The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Empower: Conquering the Disease of Fear by Tareq Azim, Seth Davis

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

Empower: Conquering the Disease of Fear by Tareq Azim, Seth Davis From finding common ground with warlords, introducing the Taliban to change, and working with NFL greats such as Marshawn Lynch, this uplifting and inspirational memoir from coach and personal development expert, Tareq Azim, will help you build a relationship with fear and embrace your own power. A descendant of Afghan nobles, Tareq Azim’s family was forced to flee their homeland in 1979. He assimilated in the United States through his love of sports, excelling in wrestling, boxing, and football. In 2004, Azim decided to visit his home country, and upon arriving, he discovered countless children living on the streets, waiting for the inevitable recruitment into terrorist networks and anti-peace militias. Azim’s close encounter with the ravages of a war-torn society taught him how pain can generate the most intense forms of fear, anxiety, and depression. He had found his salvation through sports and physical activity, and he knew these children could, too. He put his method to the test and created the Afghan Women’s Boxing Federation, the official governing body for women’s sports for the National Olympic Committee and the first ever in the history of any Islamic republic, proving that Afghanistan was ready for social change by addressing the harms of accumulated trauma. Now, his remarkable full story is revealed in this book that is both a memoir and a roadmap. Through his own experiences, he effortlessly explains how fear is an invitation to seek a deeper feeling within—a feeling that is achieved when we engage in righteous and sincere struggle. Only then will our choices be guided by values that help us avoid the pitfalls of moral and personal failure. Featuring actionable advice and varied clear-eyed case studies, including MMA star Jake Shields, former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, and San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York—Empower is the ultimate guide to living a life understanding that fear is there to help you.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, we're coming to you with a great podcast.

We certainly appreciate you guys. Be sure to watch the video version of this. Go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss. Hit the bell notification button. Go to all of our books we're reading and reviewing on goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss. You can see everything we're doing over there. And also go to, what else is there? All the groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram.

There's just so many of them. Just put in the Chris Voss Show or Chris Voss and you can find everything that we're doing over there as well as my books. Anyway, today we have an amazing author on the show, as we always do. He comes to us. Tarek Azim is going to be on the show with us, and he's going to be talking about his book, Empower, Conquering the Disease of Fear. January 11th, 2022 came out, and we got him on the show. He's going to be talking about his amazing book and everything he does. He is determined to normalize conversations about mental. His mission drives his success as a seven-times world championship attending coach in combat sports, former Division I linebacker at Fresno State, Silicon Valley entrepreneur, author, and philanthropist.

He lives in San Francisco, California, and he's joining us today. Welcome to the show. How are you? Chris, thanks so much for having me on. Thank you for coming on. We certainly appreciate it. Congratulations on the new book. That's always fun. Give us your plugs so people can find you on the interwebs. It gets to know you better. Yeah. So tarakazKazim.com. And on the social side, I'm primarily just on Instagram. I'm not in my game with this social media stuff. I have an at Tarek, T-A-R-E-Q. There you go. There you go.

And so what motivated you to write this book? You know, I actually had, I really didn't have an intention of ever writing a book. I just was on this mission around imposing this idea and this concept I had around wanting to prove the efficacy of sport and physical activity when it came to key mental and emotional deficiencies. And for years, I started building a ton of proof points on this ideology. How are you consistently running towards not normal things? What's helping with the confidence? What's helping with the the insecurities and it always had this correlation to sport so long story short I built a ton of different projects initiatives a lot of stuff for myself where Paul Kix editor at ESPN had reached out several years after a ton of my work throughout the National Football League

and the UFC and so on and said hey there's something always missing in these interviews I said what is it he said you're always talking about the guys and the people and the UFC and so on and said, hey, there's something always missing in these interviews. I said, what is it? He said, you're always talking about the guys and the people and the communities and the companies and so on that you work with, but you never talk about you. And how did you get to this? And he was the first person ever to ask. And that ended up turning into a really fantastic feature on ESPN, the magazine. And when that feature came out, the reception was out of

