The Daily Stoic - NFL Trainer Tareq Azim on Living Intentionally, Redefining Success, and Memento Mori

Episode Date: February 26, 2022

Ryan talks to NFL trainer and author Tareq Azim about his new book Empower: Conquering the Disease of Fear, why intention is a better indicator of long term growth than specific goals, the distinction between ego and confidence, the power of meditating on death, and more.Tareq Azim is a seven-time World Championship attending coach in combat sports, a former Division I linebacker at Fresno State, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, an author, and a philanthropist. He also created the first Afghan Women’s Boxing Federation in 2004. Tareq’s mission is to normalize conversations about mental health, and this has driven his career and success throughout his life.Read Paul Kix’s article: The inside story of NFL trainer Tareq AzimFor a limited time, UCAN is offering you 30% off on your first order when you use code STOIC at checkout Just go to UCAN.CO/STOICGo to shopify.com/stoic for a FREE fourteen-day trial and get full access to Shopify’s entire suite of features. Grow your business with Shopify today - go to shopify.com/stoic right now.When you purchase a 3-month Babbel subscription, you’ll get an additional 3 months for FREE. That’s 6 months, for the price of 3! Just go to Babbel.com and use promo code DAILYSTOIC.LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the candidates you want to talk to, faster. Every week, nearly 40 million job seekers visit LinkedIn, Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/STOIC.As a member of Daily Stoic Life, you get all our current and future courses, 100+ additional Daily Stoic email meditations, 4 live Q&As with bestselling author Ryan Holiday (and guests), and 10% off your next purchase from the Daily Stoic Store. Sign up at https://dailystoic.com/life/ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFolllow Tareq: InstagramSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoke. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes. Something to help you live up to those four Stoke virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go

for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. You might have heard my interview with the ESPN writer Paul Kicks, who's book the Sabotour. I've recommended many times. He wrote a piece about me and Stoicism

in the NFL and professional sports. This would have been summer of 2020. But I think one of the best articles that Paul has ever written is It's actually about today's guest. It's called Prepare for Death. It was an ESPN feature. I'll just read you the deck headline of the piece, gives you a sense of the guest. A man who once stared down Afghan warlords is now transforming NFL stars.

This is the inside story of Torek Azim, Profa Ball's most revolutionary trainer. I mean, that's pretty great. And I was happy enough to interview Torek in today's episode. He has a new book called Empower Conquering the Disease of Fear. He's a seven-time world championship attending coach in combat sports, a former division one linebacker Fresno State, Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author and a philanthropist and he created the first Afghan women's boxing Federation in 2004. His mission is to normalize conversations about mental health and this is driven his career and success in life. And I think you're really going to enjoy this interview.

You can follow him on Instagram at T-A-R-E-Q. You can check out his new book, Empower, Conquering the Disease of Fear. I really enjoyed it. You're definitely familiar with clients that he has trained, Marshawn Lynch. And I will also link to the Paul Kicks story in the show notes because, well, it's pretty good. I'm very excited to talk because I read the Paul Kicks profile of you a few years ago. And Paul Kicks also wrote

a piece about me, so we share that in comment. Oh, okay. Fantastic. Again, what a wonderful human being. Yeah, he is. He actually wrote a great book that I love of the saboteur about the French resistance. But a small world, and I was wondering if you're going to do a book because when I read that piece I was like, man, this is a story. Yeah, no, it was interesting. It was actually Paul Kicks that put me on the map. Ryan, I never had an intention of writing a book, but I always just had this internal intention of wanting to live in history books.

Yep. And Paul Kicks showed up out of nowhere with this interest in wanting an interview. And at that time, I was just kind of over it because every interview I was doing was about the guys I was working with. So it was always this repeat interview process of the same old story about my teammates and Paul said, no, no, no, no.

I have questions about you. I said, okay, that changes things. Let's do this. It's funny because I grew up not far from you. I grew up in Sacramento. I think part of it is I got to imagine you didn't grow up knowing anyone that wrote books, anyone that was in sport. It's a part of America that I feel like

because people think it's California, they think that it's all Los Angeles or something, but it's a different vibe. It sure is, it definitely is a different vibe. And it's a vibe we take a lot of pride in. Yes, yes, for sure. Well, let's start with physical fitness, because I think it's related obviously to mental fitness.

But I guess people probably assume that when an athlete works with, that why would an athlete need a strength in conditioning coach, right? I guess people probably assume like, of all the things, this is the part of it that they have down pat. They've been training in this their whole life.

Is there really room to grow, but I imagine there is. Yeah, when it comes to professional athletics, you know, I think once you kind of get past the obviously, you would have to speak US side here, like you get past the college level. It's really about what do you do to sustain and become as technically as you possibly can with what you have. So obviously when folks think strength and conditioning

or strength and performance, the idea is probably what folks see on what defines that, which is like pushing weight and doing these Olympic lifts and slamming balls and doing this and doing that, but it's a very general term when it comes to strength and performance. And what my model was primarily about around was really tapping into what's been the most neglected and identifying those neglected components of endurance muscular endurance strength balance body weight

capabilities mobility And and and I'd kind of just frame my strength in conditioning and performance program around that because I knew if they were You know obviously neglecting physically then it gives you the the the all-in on what was going on mentally and emotionally then it gives you the the the all-in on what was going on mentally and emotionally. So you sort of look for the the area in which either they're sort of naturally weak or their training has neglected something and that's what you focus on. Right because a majority of injuries happen. When injuries happen they're usually happening to parts of our bodies we neglect. Right. Yeah. So it's it's it, my model has always been about preventative. Right? What do we do to prevent something happening? Or if something has happened, what do we do from preventing that to happen again? And the majority that came from the way I was

