The Joe Rogan Experience - #2364 - Brandon Epstein

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

Brandon Epstein is a mental performance coach, speaker, and author of several books, the most recent of which is "The Success Code: "Programmed to Fail: How to Break Through Your Mental Block and Achieve Greatness." www.thebrandonepstein.com WORKING KNIVES FOR WORKING PEOPLE. PROUDLY MADE IN THE USA. https://www.montanaknifecompany.com/ Don’t miss out on all the action - Download the DraftKings app today! Sign-up at https://dkng.co/rogan or with my promo code ROGAN. GAMBLING PROBLEM? CALL 1-800-GAMBLER, [phone] or visit gamblinghelplinema.org (MA). Call 877-8-HOPENY/text HOPENY (467369) (NY). Please Gamble Responsibly. 888-789-7777/visit ccpg.org (CT), or visit www.mdgamblinghelp.org (MD). 21+ and present in most states. (18+ DC/KY/NH/WY). Void in ONT/OR/NH. Eligibility restrictions apply. On behalf of Boot Hill Casino & Resort (KS). 1 per new customer. $5+ first-time bet req. Max. $200 issued as non-withdrawable Bonus Bets that expire in 7 days (168 hours). Stake removed from payout. Terms: sportsbook.draftkings.com/promos. Ends 9/29/25 at 11:59 PM ET. Sponsored by DK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe Rogan podcast check it out the Joe Rogan experience train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day the episodes of guys you had on fall into the camp who had their YouTube channel deleted and we're talking about like wellness like doctors talking about COVID stuff there was a bunch of doctors that had their their YouTube accounts deleted really yeah it was a weird time You know, it's a weird time. The world of medicine is interesting because you've got so many positives, right? Like people are healthier. They live longer today than they ever have been before. If you get certain diseases, they have cures for it that didn't exist before. But there's financial incentives involved in prescribing medications that maybe people don't fucking need because they can make more money if more people take these drugs.

And that's the problem. Like, there's, we've got to separate the baby from the bathwater and know what to throw out, right? And it's, you can't throw out medicine. Like, that's crazy. It's amazing. Like, what these pharmaceutical drug companies in coordination with all these brilliant scientists have created is the greatest medicine system the human race has ever known, at least probably. As long as maybe the Mayans knew some shit. Like, you know what I mean?

Like, maybe some, like, civilizations that collapsed because the, you know what I mean? Like, maybe some, like, civilizations that collapsed because the. The Europeans gave them all fucking smallpox, ironically. Who knows what the Egyptians knew? You know, who knows what those people knew about health and about medicine. But what we know today is that there's incredible stuff that comes out of the pharmaceutical drug companies, but also they fucking lie to you. They'll also, they'll publish fake studies or not fake studies, but they'll publish studies

that they've engineered to be successful even though they're not going to be. high data that shows that it causes side effects. They want to make money. And it's not the people that are making the medicine. That's what's crazy. The people that are making the medicine are fucking geniuses. It's the money people. It's always the money people in everything.

And that's the same thing with YouTube and that's the same thing with everything. It's the money people. And there's when you have a giant corporation you have like all kinds of stuff going on. But the number one thing that's going on is everybody has to make more money every quarter.

and that's where it gets nutty yeah it does and we also live in a culture that wants that like fast food experience right oh yeah yeah and so it's we're so susceptible to it yeah for everything for weight loss to any issue you have

we're experiencing it a little bit in the comedy community because and this is by the way this is like a normal thing that happens to young comedians they want to be further than they are maybe they think they deserve more than they're getting they think they deserve more shows, better spots on shows, and it does happen. And then there's also, you know, like,

there's a competitive drive involved in it. So there's a little bit of delusion, a little bit of a competitive drive. It's very similar, I would imagine, to fighters. First of all, we just tell everybody, success code, you're a mind coach. Yes, sir. You worked famously with Sean Brady, who I love. Yeah, he's awesome. He's a fucking animal. Yeah, I love that guy. Woo! He's fun. He's fun. And he's got, like, like extra muscles on his back. I don't know what the fuck that guy does, but he looks like a turtle. It's those tattoos coming to life.

We were all talking about it the other day. We were like, he looks like a turtle. Like, he's got like a shell on his back. It's just, just jacked muscle. Like, I know what that is. Like, when I see a guy like that, I'm like, that guy will squeeze your fucking face into jello. Like this.

He's scary. He's so strong. And what he did, Leon Edwards was like, holy shit, man. That's a world champion. To do it that decisively on a world champion, like, he's completely turned a corner. He was always awesome, but he post the Bilal fight, completely turned a corner, and a lot

of that success, he attributes to you. Yeah. It's interesting. He talked about this openly, but after the Bilal fight, that's when we started working together. And it was because, I think this happens to a lot of fighter, a lot of high achievers, is he built this identity of being unbeatable, right?

So all his belief that was wired around who he was, was I am unbeatable. And so when he lost, everything's shattered. And so he was broken. He didn't know how to pick up the pieces after that. It was like, how is this possible? I believe I'm unbeatable, but then I lost.

And so we literally had to go into his nervous system. And it's almost like clearing out, almost like we're doing surgery at an energetic level of clearing out all the bullshit around these new beliefs that are starting to form like in the confusion of like I am beatable. What am I going to lose my next fight? And we had to clear all that and bring them back into that state of being of I'm unbeatable again. And how did you learn how to do all this?

Like, what's your background? Yeah. So I was a college football player. And my freshman year in college, I rode the bench, and I was looking for solutions. I was a typical meathead. The most important things for me was getting jacked and playing football. Like, I was literally at a supplement shop looking for pro hormones. This is me at 18 years old.

It's like a hypertensive, big neck. And by the way, they used to sell some shit. People don't know. Basically steroids at local. supplemental supplement stop. There was this stuff that I took once, the strongest shit I ever took in my life. I think it was called Mag 10. Do you remember that? Do you remember that one? It was bananas. It was full on steroids. And after I got off it, my dick was like, what are we doing? We don't have any more testosterone left. That was me 18. I took it for like eight weeks. It was crazy. I think I gained like 15 pounds. And I couldn't believe you just buy it from a store. I'm like, this can't be that good if you're just buying, when someone told me about it.

And I was like, really? And they're like, yeah, you have to try this. There it is. Is that it? I don't know if it's the 2004 edition is. I don't know if that's the stuff. But you definitely can't get that anymore, can you? They just keep banning them.

What's in there? But here's the other thing about what's in there. Says who? Says who? Who's checking it? We had a problem with my company with On It. When we first started, we would send stuff out to third-party labs to get it analyzed, right? And we were finding all sorts of things.

things in it that aren't supposed to be in there, like different vitamins, creatine, all kinds of shit that's just not supposed to be in there. Like, why is this stuff in there? So this is what you hear about with tainted supplements with fighters all the time. So what happens is we found out that some of these companies that mix your products for you. Say if you have like some B3K2 supplement, you put them all together, they're mixing them in the same bin where they're making steroids. They're mixing them in the same bin when they're making creatine.

Like they don't give a fuck. If you're not clear in the residue, just like leaving it in there. that shit overseas, they're just, they don't give a fuck, okay? They probably don't even want to be working there. They're probably like held it against their will. Like, who knows where this factory is? And so

we had to upgrade our factories. We had to figure out where the most ethical sources are and make sure, and then we had a third party test again and make sure we're on the level. But that's a real problem. So if you're buying something like that, they can tell you whatever's in there. They fell fucking throw Viagra and D-Ball

and who knows what's in there. Just because it says what it is on the label, that's the wild thing about supplements, right? There's no FDA process. It's just whack-a-mole, right? They figure out, they're like, someone reports it, and then they get rid of it, and then whack-a-mole, the next one pops up. They're like, it's pretty much the same thing with different branding. Yeah. In some ways, it's good, right?

Because you can get all these vitamins when I have to get a prescription, because we all know the efficacy of vitamins. It's legit. But in other ways, it's like, I read something about Amazon, and this is crazy if it's true, is that I think it was like 30% of the supplements on Amazon were forgeries

Yeah, I think I've seen people putting fake labels and stuff and making it look just like it Yeah See, find out

what the number is and by the, you know, I don't know how they even determine that number but it's not zero and so I stopped buying supplements

I buy fucking everything from Amazon and I stopped buying supplements from them I would get like pure encapsulation stuff and I was like

I don't know I don't know if I'm getting it from the company. So I just buy it from the company now. So when you buy it to know it's like pure, it's that good good? Well, that company, Pure Encapsulations is really good. I have no affiliations with them, but I use their stuff all the time. I think a lot of people have that question though.

Like for me, it's like you just see 100 brands on Amazon, you're like, well, which one's actually legit? Because you know something of trash. But you just got to find a company that has like a great history of a bunch of people that have tested their stuff and that use their stuff. And pure seems to be one of those companies. I mean, there's a, I'm just using that name because I use it, but there's a ton of, like, super legit supplement companies where you know if you're going to get 10,000 milligrams of D3, that's exactly what it is. Yeah. They're just above board. They know what the fuck they're doing.

Like everything else, man. Like, you can get the shittiest car in the world or you can get a fucking Mercedes, you know, they know what they're doing. But, you know, people who are listening to podcasts like this, we're just kind of like listen to influencers in a way. It's like, oh, Huberman, why trust you? So you have supplements you represent? All right. Well, Huberman is honest, and that's the most important thing. That's what we do now, right?

We're looking to these, it could be doctors, but these people who we put our trust in. It's like, that's kind of like the bar that we're setting for like, all right, I'm going to trust you. Honestly, like that is everything, right? And including for yourself, like when everything falls apart, like what happened with Sean after the loss to Belaw. Like that, the thing in your head, like, what it is is, man. You know? Like Max Holloway says, it is what it is. He always says that.

It's a beautiful way to look at life, really. It sounds simple, but it is what it is. Like, you're not going to change it by freaking out about it. You're not going to. This is what it is. That guy was better than you. So how do you get to, what are you going to do? How are you going to improve?

What did you do mentally that was different? Was there decisions that you made during the fight? Was there something going on? And if you can't be honest with yourself, you're not going to improve. But if you can be honest with yourself, it can make you stronger. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of guys that have gone through losses and came back way more dangerous. And there's other guys that go through losses and there, maybe they didn't go through a process like yours.

Or maybe they had a little, some self-belief issues already. And, you know, and they were kind of manifesting themselves before the podcast. Maybe they were starting to, or before the fight rather, maybe they were starting to get imposter syndrome. You know, like some fighters get imposter syndrome. They start winning and they're like, there's no way I can be the champion. This is crazy. And there's a governor, right? Like a governor in a car that comes up where it's like, all right, I can be successful up to this level.

But anything beyond this is not safe. It's scary. Yeah. It's scary. But it's like that real animalistic primal part of yourself that comes out and goes, I couldn't even constantly tell you why, but like I can't go there. Like I can't get to that level of success. If I do, I'm going to tear it all down. And we see people do that in everything.

Well, it's a weird fear for people that are trying to be successful because they're listening to this. And like, that doesn't make any sense. Like, why would you, it's because the pressure of maintaining it, especially, I think, if you came from nothing, because if you came from nothing that you realize how lucky you are and you realize that, oh, my God, look how successful I am, I'm a world champion now, or I'm in whatever you do in life. Yeah. And then you start thinking, what if I fuck this up? Yeah. What if I can't keep it up? What if I can't keep it up? What if it all goes away? Yeah. And what am I going to do? What am I going to do? What am I going to do? And you start freaking out. And then if you go on social media, you start reading. comments about yourself. So for fighters, that's a real problem. There's a lot of fighters. I see arguing with people. Fuck you, pussy. I'll smack you. Don't do that. You are wasting so much energy. I'd rather you do heroin than do Twitter if you're a fighter. Like, get off there.

But what we want to do is we want to get to them in place with a matter of fact about what they read, which sounds like almost impossible for a lot of people who are listening right now. Like, what do you mean? This person's talking shit about me. But Brady is matter of fact about this now. Like truthfully, he's wired in a way that where someone starts to talk some shit about him, he can laugh about it, he can just matter-of-factly not be emotional about it. But it's also because he's on a hot wind streak right now and he looks awesome and he's super confident. And he's got a lot of momentum on his side. It's a compounding of the belief from the physical experience and then the belief that we've wired into him. Right.

