there has people right down to gestions. And one of the things that people said is like on this professional soccer team is the shower

pressure sucks in the locker room. So the next day, there's better shower pressure. You help, you make changes no matter how small. Listen, learn and then help. After you help, then you lead. What too many leaders do is they come in with an ego and go, I have to establish myself as the leader. I have to tell people what to do. I have to tell people what to do. I have to show people what they're doing wrong and the new direction we're going.

And because of that, they haven't taken the necessary steps to work through this the way our evolutionary biology does, is it's constantly going friend or foe, friend or foe, friend or foe. Because if it's foe, I need to fight or flight. Only two options. I need to either resist this guy because he might be trying to take my job, hurt me in any form, shape, wherefore,

or get the hell out of here, find a new job. Until I feel like he is friend, which is the person that's going to help me at the campfire, support me and care about me, then I can't lead. You can't lead, and by the way, this is, I didn't create this, George Washington's, that is the listen, learn, help,

then and only then lead. It's kind of like the same thing with like, mechanics, consistency, then and only then intensity. Same thing, listen, learn, help, then and only then lead. Because if you don't, you're going to have people falling, you're reluctantly. And that's not a leader. That's a positional leader. I had Eddie Jones head coach of England Rugby on the show a little while ago. And it turned out that he was up in Newcastle. So I went for breakfast with him. I got his email address

and unsolicited just asked him to go for breakfast the next day and we did. He told me this story about, first off, he told me a story about Alex Ferguson who was Manchester United's manager for a very long time, maybe 20 years, something like that. And when he first came into the club, there was a lot of turmoil and he needed to get the players on side with him quickly. So what he did was one of the players tells this story separately about how every game for the entire rest of the season after Alex had joined. Alex had gone up to this player and said to him, you are the most important player on the pitch. It is all about you today. You are the most important player. And it only turned out to the end of the season, he started chatting to a couple of the other guys. It turned out that Alex had been saying that to every single

one of them. Love that. Because he needed all of them to feel like they had that bond, but he needed to expedite it. He didn't have time to wait to actually be able to work through stuff and he's become one of the most successful soccer coaches of all time. Another story that Eddie told me, so this guy is in charge of our rugby World Cup hopes, right? 2023 rugby world cups coming around and this is the man who was coached, played for Australia, coached Australia, Japan and England all at separate times. He was a school supply replacement teacher as well for sport, but also taught everything. So he's literally from the lowest 13 year old boys picking up a rugby ball for the first

time to the best teams on the planet, right? He's done the entire thing. And I was asking him, because he was going to go watch this game afterward. I said, so what are you looking for? You're going to go watch these guys. There's whatever 30 people plus some referees, plus some physios. It's like 35 people on the pitch. What are you looking for? these guys, there's whatever. 30 people plus some referees, plus some physio. It's like 35 people on the pitch.

What are you looking for? You say, well, first off, I'm getting rid of all the noise. So I get rid of the players that I'm not looking at. And I look at the players, but at least 50% of what I'm focused on when I'm watching the players at the game isn't their time during the game. It's how are they interacting with the coaches during the warm-up? What's their body language like if the score starts to go in their direction, or if the game. It's how are they interacting with the coaches during the warm-up? What's

their body language like if the score starts to go in their direction or if the game starts to go against them? Do they keep their head down or do they keep their head up? He told me another story about when he took over the Japanese team and Japan wasn't particularly good at rugby, Asian men typically aren't built for that sort of a sport, especially if you put up against what like Pacific Island is like a Samoan versus a Japanese guy. Typically, you're going to get flattened by the Samoan, so he was trying to make them fast and do other bits and pieces. And one of the lessons that he was looking for in when he observes the players is how much they look at the coaches, says that he wants players that take the game plan and then they work for themselves. And he'd spoken to, apparently,

Japan's good at three things. Women's volleyball, women's downhill skiing and something else, right? So he went to go and speak to the women's volleyball coach. And I didn't know this because I haven't watched that much volleyball, but apparently the coaches from volleyball are right on the side of the court. So they're right next to the players. And the coach came in, he didn't take your softly, softly approach. He took a slightly, he took the flip the poker table over approach. And he watched the game and the players that kept looking to him during the match, all of them were bent, all of them went. And he said, I want players that can play for themselves. And now Eddie's taken that forward. So he's watching this game and maybe there's two or three players

on the pitch on a match that he's looking at. And he's looking at what's their body language like before they begin. How are they interacting with the rest of the staff? How are they warming up? Are they doing it with enthusiasm? Are they looking like they're positive? What's their body language like if they start to win or if they start to lose and how much are they able to focus on their own game or how much are they looking at the coach for the equivalent of audibles and plays. And to hear that from one of the most respected sports coaches on the planet was, that was a good breakfast. Super cool.