training and I was taught to train. Right? Like, I've had, I'm 39 years old now, I have four operations on my spine already. You know, and it's training, it's from these vertical loads, it's from doing things that I wasn't supposed to be doing. I could have been a lot more logical and technical if I was taught that. So by way of my injuries and by way of being coached wrong, I think I had a bit of a concept and an idea around what to do right. And does part of that come from the fact that we try to sort of do this one-size-fits-all thing that everyone should be doing X as opposed to like what do you specifically need given your body type, given what you're trying to do, given what you like and dislike and all that sort of stuff? It's fantastic. You ask that because it's very, that correlates to like ideology as a whole, right?

Like, even when it comes to nutrition, right? You see all these nutritional fads out of like everybody should go keto and everybody should go caveman and everybody. And it's like, no, your blood work will actually tell you what you need. Right. You know, and it's similar to like a physical assessment will tell you what you need. Right. And it's similar to a physical assessment will tell you what your body needs. And that's hard because it's sort of like,

I got to imagine also with a trainer, there's this mentality of like, when all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail. So it's like what you like or what you're good at or what you're known for, there can be the temptation to force that on certain people as opposed to think like, what do they need, what do they want, what will make them better. There can be the temptation to force that on certain people as opposed to think like what

do they need, what do they want, what will make them better. Yeah, and I learned that actually young, right? I came a coach by default and I was actually coaching folks on what I was good at. And I was seeing that I was almost setting them up for failure or injury or a submission or a, you know, a threat in the cage or the ring. And I said, okay, T, it's time to put your ego aside and actually become a student of the person you're sitting across from. And actually start to share perspective more than, here's the answer, right? And then you allow the answer, you allow the athlete to, you know, kind of marry into your ideology

and you together start to formulate a strategy around what would put them in an optimal state. I imagine it's not always coming back from injury too, but it could be there's something that they feel that they're just like either a level they're not hitting or a part of their game or their portfolio that they feel like they could be better at. I always love when you watch an athlete

sort of come back from the offseason, not just not in bad shape, but you're like, oh man, they put on all this muscle or they figured out how to do X, Y, or Z. I always find that so inspiring. Right, so that's right, it was allude and te earlier when I said preventative. It wasn't necessarily about injury.

It's about the feeling, right? Like preventing a feeling of like, gosh, I would have done more. Gosh, I wish I could have. You know, and it's, let's prevent these feelings as a whole. Some could be injury, the feeling of injuries. Some could be the feeling of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of contentment, whatever it may be.

But yeah, preventative is kind of been my thing. And really honing in on that in order to get max output from folks. Because if you put physical goals on for folks, they'll reach them. Sure. They'll reach them and then the complacency kicks in. But if you make goals around their training, having an intention to do something that's a feeling, they'll never reach it until they die. So they'll just keep pushing

at these new levels out of them. I was just thinking about that the other day, because someone was asking me, I was giving a talk and they asked if that any goals like as a writer. And I was saying that I didn't because almost all the goals that people recognize are based on things that we don't control, right?

So your goal would be to hit the New York Times bestseller list or your goal would be to sell a certain number of copies just in the way that your goal might be to win a Super Bowl or to make the Olympic team or whatever. And those goals obviously, they mean something and it would be hard to do them and not be trying to do them. Like you don't accidentally make the Olympic team. But I feel like one of the problems, I like what you're saying about a goal versus a feeling versus an outcome, because to me the problem with the goal is that ultimately somebody else

decides if you achieve the goal. If your goal is to be more proud of your body or more comfortable in your body or your goal is to be faster releasing the football, that's something that's up to you versus like if your goal is to be a starter or your goal is to score a certain number of touchdowns or a certain number of yards, ultimately a whole bunch of other people can get between you and doing that thing. Yeah, and this is right. I think we have a massive opportunity to start to educate the value of intentionality. Just the intention of that and how, because intentions correlate so much more outside just

the physical outcome of something, right? Yeah. And the applicability that the intentionality can have into so many different sectors that you can reference would make a lot more sense to that person. You can't compare everything to a super bowl, but you could compare everything to the intention and the preparation for the super bowl. Right. Right. No.

And I feel like it's not just protecting against downside. Like, hey, if your goal is to be a great scientist, not win a Nobel Prize, if the Nobel Prize snubs you, you're protected. That's nice. But it's also like, what if your goal is to win a Nobel Prize and then you do it at 25, what are you supposed to do with the rest of your life, right? And I was reading about Tom Brady and they were saying that, you know, thinking that Tom Brady is obsessed

with winning is the wrong way to think about it. Tom Brady is obsessed with getting better. And to me, that's another way of saying intentionality, right? You're obsessed with getting better, which is something you control that just also tends to lead to winning a lot. Right. But we also do have, you know, the freedom, right, and the permission to craft their own narrative and definition of words, right? Like, yeah, I agree when Tom says winning, because when people always ask me, like, how's it going? Like, what do you plan on doing?

Like, winning? Sure. Like, I guess all I want to do, I'm addicted to winning more than anything else in the world, but I'm not defining winning by a competition with people. Yes, right? I define winning by like, did I just get myself beat to the ground today in order to get what I wanted to? Good, I want, you know? Right. No, no, people think being competitive means beating other people, but really competitive is just about like giving your best at whatever you're doing.

