Modern Wisdom - #549 - Mark Bell - Stop Being Shamed Out Of Your Competitive Edge

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

Mark Bell is a world record-breaking powerlifter, owner of Super Training Gym and inventor of the Sling Shot. A lack of support killed more dreams than a lack of competence ever did. There's a modern ...trend that trying hard at things and taking them seriously is uncool. Disincentivising excellence is one of the worst habits a society can have and it's time to put a stop to it. Expect to learn why taking a compliment is a skill that many of us don't have, why there is no growth without having a goal you're working toward, why Mark has never had a bad day, what it was like to train under the legendary Louie Simmons at Westside Barbell, how crucial the story you tell yourself about life is and much more... Sponsors: Get 20% discount on House Of Macadamias’ nuts at https://houseofmacadamias.com/modernwisdom (use code MW20) Get the Whoop 4.0 for free and get your first month for free at http://join.whoop.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Extra Stuff: Check out Mark's website - https://markbellslingshot.com/ Subscribe to Mark's YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/c/MarkBellsPowerProject 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

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Mark Bell, who's a world record-breaking powerlifter, owner of Super Training Gym and inventor of the slingshot. A lack of support killed more dreams than a lack of competence ever did. There is a modern trend that's trying hard at things and taking them seriously is uncool. Disincentivising excellence is one of the worst habits a society can have, and it's time to put a stop to it. Expect to learn why taking a compliment is a skill that many of us don't have, why there is no growth without having a goal you're working toward, whether Mark has ever had a bad day, what it was like to train under the legendary
Starting point is 00:00:40 Louis Simmons at Westside Barbell how crucial the story you tell yourself about life is, and much more. Being shamed out of having a competitive edge is such a dangerous routine for societies and groups of friends to get into. A lot of the time it is jealousy or resentment or fear of insecurity, masquerading as satire or piss-taking, and I really, really hate it, and I'm very, very glad that we got to have this conversation today.
Starting point is 00:01:11 I think it is super important, especially if you're the sort of person that wants to do different things and need to support of community around you. This is something that you need to learn. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mark Bell. Mark Bell, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. So the people that aren't familiar with you and your backgrounds, what is it? Many, many years of powerlifting, lifting some heavy ass weight and powerlifting consists of a squat, a bench press and a deadlift. And so most of my time was spent trying to build strength in those exercises and then in the gym. When you work on a squat bench and a deadlift, all the workouts I did for
Starting point is 00:02:15 about 30 years were all, everything was focused and honed in on how to make those lifts stronger. and honed in on how to make those lifts stronger. And you trained under some of the savants in terms of coaches of Aureira? Yeah, I got to rub elbows with Louis Simmons, Charles Poliquin, Dave Tate, a bunch of different kind of giants in fitness, giants in strength. And Louis Simmons, I actually went and trained at his gym, Westside Barbell, and he was a mentor of mine and that gym was very very intense Westside Barbell had probably about 50 or 60 lifters in there. Each guy probably, most of the guys were big, most of the guys were really big, like 275 and up. And it was intimidating. There was a squat rack was all the way,
Starting point is 00:03:05 and it was not all the way, but it was in the back of the gym. And the first couple of times that people went into the gym, they would kinda go by the dumbbell area, they might make their way to the bench press, but most of the time people didn't make it to the back of the gym until they felt a little more comfortable, which was pretty much never because it was a high intensity.
Starting point is 00:03:25 Just everyone in there, their goal was to get as strong as possible and not even just that. Some of the guys were in there trying to be the strongest in the world. Dude, I mean, the legends of those stories, the videos that people have seen of Westside, of Louis training. Oh, pop, pop, pop, pop. Yeah. Back, back, back, back, back.
Starting point is 00:03:45 So, what do you think has been lost with Louis? Or has, because he's now passed? Yeah. Has his legacy managed to live on? Do you think has he made a sufficient impact that people are now taking the good stuff that he brought in and continuing that? I think some of the movements and some of the things that he brought to the table, they're still around and there's still a lot of people utilizing his, some of his inventions.
Starting point is 00:04:12 He created the reverse hyper extension machine. He is the guy that brought bands and chains and stuff like that to the forefront, dynamic effort work, you know, moving weights fast. He brought a lot of attention to that. So I think that a lot of his stuff still lives on, but what I really enjoyed about somebody like Louis Simmons is his ability to be creative, his ability to also pull information from old text, pull information that's been around forever and try to repurpose it and put it back into the universe basically. So the things I've learned from him are, you know, they're going to continue on forever within me and they're going to continue on with a lot of other people that he mentored as well.
Starting point is 00:04:57 We went for dinner last night before my housemate, Zach had his tuk-trod, which he only got back at midnight. One of the conversations we had there that I thought was super interesting was about being embarrassed about your competitive edge. So Zach was telling this story about how, when he was younger and in high school, some of his friends would take the piss out of him because he would want to win, he would want to do well,
Starting point is 00:05:20 he would want to take things seriously. And I think that's such an interesting, I see that in myself. It's a very interesting concept or topic because it's kind of cool. Some people see it as cool to be blase and nonchalant about whatever it is that they're doing because it gives you a get out of jail free card. Someone trying hard in certain respects is a bit kind of a bit lame, but that disincentivizes people from trying hard and from pursuing excellence. So thinking about West Side, thinking about your lifting history, what you're aiming to do though, what it seems
Starting point is 00:05:58 like you're aiming to do is surround yourself with people that are chasing excellence, surrounding yourself with people who take things seriously. Do you agree? I think it's really important to be around like-minded people. A quote from Louis Simmons is, if you walk with the lame, you'll develop a limp. And so you want to try to get around like-minded people, and you want to kind of question who you quote
Starting point is 00:06:19 on quote, run with. I had the opportunity yesterday to run with Zach Bitter. And we ran six miles, which to a runner, six miles is not really a thing, but me coming from a former powerlifting background, I have, there's a lot of things in my head that I have to, I have to get rid of these limiting belief factors that are there because I could easily say, well, I'm not a runner, but I am, I'm running. So like, what else would quantify'm not a runner, but I am running. So, like, what else would quantify me as a runner other than me running?
Starting point is 00:06:49 I have competed in running before, so therefore I'm a runner, just the same as him. But Zach Bitter is a world record holder. He broke all-time world record. He ran, I think, like, a 634 minute mile, for 100 miles straight, which is just absolutely mind boggling to me, but it's also really inspirational to me because I'm like, I might have trouble doing that because I'm not Zach. And he dedicated his whole life to it. So I'm okay with saying like, it's possible that that may never happen.
Starting point is 00:07:29 However, I have so much progress that I can make, because when you talk to somebody like a Zach biter, you talk to somebody that's broken world records, you'll ask them, you'll say, hey, do you think you could have done even better, and they will start to give you a list of things that they could have done a lot better with. So if somebody who's already really proficient at something can get better, somebody who's, you know, reading, you know, eight books a month or something like that,
Starting point is 00:07:55 could they, maybe not necessarily read more books, but could they get more out of those books if they are to listen to information from Tim Ferris years ago, talking about efficiency and how to have better reading comprehension and things like that. So everyone that you would ask, can you get better, doesn't matter if it's the rock or whoever we put up on a pedestal, everyone has the ability to get better at least in their own eyes, I think. But that pursuit of excellence comes back to what we were saying before, right?
Starting point is 00:08:25 It's, I've only just recently realized it in the conversation with Zio over the last night. If I can just interrupt for a second, I think what we're alluding to is sometimes it's hard to celebrate victories around certain people. So let's say I did a million dollars in sales last month. You know, it's a short list of people that I feel I could share that with
Starting point is 00:08:48 where it doesn't feel like all it's really saying is, hey, like I'm improving. Like I did this last year, at this time, for this particular month, and now I'm doing this. It's not like, hey, I'm a millionaire and you're not. Like that's not really what I would be trying to say. But it's hard. Messages, all we have is our ability to interpret stuff.