control. And it was out of control because I think a lot of people actually felt understood and could relate. And so Paul Kix put me on the map. And one of the first to actually write to ESPN to ask to connect with me was Simon and Schuster. Oh, wow. That's awesome. Yeah. And they just said, hey, we'd love to talk. I think there's a lot more here. And there's a fantastic story and book here. You have quite a bit to share. And I ended up meeting with Amar Diyal, who was just an absolute game changer. And when they shared with me the process of a book and how unconventional my process was

to writing a book, I was just like, this is godsend, man. This is absolutely godsend. So that's how I got into writing this book. It was my life's work. I made some noise and the noise was appreciated. And one of the most renowned publishing houses on the planet saw some magic here and that's what we were able to make. Yeah. We love Simon & Schuster. They sent us just the most brilliant authors like yourself. So give us an overall arcing vision of the book, if you would. So the book breaks down into three different segments almost. It's a book that's intertwined personal, almost memoir-ish type, slash prescriptive,

slash proof of mentality. So every chapter almost starts with a story about my life, obviously coming to America as a refugee. And obviously the circumstances were a lot different than the folks I grew up with, but I always found a way to make it work and achieve some of the ideals and desires. But there was a lot. There was a lot of pain and a lot of grit and a lot of blood and a lot of just sweat that kind of went into these outcomes. But a lot of them came with a ton of mental and emotional distress. The interesting thing was, is growing up, I never considered it distress or trauma or anything. But the older I've gotten and the more I share the story, the more it's like, hey, this falls under this category, like this is some serious stuff you went through.

But then what I realized was that there's a lot of other people that also go through this, and these feelings and these battles and these internal wars. So the second portion of the chapter is an example. And it's primarily an individual of actually public influence, whether it's Marshawn Lynch, whether it's Jed York, whether it's Tulsi Gabbard, whether it's Tom Cable and several others, about 10 chapters. I wanted to incorporate an individual in every chapter because they are an individual that a lot of society is looking up to. And these individuals actually have come into my life and into my book because they wanted

to prove the significance and the value of vulnerability and asking for help. So if you've got a person like Marshawn Lynch or a Tulsi Gabbard or a Jed York or these types of individuals having no problem owning up to a deficiency that's preventing them from contentment, this is one of those first steps I take to helping normalize the conversation around mental health is using these types of individuals in my storytelling to help lower the waterline that it's okay like it's totally okay to have these deficiencies that are preventing you from being at your optimal state and then the last part of the very subtle nudges on kind of things to think about when you're going through a process

so it's a prescriptive memoir almost and you've worked with some nfl greats marshall lynch beast mode and what a what an amazing player he is. And I think he joined the Raiders in the last year or two of his playing in the NFL, didn't he? He sure did. Yeah. I'm a big Raiders fan, but it's a painful journey. We did make the playoffs this year. Yeah, barely.

We squeaked that in. And we'll lose next week. So that's it. Come on. I don't know, man. It's tough, year. Yeah, barely. We squeaked that in. And we'll lose next week. So that's it. Come on. I don't know, man. It's tough, man. It's tough. It's been a tough 20 years or whatever the hell it's been since Brady stole the last one from us.

So you have an interesting origin story. Let's go back to your origin story of where you grew up, where you came from. What kind of put you on the road to this and put you in the place to be where you're at now? My family came to America as refugees from Afghanistan. When the Soviets had invaded the country, obviously a ton of folks, including my family, were abadged at Hatali. Both of my grandfathers were extremely noble figures

in the history of our country. My maternal grandfather was actually one of the key targets of that communist regime. He was a commanding general of the Afghan Air Force and Bagram Air Force Base and the senior advisor to the monarchy. And my grandfather was one of the first that actually decided from the monarchy not to leave. My grandfather was requested and asked, hey, let's meet at the border, go into Pakistan, regroup and come back. My grandfather's message back to the king was, let's go ahead and pack the dirt and the people we swore to first, then you'll see me at the border. This will be the

first time I'll have to disobey an order from you. And my grandfather ended up staying along with the prime minister. And they both got taken, imprisoned and executed. And my family fled. And my mother and father and older sister were lucky enough to get some sort of asylum and fly out of Kabul and ended up in Germany, in Munich. And my grandmother and the rest of our family had to walk out of Afghanistan to Pakistan to a refugee camp. And then everybody later regrouped in Germany where I was born. Oh, wow. So we were like a refugee establishment in Germany. And Germany had massive open arms to Afghan refugees at that time. And we spent,