I think it's a disservice to yourself when you give that right to other people, right? Yes. And that's a lot of like what I've been blessed to be able to coach and advise and consult on is hoping that that, not that this is the answer, but it's just a perspective that's worked for me and my stable, right? And it's a perspective that I'm just hoping many adopt because so many folks are such big fans of my stable, right?

They look at the Marshawn Lynch's and the Jake Shields's and the Jed Yorks and all these folks that have just kind of done the not normal. And it's like, look, I'm just giving you a taste of like, here's what they do in order, you know, that have made them be something you admire. Like you could admire you if you did this with yourself. And I remember the first time I heard an author talk about how many copies they wanted to sell of a book. I found that to be very, it hit me in a weird place because it struck me as in a sense

artificially constrained, right? Again, to say like, I wanna win a certain amount or I wanna do a certain amount, it's almost putting the ceiling on it, right? Because you should be trying to do it as much as you can for as long as you can, in a way that's healthy and productive and doesn't come at the expense of your family or other things.

But within that context, if your success is purely designed by external things, not only is it other people can prevent you from doing it, but also it, I think it puts a weird ceiling on it that doesn't need to be there. It, yeah, agree with you 100%. I, when you read the, I don't know if you had a chance to read through the book yet, but yeah, right, right here. Okay, yeah. So, the permission chapter with, with Jed York shattering the glass ceiling, right?

Was that? The second part to the how I think about that is, I'm just not going to allow the rest of the world to ever have their finger on the trigger of my faith and my destiny, right? And I think that's another really important thought process for folks to be in competition with self. Because to your point, like, a number of books being sold is a great,

I fulfilled your expectations, not my own. And what if you sold a lot of books being sold is a great, I fulfilled your expectations, not my own. And what if you sold a lot of books, but deep down, you knew it was garbage, right? So like what if you want, or what if you want a lot of games, or what if you got MVP, but you knew that you hadn't played your best, or you knew that you doped,

or there's any number of ways that one could accomplish the external goal but betray one's ethical compass or one's own standards to get there and is that is that winning you know again if we can redefine winning I don't think that is winning. Right and then but again that's that's that's what happens when you fulfill the expectations of everybody else but your own because it's not authentic to do that Therefore, you're gonna do inauthentic things to achieve that because that's the road map to it. Yes So it's important to be selfish

Right because it forces you to be honest and truthful With the intention of obviously being self-selfless with the outcome of obviously being selfless with the outcome. Right, or if selfish means like you have your own strong sense of what you're trying to do and what success is, because then what other people are saying success is or isn't becomes less relevant to you. Bingo. Yeah, I remember I talked at Alabama a few years ago and Sabin was talking about how people will sometimes think that he's incapable of being happy because the team will be up by

30 points and he'll be frowning on the sideline. But his point was that it's not that I'm not happy with the score. It's that I don't actually care that much about the score. I care about whether we're doing what we're supposed to be doing. So if we're winning, but it's because the other team is playing terribly, that doesn't excuse the fact that we have utterly abandoned our game plan or we're being ill-disciplined or we're not coming together as a team or any number of those things. So in a way, it probably feels egotistical, but I think it's actually more in the realm of confidence.

You're like, here's who I am, here's what I'm trying to do, and I don't really give a shit about anything else. But I also don't understand when the intention is about self-maximization, and the reward is something so many are celebrating, I don't understand how the word ego-testical is a bad thing. And it's so funny how confidence And you're almost shamed for being confident and not thinking like the normal. And I'm hoping we kind of come to a, not necessarily a solution for that

because I think it'll stop the ambition, but it's just very interesting to me how language like that is used to judge shame and slow down. Would you make a distinction between confidence and ego? Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, what confidence is what I would consider like having proof, belief, and reference, and then ego is what I need to be able to run through

that wallhead first and be okay with it. Huh, that makes sense. Like to me, I say confidence, like I talked about this on another episode, actually with Dr. Nate Zinser, who's the mental skills coach at West Point, and he, I was saying that I don't believe in myself, I have evidence. And so to me, confidence is like, I've done the work, I've done the research, I've thought about it, I know what's, like I know what I'm capable of. To me, ego is almost coming from a place of insecurity or greed or selfishness or superiority.

So to me, a confident person, the second chapter in your book's All About Humility, to me, confidence and humility can go together whereas ego and humility are opposites of each other. Yeah, I mean, look, again, it's how you use language and how you use words to stimulate, right? It's funny because of my relationship with seeing ego and the relationship of seeing confidence,

gives me so many different types of perspectives to marry, given a circumstance in a situation. Like, at what times and periods in your life is ego important? You know, what periods in time in your life is confidence important. Yeah. I do think all these things exist because there's a time and place to use them. That's true.

And I'm not gonna play the leverage them, but I do think it's an easy way of pursuing and living if you just stamp that ideology and that mentality on everything. That's right. I mean, I think time and place is a good way to think about it because it's like you could probably get away with being egotistical on the field as a motivating force, but you'd better fucking be humble in the gym or you're not going to do the work, right?