Starting point is 00:09:11 And we can see how ugly things can get. Like email is probably the worst. Text messaging isn't too far behind. And if you have issues with people and if you want to try to figure out what is the easiest way for this person to interpret this information the way that I am actually trying to convey it and the easiest way would be to maybe make a phone call and say hey I would love to talk to you more about this in person because there's a lot of intricacies of what I'm trying to communicate that I can't put through
Starting point is 00:09:44 a text. Think about all of the hurdles that you're having to jump over just in order to be able to celebrate a win with someone that's supposed to be on your side. This isn't to say like lots of people that I'm around are perfectly happy to celebrate my wins. Like, me and Z tell each other each day about what it is that we think's gone well the day before and it's not a dick measuring competition between each of us. It's one of the reasons that we get on so well. But the idea that excellence is a lonely pursuit is one that I don't think most people think about.
Starting point is 00:10:14 They have those studies with the lobsters where the lobsters gets depressed and they won't play with the other lobsters unless they like play in ice. And I think they've done studies with mice and stuff like that, too, I believe Jordan Peterson has referenced some of this as well. They need to let the other mice win at least 30% of the time or the mice just stop playing. They like I'm done.
Starting point is 00:10:33 So another example of this would be, you know, if I am to do some jiu jitsu with my co co host and SEMA, like we can't really, we could, we could like play it and he could show it to me and I don't have any proficiency in Jiu-Jitsu. He's a purple belt in Jiu-Jitsu. It's gonna fuck you up. A brown belt actually, yeah. He's gonna, he's gonna destroy me. And so I think when we're talking about expressions of greatness, it's important to match it up against who, you know, who is it matched up with and who is it matched up against. If I share a business success with a business minded person who's already a savage, they're like, that's pretty cool. You know what though
Starting point is 00:11:22 you could actually, did you think about doing this? I have a whole company that does this on Instagram and on TikTok. Have you guys done that yet? Because I bet you can double and triple. And you were thinking, my God, this is pretty good. And they kind of... You're leaving something on the table. And you do end up in a dick measuring contest.
Starting point is 00:11:38 I do get, I understand what you mean, especially with regards to a BJJ, that's a type of suit that's inherently competitive. Like a conversation between you and a bro, I do YouTube, you do finance, or you do art. Like, Zaxmas is a painter, right? She releases these fantastic paintings and drawings on the internet and sells them for tons of money. If I tell her about some cool guests that I just had on, that's two completely different domains. And that's basically what I'm talking about. The ability to have a group of people around you who you can talk about your successes with in a domain that they are not competing with you in and have them support you still requires a good bit of hurdle jumping unless you're
Starting point is 00:12:23 around like a very specifically sort of tuned person. And what this story from Zach sort of taught me was that he was disincentivized from chasing his own excellence because he became embarrassed about it. He became embarrassed by his friends for being the kind of person that takes things seriously that wants to improve and that wants to win. And I don't know, I just struggle to see any scenario in which that would be an advantageous life philosophy. Like, you're literally, you're encouraging somebody to regress to the mean. Like, hang on, you're doing something different to us. Why?
Starting point is 00:13:01 Why would you do that? I've got a chip on my shoulder about this, but like, still, it's just, it's a culture that I would love to try and completely annihilate as much as I can. If you're getting more to life than I am, I'm going to sabotage you. Yes. And I think that I think that that is, I feel it. I feel it sometimes. You know, when somebody mentions something to me, I'm like, I, I, I, I, I, I, I'm thinking of me, me, me, wait, to bring that person down to reduce the gap between you. Yeah, what's the story that I can share? How do I fit into this? Well, I win.
Starting point is 00:13:33 You know, you mentioned that you had this really wonderful opportunity and I'm like, what, how do I, how do I, how do I, I, And then for me personally, I have to work on that a bunch. And I have to think, well, we're just different people. Like he has a different pursuit. That's really cool. I kind of wonder how he did that. And then I would have a question for you, rather than a statement.
Starting point is 00:13:58 And I think more of our conversations, I think it'd be great to end them with a question mark rather than a period because a period is just a statement that you just said and it's like a little bit more definitive, but when we end it with a question mark, you're asking a question and now we can kind of go back and forth. And I can learn more about what you did to get there. It's an interesting thing when you, I think, people, when you share a success, they immediately wanna bring up their own successes
Starting point is 00:14:33 to try to measure up. And if that doesn't work, they will immediately go to some negative context around how you did it. Maybe it was through performance enhancing drugs or maybe it was through your dad owns a gym and so of course you're stronger than me. Lucky timing, first move or advantage. There's all those things, all those bells and whistles that go off. I've made many posts about this in the past.
Starting point is 00:14:58 It's easier for me because I'm rich. It's easier for me because I'm ripped. It's easier. But there was a time where even within myself, where I felt dumb, I was pretty broke, you know, there was times where... It was fluffy. Fluffy, very fluffy. I got very fluffy. Yeah, there was some fat times back then.
Starting point is 00:15:22 But again, I think the key factor is, can you get better? And when you are communicating with somebody that's trying to share something with you, it's also okay just to compliment them. And then in terms of receiving compliments, people really fail at that too. That's a really good point. People stink at that. I spent years deflecting so many compliments from fans, and I was like, that is really foolish of me. Why can't I just say thank you and give the person a hug? It's uncomfortable, that's why.
Starting point is 00:15:58 If someone comes up to you and says, Mark, I just want you to let you know. You shouldn't be uncomfortable, like, we're, we're, we're, we go to great lengths to try and have that impact. Get these studios and get these lights and have these cameras and these microphones. Maybe, I, this is going to be super idiosyncratic, right? Like your motivation for doing it might be different to mine,
Starting point is 00:16:17 might be different to somebody else's. But I remember I was at body power in 2018. So classic fitness expo, shirt off, doing the muscle ups on a CrossFit rig and stuff like that. This guy came up and told me a really meaningful story about his father passed away and this thing from the show and blah, blah, blah, and he starts weeping. And then I start weeping.
Starting point is 00:16:37 I'm like, oh, fuck, I'm supposed to be in this testosterone field alpha fest. And there's me with tears rolling down my face, because this guy's just telling me this beautiful story, but I was reconnected with his family and all of this stuff. Just fantastic. And then I realized that the opportunity, although stories might not hit quite so emotionally hard every time, the opportunity for me to connect with a nice message from somebody or something like that, rather than, rather than, I don't know where the discomfort comes from. I don't know where it, but it is, it is there. Even
Starting point is 00:17:10 though that's the thing that you're seeking, you know, somebody watches you do a presentation at work or a sales call at work or whatever, or you start going to the gym and you look better or something. And a lot of the time someone will give you a compliment, what I found myself doing for a good while was, I would come up with a excuse about why that compliment didn't really matter. So for instance, if someone came up and said, hey man, like you're looking bigger,
Starting point is 00:17:36 you must have been training pretty hard. Go, oh well, it's easy when you don't have a life outside of the gym. That just classic defense, just completely. And it makes the person that gave the compliment feel like shit, you don't actually imbibe what it is that they're saying because you've created an excuse
Starting point is 00:17:52 about why that compliment doesn't really matter. And it is such a good point to say that taking compliments is a skill because you're disincentivizing other people from telling you something that would make you feel better. And maybe that's a thing like me saying, oh, you know, I wish that there was more support and I hate tall poppy syndrome in British culture
Starting point is 00:18:12 and blah, blah, blah. I wasn't massively receptive to the antithesis of tall poppy syndrome. But I wasn't being super receptive to that. So maybe it was my fault. In fact, it almost certainly would have been contributed to by me. I think, again, I think questioning stuff and just getting into good conversation with
Starting point is 00:18:30 somebody, somebody is really complimentary. Hey, I love those bench videos you did years ago. It got me into powerlifting. Powerlifting got me out of, you hear people always say, like, dark times. It got me at a hard times, dark times. I will usually follow that up with, like, hey, if you don't mind me asking, like, what were like dark times got me at a hard times dark times. I will usually follow that up with like, hey, if you don't mind me asking like what were those dark times? So can you
Starting point is 00:18:52 Just for a second stop being such an asshole and can you Communicate with somebody and ask them about themselves. I think we have a hard time doing that even in relationships You know like with my wife and I we've been married for 20 plus years. We do the best we can with that. We try to say like, how are you doing? How was your day? And then my wife might fill it in with, oh, you know, Quinn did this, that's our daughter,
Starting point is 00:19:22 and Jake did that, and I had to take them. Baby, how was your day? Like, like, you know, and she was like, oh, it was really cool. I got an opportunity as swam in the morning and I got to read a book afterwards and I talked to my mom. I imagine as a mother that that placing personal worth second to the family to the job. Like, I imagine that that must just be fucking endemic amongst women. Yeah, I think 100%. 100%. I just, again, when somebody is these complimenting you and you start to, you start to get into these conversations and even amongst friends, This is what good friends should be doing with each other.
