The Bossticks - Ed Latimore On How To Control Your Mind, & Emotions By Being Objective, Educating Yourself, & Looking At Other Peoples Opinions With An Open Mind

Episode Date: May 27, 2021

#360: On today's episode we are joined by former pro boxer turned writer, & online entrepreneur; Ed Latimore. Ed joins the show to discuss how we can control our mind and emotions by educating ourselves and being objective. We also discuss how people with differing opinions should not immediately be set aside or looked upon with hostility, but rather with curiosity and a desire to understand. We round out the show by discussing the benefits of surrounding yourself with people that have opinions counter to your own.  To connect with Ed Latimore click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by HUSH Hush is on a mission to help people around the world relax with ease and fall asleep faster whenever they wish. We love the lunar grey throw. It's the perfect weighted blanked to help melt away anxiety and sleep better. Hush also has an amazing give back program where they donate 1 in 10 adult blankets and 1 in 5 kids blankets to charities and shelters in need. You also have a 100 night money back guarantee . Visit https://hushblankets.com/ and use code SKINNY for 10% off all items! This episode is brought to you by Just Thrive During a time when boosting our immune health needs to be at the forefront of our minds Just Thrive has the answer for you. The Just Thrive probiotic can help boost your immune system and heal your gut. 80-90% of Americans suffer from gut issues and these issues can track to many of the diseases that humans face. With Just Thrive probiotics we can help combat these gut issues. Use promo code SKINNY at www.justthrivehealth.com/skinny to try today!  This episode is brought to you by Oshēn Salmon Oshēn Salmon was created for those who longed for their perfect protein match. One that was easy to prepare, packed with protein, and made us glow from within. Hello omega-3s! Ocean raised salmon has more than 1,500 mg of Omega-3 content which is double the Omega-3 contentus versus most wild salmon. To get your box of Oshen visit www.oshensalmon.com and use code SKINNY for 15% off plus free shipping.  Produced by Dear Media 

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And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her. When I meditate, I like to think about how badly a situation could have turned out. That's as close as I need to get. You don't have to learn everything the hard way. if you do, you probably won't survive long enough to reap the benefit of the lesson. So I try to learn things that way by imagining the experience. And that's where that comes from.

We have got an exciting episode for you today. Our friend Ed is on the podcast, dropping some major realness. Ed Lattimore on the show today. Many of you guys may be familiar with Ed's writing. He is a bestselling author, former professional heavyweight boxer and competitive chess player. And the way that we got turned on to Ed Ladamore was scrolling through Twitter, just, you know, perusing around. And I started to see writing from this guy. And the way that Ed writes on Twitter is literally like an artist. He somehow is able to capture your attention in very few characters. And so, you know, we really started this rapport back and forth on Twitter. I started sharing some of the stuff that he wrote. He started resharing when I wrote. And I just DMed him one day and said, hey, you know, why don't you come on the show one day and like let us hear your story and get a little bit more into the mind, which is, you know, kind of how these things happen these days.

And Ed has a really interesting background that I'll let Michael tell you about. But this episode kind of goes all over the place. It's definitely a conversation. I was so inspired by his story and then I was inspired by his tips. I mean, he says some things where you're like, oh, my God, that makes so much sense. Yeah, I mean, he's got a very compelling background and story, which we dive into this episode. You know, he said, the way he'll describe it is he says that he likes to tell people that he's lived for lives. He grew up in the public housing projects of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He knew both his

parents, but he didn't necessarily live with them. And growing up poor in public housing projects was stressful and dangerous from at the time. And it really got him to start to look at life in a really kind of cynical way. But from those experiences, you know, he learned different street smarts. He learned different skills. He learned how to really pull himself up from the bootstraps and, you know, really make a life for himself. And he's extremely successful at this point. It got a great platform. And I just, you know, I love compelling stories like this. I love people that take control of their lives, take accountability, and just make the best of it. So, you know, Ed has definitely done that and more.

Also, he wrote some books. They're available on Amazon. Definitely check out sober letters to my drunken self. It's a good one. It has five stars. With that, Ed Lattimore, welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her show. This is the Skinny Confidential, him and her. So listen, I've been a huge fan of you for a long time.

you're writing. I think like I love outspoken people that shake shit up and like you're always shaking shit up. You know that. And I don't even think I'm that controversial, man. It's not that you're controversial. It's that you just when you say things and I feel like they have impact, right? Like, and I think you know that. Your writing is in a style that gets, it grabs attention. And you do it in especially on Twitter, you do it in a way where you don't have to say much and it grabs attention. So, you know, when I, I, you know, you see me sharing your stuff once at a while and I was like, The last one, I think it was something about haters in the street, and I was just laughing. And I said, hey, I got to get this guy on the podcast, but I needed you to come here because we, you know, we try to do these things remotely sometimes.

It's just not the same interaction. Oh, no, this is great. This is the first show I've traveled for. You know, sometimes I did a concrete podcast two years ago. But I just happened to be in Orlando and Tampa was an hour and a half away from Orlando. drove over and that was a really good experience. And I said, all right, whenever I get a chance to do it again, you know, as long as I don't have to go any place crazy. And this, this is perfect. I mean, I'm sure you have no difficulty getting people to go, oh, Austin, all right, cool.

You know, no one's like, man, Austin. Yeah, that is true. It's a good middle ground. It's a good time. It's central. You know, it's easy to get to. And, you know, there's a lot of stuff to do here. So people like, okay, I'm going to come to a podcast. I'm going to come for a meeting. But then there's, like, what you're doing, there's so many people to meet, so many things to do, so much good food. Yeah. It's just a cool place. It seems safe.

You know, really, really blew my mom, man. When we went to a little barbecue, it was like a row of people in tents. And when they were underneath the bridge, man, this guy had a full-on mattress laid out like a king-sized bed. I never really seen anything like that. I mean, I've been to Scared Row, and Scared Row is a different animal. But this was interesting. And the cops were showing up to break it up. I don't know about Dave was telling me that the, I guess a while ago, they voted that

you could live in tents on the street. Yeah, they lifted a camping ban. And now they just lifted it, I guess, I think a day or two ago. And now they're like taking care of the campers. We'll use that word. Skid Row. Can you explain what Skid Row is like to anyone who's never been there? Okay.

So Skid Row, I don't know why they thought this was cool or maybe they couldn't deal with it. But Skid Row in Los Angeles, downtown L.A. is effectively a homeless person city, right? And during the day, you see the homeless people, but the freaks come out at night. You know, full tents pop up in the middle of the street. You can't even drive. Like, when I lived up there,

a friend came out of the business meeting, and she was taking the train to the next destination. So I drove over to the train station. And the train station in LA is, like, right downtown. And I had to, like, navigate. Look, I'm from the projects. I grew up, born and raised. And I did that thing, you know, that joke, like when you drive by, you locked the door,

I hit the door lock and put the windows up and now I was, you know, terrified because the big, the big thing about it that I understand is that the police don't really interfere. They kind of let the street govern the street. So there's not, it's not safe. They don't really care. It's more like, what are you doing in this place, you know? The only other thing I've heard of like this, I put a poll up because I was curious. about it was the Tendaloy district in San Francisco.

It's very similar. Apparently, worse because I guess in San Francisco, there's this whole culture of open intravenous drug use. And that's a very terrible thing as well because drug addicts do things the drug addicts do. And a lot of that is going to be whatever it takes to get more drugs. They're not exactly holding.

You know, if you get to the point where you're living in the street, end on your drugs, probably not pulling the jobs. You got to get it how you get it, usually the scheme-ass way. I want to go back to your childhood. Tell us how you grew up. Give us the whole story.

So what's the best way to put this? Okay. So for those who don't know about the term at-risk youth, I was like, all the markets for at-risk youth, you know, born into poverty. To call my mom, a single mom is probably not accurate

because, like, I knew my dad, but he didn't live with us. He lived across the state. I've probably seen him like four times a year, collectively, if we added up, we work out to less than 24 hours per year that I saw my father. Until I was, my mom didn't get a solid full-time job probably until I was 15, but we were on and off the welfare system because my mom always tried to work, right? But anyone who knows the public assistance system and the welfare system, it's very hard to work because it's like you make as you, as your

income increases, your benefits decrease. And you reach this weird point where you're not really making enough to do anything else. You don't have the time to improve a better yourself. So a lot of people go, okay, the most efficient thing to do is just kind of stay on the system. Fortunately, like very fortunate that my mom did not have that attitude. She had, you know, she had her flaws, but I've learned over the years that it's just a better look to focus on the positive things that I got from that childhood. A lot of negatives, though. We can talk about that, and that is the typical thing you expect. So a lot of violence, engaged in a lot of violence myself, but always defend myself. I'm an unbelievably, I'm probably peaceful to a fault. Boxing really changed a lot of that

in me, and now I'm very much, all right, we have a clear boundary, and it's like out here, and if you get a little too close, we're going to make sure you are aware of the boundary, and that's just not physical, but like psychological mostly, is we don't engage in random fighting. You do have a peaceful energy, though. It's very peaceful. I try to be peaceful. And that comes, I mean, a lot of that was developed in that neighborhood because being volatile

tends to cause a reaction. And sometimes that reaction exceeds your capacity for endurance. So you're going to have to fight some guys. I mean, I fought a lot of guys, but I never, fortunately, like my fighting stopped and I made smart decisions about where to go for high

school. So I wasn't around a lot of the influences. But there comes a point with you're a child where you're not a child anymore. And now we're bringing big boy weapons to the fight. People aren't, you know, just throwing blows and hitting you with rocks. You know, they're going to shoot or a stab or whatever. And those are the kind of things I got to avoid. When you were little and there's violence around you, and I'm talking before high school,

did you know that there was something maybe not right about that? No. Or did you just think that was just how you grew up? Hey, look, every kid who grows up, you know, for example, getting an ass beat, right? I watched a few of the shows, so I know I can swear it. I can swear all the fuck you want. So, yeah, when you go out, for example, getting your ass beat in the house, you think getting your ass beat is normal.