There's a great stoic line. Epic Titus says it's impossible to learn that which you think you already know, right? So like to me, that's the perils of ego is like, if you think you're perfect, if you think you've got it, that you know, you've already beat this person, you're not going to be in the gym doing the work. Whereas a great fighter is humble, probably in the in the ring when the work, whereas a great fighter is humble probably in the ring when they're sparring and they're training and they're preparing for the fight. But once you step in the ring, if you don't believe you can destroy that other person,

you're probably not going to do it. Right. And as I alluded to earlier, right? It's the ego that makes you want to drive headfirst to the wall. Like it's the ego that's going to get you from your bed into your car into the gym, right? It's your confidence and your humility that's going to make you a student again. So again, there's a time and place for it, right? But it's funny that when I've seen this, a handful of times, as you've seen, you know, my case studies, I call them case studies, my client base, are individuals that, you know, who's who of Wall Street in Silicon

Valley and professional sports? And the immediate thing because of their confidence is they're so ego-tistical. It's like, yeah. No, they actually had to use ego to get to this place of confidence that make it seem as if that's all you know them for is because you saw them in their pursuit. So it's been a really interesting assessment of both. Hey there listeners, while we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast

that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduke Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Kodopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology

that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together they discuss their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery. Why I always thought that about Steve Jobs. So obviously when Steve Jobs is up on stage like

pitching the new iPhone or whatever, he is like, this is the greatest thing that's ever invented. He has to be so infectiously convinced that he has made the greatest device in the history of the world that people believe him, right? But back in the laboratory, or two seconds before he got on stage, you know his perfectionism and his desire to always get better. He's probably like, this is wrong, this is wrong, we got to fix this, we got to fix it. So to me, what humility, humility is ultimately a better engine than ego because humility is focused on what there is left to do or where you can improve.

I think ego as a state in performance probably works, but you have to have humility or that hunger to get better as the driver, I think. I mean, how do nerves exist if a humility doesn't? Yes. Right. And it's nerves that put you on point being able to assess all of your tools and your capabilities, your capacity, you know, you're becoming a bit conservative, less emotional, more logical. So I think this whole chain and this whole evolution of thought and feeling have to

exist in order to exist. Yes, yes. Well, isn't the cycle of like great fighters that you're the hungry, humble, like underdog, who is going up against the champion, who has become complacent, egotistical, perhaps a little lazy. They don't think they can be beaten. This is also the story of David and Goliath. And then you beat them, but then the danger for you is that you then become the overconfident entitled complacent champion. And so that is the timeless cycle

of dominance in every field. Yeah, absolutely. Well said. Absolutely. How do you stay hungry, like with what you do? How do you stay a student of what you do? I've just had a, I've had an obsession with, with not normality. Right. I've had an obsession with not normality. I've had an obsession since I was very, very, very, very young. Not by, I wouldn't necessarily, okay, back then I wouldn't call it by choice. I'd call it by must in order to belong. As you know, my family and I, you know,

we came to the States as refugees. So it was very difficult to, So it was very difficult to kind of realize if you had any value to anything growing up, right? Sure. And a majority of what I had done was actually why I'm so obviously in love with sport and physical activity and the value of it and how it carries over and there's so much was that sport is what legitimately gave me that feeling of freedom and value. And I wanted- There's a fairer'socracy. Yeah, right. So is this entry of, look, what do I do?

What do I do that's different than others in my community? What do I do different from my cousins? All the Afghan refugees and the Afghan family, all you do is play soccer. Like, I've got to do something different and I decided to play football, you know, and I decided to do track and I decided to get into ASB. And I really started to do what was not normal,

but it was resulting in these feelings that I don't think anything would have given me if I hadn't taken those risks, right, of going into an area where I could have totally been judged and dealt with the unknown. And I just started getting these sweet, delicious tastes and these new opportunities and these new friends and these new experiences that no one in my community could comprehend. And I really like that feeling. And what I do to state hungry is consistently just jump

into things, learn about things, explore things that are just not normal to me or to my community. And therefore, I have and live with something of interesting. I have to imagine, and I was just thinking about this the other day, like one of the things about writing is that you have, you have more bad days than good days, right? So you sit down, you wanna have a good day, you're prepared to have a good day, and then it's just not there, right?

So it's sort of pushing through that resistance, but one of the great things about sports, I feel like, is that if you do it, it's a good day. Do you know what I mean? If you go to the gym, that's the win. Obviously, there's good workouts and bad workouts, but what I love so much about physical exercise and why the Stokes talk about it is that I think it's a great metaphor for like, for, or it's a great symbolic victory that you can have in your life. So I have to

imagine as a young refugee, you know, even the stuff that's going on with your dad, as life is not in your control, as what other people do or think about you or how your treated is not in your control, but like what you did in the weight room or what you did on the football field that day, like that with something you controlled where you could win, you could feel good about yourself and you could make your life a little bit better every day. Right, which kind of led to something a layer deeper into that was the becoming extremely conscious of feeling. And I think it was feeling was healing.

Having that relationship with feeling was extremely healing to me. Whether it be, look, I am probably the most insecure human being I've ever met in my life. And that's why I'm so kind of like with my very particular community so sought after is because I actually make insecurity safe. And I make a lack of confidence safe by being one that just was like, look, I'll own it. Why? Because it's consistently pushing me to develop that stronger sense of feeling. And why I'm so big on that is I actually saw the significance and the value of feeling

when I saw my father take his last breath. And I understood now why this was put upon me so young and why I looked and felt the way I did so much of my youth and my early adulthood, when you just kind of, you know, you just push, you just don't know why you're necessarily pushing all the time and why you like to work so hard and why you like to test yourself. I didn't have this sophistication when I was 17 to 24 to explain this, but the older I got in the life experience I saw, a lot of that really started to make sense. Yeah, I feel like there's different languages, right? So like some

people, some people are very physically intelligent, some people are mentally intelligent or articulate. I feel like sometimes we do athletes a disservice, you know, we ask LeBron James or, you know, one of the most talented people in the world at a physical thing. We ask them to describe or explain that thing, but that's not their language. Their language is acting it out, making it real physically. So I think there's kind of this trend in sports to not think about the feelings, to not explore them, to not articulate them, to not get to the bottom of them.