So it's both of those together, right? It's like the perfect confluence of those two factors come together. Right, right, right. And then the confidence that comes from these wins, especially the last one. I mean, God, he looks so good. He looks so dominant. And to do that with a guy like Leon, who, you know, we saw those Ustman fights. You know, we saw him knock out Ustman.

He's really good, man. And for Sean to do that, it was like, wow, that's a big turn of the corner, not just a little turn, just a giant turn of the corner. But stylistically, that was kind of a fight made for Sean, though, don't you think? Well, it could be until you take into consideration the second Kamaro Usman fight, because Usman couldn't take him down. That fight was primarily a stand-up fight because Leon's take-down defense had gotten so good. And I think there was that bump in confidence after the knockout, and he really felt like the champion now.

So for Balal to just step in and put a stop to all that, and then, you know, to see then him lose the title to Jack Della, and then see what Sean just did. And you look at the whole thing. You're like, what a crazy shark tank of all these killers. Leon Edwards, Balamama, Hama, Della Madalena. Now you got Islam Makachev in there. And it's like, who can keep it together the most is a giant factor. Yeah.

It's a giant factor. I know you don't really follow football, but like this is like the SEC in football, right? It's the division that is Alabama, LSU, Texas. It's like they're all killers. So any given night, anyone could be anyone. And it's just like who's going to show up and execute the best. And that's what it comes down to. And then you got Michael Venom Page, who's like the biggest puzzle in the entire sport.

Like he's also a 170. Yeah. That guy. Good luck. Good luck training for that guy. Like just good luck. Good luck. Super tall welterweight who moves like nobody who is a world point fighting champion.

Like that is a totally different thing, that point fighting thing. Have you ever watched that shit? No, I haven't. Okay. Michael Venham Page was at one point in time the best karate point fighters. And the way karate point fighters fight, they stop after one person gets hit. It's kind of like an elite form of tag with lethal weapons. Like, these guys are fucking good at these launches forward and blitzes.

And they're really good at getting out of the way because guys are blitzing at them all the time. So because of the style of the competition, they developed this very unique skill set of being able to close the distance extremely fast with a lot of distance in between them and land very unpredictable shots. Like he's super creative.

And he also knows how to wrestle now and he also knows Jiu-Jitsu now. So like now he's a mixed martial arts fighter but he's got this one skill set that's crazy unique. And I always said that's the thing that's missing in MMA because we see what happens when you get like a really elite

boxer. We've seen what happens with a really elite kickboxer or really elite jihitzu guy or a wrestler. We haven't seen a really elite point fighter who learns all those other skills because it's a different thing. It's not like, like, you know, Pereira fights. He's not moving around a lot, dude. He's coming right at you. There's not a lot of dancing and it's not a lot of, you know, fucking, there's not a lot of finesse just Sanhagan moves. You know, Sanhagan is like constantly giving you different looks and overloading your mind. Pereira stalking you, right? It's very, what MVP is doing is something totally different. Like, you can't even touch him.

He's hitting guys like, guys that have like a lot of experience in the UFC. He's hitting him with shots. They don't see coming. They can't hit him. Kevin Holland was like, where the fuck is he? I can't even find him. This is nuts. The guy just launches himself out.

You pops, you cracks you. And then he's gone. And you're like, okay, he's moving way faster than anybody you've ever fought before and covers way more distance. quicker than anybody you've ever fought before. It's like the difference between someone who is like standing in front of people and knocking sticks and an elite fencer. You know, you ever see those elite fensers? They dive forward.

They die forward and crack you. This guy can do that with like knockout shots. That's wild. Because this is him when he was an elite karate fighter. So this is point fighting. This is what it looks like. It's really weird because the judges make decisions after each contact. But this is Raymond Daniels here.

This is Raymond Daniels who's also, he was an elite point fighter who then went on and had big success in glory and also a big success in Bellator. Because of that style, it's like a nutty style. He pulled off one of the greatest, Raymond Daniels pulled off one of the greatest KOs I've ever seen in my life in kickboxing. It was a jumping sidekick that in mid-air he turned into a spinning back kick to the face. I've done it to a bag before I've never done it to a human being and for him to do it to a human being in glory now see if you find the kickboxing one

it's from glory this is the nutty one where he did like a 360 degree punch watch how crazy this is play that because that's what that was what you just had watch this punch so he hits him with its spinning back kick to the body he lets them get up now watch this what is that

that is bananas He ballet punched that dude. It's like anime. It's like Dragon Balls, these stuff right there. If that was in the kick, like, Mortal Kombat, you'd be like, get out of here, bitch. That shit would never work. But I want you to find his kickboxing, K.O. I wish I could remember the gentleman he was fighting.

But the guy he fought was legit, too. And he hit him with a jump sidekick, spinning back kick to the face in the air. So it's like that is a different thing. Mm-hmm. You know, Ancolaev's not going to do that. Pereira's not going to do that. like those point fighter guys are different it's a different thing it's a you're you're dealing with this whole new skill set this episode is brought to you by the montana knife company i'm very

excited to do this ad because my good friend josh smith owns the montana knife company it was founded by josh who is one of the most experienced master bladesmiths in the world he makes amazing knives i fucking love them i have a bunch of them they're barely over a hundred master blade smiths in the world. And this guy's been one since he was 19. He makes the sharpest knives you will ever use right here in the U.S. of A. Design tested and built by hunters, Montana Knife Company is a hunting knife company first and foremost, but they also make some of the best chef knives on the planet.

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what where's this guy in his career right now he's a really high level um in the ufc's got to be top 10 in the welterweight division um but he like he shuts people down man he shuts people down in a wild way that i you just don't see much the only person who figured him out was Ian Gary. Ian Gary outgrappled him. He just got a hold of him and grappled him. But watch this jump sidekick. This is so bananas, dude.

Watch this. Boom. Isn't that nuts? Jump sidekick to the body and then mid-air turns in his spitting back kick to the face. I mean, not everybody can do that. But when a guy can do that, if you don't know that he can do that, you can get fucked up.

Like this, Raymond Daniels can do some wild shit, man. And again, he's pulling it off against elite kickboxers. Yeah, unbelievable. I mean, he had a couple of losses where they figured him out, like Joe Valtolini. He's the first guy, like, really brutalized his legs, brutalized his legs. He just had high guard move forward, and Valtolini's, like, very classic, like, hard-nosed kickboxer, a lot of low-kick, strong punches. He just kept breaking down his legs to a point where he just couldn't walk, and then he had kicked him. It was pretty powerful.

So that style could be figured out. You know, MVP lost in, he fought Douglas Lima and Bellator and got stopped in that fight, because just Douglas was a beast at the time and chaoed him. But it's just like that is a different puzzle, man. Yeah. It's a different puzzle. It's crazy. I just love the fact that there's guys like that now in this sport where you're looking at this sport that's like 30 plus years old now.

And there's still guys that are complete innovators that are coming in when the whole thing's changing. You're like, whoa, okay. All right, now we're doing that. Now we're doing front kicks to the face, you know? It's an evolution. Now we're doing calf kicks all of a sudden. Like, Bisping went his entire career without getting calf kicked. I mean, that's nuts.

Yeah. When you think about that. That's crazy. That's crazy. He's a world champion. Went through his entire career. No one calf kicked him. That's how weird this sport is.

But I think what separates the guys is not just technique. It's not just being a specialist. in one very particular area, which is obviously a huge factor, but also the mind. And a lot of guys don't want to get help in that because they think that if they consult a sports psychologist, they're a pussy. Yeah, 100%. Being vulnerable makes me weak. Yeah.

That's a core belief for a lot of guys. And so when you believe that to be true, you're not going to create weakness within yourself, so you're not going to seek it out. Exactly. And there's also a big stigma around, like, guys, profession like anything right yeah there's like a range to comedians right there's a range people who do what i do there's there's kind of pussies who do it in a way right there's like people who are very like soft being touch with your feelings yeah yeah like the too far to like the

woo or too far to like hey i'm going to follow this textbook where really this work is it's art at the end of the day what we're doing it's like it's a it's something you feel your way through and it requires years and years or practice to get to any level of mastery that's interesting you're talking about like managing your brain as art yeah well because it's it's not just the brain it's the nervous system's the whole body it's the energy body system right so we're talking about you've heard of like meridians right they run through the body is that all real the chakras i hear about that but those are things that i hear about and i go yeah i'll wait to talk to somebody about it that's a scientist you could you could call it whatever you want right

we all feel like everyone feels anxiety right here like in their soul reflexes yeah you kind of feel in the center of your body right right boom right here like oh it's it this is this is the patterns I see with all these elite guys I'm working with it's like I can just my awareness with them is I can just feel the same thing they can feel don't you think that's probably constricted breathing though like constricted breathing that's what you'd feel it I would say constricted breathing is a byproduct of like a blockage in their body and they just feel it don't you think it's adrenaline though it's a giant adrenaline dump and it's also there's an anxiety that comes with that if

your mind starts spinning out of control like do you do train uh I used to train boxing yeah Have you ever done jiu-jitsu? I haven't done jiu-jitsu. One of the things that happens in jiu-jitsu, when guys first get started, like say if a guy has, like, maybe a distorted idea of how tough he is, and it's like a big, strong, muscular guy, those in particular, for whatever reason, seem to have a real problem when they grapple with a really good guy

where they get pinned down and then they get, like, side-controlled and mounted, and they start hyperventilating. I've seen it, like, several times from people that have never trained before, the real buff, and they maybe have this idea of who they are, and that idea is getting shattered, like just shattered by a guy that doesn't even look impressive, you know, but he's just manhandling you. And the hyperventilating thing to me seems like a bunch of stuff. It's like the battle with reality.

This can't be happening. Oh my God, this is happening. There's the forgetting to breathe. There's the elevated heart rate. There's the dump of adrenaline. There's all these different things. It's all connected. This is like a domino effect, right?

Right. Like the constricted breathing. and not being able to think clearly. It's all a domino effect. And kind of how I operate is like the belief is the thing that starts a domino. Right. Sure. And so if your belief is being destroyed that moment,

that's what creates that domino effect of the body and the nervous system reacts in the way it does. Right. And so belief is formed in one or two ways. One is just, it's formed through life experience, right? Like the Goggins of the world. He's a very rare person who just builds belief off of doing it. Yeah.

How many guys are like that in the road? By the way, shout out to my brother David Guggins, who just completed the Bigfoot 200. Let's go, Goggins. That dude has no knees, ladies and gentlemen. He's got no knees, and he just ran 200 miles through the fucking mountains. Dude, what did he do it in like 60 hours? It was posted today. Find out what his time was.

This dude has no knees. Like, I don't run. My knee's pretty good. Well, that's... In comparison. I think that's the example of how belief can actually... actually break reality of what's supposed to be possible, right? Well, it's certainly broken in the eyes of his doctor.

His doctor, when they first saw his knees, because he didn't go in for anything for a long time. When the doctor first saw his knees, he was like, I can't believe you can walk on these legs. Forget about run thousands of miles. Like, this is nuts. He was not just bone on bone. His bone was distorting.

So because it was rubbing bone on bone, it was like forming these little mushroom curves at the end of it. It's like a, it's a type of, there's a name for it, like that distortion. It's called Wolf something or another. He said it's like theoretical. Like they'd never seen it in a person before like this. So like, all right, if that exists, like that could work, but it shouldn't. Like, we've never seen it.

Maybe that doctor said it. I should be real clear on that because this is, I'm hearing it from David Guggins. You know what I'm saying? And I'm like, what the fuck? Like, he's telling me that. They told me it can never happen before. But regardless, he's, he's breaking what reality is supposed to be in a way, right? When you compare it to like a very large.

sample size. He is, David Goggins is, as much as you would say, this is crazy, he's ruining his body, like he doesn't have to do this, that's great. But what he's doing is he's carrying a torch for the human will in a way that very few people have ever done it because he's doing it publicly. He's doing it publicly. And that's why I think it's so important when I talk about it all the time about how nuts it is. This guy has no fucking knees and he's operating this way. So what does it say? I don't know how they track it, but he was moving for a total time of two days, one hour, and seven minutes. Oh, so he did it in two days?