Love those stories. It's, you know, one of the sayings is, you're not a leader until you've created a leader that has created a leader. Because what we're trying to do is empower people. That's really, I mean, otherwise what you do is you're a micromanager. And to the case in point of what those coaches on the athletic fields we're looking for is they need people that can go and lead others and lead themselves and lead others. And that's super cool. Empowerment is, I believe it's one of the biggest traits

that anybody can have as a leader is get people that are smarter in the room than they are and empower them to make decisions and lead themselves. I also really like the, the coach that was not necessarily just looking at the players playing, but the players because their body language, how are they interacting with each other. That's what I look for when I'm coaching my athletes a ton is I you're giving me words to this but about 50% is execution right it's how efficient are they being with the movement how are they cycling a barbell is

their muscle up transition smooth all the rest but the other 50% is what all call vibe. And it is the intangibles. And it is, how are they handling themselves when they're walking on the floor, when they're walking off the floor, when they're setting the barbells up, when they're between rounds. There's so much to be gleaned and gained from awareness of that aspect of coaching as well. And I believe it translates really well to an organization and business. Because part of what we do, 50%,

is the actual exes knows. Are we producing the widgets or the widgets up to the standards of expectations? But the other 50% is how do people interact as a team? And the whole kind of vibe aspect of this. And in the recent book that I wrote, I speak to this. And I got it from the guys that own 11 Madison Park, which is a restaurant in New York City that got voted as the best restaurant in the world. And there's the back of the house, and there's the front of the house.

The back of the house is where the chefs are, and the dishwasher, and all that. Then there's the front of the house where the servers are, and the concierge, and all that, then there's the front of the house where the servers are and the concierge and all the rest. And the guy that's in charge of the front of the house, that's a, it's not just about the quality of the food, it's about the experience of the whole thing. I think restaurants are just such amazing businesses to dissect Because they kind of have everything.

They have product, they have service, they have this, you're only in there for a short period of time. If no one decides to come to the restaurant that day, they go out of business. It's like it's wild to me. It's not like the safety of an annuity, like a subscription service or something else. But the guy that owns the place, and the guy that's in front of the charge of the house,

he would, what I call, soft eyes, where he would just go to a corner of the restaurant, sort of close his eyes, but not completely, and just listen. And the way he said it was, you can just feel when it's a good night. There's a certain excitement in the air. And I think that translates to managing any team. I'm a big believer in becoming really good at having good meetings.

Because I think that having a good meeting is essentially, that to me is the team actually performing. You want to as a leader, it's very important to Get your team to actually be good at being Good at meetings and it sounds weird because what everyone thinks their job is to be good at their job but if you have a whole bunch of star performers, there's I mean there are so many examples of teams with multiple all stars on them that way underperform. What you actually need is a good team. And when your team truly comes together is in meetings. And I think that that is a massively underutilized aspect because I think that poor leaders do it in a very transactional way, where they think the goal is for to get, you know, meat to tell everyone here what's happening. And as

long as that happens, the meeting was a success. And that's not the case. The case of meeting is to get people to feel empowered and to get people to feel connected to the overall vision and direction of the organization. And that is one of the ways that we can do that is by with the soft eyes, the empowering, and just get the feel of how are we working together as a team. That's expertise. That's the role of the leader, right? The guy at the top or the guys at the top,

their job is to be a hard to replicate complex decision engine. They can't precisely tell you all of the things that they've taken in, but they aggregate all of the different stuff. So I'm sure that you do the same, but when I'm running a club night, I don't want to be near the front door.