Starting point is 00:20:07 We should be complimentary of each other. We should be asking more questions. Somebody's sharing with you that they read something really interesting what you'll find yourself doing. You'll say actually in 2019, there was a study that diffused that whole thing that you just said about cholesterol or whatever it might be. And it's like, I think a better stance would be to ask another question, ask a follow up question, say, hmm, that is actually quite different than something I learned years ago. What's your belief on this and learn, like continue to learn more. You already have
Starting point is 00:20:41 that stored in your head. And maybe you can bring this other conjecture up as you move forward. But I don't think it's a great way to like, you know, hit somebody with right off the bat. Assuming that the person that you're speaking to has something worthwhile that you could learn from them is just such a fantastic first principle. principle, but yeah, I wonder about the challenges that people have of holding themselves to high standards as well. So this is kind of a double-edged sword, right? That in order to be excellent at a thing, you need to demand a lot of yourself, but as soon as you posit an ideal, you then begin to put yourself and whatever you do in reference to that ideal, which inevitably creates a gap.
Starting point is 00:21:27 Like if this is what you want, anything that you do is always going to be in reference to that. And even if you overshoot your ability as a type A driven person to go, actually I meant this, you know, I catch back up, I meant this and you just continue to, one of my friends refers to it as like running toward the horizon that every time you take a step toward it, it takes a step away from you. And that, learning to be able to be more holistic with your pursuit of goals and high standards specifically,
Starting point is 00:21:59 I think is something that takes a very long time to work out how to do in a way that isn't toxic. I got a question for you. Do you think that people might not be aware that they're negative and in addition to that, do you think there's some people that maybe are unaware or maybe they feel as if they're like making progress and they're really maybe not moving forward. People that are negative and just like stuck. I would say so.
Starting point is 00:22:32 I'm not sure about the progress thing. The progress thing might be more difficult to hide from, but the negativity 100% that you can be in a environment that treats negativity. It praises negativity. So maybe they're interpretation of even what they perceive as being negative. Yes. Maybe they don't even believe that it's that negative.
Starting point is 00:22:55 Maybe they just think it's their nature. Correct. And maybe that's just the way that you're supposed to respond. You know, I mean, this is the British art form of piss taking and satire, right? Like that's one of the things that we're really, really good at. And it's fantastic in a comedy, but it's not great for personal development. And it's one of the things that I love about America that you guys genuinely support success. Like, someone does well.
Starting point is 00:23:18 And I'm sure that there's subcultures in America that's full of people that, like, tall, poppy tear down as well. But if you find the right group of people out here, I think the American Dream super that really is still alive You do well and people want to raise it up and they go wow man like that. That's awesome And the sentence finishes there. It's like that's not it's not that's awesome, but that's awesome and like that's awesome. Congratulations for you But yeah, another thing that you were talking about with why we sometimes struggle to accept compliments for what they are. We were talking about this over dinner last night again as well. The asymmetry in what we experience of our own lives and what we see of everybody
Starting point is 00:24:00 else's because our own inner experience is so rich, this textured world, and we understand the decision that we make. We see every single different vassalation backward and forward, it could be this, it could be that, it could be the whatever. And all that the world ever sees is what you end up doing. At the end of that, I'm going to have the chicken sandwich or the beef sandwich, chicken beef, chicken beef, right, and then you end up doing it. And that's for everything, for the business decisions that you make, for the partner you choose, for the life, all of that stuff. And I think inevitably it leads us to have, for the most part, a lot of self-doubt, because everybody else just looks like this really smooth acting self-reliant agent that seems to be able to
Starting point is 00:24:41 make shit happen. And we see a tumble over our own decisions from a front row seat on a daily basis. And I think that that asymmetry can lead us to not value simple compliments and simple successes, perhaps as much as we should, because we see all of the stumbles that we took on route to getting there. A hack for me over the years,
Starting point is 00:25:04 and this probably had to do with perhaps some financial freedom and getting into positions where maybe I felt strong enough and confident enough to maybe hand opportunities to people. But I've found so much utility in sometimes I'm probably, to some people, I'm probably almost annoyingly kind. Like I, I want to assist people. Like there's people in my life. There's people that are in my phone and things like that that I know I have the ability to
Starting point is 00:25:40 assist and to help. And so I'll send them a lot of messages, text messages, voice messages. But it's been really amazing thing for me to think, how can I connect this person with somebody else? How do I, this person's amazing. I can't even believe how awesome Andrew Hoover minutes who came to my gym a while back and was on my podcast and stuff like that. How do I share him with more people? How do I figure that out? I could share him on my Instagram,
Starting point is 00:26:12 like that's a good start, but what about maybe connecting with some potential sponsors and stuff like that for his show? And the reason why I think that way is because that'll just help me look better too. So selfishly, there's always a little selfishness and wrapped up in everything, I think. And so selfishly, that's wrapped in there as well. But I would love for him and people like him to feel better, to feel more comfortable. And they think about me or they think about me, or they think about my team,
Starting point is 00:26:45 or they think about super training, or they think about anything to do with me, my products, the podcast. I want them to have a really good feeling about it. You know that friend that when you see him, like you just start laughing, like you're 100 feet away. You see them at the airport,
Starting point is 00:27:01 they come pick you up or something like that, or you saw him in an unexpected, you went to the coffee shop that day, and there's your old buddy who is always hilarious. He's no drama, and you just light up automatically, you just start laughing, you start thinking, I don't necessarily have that personality that way to be that quite that dynamic maybe,
Starting point is 00:27:22 but I think my strengths a lot of time is in connecting people. So for people listening, that feel like they can connect the dots here and there for somebody, which I think everybody can if you really think about it because we know a lot of people and we're in closer proximity to people than ever before just with social media. So this is an example of this would be if you heard something that you felt could serve somebody else. And it's just a message on a podcast or Instagram.
Starting point is 00:27:54 Copy it, paste it, shoot it over to a friend. Maybe it helps change your life. I think it's an interesting nuance to consider the respective glow, the reflective glow that you end up basking in when you do the thing like for Andrew, you know, his phenomenal and should have more people than the like mountains that already listen to him, listening to him because I think science-based tools for health and fitness and wellness and mindfulness and stuff is great. But there is a, you can start to feel a little selfish or a
Starting point is 00:28:25 little guilty because you know that there's something coming back to you, but ultimately any selfless act has a selfish component, even if it's completely subconscious, because by doing something selfless, you're ultimately going to get a good, a sense of good will from it. Studies that have been done, which I'm sure you're familiar with, where they give people £10 and they say, you can spend this on yourself or you can spend this on something for someone else. And the difference in the amount of pleasure that people take from the money they spend on somebody else is way more, so you got, okay,
Starting point is 00:28:52 so the most selfish thing I can do is to be selfless. Okay, how do I do something selfless, then? Genuinely, how do you do something that is at its purest sense, selfless? Well, I would need to do something that's for someone else, but somehow didn't make me feel better. But where's the incentive to do that? And if you can have a positive some game, they feel better, I feel better, fantastic. They feel better, I feel worse. Maybe that's somehow more fucking virtuous. I don't understand, but yeah, I think the connecting thing,
Starting point is 00:29:26 I've been a club promoter for 15 years, man, it's like in my DNA. Now, whatever epigenetic for networking has been switched on and it just doesn't stop. And the connecting thing, connecting people thing is so cool. And there is a little bit of a winner takes all power law, Matthew principal thing going on,
Starting point is 00:29:45 because the more context you have, the more people you can connect, and the more people that you connect, the more context you get, which means that there's more opportunities. We were out there going, like, do you know someone from this place? Oh, yeah, I know someone from that place.