I thought I saw online. It took three days total? It took three days total? Because the 20 hours of stop time. That's like your rest time. Oh, right. I don't know where they list the overall. 200 miles.

It says it listed here, which would be the race tracking. It says when he started and when he finished, right? It says he's finished. Oh, it doesn't say what time? Yeah, I don't know when they said. Oh, is this all off the website or is this track, leaders. What place did he come in? Ninety-third. He's also 50. I mean, he's a freak, dude, but he's like carrying this torch for, you might not want to do what he's doing. I wouldn't

do what he's doing, but I'm saying it's kind of crazy that this guy can, at 50 years old, can have these endurance workouts with world-class MMA fighters like Israel out of Sonia. And he's got Izzy throwing up in a bucket. And he's not even breathing heavy. And he does like multiple of those workouts a day in silence he doesn't listen to music no one is telling him to do it he's got no coach yeah like he's out there man he's out there he's just built it through pure willpower yes i would say most people almost everyone else in the world they don't have the ability to build that level of belief through their willpower i don't know if they don't have the ability but they don't do it he's 23rd to finish but if they don't do it was 23rd his bib was not

Oh, no shit. That's amazing. 23rd place. 50 years old. No knees. Crazy. What a monster. What a monster.

Imagine that guy was after you. Like, what a monster. It's just, it's beautiful. It's like a beautiful expression of will. Because that's all it is. It's just the will to go on. You know, and the discipline to continue to train like that every day. And then every time you test your will, you push it.

further. He's like, I'm in the lab every day. Yeah. Like, he's literally learning more about himself while he's doing this. So why do you think, you know, millions of people read his book and then such a small percentage of people can kind of replicate that example he's saying? I don't think you want to replicate it. Not to his degree, but to any degree, right? Yeah, I think it definitely moves your, what your water line is, right? It moves what you expect of yourself, moves that up a few notches, because you know a guy like that. out there. If you didn't think a guy like that's out there and you worked out of the Y three days a week and no one else did, you'd probably be impressed with yourself.

You know, I'm about that fucking Y three days a week using the Nautilus machine. It's all in who you're comparing yourself to. And, you know, obviously I can't compare to David Guggins. But when I know that a guy like that is out there in the world, it raises my own personal standard up a notch. I don't ever, I'm never going to hit what he does. I don't have the time. He's working out four or five hours every day. It's crazy. I don't have that commitment either It's not what I'm interested in

But him doing that has like raised mine When I look at like Jocko's Instagram And every day it says 430 on his time X He like shows his You know he's got one of those mares What is that watch called? What's that watch that he has that everybody wears The digital time X watch

It's a famous classic Iron Man That's it right Is the Iron Man Yeah I know what you're talking about Yeah this fucking bull Bulletproof watch, of course, that's what he wears, like 409 a.m. That's when he gets up to work out every day. But guys like that, guys like you, you guys are dogs, right?

You want it. You get inspired by that. Some people, they just feel deflated when they see that level, right? They're just like, oh, God, that's... No, man, you got to embrace it. It is deflating because you're so far from the finish line. It's deflating, you know? But that's why there are fundamental ways to actually build belief within yourself.

Like, there's steps. to do it. And that's what really I want to drive home for anyone who's listening to this is that you can build belief and it's not just banging your head against the wall. I believe you. I'm sure there's systems to it. And that's why I really wanted to talk to you. But the whole idea of the meridians, like how does that factor into it with you? How do you, what do you hang on this idea of like meridians in the body? Yeah. So I'll talk about how I came to know them, right? So I was playing football. and walked into the supplement shop, looking for my next pro hormone.

Oh, that's right. I interrupted you right there. Oh, good, bro. We came back circle. We came back here. Here we go. Like, we needed to. So, 230-pound, 5-foot-3 dude in there,

just jacked. And I'm like, hey, what pro-homos do you have? And he looks at me as like, he's very, like, zen type of dude. And he's like, what do you want it? And I was like, I'm trying to get on the football field. Like, what else could I do? My meat head.

Like, I need to get stronger. It's the only thing I can do. And then he's like, You say, how do you feel? Like, how do I feel? Like, this is me, 18 years old, atheist, don't believe in anything, the biggest skeptic you're ever going to meet in your life.

And he's like, I want you to try this exercise. And he has me just look off into the peripheries of my eyes. How long did you know this guy by then? Literally meeting him. And he just starts going in on me. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think he was trying to have sex with you or anything?

Well, we can get into that. It's just an odd thing to go right into meridians. How do you feel? Like, whoa. Trying to get jacked. Yeah. Well, he's just that type of dude. So I call him like a sensei now because I've known for...

Oh, you know what I'm still? Yeah, yeah, no, no, no. So he's just a weird guy. He's a weird guy, super weird guy. A lot of guys would have their hackles up, though. Like, what do I feel? 100%. Oh, no, first I was like, fuck off me, you know?

I'm looking for creatine, bro. Get the fuck off. You know what I mean? Like the fuck. Insecure male energy, posturing up. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm trying to fuck me. But, no, he just made everything feel approachable to 18-year-old meathead.

So he started teaching me these breathing techniques, like, for meditation. And he worked at a supplement store? He was working there at a time. He was studying for his neuroscience degree at a college. Wow. To get his master's. What a, like, fortuitous coincidence. Yes.

To run into a dude like that way you're trying to get jacked. That's life, right? Right, it is, kind of, right? Like, think about it. You're looking for, like, the full meathead path, and he run into a guy. He's like, how do you feel? You're like, what? What fucker?

I don't feel nothing, bro. I didn't, though. UFC 319 is blowing back. to the windy city for the first time in six years. Check the fight card and get in on all the actions at Draft King Sportsbook, the official sports betting partner of UFC. Drikas Duplice puts his middleweight title up against Hamzaa Chimayev, who's a perfect 14 and O.

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Boyd in Ontario. Bonus bets expires seven days after issuance. Four additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see dkng.ng.com slash audio. Because nobody was talking about anxiety back then. Right. You know, I had crazy performance anxiety. I didn't know that was a thing. I was just like, I was like, I don't feel good.

I don't know. What do you mean? Like nobody was talking about their emotions. Yeah. And so he just started teaching me breathing techniques. He taught me up at the meridians, very simple ones that he's like, okay, visualize breathing energy. And this is martial arts stuff, right? So much has to do with breathing.

So he was into martial arts as well. Like, all right, I want you to imagine breathing up your governing meridian and your central meridian, which is like right in your spinal cord and up to the center line of your body. He's like, all right, breathe in deeply here. How do you feel? I was like, oh, I just feel more confident. I feel stronger. So he started just teaching me how to do simple stuff like that.

and then bring it on to like the football field. I was a de-lineman. And so I needed to knock people over. Same thing as martial arts, right? I needed to feel grounded. So I needed to connect to my root chakra, which is, you can call it whatever you want, I don't care. But it's like the root part of your body,

the primal, you know, ball sack area down there, the gooch, that if you can start to breathe into that area of your body, you will feel more grounded. And you can actually become more grounded. So I started using these techniques just to play football. And by doing so, I was like, I don't really care about studying the system super in depth, I'm super in-depth, but I was just taking the tools that were useful to me.

Like, literally use these and use them to get stronger, like to bench press more. It was just breathing techniques along with visualization, and they're just following this ancient Eastern medicine. How did breathing techniques help your bench? So there's some breathing techniques. I'm sure you're doing martial arts, right? You put your tongue behind your teeth, and you can start to breathe in deeply. And if you start to visualize, bring an energy down through the crown of your head,

the meeting a time kind of like in the just below your belly button there you can just start to build more energy more power you're just focusing energy that's all you're doing and then if you visualize yourself lifting the weight you're going to lift it heavier and so how much heavier there's a bunch of research you could look up um tons of different strength based task studies that show that visualization increases strength like for example so that's just kind of a kind of visualization you think that breathing exercise i was just stacking what was known as like basic pet lap imagery, P-E-T-T-L-E-P imagery, along with these breathing techniques and visualizing a specific way.

Oh, I thought that when they say visualization helps performance, I thought it was like long-term. I didn't think it was like right before they did a thing. I thought, I think it's both. It's like part of training. I think, okay, so there's two types, right? So there's like, for example, there's literally a study you could look up, and it's like a bicep curl.

They did the study. There's four different groups. The first group just didn't do anything. The second group just did bicep physical curl. The third group did bicep curl plus visualization of doing curls. The fourth group did just visualization. The group that did just a bicep curl and the group that did just a visualization performed the same.

They had the same increase in strength. And the group that performed the best was the one that did the visualization plus the bicep curl. Interesting. And so there's a bunch of studies like that that just show how when you just stack these different tools together that can be beneficial yes in the short term for like a fighter for example like this is what i'm trained my guys when we go into fight camp every single time we're just training the subconscious to be comfortable being in the setting and just training the subconscious my right we're just wiring just digging in those grooves of like this is what's going to feel

like this is going to be the experience and just wiring it in a way of having success and then what i do is i notice i'm like how do you feel how do you feel how do you feel as we go along here it's like oh there's doubt that's coming up boom let's go in there let's get rid of that and it's not an intellectual thing to remove doubt it's a feeling thing in the body and honestly i i don't care what we call it we call it in the shocker we call it just feeling in the body and you say all right i feel doubt coming up right now at this point in the fight why well i have this memory that's created this scar tissue within my nervous system right now because this has happened for that i believe if i try to do this then something bad is going to happen to lose a fight right so we need to actually

accept that, right? Zen proverb, what I can't accept won't change. So you use these breathing techniques to accept your way through it. The body kind of relaxes through it and then we let it go and then we choose the opposite belief and that's the alchemy of the process. Do you know how many people were involved in the study that showed that the visualization right before the performance was better? Jamie, did you find it? This is a different one. This is about hip flexors. Hip flexors. There's a bunch of them out there though. Study whether mental training alone can produce a gain in muscular strength. 30 male university athletes, including football, basketball, and rugby players were randomly assigned to perform mental training of their hip flexor muscles, to use weight

machines to physically exercise their hip flexors, or to form a control group which received neither mental nor physical training. The hip strength of each group was measured before and after training. Physical strength was increased by 24% through mental practice. Strength was also increased through physical training by 28% but did not change significantly in the control condition. Whatever that means. What does that mean? That just means that people who didn't do anything. They didn't visualize and they didn't do.

Oh, in the control group? Yeah. Okay. I'll get it. I thought they were saying a different thing. The strength game was greatest amongst football players given mental training, mental and physical training produced similar decreases in heart rate and both yielded a marginal

reduction in systolic blood pressure. The result support the related findings of whoever that is, that giant name. Interesting, very interesting. So it definitely has an effect, and it seems like it definitely has a positive effect right before you're performing any kind of athletics. Yeah, and I think these studies are over like at least a six-week period of time. So if you want to see like strength-based tasks improve over time, like they're incrementally

getting stronger, right? It's not just then. They're kind of maintained that strength. I imagine as long as they continue to do the visualization. Yeah, I wonder, you know, that's the thing is, like, most people that go to the gym, like most people who are listening to this have regular jobs. If they go to the gym, they don't go visualize. Yeah, this is peak performance stuff we're talking about.

Yeah. This is pro-athletes elite. Don't you, if you're trying to get better, like what way to, you want to get better, this is good for you too. Yeah. I know it sucks. You don't want to visualize your kettlebell routines and visualize your muscles growing afterwards, but it might be worth a go. I'd like to hear from some people that try it.

Because if that kind of results, that's pretty... Oh, it's crazy. That's pretty nutty, man. So, like I'm saying, like, I did this stuff, and then I actually abandoned my football career because I liked it so much. And I went on and did research. I got a research grant just to look at the effect of using some of these techniques on bench press and performance and also decreasing anxiety. Because for me, I realized when I was 18, 19, I had crazy anxiety. I was like, all right, this stuff is helping, you know?

