Modern Wisdom - #549 - Mark Bell - Stop Being Shamed Out Of Your Competitive Edge
Episode Date: November 7, 2022Mark 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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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
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.
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
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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
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
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?
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.
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,
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?
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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
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,
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
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
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
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
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,
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.
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
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.
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,
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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,
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
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,
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,
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,
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,
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.
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
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,
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,
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,
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.
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
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.
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
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
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,
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
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.
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
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.
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,
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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,
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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,
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
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.
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.
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
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,
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
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.
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
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,
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?
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
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
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.
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.
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,
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,
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
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,
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
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
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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,
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
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
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.
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,
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.
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?
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
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
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,
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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,
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Appreciate it.
I appreciate you.
Thanks, man.
Thank you.
you