Starting point is 00:29:55 Do you know someone from here? Oh, yeah, you should really intro the blah, blah, blah. So you do start to see coalitions of people move and win together, but going back to the very beginning about supporting each other's excellences, being in a community of people that wants to raise the others up and supposed to tear them down, or even just be neutral about what it is they're doing. If you support that person, you can fly along with them. Like when I think about some of the people that I've been around and some of the different
Starting point is 00:30:23 positions that they've got themselves into, the same names keep popping up. There is no reason that you should continue to be an absolute beast in this industry and that industry, and oh, you also happen to be an amazing trader, and also, you know, you know, turns about crypto and you know about investment, and you've got some stuff to do with content creation.
Starting point is 00:30:39 Well, why? And also, why would no one that person to be around me? So yeah, I think the networking thing is interesting because it's become very transactional. People can see it as like, what can I do for them if they can do something for me? But ultimately, if you do that from a virtuous, holistic, I want everyone to be better place, I think that you can do that without feeling too guilty. Yeah, and that's the way I view it. I view it as over time, you're going to understand who I am better. So I'm not concerned about, I'm not concerned about if the person in the back of their heads like, oh, I was just kind of trying to do something because, you know, hopefully I know you more
Starting point is 00:31:18 than just for like a month and hopefully I know you more than just a transaction of you coming in and doing my podcast. That's why I invite so many people out to my gym in Sacramento, my headquarters where I have my podcast and everything's under one roof, is because they get to see my employees, they get to see the vibe there, they get to see everything, just like we're doing here at Nix place, we're at BPN headquarters, and this is absolutely amazing facilities, got the gym, and everyone here is super kind and each person has their own journey and their own story. I was telling us about losing over a hundred pounds. So there's like, you know, these remarkable stories everywhere. And
Starting point is 00:31:56 I think these guys get it like they they know and understand and probably a lot of that's been handed down from Nick of just figuring out ways of being helpful. There was this story that I remembered from a Peterson live talk that I went to go and see Manchester. This must have been 2017 or 2018, this is before the guy even knew who I was. And he was in Manchester, Northern town in the UK, a lot of ganglanz sort of violence and stuff outside of that. And there's boxing gyms. And one of these particular boxing gyms that's placed in the UK, a lot of gangland violence and stuff outside of that,
Starting point is 00:32:25 and there's boxing gyms, and one of these particular boxing gyms that's placed in the middle of a gang area, that's the safe haven for these young kids so that they don't get picked up by the gangs, right? And it's a classic story of some, you know, patriarch leader tough grizzled Northern British man who's been a boxing coach for 40 years or whatever, and he's telling the kids what for whatever and he's telling the kids What for and he's got the flat cap on and stuff like that and Jordan went to go and see these kids and he was talking about it during the Q&A And one of these stories this young guy said that he had been trying to
Starting point is 00:32:58 spend more time reading and learning at home and it was his mum and his stepdad and his stepdad It seemed like was treating him pretty badly or whatever and home and it was his mum and his stepdad and his stepdad, it seemed like was treating him pretty badly or whatever. And his stepdad came in one evening and hit this book out of his hands and said, what are you reading for? There's readings, readings for idiots or like, do you think that it's not going to make any difference in any case? Impetus and in his sort of classic way, he gets this nalbed finger out and he goes, if you want to punish somebody, tell them that they're wrong for doing something wrong. But if you really want to punish somebody, tell them they're're wrong for doing something wrong. But if you really want to punish somebody, tell them that wrong when they do something right.
Starting point is 00:33:28 And fuck man, I'm sat there with hairs standing up on the back of my neck, so I go, that's that disincentivizing excellence thing all over again. And just trying to get people out of the scarcity mindset and into the abundance mindset, that's one of the biggest changes I think that you can make because every single interaction that you see is an opportunity, every single time that you sit down with somebody, that you meet somebody, this is an opportunity for me to learn from them, for me to connect with them, for me to make that day better. And it's, you don't need to get into woo and spiritual karma, although we are in the
Starting point is 00:34:01 like capital of that at the moment in Austin. You don't need that. You can just say, look, I just feel like this would be a better way to exist. From first principles, I think it's a better way to exist. I think when your brain is honed in on, like, better, I think it starts to hone in on better for everything. Maybe I can have better language. Maybe I can be better educated.
Starting point is 00:34:22 Maybe I can make better decisions, better choices with my food. That's how it's worked out for me and I feel like It's an incredible feeling. It's hard to communicate because I would love to basically just make a post on social media and be like, I feel fucking awesome. I feel amazing and a lot of it's because of ABC. I feel fucking awesome, I feel amazing. And a lot of it's because of ABC. That'll be received pretty good by some people, but it also, I can't control how it's perceived by everybody,
Starting point is 00:34:52 but it is literally how I feel in this pursuit of trying to make things better. And I think it all starts, for me, it started with just putting more time in other people, like just not being in a rush. When I communicate with somebody, I don't have somewhere to be. I'm fucking with you and I love spending time with people. There are times where yes, I do need to fucking jet and I need to go.
Starting point is 00:35:20 But when I'm driving home in my car and I'm like, yeah, I'm like, damn, like I shouldn't have probably spent that 30 minutes with that person because it doesn't really impact much, but then I'm like, no, no, no, it impacted them. So you got to remember that. Like that's, you know, and I got to stick by that. That was, okay, that was the right decision. And I got to communicate that to myself throughout the day.
Starting point is 00:35:44 And it's been something that just, it just makes me feel good. I just feel at peace. So sometimes when I hear of somebody making a lot of money or somebody just making these big moves, I'm not in a spot in my life where I feel like I need to come out that with anything negative.
Starting point is 00:36:02 I'm not in a spot in my life where I feel like I need to match that that with anything negative. I'm not in a spot in my life where I feel like I need to match that. It's something that I'm probably not completely over. Maybe I never will. Maybe there's some competitive nature in there or something like that. But to go back to what we were saying in the beginning
Starting point is 00:36:18 about not wanting to maybe shine too much or not wanting to just crush everybody with what you're good at. I think that there's appropriate times, there's appropriate times to bring stuff up. So if somebody, if somebody is mentioning, they're really struggling on their diet, well, maybe that's where you can start to say, hey, I learned this and I'm really excited this help. And this help, well, they just mentioned that they're kind of open the door
Starting point is 00:36:48 for you to lay out some groundwork for them. But if they don't, and you're trying to impose this way of living on them, that's when we get in a really dangerous situation. It's because I don't know how much judging we can really do. It's tough. When somebody's, you know, when somebody's heavy, we would like to automatically think,
Starting point is 00:37:08 well, that person's 60 pounds overweight, and we know that that makes you unhealthy. We kind of know that, but we don't, there's some pretty decent evidence, but also maybe, if that person's 60 pounds overweight for just two, three years, maybe it's not that detrimental. We have no idea where the person came from. We have no idea a glimpse into what their life looks like. And so trying to, you know, enforce or trying to push an
Starting point is 00:37:38 agenda on somebody just is something that probably is going to fall short. It's interesting the balance between being sufficiently gentle with the messaging, with the framing, with how you put it across. We were talking about how some women that gain an awful lot of weight do so in response to sexual trauma that they've been through in their past. And that by gaining a ton of weight, they think that they exclude themselves from being an object of sexual desire. So they use their weight as a protection strategy so that they never go through that potential assault or whatever again. And he goes, okay. And he is someone
Starting point is 00:38:19 some well-meaning person going, have you heard of carb cycling before? Because carb cycling is a very, I mean, I've got this local guy's great, they're like high intensity classes, but they're going to be gentle on your joints. Meanwhile, you've got this sort of inner trauma just screaming out. And that is a very difficult line to walk. You know, how do you, how do you push hard enough with someone? And this is another, another interesting progression. I think that people go through as they grow up.