I want to be 30 yards away from the front door. And I can see where the guys that are scanning tickets aren't leaving gaps for people to move through. I can see where we're getting held up with the door staff at the front. I can see that the smoking area is encroaching and that the barriers have changed. I can see that there's that group of guys over there

that aren't gonna get into, they don't have student ID, but if we let them wait and they get to the front, they're gonna be pissed off because they've just waited for 20 minutes. But the cue picker, the guy's job, it is he hasn't seen them. All of this stuff happens,

the same as you and your gym. I imagine if you want to get a feel for how the class is going, you don't stand in the middle of the class. You stand right at the very, very far edge, and you just, that's soft air eyes, open gaze, you're just looking across the entire gym. And that's where, that's one of the beautiful things.

That's why I, or anyone would enjoy watching someone in flow at something that they're greater. I would enjoy watching you watching your gym. I would enjoy watching the guy that runs the front of house of that fancy restaurant observing his restaurant because you're seeing someone aggregate millions of bits of data and then come just come up with one thing, the one thing that's going to have the highest impact.

Okay, where is it that that queue, that group of guys, that smoking area, that queue from the coach, that fact that the person over the far side is the one person that hasn't yet been spoken to by any of the guys that look, whatever it is, right, that table that the person over the far side is the one person that hasn't yet been spoken to by any of the guys that look whatever it is Right that table that we know that hasn't had the wine whatever whatever it whatever it might be like that's fucking Awesome to see like I Nerd out over expertise like that so much. I think it's amazing to see people that have that level of competence Yeah, I love that that's It's it's so I love what you're saying, is like computing, like the millions of data

points altogether. And if you ask somebody to break that down, you just have to know it intuitively because it's been built into you from so many, it's kind of like the expert, the fire chief, right? The fire chief is in the building. They're all fighting the fires. And without any, he just goes, guys, we gotta get out here. Exactly.

He can't point to anything, is he just feeling? There's loads of stories like that from 9-11 as well. Exactly the same thing. Absolutely, there's so many stories like that. And it's what you were saying is, I can just tell that those guys, those are students, they're not going to do their exact, and we got to make sure that we're not,

it's a built-in to you, and that's what the level of that's the competence piece. That's where you get to display your level of expertise. Who is one of the athletes that's had the best vibe that you've worked with? Is there someone that you put them in the gym and everybody else just gets in about a mood, everyone's on a good level? Yeah, Catherine, definitely.

Catrin's like phenomenal. Catrin is, but she wasn't always like that. Catrin used to be kind of an emotional when she was first starting off as a competitor in our sport. But Katrin is awesome. Katrin is a fierce competitor, but also makes everyone feel good about things. I think you've mentioned in the past that her and your wife are kind of similar, apparently, like

girly and giggly and they get excited about stuff and you're a bit more sort of... Resurred. Stiffle, blip, British, sort of standoffish type thing. And you're so right, that vibe element of having a catcher in or a Mrs. Bergeron or whatever, like in the team, especially if you have a male dominated team, fuck, it is so important to have someone that just brings a bit of lightness and fun and energy to the situation that isn't this super intensity that I think a lot of guys try and fix men, try and fix situations by drilling down into focus more,

by trying to grip things harder, and that often takes you further away from flow, rather than into it, it adds pressure on as opposed to releasing it. And I think having those sorts of characters makes a big difference. Absolutely, I love the references to a flow state, because whether it's my athletes

or my employees, my team, that's the goal. Right, that is where the best of you comes out. It literally flows out of you, because it's not being interrupted by that the logical thinking brain, which is slow and too calculated. You could, you know, that, whether it's you are putting on the nightclub or the restaurant tour or the fire chief, that's, that's just something that comes and oozes

out of them. And having people that keep it, not so heavy, for sure, is an asset. There's a quote from you that says, the harder you try the more elusive flow is, and yeah, fuck man, if that's not true. But there's a real difficulty. I think it was like a bar of soap that you're trying to grab. And like, yeah, like, oh, I got to, and the more you try to, like, focus, the more you try to focus on how to grab the harder it gets. There's attention here, though, between balancing desire and grit and effort with ease and presence and intuition and gut, and especially, I imagine, in a sport, but also especially in something like podcasting is a good example. If you try really, really hard, you end up being shit.