you know, a good three, four years really trying to figure out how to get to the U.S. where the rest of our family was in San Francisco and in New York. And we chose to come to the San Francisco side of the family. And it took some time, but I was two years old when we came to the U.S. And yeah, and grew up here in the Bay Area and lived in about 12 or 13 different homes by the time I was a senior in high school. You know, given the circumstances of our family situation, our family never really had the intention of ever making America home. It was always like, oh, we're going to be over.

We'll go back. Things will go back to being what they were. And that reality just really started becoming a non-reality as time went on. Obviously, the U.S. government was fantastic with our setup, with housing and Section 8 and food stamps. We were able to hold, and my mom was working three jobs at a time for some cash. But again, that wasn't sustainable, right? It was like, this has to end because we're going to go back. A lot of our roots and our beginnings in the U.S. started there.

Coming to America, that's exactly why. Yeah. How did that shape you that's going through 14 different homes i moved around a lot as a kid but not that much i think about four or five times but it helped me how did that shape you as a child growing up and becoming who you are i actually i didn't have an opportunity to fall victim when i was young I didn't have an opportunity to be sad. I never really had an opportunity to really go into the tank. I had very young, my siblings and I had to grow up real quick. Both of our parents were very sick. You know, my mother suffered tremendously from some of the really traumatic experiences of what happened on their exit out of Afghanistan. And my father was diagnosed as a manic-depressant and bipolar.

And obviously, as time evolved and more time away from Afghanistan and family and the unknown and the uncertainties, his mental and emotional health got really bad. And so we spent a lot of our time doing a lot of caretaking of our parents to where it was like, look, as long as we're just together, whether it's this shitty apartment and the projects to a random, like really awesome home you can get four or five months, but we didn't care as long as we were together, that was sufficient enough. We just never really had room for victimization given. My mom always reminded us what they went through to get here. Number one, number two, what happened to my grandfather? It was very difficult for us to ever really feel sorry for ourselves,

given the fact that we had electricity and running water. Did that propel you into wrestling and boxing and football and all the different sports you did just did some of that be uh yeah it definitely did it definitely did man obviously coming up and obviously extremely poor and but having this like internal family legacy that lived within the home we knew who we were butically, you could never see that. You would never believe that. Where we lived, what we drove, how we dressed, where we did grocery shopping, how we paid for groceries. It was difficult to actually find confidence. It was like this massive insecurity of, holy shit, I hope no one knows. Holy shit, I hope no one knows. There were points where we

would be at a grocery store and my father used to whisper to me, he'd say, hey, son. Yeah, he goes, if you want to go to the car now, I'm to pull out the funny money which meant i'm about to pay for food stamps and if there's anyone from your school in this grocery store you might want to run over to the car so they don't see you so i lived with a ton of just insecurities but i was always an extremely loud personality masking masking a lot of that. But the only thing that ever leveled me out and humbled me to be okay with myself was sports. Initially started with taekwondo, then soccer and football. And then I got into grappling and jujitsu and boxing and kickboxing. And it just, I started really, because the depths you take in these martial arts help you find more about yourself.

And that's where the obsession with combat sports really came to play. And the correlations I was seeing with the things I was hiding about myself and not comfortable with myself. There's definitely something about working out in sports, especially as a man, that really fulfill you. Because we're natural gladiators in the way we're built and designed and hereditary. We go out and kill the dinosaur and all that sort of stuff. And so there's a real, it really helps your testosterone. It helps you, I don't know, it just helps you feel more in control of your life. I started working out really heavily every day for the last five months for the first time in 53 years. And it's really

changed my life and my mindset. It's really made a huge difference. And also just making me feel more in control of me and my life. And I think that's really made a huge difference. And also just making me feel more in control of me and my life. And I think that's something more people need to tune into. I totally agree with you. This has really been my life's work and my life's mission, which has really been showing the correlations between the discomfort of literally, imagine doing 15 push-ups to the tips of your fingers and then holding a plank after the 15 push-ups like your body gets super shaky right yeah i bet it does and it's just so funny that something so simple that you can do in your hotel room in your office

pre-game pre-podcast you're shaky but just that shakiness alone your body's still capable of doing it but it's you actually choosing like, look, am I just going to breathe through this? Am I going to sit through this? I'm going to embrace this discomfort. What's this going to give me? This mentality could apply, but the reality is it's funny is physically you get so shaky and sweaty and nauseous and discombobulated. I think about anything emotional or mental that ever happens to you, never feels that bad. Yeah. It really steals your mentality.