Call it meditation, hypnosis, whatever you mean. If you can progressively relax yourself, right, sitting in a flow tank, right? If you can just do that, if you can progressively relax yourself, your anxiety is going to go down, your cortisol levels are going to go down, the whole body is going to thrive. And this is actually like connected to so much that has to do with our health, kind of become a full circle is I see so much, all professional athletes come to me with these injuries, the physical therapist working on it, working on it, working on it. Nothing's happening.

It's just a nagging injury every single time. If I can relax them enough and I can get to the root, emotional core, of whatever's creating this pain for them. And it's usually emotional. It's actually like a memory or some kind of mental block, like the governor is coming in. Right? I'll see some guys in like the lower minor leagues.

He's trying to go up to the major leagues. And it's like these things will just start to express themselves when they're just about to get to that next level. And if we can move through the emotional side of it, the pain disappears. Right, but not in all injuries, right? Like there's got to be like legitimate injuries where guys blow them in it.

miscus out, guys have broken shin bones. Yes, I would say stuff that can't be explained. Like, a lot of times, right, you go to the doctor, like, I don't know what your issue is. Right? That happens all the time. Okay, well, that's a different thing. I mean, the realities of physical injuries that guys get from combat sports training are real. Like, if you have bulging discs in your neck and your arm goes numb, that's a real problem.

Yeah. You know, it's not just an emotional thing. I'm speaking about things that are, like, nagging, and you're doing the physical therapy and it's not working. Right. okay if that's you okay so yeah we gotta be specific right so you're talking about like weird stuff that does come up where they're almost like psychosomatic injuries because guys are responding badly to the pressure and not even just the the pressure it could just be it could be an injury that

existed before but it's just not healing for whatever reason it's not healing and it's just kind of recurring if you can get to the emotional route who keeps that I have fun with this now I always look up whenever someone tells me their injury I just look at them chat GPT what is this spiritual emotional connection to this injury and it's usually right on point i'd be like what do you think about this they're like oh yeah that's spiritual emotional connection to but not to like legit injuries like a broken hand yeah i mean you know what i mean yeah for sure like someone breaks their hand they got to get screws and plates in there sure yeah that's not you can't look that up on chat gbt yeah yeah broke his fucking hand it hurts i'll give you an example like i have so many

of these right it might be like someone has like a hamstring that just just nagging, right? A lot of athletes. I pop my hamstring and it just won't feel normal again, right? I look that type of stuff up. It's like, all right, well, why is this going away? I work with like pitchers in Major League Baseball. It's like my hip. It's like, well, why is this coming up now? And use, there's always like some kind of root and if we can get to it, we can relieve it. I bet there's a lot of guys, too, that have, if you think about making a living with your body, you make a living in a sport with your body where you're putting your body through explosive movements that could blow joints out so there's always this anxiety yes it all could go away yes

one twist of the ankle one blow out i mean look at uh people all the time lose their careers in football and in martial arts because they blow a knee out or they blow their back apart bro there's only like ten core beliefs that create fear in athletes i've seen like there's not that many and one of them is one you're pointing out right now is like life changing injuries will i be able sustain it you know The core is like, will I be able to sustain this or will I be able to continue to do the thing that I love? Right. And of course, like, yeah, if you get injured, then you're going to lose at all. Did you ever talk to Weidman after he broke his leg?

I did. Did you? I did. Yeah. Does he openly talk about that? Are we allowed to talk about this? Yeah, I mean, he gave me a testimonial, so I think he's pretty open. You gave him, like, online, so he could talk about it.

Yeah, he put, like, a video testimony. He's one of the toughest guys that's ever fought in the UFC. He's an animal. And that guy in his prime was fucking terrible. Yeah. But that injury that he got is one of the absolute hardest injuries to recover from. That broken leg, when they break their shin in half like that, very few people ever come back. Yeah.

I mean, there's one guy, I believe, that's a heavyweight in Bellator. It happened to him, and he's fighting again and fighting well. I don't know his name. See if he could find his name. But Anderson was never the same after his. Tyrone Spong was never the same after his... as Weidman was never the same after his. It's just, and psychologically, it's got to be fucking crazy

to think that you threw a super powerful kick that broke your own leg in half. And now you're expected, you went through a year and a half of hell to try to just get to the point where you can hit paths again. Yeah. And now you're going to go risk it again. Might kick someone's knee again and break your shin again and do that again.

And then you can't walk again. What we're talking about is like that, But just so we have physical scar tissue, it's that emotional scar tissue, you know? It's just like, it's hard for those thoughts not to come back into your head of like, I need to be extra careful here. Well, the reasonable thoughts. Yeah, of course. You know, if you think about it.

But it's like Chris had that style. Well, I mean, that the kick that he threw in Ury Hall was full blast. I mean, he fucking ripped that kick. And then when I heard that snap, I've heard that snap a couple of times. And it is the most horrible sound, man. The sound of a bone breaking, like a person's bone breaking, it's like, ooh, fuck. It gets you, like, in every cell in your body. Like, God damn, that's awful.

I've seen it a bunch. I've seen it at least half a dozen times. I've seen people get a bone broken. Yeah, it's traumatizing. Yeah. To come back from that is very hard because we're talking about the anxiety of always worrying about getting injured. and then you get injured from maybe a kick you through or Tim Sylvia Frank Meir, Frank Mear broke his arm

or Frank Meera Minotaro, a spiral fracture from that Camorra. Like, coming back from something like that is really hard. But what do you do for a fighter when you're trying to rebuild them? Do you take each fighter as a unique project and you just want to know everything about them? and you know what what bothers them about themselves what bothers them about their discipline so how do you do it i'm going to explain what i do it's going to sound woo-boo but i also want to contextualize it with the fact that like i didn't believe in anything like it's just just my experience of like doing this stuff for 17

years now and just seeing and feeling my way into this art that now i speak about things that the old me 15 years ago 20 years ago would be like shut the fuck up right but so what i do with any of my clients is I bring them to a very relaxed state you know like think of custody the motto what do you do with Mike Tyson like that's what I'm doing with these guys right so I'm bringing them almost into a hypnotic state and I'm bringing them down into this place where they finally let go they're no longer trying to like keep me out defend keep up this like identity they want to project into the world so they can actually get to the insecurities because I don't touch any of the beliefs that are working for them if someone has positive beliefs or successful I don't touch any of that stuff all I'm trying to

is their insecurity, their fear, their anxiety, their doubt. And so I'm just digging deeper and deeper into their body until we start to like think about things they want to achieve. It's like, ooh, what was twitchy there? Right? Something twitches in them. It's like, I'm feeling like, I'm getting angry now. Why are you getting angry?

Right? Why do we get angry? It's because we're afraid and we're trying to defend ourselves. And so if I find something like that, I feel into it with them. And then I ask them, I'm like, what do you believe in to be true that make you feel this way right now? and if I sit there along and I hold him in that tension

it'll eventually come up and through that we can release that belief we can accept a way through it first we can release it and we can reprogram it how are you setting this up is this actual hypnosis

are you doing like hypnotic techniques yeah yeah and how did you learn how to do that same guy sensei is he have a cult does he have a cult that we could join a one of one

so this guy taught you hypnosis techniques as well. Yeah, yeah. He taught me a lot of different thing. Hypnosis, NLP, timeline therapy. And then I didn't go on and get a secondary degree. So I studied that, I created my own degree. I went to a liberal art school in LA, the mental aspect of human performance. But everything I was learning that was helping me and my teammates, I was learning outside of school. So I was like, I'm not going to go spend $200,000 in getting a secondary degree when I'm learning everything else outside of school. So I've just continued to go to workshops, learn, study with different people

who know how to do different techniques and that's how I learn very kinesthetically in the same way that if you're doing martial arts you're just trying to go to as many mass as you can this guy jujitsu, this guy kickboxing that's just what I've done I've gone and tried to find different people who are really good at what they do

and that's how I learn through doing and actually experiencing the work of myself first if it works for me then I try it on my clients it works for them I just keep it going and I just I don't have one technique I use many different techniques whatever the moment calls for that's what to use Are there even degrees that you could get in human performance that would sort of match the kind of studying that you're doing?

No. Is there anything? Like, if you went to a major university, do they consider human mental performance and human performance, whether it's in athletics or chess or anything like that? We have to really think through things and deal with pressure. Do they consider that a discipline? Is that something that they study? I think sports psychology, I think you need to do this. That sounds very rudimentary.

It is. Like sports psychology versus human performance. It is. When you think about this conversation that you and I are having, one of the things that we're talking about is how important it is to have a mindset that allows you to work your way through difficulties and become successful at a thing and just get out of your own way. Everybody wants to do that. So if that's a real thing, why wouldn't that be taught in every major university? Because they won't let you smoke the toe at school, that's what. But they don't have to specifically advocate for it.

But the kids are going to do it anyway. But what's important is that they should recognize that this is a thing. Yeah. Like if it's a thing, if we all agree, and I bet any competitive athlete in any sport has experienced anxiety. You've had days where you felt amazing and you performed amazing. And then you've had days where you doubt of yourself and you fucked up and you dropped the ball. or whatever you did, there's this weird battle that goes on in the head, and it's all, it has a giant result, whatever's going on in your head, and how you perform.

Yes. And you always talk about where do ideas come from, right? Like, where do they magically come from? I don't know where they come from exactly, but I know how they're getting filtered, and it's just through the beliefs, because our belief system deletes, distorts, and generalizes information. And the fact that nobody, not nobody, but many people don't understand how that filtration station works just limit so many of us from achieving what we want because we're literally like you all know like the girl who's like dated an asshole and she's like all men are assholes right she's deleting the story and generalizing like her best friend who's married to an incredible guy right but when you believe something you literally shape the world to make it match it right yeah you kind of do yeah and if you believe bad things bad things will happen to you no 100 percent there's millions of pieces of information that you can see smell taste touch in any moment. There's so much sensory information. We can only pick up on a few in our

conscious mind in any moment. So that's where the ideas come from. I also think it's interactive more than we like to admit. Tell me about that. I don't think you can manifest your own reality, but I think you have a part in the process and the thinking part about and the visual, not necessarily visualizing, but staying on a path. Yes. There's an element that's going on there that's affecting reality itself it's there's there's a weird exchange of energy between human beings and between reality itself that I don't think we've figured out how to measure I don't think it's as simple as you know life is a series of events and it all takes place randomly and good luck to you come on the synchronities are undeniable yeah there's some

stuff that's weird there's some stuff that's weird that makes me think without going full woo woo, maybe we just don't have a grasp of the full spectrum of all the things that are happening, of all the factors at play, and how many of them have to deal with, you know, we would air quote energy. Yes. You know, that's where the woo-woo comes in, right? Here's how I appeal to my rational mind to make this make sense, right? Okay.

So I think about beliefs are like the code of our mind that's constantly filtering in the information. All this code does is determine how I'm going to feel. And that feeling is either going to make me want to go towards something or pull away from it. Yeah. So I just want my beliefs to push me or pull me towards the things that I want because it's going to lead to me behaving in a way that gets to an outcome. As simple as that. Yeah.

Well, that's logical. But everybody's starting from a different place, right? So there's some people that are starting from a devastating place of a lack of self-belief. Yes. And for those, it's just going to be a longer journey. to get to some sort of positive outcome. But a lot of people just don't know how to begin the first steps.

Like they want to. Like if you have no confidence, you feel like shit, you feel like every day is garbage. Every way you go, you think, oh my God, everyone's going to hate me. There's a lot of people that walk through life like that. You want the first step?

What's the first step? It's awareness. Awareness. Yeah. Set an alarm on your phone every three hours just to ask yourself, how do you feel? But you feel like shit every hour, on the hour. But you've got to sit in that, right?