Starting point is 00:38:51 A lot of the things that people are developing when they start, you know, the 20 to 30s strategies, how to stop being a manchild, the basics of productivity, the basics of our health and fitness regime. I need to get up and go to bed at the same time, blah, blah, blah. That's interesting. What interests me more now is how you get from 80 to 90, not how you get from 0 to 30. Okay, I know that I can push with Z.
Starting point is 00:39:16 I can tell him, dude, I think that video sucked. Like I don't like the pacing, I don't like the this, I don't like that, and I know that he's ready to take it and sufficiently robust. And that, again again is what's important about growing and evolving as you progress, because the same is in the gym, you're not going in and squatting one plate for one rep.
Starting point is 00:39:34 Whereas when you first started, you did progressively over time, you're going to add more stress and more load because the greatest stress and the greater load are going to yield great results. But you don't do that in the beginning, you also don't do that with beginners, even if you're an advanced person. So yeah, maybe when we were talking before
Starting point is 00:39:49 about curating the message for the audience, making sure that it is well received. But how do you say once that you don't have bad days, or you've never had bad days? What do you mean by that? I mean, exactly what I said. I think, you know, I've been working over the last several years, maybe even like a decade on just reinterpretation.
Starting point is 00:40:16 It's my belief, and I try not to get too attached to those as well, but it's my current belief that negative emotions they only come from one spot. Negative emotions come from negative interpretations. And there are some things in life where you're like, I think that's bullshit, because sometimes, like something like rape or something like that, there are things that are like, it's just bad.
Starting point is 00:40:43 Like it's a fucking horrible thing to have happened to somebody. So there are things that are nuanced that are like maybe outside the bubble, sometimes on some of these things, but it's my belief that negative interpretations are the thing that spark a negative emotion. and it could lead you down a bad path and so when I Started to think about some of these things and I review them in my head. I start to clean out the closet of my
Starting point is 00:41:16 previous ideas and I start to go through and I start to evaluate and I start to say oh Like me when I grew up and I thought I was dumb, I thought I bought the story that I was stupid. There was really nothing bad about that. I needed a unique, I grew up upper middle class, no friction anywhere. So it's like I needed some sort of friction to me personally. I'm not saying everybody needs that kind of friction, but I needed friction to fine-tune myself. And what did me thinking that I was dumb, thinking that I wasn't going to be able to maybe do stuff other kids could do in school? It pushed me towards being more physical. So I lifted weights and it turned turned into a thing, it turned
Starting point is 00:42:05 into something for me. It pushed me so far that way. So when I think about, you know, good days and bad days, I could think about those frustrating times I had in school. And now I can look at them and be like, no, those were things that really helped to mold me. Because you're the things that make you, the things that make you cry the way I kind of view it is your brain is just working through a bunch of stuff. I say lift through it. I also will share the idea of run through it. A lot of people that I've run into that lift and run or exercise when they go and do these things, they are working out. Trauma is like a strong word,
Starting point is 00:42:48 but they're working through shit when they go and lift. When you talk to somebody about their weight loss journey and find out that someone lost 100 pounds, a lot of times there's some sort of trauma from their childhood when you talk to somebody that's obese and they're working through it with their diet and with their exercise. So the things that really may have hurt you at a particular time, I think when you heal
Starting point is 00:43:13 from those things, you're a little stronger and you're a little more resilient. And over the years, you know, I certainly don't start out this way, but I've always had a pretty calm demeanor and it's just gotten more and more calm over the years to the point where sometimes even that's misinterpreted. Me just not saying anything could be like, wow, he's maybe he was in a bad mood. Oh, maybe he doesn't care. Maybe I don't care. And really it's just a balance.
Starting point is 00:43:39 I have what I believe I am starting to get better at is having some equanimity. Equanimity is just a balanced mind in the face of adversity, in the face of something that somebody else might otherwise perceive as a stressful situation. So people get into these arguments and they get in these fights with people and they get into these little nasty things here and there and your emotions will flow a particular way. What I've learned is they don't necessarily have to because you have an opportunity to think about your thoughts a little bit more. If you can pause and just take a second, you're going to find that your delivery and your reaction to whatever it was is probably going to be more efficient and more effective.
Starting point is 00:44:25 A lot of times that's not really what we're taught though because if you play a sport, especially as a male, play football, play cricket, whatever sport you may have played up doing that you chose, a lot of reaction time is a big factor in there. Your response to what's happening is critical. Now, that's on the physical side, but on the mental side, it's, it couldn't be any more important. I can't think of any greater strategy than just pausing something for a moment. Say you got into an argument with your significant other. And you said, I'm not, I'm not exactly sure, but I'm really frustrated. And I need to think about it. Can you, can we, is it possible? Can we, can we shut this down for a minute? And can I come back and talk to you more about
Starting point is 00:45:22 this in like five minutes? I know how difficult that can be, but I can't think of a more effective strategy. Sometimes people will say, sleep on it, which that could even be more difficult. And then they're run through it. Yeah. And a lot of times that's where the things will work out. I think if you do stuff physically,
Starting point is 00:45:40 it really has a benefit. But anyway, just, yeah, just over the years as I started to think about it more, I was like, yeah, I've only had a couple of bad days. My mom died a couple of years back. My oldest brother died. He was bipolar and had drug problems and stuff like that. My mom basically died from obesity. So she was a hard person to try to get to head in the right direction and take the
Starting point is 00:46:05 the steps that we're even talking about right here. And so that's why I feel like I can speak upon these things because these are things that I have had to work on and part of the reason why even went down the road of studying things like equanimity and stoicism is because of people like my mother because I'm like I know that she can do some of these things. I know that she can make some of these changes. But to be honest with you, at this stage in my life, I am actually thoroughly confused on whether people possess the ability to truly change or not.
Starting point is 00:46:39 It's a really interesting thing when you start to really think about it deeper and deeper. But it's a tall task for some people. If they haven't started to change some of their mindset already, it's like, I'm not even going to bother to climb that mountain because I'm going to be embarrassed that I'm only going to get a couple hundred meters up it, unfortunately. I wonder what the future generation of young people will look like once they've been exposed to self development from a younger age. I'm sure that this is the case for everyone, but
Starting point is 00:47:18 every generation looks back at people that are when they're 34 at kids that are 14 and goes, I remember me when I was 14. I didn't look like that, act like that, think like that, talk like that, be around friends like that, spend my time like that. And it permanently seems like kids are maturing more quickly, sometimes in ways that are worse than others and maladaptive. but I wonder whether that sense of agency, sovereignty, ability to enact change within our lives. I wonder whether that's going to be democratized a little bit more. I wonder whether people are going to feel that, but dude, that's a really good question,
Starting point is 00:47:59 just how much leeway do people have to change? Yeah, in your experience, I mean, you've been studying a lot of this. It seems like, from my communication with you so far, it seems like not only are you listening to this stuff, but I'm imagining that you're like taking notes. I mean, you took notes last night a little bit on the conversation we had. Do you find yourself like diligently, like it's almost like you're still in school?