Yeah. But my point is that when you get that mentally or emotionally in balance, it doesn't physically ever beat you up and stress you that bad. So if you're capable of holding a shaky plane or running four or five sprints and feeling extremely nauseous, why do you stop that mentality just on physicality? If you apply that mentality of embracing that mentally and emotionally, there really would be nothing that would ever cause you that much pain. That's true. It puts things in perspective. I'm still feeling the pain from arm day last night. So in 2004, you decide to go back to Afghanistan. Tell us what that's in your journey and why you went back there, what motivated you to go back there. And I that would be post post u.s invasion right yeah yeah it was the time like

that was the peak time in afghanistan was that whole 04 to 08 and a half 09 period 2011 is obviously when the u.s had come into afghanistan and in 04 was like when things just started getting really crazy again i initially went back there for some responsibilities to some family name, primarily around some support to my father on our land issues. And I went there with those intentions of just going in there for the fight, letting these people know my dad is strong. My dad has a son, like we're just going to get our land back and fight these people and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it was my senior year in college, actually, over at Fresno State. And I was at a really interesting point in my life where I really wanted to, I had to

make a decision on fulfilling my responsibility to my family and my family legacy. That's getting my motivation of a lot of the not normality and these amazing outcomes. Or do I just go ignore that and fulfill my ego about wanting to pursue a career in professional sports? And I made that decision to go fulfill my responsibility to my family. And I packed my bags and May 26th of 2004, I went to Afghanistan to go stand up for my father and just be this beefcake. And as I got into Afghanistan, I actually realized I came there with a really bad decision and a really bad intention. Given the circumstances and the situations I'd seen from just my visit and travels from Dubai to Kabul alone, I was like, man, this is a disaster.

There's no etiquette. There's no humanity. There's no basic principle of communication. It was very savage-like, just people at this point. And then I get into the country and I see the circumstances of the country, just walking off the airplane on the runway. And you look around and it literally looks like an episode of Game of Thrones. And to say that I came there to come for something based around a greed and a need, I was really disgusted with myself. And it made me quite emotional, actually, that I'd come there with, I got an education, I was raised around this amazing society and

community in the US, I got to play college football, I got to compete in sports and martial arts. And I'm coming to Afghanistan to add more blood and savagery. What's wrong with you? And right there, when I got to Afghanistan, it took me about 10 minutes to actually figure out what my purpose in this world was. And it was literally from that airport to our family's home on Chicken Street. What you're reading today started in 2004. The entire Empower concept, the philosophy of I'm going to utilize sport and physical activity to reconcile peace within individuals and communities began right on that drive when I realized this is why I was brought to Afghanistan. And this is why I got the experience to understand

what I understand around sport and physical activity. And my first, I would call it case study began with youth initiatives. I started immediately in that country with just neighborhood soccer programs. Yeah. And you found there were countless children living in the street, waiting for inevitable recruitment into terrorist networks and anti-peace militias. And this is where you find your purpose. Yeah. Yeah. Look, it was and still is.

It's a very active and easy community to manipulate, which is the kids and the youth. Because there's zero, there's nothing else to look up to or look up for or look to. There's no commercials there about academic institutions or college sports or art or music or there's nothing out there being marketed other than you either will be extremely poor and live in poverty or you come join these horrible militias and get paid a couple grand every time you go shoot this scud missile at this convoy. So for these kids, it was like, okay, that's what I have to become because that's how I'm going to feed my family. So these kids were foaming and they still do, honestly, when you give them any sort of time or directional alternatives, options, these kids foam at the

mouth for just a chance to know something else exists. Yeah. And I imagine since a lot of them don't have parents, maybe they're living in the streets, they don't have good parental directions or parents, or I imagine now that Taliban's in control, a lot of girls can't get education either. Without all that, what direction do you have in life? Yeah, look, you and I can easily, and a lot of us on outside of a place like that could always say the word good and bad, right?