Until you, until I'll never forget, man. I went to a high school completely across town. We had some called the magnet system in our city and you could go to different schools that were not your feeder school. This is in Pittsburgh. Yeah, in Pittsburgh. My feeder school was, you know, full of the people from the hood. But this school was not.

full of people, you know, middle class, upper middle class, and it was a good program. So there were a lot of people who could have sent their kids to some of the private schools, but chose to send them to Schindley where we went. And so all of my friends, all of people are keeping my life, even now to this day, they are middle to upper middle class people. And I went there and I was like, hey, you mean you could talk back and they don't go upside your head? That's crazy.

This is weird. Oh, man, your food, your pantry's full of food. That's crazy. And you see all this and you start to. go, hmm, so you're telling me there's a different way to live. And then at that point, and I think at least my issue, the more I became aware of the differences, the angrier I got that I was there. And how did that manifest itself? Well, for starters, it started with a lot of avoidance. I don't think I spent one full holiday at home in high school. I either woke up

someplace else or I went someplace else or sometimes spent the whole day there. I'm very fortunate that I had really good friends and for families, not just a friend because they embraced me and took me in. And to this day, you know, I'll be randomly thinking about something when I'm writing my newsletter or putting together a post or composing a tweet and it will trigger that the kindness that was really showed. And I'm messaging, reach out to them and I'm like, look, I know, you know, what you did for me probably kept me from going on a different

path. I, you know, just want you to know that your deeds aren't forgotten. You're kind, because you didn't have to let me, you know, took one look at me. And I was, I was composed and together and I think fairly intelligent. But they could have said, no, you know, we don't. Was there violence in your home? Is that why you were escaping? Oh, yeah. Violence, violence, home, violence in the street. My mom was a big believer, you know, and just being your ass, man. That's how we solved a lot of it. And I think is, is, is I look back, at it now. I mean, then I kind of knew this is messed up. But as I look back at it now, I realized while there was, I mean, just outright abuse, man, I had scar my eyebrow

and stuff I had it for once. Once my sister got old enough and tall enough to defend herself, then the police would occasionally get involved. And that was a crazy, crazy mess. Because like once I was like 15, my mom like made a cost benefit analysis of hitting me. And I wasn't one of those. Like, I was like, I was like, I never thought it was a good idea to hit my mom back, but you never know. You don't want to push somebody. So my mom never, you know, she stopped, you know, trying to lay hands on me when I probably finished puberty.

My sister, three years younger, though, it takes three years. And then my sister was like 5-11, man. She was like, yeah. Yeah. So she'd fight back. And that's what it would get into. And you just get used to that vibe. There was no, I tell people all the time.

I didn't, I don't know what a safe place is. I didn't have that. outside was not safe because anything can go down. I knew I was fighting. School wasn't safe until I get to high school. That's going to be where a lot of stuff goes down. Home's not safe. He never really know what's going to kick off.

I didn't start finding those safe places, like I said, until I started, you know, I got the high school. I played a sport all year around or I had a job. So I never went directly home. Weekend, spent time with my friends, holidays where people are typically home from school somewhere else. Because as a kid, I'm like, as a kid, I think I'm just trying to be fun and social, right?

But as I look back and I look at it in the context of everything, and then I have experiences to reference it, I have a brain. It's like completely finished developing. I can go, yeah, man, I was trying to be safe somewhere, no stress, you know, a little fun. But because every location, it wasn't really this idea of fun. It was, you survive, whatever, right? Kids are going to be kids and try and find places to be kids and have fun. I think that's all I did.

you know what I was using last night when I was winding down? What? Wasn't you that I was using. That's for sure. I was going to say it wasn't me. No, it wasn't you. It was my hush blanket. It's a weighted blanket.

And it helps me so much to wind down. It helps with anxiety when I'm feeling overwhelmed. When you're annoying me with QuickBooks in bed, I just put my hush weighted blanket on top of me. That sounds weird, but I do. Listen, true story the other night. I had a couple, too many tequila. Yes, you do. And said a few stupid things and got in trouble with you.

And I just like hung out with my blanket. I was feeling a little bit of anxious the next day. And I'm not going to lie, I may have used the hush blanket to calm my nerves a bit. The one that I like is the classic weighted blanket. It's really like a minky cover. And it's really soft because it has minky threading. And this one I got in lunar gray. It comes in four different sizes and six different weights.

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You can send it back full refund. I know you're going to love it though. I'm telling you. Get the one that I have. I'm like obsessed with it. To check out the hush blanket and all of the hush products, go to hushblankets.com and use code skinny for 10% off all items. Again, that's hushblankets.com and use code skinny for 10% off all items. So when did you find boxing? Because what I've found meeting capable people over the years, and there's a lot of capable people here in Texas, is they have this calm kind of sure energy because you're a capable person.

And I think, you know, I boxed when I was a kid, never to your level, and I still train a little bit, but not at the professional, but what it did for me personally, I think a lot of people in life go through life, being scared. of a punch that never comes, right? They sit there and they wait and they're like, all the anticipation. And when you actually get a bit punched in the face, you actually take a hair, like, oh, it sucks, but it's not as bad as you think it was. So you kind of like break this fear barrier.

It also kind of puts you in a position where you're a little bit more sure of yourself because you know as bad things come at you. You're like, okay, maybe I can't deal with every situation, but I'm capable enough to deal with average situations. And so I'm wondering, one, when you found boxing and kind of what that did not only for you physically, but mentally. Okay. So I didn't start boxing until I was 22.

Like, they used to be old. Now what we're seeing at the highest level is at the heavyweight, because it's a heavyweight. There's something else that goes on. But they used to be old to start. But now we're starting to see these guys come from other sports. Because if you box from a kid, you will not get big enough to fight heavyweight. It's just not possible.

Your body's usually going to be in a caloric deficit. And you're always burning. know, twice your BMR every day. It's not going to happen. So what happens to a lot of guys is they come from another sport, like football or wrestling or whatever, where they did have to put on weight and then they come box heavyweight. This is the path that Deonti Wado took, you know. I know Anthony Joshua didn't start fighting until he was like 18.

I didn't know that. 18 or 19. I'm trying to think of a few, a lot of the guys that I trained with when I was out in California, because that was an incredible experience. It was called All-American Heavyweight. It never happened again, probably. This guy, Michael King, decided he was going to invest and get a bunch of backers to come together and train people from former Division I athletes and tournament to fighters

and then try and get one to the Olympics, which he did with Dominic Brazil. And Dominic trained out there with me as well. But here's another guy from another sport. But to be six, seven, how much is the time weight? Like 250, 240, 250? If you're working out constantly in a heavily aerobic and anaerobic sport, you're not going to put the weight on. So I don't think I started that late. I said all that to say, now I don't think I started that late.

But at the time, it wasn't really a trend for guys to be coming over from the other sports. Now, that's pretty much what everyone does. If they don't have like a super stellar standout pro career, a lot of them got, you know, let's go try a fight. And these guys are huge and incredible. So I start late and I start because I needed, I didn't have any sweat equity. I tell people to story all the time. I mean, I was talking about how I message people who showed me, you know, the conness when I was a kid.

And sometimes it's tough love. And I got a real, real serious dose of tough love. I had went to college one time and it went terribly when I was 18. Dropped out because they were going to, they were going to kick me out. So I just left early. After one semester and I was dating this girl and I spent like every day at her house and, you know, her family fed me, right? But I, that's nice.

But I also was on this like anti-college rate. Like I think college is stupid and it's a trap, et cetera, et cetera, yada, yada, all that kind of rhetoric. Now, I still have that attitude. The difference is I got a degree in physics. You can't really tell me shit. Me like, at the very least, you know, I went through the fire and I did it. But one day she said to me, and this is key, because I'm giving this rant about college to everybody in my circle at this point in my life, including the mother of my girlfriend who is a professor of biology at the University of Pittsburgh. And she said to me one day, she said, okay, let's pretend you're exactly correct.

College is worthless. Or whatever have you done for the past four years other than show up here and eat my food? And then she kicked me out. And that was an ego check, right? I ain't cried a little bit, not going to lie. And then I said, I said, man, I got to do something. Because I wasn't doing anything at that point. I was pretty much, I was working at Starbucks, I think.

Yeah, I was working at Starbucks, man. Back in the day when you used to yell, may I call? Because I know that because I went back for a second job. And we're like, we don't do that anymore. But that was back. I was 21, 22 working at Starbucks. And so I said, let me do something. I looked at all my options.

personality and it came down to join the military our fight. But either way, what I wanted to do was get some sweat equity. And I wanted there to be some proof that I had lived. If you looked at me objectively without talking to me, there was some proof that I had lived other than like stories about, you know, my cool personality. I wanted some objective real stuff. YouTube was just big coming up.

There were videos of fighters everywhere. I said, you know what? I can do that. Let me go through. I want with fighting. And I walked into the gym and my asses. attitude when I went to the gym, I said, okay, I'm not going to quit. I'm going to stop this under two conditions. One, I get injured beyond, you know, I can't go forward. Or somebody after like a

year to like, bro, let me, let me pull your side and tell you something. This is not for you. And neither of those things happened. So I just kept getting a little better, a little better learning because I was terribly uncoordinated. It's a joke. Like, I tell people, people, I'm not the black dude that can play basketball. You don't, don't pick me. I can't really do anything. It's not my sport. And I ended up after, you know, ups and downs,

I encountered someone I couldn't win. I couldn't beat in my city. And he beat me one time. He beat me the second time, all on points, but I couldn't get past them. And I objectively knew. Well, no, at that time, I actually didn't know how not good he was because he's my only comparison.