Starting point is 00:48:22 No, so the reason I did it last night is because there was stuff that was so good I didn't want to miss it today. But I am pretty undisciplined when it comes to note-taking or having an external second brain, a bunch of my friends, Ali Abdahl, Tiago Forte, these guys literally wrote to the book. He wrote a book called Building a Second Brain. Like he's got the thing created. However, for me, it just doesn't work. And the best way that I've found, which might be a cope because I don't have
Starting point is 00:48:50 the system, is Tim Ferriss' The Good Shit Sticks. The stuff that resonates with you is the stuff that you'll carry with you. And if it didn't stay in your brain, it wasn't meant to be there. Now, you can lean on the side of being laxadaisical with that and end up just forgetting everything and go, well, nothing's sufficiently interesting. You know, that seems unlikely. I feel like my, the rate of income, input and the rate of retention is pretty well balanced now. But a big chunk of that is because I have an outlet that I'm always looking for stuff to use on. You know. Another story about Winston Churchill's ministry of Ungenital Monellary Warfare or whatever book I'm reading, that's a story that I'm using because I have an outlet. If people don't have that, they have less incentive to retain, which means they have less
Starting point is 00:49:36 incentive to grow. It's fortunate that in between the income or the input for me and the output of being on the show, I end up taking stuff for myself. It has to go through me. And during that, that forces me to change. So I wonder whether a vehicle for change for people, a men's group, a woman's group, a friend that's really inquisitive, some sort of creative pursuit, like a sub-stack or painting or poetry or music or whatever.
Starting point is 00:50:01 I wonder whether as more people do that and as more people get interested in not just being consumers but in being creators, whether that will encourage them to do more. But yeah, man, it's sad to think that our parents' generation didn't necessarily have that belief put in them so early. What I think is interesting about that generation is that that generation kicked so much ass and made so much money that people aren't hurting nearly as badly as you think. And I know people are like, all these are free to say you're rich. During the pandemic and during these times where a lot of businesses had to shut down and people really did, they were suffering at a point.
Starting point is 00:50:47 There's still people with a refrigerator full of food, a freezer full of food, a cupboard full of food, and there's still people stacking up, like just really shitty unhealthy foods. I mean, what did people do during the pandemic? They ordered fucking door dash. I mean, but then people are talking about their stress and anxiety. It's like, again, it's hard to not come from a place of being judgmental, but you're like, man,
Starting point is 00:51:16 like you just told me that you want to completely get rid of this drinking problem and you just, you just down to a whole bottle of vodka, like what's going on here like and and that's in my view that's what we saw we saw people were hurting during that time and we saw people going through some hard shit but I do think that the generation of like my dad who's probably 74 75 now I think that generation put up so many fucking points on the scoreboard of life that a lot of,
Starting point is 00:51:50 at least in America, a lot of people are set up pretty well. My dad has been doing taxes for a really long time and could be the area where he does taxes or whatever, but he's been doing it probably maybe 40 years or something like that that maybe 50 years. And I was like, Dad, I'm like, these people, anybody that you do taxes for like, do they not have a fridge full of food, a freezer full of food and pantry full of food? He's like, yeah, no, they all do. And I'm like, well, and, and, oh, he said, and even, and he goes
Starting point is 00:52:19 furthermore, they usually have a freezer in the garage that has, you know, more food in there. So that generation, they did miss out on some really cool stuff. They missed out on believing in yourself and believing that you can probably achieve higher things and you might be able to choose your own path. It was more linear. But they took a path and they did it. And they didn't really know if there was other options. And you got to kind of think that their parents,
Starting point is 00:52:50 like my grandpa and stuff like that, worked on the railroad and like, there was an even more direct, like there was no conversation about, you trying to go to a different college, you were going to this school, and then you were going to this school, and then you're going to this school, and then you're working in a railroad or whatever. Maybe they didn't have an opportunity to go to college, right? I think college was something that was, you
Starting point is 00:53:13 know, from 30, 40 years ago. Well, think about the challenges that people face when they don't have those different opportunities, when they don't at a young age get given all of those. But then on the flip side, I think that the pendulum swings back too far, and we now have the paradox of choice. People have so many different life routes that they can go down. There's, I wonder if there's a name for it, I haven't found one yet, but commonly when people leave university, and for the first time since the age of four or five, they're now free-wheeling on their own. They've been on train tracks all of this time up until
Starting point is 00:53:51 the age of 21, 22, 23 and they're released into the open world and they go, holy fuck, I can go anywhere that I want. Even if I've been on the the tightest track of medicine or charted accounting or dentistry or whatever that kind of has a very obvious progression, there's still a sense of free falling because they go, well, what do I do? Since the age of five years old, when I had to get up, where I had to be, what I had to learn, what I was expected to do, the progression over time, the time I was going to spend away, the time that was going to be, all of that has just been prefabricated for me. And now I'm released into the world ostensibly as an adult, but functionally as a child. And I have to make all of these decisions.
Starting point is 00:54:38 And Barry Schwartz is the paradox of choice, suggests that it looks fantastic when you give people a ton of different options because it allows them to choose an option which is closer to the precise thing that they actually wanted. But what it ends up with happening, I learned this start about jam, right? So when there were fewer types of jam, I was like peanut butter and jelly type stuff. Correct. Yeah, so we would call it jam like a preserve. Yeah, I guess. Over here.
Starting point is 00:55:08 40 or 50 years ago, I think there were like six times fewer different variations of this particular product we're talking about, but they sold 50% more. And there may be a whole host of reasons for why preserves aren't being used as much, I don't know, but the argument that was put forward is this paradox of choice, the fact that when you go in and you have, you get paralysis by analysis, you look at all of these different types of jam and you go, you'll do all the marmalade with bits or without bits, or I want it to be the orange, or I want it to be the blood orange, like all of this stuff. And I think that the same thing happens with life, that people have all of these different options in front of them, and that that can cause them
Starting point is 00:55:49 a high degree of anxiety, because they know that if their life ends up in a place that they didn't mean it to be, it feels like it's more on them. And there is a beauty to having a reduction in the number of choices that you can make. You know, for all that we can say, look downstream from it at what our parents have got to deal with with a reduced amount of sovereignty and more challenges and a lack of sort of self-belief
Starting point is 00:56:15 in being able to change the direction and stuff like that, yes. But they also didn't have the pain of as many decisions or maybe even any decisions. Go back, we've got this sort of mating crisis thing going on at the moment with men and women not being able to find partners that they feel attracted to. And a hundred and a two hundred years ago in the year of Darwin's birth, which was 1830, the average number of divorces in the UK was four. That's not thousand, that's not million four, period, right? If you naturally marry the daughter of the owner of the farm that's next to your family's farm, I mean, and you
Starting point is 00:56:53 still see this, this is still rolled forward in arranged marriages in Indian culture, right? Of a bunch of friends, they're Indian, they're in arranged marriages that didn't know their partner or basically didn't know their partner before they ended up getting married with them. And the familiarity has bred love off the back of that. So it's such an interesting conversation to be had around like how many choices should we give people? Like for the increased choice and sovereignty, there is an associated degree of anxiety. It gets to be difficult because your choices are really important.
Starting point is 00:57:26 Like what you choose is really important. But I think what you could potentially do is if you fill your plate up enough, there's less room for you to do bullshit stuff. But we did last night with the protein, that protein leveraging that we did. We just had protein dish after protein dish, and if we're stacking up over 100 grams of protein each, it doesn't really allow for much, all the way to the point when the dessert menu came,
Starting point is 00:57:54 it didn't even really look appetizing, because we got after it with the steak and the shrimp and the steak tartar and the tuna tartar, and there was this endless amounts of food there. I think that people should stuff themselves and fill themselves up with, like, I do this so much sometimes that it's to a point where I almost feel nauseous. And I'm not talking about with food, but in terms of the education process, on the way here, I was listening to a podcast. I'm always trying to, not always, but I'm oftentimes because I sometimes, I just like downtime, but oftentimes I'm
Starting point is 00:58:36 thinking of ways of like, how can I learn something right now or how can I be doing something maybe just, how can I enhance this? It's part of the reason why our podcast, the podcast that I run, we have a stand-up desk. Because I'm like, ladies, burn more calories when you're standing up, but I don't wanna sit for three hours every day and maybe that's gonna bug my hip
Starting point is 00:58:57 and cause me to be stiff and stuff. And so while we're doing the podcast, I gotta look crossball, I'm like rolling my foot out on there and messing around with my toes. And I'm listening to everybody and still paying attention what the hell is going on. But I'm always thinking, you know, how do I, I never really do one thing at once.