Parenting, for example. But when there is no standard to it or teaching of it this is just parenting for us it might look like it's good or bad parenting but out there that's just how parenting works you have kids you try to have as many as you possibly can and these kids go out there as a start as soon as they can start working or walking like you put them to work to start feeding the family. Wow. And that's a very new thing. Afghanistan wasn't like this pre-79. Afghanistan's gone backwards about two or 300 years in the last 30 years, ever since obviously in 79 when the government froze and religion froze and academics froze and economics froze. Afghanistan also froze

but then it went backwards. So it's a bit of a disaster. But again, I just found my hook and my way, my platform to communicate any sort of direction on stimulating thought and value and acceptance was literally happening through elevating their spirits and then say, great, everybody take a knee. And then boom, relay a message, relay a thought, relay a challenge, and just really starting to educate humanity and human technique, basic human etiquette and tendencies to these young kids and incentivizing them by their soccer practice again tomorrow if you answer this question. Or, hey, we're going to ice cream at the park on Friday if you guys come 10 times in a row. And it was interesting, and it really showed the appetite that these kids had and the people of afghanistan had to actually see alternatives to what's currently available to to and for their peace yeah and then you start the afghan women's

boxing federation yeah yeah so the soccer program actually is what helped stimulate that it showed me that there was reception of women's activity in sport but i do believe the soccer program actually missed its opportunity to market the efficacy sport was having on the identity of Afghanistan. So much of the soccer program and the standouts of the women's soccer program were primarily being used for these publicity stunts to push narratives around independent films or nonprofit organizations and so on. But no one was using that program to be like no this isn't about that this is something much bigger but i realized soccer wasn't big enough for that why afghanistan being the most male-dominated activity known to mankind i'm sorry one of the

most dominated societies of all time i felt like look boxing is the most male-dominated activity of all time and if i can activate this program in particular, I think it would change the entire social landscape of the world's perspective on Afghanistan being ready for social change. So I was just thinking about what is it I can do that's nonpolitical but can make the biggest political noise. And I knew no one would ever really see the correlations between boxing and then identity of women's oppression and the reality of that in a nation like Afghanistan. So the Women's Boxing

Federation was my way of wanting to prove to the world that Afghanistan was ready for social change. That's awesome, man. Yeah. That's awesome. And of course, empowering people in a lot of ways, which is the title of your book. There you go. And so you do the Afghanistan things. How many years were you there in Afghanistan doing that? About four and a half years. Yeah.

Yeah. Once I got this women's boxing program set and I was able to do this one very particular part of the story of that women's boxing program that was the most defining to me around the significance and the value of communication, which really changed my approach to life, where I saw the power of communication was when I was able to get the Taliban to support the women's boxing program. Oh, wow. Wow. The Taliban were the ones that I was told by everybody in the country that were going to skin me and behead me, take your American ways and go out of here with this idea about women's boxing. And the more I would explain what I just explained to you and to the viewers here about why the boxing program, it actually started making sense to what the West would call warlords.

I call them tribal elders. And I went down a list of these folks that I shared this perspective with and this intention with, and they were all extremely supportive, surprisingly, to everybody else, but not to me. Because I knew the intention was so powerful that you'd have to be an idiot to not be like, okay, good, I got to be behind this. And as that kind of went on, the last one I connected with was actually Ahmad Motawakil, who was the chief spokesperson and foreign minister of the Taliban regime. And he was the last meeting I had that I really just needed that stamp of approval in order to get this program to actually be registered as a federation under the National Olympic Committee. And we ended up spending some good time together and had a really good, thorough conversation. And I was extremely surprised, not with his reception. I knew it would take me time, but I didn't know I'd get it as fast as it did. To where he was extremely supportive about this and had relayed to me.

I said, I would relay this message to know that none of us will ever get in the way of this program. This is a very symbolic movement. Our women need this. Our country needs this. And the world needs this. That is awesome, man. That is awesome. I actually recorded that.