And I ended up totally unrelated to seeking a better coach. I seek the different coach because he started training at my gym. And I said, okay, this is foolish. How are we going to do this? So I started training with Tommy and Keller. And Tom Yankello, one, he's a role model, man. He's really my friend, but he's an incredible coach. He's coached guys to World Championships.

He's coached. He's been coaching Roy Jones Jr. That's how I ended up, you know, sparring that because he was coaching him. and Tom took me in three weeks and it really fixed a lot and changed my whole ethic and work ethic and then that opened up the opportunity for me to win that state going glove. And the guy I had to beat to go to the state to face the Philly guy on the other side of the state was this guy beat or I lost to two times and I finally, you know, beat him in this time by a second round knockout. So I was like, oh, wow, I'm so much better and it gets better.

It's been been really good. Boxing's been really good for teaching me the power of likability and really re-reemort. forcing that. You learn a bunch about like all the stuff you got to, you know, learn to succeed in business. You'll learn in boxing. So what do you think boxing ultimately did for your mindset? Because I know you talk about

stoic philosophy and breaking past the fear barrier a lot, but like if you were to drum it down to what it did mentally for you. Mentally? Mentally, I know that I can learn anything. There's not even a question in my mind because of that. And I tell people

all the time that I had the courage to attempt to get a physics degree at age 28 is when I was actually 29 is when I technically. And what was motivation for a physics degree? So when I was looking at like jobs, because at that point in time, I was like, man, I need to get a job because I was like, I was selling phones. A team mobile for like nine, 28 an hour. I'm like 27. I'm like, man, I'm smarter than this. My lifestyle does not match my ego.

So I need to like fix one or the other. and the ego wasn't going to go anywhere. So I said, let me get to work. And I got to work. And I was looking up, like, all the high-paying jobs and all of them had math involved. And I said, okay, I don't really want to study math. Let me study. And you get a math monitor where you complete the physics studies because it's so heavy in math.

So that's how I ended up doing that. But I was terrible at math in high school. I put up, and I put an article up how to get better at math. And I wanted to, like, make the point that I wanted to, like, make the point that I wasn't good. I wasn't just some smart kid, you know, writing to other people and telling them you can do it because I did it, but I'm on math with it. So I ordered my high school transcripts so I can get screenshots to put them on. And I was worse than I thought.

I was coloring it maybe a little bit. The highest math grader I earned a B and worked my ass off to get that B in geometry in ninth grade. Everything else, Cs, D, Z. You know, I wasn't good, right? So I really tried to stay away from all things related. quantitative disciplines. Even the first time I went to college, I was going to, like, major in, what was it,

psychology and, like, foreign language stuff, right? But after boxing, I watched myself go from this, this uncoordinated guy. I mean, now I can move and groove. I can, you know, switch hands dominantly and not have to think about it. And I'm just as good at my left is my right. And I said, okay, if I did that with my body,

we can do that with my mind. And so that gave me the confidence to put the time in, to learn math, go from the ground up and correct all those deficiencies. And I said, just give me enough time and I'm going to get it. And I just kept busting my ass. And that's what boxing did. Boxing let me see that I can do anything. Boxing also changed my relationship with pain and feedback from experiences.

Boxing is a very powerful negative feedback mechanism. And it's quick, too. You're not going to make the same mistake twice. And if you do, you're definitely not going to make it the third time because you won't around. Are you going to lose and be flushed out to support or whatever? And that makes you unbelievably realistic, as I like to say, it builds an unflinchingly comfortable or close relationship with reality. I don't, I never got. I think that's why I love your writing. You cut right to the fat of it, right? You just, you get right, I mean, you go right through the fat of it. You're just like,

hey, and what I, and listen, this is a controversial subject and people, sometimes it hits a wrong nerve, but you talk about how people don't care about your story or what happened to your circumstances and then basically you just have to deal with whatever those circumstances are and move forward. And I think that speaks to me because we live in a time when there's, you know, when people are, you know, looking for a lot of ways to live more comfortably or looking for ways to avoid things or looking for ways to, you know, justify feelings against logic. And it's, and what you do is you write in a way that says like, hey, cut all the bullshit, this is what it is. It seems like you talk a lot about victimhood mentality as much.

what I would call it. And you cut right to the chase. Yeah, I tried to. Ocean Salmon. This is the salmon of your dreams. Okay, so Ocean is the new direct-to-kitchen, salmon delivery brand that offers Ocean-raised, Ocean-Love salmon. I am a huge fan, especially since I moved to Austin of cooking this because it's so easy

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came up with that idea and where it comes from. You know, interestingly enough, that way of thinking is not entirely motivated by boxing. A lot of it is motivated by my sobriety. Coming up on eight years, sober, it's December. Congratulations. Thank you very much. And it is a big deal to me because there's an entire reality of decisions that I simply didn't make because I didn't have to make them when I stopped drinking.

When I was drinking, I always, I just. got lucky, man. I mean, I've been pulled over. I was telling some of this story the other day. I haven't pulled over at least three times where like they should have at least what my ass. I mean, maybe arrest me. But they weren't, they would have been right to do any of those things and I don't have an arrest record. I got lucky and one day I stopped trying to outrun the law of large numbers, as they say.

And I decided to put the bottle down. And drinking was the issue. Oh, yeah, drinking was an actual issue that you had or did you just notice that there were things in your life that it was doing that wasn't serving you? Man. No, it was a problem.

There was a problem. And, you know, everyone has a different sign. You know, there were all kinds of signs. I have the ones that I distinctly remember. I noticed that it, I remember when I learned that it was affecting my social life. Remember,

I'm in my 20. That's supposed to be the thing you do drink. But if people are like, you know, that guy, you know, he drinks too much. I was just going to, I was choosing my social venues based on the alcohol available, which, okay, that makes sense. But then you start choosing family venues to go to. All right, strike one problem. Physically, my coach was like, smell one. They were you drinking before you came here?

I was like, yeah, man, I went ahead. A few. What? What's up with that? It was like, he loses mine. Now I'm putting my training at risk. Okay. And I'm not put, I'm not working nearly as hard.

Probably getting winded too. It's hard, yeah. And it's not like I had a boatload of money. I was broken. I always said, you know it's an addiction when you do it past the point of diminishing returns. I was drinking way past the point of it doing anything positive for me. So I had to cut back. But I think about me making that decision to cut back, hearing all the the tarnishing of my reputation, seeing how physically

I was not doing the best I could and no one would take me seriously or whatever and I made a decision. I made the decision before reality made the decision for me. If I had got into an accident or got into a DUI and I couldn't go or do something, then it doesn't mean as much.

It's like when you apologize and call yourself out before someone calls you out, it's like you're not sorry that you did it. You're sorry you got caught kind of deal, okay? that was what motivated that because I was thinking about, you know, all the things in my life, like the, the esteem that I hold now amongst people. And that means a lot to me. People can look to me and they can go, okay, this guy's got. You might not like me, but you're not going to be able to say, I'm a piece of shit, you know, because I got that under control.

People took my sobriety seriously because I took it seriously. I didn't say anything about it until I had at least one month in. And then I was like, all right, a month in, right? Because how many, I mean, you guys have heard it, you know, after a heart night of drinking, you're like, oh, I'm never going to drink again, right? It doesn't mean anything. It didn't mean anything to me if I had just put it on social media to be like, all right, done drinking.

Let's go. No, no, one month. You know, now I got years on. Now people look and they can go, this guy's serious about this. It's not just paying lip service because he felt bad about doing something or somebody called him. I don't know. It was a real commitment.

So when you get in front of it. of things before reality has to get in front of them for you, people tend to be forgiving. They tend to understand. They can chalk any crazy thing up, I said, or did, you know, if it kind of anything in nuts comes to light or something like that. People go, you know, he was drinking and he's not drinking now and he's been sober since, you know, but not like, oh, I just quit a week ago. They look and go, it's real remorse.

I guess that's what they try to do in prison, right? They say, okay, are you showing any sign of remorse? That's what penitentiary means, right? The penitents, the show penitents to be like, okay, you learned your lesson, but did we have to teach it to you? If they don't have to teach it to you, people tend to be okay. You're moving forward. You're being a better guy.

I started getting invites to, like, the family functions of my friends again, which was like a thing we met and they were like, but, you know, I disappeared entirely because, like, that's going to be to God. It shows up drinks and makes a fool of himself, right? But what was the epitome that made you, you know, when you write something like nobody cares about, you know, your past circumstances or what happened or what you said? What was the epitome that made you realize that and what's the reaction? And what's your typical reaction when you tell people that? The thing that made me realize is, is I like to dwell on the negative when I meditate.

I like to think about how badly a situation could have turned out. That's as close as I need to get. I mean, I don't have, you don't have to learn. everything the hard way because if you do, you probably won't survive long enough to reap the benefit of the lesson. So I try to learn things that way by imagining the experience. And that's where that comes from. Now, when I tell people that I do, the reaction is very typically there is a more positive than you would think response. But when people don't respond to it positively, when they feel attacked, when they feel like that's callous, I have to remember.

remind them that the world doesn't care how you feel about such and such a thing. You know, you see this a lot in people who never dealt with childhood trauma if they were like abused or something. And they go on to hurt someone in their adult life. And the fact that they were abused as children, that's terrible. And sometimes in sentencing, the judge takes that into consideration, but a lot of times, you know, it doesn't make a difference. You're still going to go down

because you end up messing up. They don't go, you were messed up, that happened. No. Part of being an adult is to take responsibility for things and take responsibility for your childhood, not to say your childhood is the reason why you're such and such. No, they don't care. They look and go, what are you doing now as an adult?