Starting point is 00:59:13 It's always like multiple things going on. And I understand that like people sometimes are like, oh, you can't be effective that way. But like when I run, I'm either listening to music, which is helping me grow and expand, maybe like in my heart, I'm either listening to music, which is helping me grow and expand, maybe like in my heart and my mind, and when I'm, you know, sometimes on a run, sometimes I'm listening to a podcast or a book,
Starting point is 00:59:33 and maybe that is helping me to grow and expand. So I think with all these big choices, I think it's important, all these different choices you have, I think it's important to really fill your plate up with stuff that's valuable. And I guess that gets to be the hard thing because what is valuable to you? Our value assignment in our society is sometimes misguided and misarranged in a lot of ways.
Starting point is 01:00:00 There's, we have a tendency to really want to listen to a doctor. We have a tendency to really want to listen to somebody that's been doing something for a long time. But none of those things make any sense to listen to them for anything. The only thing that should matter is someone's explanatory knowledge. When they explain something to you, does it hold up to some things that you may have heard in the past, or is it kind of ruffling against some of that?
Starting point is 01:00:25 Is there some friction there? And if there's some friction there, you might want to try to figure out how do you smooth that out, or how do you maybe start to research some of that on your own. So, with all these huge choices out there, what I think is a wonderful thing is to think about some of the people that you see on social media. And maybe start to, I know people don't love this idea, but maybe start to mimic them a little bit. Maybe start to say, you know what, I really love that that guy is in fitness and that guy
Starting point is 01:00:58 wrote a book. Like, those are really cool things. I don't know the fault. Man, I'm not sure about myself. I don't, I'm not great on camera, but you know, maybe you can start to figure out by your own versions of that. I was just talking with Nick Bear today about he just used to be so shy. He's like, I didn't want it now. He has a podcast. And now Nick is a legend in the fitness industry. He still doesn't really like to
Starting point is 01:01:23 talk, especially about himself. And so some of the videos that you see sometimes, it's a video of him doing something and there's a voice over put to it later. And there's a strategy behind that because that's his niche, that's what he feels good with, that's what he feels comfortable with. So kind of, I guess trying to divide out like,
Starting point is 01:01:42 you know, drinking with your friends or the direction that you went when you were younger, owning like a nightclub, like, some of these decisions, like they might not, they might match up with the way you feel at the time or what you're doing at the time, but they also may not match up with your goals, because if you are trying to be like a pro bodybuilder and like run a nightclub or something like that, that would be difficult. A very difficult, yeah, you put yourself in a compromised position. Going back to the reframing thing, there's a quote from Marcus Aurelius that I'm sure that you're familiar with
Starting point is 01:02:13 that says, the whole universe is change and life itself is but what you deem it. Either gratefully better than or bitterly worse than something else that you alone choose. But I mean, the whole universe is change and the life itself is but what you deem it. So that is talking about what we are angry about for the most part is not the thing. It's the story that we tell ourselves about the thing and it is the perpetuation of the anger. I continue to think about it. Sam Harris says this little experiment where he says, get angry about something and then try to remain angry without thinking about the anger. And it's impossible. It dissipates within two minutes. You become the architect of your own misery, right? You perpetuate these
Starting point is 01:02:54 problems yourself. You're the person that is coming in. Yeah, maybe someone came in and rang the bell, but it's you that continues to pick the hammer up and ding, ding, ding, over and over again. to pick the hammer up and ding, ding, ding, over and over again. When it comes to situations that you are triggered by, that ring the bell, what are practices that you go through in order to reframe in a more effective manner? I love this topic because I think so much stuff
Starting point is 01:03:21 has to do with stress mitigation. Again, using grappling as an example. If I learn something like a sprawl, which is to defend somebody taking me down, if I just learn that maybe for five sessions and I get to try it out with some different body types and different people, The mitigation of somebody confronting me wanting to take me on in some way changes drastically. The stress of it is like, I don't know what the fuck this guy's problem is or what's going on here, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to be able to handle myself at least okay. So it's directly proportional to your capability or your competence at being able to deal
Starting point is 01:04:04 with it So I think so many things are a skill set and these skill sets that we acquire Can be ways to really dampen and mitigate the stresses in our lives And I think we have a tendency to Day in and day out just kind of sweep some stuff under the rug sweep some stuff to the side that we know that we should work on and that we could work on But we think of every possible thing that we that we can to not do the thing. We keep putting it off. We keep putting it off. You'll find yourself distracting yourself with stuff that you don't normally do.
Starting point is 01:04:39 Like you might all of a sudden start kind of cleaning out your closet or something like that at home. It's like, it's not a practice that you normally do, but you're doing it because you know you're supposed to run five miles for the day. And you went to grab your shoes and you're like, this is a mess and next thing, and you're just like, you're wasting all this time so that later on you can kind of make
Starting point is 01:04:59 the rational decision of like, I don't have the time to do that for today. And so for me to try to mitigate or defend or any of those things, it's like, how can I learn or how can I do? What can I do? What is something I can go and do? So if something lands on me awkwardly for the day, and I didn't particularly like the way someone talked to me or something stressful
Starting point is 01:05:26 popped up. I mean the first thing is I don't have to interpret it as being stressful. I do not have to interpret it as being negative, but sometimes that should happen. So if I did choose to put it in a negative category, then I would think there's stuff that I need to do today that it has always been in my best interest. It's what makes me. And so you can make up, I love this term, make up your mind. Make up your mind to go and do something else. So for me, it would be like run or lift, but it wouldn't necessarily be direct. It wouldn't be like, or lift, but it wouldn't necessarily be direct. It wouldn't be like, you know, unieter talking, and then all of a sudden we got in this heated discussion,
Starting point is 01:06:09 and I got stressed out or something like that over. So maybe something you said insulted me, or made me sad. Maybe something you said, I can be a sensitive guy. Maybe something you said made me sad. And I'm like, man, I really hurt, man, fuck, I don't know how to explain that to him, that that hurt.
Starting point is 01:06:24 It's a little weird, we don't know each other that well. I don't even want to fucking tell like, man, I really hurt, man. Fuck, I don't know how to explain that to him at that hurt. It's a little weird. We don't know each other that well. I don't even want to fucking tell him. So yeah, I'm just gonna go. But I wouldn't, like I wouldn't, I guess what I'm trying to say is I wouldn't necessarily like, you know, go and run immediately after that. It's just like some part of the day I'm going to run a lift
Starting point is 01:06:42 and start to contemplate that discussion a little bit more. So it seems like time creating a buffer is a big part of this and that goes back to not reacting immediately. Time is a huge component, but again, I also think I have a saying of do more, be more. And sometimes people take that a little bit, they take that a little bit extreme. I know everyone's got like their morning routines and they got these fucking rituals and shit and then they're trying to optimize everything and I, that's cool. Like if that sets you forth and down the right path for you and it's been a success for you, that's really cool.
Starting point is 01:07:19 I don't really, I don't really operate that way because I just have so much stuff that I want to do in a given day that I'm going to get to them. So it doesn't really have to be routine. You can almost view it as a challenge to sometimes be anti-routine. See, can you say to yourself, am I so much of a pussy that I have to have my specific routine? I have to have my raw milk in the morning and I have to have this very specific thing
Starting point is 01:07:49 going on each and every day. Otherwise, I'm too thrown off and I get at a balance. I get at it. Equanimity. So do more, be more as a concept of motion is delusion. Movement is the key. Movement is your motivation. Motivation is outstanding. It can be a great thing. It can be a really strong driver. There's many different versions of motivation that people can get from all different kinds of other people and other things. But I think the act of actually going and doing something, it could be anything, it could be like gardening. You could be hiking.