He let me video our conversation. So when I got that, and then I was able to relay that message to the National Olympic Committee and to the community, primarily to the small batch of girls that actually stepped up to be a part of this movement with me, the relief and the excitement was one of the best ever. And at that point, I said, good. My job here in Afghanistan is done. And got the federation activated, got the federation, started the club, built the facility inside of the Olympic Stadium

where they used to actually have their public executions, just as a statement. Wow, that's a definite flip. Yeah. And after that, I just was like, great. Now I know what it takes to help folks understand potential. And that boot camp in Afghanistan really put me on path to do what I had done since and led to this amazing opportunity with Simon & Schuster and this book.

That's awesome, man. That's proof positive of your techniques and work. And on top of everything you've done with NFL players, you talk about the science and case studies around the efficacy of sport and physical activity to help mitigate threats of mental and emotional health disorders. Tell us what that means to you and what that's about. So internally, I run this process called the game plan. And every single group, firm, agency, company, or individual that wants to become a client or a teammate,

they have to go through this onboarding process called a game. I call it a game plan because if I call it what it really was, people wouldn't show up. And because it's me and everything I've been involved with physically, they think when you say game plan, they think it's like a physical game plan, right? Like weight training and nutrition and so on. And the game plan is actually just a very honest conversation. And the whole intention of my game plans are really trying to get down to the depth of how folks define what's preventing them from being at a state of contentment. And it's been really interesting that 100% of the time, every single game plan I've done over the last 16, 17 years, every single individual has said the exact same thing. And it's been the fear, it's the judgment, it's the uncertainty, it's the things we don't know.

And then I ask, what is the ultimate unknown? And what's the worst thing that could happen? What do you think everybody says? They die. Thank you. And Chris, when folks say death, for me, my confidence just goes poof because I'm like, great, this is perfect. And they go, why are you celebrating that? I said, because now I know I have a place in your life.

And they say, how so? I said, death isn't an an unknown death is actually the only guarantee you know death is the only thing that's happening for sure that in taxes right that depends on what country you're in and what happens with these game plans i actually start to frame their entire development and their entire perspective and mentality and narratives around the consciousness of death. Wow. And they asked me, why are you so obsessed with death?

And I'm like, because it's the only real thing that's happening. And if you think about it, right, everything you do in this world, everything you do in this world, those are the uncertains. Those are the unknown, but you tackle it with confidence. The only thing that's 100% certain, you're doing everything in your life to avoid even thinking about it. We've had this whole hashtag we've had for years, which we've always been called the not normal versus the normal. What really separates the normal from the not normal mentality is what we prepare for.

In my stable and I, and I'm hoping the readers of this book really start being able to shift into this not normal category of individuals that actually prepare for making their entire existence around preparation for that moment, that last moment. And what is it about that last moment that's so important is when I ask again, in these game plans, what is it that you take to your grave when you die? What do you think everybody says? What would you say? I would say it's going to be the things that were important to you, probably emotionally, your memories. For me, it's my dog children. Some of the experiences I had in life, it's not going to be about money or anything I built or how much I made per hour. It's not going to be any of that. It's going to be the choice memories that I have of what I did in life and who I interacted with that was important to me, I suppose.

Fantastic. And if you think about that and package that, all of that leads to an outcome. And that outcome is a feeling. So the easy answer to the question is at the end of the day, all we all take to our graves at the end of the day is an accumulation of our life's feelings. Oh, that's interesting. Literally take your last breath with a feeling. Never thought about that. And we really complicate peace.

You don't have to be that complicated because if you contribute every single act and intention and association to contribute to that feeling that you're going to have on your last breath, you could live a lot more than most. You'll stop procrastinating. You'll be more forgiving. You'll actually love yourself. You'll love more.

And it really, I think the mentality alone just humbles tremendously the human. And I think the more humble we become and the more conscious we become of these things, we actually act on what we also try to avoid, which is nerves. Yeah. And why I think nerves are so important. Nerves actually get us to think and act on every asset and resource we have. At the end of the day, this thing, primarily these case studies really led to me that folks actually look at fear as a disease that is preventing them from contentment, preventing them from optimization, preventing them from love, preventing them from opportunities.