And in fact, our judicial system recognizes this difference in charging people as minors charge in them as adults. When you're a minor, it's kind of assumed that there are things beyond your control that influence you to make a decision and perhaps you did not understand the scope or impact of it. But once you become an adult, they're going, ah, you knew better, right? No matter what happened, you knew it wasn't right to do it again.

Now, unfortunately, that's not always a powerful enough deterrent, but it does the job when it has to. When it doesn't do the job, you know, they go, look, man, you know what you were doing. let's take care of you now and now you're not going to have a chance to hurt anyone else. So that is the lesson that it's really practical too, because once you start looking at it, I got to be in control. I got to fix what's wrong with me instead of taking out what's happened to me on the world. It is, it's very, it's the first step.

It's one of the first steps to healing yourself, man. I'm a big proponent of that. I mean, I'm a big proponent of people going to therapy too, but you also got to take responsibility for your own issues and really trying to do work on them yourself. I think that's a hard conclusion for many to come to. But it's an empowering conclusion because you also talk about how nobody's coming to save you. And I completely agree because, listen, all of us have our own problems and our own issues and our own families. And I think where, you know, many people wait around. They say, someone's going to come and help me or someone's going to point a new way or like, you know, this is somebody else's fault.

And it's like, you know, Jock Willing talks about extreme ownership. And I love that theory because it comes down to the fact that you are the only person that's going to really dictate the choices you make in life. And those are the choices you know make emotionally, whether you know, you decide to get angry about something or sad about something or the choices of who you decide to be friends with or what you decide to engage with or what businesses you decide to do or not do. Like that ultimately always comes back to you. But I think people like to kick the buck down the road and say, well, it's not me. It's somebody else. What's been the most powerful thing that you've tweeted or Instagrammed or shared that got a positive reaction, but also a negative reaction? Oh, man.

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because there was like the counter counter response woman are trash too said men aren't trashed wrong on trash you know the real issue is you're a trash human being and you know like a track slight I think I said birds of a feather flocked together And that idea makes people go, huh, I am the common denominator in all of my relationships and they keep turning out poorly. Maybe I should do some self-reflection. That's the mature response. But I think maturity like any other trait is normally distributed. And a lot of people do not or are not mature.

Occasionally, I'll venture into the realm of things and culture. And that doesn't happen often. But when it does, I think my response and take on things tends to inflame or it tends to be polarizing. Do you have a strong agreement or disagreement? And I actually deleted the tweet because it was like, okay, whatever. But I'll never forget when there was the shooting in El Paso and then like two days later or shooting in Ohio. And they were both mass shooting events. The difference was the mode, well, the difference I put that in air quotes for a reason was the motor.

motivation of the El Paso, right ring versus the motivation in Ohio left wing. And I said, why are we blaming the president for someone else's action? You know, people are dead. You know, it doesn't, and they're dead on either side. It doesn't matter how a person, but like that, that defense isn't going to hold up in court. And it's not, you know, a bunch of other people who support the president at the time. Trump, they were like, they're not shooting people. Well, we got to look at the real issue, you know what I mean? people don't like that kind of stuff. One thing that really, this, you know,

blows my mind sometimes. I said one day, you know, they really snuck colored person back into our vernacular by changing the order of the words and adding a preposition. And most people was like, wow, I never thought I never thought of that. And then there were like these hardcore people who couldn't see the breakdown of logic.

And they were like, well, what else do you want them to call us? I was like, you know, black was working just fine for as long as I've been around. And now they freak out. And when you put out things, I try to be nuanced. I try to think and have my reactions based on, I tell people all the time,

I don't have an opinion, but I have his data and I follow data. Okay. And, you know, that bugs people, but yeah, I don't, I try not to.

What doesn't bug people nowadays? Everything. Here's my thing with everything. Everyone gets bugged about everything. So I admire people who still stand up and say their opinion like you, even though you know that it's going to bug people, because I think there are a lot of people that aren't bugged.

So if you have to make a choice, are you going to appeal to the people who are bugged by every fucking thing? I mean, every fucking thing. If they took that productive energy that they were spending online being bugged at everything, they would have a whole empire. Right. And you know what's crazy about this being bugged by everything? I wonder the interesting things about my, I guess we'll call it,

story arc is I was born and raised in Pittsburgh a blue state and a city so it's blue. And this is you, I don't always talk in these terms, but I think it's really useful for this conversation because there are certain traits to follow red versus blue, whatever, right? So I'm raised in this completely blue state, blue city. And so as a first generation Facebook user, all of my contacts are local. Or not all, but a large, but a majority of the ones you see are people are grown with people. Especially in the beginning of Facebook. Yeah.

Okay. And then I come to the world of Twitter and I start really expanding my horizons, meeting other people. And I see, okay, there's another type of, I didn't know it was extreme. And one thing I always say is like, extremists don't know they're extreme because they spend time with other extremists. And then you go and see how someone else thinks. and I see, okay, these pieces completely other end the spectrum, but just is extreme. Just the other way.

Just the other way. So I try to sit in the middle. And when I sit in the middle on Facebook, I get a very different reaction when I sit in the middle arguing analysis of a problem when I'm on Twitter. And, you know, first of all, from my social media user interface standpoint, Facebook is effing.

you know, there's just, because people have all the characters to type. No, I deleted my app. It's not, it's not, I don't want it in my ether. I just deleted the app off my phone. I can't take on, like, it's almost as bad as just having the news play in the background all day long. It's, it's worse. You know why it's worse? I don't want to hear what Aunt Sally has to think about politics.

I'm good. Exactly. You know, people want to attack and attack you for everything you think and feel. And it used to be, I'm going to attack you because you have a certain thought. Now it's going to attack you because you don't think like me. And that is, you know, problematic. You can compare it to street gangs. The difference is a street gang at least recognizes neutrality.

You know, they do not. Extremers do not because neutrality. Yeah, there's so many people that say that to us. It's like, you can't stay neutral. You have to think it. And I'm like, well, I don't, if you, if someone is so extreme on this side and so extreme and you disagree with those extreme levels, then you almost don't have a choice but to stay neutral because you don't agree with either extreme. At the very least, it's not so much stay neutral, stay objective.

Yes. And when you look at things objectively, what happens a lot of times is you, you agree sometimes with one side and you agree sometimes with the other. But it's not because your ideology follows their ideology or your biases follow theirs, you know. It's because you looked at the facts and you saw how things. thing was and you said they were right. But broken clocks are right twice a day. That doesn't mean you should start using them to tell Tom. Michael Crichton calls this, the rain causes

wet streets, our wet streets cause rain type thinking, where you look at an outcome and you think that the outcome is why the preceding cause is why it occurred. We try not to get too political here, but I think like this is the problem that's going on with these echo chambers is that everyone tries to make everything a political statement these days, right? And it's not always

about politics, right? Well, you know why it is. You know, people are fundamentally lazy. And I don't think that is a negative. As they taught us in physics, we were studying molecules or something to that effect. All systems will try to assume

the most energy-efficient, configuration. That's a really smart way to say people try to get as much as they can for as little as possible. And that's reflected, not just in their activities, but also in their thought process. It takes a lot of energy to analyze and think a situation to buffer your emotional response and analyze it and go, okay, I feel this way. You can't help that. Let me go step and look through the thought, look through the information, see if that changes how I feel. That takes a lot of energy. People who do it regularly don't consider how much energy that takes. That's why most people don't do it. It's a lot easier to just go, okay, I'm not really

against abortion, but I'm for gun laws, so I'm going to go, I'm just going to take on everything, right? Yep. And make that meet. And then on top of that, people who will hear you think one thing We'll assume you think that way about everything. And that's very typical because people are systems and they try to assume the most energy-efficient configuration for their thought process and their beliefs. And unfortunately, that is extreme, or extremism and generalities. I'm obsessed with what you just said that it's not about being neutral. It's about being objective. Well, I think that's what's happened, you know, in the American police.

political system is maybe you're somebody that was raised, let's just say in a red state, and you had conservative values or maybe you're like, you know, you wanted the government out of your business and maybe you had religious tendencies and you didn't believe in abortion and maybe you know wanted, you know, different fiscal reform. And then you get a guy like Donald Trump who's so polarizing and, you know, so extreme, he gets extreme base and all of a sudden, you know, people that have maybe been their whole life with those values are associated with this person and all of a sudden they're put in this bucket where it's like you're an extreme hateful person.

side. But it's like, no, like, what happened is these two political parties at the far ends that became very extreme. But there's probably a lot more people in the middle that just forgot how to communicate. Yeah. I not only forgot how to communicate, but what we have in this country is we have a system that makes it almost mandatory that you, no, I mean, not almost. It is. You don't really have a choice. I mean, you got one or the other, but things are becoming so extremes. And I always say opposites that their extreme become indistinguishable from one another, extreme hot and extreme cold. Don't mean a mean a thing to your. to your nervous system.

The extremes are an easy place to be because you don't have to consider both sides. You don't have to weigh out and question your thoughts and beliefs and extremes. Or not extremes, your thoughts and beliefs and feelings. You don't have to analyze that. You just get to have a quick reaction. You get to be cathartic immediately without considering if you're being cathartic about the right things

or if that's the most appropriate emotion to display at the moment. And you just run with it. And most people are like that. So you have company. They're not allowed people like me, so I don't have company. One thing I say is that you've got to understand when you're objective when you pursue the truth, you get twice the enemies and half the allies because everyone who is extreme, they can't associate with you because you're to your two to center and they're so extreme. Anything that is, anything that is not on their side, you look like an extreme person. You're just in a center.