But that seems like a big component of what you do is trying to figure out what those feelings are, not just stuffing them down or pretending they don't exist or labeling them as weak, but putting them to the test figuring out what they are, dealing with them. Yeah. Someone recently asked me, you ever thought about working with Antonio Brown, and what would you say to him? Yeah. I said, I would say nothing to him.

I would listen to him. I would try to understand him. Sure. You know, and to your point, that's 100% spot on, which was, even with myself, so much of my value and so much of my relevance was always by way of what I was doing physically. And I always believe me, Ryan, I struggle with this tremendously for years by being, I have a lot more to contribute than just physical.

Like you should, you should hear me talk about creative. Let me help with some strategy around your business and your structure. I'm very process oriented. No, no, no, no, no. Like show us on the ring, show us on the mat, show us on the weight room, right? And it was actually building my facility was my hub that gave me the opportunity to be able to bait them in through the power of physical activity, but then be able to share a perspective and somewhat of a philosophy around

optimization. And it all came from actually having these very, very transparent honest conversations. And these transparent conversations with my athletes exposed, you know, so much of their anger and their frustration was with folks don't understand me. And it's like, well, after this conversation, I can guarantee you you don't understand yourself. And once you understand yourself, then you'll know how to articulate, you'll know how to present, you'll know how to brand and market, what means what to you. And we literally use our training grounds and our physical activity to actually have these conversations all day long.

Yeah, I heard a great thing. Someone's giving me this advice as a parent and they were saying, you know, behavior is the language of children. So basically that because they're a child, they can't articulate how they're feeling. They don't even know that what they're having is a feeling, they're acting. And how they're acting, you know, explains what they're going through. My wife and I were talking about this with our kids during the pandemic. It was like, our kids don't know that they're stressed. Like, they're obviously stressed because we're in the middle of this strange, surreal thing

that's happening, but they're not aware that stress is a feeling. So they can't say, I'm stressed. They can barely even say, I'm scared, right? They might be scared or upset about a specific thing, but generally it's through their behavior that they're talking. And I do feel like in sports, you tend to see people who have perhaps not ever been encouraged to articulate or explore their feelings. And so we're forced to look at actions, whether it's quitting in the middle of a game or it's getting arrested or gaining weight in the off season, it's through these actions that they're articulating maybe fear or a boredom or a self-destructiveness or any number of those things.

It's through the actions that they're speaking, and it requires a certain amount of, from a great coach or a friend, you know, whoever it is, whatever your relationship that person is, it requires a certain amount of empathy and patience to be like, oh, this is why someone is doing this and how can I help them understand why they're doing that. Yeah, and a majority of that is that they've never been held responsible for that because it's always been, you're so great at what you do. Don't worry about developing anywhere else. Yeah.

And what happens is that, you know, some of them actually stopped growing in high school. Yeah. Because from high school on, you know, etiquette, you were told, yeah, but I'm just saying, yeah, exactly, like right? etiquette morals, ethics, language, respect, you know, universality, preparation for the world,

like it just stopped because just got run fast, you know, punch hard, like, you know, and what happens is they get into an environment and into a society where it's like, okay, great, there's 53 of you now on one team, not just that one superstar anymore. So, and then they get frustrated and like, well look, my whole life, this was okay.

Why all of a sudden, when I'm making money, and I'm a name, like, why am I now having a glass ceiling put over my head? And why now am I being restricted a name, like, why am I now having a glass ceiling put over my head? And why now am I being restricted from X, Y, and Z? It's like, we got to just go back and rebuild and really reintroduce responsibility as an adult now versus kind of developing them in their youth. Yeah, I grew up a Sacramento Kings fan,

so I obviously grew up hating the Lakers. And I was reading a book about Shack and Kobe a couple months ago. And it was interesting to watch sort of two guys who obviously both want the same thing. They both want to win, but how they like magnets drive each other away from each other, because they can't articulate the feelings that they have, right? They can't articulate how the other one is rubbing the other one in exactly the wrong way. And Phil Jackson is for a while able to keep it all together. But I think one of the problems with winning and success in life is that not just when

you're young, but when you're older, it could sort of prevent you from having to come to terms with certain feelings or fears or bad patterns of behavior because in every other aspect of your life it's working out for you. Yeah, and that's where we should, again, really be extremely mindful on integrating values and value systems for folks. No, like, look, I can give you something that kind of tells you what my value stem from. Therefore, we can have some sort of alignment,

whether it be philosophically or however it may be, right? And I think that, you know, but the good thing about guys who feel Jackson and others is at least they lower the waterline enough to be able to create that state to just communicate what's important to you. that state to just communicate, what's important to you. But this side also has to be mindful and ready to expose and express what's important to them, right? The opportunities are always there,

but it also takes, again, self-understanding in order to be able to contribute to that opportunity. Well, the way I think about it with like those feelings or those emotions or vulnerabilities is, yeah, sure, you can stuff them down for 10-day-don't-exist. But it's kind of like, it's like putting it on a credit card, right? The bill is going to come due sooner or later. Would you rather pay it now? It's a thousand dollars. Or would you rather pay it 10 years from now and it's 20 thousand dollars? because it's compounded and compounded. And when that bill comes to it,

it could tear the team apart, it could tear your marriage apart, it could tear any other part. So it sounds like you're sort of cracking the guys and women that come into your gym. You're cracking them open completely. You're not just like, let me look at the muscles. But you're like, we got to focus on these feelings that are perhaps injured or not as developed as they should be

because you could be the fittest man or woman alive, but if you're emotionally unstable or weak, you're gonna snap under pressure also. Yeah, and it's funny because the public will the public will have this, this, this, this, this, you know, view on them and the persona that's been developed on them that these folks like to fight, but they only like to fight what's comfortable. Sure, you see, they don't like to fight what's uncomfortable. Yes.