Like the goal is to just ease yourself into it. How do you encourage a team, especially in a sport that is reliant on grit, determination, resilience, digging your heels in, getting serious about the lift, getting serious about the workout. How do you balance that grit and effort with ease and presence? Okay, so the the number one thing that pulls people out of a flow state is a distraction. So it makes sense, right? You're you're plugging away, you're writing your beautiful manuscripts, you're you're shooting baskets and everything's falling, you're doing whatever it is that you do. And things are, it's amazing. But then a car horn goes off or somebody punches you in the back

or somebody turns the temperature up to, or someone throws water on your face. Like those distractions are are gonna pull you out of a flow state. Those are not the common distractions. The common distractions are the voice in your head. That's the distraction that we most of us are fighting. And that distraction is throwing things forward.

What are the consequences of my actions right now? That's usually what pulls people out of a flow state so they get too caught up in what they're doing right now and They're thinking about it too much. So Imagine an athlete that you that is about to take the game-winning shot in a basketball game and he's going Okay, if I make this shot, that means bigger sponsorships, more, bigger contract, everyone's going to love me. If I miss this shot, holy crap, the whole team's going to, I'm being tasked with this. All of that is, once that starts, you're out of flow. It's gone. It's the bar of soap that you can not grab onto. The more you try, the harder it is.

So it has to be this trained level of being present. And this is where mindfulness has become so popular in sports. Because what mindfulness is is the ability to stay present, open-minded, without judgment. What that means is it allows you. It doesn't gonna put you, but it allows for a flow state. If any one of those three things doesn't happen,

if you're not open-minded, you're closed-minded. That's antagonistic to a flow state. If you're not positive, you're negative going like, oh, this is going to fucking suck. This is going to be terrible. I'm going to miss this shot. You're out and you're judging. Okay. What is this going to be good? Or it's going to be bad? Michael Jordan was able to get a flow state more than anybody else in his sport. He goes, why would I worry about taking a shot? I haven't even taken yet. So he doesn't worry about anything because once he's not going I worry about taking a shot? I haven't even taken yet. So he doesn't worry about anything. Because once, he's not gonna worry about taking a shot

before he takes it because, why would you ever worry about that? He takes it. Why is he gonna judge what it's gone? It's already happened. It's in the past. So he's just constantly, it's literally the ability to stay in the here and now.

And that's way easier said than done. That is a massive challenge. We have this infatuation right now in society with being present. And it's because people are consumed with their phones. And when you're consuming the phone, your head is in the screen. You're not actually experiencing life where your feet are. Well, that's like the lowest level of presence. There are so many different levels of being present. And the highest level of presence is actually pure consciousness, where you are just operating in a flow state, which is again, living with pure enlightenment and joy. And there is no good or bad, as Shakespeare

said, there is no good or bad, but thinking makes it so. So stop your fucking thinking and just experience the moment now. If we could shut our brains off as athletes, we could experience everything that we have the potential to experience, which is so beyond our wildest dreams. It is the middle-aged woman lifting the car off of her baby. That is like what we are capable of, but we don't do that because we put these self-regulators, these invisible ceilings and limitations on us that keep us from operating at our fullest potential

our fullest potential is us in a flow state and We've all experienced it at certain times in our lives one way or another. It's either You run at your nightclubs and it's like it's just going or you doing a podcast or your TED talk and it's just flowing out you doing a podcast or your TED talk, and it's just flowing out. Other people have done it when they are composing music or skiing in powder or they're swimming and all of a sudden they feel like there's no effort they can breathe. It's just like, we've all had these little glimpses of it. What the thing that we are all aspiring to do is to live in a perpetual state of flow. Pure consciousness, finding God, heaven on earth, whatever that thing is, our true best

selves. And that's why I believe that athletics is such a powerful tool for us to become our best selves because it can show us what those flow states look like. One of the interesting things that Stephen Kotler said, I know you're a fan of his work as well, he's been on your show in mind, and he talks about the fact that emotion knocks us out of flow as easily as anything else or in fact even more easily. So task switching, you switch from doing one thing to another, it takes you about 20 minutes to go back in. Flow is precisely the same.