So you lose the extremist on both sides. and you also lose the moderates because it's not so much that they disagree with you it's that people are group creatures are very social and if it's between following one guy's truth or everyone else's laws

you probably have a much better chance to survival and really mental health if you follow everyone's laws and it's just it's not it's hard but we're not looking for hard I mean we're not looking for easy because it's hard but we're not looking for easy

or what we're looking for is truth. But that's not everyone. What's an interaction that you've had on the internet that started out negative with someone? Maybe they slid into your DMs or wrote something in a caption that turned out positive. Okay, so there was actually a guy. I thought I would be able to link up with him down here, but I think he's in Houston, not Austin. And we initially really clashed about a lot of stuff related to, and we still classed, first of all. not about things.

He's a very, he's, he's, he's left to the point of being a socialist. And, and, you know, not this soft socialism, but the real socialism they talk about. And I'm like, yeah, it doesn't really work. We got a lot of history sort of. But, you know, he started, we, we started classing because I'm objective and not extreme on either one. So I look extreme to an extreme guy, you know, to the point where he was, you know, pop off ad hominem attacks, man, trying to insult.

me and my girl, my life. And I'm like, this is crazy. And then one day, I just, I just, you know, messaged him about something because he was a comedian down here or down in Houston. And I said, look, man, I just want to let you know. I think what you do as a comedian, stand up. I can never do that. And I think that's cool, man. I respect what you're doing. And, you know, it changes the whole interaction because I'm looking at him and I'm reaching, I letting him know. I respect, you know, what he's doing. And I see him as a person, not as an adversary, you know, we can, we can disagree on certain things, but that ain't, that's got nothing to do with how I view as a human. And now he's a solid guy to me. We talk and chat. We still disagree

about a lot of stuff, but, but it's, that's okay. I don't get why we can't have all different kinds of friends that we disagree with. I don't want to, I don't want to be in a room with all people I agree with. That sounds so boring. Here's, here's the theory I've come up with about this. So, when something is wrong, when we decide, not even when we decide, but we'll use the objective case. If you get the wrong answer, that means you did something wrong, right? Almost by definition, I think that, you know, what is that? Reflexivity, right? You did the wrong answer. You got something wrong. And if you check your back work, you get the wrong work. Right? You check your answer back. You get the wrong work. And you try to remedy, rectify,

whatever, right? Your incorrection. We apply it to objective thought. Let's talk subjective. let's talk interpersonal. If you have the wrong opinion to me, because your opinion's different than mom, then you must be rectified. You must be corrected. And if I can't do that, then I have two choices.

I have to look at you and I have to assume something about your life is off, is wrong, whatever. You'll get it when you mature, when you grow up, whatever. Or, man, this guy is, is together, but he thinks differently. So I need to eliminate him from my life because there's no way a correct thing and an incorrect thing can both work. Or there's no way that if he's right that I'm wrong. Oh, then that's a big one.

Right. I was, you know, I was writing about this recently about how, you know, I lost a lot of friends when, oh, friends, right? We put that in air quotes, right? lost a lot of friends when I got my life together. And they didn't drop me when I was being a drunk, drunk text and, you know, being crazy. They didn't even drop me right when I got it together. But there was a weird period. And it was the timing of it. It was about two to three years in where they were just dropping off like flies. And they didn't give me, give me reasons, right? They weren't the real reason. You know, James Aldrich says in his book, there's a good reason and the real reason.

And the real reason I believe, looking at our interactions over the years that led out to that, is I had very different thoughts. But you could sum those thoughts up. You could explain those thoughts about where I was in my life. Well, when I surpass you, and I'm together on every visible metric or intangible metric ahead, so now you got a choice. You can't just, because if you're using ad hominem attacks, I've removed that tool from your toolbox entirely. And we know you don't have the logical skills, not to try and prove me wrong, but to at least defend your position. And emotionally, you're not mature enough to sit there and deal with me without bringing up those topics. You know, let's just be friends.

So your only choice left is to eliminate me. And that's what happens, I think. I think that people go, hmm, you're wrong. But I'm right. And we know I'm not wrong. so since you're the wrong one and we can't explain this wrongness in any other way you got to go you got to go because you know the bare fact of you being around makes me question my decision it's like it's like people who are vegetarian and they go that's what's happening at a

mass level right people are getting rid of people in their purview or rid of those conversations because there's no nuance anymore it's either right or wrong and there's no gray area yeah crackhead mentality michael will not michael will not shut the fuck up about this We were literally in bed and Michael's like, ha ha ha ha ha ha, crackhead mentality. I was trying to explain it to more, and I was like, I'm just going to wait, Ed's here. He's going to explain it to.

People are probably like, what the fuck is this guy talking about? Okay, so first off, let me preface this with something that will sound completely unrelated. You can either laugh a little or cry a lot. And I always say that quote along with another one, that life is a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy for those who think. Let's take those two ideas and just put those off to the side like a footnote or an intro to a book chapter. I grew up around a lot of crackheads.

I live next door to crack dealers. I actually remember this is a crazy memory, man. I was like four and I remember the babysitter who was next door or the apartment across the hall. It was over there and I thought she had a squirt gun or I started squirt and having fun. It was a small squirt gun, but I thought it was a squirt gun because I'm like four years old. What else could it be to me? I don't know. And I couldn't understand why this made her so angry and why she had.

My mom was arguing with her back and forth and ended up, you know, paying her, but she never let me over there. Because that squirt gun was a syringe full of heroin, right? These are the things that I've been around and grew up around, and it's just normal to me. But once I realized that I had this, these things were off and messed up and make jokes about it, because I'm not going to cry about it. It's part of life, but I got to cope with it somehow. So it's my sense of humor. And my sense of humor is that I'm going to take these things I experienced in Saudi, the rampant drug use that I was around.

And I'll have some fun with it. I'm not going to let it be that thing. Oh, man, I can't believe it. Because I'll get this a lot. You know, like with me putting my shirt out there for sale, my crackhead hustle tweet. I have people write me talking about, man, you don't know anything about drug addiction, man. This is terrible.

This man's profiting off a crack. heads and stuff. I'm like, all right, you can choose that route. Here's my route. Now, if you want to talk about my life experience with this, you know, look, feel free to sit down and discuss it. But if you're not going to do that, let's just have a conversation or you can go away. But I'm not going to deal with the negativity. But that crackhead hustle thing. So you're pointing this, like, so you're saying that you saw rampant drug use and it was part of your life and it impacted you, but you saw some hustle in it. I saw a potential for humor.

I just made make a joke. And now, there was a lot of hustle. I mean, because I was trying to explain it to. Can I? Can I? I want to know what the hustle is, right? What does the crap? No.

What does the mentality? So, okay, footnote, addiction is not hustle. All right, now do we get that out the way in case you were going to be like, they're addicted to crack. What's what people say? When a crack kid needs crack, you got to remember, crack kids don't tend to be stable members of community. They're not going to work every day.

not paying taxes and waiting on that direct deposit to hit so they can go out and party. No, they got to figure out how they're going to get the money and they got to do it fairly quickly. And so a crackhead will do all kinds of creative hustles, man. You ever been to the gas station? You've got to ignore that guy who's trying to pump your gas for $3. That's a crackhead hustle. I put up an article.

I put up an article. It took place in Pennsylvania. you, these motherfuckers blowtorch then broke down a bridge to sell to scrap for crack or for drug money. I'm assuming it was correct. Guys will, you know, work all day, every day to fund that. And they're like manual labor, man, moving bricks and day labor jobs. Crackheads will hustle to get drug money. And you get to see when you look at this mentality, this crackhead mentality.

Now you get to see what happens when you really need. something and you don't really have a choice to get it. So imagine if you took that mentality and you applaud that to a goal and go, I really need to finish this book and I don't have a choice, let me work my ass off. That's where that comes from, right? The crackhead hustle mentality. And it's funny because they're crackheads. It's funny because they're crackheads. Like I put this book out. It was like, I think it was my, it was years ago. My first self-published book, How to Catch and Kill a Crackhead, the definitive God. And it was just me being funny in having to have a good time.

But a lot of the comparisons I made were to vampires because they seem like vampires to me. They always come out at night. You know, there's stories. And these are real stories where guys, you know, shoot a Crackhead and the Crackhead keeps moving because he's high and can't register. Funny story, an officer told me once that they got called up to a crack den or a crack house and went inside and crackedhead jumped out of nowhere at. I'm like, ah, and he shoots him in the face. This is back when they carried revolvers, and I guess the revolver wasn't clean or something like that.

Something took a significantly reduced the firepower. I mean, there was still a bullet, and I heard, but if the crack hit fell, he got up. He got up because the bullet wasn't a shot out with enough force to penetrate and do any damage. Just put him down and he just got up and come running. And you start building up this lore and this legend. Now, where the real thing is,

but it's not popular enough and it's not really funny, It doesn't have to ring to it. The real issue is PCP. That shit turns people into just super. What is PCP do? What is PCP do, man? Okay, so apparently PCP is like, I think technically it's a psychedelic, believe it or not. But is it?

Is it like battery acid? What is it? I'm not a chemist. Okay. But I think, you know, it's something you dip a lot of, it's a liquid, you know, and you dip your drugs in them and smoke it up that way. And a lot of times it makes you, I guess they call it butt naked because it makes you really hot and you got to take your clothes off. And there was a story about a rapper who was on it and he ate his girlfriend's face and now he's doing life. So right, like these are the stories we could focus on.

It's angel dust. Angel dust. And it causes hallucinations, distorted perceptions and violent behavior. There's a forum on the internet that has all these cop stories about trying to arrest people on PCP. It's incredible. But funny story, random funny story. Why is it called Angel Dust? So what I read is that when PCP hit the scene, it was serious.

All the drug years wanted to try it like a new drug, right? And they tried it, and it was crazy. People were losing their mind. And they said, this shit is too much. The crackheads thought it was too much, and they weren't going to do it. So PCP loses popularity. It wanes in its shoes. and then somebody brilliant, I assume, decided to do a rebrand.