Because most people, like, cut themselves off. at like the head and they just stay in the thoughts the negative thoughts but they don't actually go into the feeling so that's step one okay just to sit in the shit pit of full awareness of all the feelings then from there set another alarm for the next week that go okay feel what's coming up and then ask yourself what were you focused on then you can start to take some kind of ownership over like where are those thoughts coming from right how is my focus creating the way that i feel right and you can start to start you can start to see your beliefs by connecting those dots of like all right why is that making me feel angry so you have to feel first

and then notice what you're focusing on and then you start to come into this feeling of all right well i'm seeing it right it's the the four stages of learning you're getting to this place of conscious incompetence i see that i make myself feel bad i don't know how i'm doing it and then you can go okay what if i started to flip the focus and i started to build that muscle because this is the way i think about the mind and all these things is it's a muscle just like the body you can start to train it your mind just picks up on these patterns of repetition just like striking a bag just like anything else if you do something over and over again right you say the same things yourself over and over again the repetition starts to make its way down at the subconscious level well huberman

talked about that that area of the brain that actually grows larger when you do things you don't want to do and you build discipline so it really is like a muscle so you don't want to focus on the thing that is good for you because it feels like oh yucky it's like i'm lying to myself but that's the just flip it just continue to flip it but for some people they don't know how to get started with these thoughts like without hiring a coach well i mean is do you have it laid out yeah yeah what what someone should do like from the start is a literally playbook just do everything in the second half of the book what i'm what i'm getting to this is though like you know you're dealing with a guy like sean brady he's already tough as fuck he's already a you know

elite mma fighter he has this loss but he's already a beast of a human being but when you you're dealing with people that don't have any athletic background and you know maybe they just have a job and they just have no fucking confidence when they're sick of it they're sick of like living life in this anxiety pit of despair and they want to find a way out there's got to be like multiple different things that have to happen right so it's not just the way you think but there's also like actions and i think this is an action right step into awareness yes feel it the next set of actions the next week step into awareness of what you're feeling and what are you focusing on that makes you feel the way that's another set of actions but do you feel like this is all possible for

someone to achieve without some kind of physical exercise in coordination with it um because it seems like it seems to me that people with depression in particular like one of the best cures for depression is regular exercise any kind of exercise whether it's you know fucking go jog around the lake whatever you want to do. Listen, even before any of this is low-hanging fruits. Like in the book, I have people do an intake of their life. And I have them also kind of just look at all the low-hanging fruit of like, if you're drinking vodka bottles at 7 am. in the morning,

like that's a low-hanging fruit. You need to start to find a way through. Drink one instead of three, right? There's all these like small steps you have to take. Drink one bottle instead of three? Is that what you're saying? You know, the tiny bottles. Come on.

You know what I'm saying? If you're drinking vodka in the morning, like you've got bigger problems. Bro, I've had clients who are like, you know, high-level executives that are so stressed that they drink first thing in the morning. I've had, and I've helped him get off it completely. But it starts with something like that of like, all right. Well, that's a big duh, right? But what I'm getting at is I think if you want to have less anxiety, you've got to wring some of it out of your physical body as well. And that'll help you achieve clarity.

You have to think about it like a nutrient that you're taking or brushing your teeth or doing some. Take your medication. You have to really think about it like that. And it doesn't matter what kind of stuff you do. It doesn't matter whatever you like to do. If you like to do yoga, you want to go hike with a weight vest on, you want to do pushups in a parking lot. Do whatever. Do you do something.

I couldn't agree more. You just have to do something where you push yourself because if you don't, your body stores up, it seems, like, all this anxiety. Yes. And the reason why I believe this, one of the reasons why I believe this is like I've had some of like the best mindsets ever in my life after yoga class. and long stretching sessions where I'm working on something. I'm just like, you know what, I'm going to stretch out here. And I'll just sit and stretch for an hour and a half, two hours. And when I get up, I feel wonderful.

I feel like the world is beautiful. I want to hug people. I feel so peaceful. I love doing that right before I do stand-up. It's like one of my favorite things is to really stretch out right before I do stand-up. And I just feel so relaxed. It's so different. So you're carrying around actual physical tension.

that affects your mind. That's why I think, regardless of the tools that you use, yes, all of it. All of it. That's why I'm not just mental performance. It has to be all of it. It's nutrition. So important, right, the gut brain axis.

It has to be nutrition, exercise, rigorous exercise. How about your career, living a life where you have like some sense of meaning, right? And starting to move towards that. Right. Don't do something you hate just because it pays you if you have an option to do something that you might possibly love. If you want a better life, that's the life. Even if you're making less money, that's the life.

You don't want to be doing something you don't want to do. You're trying to decrease the amount of stuck energy in you. That's what you're trying to do. When you feel suppressed, you're not doing what you want to do, the energy gets stuck. And if you're doing a job that you hate and you know you could be doing something else, you just never fucking gone for it. Like, ooh, that'll eat away at you. In the back of your head, it's just always there, it's always there.

Forever and ever and ever, it'll always eat away at you, that you never took a chance. You just, and they show up every day, 9 a.m., chunk, chunk, punch in, fuck. Just waiting for 5 p.m., fuck. And then you get off and you're tired. Yeah. You know, and then you see other people that didn't do that, and you feel like shit even more. And then, you know, it's like, you're 40 and it's too late you feel. But it's not.

It's never too late. Are you breathing? Are you alive? Okay, then you can figure out something better than what you're doing. You don't have much time left. Yeah. that self-suppression creates a depression in any aspect, right? Yeah.

Anytime you're trying to just squeeze in, hold it in, hold it in, whether it's an inspiration you have, whether it's like, hey, I want to go play this sport. Right. But I just never make time for it. That's self-suppression. Like you have to make time for your natural inspiration to flow through you. And if you don't, I think that's what creates depression. Well, it's very hard for people to get going, to just to actually do something.

And I brought this up a million times, and I'll bring it up again, unfortunately. Stephen Presfield has an amazing book called The War of Art. And it's about that suppression that you put on yourself, that weird, and he calls it resistance. And, you know, he talks about summoning the muse and deciding that you're a professional and show up every day. And I think it's the same with that. It's the same thing. It's like it's hard to just get off the couch and put your shoes on. Like Goggins talks about it

He's like I stare at those motherfuckers For half an hour sometimes I don't believe him I believe him He doesn't lie He doesn't lie He doesn't lie

He's telling you the truth That's why Because he brutalizes himself It makes sense that he stares For 30 minutes But he probably literally Stares at them Yeah

Fuck you He's just cussing him out And then he just puts them on You don't know me son Exactly It was that he puts him on So it's There's something there

You know There is That resistance that Pressfield talks about, that's exactly what I'm talking about, right? Yeah, it's doing something to you. Whether you're an athlete, whether you're a creative. I mean, I think it applies to everyone. Like, the resistance is whatever's holding you back from following your natural inspiration. Well, I think a big part of that resistance is a fear of failure.

There's a thing that hovers over people, that's fear of failure, and that actually, it keeps you from just doing the things that you need to do to be successful. you get afraid for whatever weird reason it becomes a predominant fear in your head broken code there's so many reasons like i'll give you an example so i ran like a big fitness channel when i was trying to make it before i started working with cool clients who were like john brady and built a big fitness community and i would see that like a mom who's not doing her exercise and it's like why don't you just do it just do it just get up just do it you deep you go down into subconscious, find, oh, well, I believe that if I start working out, I won't have time to be the mom that I am right now, and then my kids will leave me. Completely irrational. But subconsciously,

that's what exists out on there. For so many people, they think they're going to lose out on something. And if they lose it, it's not worth it subconsciously than doing the thing that they're inspired to do. But it's also sometimes people, their health is bad. And then unfortunately, they're not eating correctly. And that's why their health is bad. And they have zero energy. And so the daunting task of doing something on top of working all day. It's almost like overwhelming to them. And then if they have kids and they have a bunch of... And then the option is get up at 6 a.m.

Like, no, fuck you. Well, that's the power of transmuting the energy. So just flipping the energy on it, right? To go from, this is going to make me a worse mom to, this can make me a better mom. And maybe that will give them enough juice to actually go do the workout. Maybe. Maybe.

I mean, there's gotta be something that you can do to trick yourself into having the energy to get started. energy to get started. But that's kind of what it is. It's like you have to trick yourself into getting started. And then when you get to an elite athlete level, like Brady, it's got to be about making sure the process is airtight, right? It's got to be like really tuning it in, right? Like making sure it's finally tuned. Yeah. Basically, fight week, I want his energy. I want him to be matter of fact about everything just a matter of fact just neutral just sitting right here you know the feeling you have in your heart where you're just like present just right there

right there but what how do you get there like what's the way to get there so for him at that elite level it's going down and it's clearing out anything that comes up during camp it might be and this isn't actually Sean but like I work with a lot of other fighters and for them it would be oh I'm losing in some of my sparring sessions and so their confidence is actually going down because of that. And so it's literally reprogrammed that belief inside of them. And this sounds woo-woo, but if you ever want to do a session, you'll actually be able to feel it with me.

And what happens is we transmute the energy to make them feel that it's okay to believe that even when they're losing and sparring, they're getting better. And so something just shifts inside of them. Instead of it creating a seed of doubt, when they're like working on something, they're drilling something and they're not

winning everything. Now it's okay, I'm getting better. And it's just a feeling that shifts in them. well that is reality right i mean as long as they're not getting truly beat up rationally of course sparring in a good place but that survival instinct or that goes i should be winning everything yeah doesn't like that and so sometimes we have to rewire those things so that's what we're doing as we're going through camp is like seeing what comes up what's decreasing confidence what are you dialed in everything you know i'm working with other coaches as well and making sure are they doing

what you want them to do and if they're not what's going on here and that's kind of my job so So it has to have, rather it requires a very strong connection between you and the athlete. Oh, deep. I would say that nobody knows any of my clients better than them, except for maybe their wives. Better than you know them. Yeah. It's in extreme intimacy because I talk about some of the book called The Core Wound. So the worst thing that ever happened to you is the worst thing that ever happened to you.

but some people have, you know, they might have witnessed a murder or maybe they lost a parent when they're young, like something really bad. Another person might have been bullied when they're in the fourth grade and kicked out of a friend group. If we identify what that core wound is for them that fundamentally hurts their confidence to this day and we clear that out, we can exponentially increase

just their confidence and their self-belief. But the only way we get there is they're telling me their deepest, darkest secret. But how do you clear it out once you... There's just some of these techniques. There's something like hypnosis, right? You can use it with hypnosis, NLP. They're all these mind techniques that you can utilize to clear the energy, which clears the emotion.

So NLP, that is like that Anthony Robbins stuff, right? Neurolinguistic program. That's what he does, right? I think it's part of what he does. I don't know. I've never worked with them, but. And did you go to school to learn neurolinguistic programming? No, I just study with someone who taught it to me.

Yeah, I just learned very well one-to-one. Just like that's how I learned. I'm not totally familiar with it. How complicated it is NLP? Because I know some people, like, really believe in it. It's all perception, right? What is it? Explain what it means, but you say neurolinguistic programming.

What does that mean? Yeah. I don't even know what the... I don't know how to explain neural linguistic programming, but I would just tell you what it is. Okay. Fundamentally. You're just playing with perception, right?

So someone has... Something's easy for me to get rid of is, like, the fear of flying. I had this baseball player this year I'm working with. Every time it gets on a flight, starts freaking out. Unnecessary. So what do we do? We imagine him on the plane and I have him sit, visualize being on the plane and starting to get to that place of anxious, where the thoughts, oh, the plane's in a crash. He knows it's irrational, but why is he feeling this anyway? We have to go into a feel the emotion, feel the emotion. Then I have to imagine, for example, a giant

picture in his mind, in his mind's eye. And this picture is holding him and all the anxiety and the worst case scenario happening. And then we, boom, get rid of the color in the picture. And then we imagine this picture becoming super tiny and then we imagine it just disappearing and then we put a new picture in there of him being able to fly not crash be able to do it all the time and be successful that's it that's it what if it was 9-11 and he flew right into the tower right after he gave him that advice well that sucks how would you feel would that would be it you like i quit i'm done yeah i mean they sound like very simple techniques but it's something you have to to experience.

Yeah, but it would seem to me that it would be very difficult to get people to actually change their beliefs that easily. Like, the idea sounds solid, but the actual process of shifting how you view the world, depending upon the person, is like turning a battleship around. Yeah, it is. It's heavy. I don't know. I mean, this is the stuff that goes beyond the rational mind.