And he said that an emotion, if you have an emotion arise, and this is one of the problems with if you're trying to write a manuscript or a blog post or an article or an email or something, and you still have your notifications on and something pops up, and it's good or bad or whatever That's just kicked you out of flow for 20 minutes and there's something This is something that I'm playing around with more that an embodied practice like Crossfit like a bike ride like a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu a boxing or whatever yoga Pal palates, fucking Tai Chi.

There's something to me easier to drop into flow when I'm doing something physical than when I'm doing something mental because I'm able to, the goal is to switch the mind off but when you're doing something that requires a ton of cognition you're switching the mind on to switch the mind off and it kind of can feel, it feels to me more difficult. But there's a virtual reality shooting range bar in the city where I live. And one of their games that they have is about two minutes long, five different targets pop up every three seconds. You have to hit them. So you go like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,

and then it'll change again. I swear to God, that is the quickest way to get into a flow state. One of the guys stopped doing it and he turned around and he said, dude, you could have told me that my mother had died halfway through me doing that. And I wouldn't have registered what you'd said. So there's something about a physical activity. And that's why I think sports and pursuits like CrossFit, where you have a class, where you've kind of externalized the thinking brain to the coach. Coach, you're telling you what to do, you don't need to think, oh, well, is it 21 reps or should I maybe actually do only 15?

I'm feeling a bit tight, it's like, no, the workout says it's 21, so you do 21. All of that externalizing, all of that physicality, I think that that, especially after the last two years, people have probably forgotten the fact that a physical pursuit like that is just, it's inherently fulfilling. Forget the health benefits, the longevity, the muskilature, the leanness, all that stuff, it's inherently fulfilling because you get out of your head for 45 minutes or 60 minutes of the day.

Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't, I couldn't agree with that more. I think that part of that, the physicality part, is also though because you're an athlete and because you inherently enjoy it. Whereas somebody else is getting off the couch for the first time, they're, they're trying to do something physical and their their inner voice is just screaming at them because they're full of, I don't fit in here. You're never going to achieve this. This, and that's why I think that certain people find it in their own ways.

And some people sitting down, just writing. Oh, fuck some people will be music. If you put fuck, for some people it'll be music. If you put me down in front of it. Music is fucking piano. So that's why people get addicted to this performance thing in music. Like music is so, cause it gets people into a flow state.

It's just a, especially performing it. Listen to it as one thing, but if you're performing music, I can't imagine the feeling of performing music in front of like tens of thousands of people. That to me would just be like the ultimate of all those things. Well, you feel that. You feel that even from the crowd. Yes. You go to a huge concert and you feel this, it's called collective effervescence in the social psychology literature. You don't know the person that's 50 yards in front of you

and yet you're moving in the same way and yet you're thinking the same sort of things and your emotions are working in resonance and this isn't some fucking magnetic woo woo Ronda burn the secret field shit. This is you and them are emotionally in the same sort of state because of what you're observing on stage and what you're observing on stage is a musician in flow, performing something which is toward the limit of their capacity and it's beautiful

and terrifying and awe-inspiring and dread-inspiring all at the same time and everyone moves together. Nobody outside said, right guys, so we're all gonna do this dance move at this point. So why the fuck did everybody coordinate? Well, because everybody's in the same place. That's super cool. Yeah, it's, uh, which, I get what Kotler's saying in terms of like,

emotion is a fast-weighting knock you out of it, but I might caveat that with certain emotions, anxiety, fear, dread, judgment, yes, but feelings of elation, love, connectedness. Those are emotions too. And, you know, the biggest wave surfers in the world feel connected to the wave. If we say feel connected, feel as an emotion. What they're not is judging, am I going to survive this thing? What they're not to, it's like climbing the free soul up, I'll cap your time, like total flow state at one with the wall. All of a sudden, this thing he struggled with for months and months and months became, if not effortless, like, enjoyable, right? It was like, there's

this level of an enjoyment is a feeling. And in flow state, there is a feeling of enjoyment. So if there is nothing will knock you out of a flow state faster than a negative emotion. That might have actually been what he said. I'm just misquoted in there. Yeah, so I think that that's a big level of awareness because we want people feeling the vibe because the vibe is so key to that. Talking about Catrin and the guys, you've had some big changes recently.