And, and, and that's what our practice is, right? Our practice is about finding that discomfort and trying to find comfort with that. And that literally just comes from the base root of just honest conversation, to honest perspective and understanding and then acceptance of themselves. Like punching someone in the face or being punched in the face may actually be less scary than exploring feelings about your childhood or your fear of not measuring up or any of those issues may actually be more uncomfortable than taking a blind side hit from a 250 pound sprinting linebacker. Look at my life.

It's been my life, Ryan. I ran away from me my entire life. You wanna know the first time I was ever honest? When? When I wrote this book. Really? Yeah. I tell Seth Davis who wrote this book with me.

In the way we wrote this book, he was like a coach. Yeah. He didn't interview me and then go write the book and then bring it back through weeks later. It took us 19 months because he asked me questions that I've been avoiding to ask myself. And I've been trying to make up for these, these, these lack of, of dealing with with my physicality. Hence, why my, my back is the way it is, my nose is the way it is, and my nose is the way it is, my ears are the way it is. You know, because I know the public would be like,

oh, he's such a beast. Look at him. He's sparring the best and training alongside the best of the questions of my own truth. I would never have to answer. I was making it all up with my physicality. Yeah. So I imagine the trauma of watching your father's mental health collapse as a kid,

that must have been one of the things that you didn't want to face or have to think much about. Yeah, I mean, I grew up my entire life, you know, as long as I was conscious that my entire responsibility to this world was to protect this man, right? My father. And when, you know, I was trying to be the strongest and the, and the fearless and, you know, jump off of a three story building into a pool to show that I'm just things like this all the time to show my dad that I'm, you know, you've got someone

fearless here to protect you from whatever it is that's, you know, been causing you this anxiety and this depression and this, and these depression and these mental and emotional health challenges he was struggling from. And that kind of carried over into my way. You know, and obviously when I speak of truth, I don't speak of being honest to people. I'm talking about my own self's truths of being engaged with trying to understand why I am what a majority of my family and friends would call a workaholic. Why don't you ever stop? Like, why can't you just be in the zone or in the space and so on? And why is things, for me, for example, folks would say, a piece. It's a yoga mat and a hammock and lemonade.

It's opposite for me. Like war is peace for me. Like I have to be in a consistent state of like strategy and development and so on and so on. Why? Because chaos is the only thing that brings creativity to me. Chaos is the only thing that makes me want to become more independent. And it's just hard to relate.

Do you think part of that physical drive and then the daring was also like, I'm not like my dad, like I'm strong, like, you know, not that he was weak, but the message itself, like, I'm not like him. I'm made differently than him. 100% and my mom had a lot to do with that. And my dad actually had more of my mom to do with that. My dad was always pushing me. And when my mom would try to restrict me on things, my mom, I remember my dad would say to her,

let him be, like don't make him like me. You know, because his mother made him very very very very very fearful of everything She was so protective of him To where he was you know A grown man that was like just wouldn't take particular leaps and in risks Because of what was embedded in his head and like don't do this don't do that his entire life So it was actually my father that that was that was pushing me to don't be like me. But the interesting thing is Ryan, after he seeing his last breath, like I always stopped my entire life, I was protecting him,

seeing the way he took his last breath, the reason I smirked him giggled versus like lost it death, the reason I smirked and giggled versus lost it was because my dad actually saved me. How so? He made me realize what my purpose in this world was and what existence actually meant. And what living actually meant. And I've lived by that now. And if you can even see the title of the ESPN feature by Paul was titled Prepare for Death. And what my father showed me was that there's only one thing that matters in this world,

to me, to us, which was dying content. And the way my father took a smirk and how he exited this world on his terms. I was like, wait, all these years, I've been sitting here trying to protect this guy from this moment because it was scary to me, but he pursued this moment with such confidence and gratitude and graciousness and selflessness that he looked to his kids and smirked as he took his last breath.

That's pretty cool. That is That's a it's an interesting philosophical concept. So Cicero Sort of ripping on the Stoics would say that the point of philosophy is to learn how to die The dying is the most important thing that we do in life, right? It's the final act and it's the one thing we all share in common. And yet it's the thing that nobody thinks about, that nobody tries to do particularly well. And in fact, everyone spends the vast majority of their time denying, running from, or, you know,

otherwise trying to make bargains to gain from what you're having to do. Yeah, yeah, and my father showed me what that, and it hit me, and I tell you, like I literally had my hands under the back of his head when everybody left and I was kissing his forehead, and I, his after he had gone. But I said to him, I said, your entire purpose in this world was this moment.