Like, if you were to experience it, you'd be like, okay, I get it. Yeah. But it's a emotional experience. I mean, how do you, there's some things we can't explain, right? Like, how do you explain going through the veil on a psychedelic experience? It's something that you can't really explain when you come back on the other side. It's that kind of thing where it's like when you're in the experience, it's like, how is it supposed to be possible? I explain the techniques you're rationally, but like, what are you talking about?

Same thing if you have this immense psychedelic experience and you're passing through the veil and you're seeing all these things having this experience of interconnecting this. And you try to come back and you tell someone who's never had a psychedelic. experience and be like what are you talking about yeah there's not enough words no no words work this stuff goes beyond language it's the same thing yeah you can say like i saw a beautiful rose and i'm like oh cool i know what that looks like that's why it yeah yeah exactly there's not enough words for a psychedelic experience so this work that's why i like i put together the playbook so i give people actual things that they can do because i understand not everyone's going to work with me one to one to be able to experience this

but people can do these simple exercise people can audit their life and they can see some of the patterns of thinking and just the awareness of seeing some of the patterns you're thinking if you study enough you might be able to change it right we've all had bad habits and sometimes just get to a point we're like all right i'm not doing that anymore so this neurolinguistic programming do you specifically design this kind of so you what you do that is one of the things you do yeah do you specifically design different ones for different people that you work with if you're going to work one-on-one with the client honestly i don't know what i'm going to do before i go to go into any it's all just I just feel it in the present moment I mean you could think of it like I have all these tools I can use and then I feel into what their issue is and then I do my best with the tools I have to fix their issue I'm just problem solving the moment does it feel weird to do that as a career I mean that sounds like a crazy job it feels like so much so much weight on your shoulders to try to help a person like especially try to help an elite athlete like knowing

what to say and how to get their mind tuned in right and what to what to introduce and whether or not this technique is effective am i doing this right i just don't think i i surrender to something bigger than myself right that's what i have to do is just allow how did you know that you could do it though like how did you know that this was going to be like really effective especially on someone like a fighter where it's like this is a really complicated gig like you really you want to talk about a sport where you have to have your mind right like there's no sport like fighting Because any mistake you make, you're going to get head kicked. Yeah.

Well, I lose too sometimes, right? So like Wyman, I helped him come back, his first fight back from after he broke his leg. And he said that's the best he's ever felt in his career going into a fight. He still lost a fight. Yeah, there's a physical factor there, too, that whether or not a guy like Wyman never wants to admit because he's so tough because he has this incredible belief in himself. but a catastrophic break of a bone like that when you're in your late 30s that is hard to come back from man that's not simple yeah it takes a long time and you know he came back you know he he eventually reached a higher a higher level than in

this first fight back but he doesn't you know necessarily look like Chris Wybman when he beat Anderson Silva yeah or Chris Wyman so 39 now yeah yeah unfortunately and these guys it's like If you're natural, and he's natural, they get to a certain point where the body just can't keep up with the brain. Like, their brain is so strong and they're so tough, but their body is not a 24-year-old's body anymore. It doesn't move right anymore. And this accumulation of injuries, regardless of your belief system. Yeah. It's just your foot doesn't work anymore, bro.

I mean, that was me understanding. Like, when I was 18 years old, I'm like, I'm not that good at football. Like, I don't have the physical gifts. Like, I'm just not that athletic. I'm not going to run that fast. And when, so this is how I discovered. it, right? I started to learn these techniques. Like, I can do things like get rid of someone's headache very easily with some of these techniques. So, like, I have a teammate, had a terrible

headache. I'd be like, all right, let's do some of these hypnosis, relaxation techniques. He's like, my headache's gone. I'm like, I'm way better than this and I was at football. And that was a spark within me that made me. See, me, I would take him to the hospital. I'm like, bro, you might be having a stroke. Let's get you to the hospital. It's just a headache. Come on. When a guy who's a tough guy complains about a headache, I always get concerned. He wasn't that tough. He's a football player He's got to be tough

Bro, you want to see tough Look at LeBron James' feet I was looking at LeBron James' feet Today online Have you seen him, Jamie? Bro How does that guy play elite basketball With those fucked up feet

Like his feet are so broken Because of all the years of exploding And twisting and turning And he's been playing professionally For how long? 20 years? 21 I think that's bananas Yeah, I don't understand

Think about the amount of explosions he's forced his feet to perform. Imagine moving back and forth and you wait 250 pounds. Like, that's nuts. That's so much force. He's not the same species as us. He's something else. Discipline, bro. But look at those toes.

That is bananas. That's bananas. Like his toes just take like sharp turns. It may or may not be accurate. That other one looked better. Let me see that. That looks a little better. It's a little over it.

Yeah, it's a little over it. But he might be getting it. Maybe he did that on purpose. Maybe he did that for the picture, just to be silly. This is the viral a while ago is on the beach. Yeah, that's pretty obvious. So his big toe goes under the next toe. It's that twisted in.

That's obvious. It also doesn't like the same foot as that foot. You know, Brian Simpson was having a problem with that too because he's got wide feet, and I told him about yoga toes. Yep. That stuff works, man. You ever use those? They stretch your feet out.

You put your toes in there. and they stretch, it's like a little rubber stopper in between each little toesy and it stretches your foot out and makes it feel better. It relieves the pressure that you're getting with narrow towed shoes where it's squishing it in the front

fucking your feet up. But to be that tough to play basketball with that kind of a foot for 20 plus years, that's nuts. Yeah, it's taking a lot of... To be gardens and run with no knees. Nuts. Nuts.

That's what inspired. does though you know I think these guys just want it they want it they want to keep going they want to keep pushing it they want to see what's possible yeah I was watching a fight today one of my little chat groups that I have with Dean Thomas and Matt Sarah and John Rallo a guy was fighting in a box it looks like a boxing match and he has one leg so he's hopping around with one leg trying to fuck this guy up so if you ever think like maybe here let me find this you ever think like maybe life has been too hard on me.

Maybe the barriers in front of me or insurmountable. Try fucking doing what this guy's doing because this is really kind of crazy. And I don't understand what they're doing because they're barefoot, but they're not kicking. And I guess the guy can't kick because he only has one leg. Maybe they agreed, no kicking. But like, why put a shoe on?

You know, I don't understand why? If you guys aren't going to kick, why don't you have shoes on? better for your grip. But this guy's hopping around. Did you get it, Jamie? Yeah. This guy's hopping around throwing punches with literally one leg. Look at this.

Oh. How nuts is that? One thing you do have to think, it sucks that he only has one leg, but I bet he weighs about 40 pounds lighter that way. Oh, yeah. So, like, he's probably got some strong-ass arms. But you can only generate so much force with one leg.

I can't even balance on one leg. I know. His balance is insane, man. And his movement's really good, too. like there's people that have two legs that don't move that good it's nuts the other dude is like i wish i could leg kick you like that's so not fair you guarantee that dude can't kick you back so explosive but it's just pretty nutty that you know he's still willing to fight

and he's hitting this guy i mean is the human will yeah it's incredible it is incredible the human mind can do very strange things if you let it keep going down a path and keep getting better and better. You know, you can get to a very strange place that, you know, a lot of people don't want to believe exists. Yeah. Just to keep expanding the possibilities, right? Exposing yourself to new things.

I think that's why, like, people in my field traditionally, like, they're not doing psychedelics. Like, it's not really a thing that people do. Why do you think that is? I would imagine. I don't think that anybody that's really exploring how the line works. I'd say maybe more sports psychology, stuff. like that because they're more clinical the more clinical people you know their doctors they're you know their people are much more clinical methodical about things but for me like my full

ego death through the bufo toad was fundamentally the most important part of me learning to do what I do because in that experience it created enough space between me and all my beliefs you know it's that like that neuroplasticity that gets created in those moments afterwards where you can actually kind of see things you can kind of see the the forest from the trees If you never have the experience, then, like, this is something people talk about all the time, right, is the whole thing, the ego is the enemy. It's like, well, it depends what you're considering the ego because you can't get rid of the ego. If the ego dies, then you're just in the oneness, right? So you need the ego, we have to build it up.

And I think for fighters especially, like they need massive egos, but they need healthy egos, egos that our program succeed. Yeah, no ego is not attainable. If you're a human being, you're going to have an ego. You just have to figure out how to manage it And don't let it burn your house down You know, it's like that customato quote about fear Fear is like fire You can cook your food with it

Or if it gets out of control to burn your house down Yeah I think that's the case with many many things Including psychedelics by the way I think there's a lot of people that burn their house down Yeah I think there's a lot of people that go really far And they lose their grip on reality And reality gets real slippery

And they sort of try to redefine reality to fit their own narrative, and they seem schizophrenic. Yeah. I've seen that from multiple people that have taken too many psychedelics. They're just abusing it. You've got to use, like, a tool. Well, yeah, but it's also everybody has their own specific way that they interact with the world. And if you're taking psychedelics to justify your specific way of interacting with the world,

Yeah. And then you start indoctrinating other people to your specific way of running the world. You try to, like, have a branch off civilization. Like, that's like this thing that happens to guys in particular. You don't see a lot of, like, female guru psychedelic ladies, you know, or they're more like mother figures, but not like gurus. The gurus are all dudes, and it almost always. Sex. There's always going to come up with boys down to pussy.

Almost, always. Or Dick. depending on what you're into. Because the guy out here in Texas, in Austin, was, there was a building that Ron White loved called the One World Theater that we were actually in contract, under contract for before I wound up buying the mothership.

And that place was run by a cult. And this guy was a gay guy, he was a gay porn star and a hypnotist. There you go. That's a deadly combo right there. Who was teaching yoga to folks in West Hollywood and slowly but surely formed a cult, and then after Waco

Remember the Waco thing went down Everybody panicked And the cult awareness network Apparently was like looking for him And looking into him Because like a lot of the family was like We lost my son He went to that book

So then he decided to change his name And then he moved to Austin And he had his followers Build him a theater So he could dance in front of them And that's here And it was There's a crazy documentary called

Holy Hell But this guy This is what's crazy the people that hated him at the end of the documentary the people that said that he was a giant scammer and he was a piece of shit and they wish they had never met him they all said they had gone through this thing called the knowing and the knowing was like he would withhold it from them and a lot of them are like really upset they weren't getting the knowing and it was this thing that he would do where he'd make them I think they were on their knees and he would touch their face and tell

them that it was going to happen and they would all say the same thing they would all say afterwards it was one of the most beautiful the most beautiful experience of their life that they felt a complete total connection with god and it changed their worldview and their perception forever like it's available in your mind if you believe if you truly believe and they truly believe that this guy was like a legitimate mystic it was a legitimate guru and because they believe that even though this guy's a gay porn star and a hypnotist and a fucking psychopath because they believed that when he put his hands on them they felt it so what a complicated relationship you have this guy who one of the guys left the cult and he's like hey man uh this guy's been hypnotizing me and fucking me

for 10 years and then everybody was like me too it got crazy and then they all wound up leaving but he also did this thing for them yeah where he connected them to god yes which is really nuts man because you would think fuck that guy that guy sucked I can't believe but but there was his one day and there's one it was almost like a part of the little cosmic joke of life yes is a cosmic joke this fucking weirdo possesses the ability to literally connect you with God but he behaves like a demon he's just butt fucking dudes and just taking all their money and it's just madness but what he's able to to do when he touches you is real.

What a cosmic joke, if that's true. You know, there's all those Indian gurus, right? Where, like, people tell the stories of, like, all they had to do is, like, gaze on me or touch me. I've never experienced any of this. And then you just feel like you've had experience with God. Yeah, I believe it. I believe if you believe it.