You've had some coaches and some big name athletes that have moved on. How do you manage a period of turbulent change like that? So the first recognition is that change is inevitable. It's part of our world and our universe. We start, whether you believe that we started as a pin-size thing that exploded and now we're this universe,

so you believe that we are Adam and Eve, or you believe that we crawled out of the oceans, grew legs, and like change is, and it's the only constant is change. So that's one of the big aspects of that. And then the next is just perspective. So one of the things you're alluding to is Katrin, who is the athlete that I trained at one of the CrossFit Games a couple of times, super close, looked at her as like, above a best friend, almost like a daughter, lived with us for years and years and years, recently decided to move

back to Iceland. So the perspective there is, if you don't take perspective, you go like, oh my god, I can't believe this is happening. What do you mean? We had such a good thing going like, but the reality and the perspective is, like, oh my gosh, what how amazing was this? I can't believe that you gave up the last seven years of your life to leave your family in Iceland, to move and live and train with me in Boston. What an amazing, awesome experience that I am so grateful for. It also makes total sense that you won't go back to Boston.

You are now 20, you know, eight years old. Your life is happening. You have a real meaningful relationship with a significant other. You bought an apartment a couple of years ago that you have yet to have the opportunity to live in. You're getting a dog. Your sister is having babies. You're best friends are having babies and getting married.

I understand like so it's perspective of understanding where we are and it would be once you put it through that lens, it actually kind of sounds ridiculous to think anything otherwise. So to me, I think of it, and we started the conversation off with those three pillars of awareness, intention, and action. I like to put all of those with the prism

of perspective on top of all of it. We can't get wrapped up in our own little tiny little worlds. It is something is bigger than us. And we like to have the entire world operate the way that we want it to. And if things don't go our ways, we get all bent out of shape. Well, that's kind of ridiculous.

There's 7.5 billion people on planet earth. And in our little world, we want everyone to act, think, and behave exactly like we want them to. And if they don't, we get all bent out of shape. To the tidings little things of like someone sent something about you on social media. To you show up to a party and someone's wearing the same things as you to someone that was close to you and who decides to move away like This is the reality of the world like nothing we have is going to line up exactly the way we wanted to

Whether even if you're a tree It's going to be windier than you want colder colder than you want, and rain more than you want. Or it might be too sunny longer than you want. You're not getting enough rain. But no one experiences, no one, no thing experiences life on their terms. You don't. You don't have that much control. And I think that we think that we have more control than we do.

And when you allow yourself the opportunity to just let go of those things that you don't control, may it's a whole lot easier to navigate these challenges and these changes in our lives. Is it not hard to feel fear or self-doubt or whatever when you've got that turbulence going on or are you able to bypass that with perspective? you able to bypass that with perspective? Yeah, so if you would have asked, like, Catherine leaving, if that had happened six years ago, it probably would have been a pretty darn big moment and not in a good way.

I think I've been able to kind of navigate the world through this prism for a little while of perspective. Even still, it's not like Sunshine Reimbo's brick paved road going forward. It's still like gosh dang like that would been so cool, but that's pretty darn short. I can so for an example, when Katrin told me, she was an Iceland at the time. She always went back to Iceland after the games. She went to Iceland and the conversation I was having

where there was on the phone. I was at my daughter's, my daughter plays collegiate lacrosse. I was at her college lacrosse game between games, called Katrin, scheduled call. And I was like, we were just talking about it. And we were talking about when you're coming back. And she's like, you know, I think I might stay. And I, the initial gut reaction wasn't one of like,

what was me? It was not, what do you, it was not of question. It was, which I'm really proud of, honestly, because this is something that's been, it was gratitude, it was gratitude for having had the opportunity. And that was, I was like, I actually hung up the phone, went and talked to my wife. I didn't tell my daughter, my daughter is incredibly close to Katrin, because I didn't want to affect her next game. But after my daughter left for her next game,

I just said, Katrin is going to say in Iceland, I'm not going to work with her as a coach anymore. And she said, how do you feel? And I was like, I'm totally going to work with her as a coach anymore. And she said, how do you feel? And I was like, I'm totally okay with this. And she's like, I'm not surprised. Because we've been working on this for a long time. We've done a lot of self-expiration, a lot of spiritual journey, a lot of meditation,

a lot of personal growth to where something I would have rocked me five years ago Was a bump not a rock Now having said that there was still angst when we were what's funny is I know I'm not enlightened or anything close to that yet Because when we decided to announce this to people I Got the feelings and it's that's that was weird to me is like I still got the feelings of like that gut feeling that that uneasy feeling of like you're about to go on and give a presentation they not prepared for that like oh this is this sucks type thing. So what do you think that is? What do you think that's about?