And they started calling it Angel Dust and the Peace Pill, PCP, kind of like an acronym, the Peace Pill. And then people are like, okay, same thing, different name. It comes back and... The branding's good. It's great branding. But the point you're trying to make when I think when you, tell me if I'm wrong, when you use the crackhead mentality is that there's people that are out there hustling

doing whatever they need to do to get their hustle done. And making excuses is not going to ever put you in a position where you can accomplish your goals or dreams or whatever. Exactly. I'm going to apply the crackhead mentality when I have to get something done.

You're using humor in an example that everyone can understand and relate to. I can understand why you'd catch some flock for it. Oh yeah, for sure. But the analogy and when you sum it up, it makes sense. Yeah. I can't remember the guy's first name, but Sunamono,

Sunamoto, like the guy who wrote a book of five rings. No, the Hagakuray. I get the two confused. But, yeah, and he said, I'm paraphrasing it. I'm not going to be a plus as a translation, but he said, there's not a single person who can't be a good role model if you only focus on their good qualities. And I was like, wow, that's great.

So a crackhead can be a good model if you only focus on that hustle. I'm not telling you. It's always like, aren't you worried that somebody's going to see your advice? You got a big platform and they're going to go, yeah, I'm going to smoke crack. And I said, look, man, if you smoke crack because some guy on the internet made some crackhead references

and he, but with a book out about his sobriety, that's got nothing to do with me. That's between you and Darwin. Don't put that on me and I let that go. But I think that's what people don't get these, it's humor. You got to have some fun. Humor in and of itself is not.

supposed that it's funny. It's not supposed to make you feel comfortable. It's supposed to be a release of discomfort. And I think one of the, one of the sad things today is comedy is so woke now that we're losing that, that ability to release. It feels like, well, in comedy is some of the best teachers, right? It's some of the best ways to start conversation. And I agree with you. Like, we're getting to a place where you're like, you can't joke about anything anymore. Right. Without pissing somebody out. But, you know, one of the things we talk about here is, I think you, I think the pendulum's going to swing is because, because it's, as soon as everything becomes offensive, nothing becomes offensive, right?

Exactly. Because people don't have, again, if they're lazy and thought, you don't have time to decipher, wait a minute, am I offended? Or, wait, should I be offended? Or, wait, if that offends others, like, does that offend me? Like, I think we're getting past the point when we've lost the ability to figure out, like, what is actually offensive, what's really an issue that we need to take on? Because everything's an issue and everything's offensive.

There's a great thought experiment I did. I said, I was at dinner the other night. I went some friends. And there was a couple there that I never met, so I didn't know where they stood. And my one friend who knew me, he really poignantly pointed out that of all the people we know, I'm probably the least in an ideological bubble because of the way I live my life. And I'm always on the internet talking on different people, and I'm trying to be. And I said, you know, to the group, I said that whole thing about the extremes being indistinguishable,

from another opposite is being indistinguishable by extremes. And there's somebody at very left, you know, vegetarian and the husband marches and the women's rights rally, you know, good people. But just all the telltale signs of being on the left. And she said something that was really revealing. She said, I'm having trouble imagining what extreme left looks like. I can see extreme right. And remember what I said that when you spend all your time around extremists, even moderation looks like extremism to you because all you see. are people who think like you.

And so she, and now I had to come up with a tactful way to say, that's the point I'm making. The point is, is that they're blind to being able to see if they're in the extreme. Yes, that was the point I was making.

And so I thought I was like, okay, what does that actually look like? Because I didn't want to just, you know, have something that sounded cool, but didn't have any legs under it. So I spent a lot of time thinking about it.

And I was like, and I realized something, and extreme, extreme tolerance leads to quite a bit of contradiction and you're forced to eat yourself and attack within. If we want to take a characteristic

of this spectrum and we'll call that inclusion or tolerance. Right? Extremely not inclusive. Like these are my people with national, we're proud, white, whatever, right? That's the extreme there.

And the left, everybody is open and the same and there's no type of, it's all a social construct, these differences, okay? And you get the same thing. But the way it looks on the left side, I said, okay, here's a thought experiment. Is it your body, your choice, right? Of course.

Okay. So should I get the vaccine or not? Am I allowed to just not get it and you're not going to give me shit about it? And that's, then you can see the brain freeze. People's brain freezing right now. Because you can't, when, when, Everything is allowed. Nothing can be allowed.

Unless you go straight to anarchy and then with that, you have to just... Or let me give you another example. Feminists, we talked about this on the podcast before, when really strong feminist. I sometimes notice that if you don't fit in that box of what they think is a feminist, then you're kicked out of the box. But how is that? I don't understand. Right. If you're inclusive of all women and you're for women and da-da-da-da-da-da, but then when it doesn't

look like the cookie cutter image that you need it to look like. The easiest way for me to sum up extremes in my opinion is when there's absolutes, right? Yes. When there's absolutes, when it has to be one way or the other. If you are somebody that thinks it has to be one or the other and you don't, you can't figure out nuance and you can't change your opinion based on new information or new facts presented, then you're in an extreme. And there's probably people listening there being like, wait a minute,

I believe a certain thing, and I can't get off of that opinion, well, if that's the case, you have to look and say, am I on an extreme spectrum? Because to your point about vaccines, you can't say everything's allowed in your body and your choice and then say you have to get the vaccine for the better of humankind. Because if it's not your individual choice, then your argument's out the window. And I think that is 100% why, at least on this platform, we try to point out all different perspectives and have all different people because I'm trying to get people out of the mindset of you have to be stuck in your own opinion with the same opinion always. I also think there's something, Robert Green talks about this a lot of just because you thought something yesterday, that doesn't mean you can't change your opinion tomorrow. And you can be fluid and not be so formed.

And like you don't have to put yourself in a box and you don't have to say this or that. Like you can you can be fluid with your opinion. Because we're so society in general is stuck. And we're stuck because first, no group ever battles to a draw. Draw is something they have to accept because the conditions don't allow them to progress and win absolutely. So they have to settle so they don't incur more damage. But they do walk away with something. Okay.

Put that aside. But no, can we come back. They've got to pick what battle they're going to fight. And so they choose to fight. We'll say the vaccine, right? But most people don't choose to fight that battle. But when they fight it, they're not fighting it with the idea of it let everyone make a choice. They're fighting it so you can think like them eventually.

And this is where this extremism on the other side goes. It's like, okay, we want everyone to think like, us. The problem is everyone is different and we can't, we can't reconcile those differences in thought. This is what I was talking about with the whole. We're going to cut you off because we don't agree with you anymore. So now we got to figure out how to make you think like us and be like us and behave like us. But we will settle right now. We will settle right now for you just not being able to talk. Not you being, you're not being able to speak up. But eventually we're going to figure it out.

And to them, it's a temporary victory, you know, until the tables turn to themselves. It's a great story. I just remember, I guess they were, you know, trying to throw a woman's march in in D.C. after Trump got elected. And they were organizing. And then someone came in and was like, wait, we're the women of color. I can't do this. I can't support this.

And then someone was like, all right, all right, cool. We'll include the women of color. it's not a big deal, of course. We're all equal. And then someone comes in and goes, what about trans women? I don't see when trans women represent it. And I don't realize the irony

it is being a woman's march, but whatever, right? And they go, okay, we got to do that. So they tried to throw this thing for their group collectively they all belong to, but because everyone wants to be special, and they need to be pointed out, they ended up fighting amongst themselves, and nothing gets done that way. How about this? I don't want anyone to think like me. I want them to think like them. Right. I don't want people to think like me. Think like you want to think for yourself.

But that's the problem is that people are not understanding that maybe they're not, they don't even have their own thoughts right now because they're just getting into group thing. And it's like, well, I'll take another like very easy issue to understand. an argument for open borders, right? People want open borders without analyzing, you know, any of what's going on in any of these situations. But at the same time, those same people might argue for a passport vaccination or vaccine passport. Right. It's like, well, do you want open borders or you're not? And here's what they're doing. They're saying, but, but, but, but. And I'm like, no, no, no, you can't have but, but, but, but if you're on an extreme and you have, and you want either to be open borders or you don't. But you can't say, but, but there's a qualification

because the other side, and here's why I bring this point, the other side is also saying, but, but, but. Right. And so nobody's talking anymore. They're just saying, but this is my rule, but actually there's an exception to my rule, but there's an, and you can't have an exception to your rule, but my rule has exceptions,

and the whole world stops talking that way because none of it makes sense. Animal Farm was a beautiful book, and I don't think he knew what he was right when he wrote it. I mean, he knew what he was criticizing. He was effectively criticizing socialism. I think Animal Farm came out like 1950, and it was right after World War and a Cold War was revving up

and he was criticizing an animal farm the ridiculousness of communism or, you know, hard, socialism, soft communism. What are the differences, right? And one of the things that is a theme that continues to play out through the whole book is how they set the rules for the animals and then they kept changing the rules

with every little thing until eventually and the animals were like, oh, it must have said that always. Okay, it must have said, yeah, okay. And they just go along with it until they destroy themselves, right? That's the end of... People also don't read a lot of... I mean, I don't think people realize

how quickly civilizations can crumble. And I'm not saying that's where we are, but I think people feel so important to think, oh, it could never happen here, and it starts to happen when people stop having conversation. Exactly. There's a, you know, the meme goes out, and I try not to trust just the meme.

I go do the research, but it's true. You do the research, and people don't realize... It's not like everyone in Germany was a Nazi. In fact, most people were not. But a small group, We just kind of kept giving concessions. And next thing you know, you got that situation. And so much of the playbook, you know, all you got to do is just like study.

You just read it. Like the information is there. Like if information was a problem, I say, everyone will, or rather, if information was a solution, everyone will be, you know, Jack Tan and Rich. But that's not always the case. But we know, we know where this goes, right? We have so many examples in history of where they. this goes. But people don't study. They don't study and they're not incentivized and study.