And I do believe that fear is 100% disease. If you allow it to be, if you allow it to be that responsibility, you're giving it. But the reality is, from my perspective, fear only exists for you to embrace it. You know, because embracing it is what forces you to prove to yourself that you have the capability of actually being able to leverage this and use this. It just is consciousness. What we've been doing over the last, you know, 16 years with these game plans and these case studies, which are these game plans are what we refer to as, is taking this and applying this mentality.

Obviously, I did it as a community in afghanistan and youth and then tribal elders and then when i came to the u.s it was primarily building my brand a bit around this philosophy through my teammates through jake shields and all of his success as an mma legend marshall lynch tom cable my mentor was the first to give me a shot at 24, 25 years old with the Oakland Raiders when he was the head coach. Primarily on this, he goes, you'll figure it out. Not like you better do this, you better do that. He just trusted the intention of what I was doing. And it was all of these little proof points of individuals that

actually gave me the confidence of actually starting to organize this organization. And as we evolved in 2011 and 12, integrating this mentality in these game plans corporate wide, where we would go into companies and challenge their sales performance times, their absenteeism, their product development times. And we'd actually compare our methodology and philosophy to work outcomes and prove the science that way. That is awesome, man. I can totally attest to that. I grew up in a cult and I watched a lot of people, especially from dogma, there were always a fear of the one thing that a lot of it revolves around the fear of why are we here? And when we die, what happens after we die? And a lot of fear of death really, when it comes down to it. watched my father especially in his later years always afraid of death but he never lived his life

and one of the reasons that i see a lot of people especially if they're in a dogma because they put off so much of the wonderful things that are in life and that's bad this is bad that's bad because some i don't know some puppet master in the sky said some masochist sadist. And they don't live their lives because they're putting it off to some post-life or something, or they're hoping that's there. And they're betting the whole gamble on that. And the fear comes because they don't want to die. They haven't lived their life. They've missed out on things in their life.

And I realized my dad, especially at the end for the last five years, he was really fighting not to die. And he was so afraid. And I could really feel inside of him and other people I've studied this with, that they're afraid of death because they haven't lived their life. They realize they've wasted a lot of it. Or maybe deep down, they realize subconsciously, they've wasted a lot of it. And for me, I came to the resolution that, okay, and this very early on, I took this on and there was a guy who I won't tell you who quoted, but he said, there's two things. There's things that happen in life that are very definite. You're born and you die. And it's what happens in between that makes the difference.

And so early on as becoming an atheist, I accepted that I'm going to die. And there's a lot of people who have a lot of different opinions about what happens after you die. It's a crapshoot. It's like Karl Marx, not Karl Marx, but the Marx Brothers, Groucho Marx used to do the, you had to guess the word in his head. And if you didn't guess the right word,

what is the lucky thing? You could be a great Catholic and go to church all your life and then die and find out the lottery ticket was Mormons or something. And so you don't know. So I just accepted the fact that I'm going to die someday. And I'm going to live my life in a way that if I die tomorrow, I'm happy. I don't have any fear of dying tomorrow. I did my shit. I had a good time.

I lived my life my way. I didn't live in society's way. So I really agree with you on this concept of looking death in the face and not fearing it. And then living your life without that. What else really helps is knowing that the person sitting across from you, whether it be on that boardroom or in the cage or the ring or the football field, and you have this type of mental edge of being able to embrace what they're terrified of, also helps tremendously.

And where I go with that is that this, at the end of the day, we can't fear death. Yeah. Because think about it. Death only happens when it saves you from pain. That's true, I guess. We all worry about that painful sort of long death. But at the same time, too time too again this is where practice of again i'm not pushing any religion a belief system and hope right is an important practice

to have because at the end of the day that's all you're going to depend on in those moments and if you don't have practice with those things between now and then you can't depend on that yeah right so this is why the belief the conviction, the commitment to building a relationship with hope is also extremely significant to know that again, death is only going to happen when it saves you from pain. So between now and then, prepare for how you want to feel on that last breath. And how I got to this, and I'll stop on this topic, was God bless my father's soul, man. This book was inspired by my father and his last breath. And I started the book with a chapter called Smiling at Death. And my father actually took his last breath with a smirk.

