Modern Wisdom - #621 - David Laid - Why Getting Shredded Won’t Make You Happy

Episode Date: April 29, 2023

David Laid is a fitness model, influencer, Creative Director at Gymshark and YouTuber. Being young, jacked and famous is a desire almost every 17-year-old guy can probably confess to wanting at one point. But what if the glamour isn’t all it’s made out to be? What happens when injuries threaten to take away the foundation of your self-worth? And what do you do when you need to grow up? Expect to learn how David uncovered self-worth beyond aesthetics, the setbacks that led to his lowest point in life, how to mentally deal with injuries, the biggest influences on his mindset, David's perspective on modern dating, how to harness adversity, what gymbros should envision beyond fitness and much more... Sponsors: Get 10% discount on all Gymshark’s products at https://bit.ly/sharkwisdom (use code: MW10) Get $100 off plus an extra 15% discount on Qualia Mind at https://neurohacker.com/modernwisdom (use code MW15) Get 20% discount & free shipping on your Lawnmower 4.0 at https://manscaped.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Follow David on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@DavidLaid Follow David on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/davidlaid  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is David Lade, he's a fitness model, influencer, creative director at Gymshark, and a YouTuber. Being young, jacked, and famous is a desire that almost every 17-year-old guy can probably confess to wanting at one point in their life. But what if the glamour isn't all that it's made out to be? What happens when injuries threaten to take away the very foundation of your self-worth? And what do you do when you finally need to grow up? Expect to learn how David uncovered self-worth beyond aesthetics, the setbacks that led to his lowest point in life, how to mentally deal with injuries, the biggest influences on his mindset, David's perspective on modern dating, how to harness adversity, what Jimbo's should

envision beyond fitness, and much more. I very much like hearing from people who have had early, rapid success and exposure and notoriety and status and prestige and stuff, because it helps to see the other side of the curtain, something that an awful lot of people want or think that they want and finding out just how rosy or not the reality is, I think is an incredibly important lesson. I really hope that you enjoy this one. A bit of an update across the UK and island tour I'm doing in November, tickets went live on Thursday and they all sold out in less than 60 minutes and then we released more dates in London and

upgraded the venue elsewhere. And those tickets sold out too. At the final tickets that remaining will be available this Friday, the 5th of May at 10am UK time. And that will be for the Manchester date. Everything else is very sold out. I'm afraid for the people that got tickets and supported the release, I am incredibly thankful. And in 2024, if you do not live near Manchester, Dublin or London, I will be going to you. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Jim Shark. My favorite new piece from them is their Apex T-shirt. It's got this anti-order technology called Essence, which is anti-microbial, means that

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a checkout. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome David Lade. We are both fans of Charlie Hooper and he says that when somebody asks you what do you do, you have the opportunity to hook lots of different things in. So if someone was to ask you, why do you do what you do? What's the single thread that ties together all of the things that you do? What would you say to that? That's interesting. I feel like there's been like an evolution, like throughout that because just what I do, I guess it's like changed like over time because like now like like broadly speaking like on the surface, like I make like YouTube like fitness oriented videos, but I think that started when I was

like 13 or 14 years old, like I got into like weightlifting and then I took a lot of pictures of my progress, made a transformation video, then ended up going viral. And then I just started making a YouTube channel just with like my friends in the gym, just making random videos, like working out. And then I guess I started being more interested in making cinematic-ish content and just making it more like, I don't know, sophisticated, like higher quality, like et cetera, like more artistic and Yeah, I guess I

Just enjoy making videos that I just enjoy making Do you wish sometimes the your Entrance into the world of virality social media YouTube hadn't been So tightly defined based on the way that you look, the gym, or do you like integrate that as part of your history? Perfectly fine. I'd say so. I mean, I'd say I had an earlier point maybe like years and years and years ago. It was to the point where there was like a, like I guess, a slight like toxicity component to it years ago, it was to the point where there was like a, like, I guess, a slight, like, toxicity component to it because the whole reason that I got into working out was because

of like very, like, generic stereotypical insecurities, just being like extremely skinny, feeling all that. And then as I started getting more and more progress in the gym, and then that obviously gave me like a self-esteem boost. I felt a lot better about myself. And then I would like to take pictures. And then obviously, when people take pictures, often times they just want to like maximize it to get, you know, the best lighting angles, etc. And then I got to a point where maybe like a few years into working out where I had just a decent bit enough of muscle to get pictures that look like semi-decent, right? But not in those pictures, like in real life, like without like a pump or whatever, I remember just like feeling like still like very like just

skinny and insecure. And then it was like a problem because even say like my senior year in high school, I remember I would just wear hoodies just all the time because if you're like a big baggy hoodie, you can't like exactly tell like like the size of an individual. Even though at this stage, you're probably one of the biggest guys in school. Yeah, I mean, I wasn't like gargantuan or anything so but I definitely I I look like a normal reasonable human being with like an acceptable amount of like muscle tone right but still in my head there was like this crazy just distortion body dysmorphia and then eventually the way that transferred over to social media is

it was like that thing just amplified even more in terms of just needing to look as good as I possibly could like in pictures. Like, you're not screwing it. Yeah, so if like, I take a picture with someone and then my physique didn't look like as good as like, I thought it would like in my own pictures that I would take or just by myself in like particular curated environments, that would definitely wreak havoc on my well-being and that was definitely sub-optimal. But as more and more time went by, I feel

like that general complex just naturally dissolved and has been a bit more peace. Where are you at now? You know, because you're still at what you're 24? Just in 25. Right, okay. So, you've been on the internet for longer than I have, despite being 10 years younger than me. Right?

Given the fact that you have had this long career from basically, when did that first video go viral? 17, 18? What age there I was? I was about 17. Yeah. So, you know, a good chunk of time that you've spent with an awful lot of eyes on you on the internet.

All of this has been based around the way that you look. You know, this is coming out the back end of the like aesthetic bro, like Jim's is era type thing. How have you managed to dispense with or how much have you managed to get rid of that body dismal for you, that sense of your sense of self worth being attached to the way that you look, your leanness, your size. I think the way that that the solution happened to whatever degree it has happened was through just so many years on and or such a prolonged period of time of just feeling such internal discomfort and

dissonance and just an overall sense of discomfort in my actual day to day life having to just like micromanage just my own self image of how I think I look out of this is that and then it just got to the point where that was just so unsatisfying to operate in that way that the more I would distance myself from that, like organically as a byproduct of like achieving a certain like understanding of how that makes me feel, then I would just notice, it would just not feel that way anymore,

but even like throughout the years like at times I would have Situations where I could just see my brain re-entering previous thought patterns that I did when I was like fully In sconce in that mindset But back when I was fully in sconce in that mindset that was literally my like reality as I was like having those thoughts and feelings but now that previous thought pattern still exists, but it exists within a broader understanding so that when it arises, I could just recognize it's a riser, and then it'll just go away.

And then just like, I don't know, at peace, or I like feel fine, there's like no issues really. So I don't know, I didn't like necessarily implement like just like a strategic like plan or like taking you steps or like create, I don't know like a mental hygienic discipline to do that. It's just sort of just organically just happened after just like contemplation and stuff. Talk to me about the introspection in the self-work that you've done over

the last few years. Just to interject them, I'm like, you're a young right? You're 25. I was like an adult infant at 25. And the way that you're talking about letting go, releasing difficult challenges that come up is very mature, especially for somebody that's had broadly the internet world at their feet for quite a long time. And I'm fascinated to work out how you go from that aesthetic bro thing to now still a relatively young age, taking value in different stuff. What have been the practices, the thought patterns, the influences that have got you? I'd say one of the main reasons that happened

is just my natural disposition of being extremely introverted. So for me, I spent a lot of time by myself, that's my recharge period, yadda yadda, like we all know, like how like introversion works, like basically so for me, just, just long periods of time, just by myself, just thinking about shit. Are you an only child?

No, I have three brothers. Okay. Yeah. Just thinking, just obviously listening to just lots of podcasts, like lots of great thinkers, just borrowing like thought patterns from other people and just building this larger like conception Like in my head and then contrasting that with my own insights and things that I've just experienced and Yeah, just just lots of just just lots of like thinking because I feel like that's how most things are like typically like resolved

Like there's an idea that I Forget like there's lots of people that talk about some tree for people, talk about this too, but if you, if you want to, like for example, like you're familiar with like Naval Ravacant, like him talking about like prescriptions or like if you spoke into an individual like like capital groups, I don't know if they're like synapycasts. Oh yes. No, very long time ago. Who? Capoeil Gupta. No way. Correct. Has he actually? Yeah, there are no prescriptions, prescriptions, guys. Was it an audio only podcast? Correct.

Yeah. So I mean, you get that whole idea, like, basically, I feel like, so if an individual is like struggling with like any source of like body, a smorphier image issues, like, etc. One line of thought is like, okay, you're like, I have an issue, like, I have a problem, I have like anxiety, I have distress, I have all these like things going on. So one school of thought is like, okay, let me, okay, I have issues, I have distress, I have all these things going on. So one school thought is like, okay, let me, okay, I have issues, right? I need to fix issues.

So let me implement certain things and regimes to combat these problems, which is useful in moderation to a degree, but I feel like for just a really, really deep internal, authentic transformation, you can't do that by following just certain, let, let me just write down like in my like gratitude journal Like 15 minutes a day like every single day like let me just like have this like mantra like meditation kind of pattern Maybe that works as some people to some degree, but in a certain kind of way there's a

type of like Insincereity that goes with that because you become obsessed with doing the Doing the the surface level generic action to get out of your state of distress as opposed to just sitting and being in the distress without any agenda and just being there and in that state, just naturally you somehow just wiggle out of it or dissolve or just transcend like the issue or you don't even transcend it, you can just understand it on a deeper level. And this is that deeper understanding that gives like health, I suppose, if that makes

any sense. It does. Well, I think that an interesting question might be how many of the strategies that you use to deal with the things that you don't like about yourself or about your life are not helping you to deal with them, but are helping you to escape from them. So yeah, so I just remember, so I remember, so when I was like young, when I was like 13, 14-ish, like 12 or whatever, I was like very insecure, I was like skinny, whatever, so like I saw like, you know, muscular people that I look up to, I was like, oh, like I want that, right? So then I followed a bunch of people, I gained a lot of inspiration,

and then I did what I needed to do to build my physique. And then I think I was around the age of 18, 19, 20, sometimes around that time. And then I think that's when Jordan Peterson first started popping off. And I was listening to a lot of his content, and I was like, whoa, there's something about this resonate so much.

I remember feeling, we just have certain just about this, it resonates so much. I remember like feeling, just that I, we just like have like certain, just interesting ideas or like things going on in my brain, but they couldn't like come out just right. And then when I would listen to someone like Jordan Peterson speak, I had a very specific admiration for the, his ability to so precisely with perfect congruence of what's happening internally,

what he's saying externally, to be at a once-to-one ratio with just like, music orchestral grade Precision with like his like delivery just almost like you regardless of what he was like saying It's like destruction out the concept of a speech that I just had like an admiration for in addition to the things They're obviously set as well. So then that I feel like Launched my brain into wanting to just like develop in those like general regions like categories and stuff So I would just listen to like so many other people, the same Harris is Alan was et cetera,

like all these like different people. So then I remember like reaching a point of like I was like 20, 21ish and then I had a general feeling of just like the whole body to smurfy yadda out of all this like stuff was just like catching up to me all these like generic whatever like all these problems that mean like so many people deal with. And then I went down like the prescription path, right? And the prescription path would have been like, like I started going to yoga all the time. And then I had this like huge ego complex, like showing up on time, like doing all like my poses, like extremely, extremely well,

because I'm like, if I'm like doing this, right? And then I also like, I'll like sit down like I'll meditate in the morning, for 30 minutes, whatever. I was like so obsessed and excited to do that. Because obviously, you know, the thought pattern is doing these things will like alleviate me and like get me out of like my problems or whatever. So then I feel like it's a very common thing for like so many people to do. And then they become obsessed with doing that.

I became obsessed with doing that. And then I felt like huge bursts of dopamine throughout that right because I'm like, oh, checkbox, like yoga session finish, like this thing finished, like this, like food, like eating right, and I would just feel like so excited, but it was almost like a short term just pleasure seeking fixation on like doing that and that it actually didn't like really like solve anything. Underneath you've still got the existing problem. Okay, so you've got in the first instance an issue with body dysmorphia or a dissatisfaction with the way that you look. You fix that by finding people that you like the way that they look and modeling what they do.

Then you find people that you admire the way that they think, and you compare the way that you think to the way that they think. You then start to model off of the way that they think. What are the similarities between, or what is it that you are looking for? Do you think in both camps of people? Like, what is it that Ziz and Jordan Peterson have got in common that seduced you? That's a great line. What are the things that Ziz and Jordan Peterson have in common? I say that it's to you.

To you. To you. In attainment of something that I, for whatever reason, deemed to be admirable and non-negotiably necessary for me to have. And in Ziz's obvious case, it's, you know, muscles, short impetus and brain, et cetera. But so it's just their accomplishment of something. Yeah.

And I feel like you could almost tie that into, I don't know if you could tie that into the general concept of like masculinity, but I'd say to me, it's just something that they like achieved that I for whatever reason just wanted to have. Well, it sounds to me like if you want to roll masculinity into this, you're trying from first principles to come up with like, what is a modern Renaissance man? How do we have the body, the brains, the humility, the benevolence, the altruism, the insight, the self-awareness, the power, but not the tyranny, the money, but not the greed? How do we hold all of these things together?

One of the challenges that I've been talking about a lot on the show at the moment is finding a firm place for men to stand in the modern world. And this isn't just good for men, right? Because if you have good benevolent, strong men, they make pretty good partners, usually, on average, like they're good for the women as well, and they're good for the community and they're good for the society and they're good for the civilization and the GDP and the economics, all the rest of the stuff. Given the fact that you have spent a lot of time chronically online for the last 10 years, what's your conception of male role models at the moment, the challenge of masculinity, why do you think it is that a lot of young men are feeling lost and requiring more and more of these role models?

I think there's many different interpretations. One, school thought our camp was like, oh, there's been a disruption of the nuclear family unit and there's some conspiratorial reasons for that, some non-conspiratorial reasons because you can go under the hypothesis that to have a more less successful upbringing, you want to stand in nuclear family unit, mom and dad, and then without being like fragmented, fractured, then that creates all sorts of problems. So if that is the case, then the quote unquote child boy like in this instance isn't getting a certain type of, isn't getting like a healthy, proper dose of masculine energy like within

like the household under the assumption that the household is fragmented for whatever reasons, then that need still needs to be satiated, and because it's not being satiated at home, due to the easy access of the internet, then that role models will be found online. So in-built intrinsic, the human condition is that need for that kind of energy, and if it's not being given at home is going to be needs to be supplemented elsewhere in all this case online and depending on the

Maybe maturity level of the individual or just How the individual is wide that they like certain people gravitate towards these types of online figures Other will also rotate in this. I mean, not rotate, resonate or connect with other people that they find on the internet. And I think that the reason that people like Z's and Jordan Peterson, all like that, are influential and have like, resonance is because they're arguably supplementing that need that a lot of people aren't getting in the stereotypically standard classic home nuclear family-esque kind of way.

Yes, I think yes. I also think that even if you do have a nuclear family, the rules and procedures that the generation before us had, you know, if your dad grew up and never had the internet until you were born, How is he going to be able to fold in understanding the way that social media works, understanding the way that online dating works, the crazy, crazy changes that we've seen with regards to men's roles, the Me Too movement, all of this stuff. I think that even the best meaning father in the world from the previous generation might struggle to have the language to be able to communicate with a kid that is growing up. Yeah, no, for sure. Times are changing so fast. Things are changing so quickly that,

you know, the previous like rule set or whatever, although it may have like certain fundamental pillars or parameters that will be universally applicable for any timeline whatsoever. When things change as they inevitably do, things approach as needs to be just micro-managed and nuanced tweaked and then no one knows exactly to what degree that needs to be done. It's so easy to overshoot or undershoot. Because the rules haven't been made yet, we're essentially figuring out on-fly what's happening.

Correct. I also think that it's more than perhaps just a micro-tweak. I think that the last 30 to 40 years has been a bit of a left turn, as soon as you introduce the internet. One interesting thing that I was considering on the plane ride over here, for the guys that didn't come up living on ziz and that is that ex-bro era. A lot of that was about pulling girls at festivals. It was sort of quite showvinistic, it was harmless and funny and self-deprecating,

but there was still a lot of that sort of gym flirtation energy in there. How do you think in 2023, given the politics that we have at the moment, given the hypersensitivity around approaching girls in the gym given the advent of me to How do you think if you deposited ziz in 2023? That kind of content would be received now do you think that he would survive without cancellation? Someone like ziz I think that he would survive without cancellation probably because I think like extremist people like that, that I mean they garnered like a certain like audience like the more knee shirt stream you could be like you'll call to the internet audience and obviously like

a lot of people also dislike you as well and that'll like add to your benefit in terms of like social media like expansion. So I mean there's like plenty of people that many people deemed to be detestable but they're still extremely prevalent on the internet. So, no, I think all things considered, I don't think this would be canceled per se today, because I mean, there's so many other people that are taking on this, this is asked manly energy and just like passing, taking the torch that he passed on that are still living in those general kinds of ways.

So, I think that he would probably flourish just fine, objectively speaking. Talking about this, I'm fascinated about this trajectory, right, that you've gone on specifically. What changes, if you were able to create what you think the world of men that are around about your age need right now in terms of influences and influences, what do you wish that you could see more of in terms of the sort of content that's out there in terms of the kind of messaging, the kind of values, the sort of things that men should be aspiring toward and the things that they should stop aspiring toward as well. What would you try and prescribe?

I think generally speaking like a reduction in materialism would probably be a good thing. And I think the additional emphasis on just developing like a competence like any domain whatsoever, whether it's like pottery, you know, exercising, working out like whatever it is. So it would be, I think it would be better to shine more of a light on People's genuine like ability and attainments and skill level in whatever They're idiosyncratic or generic just pursuit and endeavor is and just have Appreciation for that in and of itself without any with a significantly less emphasis on the periphery of the tangible material assets of that that type of success, like yield. So, Homozi on an episode that I did with him a couple of weeks ago said,

far more people are kept poor and stupid by that ego than get rich off it. And, you know, he made this great point that if you are somebody that considers yourself to be a high performer that is pushing and always trying to grow, and you're able to retain your ego. It's because you're in the wrong room. And his point was, even though he's now worth a hundred million, he's got this acquisition.com, he's doing these massive deals, he is permanently in rooms where he is both the stupidest and poorest person in the room. How can you allow an ego to proliferate and grow when you're permanently the lowest wrong of the ladder? And his argument was basically that ego comes

from people artificially walling off the size of the pond that they get into to allow themselves to always be the biggest fish. But also I feel it could come down to their deepest most fundamental motivation. Because for example, you could take someone like Alex, he desperately is a wire to do something and wants to do something Just like work, build his empire business, whatever that's like his sort of thing

So he just he simply needs to do that to be satiated happy and like satisfied, right? So that's just what he's on and in order to be able to do that as effectively as he possibly can manage that would Necessitate and require a very high level of like self-awareness awareness. And obviously self awareness is the antithesis to ego. So that's just simply what he what he wants to do. And then you could take someone else that is like the small pond like ego situation. Their primary most fun amounts of desire isn't doing something for its own sake or any you know, deeper reason like that. It's simply towards the the growth and maintenance of the ego,

right? And that's just simple. That's just what their motivation is. Like, they're simply, they're more interested in like having a certain self image of themselves and doing everything to convince other people of that image and convince themselves of that image because to them, that's more important than other things. So just like a different hierarchy of like priorities, right? So like the lower level development cycle is gonna want to favor just egotistical-ish types of things. How do you square this circle with the person that's listening to this and going, hang on,

your David fucking laid, like your Mr. Instagram, Ziz, Ira, like, how have you made that change? How have you made that transition from being somebody who outwardly it seemed like it was and you mentioned yourself, it was to satiate your feelings of insufficiency, to now get to a place where I mean how many videos have you posted on YouTube in the last year, probably less than 12? How many Instagram posts have you done in the last year, less than 20? It's been out of decline.

But my point being that from where I can see, and I didn't get to hear you on podcasts before, I think that your trajectory in terms of how you're sounding to me, in terms of the things that you're thinking about, is fucking phenomenal. I would have happily taken the sabbatical from social media if what it's resulted in is you being like this. But how do you get to that point? There are guys on the internet that are watching the ego, lifter, the materialist, Ferrari driver, the Richard Mill, red lebutons, bottom table, club live in Miami. What is it that can drag those people out of that?

Or what would you say to those young guys if you could? Why should they be bothered about this thing which seems hard and difficult and nuanced and no one gives a fuck about except for that unsent of existential self-worth? I think a lot of those people that operate like that, they have a vague understanding that maybe the way in which they're operating from a lot of other people's points of view is seen as negative, egotistical, immature, etc. So they have that general awareness, which they're operating from a lot of other people's points of view is like seen as like negative Egotistical and mature like et cetera So they have like that like general like awareness and there may be a way that they to satisfy you know Society at a holes, you know expectations of them. They would maybe like cease or halt or like slow down on some of that behavior

Or like you know out road or etc But they're like aware of that but they just they just They just don't want to do it because going back to what I was saying before, that's just simply like, they're just more interested in doing that. That's like where the current level of like their development is. So in the same way, like to me, the, the way that I accrue, whatever, like I accrue, like whatever time, like it came from just like just organic, like introspection. So going back to kind of what I was like in the beginning, you just simply, you need

to just examine, you just need to just like look at what you're doing. Just like look at how you're living and look at how you're operating and just like dissect it as much as you can and be honest with yourself. Obviously, you like look at it and I feel like if you're genuinely and sincerely doing that, right, you're more than likely to realize how that pattern, that style of living is just disadvantageous for your absolute best interest. And through coming to that realization, you just organically stop doing that.

You don't have to do different things. Yeah, you don't have to discipline yourself to stop doing it. I really want to do it, but I want to go to this, but I can't. No, you just want to have that desire. And that's the best place to be at. Because why do you want it? It's just where you got to arrive, you know?

So my favorite ever blog post of all time is by guy called Kyleschenroder and it's called What Do You Want to Want. And he talks about the difference between wants and what we want to want. So once are societal programming, they're pathosive least resistance, that the way that you've dealt with past trauma, they are all of those things. What you want to want involves you going in and reprogramming your desires. You want to end up at a place where what you want is what you want to want. And he uses this example of the fact that if you don't go in and program your desires, the best thing that you can

hope for is to be a rich, successful or famous slave. A slave to the impulses of your body, the confused biochemical signals that you get, the desires of the people around you. When I read that, this is five years ago now, I thought, what do I want to want in life? Genuinely, what do I want to want? I have the opportunity, laws of thermodynamics and a little bit of economics restricting, I can want anything. This is what we're talking about here. We're talking about digging away at all of the layers of ego and predisposition

and expectation that you've built up and getting yourself to something that's firmer, getting yourself to something which is what you want to want. getting yourself to something which is what you want to want. Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of validity in that because basically, like what you're saying is, like, you a person wants certain things and they maybe he realizes something degree, like these just kind of, this maybe, maybe isn't my best interest. And like silly, like a little hypothesis lurking in the back of the mind. Okay, so if I'm an autonomous being, I could, I could more or less curate or decide what I want to want. So if that's a possibility, let's just look broadly speaking.

What are some of the things that would maybe be in more of the best interest for me to want? And then you decide those things, and you fixate in that pattern, I mean, fixate in that direction. And even if you, you could argue that that's still prescription asks the some degree, but then you could also say that doing that is better than just continuing wanting those like sub-optimal things. So if that's what gets you moving in that direction, then it's absolutely.

Yeah, and direction is more important than speed, right? Like you can be going as fast as possible in the wrong direction, and it actually takes you further away from the destination. This is something that a lot of people, I call it the Manopause, which is mid-20s to what late-20s. A lot of guys, it seems like you had yours earlier, realize that a lot of the values that they hold, a lot of the things that previously they took a sense of self-worth from, that the world told them that they should value.

They don't make them feel fulfilled anymore. And they go, oh, fuck, like, I got toward the top of this mountain. And I realized that it was the wrong mountain that I climbed. And actually, I was supposed to be on that one over there. And it's difficult because in order to get to that one, you need to go back down this one that you've already climbed. You need to dispense with the stuff that you've got rid of. This is where I think introversion is such a cheat code. Because like, I feel like you're less at the mercy of other people's designs. Because even like for me, I noticed that if I'm the more frequently and the more

for a sustained period of time, I'm involved in certain just patterns of behavior, oftentimes socially or just what I do in general, you just become locked in those patterns and it becomes more difficult. You have more of a narrow perspective. So, you know, the brain's malleable, it just gets programmed in that way and you're just kind of a narrow perspective. So, you know, the brain's malleable, it just gets programmed in that way and you're just kind of operating that way. So for me, a lot of like the best insights that I've gotten are like times when I like completely

just like fully detached and just answer this weird like meditative, just like flow state of just being just so just alone. And then yeah, so it's just, I feel like, yeah, I mean, almost a prescriptive thing that you could say is to just stop. I mean, that's what they say, like psychedelics, you know, I think I heard someone on Joe Rogan talk about, yeah, like a nice analogy.

It's like, the brain is like, like a hill covered in snow. And then when the skis go down the snow, that's a thought, behavior pattern, et cetera. And the more you have it, the more deeper that groove gets, and then the psychedelics, they just like wipe the snow. So detaching from society, detaching and, you know, reclusing yourself for a period of time, it's like a microform of like a psychedelic snow flattening kind of thing.

Because you're removing the external inputs as best you can. Removing the inputs, stopping the behavior patterns, just allowing yourself to see things differently and have different patterns. For the people who are thinking about monk mode, there's a really great blog post by Elimitable Man, if you just search Elimitable Man Monk Mode, 13 years old now, I think. But it's really, really great, there's the three eyes.

Isolation, introspection, some other shit, there's a third one. Anyway, that, I really, really enjoyed that blog post and that was good to me. One thing that I do find and this is me almost directly like telling it to Hamza, my friend, monk mode can be taken to an extreme and you can do, you can obsess over isolated self development too much. Yeah, the way that I, the way that I would look at that is like, monk mode can become a detrimental extreme

when monk mode becomes hyper-prescriptionized. Because I feel like the way it becomes an extreme is like, you're like, okay, I want to self-improve myself, just monk mode, right? So then you just become obsessed with RPE 10 just maxing out like monk mode. So there, the true fundamental motivation isn't understanding things,

the true fundamental motivation is to feel good about yourself from Maxing out monk mode for the egotistical grad because yeah, I mean like just how we talked about how You say young individuals like materialistic program by society like wrong values and stuff the reason that they're doing that is because that Satisfies are ego that's been programmed and programmed into them right someone going all out monk mode right someone going all out monk mode, right? Obselably, abstaining from all of that, right? They're, they're, they're, they have the exact same ego, but the subtle difference is that they could feel a sense of

just like moral superiority. Correct. Because I'm better than you because all of that. But in reality, they have the same ego, it's just transmuted into something else. This is a very important point that I want everybody to take home, which is, This is a very important point that I want everybody to take home, which is you can justify any kind of activity as being the thing that is going to give you a sense of dopamineurgic I achieved the next thing. Just because you have switched one type of obsession

for another type of obsession does not necessarily mean that that obsession is more holistic. You could argue, given the choice between being obsessed with the gym and being obsessed with taking heroin, that the gym is objectively a better obsession to have. But if you're going to get really down to zero, what we're talking about is, how can we sit with the discomfort of not being enough? How can we sit with the discomfort of not having an obsession at all? What does that feel like? And this is like almost a psychedelic point, right? To get rid of, to get rid of the desire to need those things overall. You know, I feel like that, that's a very good point to idea that like, yeah, like doing

heroin or whatever or like, versus like working out out on the gym like it's a similar kind of Egotistical pursuit but due to like I Mean obviously the working out like the healthier thing and you the externality of one is very different Exactly. That's what I'm getting at the externality could be like drastically different for example Like you could be addicted to heroin or you could be addicted to just like rampant Entrepreneurial just financial, just hedonism, and that, and that again, due to how society is,

it's celebrated, yada yada, blah, blah, but like you said, it is the most important thing is realizing that fundamentally, you're a slave to an egotistical construction with either one, and the goal is to transcend that, even though your egotistical construction that you're feeding is societally rewarded, right?

So that's a trap that you can really, really fall into. So the key is you need to go a little lower than that. Yep. I agree. It's a very difficult thing to do to let go of something which is not destructive, reinforced, praised, gives you accolades, and really importantly, like you said, gives you the moral high ground. It's like, look at me.

Look at how awakened I am. This is a term that you might not be familiar with called spiritual bypass. So have you heard of this before? Yeah. So people that go to South America, take a ton of ayahuasca, come back and proselytize, extol the virtues of this amazing peak experience that they've had. Don't do any of the integration, don't do any of the self work. Go back to being the same, maybe not even a piece of shit, but just go back to being the same person that they were before and then go and do it again. That's

spiritual bypass or better to I prefer spiritual tourism, that you can go and like visit it like a holiday home and come back and forget about all of the things that you learned. The goal is to integrate each of these different points here. So one thing that was very formative for me, and I'm interested to find out about your experience as well, I had a pretty serious back injury about four years ago. Got in a crossFit, was way stronger than my body could deal with, and managed to slip two discs.

I found Stume McGill, number one back pain specialist on the planet. I know that you have worked with him too. How difficult was it for you, as somebody who had a lot of his self-worth wrapped up in the way that he looked, to have that taken away from you by first off a back injury. And secondly, by what I'm guessing, if you've followed what you told you to do, was an

unbelievably slow, painful, very humbling process of slow rehabilitation. So you had this guitar real nicely. So with me, due to having all the body dysmorphia insecurity, just like needing to work out to feel like the validation, self-love, self-worth, et cetera, right, that other extremes that that pushed me into is just like how intense I would exercise, right? I would just, you know, horrible form, lift as much as I could, just paint, tolerance, like, push through all of that, right? And that lift, Simo, as well, was just creating.

That lift, Simo, so here's the thing. So, from one point of view, it's like, wow, that's so admirable. You just work so hard, you're so disciplined. You're so dedicated. That's just so amazing good for you But if you you know look behind the curtain a little bit That's not this that's not that altruistic impure of like an energy source, right? It's a toxic energy source and that talks to energy sources and the insecurity and then then basically That led me to just severe injuries of my spine because horrible form lifting heavy weight blah blah so With that right it's almost like my back injury is a

personification of Being fueled by a Toxic fuel source, right? And then the thing is, like someone could have told me back and they'd say, oh, like, you know, you shouldn't be, like, lifting this heavy, you shouldn't be doing this, you should have been more careful, right? And that's me being like, oh, where the, maybe I shouldn't

be doing that in the same way as someone that's like living a very hedonistic, young, immature, egotistical lifestyle is also vaguely aware that they maybe shouldn't be doing that. I had that same awareness too, but even though I knew that, it just didn't matter because my goal was like so egotistical at the end of the day, which is why the back situation,

like, need it to happen to me, like, there was simply- Are you thankful that it happened? I mean, and, and, yes, in a certain kind of way, but I feel like it was inevitable to happen, because I mean, one school of thought was like for people to make like a proper drastic change, like they need to hit like a form of like rock bottom right

I had this having to start the other day. I maybe it's like hurt it's not remember but it's like Something along the lines of like wisdom that is often if not exclusively attained after like like a rock bottom ish type of situation, but then Ideally you'd want that wisdom like beforehand, but paradoxically it can only be gained after like a rock bottom like kind of thing. So it's like this weird tango inverted loop thing. But yes, I mean like for me, that kind of definitely aided in a lot of the just introspection or like growth or whatever,

just like having like that back situation happen because it forced me to just like slow down. Like I was in such debilitating pain that like not only could I not deadlift or squat like the way that I wanted to. I couldn't deadlift squat or all. I couldn't work out sometimes how I wanted to. I just be laying in bed with just chronic debilitating pain. And to get out of that really wasn't that difficult at all.

I mean, it was, but when I see not that difficult all my it just like stop doing stupid things that hurt you and like rest, but how my brain was wired at the time. Like, that's not an option. Like, I just need to go, go, go, go like rest, but how my brain was wired at the time, it's not an option. Like I just need to go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. So it hit a point where, so you can almost argue that it wasn't just altruistic transformation. It literally hit a point where the back pain was so debilitating that I would rather kill my previous ego and start from scratch, then I would maintain that ego and tolerate the back pain. Because before it was, back pain was here, ego was here still more worth it.

But when those scales, like, tip just the right amount, it was an organic shift. Because I literally just had no other choice. So I literally... You can strain by your buddy. Yeah. So like, I had to start from ground zero. And, I mean, yeah, that's changed. Not being so extremist all out in the gym, like being very like patient, disciplined, careful with like how it go about something as simple as like training, we're in the past, like, oh, I feel good to max just all the time. And so I feel like that new mindset now that I got from dealing with my back injuries

has definitely permeated out like into other areas, but I think it arguably needed to happen to checkmate me into a form of like introspection. So me too, me too, man. It came at the right time. I had spent all of my 20s being a commercial man model, walking around with my top off in nightclubs, getting photographed by Dean. And a lot of myself worth was wrapped up in that. You know, even though I wasn't doing the online thing to the degree that you were, I still was like the guy that was in shape.

I was always the one of the biggest, one of the leanest amongst my friends. And that gets taken away from you and you think, oh, fuck, who am I now? Who am I now when all of the places that I took myself worth from are gone? Well, fuck, like what's left? Because this isn't gonna be here forever. I had thought of a quote the other day,

which was, your looks are a depreciating asset, your mind is an appreciating asset, invest yourself worth appropriately. Like everybody, no matter whether you think that your sexual market value as a guy is gonna peak at 45, like there is going to come a time where you get over the top of that hill and it's going to start descending.

Like even fucking David Gandhi, right, is gonna start descending at some point. You have the opportunity to invest in something which is evergreen, which is going to compound, which is going to benefit the rest of the world. And that's not to say that people that are in shape can't benefit the rest of the world. It's good to be motivational, so on and so forth. But especially for women, I think, there was this story about Paulina Paricova, who was a supermodel back in the 1980s and 90s, and she's now 56 and her husband had died, and there was a famous story that came out about her about a year and a half ago. And she was lamenting the fact that as a 56-year-old, she walks into parties and none of the

guys look at her anymore because they're all distracted by the 23-year-olds that are in the room. And she was saying, you know, a lot of myself worth, I feel really terrible and so on and so forth. And it made me sad, it made me sad because I was looking at somebody who was still taking their fundamental sense of self-worth from the way that they looked with, I think, two or three kids. And it just, it doesn't feel graceful, do you know what I mean? Like, it doesn't feel like somebody has allowed themselves to get harmony and grace and transcendent include

the things that they had before. And also, there's obviously a massive amount of like hubris and hypocrisy here, because when you were 22, you didn't care about the 56 year old that was in the room, that all of the guys looking at you were ignoring to look at. It's like, look, this is the arc of life. Everybody knows that it's coming. Everybody knows that your looks are going to fade, that you're going to become sick or ill or

destitute, that you're going to run out of money, that the people around you are going to die, and all that you're going to be left with is the power of your thoughts. Right? How much resilience do you have that you can rely on so that when the hard thing happens, you have somewhere firm to stand. And if the firmest place that you have to stand is, I am single digit body fat. You were in for a hard fucking time. Yeah. Any external metric or just anything that you like latch on to whether it be your body fat percentage or your youthful

looks that diminish with age that you just get upset. You have a project account, man. Yeah, you have bank account, like forms of status, like, et cetera. Just yeah, if you become, I mean, it's like a Buddha saying, like, you just become like attached to stuff. It's just a problem. It's just not good.

But there is an enjoyment in, you know, having like, like a huge bank account or enjoying your looks, a very, very high degree. Don't, don't, don't get me wrong. Like, you need external accolades. Right? Like, I'm not, I'm not saying that we can, like, dispense with status. Yeah, they're the primal hierarchical, whatever they want to do. That's the most legitimate thing, too. Yeah. Yeah. Right like I'm not saying that we can like dispense with say to primal hair hierarchical whatever they that's legit things

Yeah, yeah, but it just I Guess I guess it will put it like yet like that stuff is necessary useful to like certain like healthy degrees But obviously not sufficient necessary, but not sufficient again necessary, but not sufficient and It's just yeah, I mean is it's like a spectrum of like the more you like rely on those kind of things for like the like well-being and like happiness It's just you just you just run into problems and it just like you were saying that you want to be in a state where When all is like said and done and it's just you that you have like something like

firmer to stand on so Yeah, what are your thoughts about the modern world of dating, especially for young guys? Do you think about this much? There's a lot of advice out there for young dudes with regards to dating, especially to do with gym videos, approaching girls in the gym and the lack thereof and the challenges of guys approaching and so on and so forth. What's your conception on this? I mean, I guess the modern dating, like the internet has obviously played like a massive role, like the whole dating apps, fapping a situation.

I mean, I think obviously speaking things like the internet have like drastically reduced, like genuine, like human discourse. We're like in the past, a lot more conversations were like in person that were like real, because like when like two people are communicating over text, it's such a narrow dialogue when you're like with someone a person, there's like all these just energetic components, intangible, micro-facial expressions like all of that. And that's preferable slash arguably needed to have like a maximally rich and satisfying

and satiating like human experience overall with people like in any relationship friendship as kind of context. So I think just like the simple idea of that, that being reduced due to the introduction of the internet, although the internet obviously has a lot of benefits you can meet people around the world, different areas, et cetera. There is like that like obvious downside.

And with that being said, there would be like an isolation component as well to, you know, socializing with real people less and then living in your own head and then communicating in just meeting and talking to people on like dating apps and stuff. And then you could just start downloading and integrating certain just like toxic ideologies on male, female, intersectional dynamics that could have some tidbits of truth, but without contrasting and integrating it with your own like real experience because you have none

because you're just isolated and extracting ideologies online that that could be just a massive detriment to your dating life. I think that's a big bang bang. I've been hopping on about this for so long. I did an interview for a new, the redone substack of what used to be ideas sleep furiously and they've changed the name and I can't remember what it is. And they did it.

We did a little interview and they talked about why is it that men seem to be struggling with the advice that they get online? And remember, for the girls that are listening, you need the advice that men get online to be good because you are the one that's going to have to put up with these fucking men, right? So my point was, if you're chronically online and most of your experiences around male to female interactions have been mediated through the internet, what are the kinds of stories that are the ones that go the most viral online? They're the most egregious. They're the one where some terrible catastrophe happens. And the guy comes home and loses his house and is left foot.

And she takes his, like, all of his hairline in the divorce. And that's the story that's going to go viral. Yeah, and you can almost parallel this with prescriptions because if you don't have real sufficient amount, whatever that means of a real experience with the real people and you're getting ideologies online or just hearing worst case, catastrophic scenarios, et cetera, a lot of like theoretical frameworks

that could be laid forward kid in isolation in the abstract makes so much sense and the math could run out and like it works out, especially when extreme scenarios added upon that. Then when it comes dating advice, what you should say to approach in this is that the more prescriptions you add on, it just becomes such a disaster. But people can think, how do I do this whole thing if I don't have any like prescriptions or like know what to say or how to go about it, right? But the thing is

paradoxically so if you like lay that to like to the waist side, right? And then you're like around like people like speaking to people girls, etc. Whatever it may be a Certain organic chemistry arises if you would like let it arise But the more weird prescriptions layers like you add on top of that you're just like fucking the whole thing up and it just becomes off. So paradoxically, leaving that to the waist sign, your body and your instincts will take over and they'll just like know what to do. Right. But so that's almost another way of putting it. The advent and introduction of the internet dating apps, etc. has suppressed the natural organic instinct in favor of just weird toxic, arguably, like programming with, you know, how to

go about things. And that just creates just in a GMO inorganic disaster. Yeah. So this prescriptions thing, I think we just need to drill this home for the people that maybe aren't familiar with Capille's work. The point is, if you don't have any real world experience, the only place that you're going to get any tactics from are things that have been told to you that you've never actually come up with in the real world. But if you were to spend, let's say that you could live for eternity and have an unlimited number of interactions,

if what the prescriptions are accurate, you would inevitably arrive at them in any case. If I gave you a million years to work out and you didn't know it, the most effective way to get a bar from the floor overhead in one single movement, you would eventually arise at something close to a snatch because it is simply reality and theory coming up together, constant in kissing the guy that was drinking an armetry, quoted this unbelievable line the other day that said, in theory, theory and practice are the same

in practice they're different. Mm-hmm. Just a thought that I was having is we're saying that is so you could like parallel this whole prescription idea like from the dating back to like like working out for us like you have someone that's never worked out before right but they'll sit and they'll learn like all like the theory and the this is that et cetera and like what their personal ideal regimen would be and then come up with that and then if they try to execute it if they even bought their Ducos like sometimes it will like fall through

because just their bodies are different, like how their life styles are set up. So yeah, even prescriptions could be like that trimassle in something even as simple in the realm of fitness because if you just like start like doing it, right? If you wanna go all out and be like the best of all time then obviously you're gonna need to follow like certain things.

But the problem I have with the problem I have generally with capills and I had this problem when I spoke to capill on the show. The issue I have with capill's no prescriptions point is that unlimited degrees of freedom allow people to find things through experience. However, you need guidelines and guardrails. Why are we talking about this crisis of masculinity where guys are lost and unalone? It's because everything has been blown open. If everything is masculinity, then nothing is masculinity. Right? And you go, okay, from first principles, please work out how you are supposed to show up in the

world. And you go, dude, that's really, really And you, what you want me to do that for diet and my rolling society and the way that I should make money and the way I should interact with my friends and the way that I should get a girlfriend and the way that I should become a father. Like, it's fucking exhausting. The best way that I've found for this, and this is where I diverge from Kapil's work. The best way that I've found from this is that in the beginning of anything you need instruction because you have no experience to rely on. You don't want to become dogmatic about the instruction but you do need to take it. So you explore at the start and then you exploit over time. Do lots of different things, find out what works for you and then over time once you have learned the rules,

you can break the rules. But breaking the rules before you learn the rules is just not playing the game. Yeah, now I agree with that. I did such a poor job of expressing what I wanted to with that parallel with prescriptions with the working out. But yeah, I mean, obviously if you're getting like into fitness, like you're going to follow like some big program in general, I think the idea that I was like trying to get at is you're better off like taking a random workout program, whatever it may be, just going out doing it, seeing how you respond to it, just seeing how much you like working out in general.

Maybe you don't want to be a heavyweight bodybuilder, maybe you just want to work out a few times that we can get in shape and that'll satisfy you, but you won't know that unless you actually try. So that's all fine, but what I was getting at is not doing anything, just having like all like the theory, like what works out, and then it just not being like a practical like execution in your actual life.

There's more something like that, but I agree with the nuance, like obviously like, you can't derive absolutely everything. And just, you know, just be like, a first principle. Work out from first principle, obviously, like when you're a kid, like you need to be taught language, you need to be able to taught your shoes.

Those are prescriptions from a certain point of view. Yeah, so, yeah. That was where I got caught. That was where I got caught with Capille stuff. So I did a newsletter that I wanted to read to you from the other week. And I think that this is, this is very, very interesting. Something I've been thinking about a lot read to you from the other week. And I think that this is very, very interesting,

something I've been thinking about a lot. This is from David Goggins. It's so easy to be great because most of the world is weak. If you are even remotely a savage, you will run these people over. It's all out there for the taking right now. That's Dana White. Everyone rails against the victim mentality

that seems to be sweeping certain areas of the world. I get it, you don't want your town or country or species to go to hell because everyone has forgotten how to take some discomfort or deal with challenges in life. But, on another hand, this rampant fragility is your competitive advantage. The bar has never been set lower. A bit of consistency, a bit of intentionality, a bit of resilience, and a gram of talent will make you into an absolute killer. I also understand that you probably want to raise other people up along with you. Having a greatness stand on the shoulders

of the world's fragility may seem exploitative, and I love the idea of not just improving yourself, but changing those around you for the better. But there's a limit. Your efforts are multiplied by 10 times when building with the right people and by 0.0 times when building with the wrong people. If someone refuses to alter their habits or update their worldview or improve their life, despite being given all of the tools and encouragement they need by you, then they can stay where they are. It is not your job to drown yourself by trying to keep others afloat who don't want to change. Humans don't mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it. What they mind is not feeling necessary.

Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. That's Sebastian Jungenge. It's easy to be a savage when everyone else is a pussy, but sometimes it's hard to find a sidekick. What do you think about that? What does that mean that last word sometimes with a sidekick? That if you're with the right people, you're effort to multiply it by 10 times and if they're with the wrong people, then they're restricted, basically. Yeah, I mean, I can go back to the simple saying of like you're like the average, like the five people that you surround yourself with and you gain exponential momentum in the direction that you're going with. So if you're with a suboptimal set of people with values that aren't in your best interest, you're going to be accelerated in an accelerated fashion going in the wrong direction. What about this balance between fragility of the modern world being competitive advantage?

Well, I think it was a lot of those people like the Goggs and the few that you said like that. It's a very like stereotypically uber masculine kind of like mindset, which is like fine, right? But I feel like sometimes that can be taken to an absolute ridiculous extreme, but the right amount of that is like a good thing. What are you aiming for? What's an integrated version of that to you?

I like the idea of having an indestructible mindset, being able to overcome like obstacles and adversity and having that like, just like that, just focus and sensitivity. But I think that sometimes you can get just exclusively like fixated on that. Like for example, with David Goggins, he went through just like extremely traumatic stuff. Like I've heard him on so many podcasts

and like I've like audio book, like a good amount of like his book so I know like the backstory of the data, et cetera, is really just like horrible stuff. And for him, I just all the experience and everything that he's gone through, just in order for him to be able to thrive and come out of that, he needed to adopt a certain kind of just indestructible godlike mindset, which he did achieve.

The coping mechanism. Exactly, it's exactly it. It's a coping mechanism. In the same way that you could look at me working hard on the gym when I was younger, so that's so admirable. But in reality, the fuel wasn't the most like positive thing. So you could make a semi-ish kind of parallel to the David Galkins' Jewish. So because of what he went through, he simply needed to adapt that way. It was a necessary coping mechanism.

And his situation was so extreme. And he talked about it, just so poetically, which is so much passion and intensity that a lot of people, when they read that, they resonate with it tremendously, especially if they're lacking that. If they're lacking just like the discipline and that kind of stuff, hearing someone like David Goggins give you the theoretical framework of being able to overcome stuff, combined with his own painfully visceral experience of it, it'll just give you goosebumps

hearing it. And if you have a depletion or lack of that in like your own character, you're gonna naturally gravitate to like someone like him and you're gonna get exactly you're gonna get the benefit in the same way that people would be inspired by me working out when I was younger and that would benefit them even though the fuel source pushing me wasn't like the most cleanest form of gasoline. So although mindsets like that are extremely, extremely useful and powerful in certain circumstances, but I feel like, because I mean, I feel like for like a David Goggin situation, like, like at a certain point, like he might even go like deeper when it

comes to just his, just like character arc, just like his development is like a human being. I just had parallel, for example, to someone like Mike Tyson, like when he was like super young, just like indestructible, like super villain, like as he's like gone, oh, older, like a lot of his temperament

has just like simply transformed, like he was so aggressive and just intense, like when he was like younger, because I don't know his full situation, but maybe it was a form of coping mechanism, maybe it was just in his DNA to be like that, but he would just like that. And then over time, he just mellowed out

in a certain kind of way. And that's not better or worse of mellowing out. That's just like the arc that he's going through. But then you could say that if David Goggins, I'm not David Gog, if Mike Tyson was that exact same way that he was when he was younger into his old age where he is right now, you'd almost look at that and be like,

there's still like fixation in a previous behavioral pattern. That's no longer. He has transcended it included. Well, I think the point here is that kind of almost like a resentment that very visceral, powerful almost like a resentment that very visceral, powerful scarcity mindset is an unbelievably potent fuel, but it's really fucking toxic. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't, it can be toxic in certain instances. I don't say, I don't think it's like purely like toxic, like in, it's toxic to you.

It's toxic to the inside. Like yes, it's very, very good. Like being driven by a sense of insufficiency can cause people to do unbelievable things, right? It almost all of the high performers that I know are not driven by what it looks like from the outside and what it should be proselytized. It's this beautiful balance of, you know, fulfilling the logo speaking forward and manifesting your essence. It's not that running away from something which makes them feel insufficient. There is a voice inside the head that is a disparaging parent, it's a bullied school,

it's a teacher that didn't believe in them, it's an abandoned sibling. Something inside of them is saying, you want that enough? The only way that you can make yourself enough is to perform out there in the world. And if you perform well enough, maybe finally the world will accept you and you will be worthy of love. That is an energy that fucking every single high performer on the planet, except for like three people can resonate with because running away from something that you fear is an unbelievably potent fuel and running towards something that you want

comparatively is less so. But if you use the fuel that pushes you away from something that you fear for too long, you will end up having malignant coping strategies and it will burn everything that's inside of you as well. Fucking powerful, but it's gonna make that engine run at a very high rate. It's powerful and you'll need to use that fuel for a certain period of time when it's needed, but then it's important or ideal for your best interest to want to just like transcend and like go forward. Correct.

Another quote, so this will be, everyone will have seen this by now, because the whole movie episode will be out, but it wasn't out before this. And what he was talking about, as you said, was some of the challenges and the setbacks that people have and how that could give them the justification for maybe not being where they could be. And he said this really great quote, which was, if you have suffered from sexism your entire life, if you have suffered from racism your entire life, you would be absolutely justified in not being at the place where somebody who didn't have those disadvantages is. However, the advantage that you do have is that unlike me or you

or Homozi, you can be a role model to those people who did have those problems because I can guarantee you that there is someone who had it worse and did it better. And he said that and I was like, holy fuck, that is so good. Because for me, somebody that went through challenges as a kid, who had a bit of a chip on his shoulder about not being in... Not feeling like I was supported and having to do a lot of this work myself, like I had to fucking pick myself up by my bootstraps. First principle is, okay, what do I want to value? How do I want to do this?

Let's build a thing on my own twice and getting rid of that, like getting rid of that chip that was on my shoulder without using it as the bitter, like I'm doing this to prove the fucking bullies wrong. I'm doing this to prove the people that didn't believe me wrong. I'm doing this to prove the fucking bullies wrong. I'm doing this to prove the people that didn't believe me wrong. I'm doing this to prove the place that I came from that didn't have the big enough vision to help me wrong. The way that that became was made alchemized to feel more holistic was that I thought, okay, well, there's other people that are going to be feeling this too. There's other people that are going to go through these challenges.

Not only can I beat the setbacks that I feel like I had, but I can also help other people from get past them too. I can be like, look, here's the pitfalls, here's how you expedite success. Not only did this thing not get me, but it's not going to get you either. And that's the best way, I think, to transcend challenges and traumas that you've had in your past. Not only do you beat it, but you help everybody else to beat it as well. You know, I completely agree. It's like a tipping scale. You could either have it leaning in the toxic, like resentful direction, or you could optimize and leverage it in like a way or scale, benevolent, positive, like way, it's definitely the way to go. What do you want to, how do you want to serve the world?

Now, like you've got creative director at Jim Shark, whatever you are, your new job role, you have a massive amount of reach, you have as far as I can tell the raw materials to be able to go and do pretty much anything you want along with a shit ton of time. How do you want to serve the world now? I'm not intisely, I'm not entirely precisely sure. Still working on that exact agenda, like figuring out the most optimal way to do that. But the idea of the camera on my head is,

for example, when they talk about when you're raising children, when you're apparently the kids hear nothing that you say and see everything that you do, so almost the person that you are is what subcommun that you do. So almost like the person like that you are is like what sub communicates at the highest level. Like to people, basically if you're a certain kind of,

if you live or exist in the right kind of way, like whatever that means, like as a parent to your kid and the kid gets like, it has like a healthy development as opposed to doing everything incorrectly, but saying like all the right things. So for me, even though I don't know like precisely what I'm going to do, like in a tangible fashion, so just like help society of the world at scale. As I'm figuring that out, like the thing that I'm putting emphasis in priority

on is just like, like living in congruence or just feeling just like optimize and just like aligned with like with just how I am as a person and like how I operate on just like a daily basis, even like with the most subtle, subtle things. What's that highest sense of self? What are the things that you value the most when you're operating at your highest level? What do you genuinely take pride in? Well, like lately for a good amount of time now, it's just been,

I guess forms of like artistic expression, like in a sense, whether it be like something as like simple as like making like a YouTube video that's like like cinematic or well made, like in a certain area or just coloring and editing, just like videos. I don't know, just like simple things like that. I don't know, like lately I'm finding a very high degree of just like intrinsic, my bet, intrinsic station with doing, I guess, just artistic things in a way.

In like, in what about personally? Like, what is it that you, when you show up for yourself, like, what are you most proud of? So I'll give you some of mine. So it's when I tell the truth. Like, when I tell the truth is the most important thing. And I mean, for me, like, when you initially said that that was like, one of the first things that came to mind, but yeah, no, I mean, that's like, like, that's like a huge

one too. And like, all like micro like little situation, because it's so easy to just like, like, like, kind of like, like, like, like, like, like, 20 times. Exactly. And you could like, feel like sense all of those. So yeah. What else? You need to tell the truth. What else do you need to do? Come on. To be the person that you want to be. What else? You need to tell the truth. What else do you need to do? Come on, to be the person that you want to be. What else do you need to do? I don't have a precise answer at the moment, but I feel like with a baseline of just honestly

and all the micro and macro situations, like that covers a good amount of it and spawns out into other things, but I feel like it's a pretty all of it and like spawns out into other things, but I feel like it's pretty on-comersing one. I think that's the foundation. Yeah, I think you're right. But you know, for me, for instance, like vulnerability, learning to be increasingly

vulnerable, which again, everything is a form of truth, right? And me saying that I show up and be like compassionate to my friends, that's a form of truthfulness, right? It's like trying to be your best soft going forward, being vulnerable. For me, leaning into difficult things, for instance, like one of the problems of having increasing number of resources and like material success or whatever is that success can make you soft and it can make you lazy and it can make you rely on other people, which is something that I've managed to avoid.

But I've managed to avoid it mostly through a combination of neuroticism and like obsession, not through the, you know, transcended, no prescription. I do not just, I simply don't want it. It's like being fixed by something which is also still a relatively toxic fuel. I'm impressed by you, man. I think that you're a very impressive individual. I think that the trajectory that you've been on from where you were to where you are is fantastic. I'm really, really glad that you've got the background that you have. And the reason that I've like tried to drill so much into the psychological side of what

we've spoken about today is that from the outside, the many million followers on Instagram, the, you know, 50, 60 million play video of the body transformation, it gives people, not only a preconception about the person that you are, but it makes them presume that you would be locked into a particular type of life path. The same way as, I know, like you two releases a new album and all of their old fans hate it. They go, well, look, guess what? We like it. This is the direction that we're going in now, right? And this is the getting to the top of the mountain and looking across and going, I think I'm on the wrong fucking mountain. Shit. I have to go down. I need to transcend and include. I'm really, really glad that you're doing what

you're doing. I'm really glad that you're on the trajectory that you're on. Yeah, I'm excited to see where it goes. It's an adventure. Where should people go if they want to keep up to date with the stuff that you do? Um, just, um, my YouTube channel mainly just search David Laid and yeah, it's basically it. Like my Instagram same thing, David Laid and, um, if you guys want to have like a very natural and healthy and optimized pre workout, you can also buy my pre workout at uforipree.com and yeah, that's where you can find me. David, I appreciate you.

Thank you for today. My pleasure. Thank you very much for tuning in a parting thought that I noticed on the internet this week by Morgan Howsle that relates to everything we spoke about today with easy success that comes at a young age. Nothing is more blinding than success caused by luck, because when you succeed without effort, it's easy to think. I must be naturally talented. I'll see you next time.