There's a whole group of young people coming up who think free speech is a bad idea. And how do you get to that point? How do you start thinking that? Well, you're uncomfortable now, but you don't realize that you should probably just get a little tougher because when you start to eliminate that, that's one of the things that is a common feature in the crumble of all society's regimes, et cetera. Let me ask you this, Ed. Let's say Sally's listening to the podcast right now, and Sally's going to go and have Thanksgiving dinner with her whole family.

And she sits down at the table and Aunt Susie starts going off on her political opinion and Sally does not agree with her aunt. How do we learn to control our emotions to get to a place of productivity? Okay. So emotional control. How do we learn that? How do you stop being so reactive? not really reactive.

I just look at people and go, right? But I think how I've developed that ability is that I have my perspective based on how I think, not on how I feel. So I don't feel like a person's attacking me. Like I am not my opinion, it's my point. So I never feel like how a person thinks or feels is an attack on me, even if they try to make it an attack.

And so I never invest too much energy into how I feel. I tell people all the time, I go, look, man, I don't even take my own opinion seriously enough. Then I'm probably going to change them. So I'm definitely not going to fight with you over them because you think my opinion is more serious than I'm doing. It's my opinion. When you are very content in how you have arrived at your conclusion and you feel confident, you don't feel the need to defend it. certainly not against the random attack. It's it's the random attacks that row people up.

We call it hit dog syndrome. You throw a rock into a pack of dogs and the one you hit will bark. If you say something crazy, if you say, you make a general statement and the one that bugs you, we know you're the one who's offended. We know you're the one who's bothered. We know you're the one who has the issue. So if you want to get control, you just have to make sure that you are confident in your release. And you don't, you won't feel the need to.

battle back and have a purpose. When you have a purpose, that really helps. I think about all the people who come along all day to just attack some ideas, some group, some person. And I'm like, man, you need a girl or a puppy or some kids, like something important enough to where you're looking and going, this is just a bad use of my time. What do you think the reason is, that people choose to be offended because in my opinion, being offended is a choice that I consciously make.

If I'm offended, instead of looking at the other person, I look at myself to why that offends me. Well, it's that, it goes back to that really, I think it's famous. I mean, famous in my world anyhow. You know, you are,

what I say bothers you because, when I attack your thoughts or your opinion, it bothers you because you believe them for emotional reasons, not intellectual ones. It's how you feel, not how you think about it. Because thinking is really cool.

And we don't do enough of it in the world, I told you that. But the really cool thing about thinking is that it forces you to not be emotional about something. It forces you to follow a line of reason and logic. And even if that reason or logic

disagrees with how you feel, at the very least you followed it through and then you can argue your side or the other side. Emotions are different. The more emotional you are, the more fearful you are, the more agitated you are, your amygdala actually revs up, but that shuts down your prefrontal cortex. And I am by no means like a brain nerd dude. I only know this because I was writing a chapter for a sample or something where I did out of a book I thought I was going to write. Maybe I'll still do it.

But I had to research the nature of fear. And I learned that when you're afraid, your amygdala goes crazy. But then there's an inverse dial, inverse relationship of your amygdala activity and your prefrontal cortex activity. The front of your brain, it goes, yo, chill, make a decision, calculate how this is going to work out. Think. So when you're emotionally revved up, it's very hard to think. And there comes a point where you're not thinking. Like when you're full on, it's like, because the book was about boxing.

I was about boxing. And I was talking about what happens when you're afraid. and when you're in the ring and how you deal with that fear. Well, one of the things we figure out real quick is you don't have time to think. And you probably couldn't either way until you get calm. But when you're first in there and you're afraid, you're literally acting on survival. And that's how we respond. We act on survival.

So people have got to train themselves to think because thinking tamps that response because you can't do both at the same time. Stop drop and roll. if you get lit on fire, stop, think, and speak. That's what I was trying to... Think before you speak. To hit on, and what boxing taught me when I was a kid, is it takes you out of thinking with fear, right?

Because when you first start boxing, you know, someone's hitting you. And listen, you're going to be scared any time you go in the ring, especially if you went into a fight. But that comes up. But what boxing teaches you, in my personal opinion, and what it taught me was how to set aside fear and think logically in situations. that typically would be fearful, right?

And when you're able to do that, you're able to make such better decisions. And again, it's going back to that thing. It's like we fear the punch that never comes until you understand how to deal with those punches. Until you know how to deal with it. I always say boxing is like turning down the noise on reality. You get used to, what's the first,

one of the first things you've got to learn how to do. You've got to learn to not flinch when you, you won't last long enough if you bite on everything. that comes at you if you treat every threat the same. But you could still get a hit. Like, it's not a fake. It's actually a thing. So what's the solution? You can't always defend influence, but you can't always just sit there. I'm not going to respond. No, you get control. So you're able to move fluidly when attacks are coming. You're able to react to them correctly. And if it's a fake, you don't bite on it, but you're still in a position. But it's a relaxed position. When you are,

when you're in the ring and a fighter is able to west while, why so as you get tired, you start falling for fakes more? You don't have the energy left to think. Because it takes energy to think. And it's not thinking in a sense

to be going to sit down and write this problem out and solve this boxing. No, it's a different kind of a control thought, but it's still a control. It's proactive thought, not reactive thought. Reactive thought is not in the realm of intellect.

It's not in the realm of reason. in the realm of this is what is in front of me. I need to react quickly. Let me do it before I perish or before I'm taken out. And I think that's how people are very revved up to words. Words when you let the words have an emotional effect on you, you're going to lose every time. That's one of the reasons why there's trash talking fights.

There's a difference between trash talking like, you know what I'm talking about, then the purve that's hysterical and screaming. And anybody that's been in a ring or been in any kind of fight, you never take the person that's screaming and yelling. Or like in a street fight, right? The guy that's screaming and yelling, I'm not worried about that person.

I'm worried about the guy who's sitting over to quiet. He's got his hand on his hip, you know. Yes. I'm worried about you two. No, but that's my point is like if you look at social media or like any of the internet, it's like the loudest, like rabble, screaming. That's not, you, serious people can't take those people seriously, which means, you know, you can't have a productive conversation.

The only way to have that is with the calm, manner and saying like, hey, let me hear you, let me hear me hear. And maybe you're right. Yeah. Yeah, right. But it's not going to. I mean, I, I, what am I. I'm a realist. I mean, I'm a realist with a slight optimist lean. Like, like, if I have to take the bet on humanity, I'll probably, realistically, I'd probably short humanity. Like, that's just, you know, that's the reality of it. But when I try, when I get in touch with my feelings and I decide I'm going to be filialed, and I want everyone to be good. And I'm looking at the impact. I hope that my words and writing

have, I do it because I want to change the odds, man. Like, I want to, I want to get us like not a plus. I want to win. I want us to get along. I want everyone to be able to talk to one another. I think like World Peace is as a silly goal. That's an extreme. What I really would prefer is world thought. Like, if I could get just 10% of people to think and discuss things, that's, that's,

you know, that's a good. That's a drastic improvement. Think about how many people you interact with it on a daily basis in person or on the internet. And so much of it is just reaction, reactionary react. And now people think that because they can Google something that they understand it. And that's, you know, that's another problem in and of itself. As people who think they're reinforcing their opinion with thought. And the reality is, you know, you can find a spin on anything, almost anything.

So you've got to learn how to think. My dad used to tell me this quote for as long as I can remember. it's like his favorite thing if he's listening, he'll probably laugh. And he used to say to me when I was little, he said, 2% of the world think, 8% of the world thinks they think 90% never thinks decide which one you, which percentage you want to be. And I think about that all the time because hopefully you can work towards getting in the 2%. Hopefully, I think the most dangerous place to be is, you know, in that 90%. But I think there's a lot of us that fall in the 8%. And it's, you know, constantly working, questioning your thoughts, questioning your beliefs, questioning the general narrative, questioning the status quo.

to get to a point where you're thinking more. And so I agree with you. I would love to know what Ed's tools in his toolbox are. What are your morning routine tactics? Are you practicing stoicism every day? Your workouts. What sets you up for a successful day? What sets me up for a successful day?

I think the first thing that sets you up for a successful day is sleeping well the night before. And that's a whole other discussion, things that make you sleep better. but the the TLDR is, you know, try to get the bed a decent hour. That starts, that's how it all starts. As far as, you know, the first thing I do when I get out of bed in the morning, I try to get started on the task immediately, whether it be physical or mental. I try to have it be physical because moving is better. Whether that means going for a walk, jog, doing some dishes, you know.

Take a fucking hit, do some dishes tomorrow. Yeah. wake up and do it all. Wake up and do dishes. And then doing that, I feel like, okay, I got a small one out the way. Something's clean. Something's moved.

Something's created. And so the rest of the day goes okay. At least I've had a, I tell people all the time, and I've had a bad day in a very long time. I think the last bad day I had was the day before I stopped drinking. That's how I look at it, right? But the sleep is key.

The movement is key. And I have a completely stress-free environment. And I worked hard to do that. What does that look like? A stress-free environment. I don't argue with my girl that never happens. I can't even. I don't know if you got to see the cow.

She's like, take a hit. Well, that's a good tip. Well, here's the thing. You know, now when I say I don't argue, that doesn't mean there aren't disagreements. But Michael's choosing to be offended at me. That's a his problem. But we have a good communication system. I think it's important.

I tell people all the time, I was just telling my friend last night. I said, if you, whoever you pick, one of the things you've got to have to make sure you pick is you pick somebody based on how they disagree because every relationship is good and everyone's good, but it ain't going to be good all the time. And you don't want to find out you got like somebody

that thinks they can swing with you or something crazy like that. No, you want to pick someone who you can disagree with. Well, and I have a, I have a wonderful person at home that helps. I don't have to suffer anything. I don't want to suffer. That helps. My goal is not so much to,

to, like, earn as much money as I can. My goal is to do it the way I would like to do it. And I've been very fortunate. And then my story and how people respond to me. It's really afforded me a lot of opportunities. And most importantly, it's afforded me the opportunities to where I don't have to suffer people. I don't want to suffer. I don't have work for anybody.

I don't spend time around people who don't. don't make me feel better or anything like that. So really, I'm a big believer in the big wins. Good sleep, good people around you, make sure you eating well. If the meal is not home, quote, we go to a restaurant where it's damn good. I can't remember the last time I got some legit processed food,

whether high-speed processing like some McDonald's or something that comes in a package. And yeah, I'm trying to, I work holistically. I think if you take care of the big things, it makes it easier to take care of the small things. and the small things of where the leverage is really gained to where you really move ahead. But it's really hard to focus on a minutia

if you haven't dealt with the majority yet. I have a question that I've never asked anyone on the show, but I feel like I can ask you this. Do you schedule time in your calendar to read? Because you seem like a big reader. Oh, you know, I should. I don't, though. I just, I have books that I know to read.

And I just stock up. And look, man, I have physical books. I have a decent. enough library. But I've been putting a lot of books on the Kindle lately because of the way I decided to read. I've started to go through. And then when I see a great quote, I just highlight it and export it out to read wise. I think now the Kindle app has that same feature. And then I'll go back. And now what I'm doing like on my website is I'll write out the 10 best ideas based on a quote and really try and break it down and think. Like, for example, that how could I

quote I gave earlier? I may have got the wording wrong, but I got the idea right. And that's the I did. You know, you don't want to just read the waste time. You got to somehow get that in your brain. And I found thinking about it, I writing about it, really helps. And on top of that, I get SEO boosts from my site and brings people in. So it's a win-win-win-win-win-acrossed but my reading is not scheduled. It's just like, you know, what does my time look like? Everything is writing, right? Maybe shoot something related to a course that I'm putting together. I play a lot of chess and take a lot of walks with Anna or go to the gym and and I read. Those are the times.

If you were to leave our audience with a book, a podcast or a resource that's really changed your life, what would it be? Course of Miracles. A course of miracles. Oh, that's my mom's favorite book. It is a heck of a book. It is. So what it is? I'm going to just give you the folklore behind it and don't really pay attention to that because it's not relevant and can distract you.

I think it's worth while mentioning. The woman claimed that at some point in her life, she was inhabited by Jesus who worked through her to write down this word for word. And the whole book is, it's a course in forgiveness effectively. It teaches you forgiveness. The first part of the book is the theory behind it. And then there's an application. The second part, that are exercises you do every day.

an act was 365 exercises for about many days in a year and you just go through it. And I read that book when I was 23 and then I read it again. And then now I have a copy of it. And what it did was fundamentally change my relationship with humans because now I'm able to look at people and I go, okay, I look at them way through the lens of forgiveness. And now forgiveness is a very natural thing to me. But it's a practice. You have to continually practice. You have to know what forgiveness is. I tell people all the time. A forgiveness. is not a substitute for justice. I think the average person has that interpretation of forgiveness.

We're going to let something slide. We're going to forget. Like, no, you're still going to have to go to jail. We're still going to, I'm not going to mess with you. But it's for my internal peace. So I don't go out and do something horrible to other people. One of the examples I give in an article is I say, imagine that the guy, all right, I talked about the El Paso killer, actually.

I go, okay, you know, that guy's going to. do life if he's not dead already. He'll never, he'll be punished sufficiently. But what we can't do is undo what he did and the effect that he has on people, the effect that he's had on people directly and indirectly. So what is our choice to always be angered and to always be agitated and to not trust and deal with all kinds of things? Or do we look at and develop a way to forgive it, this act. And that bugs people because what they think the word forgiveness is. But all forgiveness means is that you no longer need something from a situation to feel like, to feel even, to feel paid back, whatever. You for, that's what happens. When you get loan forgiveness, they're like,

you don't got to pass anymore. It's all good. That doesn't mean that that loan's not in the books and you didn't get something from it. It just means, you know, you let it go. And that's the same with forgiveness. have to, what we try to do is we attempt to balance the emotional books. We go, you did that, so I'm going to do that to you, and that's going to make me feel better. It never really works that way. Never, you always disappoint. You're like, oh, I still feel like shit. Well, because you didn't deal with the issue.

And that's what forgiveness tries to help you to do. And that's why that book is so important to me, because that, like, for that book fundamentally changed my relationship with my mother. I was like on a point where I was very, you know, I was talking about how I grew up earlier. And as I got more and more exposed to the differences, I got angry. I got angry. And I just was like, why would you have me in these circumstances? This is terrible.

And, you know, all these things I could have did as a kid, you had this issue or that issue. And that's why I didn't do it because of that. And it really became a volatile relationship with my mother to the point where we like, stop speaking for a little while. And then I found course of miracles. And I started reading. And then I was like, okay, here's us. And here's a way to live, way to move forward. And now, I may have a great relationship more mom.

It doesn't mean I forget anything to happen. I just, I go, okay, you know, you did the best you could with what you knew at the time. And if I was in your situation, I probably would have done the same thing. And I understand that now. I understand. And I know that your heart was in the right place or the best place it could be given how you grew up and what you knew. and I'm going to no longer expect this to be balanced or fixed by anything you can do in the present, anything you can say will just let that be.

I know your character about certain things and I know how to protect myself. You know, the old fool me twice, shame on me kind of do. But everything else, I don't let it have an effect on my emotions. That's the power. That's the key of forgiveness. I feel the same way about forgiveness as you do. Can you pimp yourself out to our audience? feel like a lot of people are going to want to follow you.

What's your Instagram, your Twitter, your website? Where can they buy to support? Give us all the details. Let's make it. You know, if someone is born in the future with my name, I feel sorry for that guy. Because I have taken Ed Latimore everywhere. That's my Instagram handle, at Latimore. Don't fuck with Ed Latimore.

My Twitter handle, Ed Latimore. My Facebook page and profile is Ed Latimer. My website is Ed Latimore.com. And on the website, you can sign up for it. newsletter and all that kind of thing. If they were going to start with one article on your site, one or two, what do you think the best best? One or two, I think my articles on forgiveness are really important. So any article about forgiveness, I think I have four, maybe three, three or four.

That would be like if I have an, if my impact on you is going to be any kind of way I would like you to be able to move past emotional issues, emotional troubles, things that block you. That would be the first thing. And then after that, let's jump into something practical. I think all the guys can read my article about how to be an attractive man. I think that that makes a big difference because I don't just talk about the appearance that plays a role. You are very handsome. I told you when you walked in.

He's very handsome. And these clothes, right? These clothes are for I have a sponsor, which is very cool. State and Liberty, check them out. Oh. And if you do buy them, buy through that link because then they can see that they may. made a good call investing in me. The shirt is a great color.

It fits my Instagram feed. I couldn't be more happy about it. Great fits me. It's really cool about it. You know, and I don't know, I'm plugging, stay in liberty,

whatever. They reach out and are like, you know, we never had a guy on Twitter before. And I'm like, okay, cool, we'll try it, okay?

And Twitter wasn't working. So what I did is thinking and smart, I go, I've got this great article about how to look better and be better, man. Let me put the link there. And I went and checked. And I was looking at it,

totally forgetting that I'm not an affiliate. and I'm just a sponsor. So I was like, man, I'm having no luck. And then I went and saw it. And I was like, oh, wow. Okay. So I sold, you know, $10,000 of the clothes through this link.

Let's go. And I mess with him. I was like, hey, you guys want to kick me some more clothes? I just know. Yeah, sure. What's the tag so I can tag them on Instagram when I post a picture? State and Liberty. State and Liberty.

I love the Lelock moment. And it's great because what that inadvertently led into it's where you've got to be nice to people sometimes. I have a friend, and she shoots a lot of the photography when I have it, my photography, go up on Instagram. So she saw some pictures of me in this shirt. State and Liberty saw them and were like, wow, those are great. Can we use those? I was very cool.

Go for it. And then I noticed they never used this. So when they wrote to me, though, they were like, hey, can you send us some more of those photos? I was like, yeah, sure, no problem. But, like, it's curious. Like, why didn't you use the photos before? And I'm like, oh, we discontinued that shirt. So you can't.

I mean, right? But, you know, I'll make sure what's whatever, whatever one. you get, we're going to use that. We're going to make sure we have it in stock and then you'll be on a website. I think they should do an ad collection. That would be and it would sell. I think it would sell. I think it would sell at the very least because, look, I never take for granted that people like to listen to things that I deliver. Like, I never take that for granted, man, because fortunate it allows me to make a living being myself. But what do I say on the side of time? I take what I learn the hard way and I break it down so other people can learn it the easy. way. And that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to make a difference. So, yeah, check my site out. Check me out.

Unless you've got two big fans here. And I'm glad you came out to Austin. I'm glad we got to do this in person. Yeah, me too. Anytime you come to Austin or L.A., you have an open invite to come back on the podcast. Oh, awesome. Awesome. I want to take you open up on. Yeah. Anytime. When you have your collection out. The collection out, the new book that I'm writing. Definitely when you have a new book, you're an open invite. And anything we can support, man. Awesome. I greatly appreciate you. us having me. Thank you so much for coming on. You're amazing. Thank you very much for having me. To win a copy of Ed's book, Sober Letters to My Drunken Self, all you have to do is tell us your

favorite part of this episode on my latest Instagram at Lauren Bostic. We love your feedback. Thank you guys, as always, for supporting the show. And feel free to follow us on Instagram at TSC Podcast. See you next time.