I think the 63 years my father lived and at the age of 30, 31, watching that, I realized my entire purpose in this world was that. That's what I was trying to articulate that I just never could articulate. But it came, I wouldn't even call it at the cost, but at the experience of watching the love of my life take his last breath. You know? Do you think your father had coming from Afghanistan, a sort of a war torn Afghanistan? Your father also had, in the way that the ancients would have had just a bit more familiarity with death.

Like, I don't know. I imagine by watching your father die, you hadn't watched a lot of other people die in front of you in the way that your father probably had seen death more regularly just as a result of the life that he led and where he came from. Yeah, culturally too. Culturally as well, and the family that we came from, and the fact that his father had passed in front of him at the age of three and four, right? And there were also raised in a society of consistent reality, right? There isn't, there isn't this non-realistic thing, like out there, death and faith are obviously heavily intertwined. So it's a part of the daily practice. It's a part of the daily habit. It's a part of the daily consciousness that you know they don't get as dramatic as a lot of folks have experienced do on this side

about death. It's a normal, it's a real thing on that side of the world. And that was also a big thing in our home. We're very, very mindful of this by way of history. Yeah, I think the pandemic has had that effect a little bit too, right? It's like, hey, death is something that's in the air, right? Like in, and sure, there's certain, certain demographics and groups that are more exposed than others and most of us are totally safe, but you know it's also something floating around and it's

there and it's not something you control and that's how it's been for almost all of human history except like the last 100 years and so we're kind of spoiled and protected in a way that I think prevents us from accessing that wisdom that your father gave you. Well, it's also a really interesting way of obviously controlling society, right, as a whole, right? It's really on the act that the whole world is suffering from the disease of fear. And at the same time, everyone is seeking acceptance and value. So if I'm suffering from fear, I'm never really going to be able to get to that. So I don't ever want to die.

And I have to do everything I possibly can until I get to that level of being accepted. That's what's obviously consistently being manipulated, it's this state of fear that we tend to live in because from my experiences with my community, it's no one's really ever built a relationship with something they can't see or hear. Sure. It never really build a relationship with something that comes by way of just practicing feeling it.

Well, one of my favorite quotes from Senaqai, she says, the problem is that we think a death is something that is in the future, right? The death is something that happens to you in, like, not now, but when you're old, right? And he's like, actually, no, death is happening now. Not just to other people, like people are always dying, but he was saying that the time that passes belongs to death.

So every minute that passes, you've died. And because you can't get it back. So that was really instrumental to me to go, oh, it's not that I might have 40 or so years left. It's that I've already died 30 odd years. Right. And then the question is, what have you lived for 30 odd years?

Or have you only died that many years? And to me, that's the real question. Yeah, yeah. I totally aligned. I'm going to send you this. I carry this coin in my pocket and it says, Momento Mori, which means remember you will die. Then on the back as a quote from Marcus Relis,

he says, you could leave life right now, let that determine what you do and say and think. Amen. Your mom seems like a pretty tough lady though. I saw that picture of her with an AK-47. Yeah, she's the general's daughter and proud of it. How did that shape you? with an AK-47. Yeah, she's the general's daughter and proud of it. How did that shape you?

Well, look, I mean, talk about tough love, you know, and why I call it tough love is because my mom made, she created a responsibility out of earning love. And it didn't come by way of, you know, Cattle and Kissing, good job. Like you earned all of that by doing things, right? Going back to high school, for example, right? Like I'm really trying to ingrain myself into this system. Like I need to be a part of the school and the cool, you know, the ASB and all of that

and the non-Afghan community only type hype. And if I wanted to go to a dance, before I can even think about asking for a dance, I'd have to make sure that the entire house was scrubbed inside and out with chlorox, vacuum lines, kitsch it, I mean, the whole shebang and my older sister, and younger brother just stood aside,

knowing like, look, she's gonna say no, but look at this idiot, like just kinda go. But in a funny way, that's how it was with my mom. It was, you were always earning to get what you want from me. And the second part to that was she was very diligent on making sure we knew where we came from as a family. And consistently pushing the not normality because of both of my grandfather's stories, both paternal and maternal and always associated in a responsibility with why she was so strict and why I had to earn.

And this whole Afghanistan thing was in our heads since we were very, very young. That when we have an opportunity to serve and give and contribute, like that's got to be our life mission. So she was always about this. You know, we're a family that consistently lays bricks and not takes them, but if you're laying bricks, you got to lay bricks that can never be removed. So that's why everything has to come with depth. There can never be any empty air, you know, type perspectives or experiences or associations. It's about depth and depth only comes by earning.

I want to ask you about service and insect, but do you have kids now? Not yet. Not yet. I'm like praying for them every day. Well, I was just curious, like how does that work? It's something I think about with my kids, because I felt like with my parents, like having them be proud of me or respect me. I felt like that was something I always had to earn and perhaps never actually could earn.

And I'm not sure that that was fair. And so I think about that now that I have kids is, is that something, is that something kids have to earn? Or is that something they are born to? Obviously you have to earn what you get in life. But should you have to earn respect and love from your parents?

Did you feel like you had to earn that from them? Was that hard? So there's that part of it, but they also did inject a sense of belief in myself quite a bit, you know? So it wasn't like, I had an idea and they'd be like, go prove it to me, then come back to me.

It was, hey, I have this idea and it's a perfect, I believe when you would do what I need to do to set you up to do this now. Okay. You know, and then it was like, go. So if you want, you want to play soccer, huh? Okay, great. We barely have any money, but we'll go to the second hand storm. We'll get you some cleats and some shin guards and some socks and we'll drive you to practice every single day, but you better make something out of this.