That's what I think. I think there are guys that are living a very different life. Just like, you know, we're talking about, like, someone who could get to this David Goggins level of discipline and physical will. I think there's guys like that with meditation and I think there's guys who get so far out there and if you recognize that they're so far out there I bet you sync up with the way they're seeing the world

you let them think for you and you believe in them and then they do something to you they put their hands on you or whatever they do you believe it's going to happen and then your mind allows it to happen I think we have access to a bunch of different states of consciousness we just don't know the tools

to access it. We don't know the code to crack to open them. And for some people, it's a near-death experience, which seems to be a chemical reaction. It's like an undeniable reaction that people have when they come back from the dead. But for other people, it's not. For other people, like sometimes it's some sort of a life-changing revelation. For some people, it's like it's falling in love or having a child or there's something that happens that like rewires the way they see the world. And whatever those states are that are inside of us, I can't imagine why there's not courses at major universities studying how to access this stuff, studying how to achieve endogenous states of psychedelic experiences. Like James Nestor's book when he talks about holotropic breathing and all those different.

Do you ever do that? I've done a bunch of it. Yeah, I've had, like, legit trips from breathing. Yeah, I guide some guys, some of my clients, like, they leave their body. You know, they have experiences of, like, leaving their body. It feels very weird. You can get it, especially when you do it, I like to do breathing exercises in a tank. In the flow tank?

Yeah, you do it in a flow tank? Whoa. Because the flow tank itself is a psychedelic experience. Totally natural. It's the best one because there's no side effects and you can just open the door and it's over. Anytime you're freaking out, like, ah, can't. Can I take it? Open the door. Yeah.

And then next time, stay in a little longer and then settle in. But doing breathing exercises in there, I mean, you might as well be taking mushrooms. You can get some bizarre experiences doing that. Yeah. So we talked about, like, how do we get people on this path? I think it's these types of experiences that, like, open a doorway. It's like a hard reset. I think, actually, for most people, they should not do psychedelics.

Most people? People who are, like, in a really dark state. Do you think most people are in a dark? Oh, okay. No, no, no. Most people who are in a very dark state, they're struggling with really bad depression. I don't think they should go right to psychedelics.

I think there's steps before that. I think they can do all topic breathing, flow tanks. Just get healthy first too, right? Take some steps. But like there's things you can... You know one of the things that's a really good thing to tell people to do? Find a fun physical hobby. Something you can get good at.

Whatever it is, whether it's fucking pickleball or whatever it is. Find a fun physical hobby that forces you to do a little bit of activity. You know, it doesn't have to be. be super strenuous, but something that you actually like doing. It's social even better. You get moving. You get moving. And then there's also the thing about getting good at something that for whatever

reason, like really helps people. I'll give you, if you really focus on getting good at something, that thing becomes the puzzle. Instead of just like dealing with all the anxiety of life, then that becomes your focus. Your focus becomes getting good at this thing. Humans need something to pour their energy into. 100%. And if you

don't have that, you feel lost. And that's a lot of people in this world. And that's the problem with just having a regular job which also saps you of your energy you know absolutely it could be something very simple you know but just find something that you just want to move on a path just get on a path and that just incremental progress feels good and the best thing is physical anything anything that you can do that that's why jiu jitsu is so awesome because you you could find that you find the physical struggle but also this incredible mental puzzle that you're figuring out every day and then also you're dealing with all these anxieties and emotions and these weird feelings like

fuck i don't want to roll with him oh god damn it he's going to get me and you're rolling with people then you got to learn how to relax you got to learn and they're like oh my god he didn't tap me this this session like maybe you got dominated but at least you didn't tap and then next time maybe you uh maybe you uh reverse someone maybe you sweep someone that never sweat before me and you just like oh my god i'm getting better at this and you you've got this puzzle and then you've also got this extreme physical activity where the rest of the day seems so easy

it seems so like so relaxing no matter what happens you're so calm because you've been getting your fucking legs yanked on and your neck yanked on and fucking take it down and side control crushed and getting arm triangled and this is

easy like no matter what you experience outside of that your bar for what sucks it's like your thing you do the most that sucks so hard is what you love, which is nuts. So it cures you in a lot of ways. And I think it's the remedy for young men. There's a lot of men that just, and it's filled with nerds.

You need to know that, too. Like, it's not meatheads. You think it's meatheads. It's mostly not. Mostly it's like really intelligent people that excel at this physical puzzle. And then through that thing, they develop all this confidence. It become, like, much cooler people, much more interesting to hang out with. Like all my friends that are like black belts and jiu-jitsu, they're all interesting.

They're all cool to talk to. Like if I can talk to a guy and they tell me they're a black belt and jiu-ts, I'm like, oh, okay, you've gone through the whole thing. Like, you've gone through some shit. Like, okay, I guarantee you and I can find common ground. Like, we could talk. Yeah. It's like there's things that are out there that are available to you that are a vehicle for developing your human potential. That's what I was taught when I was a kid and I was learning Taekwondo.

That's how they described it. is a, I never forgot that, a vehicle for developing your human potential. And I was like, that's perfect. Because I think you don't just do it from thinking about stuff and thinking different. I think you need physical stuff that you do. And the best physical stuff is scary stuff. Yeah, right of passage. Yeah.

We don't have many rights of passages. Yeah. And doing any type of martial arts and having to compete is like, oh, this is scary. It's building, it's building, what's going to happen? And you kind of have to face that fear of death in a way. It's like, you know, you're not going to die, but in a way, it feels like it when you're going to competition. It's like, this person is going to try to hurt me. Yeah.

And to come through that and get to the other side, there's something that changes in your nervous system. For sure. You've actually experienced something that very few people ever experience. And it's very different than a street fight because you're agreeing to it and you're training for it. You've got this other person who's like training, you know they're scary a shit. And they're on the other side of the cage and then you step in and the two of you're about to go to war. It's the nuttiest job in the history of the world It really is other than war

And being a firefighter or a cop It is the nudiest job in the history of the world You're agreeing to throw bones at each other In front of the world Millions of people People love it And today they just announced The UFC just signed some crazy deal

With Paramount Plus There's going to be no more pay-per-views All the events are going to be available For everybody for free Every pay-per-view Every fight card that they have from the apex which are my favorite yeah everything is going to be available for free it's an amazing deal i think it's going to explode the sport even oh my god for through the roof and it's a

super smart move for paramount yeah what a great move to not just have the ufc for seven years but have it for free like i don't think paramount costs but what how much does it cost a month it's like eight or ten bucks so if it's ten let's say it's ten bucks that's crazy that's a hundred $20 a year. You could watch every UFC pay-per-view. Two UFC paperview is like $140, right? Isn't it? Are they like $70? So you get all of them? Everything's free? That's incredible. This support is going to go fucking hypernova. Because the average person only knows about the stars. You know what I mean? But they're kind of detached because they're only watching highlights. Now they get to actually watch about the stars. They're going to be so much more bought into the sport. Yeah. It's going to be nuts. And it'll be, it's such a smart move for Paramount because you have a built-in audience. It's immediately going to jump up. over there because everybody you have to renew your ESPN subscription anywhere you know like you

have to renew it so it's just buy a Paramount subscription by the way ESPN has everything too it's great I kind of bummed out and I hope they don't lose the relationship that they had with ESPN with all their MMA shows I hope they don't go like fuck them they went to paramount I hope it's like a mutually beneficial thing like the UFC at least does some content still on ESPN because I think that's also a big factor in pulling people from, like, casual viewers that watch other sports that might occasionally watch a UFC fight, and then they see, like, Dustin Poir-A versus Max Holloway, and they're like, holy shit! And then they're hooked, right? It's like having that coverage on SportsCenter, that shit's huge. Having those post-fight shows on ESPN Plus,

that shit is huge. For the real dorks like me, that's huge. Yeah, I think even for like the average person that cares more about storytelling you know it's like maybe the wives are like this is interesting to hear about the drama of their life a little bit and the hero's journey yeah for sure yeah well it's um unbelievably compelling when you watch two world class fighters fight in a world championship fight yeah unbelievably compelling you know like uh when you watch sugar shone omalley try to get the title back from rob that was so compelling yeah sugar shan changes his whole life did you talk with him at all I haven't. I'm very curious. I would love to talk with him because I know he cut out weed, right? Cut out weed, stop jerking off, I believe, and abandon all social media.

Yeah. Which is very fascinating. I might be wrong about the jerking off. I think I might have added that in there. But he recognized that this guy's a motherfucker. He's a completely different thing. Like, Marab is like a David Goggins in that respect, that he's so far down the path of pushing himself. that it's almost like you're never going to catch him in that game you know like six months of not jerking off

and staying off TikTok I don't think that's even close to enough I think what he's been doing has been really insane for a long time everybody that I talked to that's trained with that guy say he's fucking superhuman with his cardio

and his work ethic is through the roof man when DC went to see him the day after he won the title he was out running DC went to his house sicko and he's film DC's filming his garage is that his garage gym set up and he's like this motherfucker is out running he's out running the day after winning the world title and a spectacular five-round performance where he shows superhuman cardio like superhuman pressure there's a few guys like that yeah it's fascinating to look at just that level the elite elite elite elite elite elite elite level and to see the commonalities between them for me as someone who loves studying the

mind and it's like what is different about these guys and then is there anything you could do to catch up or are they just built different or they're just wired no way did you see the anthony hernandez roman deletes fight this weekend no bro you got to see that fight you have to see that fight anthony hernandez is a fucking problem he's a fucking real problem he doesn't get tired man he pushes an insane pace and he doesn't get tired he melts dudes he just melts them you know he does stuff where you just go like what how are you pushing this kind of pace it's like a middleweight version someone said it in the the comments too the marab was in roman's corner because they're both from georgia and he's like in marab is in the corner why roman fights the middleweight version of marab because it

really was like that fluffy hernandez is wild dude it's like whatever he's doing in his training or whether he just has a like some people like Kane Velasquez had a natural cardio gift I don't know what it is but it's insane he submitted Rodolfo Vieira multiple time world judicious gym just exhausted the fuck out of him and guillotined him which is just nuts to watch that guy tap do you know who he is no I know boxing way more than UFC so Vieira is built like a superhero like he doesn't even look like a real human he looks like a cartoonish like CG version of what an elite MMA athlete looks like, just chiseled.

And Fluffy doesn't look like that. Covered in tattoos, you know, looks athletic. You know, looks tough, but Rodolfo Vieira is, that's him. Oh, yeah. Borrow. I mean, but

you know those photos of like what your girlfriend tells you not to worry about? That one where he's got his sleeves down and by his elbows in the lower, yeah, that one right there. Bro. What are you talking about? and I don't think Fluffy was even a black belt I think Fluffy was a brown belt at the time

I want to be correct about that he's a black belt now right Anthony Hernandez MMA I think he's a black belt but to submit that guy was just one of the crazy like if you had a if you had a bet in Vegas you know like if you were on draft

draft king sports book and you bet Fluffy Hernandez to submit Rodolfo Vieira You probably get like 25 to 1 odds. Brown Belt. He's still a brown belt. He's still a brown belt in Jiu-Jitsu. He submitted a multiple-time world champion just by melting him.

Just melting him. I'd love for you to talk to that guy. Find out of what the fuck he's made out of. I love to. Hit me up, bro. He's different, man. There's certain dudes that are just different. You know, like what Gaggins likes to call uncommon amongst uncommon men.

That dude's uncommon. If I was a middleweight, I'd be, like, closely watching that guy, like, Jesus Christ. Because he's also, like, every fight he keeps getting better. And it's just a storm that starts from the first minute of the first round and never stops. You never get to break. There's no breaths. He's constantly on you. He takes a great shot.

52 takedowns, eight fight, win streak, six finishes. Bro. That guy. there's there's guys that just emerge from groups of like super talented contenders where you just go holy shit and that's one of them that's awesome yeah i've done luck out for him i gotta go back and watch the fight so for a guy like you that's like a mental coach i always like wonder like i'd like to you to like talk to that guy and maybe you can pass some of that on to everybody else like what is he doing yeah how is he is he just training harder than everybody else is he just is his mindset is he just a dog

and just does not give a fuck because it seems like there's a lot of that there too but he's just mentally super strong and super aggressive that's what I love to do I give these guys these prompts and I just audit and I pull out all their beliefs and it's super interesting to hear what

beliefs create an elite performer and just hearing all the ones that are making them successful and all the ones that are causing them problems want to hear what's really crazy dude smokes a ton of weed ton of weed like sugar show you're like i'm going to quit the weed this dude's like give me all your weed

when i was when i was doing a lot of boxing i was smoking a ton of weed i was smoking a ton of weed i was smoking weed every single day and i don't anymore but at the time i was like you know i had to get surgery in my nose because i got busted up so many times yeah i got that surgery yeah oh my god isn't it nice when you get it done though like i fell down a flight of stairs when i was five so i've never had a good nose my nose has been fucked since i was a little kid so i never could breathe out of my nose and And then years of getting punched and kicked and getting headbutted and grappling classes. I had it.