I hope to smile. I hope to laugh on my way out. He literally took his last breath with a smirk. And my brothers, I looked over to my brother. I'm like, what? I'm like, what? I was like, I think dad went to heaven. He said, no, dude, he's smiling. I'm like, no, I really think he passed.

And my mom puts a mirror in front of his nose, 2.26 in the morning on January 11th. The book came out the same day my father passed randomly, by the way. My mom goes, yeah, your dad went to heaven. And we all just smirked. And I said, talk about an individual who leaves this world so selfless to make it easy on everybody around him because he lived so and that's i told him that night chris i swear to god man his body was there everybody was out of the room and i told him i was really choked up but i couldn't get emotional because of how he had left and i told him i said dad i think your whole purpose in this world the 63 years you're alive was meant for this moment for me to see this.

And I swear I put the intention out right there that I'm going to relay this message one day. And God works in really interesting ways. A couple of years later, here comes Paul Kix with ESPN. And then I'm going to deal with Simon & Schuster. And it happened. It's a hell of a journey, man. It's a hell of a journey, man. It's a hell of a journey. I've gone into situations in business where, and sometimes in fights, whether it's lawsuits or something, the more successful you get in business, the more lawsuits you pick up and it just becomes a money thing. And I just

took the attitude, what are you going to do? What's the worst that can happen? You can kill me. Well, I'm fine. Go ahead. Kill me. Like I've lived my life. I've had a good fucking time and I didn't live to the social norms of everybody i didn't wake up when i was 40 and go wow i should have lived my life and let's have a midlife crisis i might live midlife crisis at 20 so that most men have to me i just i took on the attitude what are you gonna do fucking kill me like what do i care i don't have a wife and kids you can take me out no one's gonna miss me And so having that mindset sometimes put me in some really powerful places to empower me to go, we're going all the way. And when people saw that I was willing to go all the way, there's some stories of me and my father battling when

in our teenage years. And once he figured out that I was willing to go all the way to stop his abuse, I, he had to come to the realization that he'll go farther than I will. And I won. And of course, then he stopped beating me and my siblings. And I resonate with that. Anything else you want to touch on in the book before we go out? No, I'm just really hoping that I'm hoping this book actually just helps people understand that they have the freedom to choose their narrative. I think it's important for them to know that there's a massive community out there of individuals that are okay being not normal. There's a massive community of folks and teammates out there you'll have that are always looking to embrace the discomfort.

And that's really it. I'm really excited about it. I hope folks enjoy it. And I really can't thank you enough, man, for bringing me on. Well, thank you for coming on and writing this amazing book. I know how hard it is to me to write a book. And what an amazing story, just coming from a life, coming out of a refugee camp and what you built in life. And you're helping empower so many different people. And hopefully a lot of people will read the book, of course, and learn to empower themselves. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thanks for being on the show. We certainly appreciate it, man. Yeah, appreciate you too. Hope we can do this again let's do it anytime give us your plug so people can find you on the interwebs yeah so tarikazim.com t-a-r-e-q-a-z-i-m.com and then also on instagram it'll just be at tarik it's the at sign obviously t-a-r-e-q um let's connect there you go There you go. There you go, guys. Check out the book, Order It Up. Just barely came out, January 11th, 2022.

And is it the 11th already? It's the 12th already. Can you believe it? Yeah, that's crazy, man. I just got off of CS, so I'm still trying to find my brain off the road. So order up the book, guys. Empower, Conquering the Disease of Fear. Definitely get it for your books there. Also, watch the video version of this. Go to

youtube.com, Forge Has Chris Foss. Hit the bell notification button. Go to goodreads.com, Forge Has Chris Foss. See everything we're reading and reviewing there. Go see all the groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram as well. See our big LinkedIn. We have a big LinkedIn group, 132,000 people. And then there's also a beautiful new newsletter that's just kicking butt over there. It's crazy. We put it out daily. Anyway, guys, so be sure to tune in for all that stuff. Excuse me. Stay safe, be good to each other, and we'll see you guys next time.