Starting point is 01:08:32 For me, it's pretty much just walking, running, lifting. But I have found that movement is the most therapeutic thing that there is. And I've heard other people say stuff like this. I mean, if you were to think of all the things put together a compilation of all the things that exercise, resistance, training, all the things that those things do, that would be probably like a four-hour pharmaceutical commercial listing off all the positive things that it does. And maybe at the end, it would say, please check with your
Starting point is 01:09:07 doctor because this, this particular exercise could be very dicting. So, you know, something like that might drop off at the end with like a little negative caveat or you can overdo it, you can hurt yourself, something like that. But the benefits are absolutely insane. And I think it helps, when you make up your mind to safeguard yourself from the outside world of all the different distractions, when you, I kind of refer to it as fat proofing, because when you have a child, you baby proof your home, so your child doesn't get hurt, you put a block on the stairs so they can't fall down the stairs and you put things in the electrical sockets and stuff like that. And I think you have to fat proof your life because the world outside is chaotic.
Starting point is 01:09:50 It's like a giant fucking zoo out there with all the different types of convenient foods that are bad for us. However, we're also in an amazing time where if you're in the United States, especially I don't know about all the other countries, but if you're in the United States, especially I don't know about all the other countries, but if you're in the United States and you're in a, especially if you're in a prominent city, you have so much access to healthy, good food that is ridiculous. Probably almost the same as you have to bad food. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:10:23 Yeah. So talking about the fragility of routines, this was literally the newsletter that I sent out two days ago. For a long time when I first started Modern Wisdom, I was focused on productivity and optimizing my life, strategies, tools, apps, books, and biases that would improve daily efficiency. My presumption was that pretty much everything would be fixed if I got more focused and applied more effective effort. Upon reflection, I say it is an important period to go through.
Starting point is 01:10:47 I think everybody needs to spend a year or two obsessing over deep work and productivity, kind of like how you need to learn what progressive overload and good macros are for making strength gains. These are the physics of a productive and efficient life. But it's an incomplete, it's incomplete for a number of reasons, one of which I want to focus on today, having hardcore routines makes you fragile. And this is an Alex Hamozi quote, everyone can agree that they feel better if they sleep well.
Starting point is 01:11:08 But the issue is, if you create the story that you must sleep well in order to perform. If you make it a requirement to function, then that is where you get more negative ramifications from the belief that you must have it. It makes you fragile. You need to view all of your optimal approaches as preferences. I prefer to sleep more, but if I don't, I'm still going to show up, must have it, it makes you fragile. You need to view all of your optimal approaches as preferences. I prefer to sleep more, but if I don't, I'm still going to show up because winners win. And that's do more be more, I think. That is, look, what's the actual outcome goal that
Starting point is 01:11:35 I'm aiming for here? Is my outcome goal to have a fancy productivity system that makes me feel good about the process that I went through in order to get to something, or am I just getting the work done by any means necessary? Now this is not a beginner's approach because you need to understand the physics of what you're trying to do. You need to understand the basics. It's all well and good you say, do you know what it is? I can do a little bit of lifting, a little bit of running, maybe I'll like roll within
Starting point is 01:12:01 Seamer and get choked out a couple of times and do BJJ, but all of that works because it's, you've transcended individual domains of training, right? You've transcended an individual, different type of programming. You can't do that in the beginning, but I think that holding on to this sort of very rigid, everything's about productivity, have to be as effective as possible, and I need to make sure that my Pomodoro time is perfect, and the morning routine that takes 90 minutes and whatever, it's like, okay, well, what if you could get the same amount of work done but with less of that input? Maybe you've created some habits
Starting point is 01:12:31 that allow you to take less of a dose of that. Maybe instead of doing three hour strength sessions in the gym, which I imagine Westside would have been, you know, these super long sessions and like insane amounts of calories and stuff. Okay, well, maybe my goals have changed, but maybe my approach is better. Maybe my approach is more efficient or effective now. Maybe some of the games that I've made in the past mentally or physically are carrying over and giving me this
Starting point is 01:12:54 like afterburn effect across years, years and years. So, routines making you fragile, yes, 100%. Why do you believe that it's harder to do if you're a beginner or Not advisable because I think that it's there's too much complexity in that the learning incrementally and periodized. Okay, I'm going to learn what a strength routine looks like and you need to spend you know six months to three years learning about why cooking chicken in different ways is to taste terrible and how hard it is to get one gram per pound of body weight in terms of protein into your body and why you shouldn't try and eat all of your food just before you go to
Starting point is 01:13:36 bed because it ruins your sleep and what it feels like to do full body every day and what it feels like to train seven days and what it feels like to train three days. Like you need to go through all of those things. If you're doing that, while trying to do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, while trying to do a running program, I don't think that you condense and synthesize the learning down into a pure and a fall. We have limited RAM. We have limited.
Starting point is 01:13:59 I just like where I would have pushed back is just against routine ever pretty much. Because it's been my experience that like the beginner phase can really be like a lot of fuckery. Like, like you're talking about like the chicken and stuff like that, like cooking it, like we get our knowledge from our experiences and or somebody else's experiences. It doesn't really come from anywhere else. So, we experience these things or we've heard previous experiences, but I'm a big fan of the term, Dicking Around.
Starting point is 01:14:37 I think there's a lot of like, Dicking Around that happens when you first start lifting. All the way to the point where when you ask somebody, when did you start lifting, they always have two separate times. Well, this is when I began, and this is when I started doing it properly. Right, right. And it would be nice to start out routine. It would be nice to start out with somebody
Starting point is 01:14:59 sat you down and explained a lot of it. And somebody's like, this is a really good program to stick to and you should go three days a week and all that. And to that extent, I think you would be 100% right. That person would have way better progress, probably, than the other person. But I'm a big fan of sticking with things that you're interested in and sticking the things
Starting point is 01:15:22 that you're like. So my son and a bunch of his friends have been training in my gym for the last few years. And man, it has been really difficult. I've had to bite my tongue because my son just hangs out on the preacher curl machine, or at least he used to. And I'm like, I should have, I should go sit, don't say anything. Go tell him to squat, no, oh, don't say, you know, and it's just, it's killing me, you know, I'm like, I'm like, no, these are important like, bro sessions, like I'm just so happy that he's in here.
Starting point is 01:15:55 I'm so happy that he's finding some interest relatively close to the things I'm interested in. I don't care that he's just hanging out with a preacher girl. Hopefully he ends up with freakishly large biceps. So it's been tough, but I've watched them, him and his friends all, I mean, literally grow. Like they're all getting bigger and it's really awesome. And it's really fun to see the bro sessions going on.
Starting point is 01:16:19 They're like bench pressing. I'm like, it's- Never training like. It's every day that they're bench press. But you remember that? They got like, yeah, they'm like- Never training like- It's everyday that they're friends. I'm impressed. But you remember that? They got like, yeah, they got like one buddy who will actually follow like a prescription or a program.
Starting point is 01:16:31 But most of the time they're just, you know, hanging out, either benching or doing curls. But again, you know, even with my running, the beginning stages of it was just like, let me just shuffle. I'm going to run as slow as I can. Just the only rule is not to hurt yourself. It's all been stuff that I made up, but again, back to some of what you were saying earlier, I already have a large foundation of physicality so I know. I got a good understanding whereas somebody else, if they go and they try too many things at one time, they're probably going to get hurt.
Starting point is 01:17:09 Mark Bell, ladies and gentlemen, if people want to check out the stuff that you do online, why should they go? You can go to markbellslinkshot.com and that's where I have knee sleeves, elbow sleeves, a slingshot product. You can also check out mine bullet. My favorite pre workout, you can go to minebullet.com and I'm at Mark Smelly Bell on Instagram. Strength is never weakness, weakness is never strength. Thank you for having me.
Starting point is 01:17:30 Appreciate it. I appreciate you. Thanks, man. Thank you. you

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