Sure. You know, so it's that. It's not necessarily where I was just left hanging to go prove myself every day to get this on that. But I mean, everything came with like, look, we believe in you, but you've got to do your part. But also, my parents' situation was a lot different than their parents' situation and their relationship. Right? Like, my parents were trying to survive. Like we had, you know, mom working three jobs, dad in and out of hospitals on a day-to-day basis. You got my sister, my brother. And it was, it was you also, you're almost as a conscious

human being who had to grow up really young, you also didn't want to contribute any more pain to your parents. You also didn't want to contribute any more pain to your parents. So it's like you had to earn privileges or luxuries, but their actual affection and love and belief in you, that was inherent and always there. 100%. Like I always say my parents weren't my parents or my friends. Um, beautiful. It's kind of like our friends, right? Like you have to give something to your friends in order for them to want to be your friend. Sure. And at least to be able to like make sure

that some value with this click and this group. And that's exactly what it was like with my parents, man. Yeah, I think that's a tricky thing, particularly in athletics is like obviously parental approval is something kids want. So if you're pushing your kids into sports, that can be a very effective motivator, but then it can put them later in life

in a very precarious situation, Tiger Woods being a good example perhaps, where there's just never enough, you never feel good enough, you always feel insecure, you never feel like your parents are proud of you, and that can be a pretty dark feeling to have also. Oh, it sure can. And I'm extremely privileged with having the opposite of that, right?

Like the fact that there's just like this, the affection, the belief, the trust, the support, the, you know, we'll do whatever we can to make sure you guys have an opportunity to go achieve. But when it comes to the extra curriculars, like, yeah, you better go above and beyond, if I'm going to go above and beyond my norm of approving that, you know, right, right? Because they're having to sacrifice for you to have those things. Right. And also they have to sacrifice what they're

comfortable with when it comes to the luxury, right? Like going to a dance or sleeping, like I was, was 17 years old, like fantastic. A.S.P. president, my curfew was eight o'clock. Right. Like, you know, they probably grew up worried that their parents probably grew up worrying about their physical safety. So having you at their house meant, you know, you weren't gonna get killed. Right, but also, you know, I was first-generation,

I'm not even first-generation, right? So them not knowing how we're going to be perceived or looked at and trouble what happens. And you know, my uncles who, you know, are nine years older than me in that generation of cousins, they were very, very bad boys and they had to be because of, you know, they came here in middle school and it was on. Like, just get jumped and beat up and then they formed a gang and like really just became

some really bad boys. And my parents fear was like that going that, that, that, that, you know. Sure, sure, sure. Well, so as far as being of service, what I think is so interesting about your story, and this comes during the Paul Kicks thing, is like, so your parents come here, you make it, right? It's the American dream in a lot of ways. One might think the absolute last thing that one would want to do would be to go back

to Afghanistan when it is a war zone effectively. But you felt, you felt called to do would be to go back to Afghanistan when it is a war zone effectively. But you felt called to do that. I sure did. Yeah, it was 2004. It was my last year at Fresno State where I was a linebacker, moved a fallback. But I was at a break in stage in my life where I could of pursued really trying to take it to the next level. I was so close and I just knew through athleticism, I could have potentially just had a cup of coffee somewhere. And I was in preparation for all of that. I was just getting some signs that that just wasn't in my cards.

My back, my head of back surgery at the end of my senior season. A big family circumstance and situation happened in Afghanistan, which caused my father to have to go back to Afghanistan, which came back around land disputes and family name and all of that. And I was just in this chaos, which now I love, but back then it was just like, okay, great, like this isn't never going to stop. I'm going to get my chance. And I actually realized my chance lived in Afghanistan. So I made the decision to go support my father in Afghanistan and I actually had an intention of going there to war really for my family name and do things that I never thought I would

do in a million years. I was just mentally prepared for that in that style of life. I was just mentally prepared for that in that style of life. And actually when I got to Afghanistan, is when I actually realized why that was in my cards. And why it was in my cards was that I was able to take everything I accumulated over the course of my life from the disciplinary actions at home with my parents to, you know, being involved in sport and seeing the power of community and the unification of neighborhoods and friends and multicultural experiences. I'd realized, oh my God, this is why I was so obsessed over sport and physical activity

because what it did for me internally is what I'm here to do for it nationally and globally, which was utilize sport and physical activity to reconcile peace. And when I got there for this really aggressive family situation, I just channeled that energy towards, you know, becoming one to be able to solve for something many haven't been able to solve for, which was unifying the nation. And that sounds like a big theme in your life

has been creating and supporting community, whether it's that community in Afghanistan or it's at your gym where you grew up, seems like service and community are kind of synonyms to you. It sure are. And it's really become the, it's just become the theme of purpose. Most would call work, but it's the luxury that I get to live is to know that like I've figured out how to communicate. Well, it's beautiful. And it's, it's quite a journey that you've been on and I'm, I'm,

I'm honored to have, to have read about it and gotten a chat with you about it. You're the best. I'm really happy we connected. I'm so stoked to be on this on the show. You know, the Stoics in real life met at what was called the Stoa. The Stoa, Poquillet, the painted porch in ancient Athens. Obviously we can all get together in one place, because this community is like hundreds of thousands of people and we couldn't fit in one space, but we have made a Special digital version of the stoe we're calling it daily stoeic life. It's an awesome community You can talk about like today's episode you've talked about the emails ask questions That's one of my favorite parts is interacting with all these people who are using stoeicism to be better in their actual

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