Great question. Judgment of a'm still fearful of judgment of other people. Yeah, I'm not there. I'm more at peace with my own who I am as a person, but I'm still not there where I don't give a crap about what other people think. Yet, and I go back and forth on that a little bit. You know, they say like, you know, when you're completely enlightened, you shouldn't let the opinions of other people affect you whatsoever. And I know I'm not there yet because I don't believe that. I don't actually don't believe it.

So I have a lot of, either a lot of growth to do, or that's just not the case because I think that's, if I, you know, I don't feel like I need to justify myself along the way, every single step I take, but I do believe that, I should say I believe what other people's opinions still matter to me. I'm just not a total grown up yet. Dude, bypassing that limbic system is superhuman, you know, being able to not track whatever it is, whatever the system is that your brain thinks is being activated there, whether it's the potential fall in status,

whether it's the whatever the concerns are around other people's impressions of you, this is driven into us, millions and millions of years of evolution. I mean, what is it that people say, heights and public speaking are two of the greatest fears that humans have? You think, well, yeah, one's a mortal threat. The other one's just awkward, but why is it that that's the case? Well, it's because the eyes of the tribe being on you, and if you fail, then you're going to fall in their standing and that survival, that's reproduction.

Man, like to get past that, to be able to front-brain think your way out of the thing that gate keeps all of your thoughts to the rest of your body is when you get there, let me know. Like because- Yeah, that's what I think we shall be striving for.

You know, because that's flow. What's happened is I should be living my life in pure consciousness, pure, here's what I think we shall be shooting for. We should all be shooting for unconditional happiness. Now that word unconditional when I first came across it floored me. Unconditional means without condition regardless no matter what. So if I ask you, Chris, do you want to be happy? You're going to say everyone's going to respond. Yes. And I say, are you willing to be happy no matter what? And you go, yes. And I go, that means even if your,

for your wife tries to stab you. You are gonna, you love her no difference. Even if you lose everything, every single person that you've ever come in contact with says, Chris is a bad person. Like, even if you're outside, you forgot your jacket. It starts pouring rain and you go like whoa, whoa, whoa Like well, I'm willing to be happy, but not if I lose my job not if I lose my wife not if I get cancer And I and now you're putting conditions on it and What we should all be aspiring to is?

unconditional and just slowly eliminating the conditions. So there are certain things now that don't bug me, that used to bug me. Someone saying something bug me on social media. It doesn't really bug me that much anymore. But Katrin saying something about me would bug me. So, we're not quite there yet. And that's where, if we can get there,

that's unconditional. And that is enlightened. And that's where the monks are, right? That's where, but the best thing is to not have to go into a monastery where a robe and meditate for 20 hours of it to get there. You wanna be able to find that while still navigating everyday life,

being a father of four, running a business, driving in traffic, and going to kids' birthday parties on the weekends. When you can do it in that state, that to me is the jam. That is the thing that we shall be shooting for. And it takes awareness, intentionality, and action to get there. Right, the fucking book, man. I'm telling you, right? The book, the world needs it. Ben Burjeron, ladies and gentlemen, new book unlocking potential. We linked in the show notes below. Where else should people go if they want to keep up to date with what you do?

Probably the easiest places Instagram, just at Ben Burjeron. do. Probably the easiest places Instagram just at Ben Burjron. And then if people want to jump on the book, it's on Amazon and Comp Train is the training platform. So in the Apple Store, Comp Train. And Hard of Life. Chasing Excellence podcast, shout out Patrick. There we go, and a podcast. Ben, it's always a pleasure, man. I really, really appreciate you coming on.

Appreciate it Chris, thank you. Oh, I'm fans. Yeah, oh, yeah, I'm fans. Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah