Modern Wisdom - #718 - Bedros Keuilian - Man Up & Get Your Life Together

Episode Date: December 11, 2023

Bedros Keuilian is an entrepreneur, author, speaker, podcaster, and business coach Everyone could do with a bit more confidence in their abilities. A bit more certainty about what they can achieve and their power to overcome obstacles. Maybe telling people to man up isn't so bad after all... Expect to learn what it truly means to improve, why the story you tell yourself about yourself matters, how to overcome the traumas you’re struggling with, tactics to fix the negative voice in your head, the most common problems men are facing, why you should never cheat on your partner, the biggest issue with incels and much more... Sponsors: Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first box at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Get an exclusive discount from Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/MODERNWISDOM (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get 20% discount on your Mud/Wtr subscription & freebies at https://mudwtr.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ Buy my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Bedrost Kullian. He's an entrepreneur, author, speaker, podcaster, and a business coach. Everyone could do with a bit more confidence in their abilities. A bit more certainty about what they can achieve and the power to overcome obstacles, maybe telling people to man up isn't so bad after all. Expect to learn what it truly means to improve why the story you tell yourself about yourself matters, how to overcome the traumas you're struggling with, tactics to

fix the negative voice in your head, the most common problems, manifesting why you should never cheat on your partner, the biggest issue within cells, and much more. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Bedros Kulian. What does man up mean to you? Man up just simply means to me to human up as in human up to your highest potential. I think as humans were not all created equally. In other words, many of us, 95% of us, maybe even greater, operate as human animals, impulsive, instinctive, reactive, selfish, necessary for survival. However, consciousness dictates that we evolved to our highest self, that we become selfless,

that we become servants, and that there is no user's manual that teaches Chris how to go from human animal to human being, being consciousness, radiance, connected to source or creator, right? And so, man up, I manned up my way, which is why that was a title of my book, manned up my way to becoming a better human, less emotional, more responsive, less reactive, and that led to becoming a better leader, better entrepreneur, better husband, better father led to overcoming many of my childhood traumas, sexual abuse, physical abuse. But I can tell you that when you man up to your higher self or human up to your higher

self, it's a gift. It's a gift. It's a gift. And we all start as human animals because I believe that is our number one purpose. We have to first develop and work through to then find our true purpose to serve humanity. I'm feeling the word ascend here, you know, to transcend. Yeah, to become better than your base instincts, to transcend and include in Wilburian language. Yeah, it's a, I think in all for a lot about how at the mercy of the confused chemical signals

of our body we are, you know, the reason that we do many things is because of the path of least resistance or societal norms or what we learned when we were a kid or the way that we dealt with past traumas or that thing that we want right now. Yeah. And that to me doesn't feel like liberation that feels like slavery. It is. It is modern day slavery.

And I do believe that the opposition, you know, news media, big pharma, military industrial complex, food industry, the government, certainly controlled by all those elements, have a oppressive benefit to have a reason to oppress humanity and keep them as human animals as dependent and needy and reactive and emotional as possible, because that is how you then manipulate and get control and compliance. Hmm. So I had this conversation with Eric Weinstein a couple of months ago about the objective

of modern media is not to convince you of any one narrative, but to make belief in all narratives be less certain. And I don't disagree, I think that firehousing as a tool is very useful in making people uncertain about the future. What I couldn't get to, and Eric couldn't either, was what is the end goal, usefulness of that because I don't just see people being pliable, complicit, compliant citizens. I have seen as many, if not more, people use their new distrust in mainstream media and farmer companies and so on and so forth. I've seen as many people use that as the activation energy to become almost rebels, as I have people roll over backward and say, please, Mr. Big Government, just tell me what to do. So I was skeptical, at least a little skeptical, that this strategy is either achieving the outcomes that they meant,

or is actually coordinated because it doesn't seem to be making a pliable populace as far as I can see. Do you get where I'm coming from here? I do, but I do wonder, is it because of the circles that you're running in that you see more people who are rebellious against this? Does that make sense? A friend group of middle fingers. If we were to go hang out and I'll use this term exactly as I mean it, with the peasants of humanity, the majority, the unwashed masses, the human animals, they are the majority, you would see that we and the circles that you hang out with are the minority. It's just our circles consist of people who are rebellious, who are free thinkers, who

are sovereign, who will give the middle finger to the man. We are the minority. Do you think you need to be cautious of using words like the peasantry of humanity, the unwashed masses? Do you worry that that might be dehumanizing sometimes? No, because I hope that that is triggering to most, so that they will understand the point that I'm making. I love humanity. I will fight for humanity. And I pray that the masses stop living at the bottom of the mountain and take the journey to the top, because when they do, as we talked about earlier, transcendence takes place.

But first, I have to get triggered. First, I have to be told what no one else is willing to tell them that they are the unwashed masses, that they are slave labor, that they are there to just work, be in debt, pay taxes, die, lose majority of your inheritance to the government so that your kids can repeat the cycle. That should piss them off enough to want to transcend. In the process, will I get some hate messages? Absolutely. I'm not a stranger to that. Yeah, it's a Alex Homozi is the guy that I think taught me most about nudging your view of

activation energy from just being something which has to be positive some to being able to use something which is actually a really negative fuel source to kick you out of the bottom. So his idea is people need some sort of motivation, some sort of justification to make changes. Most people have way more pain than they do pleasure. Use what you have. Right. And that is absolutely true. And resentment of you. Resentment of your message.

Resentment of you of being accused of being the unwashed mass peasantry is also part of that. Sure. Activation and a juror. Well, Tony Robbins says that more people take action to avoid pain than to gain pleasure. And so we know that to be true. And as I say those words, make no mistake about it. And I talk openly about this. I was peasant class. I was beyond blue collar. I was the unwashed masses. I was the guy that was dependent on government when I came

here from the Soviet Union, lived in section eight housing, had medical and Medicare, the Soviet Union, lived in section 8 housing, had medical and Medicare sought out the cheapest ways to live because I wasn't prepared to do my part. And so I was that guy and had I not had a mentor in my early 20s who slapped sense into me this very way. I don't believe I would have had that awakening and I believe it's our job to pay it forward. So you had, it's a hard love, a tough love mentor, which presumably shapes how you then look to mentor people moving forward.

Yeah, I would say. So Jim Franco was definitely a chermudgy all these coast guy entrepreneur who definitely mentored me with hard love. Why do you think the story that we tell ourselves influences our lives so much? Well, the story that we tell ourselves is a byproduct of what happened to us, what people tell us, like, oh, well, you're big-boned. You've always been clumsy.

You've, you know, everyone in our family is fat. You know, like, this is the thing, what I've heard. I'm not pointing to you per se. I'm just pointing to myself. Like, this is what I've heard, right? I guess. you per se. I'm just pointing to myself, like this is what I've heard, right? I guess. So if that's a story, we start piecing together what? An identity.

Oh, well, this was, if that's my story, this must be my identity. I'm clumsy, big bones supposed to stay fat, not supposed to be active, clumsy. Okay, got it. Now that I know that's my identity, which by the way is a false identity, we go into life looking for evidence to validate that

identity and you will always find what you're looking for. Yeah. Yeah. The reticular activating system is one hell of a drug. Right. You buy a new car, you see that every, how do we never need many cars on the road before? Yeah. Because you're looking for it.

I heard a really phenomenal quote a year ago to do with cynicism. People with low self-esteem will always find a way to be miserable. And it's this predisposition that you have to look for the thing that you're looking for confirmation bias. The world is the way that I predicted it to be. We were talking early on about control and the fact that there is a comfort in knowing. And even if that knowing is being, even if that knowing is not accurate or useful, if it feels like it's predictively correct, because you can warp what you see to retrofit what you believe, you end up with a world that feels like it's in control.

Yes. And when you feel like you have some sense of control, then you have less stress, less anxiety, et cetera. Now, you may not have a quality of life, at least a great quality of life. You may not have great income. You may not be the best health, but at least it fits your lo life. You may not have great income, you may not be of the best health, but at least it fits your locus of control and you're able to have some predictable results.

Someone your neighbor in the very next house could have a very different life experience because of how they view the world. Even if the material conditions are exactly the same. Correct. Yeah, I mean, this example from Sam Harris is so phenomenal, so everybody has done a tough workout, whether up into zone five heart rate,

and they've got the taste of metal in the back of their throat, and they're lying on the ground, doing a sweat angel, that even though objectively it's an uncomfortable feeling, is oddly satisfying because of the story you tell yourself about what that means. I deserve this. This is making my body better. If you had that sensation spontaneously arise in traffic, you would jump out of the car and try and go to the hospital. You would think that you were having

some sort of heart attack. You'd rip him with sweat and a heart rate and all this stuff. So that proves that the story you tell yourself about the present moment largely determines your experience of it. And I think it's the seven or nine most meaningful words in all of philosophy. The universe itself is change. The universe is change and life itself is what we deem it. Life itself is what we deem it. That's exactly right. It's the story that we tell ourselves. Now it is shaped by those who raised us and had influence over us and that we work

for, etc. But it is ultimately life. It is what we deem it. And so you have to be relentlessly protective of the information that you take in, the thoughts that occupy your mind, the people that you surround yourself with, because all of those things are influence factors. Another stoic philosopher once said that, you know, when you leave your house and when you come back that night, you come back as a different man.

You're never the same man coming back, right? And while you're either coming back as a better human, more transcendent, more aware, more connected, or not. I think this is this kind of holistic view of personal development. You can fold masculinity and sort of manhood into this, whether it's third wave, manhood, This is this kind of holistic view of personal development. You can fold masculinity and sort of manhood into this, whether it's third wave, manosphere, or ethical personal development, whatever term you want to give it.

I think this is really taking hold at the moment because especially men have started to realize the hustle and grind until my eyes bleed culture has its place, but is also unfulfilling in itself. If I can't have a relationship with someone that I care about, if I can't open up about my emotions, if I can't deal with my past traumas, like the Renaissance man is the guy who is able to tap into it all, you know, that is happy to go out and do fantastic in business, tell people difficult things, stand up for himself,

make decisions without being fearful, and then go home and let his little girls draw on his face. You know, like it's that, and that duality, that softness and that hardness, I think is what really makes you physically fit, mentally fit, mindful, equanimous, all that stuff.

And that's, I think that it's a good, the subculture that I at least begin to see burbling under the surface with regards to men's mental health role models and stuff like that. I think is beginning to find its feet. Yeah, it really is. And I'm a forever optimist and I can tell you that we're seeing

more men realizing that it's not just about the car the watch the Possessions working until my eyes bleed At the project this thing that we run a men's personal development program We have the five pillars and it's faith, family, fitness, finance, and fulfillment. Obviously, the finance is what most people think about, right? Well, if I just make good money, I'll be a good provider as a man. Most men think that they're relegated to just being a provider. Well, I provide a roof over their head.

They're safe. They have food. They have school supplies. But there's more to being a man, you know. There is more to being a man. What about a level of faith? Is in confidence in yourself, faith in yourself, faith in higher power?

But there's a path for you, right? Faith in your friends and your circle of influence that these guys who set up this amazing studio can set it up in a way that we can have this moment, right? So then you've got your faith, you've got your finances, great, what about fitness? And on the fitness side, I believe that physical fitness is the gateway drug to emotional and mental fitness.

Most people who do get fit physically, completely neglect mental and emotional hygiene. And they are living stressed, overwhelmed, addicted to vices, or financially broke because they completely forgot about the other F pillars. And so that fitness is really about can you be physically fit because think about what level of focus, consistency, delayed gratification, discipline that is required for a man to get lean, jacked and stay lean and jacked for a prolonged period of time. That's a lot of shit you got to do in terms of how you eat, how

you train, your nutrition, your sleep, etc. your environment. And that bleeds into, well, maybe I can have some greater control going back to the locus of control. I can have some greater control over my mental health, emotional discipline. And so if we can factor that, then what do we have left? Well, we got family because if you have money, you've got mental, physical, emotional fitness, and you've got some level of, you know, ability to have experiences and go places and- But a material freedom. Yeah. But you don't have anyone to enjoy it with.

Yeah. What do you think about this? You know, you talk to and speak to a type of man, you know, that I think could be categorized as dominant lean-in alpha in some regards. There is another group of guys on the internet who would also categorize themselves as alpha, who are very anti-family creation, who are looking toward women and giving advice to men that the opposite sex is someone to be avoided at all costs or to be used and discarded, to be treated as transient transactional objects. How do you see this sort of world of, you know, red pill, manosphere, men's advice with your perspective given that you work almost exclusively with men? Yeah, yeah. I, truth be told, manosphere, men's advice with your perspective given that you work almost exclusively with men.

Yeah, yeah. I truth be told man, I despise most of that Red pill world and to say that look, you know, all women are bad and all women want to use you and all women are chasing down the dudes with the lambo's and the watches and the money. That is not true. That is not true. Again, that is you will always find evidence for what you're looking for in life. And so if these young kids are seeing that on YouTube, right, I say young kids in their 20s, late 20s, even 30s, I'm 49. What do you got? I mean, what do you got? So you got a life where you're lonely. The number one category of suicide is men over the age of 60 who are alone. So that's what they're preaching. In other words, be alone. Just have sex move on have sex move on and at some point Your value is a man you become old and now you're alone. You don't have a life partner The highest category of suicide for men is men over 60 who are alone either divorced or widowed or never found anyone

So like that's the end game. They're preaching That's stupid The the highest level of fulfillment is not, it's not stuff and scientific legacy. It's actually having children and seeing those children become great members of society, value outers to society, knowing that when you pass, that is the legacy you leave behind. Like I've got Andrew and Chloe, a son and a daughter who will do so much more good for this planet than I ever did.

Cause I got such a late start, whereas they started off my wife and I poured into them from day one to be just servants of humanity. But also be savages in terms of expectations for themselves. And so that is the greatest legacy. And so without my wife how can I have those two beautiful children? And even I far were to adopt them. I can't give them the love that a mom can give, the nurturing, the safety. I can give them what a dad can give. And so it's necessary

that we connect. And so these dudes that get behind a microphone and a camera and they preach this bullshit it's just hurt people, hurting more people. It's all that is. And there, you know, that happens. I think a lot of what I'm seeing, and this isn't to say that everybody needs to have kids, there is absolutely a cohort of people out there for whom they can get to old age and the end of their life without a family and maybe make the right call and say that that was the right call. But not having a life partner, right? To me, you have to be an unbelievably rarefied strata of human to say, oh, it's just me in my paintings and my cats or dogs or whatever. And you know, this perpetual sort of juvenile world, it doesn't seem heroic to me. It doesn't scream highest service. It doesn't scream, you know, overcoming my base instinct, giving

back to the world and humanity. It's like this sort of endless immature, hedonic, like fucking sludge that you just keep pumping into yourself. And what I also see is like an industrial strength cope that's used by these people to try and retrofit meaning into their life through other areas, right? You know, look at the people who are fucking obsessed by politics or obsessed by the deep state or obsessed by conspiracy theories or obsessed by fucking comic books, whatever it writes, something because they need to imbue meaning into their life through a vehicle

because they do not have that coming from a significant other and all kids that come along with it. We are hardwired to search out, find, develop our purpose. We're hardwired for that. And in the absence of it, so you don't have a life partner, you don't have children,

which are the two of the highest sorts of purpose, and then your vocation would be probably the third highest source of purpose. In the absence of that, you begin to glum onto something. I don't care if it's antifo or black lives matter or some the new fucking gay flag that's, you know, Scott Triangles and whatever. I don't care if you want to be a transgender unicorn.

Like I'm all fort, man, fly your freak flag. However, the people that are so locked on to that as their purpose are locked onto that because they are lacking true purpose in meaning and fulfillment in their life. And so you're forced to go on onto something because the absence of purpose means you are going to be addicted to vices, pornography, vape, alcohol, whatever the thing might be. And that's how we start spiraling into anxiety and depression and self-loathing.

You talk a lot about inner voice and kind of the relationship that you have with that inner voice. It's something that I've changed a lot in myself over the last five to ten years. Let's say that there's someone listening who says, all right, Bedross, seems okay for you. You have got a lot of freedom and you're evidently friends with the person that exists inside of your head. have got a lot of freedom and you're evidently friends with the person that exists inside of your head.

What would you say to someone who has a bad inner voice and wants to change it? I think the very first place to start is to understand that we are very unique creatures on this planet. We live on three different planes, don't we? And my dog, Cookie, has no idea about that. Only we have self-awareness. We have the sense of purpose. And we live on three planes, the physical plane.

Like this is a vehicle, this, you know, your body is a vessel of vehicle. And it's deteriorating, no matter what you do, take all the drugs you want, all the hormones you want, time will always be in it. Entropy will win. Right? Exactly. So we live on that physical plane.

But we're also energy, we're radiance, we're a soul, we're spirit, we're energy. And then somewhere beyond between those two, there's the thoughts, feelings, and emotions that you have. So you're living on life on three planes. And as you get older, assuming you're doing the work, because wisdom is not just age, wisdom is experience compounded by age. There you have wisdom.

So literally your soul, your consciousness gets wiser as your body begins to deteriorate. And this is why you hear old folks always saying, if I could just go back like, what do they say? Age is wasted on the youth. That term exists because if I just knew what I know now, then, oh my gosh, what I could have done in my 20s, they say, right? And so we have to reconcile the fact that the vehicle is dying, the vehicle that I'm in is dying, yet I have greater self-control, greater self-mastery, more in line with what my God-given source purpose is. And there I still have thoughts, feelings and emotions, and I have to master those so that I could keep driving towards my God-given purpose as my body is deteriorating.

And so the inner voice is constantly fighting with those three factors, the human animal, consciousness, the physical being, that breaks down and gets sick, which they should take care of eat, right, workout, etc. And then the thoughts, feelings, and emotions because they are living in congruently. The reasons are negative self-talk exist is just, that's your conscience. Your conscience has no other way of getting your attention other than making you feel bad,

making you feel shame, guilt, anxiety, depression. That's how you're conscious, knocks on your door and says, dude, you're living in congruently with how you believe you should be living. And that's why I'm giving you negative thoughts and negative voices in your head. Just literally flip the switch and tomorrow live congruently to the man you want to live. Be don't hit the snooze button. Maybe you're sick and tired of hitting the snooze button.

Drink your 30 ounce of water, like Sean Stevenson says, right? First thing in the morning, I don't even know why he said that. I just love the guy so much. I read that in his book like 10 years ago. And I just drink 30 ounce of water every single morning. It doesn't do me any harm, only does me good. I send out my three gratitude text messages because I wake up angry and bitter most days

because that's factory installed for me. I know who I am, I'm so self-aware that I have to send out three gratitude text messages every morning so I can put myself in a state of gratitude. That is what consciousness and my conscience demands of me. And if I don't, I'll still be the miserable fuck. Right? So we have to do that thing that our body wants us to do. Be congruent with the man you want to be. If you don't, the inner self-talk will always be negative.

Yeah. The keeping promises to yourself is just this insanely powerful tactic. And what I realized, especially throughout a lot of my 20s, was that the things that I was doing in the story that I was telling myself about who I should be, weren't aligning, right? Right. That I just, I felt like I was built for more. I felt like I should be more mindful, more equanimous, that my memory, my texture of my existence should have been better, that inner texture, not materially, right? I never cared for that. I still don't, largely, which is what I think makes me a particularly bad businessman. I ran a business 15 years. It didn't really, it was just a game to me. It was never really about money. Money was a fantastic

scoreboard, but it wasn't about that. I felt like I was built for more, and I knew that I wasn't keeping promises to myself. I was cheating on girlfriends and stuff. The worst part about And the worst part about the way that I felt after cheating on girlfriends wasn't me being caught. It was what it told me about the sort of person that I was that I would have hurt this completely innocent other part of my life who did nothing except for care for me, don't nothing except for trying to make my life good. And I'd been disloyal and damaging. And I thought, right, is this really like who you are? Is this really who you want to be? And I didn't. And that was like, it was like a fucking fugue state for a long time of me thinking, Jesus Christ, like if this is, if this is the person that you say that you're supposed to be, why the hell are you doing all of these different things? Right. Right. And so how did you feel? Let's just, like, let's just take a moment and unravel

that for a moment, if you don't mind. So as you're cheating and as you're doing things, it's harming this person who otherwise loves you and cares for you and wants to see you thrive. And you know that that's not the guy that you are, this is not the man that you want to be. The difference between that is, how did you feel? What did you experience? It was pain, it was a lack. It was a sense of a lack.

It was a bitterness turned inward against my own ineptitude, my own weakness, my own fragility. The fact that I was at the mercy of my own base instincts, I didn't have the control, I didn't have the insight. I just was not, I was not all that I could be. And the fact that I knew that there was potential, there was what hurt the most, right? Yeah. The fact that I knew that there was potential there was what hurt the most, right? The fact that I felt like I was built for more and yet I hadn't decided to answer the call of that. And I had this, I mean, this may resonate with people that kind of come from a background

where they don't have as many good role models around as they would like. And you know, you don't feel like you fit in and you'd struggle to find people that give you the values that you want. I had for a good while a chip on my shoulder about not being given the tools that could have got me to the place that I wanted to go more quickly. You mentioned yourself, like I started started late, I think you said. Yeah. In a delayed onset intellectual adolescence, perhaps.

I'm a late bloomer in every category of life. Fantastic. Yeah. So, I almost had a resentment towards those people, towards the fact that I wasn't given the tools sufficiently early on. And even accepting that, even being able to see that for what it is, okay, well look, what did you want? Did you want a landed button from the School of Life

or Jordan Peterson to be born early? Like what the fuck did you want? Did you want YouTube to be invented more earlier than it was, it wasn't, right? Like you found the things that you needed to find when you were ready to find them and when they were available to you and not a moment before.

Right. And yeah, it's like kind of like personal development, whistfulness, you know, that, oh, if only I'd been given the tools more early on, I could have avoided this and that done that, and it wasn't. And. I was giving them when I was giving them. Dude, that's the thing too is I'll see so many great human beings that have a massive amount of potential. And think about this. There's the cure for cancer probably lives in someone's head right now. I mean, the potential for the cure for cancer exists. The potential for many things

for life on Mars exists. But there's someone who's basically in the shoes that Chris 1.0 was in, which is they know they're meant for more. Like you said, I felt as nying in my gut. I knew I was meant for more. I had a greater calling. However, I was living a subpar life. And the gap in between is self-sabotaging behavior. The gap in between is limiting beliefs. The gap in between is self-sabotaging behavior. The gap in between is limiting beliefs. The gap in between is kind of hitting this glass ceiling of success and then letting yourself slide back down because you don't believe you're worthy of happiness, success, love, whatever the thing is because you're incongruent. And at some point, we began to then go, well, I'm this way because mom and dad, they divorced.

I was beaten. In my case, I was molested as a child growing up. Then we came to America and ganged Vanger and started to pick on me and beat me up and laugh at me and call me foreigner. We can find so many things to blame. If only, like I said, YouTube was created earlier. If only I knew what a mentor was I could have gotten a mentor sooner. Okay great at some point you've got to turn the fingers on yourself and go now YouTube exists. Now I'm aware of what self-help is. I know what books to read. Are you reading them now? Are you

changing their narrative now? Are you still blaming mom and dad and the school system and whatever happened to us as a kid? Because if you are, you're living in the past and I don't know anyone that's gotten any decent quality of life moving forward when they're constantly looking in the rear view mirror. Well, what's the salve to this? You know, it's all well and good for largely two people who have been through said fire and zero to one is the biggest step, right? It is the most difficult one. Yeah. Because you need momentum. Precisely. Yes. You work with guys a lot. I'm going to guess that most of the guys that you'll deal with at least are probably not at zero,

but many will be beginning on the journey and there'll be a little bit of momentum behind them. With the guys that you work with, what are the things that are most common that they need to overcome in order to be able to retell that story and improve those beliefs internally? I think the most common thing that we see in the guys that we work with at the project specifically, and these are guys, like you said, they're not starting at zero, they have some momentum, they might have a business that's doing

a few hundred thousand a year, or maybe a few million a year, but they realize they're still meant for more. And it doesn't matter what they're doing because we've got guys that were senators and guys that are like professional poker players who are doing fantastically well financially. But if the finances were the only measuring stick, then great, they're successful. Hey, go on. Elon Musk's the number one on the planet. Right. Yeah. He'd be exactly. But it's not the only measuring stick because these are the guys who

are also sabotaging their life. One particular guy can tell you that he was making about 20 million a year, and he's the second in command, chief operations officer for a company in, I'll use a different city. Let's say, oh, I don't know, Camryo Beach, but he would drive from Los Angeles to Camryo Beach three times a week to work at the corporate office.

The rest of the time, he'd work from home, doing really well for himself. However, he would, on his way home, he would stop at one mistress's house and then another mistress's house and then at Commerce Casino to gamble and then he'd come home. And it's because he felt he was unworthy of earning that

and he was just constantly self-sabotaging to destroy all that. As we started to dig deeper, it's typically some kind of event that took place, that changed their trajectory on how they felt about themselves. The event could have been, they were drinking and driving, crossed the intersection, killed a family foreign the car, they survived, they have survivors killed.

It could be that they were physically, mentally, emotionally, sexually abused, and they haven't reconciled with that. So that soundtrack of shame, rage, confusion is constantly playing in the background as you're trying to develop a career, get into a marriage, raise your children, start a business partnership. You're doing all that with this, almost like this 55 kilogram kettlebell attached to you. So if we're going to race, and I'm like, Hey, Chris, before you race, I'm just going to chain kilogram kettlebell attached to. So if we're gonna race, and I'm like, hey, Chris, before you race, I'm just gonna chain this kettlebell to your leg. You're always gonna have an unfair disadvantage, right?

And so if we can just go back and identify, because as men were really good at compartmentalizing and going, everything's good. Everything's good. Yeah, that happened to me, but everything's good. Oh, it's not, man, it's like a corrupted hard drive. Your hard drives corrupted, and when you're pushing this button, there's a delayed response, but everything's good. Oh, it's not, man. It's like a corrupted hard drive. Your hard drives corrupted. And when you're pushing this button, there's a delayed response, or you push the button

A, but you get the letter S on the word doc, and you're like, what the fuck is going on? It's a corrupted system. And so if we can go back and identify what happened that created these toxic cognitions, these false beliefs and narratives about yourself, solve through it. Now you can actually go and say, this is actually not my story. Therefore, that's not my identity. This is my new identity. I'm a fucking badass husband. I could be a badass father. I could be a badass friend. And then you'll start looking

for evidence in that. You'll start taking on the actions and deeds and habits and characteristics of a badass dude. But you have to first address that. And without addressing that, in other words, without apologizing, you're never going to have, you know, let's go back to that relationship that you had where you cheated on this woman. If you went back and apologized to her, it would be just as meaningful to her as it would be for you in terms of closure and healing. Then you would go, you know what? That's what a higher status man does. That's what a dude who's connected to consciousness does. He owns what he, hey, I'm sorry for doing this, I imagine it made you feel this way.

Here's what I can do to make it right, if that's okay with you. Like, that's a proper apology. Whether she accepts it or not doesn't matter, you did the deed, now you can move forward with grace. And so by not fixing the traumas, and no one, it's rare. Like one out of every three people

have been physically or mentally abused, one out of every four have been sexually abused. So if we just look at the number of dudes in this building, like just fucking trauma all around us, right? So we gotta do the work, heal from it, move on with a new identity. You're someone who had some pretty ruthless trauma growing up as a kid. That is used, used.

Many people feel like experiences that were outside of their control hold back their potential when they're moving forward. What has your world view been of this? You know, patient zero for having dealt with something bad and then come out the other side of it. Like, what do you say to people that have had things bad happen in their past? Yeah. Well, we don't, we don't realize that that bad thing when healed through or processed through could actually become a superpower, right? And so I'll give you an example. I was

molested by two older boys in Armenia over and over again between the ages of four and six. When I turned six years old, my dad decided we're going to escape the Soviet Union. He was a member of the Communist Party. He decided we're going to escape what he doesn't realize is by escaping and bringing us to the United States. He saved me from almost daily molestation by these two older boys. You think that that would have just continued? I would imagine so until I got older

and stood up for myself, right? But I was, you know, between four and six years old, these guys were like 12, 13, 14 years old. And so I come to the United States, I've never told anyone about this. I grow up, I get married, I have kids, all the way into 38 years old until I have this massive panic attack, right?

Which I thought was unrelated to that. I never even once, I just thought, hey, that's behind me now, I've left that. I go work with the therapist and I'm like, hey, man, I had a panic attack. They put me on Xanax. I don't wanna be on Xanax. The doctor said I should do talk therapy.

I think talk therapy is for broken people. I'm clearly not broken. So, me, right? Right me. Not this one. And he goes, well, I think I've been in four or five sessions. I can help you give you some tools to cope with your anxiety. I was like, great.

And being a very type A high speed, tightly wound person, I told them I said, I don't want this to be an indefinite thing where I'm sitting on your couch like how long would it take? He says three to four or five sessions max great So he teaches me a few things like you know action alleviates anxiety and anxiety being anticipation of future pain and Halt when you're hungry angry lonely tired You're more likely to go back to your old ways, like if you're an alcoholic and you're hungry lonely Angry tired, you're more likely to hit the bottle or whatever. So just manage your halt and

Understand that action alleviates anxiety and anxiety is really anticipation of future pain and Get your sleep and don't tremble in the candle on both ends all commonsense shit, right? And so you know four or five weeks go by him like his name is Kevin. I go Kevin. I Feel like a million bucks. Like, I don't even have this, 30 to 60, this little undertone of anxiousness constantly, nying at me after about two or three weeks with him gone, right? Gone. I'm sleeping like a champ.

So I'm shaking his hand, writing the signing of the credit card statement, and I'm standing at his door. And he goes, hey, can I just ask you one question, how's your relationship with your parents? Do you wanna talk about that? Maybe, and I realize now maybe he was trying to, obviously not lose a patient, not lose a client right at the end of the day, the man's running a business. At least that's my assumption.

I should call him and ask him. I can't make that assumption. Four agreements, right? Four agreements says don't go assuming things. So, I was like, oh, my parents, like, lookgreens says don't go assuming things. So I was like, oh, my parents like, look, dude, I come from a communist country. My dad was a little heavy handed. He slapped me around here and there, but quite honestly, that was nothing compared to what happened to me in Armenia. I had never not even told my wife about what happened to me in Armenia, but in these five sessions, Kevin had built such rapport with me that I felt like

I could throw that out there. And he goes, well, what happened? And I just started bawling and I'm crying. And I'm just like, snots coming out my nose. And he's asking me questions. And I could just nod my head, yes or no. You know, were you raped and I'm shaking my head, no, were you abused? Yes, were you molested?

Yes. You know, by a babysitter? No. And so finally, I can blowurt out by two older boys, right? And he goes man, Beto, some so sorry and I said Kevin don't be what happened to that little boy I've dealt with And he goes can you say what happened to me? I've healed from and I went to a new level of crime I'm standing Chris. I'm standing. That's a sort of two-story building. I'm standing at his door I've handed him the credit card slip and I'm thinking, Chris, I'm standing, that's the sort of two story building. I'm standing at his door. I've handed him the credit card slip, and I'm thinking, what's faster?

Smashing my way through the glass and just falling towards my car, we're going down the staircase. Like that's all my brain is thinking. I've gone fully human animal, right? I've gone limbic. I just wanna leave this conversation, right? But I'm stuck.

Also my body has seized. Yeah. And as I calmed down and he hands me a napkin, I drink some water, he goes, Peter was, can I tell you something? I said, sure. He said, you know, by saying what happened to that little boy,

that's called disassociation. I'd never even heard that term. This is 10, 11 years ago. He was asked to first step in developing a multiple personality disorder. And I'm like, holy fuck. It's the last thing I need, right? So I spent the next 15 months on his couch every Monday. So he did retain the patient. But man, we dug deep. And what we found is I was living with shame,

rage, confusion, shame. Like I was embarrassed at my friend, Chris can't find out about this. He's going to think I'm broken, I'm Filthy, I'm dirty, like why would you let two older boys do that? Because at the end of the day, I let them do that to me and Kevin Help me unpack that that you know young boys look up to their dads their older brothers the older boys in the community is the right of Passage and these boys took advantage of that. He used that right. Exactly right and then took advantage of that. He used that right. Exactly right. And then the confusion like am I gay? Am I gay? So I went around banging fucking millions of chicks in my 20s bro to to say. That's constantly. So I think you'll see yourself. Yes. Yeah. And you know what Kevin said. So I was like Kevin like what the fuck man. So was I gay? He goes well you know,

did you read any gay porn magazines or anything? I'm like, no, he's like, well, clearly not. Did you go and seek out any gay sex? I go, no, clearly not. And I realized like, instead, I went and just fucking ran through hundreds of women just a signal to myself that I'm not, right? Like that's how stupid I was. But again, when you're limbic, you're just looking for

a solution and then the rage, how come no one protected me? In Armenia, there's the Babushka, the grandma's. In Russian Babushka means grandma, and Armenia was under Russian Soviet control. And these grandma's were like the fucking mafia, bro. They like oversee all the children. Doesn't matter if it's their grandchild or not. They would make me wash my hands and clean my face, et cetera,

yet they wouldn't save me from what happened there. And I realized with Kevin's help, they never saw that. They would have torn those boys. wash my hands and clean my face, et cetera, yet they wouldn't save me from what happened there. And I realized with Kevin's help, they never saw that. They would have torn those boys, limb to limb, had they seen what those boys were doing. And so what really happened is on my timeline of life, there's this giant mountain that I didn't want anyone to see. So it's like, hey, all right, no one see what's going on here.

Shame rage, confusion, unworthiness, unlovable. I even remember telling my wife one time I go, you and Andrew and Chloe metaphorically are in this room. Then there's this hallway. And I'm in the hallway. And as it's closest, I can get to you guys, right? And she started bawling like, that's so sad. She was, I feel that like I feel like there's another layer I have to break through to get to you,

but I was constantly protecting myself from everybody. And so 15 months of working with Kevin, that giant mountain on my timeline of life, it was just a little speed bump. No different than the time I tore my bicep or the time I got into a car accident. That's what we need to do to be able to break those glass ceilings and be able to actually become the version of ourselves that were called to be. What was the time that you told your wife about, you know, you've bowled in front of Kevin? Yeah. But how long did it take after speaking to him before you were able to open up to your wife about it?

Probably about four or five months in. Kevin had me write a letter to my younger self. Okay. And he gave me the first sentence of that letter, which was Deer Bedros. Between ages of four and six, you were molested by two older boys. But today, dot, dot, dot, as in today, you're this guy and that guy and you've done this and, right? Like, in other words, let's go find evidence that you're not broken, unworthy, shameful, confused, angry.

And so I wrote an 11 page letter, Kevin and I broke that down sentence by sentence. And I just felt like, dude, I can go to my wife and talk about this. And so I did. And it was very matter of fact. And, you know, she was emotional about it. Right? As you can imagine, because here I was going through it with Kevin for months. And now I'm going to spring in this on her several years into our marriage. So she was emotional about it, but she also understood. She hugged me. She goes, I love you. Nothing changes. And I was like, in my head, I'm like, really? You don't think I'm gross, right? That's still, that voice still exists.

Months later, Joe Polish asks me to speak at his genius network event. And the guy speaking before me was Tony Robbins. And he's up on stage talking about, you know, as humans we're supposed to be built for the winter and not for the summer and be prepared. Winter's coming and his like the summer and be prepared. Winter's coming and his side gets his closing line.

He's smacking his big giant mitten hands together and pumping everybody up. And I'm nervous as shit getting mic'd up in the back. Fuck, how do you follow this guy? I'm supposed to talk about leadership because a Fit Body Boot camp had grown pretty big, big international franchise. And I'm the leader of it. But I realized Joe polished on me. There's 350 attendees

at this event and all of them are just multi-multi-millionaires. And they don't necessarily have to be great leaders. You can just hire a great leader at that point, right? All this to say that I get up on stage. I'm like Kevin or Joe, and I'm supposed to talk about leadership and how I built FitBit Bootcamp through great leadership. But I really want to talk about something else. I want to talk about how I was I built FitBide Bootcamp through great leadership, but really want to talk about something else. I want to talk about how I was molested as a kid between the ages of four and six and how that limited my growth, not only in business, but in relationship in my friendships, et cetera. And I could see grown men squirming in their seats, looking towards the exit.

And dude, that conversation that I had with that audience, if you had asked me a couple years earlier, would you ever stand in front of an audience and talk about how you were molested and how it showed up and what it did to you and then how you healed from it? So I think this is what I'd go on back to what I was saying. It was my greatest superpower

because now I can stand in front of thousands of people and share this message on this podcast from a stage on my show. And grown ass man will be like, dude, you went through that too. I did as well. And I'm telling you like, dude, is with blue check marks with millions of followings. They'll see me backstage in a green room and hug me and we'll start crying. I think I was supposed to that, it sounds morbid, but that was supposed to have happened

to me. And I was supposed to have healed. And it was supposed to have become my superpower to have compassion and empathy for men. And which is why today I work with so many men in healing them in so many ways and just actually get showing them the path to heal. I don't fucking heal anyone. You heal yourself. You have everything you need to heal yourself. Does that make sense? Yeah. Dude. It's very interesting to think about how the things that we're most proud of in ourselves are the light side of something dark that we are often ashamed of or resentful about or bitter. I often talk about how

I was pretty unpopular as a kid only child a lot of time in solitude, but the light side of that is that I time in solitude, but the light side of that is that I never needed anybody's permission to go and do anything, right? Because I never had anybody's permission before. I'm happily able to go and out work on my own. Drop me on a desert island, I'll find a laptop and start working on it, you know. Like, there will be... It's a superpower. And being able to move to another country, you know, the joy that I get from traveling,

the joy that I get from connecting with other people, we talked earlier on about like obsessive observing, which is another skill that I developed because I didn't understand why other kids had friends and I didn't. So I observed obsessively about the way they tied their tie or the way that they walked or the type of shoes that they had or the shoulder that they carried their bag on and that was the reason that they had friends and I didn't. But downstream from that is something that I really value myself. The point that I feel, or the thing that I really kind of want people to take away is that it is unfortunately a double-edged sword. And if you do not do some work to ameliorate those things and to work out how the skills that you've developed or your response

to the things that you don't like in yourself can be used to make the texture of your own existence better. If you don't go and do that, you will continue to be ruled by things that you hate. Agreed. And the... Like, how close you can come to having that happen is fucking terrifying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's really, really scary. Like, I see... I can see the other path or many other paths, right?

There's many many many ways there's many many sets of slippery slides down into some circle of hell Yeah, and there's only a couple of set of stairs up. Yeah, and Yeah, I you know, I wish I wish I could give people the hope that they can do that they can make that happen. Well, see, but that's what we're doing here. It's those who leave make excuses that, well, you know, it seems like you were at this obsessive observing ability that I don't or you guys have the ability to focus and have singularity of focus on a task and I don't. Well, I didn't.

When we came to America by second grade, the Anheim Union high school district or Anheim Union school district decided to do, I don't know, studies on all the immigrant kids in that particular school, Walt Disney Elementary. And they figured out that I'm OCD and ADD, right? And this is before the perhaps over, yeah, pathologicalization of. Exactly. This was we're talking an ADD485, 1984 and 1985. And so they put me on Ritalin, different doses,

trying to figure out what's gonna work. And I remember just slumping over or just being hyper. But because of that, they put me in these classes for special education, right? Special ed classes. And so effectively, I was in classes with what in these classes for special education, right? Special ed classes. And so effectively I was in classes with what they called retards back then, right? And so that became part of my identity

that obviously I'm slow, obviously I'm not capable. When in reality that too was a superpower. My ability to obsess about something that interests me is a superpower. And so the people who might be like, well, I don't have this and I don't have that. It's like, but what you do have, if you heal through it and weaponize it,

and that's what we need to do, I weaponized ADD, I weaponized OCD, I weaponized being molested, I weaponized being called a foreigner and immigrant, getting a chip on my shoulder so fucking big, that I was like, no one ever will put my family in a financially destitute place, man, ever, ever. And so to me, making an obscene amount of money was like this mission.

And that led to then developing, you know, as a human, even more. I think I had to solve through that first because money was a big factor as an immigrant in this country when you're living in section 8 housing. But you can weaponize anything that's happened to you. So they don't have to have the gift that you have or I have. You just have to understand that what's happened to you, if you can heal through it, solve through it, process through it, there's a massive fucking superpower on the other side. It's the work that majority

are not willing to do, but wanting the outcome that we have. And that's again, once again, the gap, and it's the gap that makes them feel a certain way about life. They hate life and they think they're at a disadvantage and they're anxious about it. So then they begin to escape and soothe with drugs and alcohol and fidelity, pornography, gambling, whatever the source is.

And I don't care. I can check off every fucking box. I can check off every one of those boxes. But if you do the work and you close that gap and time collapse, you will have that superpower and you can start living the life you're meant to live. I've heard you say, if you're gonna eat shit, get good at it. Yeah. What do you mean when you say that? Well, look, life is not gonna be butterflies and flowers and rose gardens all the time. In building a massive brand like Fitbody Bootcamp, I had to eat a lot of shit with the Federal Trade Commission.

I started Fitbody Bootcamp and I wanted to make sure that all of my licensees at the time had a protected territory. Because CrossFit, for example, you could open up a CrossFit across the street from another CrossFit and they just have to compete. So my whole thing was, if I have this licensing program, I can give them a five mile protected territory, they're gonna be cool with each other, right?

Little did I know that by doing that one thing, I crossed the line into franchising. The great state of California decided they're gonna find me $2,500 times 115 locations that I had. And I said, if you guys did that, I'm going to have to go bankrupt and those 115 locations are going to have to fend for themselves, right? They've opened up a location, they bought equipment, they're running their business, we're coaching them in making this thing successful. So I've had to eat a lot of shit. I was having to,

So I've had to eat a lot of shit. I was having to, I was having to negotiate with the state of California all while trying to also find ways to refinance my house and get another credit card so that if I had to pay that money, 115 locations times $2,500, I would. Thankfully, the state of California was kind enough to say, don't pay us the money, however, don't sell another location until you become a franchise. So again, more shit eating. It cost me $87,000 to become a franchise. You gotta get an F.A. franchise agreement, FDD. There's 13 states that require different FDDs,

franchise disclosure documents. Then you're overseen by the Federal Trade Commission. You go through three audits a year. You have to have your operations manual made in a very specific way, doesn't matter if you're a subway sandwiches, jiffy lube or a fit body boot camp, this is how it is,

and the disclosures have to be very specific. This is all fucking new to me, bro. I'm like barely getting by back in 2010, but all of a sudden by 2012, I have to become a franchise. I got good at eating shit very effectively and efficiently, because if I'm going to eat it slow, it's just going to prolong the pain.

So if I'm going to go into franchising, or if I have to negotiate with the state of California, if I have to do anything, the pandemic, for example, we lost 218 locations, Fitbotta Bootcamp locations, from March 16th to December 31st of 2020. So I decided, all right, well, if we're gonna eat shit, we're gonna eat it really fast and get really good at it. So let's just make a full pivot into online coaching,

like take all your personal training clients, bootcamp clients, put them in on Facebook groups. We're gonna use train arise, we're gonna follow long workouts. The problem is most people, they will sit in this dissatisfaction and stay there and stew in it and root in it. My only thing is, dude, you're given shit sandwiches, eat them as quickly as you can and move

on. Like, you have to move on. My friend Jason Redman, he's a retired Navy SEAL, was shot up all over his face, purple heart recipient. He says, you know, he was on a mission and they found themselves on the X, right? Like, he's the predator him and his team and they're going to kill the bad guys who are bomb makers. This is in Iraq in 2007.

And next thing you know, they get ambushed and he gets shot up, seven shots across the body. One hits him through the cheekbone blows out his orbital plate. His eyeballs is hanging, his nose is gone. Shoot them in the arm. He almost had to get his arm amputated. He found himself on the X that night him and his team. So now at this point, should they just sit there and call for an airstrike and wait or do they just do what they can and shoot back and attack and attack and attack? And so what he says in his book is that they had to just full on attack these guys while calling

in an airstrike that was danger close to Jason Redmond. He caught Schrapnel, but the bad guys were dead. Helicopter came in, saved his ass, but the bottom line is like you most humans will find themselves on an X of ambush, life will ambush you and they sit in it, they root in it, they take forever to stew in it, instead eat it quickly and fucking move on. Does that make sense? Yeah. What it meant to me, if you're going to eat shit, get good at it, was in order to achieve

anything that you care about, there is going to be an associated amount of shit that you need to eat. If you want to take on the burden of trying to achieve something in life which is meaningful to you, accept that the shit eating is not a bug, it is a feature. Hmm, fact, it is a part and parcel of existing and trying to locally reverse an entropy. Right? I'm locally reversing it. It is trying to act on me. You're a finite creature with an infinite complexity around you.

Of course, you're going to be scared. There are literally an unlimited number of ways that you can die and a very, very small number that you can live through. Right? Like, that's just on a macro level. Right. But when it comes to achieving a life where the outcome is the one that you wanted, like, that's one fucking outcome. And yeah, there's a few different routes there, but like, it's a, you know, the entirety of different, where I could walk outside now, put, like, put my head on the time I can get hit and by truck, or I could put my head slightly to the left of it, like, all of these different iterations, right? The multiverse of ways that Chris's demise

could fucking occur to her. And yet, you believe, you hope, that you can manage to wrangle reality, your existence into some sort of usable, functional, useful, nice, enjoyable form. That is going to be an associated amount of pain and shit-eating that goes along with it. And I do believe that's a function of our creator, right? Whether you believe in universal consciousness, you believe a God, you believe it, whatever. I believe we have to go through a series of tests to see if we are qualified for the next level of happiness, bliss, joy, success, abundance, whatever. And so the shit sandwiches will be laid out

along your journey. There is no way to circumvent that. The creator does want to test you. And I believe proof of that is, what do they say, 82% of lottery winners are back to being broke within two and a half years. Well, that's because they didn't eat the shit sandwiches. They didn't deal with the adversity, the pain, the setbacks, and so they don't know how

to value that wealth, and therefore they lose it. A fool in his money will quickly be parted. And I'm not even Christian. It's just that Jesus wrote something that really made sense. And so if we know that we have to eat those shit sandwiches, one, get really good at it and two understand that it's part of the process so that you can achieve the outcome, this desired. 80% of the time, you'll feel like you're failing.

15% of the time, you'll feel like you're treading water. 4% of the time, you'll feel like it's over. 1% of the time, you'll feel like you're winning. Why? Yeah, this is not scientific, by the way, this is something that I would just share with my wife. The Journal of Bro Science. Exactly. This is just bro science, but based off 20 years as an entrepreneur, that's about how I felt.

80% of the time I felt like I was just behind. I was constantly behind, you know, and but that one percent of the time I felt like I was winning. And then after a few years years about five or six years into my careers in entrepreneur I realized This secret is just to find as many of these 1% and keep stacking them. Yeah, because I could dwell on the 80% of the time where I feel behind or the Or the freaking whatever it was 5 10% that I feel like you know everything's falling apart around, like the 4% that everything's falling apart around me, or I could just focus on these one percenters and realize that, okay, that's a win. Let's move on to the next battle, the next battle, the next battle before you know, you

won the war, you know, Inc. 500 recognition, entrepreneur magazines, top 200 franchises. Those recognitions will come if you stack to one percenters. You don't need 100% wins, and I think it's probably impossible to have 100% wins all the time. But as any kind of high performer, and I believe it's probably the truth for professional sports, for people who are actors and celebrities, they feel like they're just behind,

they're not doing it, they're someone else got the part, and then boom, they land a part that gets them the Oscar, that's a one percenter. Stack more more of those and that's what worked for me I put this in a newsletter the other week. I want to teach you about it I think it's kind of related to what we're talking about here. I've been thinking about how to achieve a realistic path to enlightenment As much as moving to a cave in the woods and spending a decade and silent retreat might be great for your spirit It's not going to be doable by pretty much anyone. If you've meditated enough, you know that you accumulate momentum in mindfulness kind of like a swell moving underwater.

After enough time, there is a force and a power to your ability to drop into the present moment, and sometimes even little waves of genuine calm inside break up up the surface. But if you're anything like me, it doesn't result in an extended self-perpetuating enlightenment. It doesn't even really work on its own, where your mindfulness sneaks up on you and you're in the present moment without realizing it. More so, consistent meditation and a focus on mindfulness, strengthens the thinking muscle that you use to wrangle your mind to actually exist in the now. You learn to punctuate your day with instances where your mind finally settles into the moment. And then it's gone. But then you can get it back later in the day. And as far as I can tell, this

is the realistic path to enlightenment. You are never going to become a fully blissed out in perpetual non-dual astral realm synchronicity, bro. But you can string together a few moments of peace so that at least for a few times each day, your mind rests where your feet are. I always used to think that this was a failure. If I can achieve mindfulness, but then lose it, that's still not persistent enlightenment, so I failed. Instead, I think it's smart to reframe the goal.

If you can just have your mind and your feet in the same location, 5 or 10 or 20 times a day, that's a good start. And then maybe you can do it 25 or 30 times. That seems both attainable and really useful. And that seems to be what you were doing there, right? I understand that self doubt and uncertainty and fear of the future is just going to riddle my experiences. I try and do something that's difficult. That was in the business world, but it could be in personal development.

It could be in trying to reshape the dynamic of your family or whatever it is that you're trying to do. And presuming that you're going to be able to do this, and it's just like an ambient piece, a quantumous, beautiful membrane that you get to skate along, that's not gonna happen. But what you can do is try and string together a series of these wins. Here is a landmark that I have gotten to. And importantly, string together a series of wins that you don't immediately look over the shoulder

of as soon as it's happened. I'll ink 500 fantastic, but what's next? It's like, no, no, no, no. Like allow yourself to celebrate. I think hardwiring happiness by Rick Hansen's a really great book that it came out just a little bit before the podcast revolution, which is a shame, because I think it would have really changed a lot of people. He came on the show to talk about a second book five years ago. What he basically says is that when good things happen, you should allow yourself to marinate

in them as much as possible. Even if it's just a small thing, and this is such an unbelievable tactic, like having a 10 minute walk after having food, something good happens, your first response should not be to kind of accept it for what it is. You know, people that hold themselves to high standards, I do this too, there's almost a part of me that doesn't want to bathe in things that go well because they should be a given because I'm a high performer that demands a lot of myself. You know what I mean? I do. I do.

But this isn't the way that the the brain we spoke about the reticular act of activating system earlier on. You want to permanently be on the lookout for as many reasons to feel good about yourself as possible because Lord fucking knows there's enough reasons to feel like shit about yourself, right? And everybody has that. So what I try to do, and I fail a lot, and I need to work harder at this specific skill, maybe do a sprint for sort of three months where I really, really, really focus on it, I finish a podcast, I finish a podcast like three or four times a week, like I have the opportunity to set myself a little reminder, maybe I need a post it note, to set myself a little reminder that when I finish

for just, you know, 15 or 30 seconds after I do that or after you complete the tasks that you said for the day or finish your gym routine or or do your meditation or have a great conversation with your partner or have a bad conversation with someone that you didn't want to, but you did because you needed to be truthful and be virtuous to yourself. When you do that, just allow it to sit for 30 seconds and just marinate in the sensation of that. Okay, how does it feel for me to have done something that I feel proud and satisfied about myself for doing?

And Rick, neurons that fight together, why together, you will continue to find reasons to feel good about yourself. And as a strategy, that's the concept of hardwiring happiness there in the book. Like, highly recommend you go and read it, but if you don't want to, there's the concept. What you're describing there,

especially for high performers, right? People that are high speed, tightly wound, and have high expectations of themselves. We are wired to get satisfaction, to get self-worth through production, production, which in many ways I'm jealous of regular people who can just watch TV and you know, not feel lazy and sluggish. Dude, I could watch TV like a show with my son like I we watched pulp fiction the other day and I had complete. I probably stack like 15, 20 wins that day, but after watching pulp fiction, it's somewhat of a long movie. I was like, fuck man, this was not productive.

Like I have conditioned myself or maybe better said this way. I've been wired through a series of abuse and trauma and neglect to feel that I am only a worthy human when I am producing. And if I am producing, I'm worthy. And so when I'm relaxing, if I'm sick, if I'm watching TV, I'm not. And therefore, we have guilt,

and therefore we don't allow ourselves to enjoy for even 15 seconds that win, because I must go on and produce again, because that's the only way I'm a worthy human. It doesn't work that way, though. Like I am absolutely patient, zero, for what you're talking about. I attached my sense of self worth

for a decade and a half to the success of the events. I ran my life business for a very long time. I came up with something that, I think is kind of related to this. I need a fourth horseman. I'm doing it for a project I'm working on at the moment. I've got three horses of the productivity apocalypse so far. I'm gonna find a fourth one.

Or I'm just gonna have to retrofit three horses of the productivity apocalypse. So productivity pur'm gonna find a fourth one. Or I'm just gonna have to retrofit three horses of the productivity apocalypse. So productivity purgatory is the first one and this is really interesting. So if you attach a lot of your sense of self worth to being productive, what you can end up doing is even having rejuvenative relaxation protocols

only existing because you believe that they will facilitate your productivity tomorrow. So you don't go for a walk with your partner in nature because you want to enjoy their time. It's because you listen to an Andrew Huberman episode that said 15 minutes of walking down regulates your amygdala so that your focus responds and dopamine urges C-saur is better tomorrow, right? It allows you to never escape productivity, which is productivity purgatory. The dark playground is the second one. This is an idea from Tim Urban, and this is almost kind of the opposite. So the dark playground is when you are trying to be productive, you should be being productive, but you're choosing to do something which

is unproductive. So you're procrastinating off from productivity to watch YouTube or read a book or scroll tick talk or whatever, you don't get the enjoyment of the entertainment because you've got the guilt of not being productive. And obviously you don't get the outcome of the productivity because you're not being productive. So that's a dark playground. And then not being able to enjoy fun because you feel like you should be working is the third one. And I haven't come up with a meme for that yet. You've caught me part way through. It's like I've only got my pants on, I haven't fully dressed yet.

But yeah, not being able to enjoy fun because you feel like you should be working, which is the one that you just identified that. And look, being a type A hard charging person comes with its benefits. But again, as we talked about before, the true third wave Renaissance man is the guy who is also able to go to the seashells for a week with his partner, not work, switch off his phone, and know that all of the, like, what was the reason for working this hard

if you cannot let it go, Bingo? That is a really difficult question for lots of people to answer and ultimately what it comes down to is it is a cope to bolster their sense of worthiness to the world. I am only worthy when I train for this hard every single morning. Do the achieve this much, earn this much money,

answer this many emails, only get this much sleep, that's a fucking difficult one. When people see their restriction of things that are good for them are enjoyable as a badge of honor somehow. And yeah, I think that we should all be very, very cautious of taking what is absolutely a performance in hands. You know, your ability to or your discomfort around relaxation drives you to do more things. But in no one's world is that fucking optimal, right? That's not what you want, like what's the reason for working this hard

if you are unable to enjoy the fruits of your labor, you know? So interestingly enough, what ended up helping me. And again, remember my, the work I did with Kevin Downing, my therapist was 10 and a half, 11 years ago. And then as I started spending, so healing helped me because I realized myself worth is not directly attached to production, right? So it always goes back to healing, healing.

Because again, you're given trauma either accidentally because the family gives you a nickname that you attach some kind of weird meaning to Healing healing because again, you're given trauma either accidentally because you know the family gives you a nickname that you attach some kind of weird meaning to and that you carry that for decades into your future or true trauma happened like you were raped molested abused whatever however the trauma shows up healing is necessary otherwise your self-worth is going to be attached to something either either attached to you being attached to someone or you always being the martyr or production in my case, or case, especially when you're a hard charger. But as I healed, I realized my self-worth is not attached to that one bit. And so I can catch the conversation in my

head because literally as Andrew and I were watching Pulp Fiction and I'm like, man, this movie is going along pretty long here. I don'tp Fiction and I'm like, man, this movie's going along pretty long here. I don't feel that productive. I'm like, dude, I'm having the greatest time with my son right now. Mealy, I can catch that negative thought that's still because here's a deal. I think you've been around long enough to know when Microsoft would have a, like your Microsoft-based computer would have a virus. Sometimes it wouldn't be able to necessarily fix or get rid of the virus,

it would quarantine the virus, remember that? Yeah, yeah. And it would quarantine the virus on your hard drive. So the virus, I think, gets quarantined in us. It doesn't go away, it's quarantined. And so while I know myself worth now is not attached to production, it will still rear its ugly head. But that's the realistic path to enlightenment again, right?

Self-awareness. Yeah. It's it's look. Your day is going to be punctuated with reflections that upon reflection, you're going to wish you didn't have. Yeah. It's not the job of you to seamlessly, perfectly thread the needle through this minefield of potential thought failures. Your job is to be able to notice them when they arise. Like the perfect meditation session is not the one where your mind never gets distracted.

It's when you notice when it does. Exactly. And this is the same. You sit down and you notice this little habit arise. You know, like fucking Taipei bedross just ambiently appears, hey, hey, you could be working. Hey, there's emails to answer.

Hey, you could be doing, you could be being more productive. Okay, I see, I see that, I see that. And that maybe even some truth to it. And we release and allow that to go, right? Like that's. And that is the beauty of transcending from human animal to human being, connecting with consciousness because you become the observer in your life, right? And you know this.

And when you become the observer, you can now see things almost from a outside eyes. And I could see from outside eyes, like, oh, okay, that person said something. It rubbed me the wrong way. I'm feeling a certain way. Human animal wants to react. Human being is gonna take a moment and go, did he really mean it that way? Or is this just triggering something

old in me that's been quarantined? And when we can have outside eyes and become the observer in our own life versus reacting to everything as though it's factual, we begin to get the utmost amount of control, like true control of our life, of our status, of our well-being, of our health, of our relationships. And I think you're either going to have some false sense of control as we talked about in the beginning where you know, you've string some weird things together just to meet a narrative that you've built in your mind to give you some sense of false control, or you can have true control by being the observer and realizing, hey, I'm looking to react.

I didn't sleep all last night, and the sky said something that triggered something in my head for many years ago. So I'm not going to respond to this guy right now. Being the observer is necessary and to become the observer, you have to transcend healing, transcendence, that is the ultimate purpose, self mastery that we have to achieve in life. And I think most are too distracted by social media and all content overload to even pause to begin to listen to the conversation in their head to see where it's going. But they, I think everybody has a sense. I have a lot of faith in people's ability for personal growth, especially the people that are listening to this are already outliers, right?

They've got enough time to listen to me and you waffle on about the nuances of fucking mindfulness for two hours. So they're already outliers. But I have a lot of faith that most people realize that there's something up here. I'm built for more. I'm built for more and I could become more

and I really, really want the tools to be able to do it. And the satisfaction that I get, I would actually go as far as to say that the satisfaction of noticing when I nearly go awry and then bring myself back in, is about on par with reflecting and realizing that I never went awry in the first place because both of those things have been

arrived up by conscious effort. Right. Being able to sit down and do a podcast and at no point have even had a sense of time because I've just been dialed on the person that I'm sat opposite is perfect. But being distracted during and realizing, oh, fuck, we've got to make sure that the flights for that thing and then going, nope, and coming back in is also a win, right?

It's impossible to lose. The only time that you lose is when you allow that thing to continue to take you away. Even if it does, and then you bring yourself back in and it's a strategic lesson, it's the John Covenant thing, right? You either win or you learn. Right. Exactly. I quote the I absolutely adore.

Your haters are out there holding their breath, waiting for you to fail. Make sure they suffocate. One thing that I'm cautious of with that, and it's a, don't get me wrong, it is a very useful frame, right? Use what you have, including your resentment over the people that don't like you and want to see you fail. One thing that I'm slightly cautious of with that is creating external enemies that you give too much power to, that you then begin not being a sovereign agent, you then start to play games that other people want you to play. I spoke about this to Homozi a few months ago,

and it was the first time I'd really been able to put it into words. I'll try and explain it to you and see if it relates to this. So sometimes, in my more juvenile, bitter, resentful moments, I try, or I imagine I fantasize about beating people at their game, because I know that it's a game that I could win at too.

Let's say that there's someone who has a particular dislike for me or has some sort of disdain and I know that they really care about money and I think, well, you know, I could dedicate the next 12 months to like earning more than 10 times your net worth and I know that that would make them feel bad and First off it It's a stupid thing to do to let somebody else determine your game, but what Alex taught me was Even if you win

You still lose Because they got you to change your game. Your game changed. And they didn't even know that you were playing. Yeah. And I think that that's, there needs to be a name for what that is. It's like goal hijack, right? Where you do something to try and prove a point to somebody

that didn't even know that you were doing it because of them. You consider it a kind of win because you did win, but you hijacked your own goal to prove to somebody else that you can do it better than them. So even if you beat them, they still beat you. Yeah. But the message behind that quote of, you know, your haters are holding their breath waiting for you to lose, make sure they suffocate is, is this not to change your game? Because it takes a high level of self mastery to stay on path. Those that are influenced by their haters, by their naysayers, and then therefore change their game, you're absolutely right.

You end up winning a game that you were never intending to play in the first place, which is absolutely idiotic. However, if you realize that, hey, the going got tough today. I may want to throw in the towel. Wait a minute. There's probably people sitting out there waiting for me to throw in the towel. I'm going to win my game for them today, not for me, but for them. Use what you have. Use what you have. And I believe again, God, the creator of the universe, has given us a different emotions of anger, of love, of abundance, of hate, jealousy. Those are all tools on our tool belt to be used appropriately.

Now, I can be absolutely jealous and go kill someone and end up in prison. I could be jealous, let's say my wife leaves me and is with someone else, and I'm so jealous that I go kill them. I'm going to prison. Or I'm so jealous that I end up becoming the even better version of myself. I still weaponized jealousy, but at my game. I think that is, we could call it the alchemy of emotions.

Yeah. Right. That you get to take something which is toxic and turn it into something which is valuable. And that's, again, this is a realistic path to enlightenment. It's not to never feel jealousy or envy or distaste or bitterness or resentment or hatred or insufficiency, it's to use those things to better yourself and the world around you and the people that you care about, right? That is, use what you have.

Which is massive, man. Most people don't. Most people, in fact, most people feel that they are using everything they have to their advantage and the life still isn't working out in their favor. When in reality, I would say they're probably using 20% of the things that are within their control. And then they're trying to influence the things that are outside of their control. And they're getting upset and frustrated. They can't control Biden or the border or the economy or inflation. But what are all the things that you can't control Biden or the border or the economy or inflation.

But what are all the things that you can control? Can you control what you're about to eat next when you're going to sleep? What your what text messages are going to respond to? What social media channels are going to look at that are going to give you this sense of feeling like you're missing out on life? There's so many elements to control yet they feel like, well, I'm controlling all I can. You're not even scratching the surface. Let me give you this quote from Adam Lane Smith, a friend, ex-psychotherapist, now a relationship coach. A person obsessing over politics

is a good indicator that their personal relationships are a mess. Unless they're financially invested in the political sphere, they're probably compensating for feeling powerless in their life. Ooh, so well put. Beautiful. Beautiful.

We were talking about the internal external locus of control mentioned to you before we started. William Costello, one of my friends, is one of the leading in-sell researchers on the planet. He is a researcher of in-sells, not an in-sell who is a researcher. I need to get that out there. But he sent me something from a new article that he's working on at the moment. The tendency for interpersonal victimhood, the TIV, is from 2020 study, it describes an ongoing feeling that the self is a victim, a feeling that

becomes central to one's identity. Those with a perpetual victimhood mindset tend to have an external focus of control and believe that one's life is entirely under the control of forces outside of one's self. The TIV, the tendency for interpersonal victimhood, is composed of four dimensions, a need for recognition, the preoccupation with having the legitimacy of grievances acknowledged, moral elitism, the belief that the individual or their in-group behaves more morally than others, a lack of empathy, and the belief that because of their victimization and individual cares less about the pain of others and rumination, the preoccupation with reflecting on the past instances of victimization.

The in-cellosphere, i.e. the online space occupied by in-cells, can be characterized as fatalistic, misogynistic echo chambers in which misery and failure are celebrated emblematic of all four dimensions of the TIV. This suggests that most in cells take an external locus of control to the extreme in perceptions of themselves and intersex relations. Many in cells subscribe to a philosophy or worldview known as the Black Pill, a derivative of the Red Pill denoting a willingness to see the world as it really is, as opposed to the blissful ignorance of taking the blue pill. My point here is, those constituent parts are present in absolutely everybody. And I have an awful lot of sympathy for the guys who feel like the world

is sort of leaving them behind, who feel like they were built for a different era. And I see in myself, all of those, need for recognition, the lack of empathy, the room, and maybe not the lack of empathy, actually, I've always had that, but the rumination, the preoccupation with the reflecting on past instances of victimization, all of that is very, what was number two, I think number two was, four dimensions, need

for recognition, the preoccupation with having the legitimacy of grievances acknowledged, moral elitism, the belief that the individual or the in group behaves more morally than others To have you know whatever grievances acknowledged like what if you don't what if someone doesn't come back and say you know what I wrong you So what so what like like some of those are It would be great if someone came to me and said betos you know I I did you wrong many years ago, and I apologize for that. Like, I would want to hear that.

Yeah. But because I don't, and therefore, stay in this victimhood, it breaks my heart because I'm sure these are good dudes with the best of intentions, and they feel they're meant for another era. But in reality, this is the era that, again, goes back to internal versus external

locus of control. Well, this is the area you're in. So if you can take control of the era that, again, goes back to internal versus external locus of control. This is the area you're in. So if you can take control of the area you're in, can you then begin to build yourself into the man who is high value in this era? I'm sure there's things they can do. Plenty of them. Start working out. Start listening to podcasts that you actually value and get value from.

Create change or circle of influence. If you're in an echo chamber where everybody feels the same way and is just compounding your negative feeling of yourself, maybe you ought to consider walking away from that. Well, the crazy thing about, and this is the darkest side of the in-cellosphere black pill sort of movement,

is that the number one thing that you cannot do as a member of that community is what's called ascend. Given that what we were talking about at the very beginning of this conversation, it could not be more of the antithesis, I think, of the worldview that meaning like. So in these communities, it's not just if you were to say that you've got a girl's phone number today, that would be an absolutely insane and unbelievable and would absolutely get you kicked out of the group. If you were to say the barista at Starbucks's eyes lingered on you for longer than you

thought was normal today, that maybe there's a glimmer of hope and the reason that ascending or even the inclination of ascension is so disparaged in the black pill community, at least in the in-cell community, black pill slightly different, in the in-cell community, the reason it's so disparaged is that I think it gives hope. Right. Oh, well, maybe this isn't completely just fatalistically determined and at the mercy of the universe, because if this person was able to enact some change or have a good thing happen to them,

maybe that can happen to me. And as soon as you posit hope, you then posit the potential for disappointment, right? Yeah. It's sour grapes at an existential level. That's what you want. And also hope also, once you have hope, you are forced then to take action next.

Yeah. And let's take it. The reality is in action, sitting there, playing their video games, cheeto dust and their belly buttons and their mom's basement is far more convenient and requires less effort and less momentum and less inertia than actually feeling hope and therefore taking action. Because if that guy actually, let's use that guy, he went to Starbucks to Berista actually smiled and gave him a wink and then on the hot cup of chailate, there was her phone number and he shared this in the group. Now he's got hope whether he shares it or not,

now he has to take action. He's gonna have to call her, if he calls her and now she says, yes, let's go out, he's gonna have to comb his hair, brush his teeth. My God, he might actually have to bathe. Like, look at the series of actions. And if she actually likes him, he may decide, I got to work out to keep her.

And there's a series of actions that these guys don't want to take. Again, I believe the in-sell community is the most toxic, damaging community. And it's a bucket of crabs. You know how bucket of crabs operate, right? And let's share for your audience. Like, if there's a five-gallon bucket of crabs operate, right? And let's share for your audience. Like, if there's a five gallon bucket of crabs,

there's no lid required for that bucket of crabs because when the ambitious crab begins to climb on top of the rest and starts lifting itself up by grabbing the rim of that bucket instinctively, those crabs at the bottom will grab their legs and pull them down. And so the fisherman never has to put a lid on the bucket of crabs that are alive because he knows that they will police each other and pull them down. That is the insult

community. And so they absolutely look down upon hope because hope leads to action and action means that you might free yourself from here. And that also does something else. Holy shit, that holds a mirror up to me and says, I might have to actually take some action. And well, that's inconvenient. I'd rather jack off to porn hub or or only fans and keep playing my video games versus actually put some sunlight on my body and get rid of my gelatinous body and do something like decent, like string of pair words together that make a cohesive sentence. Well, it's more comfortable to get fatalistic and call it shriotism. Right.

Like, the cope is framing hope as naivety. Right. And there is, I see this in, it kind of appears almost in other ways as well. You know, look at the, look at the sort of intellectual heterodox community. There is something alluring and kind of sexy and aloof about having a contrarian point of view, right, or being a cynic in some ways. And you go, well, are you sophisticated? Like, is that have you arrived at this world view through being sophisticated?

Or is this just the exact inverse of whatever the mainstream believes? Right? Being a black sheep is still being a sheep. Mm-hmm. You're no smarter by just doing the exact opposite of whatever the mainstream tells you. Correct. It's no more sophisticated view.

It is precisely as unsophisticated, just in reverse. In reverse. And this is no different than what we talked about earlier when we said that the, And then when we talked about earlier, when we said that these guys in the in-cell community are probably lacking purpose, any sense of purpose, fulfillment, significance, let's be honest. And significance is one of the core fundamental needs of any human.

Like, you want to feel like you matter. And so, you know what, if I can hang out in this echo chamber on this, you know, red at board or comment section of this YouTube channel, and this could be my purpose. I could be the guy just constantly beating the drum and be part of this community. It is a community. And we want to belong to a community. It's unfortunately a community that's toxic. It's negative. And it's so damaging. And when those that have any sense of hope, as you said, get stifled so quickly. It's disincentivized. It's actively disincentivized to do a thing that would pull you out of it.

And dude, I see it. I see, you know, if you get behaviorally, behavior genetics red-pilled, you realize that an awful lot of the outcomes that you have, your potential in life, is very, very heavily predisposed by the genetic sort of raw material that you were given. And then on top of that, you know, random chance and the environment and the events that you encounter in life also have that, there are just layers and layers and layers of things that are outside of your control. And I completely understand why people people become transfixed by that. Yeah. It breaks my heart, but it does not absolve them from what they need to hear, which is they're still losers. And they are actively living as part of the unwashed masses. And they will continue to stay peasants and will soon as they get older come to the realization that a decade has gone by and valuable time

has been wasted and they need to hear this as much as my heart bleeds for them. And I wish I could just parachute into the in cell fucking annual world conference convention and shake everyone by the shoulder and just say, let's go. Like, that's what I would do if I could. But I can't. So they need to hear the message that a decade is going to go by and they're going to see things and feel things differently and realize that time was absolutely wasted and you will never get it back. You say the emotionally immature man seeks out motivation to do something hard one time. The emotionally mature man uses discipline to do something hard a thousand times. Why is emotional maturity related to motivation and discipline? Good question, because when

you have emotional maturity, you realize that some days you're not going to sleep well. Some days you're going to wake up and you've got your schedule and everything's planned out and the poop hits the fan. You've got to eat those shit sandwiches, right? And whether things go well or not that day, the emotionally mature man will still do what he has to do to stack his wins, to focus on his purpose. Whereas the emotionally immature man will say, well, I didn't sleep well. I had nightmares while staying in bed. I didn't sleep well or it's raining outside. It's cold outside. I don't sleep well. I had nightmares while I was staying in bed. I didn't sleep well or it's raining outside, it's cold outside, I don't feel good. I just woke up and the airplanes hit the world trade center.

So I guess I have to change my pattern of life. You have to stay the course no matter what. And it takes a high level of emotional maturity because your emotions dictate your motion, like what you're gonna do. And so if you have emotional maturity, you're more likely to lean into discipline when things are sub-optimal. If you lack emotional maturity, then how you feel determines what you do next, which is very damaging to outcome driven humans.

Yeah, I felt this in myself. I sort of talked about the thinness of the line that you walk between seeing just how close you came to not doing a thing, but it's not the life direction and where your world could have ended up. It's literally every single interaction that you do all of the time. So I had a, I'm doing these live shows at the moment, I will do a full life tour on Island, UK, then Dubai, then the US and Canada to all the back end of this year. And I decided that I was going to do work in progress shows like how comedians do them

because I wanted to kind of move through the material and see how it gets responded to on stage and then maybe make some adjustments to how I was presenting it and also become comfortable, right? Like you've spoken in front of big group, fucking terrifying. Fucking hell. So I want you to spend some time on stage. And the way that I was feeling in the week leading up to these work in progress shows was... By the way, this is delicious, bro.

You happy with that? That is. I'm not kidding, this is amazingly delicious. We worked unbelievably hard on that. Thank you. Six months of taste testing to get that puppy right. Hell yeah. So we are, I was feeling pretty shitty and then it's like, I've got the show on the Monday

and this is the first one of the work in progress shows and it's all the rest of it. And I've got fucking COVID, right? And say what you want for the people out there. I'm all for COVID only killed, like, you know, the old and the unhealthy and the blood people with the predisposition and all the rest of it. Like lockdowns were over the top and we didn't need to respond in the way that we did in all the rest of it. Let me tell you it is no fucking joke, right? I'm 35 with four figure testosterone, and it killed me. It absolutely side-swiped me. And then I'm out of the other side, I test, I test negative for being able to,

like, whatever, I've done the incubation period. So I know that I'm fine to do the show, but I still feel like absolute dog shit. My HRV's in the tank, my resting heart rates through the roof, even like my blood oxygen isn't there. I can tell that I use a woo-rope. And I feel my felt sense is thought to muddy, coughing, throat's not clear, my speech and diction coach,

Miles, who is usually very, he's pro voice rest for stuff like this. And I had a couple of, I had a little council, the council of elders that I had a couple of, I had like a little council use, the council of elders that I had to tap into. Jimmy Carr said that he thought I shouldn't do it because he said, like, you're so early on in your life tour career, that if you have a bad show, it might knock your confidence.

And that could be a difficult spiral cascade to get back out of. I spoke to Miles, and Miles said, I think that you should do it because I think that it's a good opportunity to get on stage. The reason that I did it because I'm still fundamentally psychotic is that I realized if I was able to perform well on stage, only seven days after I'd had COVID, still feeling like dog shit, to perform well on stage.

Only seven days after I'd had COVID, still feeling like dog shit. That when I'm on tour, we're doing Edmonton and Calgary and Toronto in the middle of December. If I'm freezing cold and we've slept in some shit house hotel or maybe the flight got canceled and we haven't slept at all and we've been in the airport overnight, how hard is this going to be?

I fucking did it with, I did it just recovering from COVID. So it was like a flag that I was planting in the ground to prove to myself. This is the level that I can get to. We did recently in LA, we did all of these shows back to back to back to back to back. First off, because there was tons of people that I was super, super excited to speak to, like today. Come to LA, I am swimming and interesting people that I was super, super excited to speak to, like today. Come to LA, I am swimming in interesting people, so I want to do it. But there's gonna be a price that I need to pay, right?

And it's like, okay, well, where's the bar that I can set myself? And this is the coolest thing, like not talking about not to one anymore. We're now talking about 95 to 96 and 96 to 97, right? When you actually think, okay, this is where I previously thought my limit was and don't get me wrong, I'm having conversations sat down with fucking interesting people, fueled by caffeine, right?

Like just mainlining it into my veins, okay? Like I'm not doing the 75 hours of like, seal, like, selection bullshit that you guys do. But I was like, okay, this is where I thought my limit was for this. Let's just see if we can nudge this a little bit. And the strategic learning opportunity, right, you either, like when are you learning, the strategic learning opportunity of, what does this mean for me if I can do it?

And importantly, if it doesn't go well, as opposed to saying this makes me less of a person in an inferiority, okay, what do I need to do in order to nudge my capacity to be able to get that? And we can see it with whatever it is that you want to care about, right? Can I do 50 minutes of meditation instead of 10? Can I not hit the snooze button for a full week in a row? And if I don't, I don't moralize about it. I don't tell myself some sort of a story about what this means about me as a person.

What I do is I say, okay, what do I need to do to be able to achieve this? And I think it's just such a, like that framing, it comes to me when I'm in my best moments, right? When I'm my least juvenile, my least bitter, my least resentful, and that version of me, like treating myself like a friend that I'm responsible for helping in Jordan Peterson language, is like, there's no losing, There's no losing. And

it feels so fulfilling. And I remember the texture of my mind when I didn't have that self-love, where my self-talk wasn't there. And yeah, man, I mean, fucking hell, like I am absolutely patient zero for being someone that thought that wasn't friends with, with his inner voice. Well, that's what we need most, right? So we teach what we need most. And so what you've done is you've gone from the zero to whatever, like as you said in the high 90s. And now that's that's what you're teaching.

And you're good at teaching it because it's coming from real life experience versus have read these thousand books on self growth, self help, but I'm still the fucking human animal behind closed doors. Yeah. And I'm just going to pair it off what I've heard. But to that point, I'm so glad you did that show, even while feeling like dog shit, having even, you know, while you weren't contagious, I can confirm that when I had COVID,

it was definitely like I got hit by a semi-truck and all 18 tires ran over me. Like, again, I agree with you in every way, you should have your right to choose whether you're gonna get the jab or not and we shouldn't have had the lockdowns and et cetera, but it definitely hits you different than the common cold or the flu,

at least it did for me as well. So, but that said, I think people, most of us are aware of IQ and EQ. And I think the factor that most people aren't aware of is the AQ, the adversity quotient, and that if you could do something that you would normally do in a under-deress, so you're trying to recover, your lungs are trying to recover, and you're doing something that you planned on doing in perfect health. Now you're doing that under suboptimal conditions. You are increasing your adversity quotient, your ability to deal with adversity and maintain

composure for prolonged period of time. That then directly has influence on the IQ and EQ as well. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because you're like, holy shit, if I could do this. What else can I do? What else can I do? It gives you a high level of competency, and therefore confidence. There's a competency confidence loop, right?

And it goes, well, maybe I can actually invest in increasing my intelligence more. I can probably become a more emotionally connected human. That then allows you to go, I can probably do more things under duress, higher adversity quotient. Yeah, Ryan Holidays says, self-belief is overrated, I prefer evidence. And that was a bit like a strategic piece of evidence.

And it was probably risky, right? Looking back, I don't know how risky it was, but I was able to do it. And I'm like, oh, cool. Well, you know, if I step out on stage and all hell breaks loose and the lights go out and all the rest of it, like I still might shit myself, but I've at least got one kind of difficult thing that I overcame that makes me feel like fuck yeah, I feel good about myself, I haven't done that. So, but go back to what you said real quick,

remember what you're gonna say, because you said something so profound earlier, that line where you made that decision to go on stage versus not, or you consulted with your elders, and ultimately you made that decision. Let's say all the elders said, bro, stay in bed, recover. And you're like, fuck it.

That's regarded. Yeah, that line is so thin, man. It is so easy to justify and negotiate with your inner self and go, fuck it, I'll stay in bed. And then only to realize, I just stacked a big L, right? And that line is super thin, And if we can just cross that chasm into doing what's right, which is choose adversity under duress and watch how you continue to turn up that thermostat of the high self. But that's how people get to, you know, you look at

anybody that's done anything particularly spectacular in their life. And you think, than anything particularly spectacular in their life. And you think how is someone able to achieve this work rate? You know, I often look at Rogan and I think, Jesus, fucking Christ man, like the show, the comedy, the UFC, the family, and the leisure time and the friends and stuff like that. And I'm like, wow, like even from me, someone that's seen it firsthand, it's still like that, and like, even from me, someone

that's seen it firsthand, it's still like, it's like the guys got 36 hours in the day, or something like that. But the thing that you realize as you reflect on your own ability to progress is, well, I see my development, I see where my life used to be and my capacity used to be and I remember the texture of my own mind a little bit I used to think it'd be really cool, you know You can take a photo and that's kind of a snapshot in time of what you can see I'd love to be able to take a snapshot in mind of the texture of your own existence and be able to go back and visit it Right

What would it like to be a 2013 Chris? Let me just drop in for five minutes. Oh my god Remember all of the things that used to capture my attention and the fears I had and the rumination? I didn't even realize that this was an entire world that I could tap it and then you get pulled back out of it and getting, you know, because you can even see the number on the scale, the difference in the photos of your body, like the development, but the development of the texture of your own mind, you can only ever experience your past experience through the experience you have now. And it limits your theory of mind for yourself, for your past self, right?

And I thought it would be cool if there was, maybe Elon would knew a link, he'll be able to make a point out. I was gonna say, if anyone's gonna pull that off, it's gonna be Elon, but what, think of what an advantage it would give us to see like how much growth we've had, or how much we haven't.

I fuck, a decade's gone by, and I'm still that guy complaining about the government and taxes and inflation and what's happening instead of actually becoming the hero in my own journey. Fuck yeah. Right. What are you doing next? What can people expect from you soon? So I'm actually working on a second book now.

Manup was my first book came out in 2018 and it's done really well and my show, The Bedro's Cool In Show really popped off, thankfully, this last 12 months and quadrupled my book sales. So it went from great to extraordinary. That inspired me to write my next book, which I've got a working title, so I'm not going to share it here. What are you thinking about as a broad subject area?

What I'm thinking about the broad subject is still going to be in this self-development genre, but I'm finding more and more evidence that change can really take place in an instant and that it doesn't have to be this massive, long, painful journey. The change can take place in an instant, almost of a flip of a switch, if you will. And so I'm through my own personal experience and through the experience of those that I coach and consult, I've kind of almost figured out this hack of creating change quickly and then maintaining that change, new identity. And so I want to be able to share that because I think most people who want to produce change and become the best version of themselves

The work ahead of them overwhelms them. Yeah, and I think that there is a shorter path to it that still requires work make no mistake about it and It is very it's you know what it's like the project. I was telling the guys so yesterday You know we finished running the project 75 hour men's personal development experience, focused on those 5Fs, faith, family, fitness, finance, fulfillment. And I said, fellas, remember, we had you for 75 hours. So you can't go home and expect your wife to automatically wake up at 4 a.m. or whatever time you wanted to wake up and attack her fucking dreams. And so like, we had you and the, the marine and the seal and, and these guys like forced you into doing the things and

increasing your capacity in 75 hours. Like they were able to lead better and 75 hours are able to communicate better. They were able to problem solve better. They were able to work as a team better. And those are the four fundamental things you need in life. All of life consists of communication, teamwork, problem solving, and leadership. And so, but that's because they are in the pressure cooker of the project. I said, you can't go home and expect your family to have a sudden fall in line. Because running the first two or three classes of the project, I would get messages from the wives like, holy fuck, you guys created a monster.

Like, I don't want to wake up at this time and then go to the gym twice a day and then also attack this part of my life and the meditation and the work and then figure out what my next phase of life is gonna look like before this phase is over. All right, great. I get it. You know what? Let's start telling these guys. Easier family into it over a 90 day period. Let's pick one pillar of the five pillars and ease them into it over a 90 day period. and ease them into it over a 90 day period. And so I think the same thing applies here. Like, there is, it is going to take hard work, but there is a compressed way to be able to flip the switch and find that new identity and then become that person

virtually overnight, but it's still requires hard and heavy work. I think that's what a formative experience is, right? Like people have been through things. Sometimes it's trauma, sometimes it's a loss, sometimes it's a Tony Robbins event. You know what I mean? There's things that happen that are just so important to people. And why?

I mean, if you could self-generate that, if you could not have to wait for the world to give you the input, to be able to make that happen, if you could manufacture that element that will trigger the change is huge. Yeah. Fuck yeah, that's cool. Yeah.

Bedruss Kylian, ladies and gentlemen, dude, I really appreciate you. Thank you for coming to see me. But should people go, they want to follow your work? Yeah, yeah. So first off, Chris, thank you for the opportunity, man. I'm a big fan of your show and I really appreciate the opportunity you've given me here. Secondly, best place to find me is either on YouTube or Instagram at Bedros Coolian.

Hallya, Bedros, thank you, man. Thank you. you