I was going to the doctor because I was still sparring during COVID. And I was going to the doctor. And they were just telling me, oh, I think you have COVID. That's what they told me. They're like, oh, I think you just have stuffiness. We're going to have you tested from COVID, like two different times. And eventually I just got x-rays. And I'm like, oh, your nose is destroyed.

Yeah. But I used. It happens like an ear, right? You know how ears get cauliflower. You get that same kind of buildup of calcium deposits inside your nose. They have to carve it out. Yeah. Ever see what it looks like when they get the chunks and they lay it out for you after they take it out?

They took a piece from my ear. They took the ear cartilage. To rebuild your nose? The funniest thing is so I spent a lot of time in Columbia and I went down there for the surgery. And you went to Columbia for ear to nose surgery? Oh, I do everything. All my stuff in Columbia. Jesus, bro.

They invented it in Bogart, Columbia. Did it really? They did. No shit. Yeah, medical stuff's amazing. Honestly, like, this is going to be. sound funny but when I go there it almost makes the US feel like a third world country that's crazy just because it's so inexpensive the doctors are good the

facility's great anyhow so I go get the surgery I come out of it I'm missing the back of my ear that I didn't understand that part why didn't they do the rib usually they did the rib cartilage they said they might do the rib but I don't remember it changed the mind and went with your ear I guess the year was your ear look like now I'm gonna show it to you show me okay you got a missing chunk son whoa yeah yeah it lays kind of flat oh that's crazy not that bad not bad but you don't grapple so you have cauliflower that would get weird because it would be no structure so it would like super droop like a like a like a like a labrador what do you think i haven't gotten into jiu jitsu just because i was told by

some of my friends that like i would i could re-break my nose just by the pressure of people like leaning on it all the time i just don't want to get the surgery again when i got my surgery i was addicted fully addicted to jiu-jitsu so i waited six weeks and i started rolling again and how's your nose been it's fine But I protected it, and I told everybody that I was rolling with, hey, man, I just got no surgery. So please don't, like, cross-face me if you're trying to get a rear-naked choke or something like that. You know, like, there's certain guys that are real mean, and they get your back and they'll fucking do this with your nose to get you to lift your chin up. They'll go forearm blade right into the nose, which I understand for competition.

But for the gym, the problem is, like, you could really break a guy's nose and then fuck him up for the rest of his life until he gets it fixed. What about now when you train? Don't do that. Is it a concern? Well, I haven't been training in a long time. I haven't been training it over a year. No rolling at all in over a year. But it's not a concern.

It works great. It's fine. If I got it broken and it was a problem, I'd definitely 100% get it fixed again. The benefits of being able to breathe out of your nose, and I've talked to a ton of fighters about this. Some of them are like, I'll wait until after I'm done fighting. But Dreckas duplice, who's defending his title this weekend. Drikas, he started his career with a fucked-up nose in the UFC, and it really affected his cardio. mouth was wide open. He got it fixed and there was like this immediate bump in performance.

I mean immediate. For sure he was getting better along the way and for sure he was, you know, figuring out how to tighten up his techniques and he's just an animal, right? But on top of that, having that nose fix was a significant difference. He didn't have to have his mouth open all the time. That's the ideal way to breathe if you can just breathe your nose, right? It limits your cardio in a significant way. I noticed like a 10% bump in cardio is what it felt like to me. Like I could feel the difference in being able to breathe out of my nose. And also to be able to bite down on your mouthpiece, like if you're really

clamping down on something, and you could still breathe perfectly. That was huge. Yeah. Because before, you'd have to squeeze while your mouth is open. That's terrible. Like, if you want to squeeze on something, you want to be like this, you want to feel like fucking and you can't

bite down. They've done studies on that, right? Like, people lifting stuff with like certain mouthpieces in and certain mouthpieces actually increase their strength. Powerlifters use them, right? Yeah, I think they do it for sure also to not break your teeth. Because I went to a dentist once, and the dentist was like, you know, like, micro fractures

on all your teeth. You're like, do you lift weights? And I go, yeah, you're clinching your teeth all the time. Oh, yeah. So I stopped doing that so much, and I definitely started. I worked out with a mouthpiece for a long time, like lifting. But I think there's a certain mouthpiece that they design that sets your jaw in a certain way that it actually enhances your strength there's like some sort of a connection between like having

your jaw perfectly aligned and clamping down on this mouthpiece that allows you to actually lift more weight find out if that's true because I know that that was definitely a marketing claim for this mouthpiece thing but I just don't remember much of it but I remember like looking into it years ago it was like a weird mouthpiece with like the bottom had like a whole cut into it so I think I've heard something about that I know grunting is supposed to help you lift more weights. That makes sense. That's why they keep it out of that LA Fitness place. They get mad at you. Yeah. Is that the, no, Planet Fitness? Planet Fitness.

Yeah. I did see a study because I was looking at all these studies, increased strength performance. You know, when I was studying all this stuff, and I was like grunting. That's so crazy that if you lift weights there too loud, they sound an alarm and they kick you out. Like you tried to, the lunk alarm. The lunk alarm?

That's funny. It's safe for those people who want to be there. It's a nice safe environment. Yeah, I get it. But also, don't you want to be inspired by someone who's working out really hard like if I go to the gym and there's a guy there like whoa that guy's there and you watch that guy do some crazy routine as long as he's nice like what do you care if he's grunting but that's kind of society right we get the the padded walls in many places for people yeah I guess it intimidates people it scares them and then maybe people what is this jamie mouthpiece yeah that's it I don't know if it's proven yeah I don't know

if it's proven either but is this um official mouthpiece of the world's strongest man It's patented. Boosting muscular force and power. Huh. It's patented. So how does it work? Does it say how it works? No.

I was looking. I didn't see any... It says, I don't know. That's what it says. Thing is, if you believe it works, it probably works. Yeah, I don't know how much. Design to absorb clenching while guiding optimal tongue positioning during high stress exertion. Hmm.

I don't know. Mm-hmm. But being able to breathe out of you. knows is giant kids. So if you don't have that, if you've got that problem, get it fixed. What do you think about weed in fighting? Because I'm going to ask you a couple different questions. When I was living in L.A., I knew this neuroscientist, and we ran like a little fun study where I was a big stoner. So he had me stop smoking weed for two weeks, I think it was. He tested me, did all these brain tests with me. And then he tested me two weeks afterwards. And I

play football at box, right? So a lot of hits to the head. and he said that without weed he showed like it showed that I had a fair amount of like brain damage like my brain wasn't functionally it would when I smoked weed went back in there he said there was some kind of like

neuroprotective effect where like I was my brain was like registering as more healthy well it's part of the problem with CTE and any kind of brain issue in general part of the problem is inflammation right yeah isn't it that's one of the things of the

say, like, changing your gut bacteria has an effect on mood. You know, a lot of people that have, like, real gut problems. So you think weed decreases inflammation in the brain? Yeah. Well, weed certainly increases, decreases, rather inflammation. And that's why people use it for pain management. People with sore backs and, yeah, people going through chemotherapy. It also improves your appetite for people going through chemo because it's hard for them

to eat. But weed most certainly can help with pain management. with some kinds of pain. I know some people that have tried it for, like, debilitating pain, and it just doesn't do a damn thing. It just makes them almost more aware of it. But it's variable, man, because I was just... Jamie, who's the guy who killed bin Laden?

You know, that Navy SEAL guy who killed bin Laden? He's on... Yeah, he's on Instagram. Aneal or something? Right. But let's say his full name out of respect. I believe it's Robert. Well, how about look it up?

I don't believe. And find his Instagram because he has something to do with the cannabis business. And like this guy's just super badass tip of the spear, special forces operator, right? And there it is, Robert O'Neill. Go to his, see if you can find his Instagram. What does it say? That's him. It says set to pedal pot in New York City and said it helps get rid of the noise.

He's also an advocate for Ibegain. He's done Ibegain. I think multiple times. But go to his Instagram page, Jamie, if you could. I forget it. It's like Mr. Huya or something like that. But he said that it helps him go to sleep at night. Helps him relax and go to sleep at night.

Like there's scroll down. Go back to the grid and scroll down. There's him in an actual pot farm, like his own. own pot farm in there, like where they grow all the stuff that he sells. That makes sense because it has that disassociative effect, right? Right. And so it's easier maybe to get out of your head. But it flies in the face of this very public narrative, which is pot is for lazy people, pot is for losers, pot's going to rot your brain, pot's going to make you stink, pot's it's going to make you an idiot. Can't find it?

Yeah. I don't know where it is. I'll find it a second. Maybe that's the far right one with his hands outstretched like Jesus. That's the one him talking about Ibegain. And I looked at that. Mikuya on Instagram. What a guy like that is smoking weed. You got to throw it out the window.

All your preconceived... It's like everybody is biologically different. And for some people, alcohol just fucks. them up. Yeah. For some people, marijuana is a no-go. It's not good. They freak out. Also, when you're a dog, you know, like, we're dogs. We like to get after it. We like to work out. We like to do things. Like, I almost like when I was smoking weed every day to be the guy who could be super fit, to be training, boxing every day, and like to be achieving my business

and smoke weed every day. Like, I kind of took this, like, weird pride in it for some time as well. Like, bro, one of my favorite things to do was to smoke weed and hit the bag. Yeah. So meditative. Yeah, man. You also. Forum goes out the window a little bit. No, it doesn't. For me, it's the opposite. For me, I feel everything. Like, for me, I feel...

Maybe I'm just judging myself. The timing more when I'm hitting things. Like, it feels more coordinated. Like, when I'm throwing a kick, it's just, like, I feel the time to, like, accelerate, the time to get the hips into it. I'm more sensitive. It feels better.

Like, you tune into it. It makes my pool game 100% better. Really? Oh, 100%. It's like steroids for pool. But I also hear you on the podcast when you've done it before, like, you stay dialed in to a degree. Like maybe you don't have the same recall. That's right.

But that's the point that I was making earlier. It's different for everybody. It's not, like, I am different than other people. There's people that don't think the way I think. They don't have life experiences that I have. They don't have the ability to manage, like, the weirdness that comes with weed, which the paranoia I like. I genuinely like it. You kind of need, do you like that voice?

It's just kind of a question you a little bit. Don't get too big for your britches. Yes, I like it. I like being scared. I think it's good for you. Yes. As long as you use it wisely, like you take that weirdness, like, oh, maybe I should go give him a call and explain myself better. Maybe I should reach out.

Maybe I should do this. Maybe I should do that. Maybe I should like make it easier for these people. Maybe I should, you know, it makes me like very considerate. And I think it's a really potent tool for managing. your state of mind but that's just for me i don't know how your mind works i could would only be pretending right like we're all on a different mind journey too right yes if you're a person who was beaten by their parents and you were fucking mugged and then this happened to you and that happened

to you and you got fucked over at work and that and here you are there like that's very different than a person who's had a lot of success and been real lucky and got to a point and as a healthy mindset maybe it's more nostalgic you kind of smoke what you're thinking about you know it gives you time to separate a little bit from being in the grind versus well my point is like if you're all fucked up maybe pot's not for you yeah right if you're a real mess and you're like barely hanging on like to regular life maybe freaking yourself out with potent THC is not the way to go especially these days yeah there's what I'm getting that is like maybe as your journey progresses and you get healthy and you get more confident and strong and more successful

Maybe then. Maybe not even then. Maybe that's not your thing. You have to be honest about what's your thing. You have to find... The problem with things being illegal is you don't have that opportunity. And then you have people that had bad personal experiences with it

and they're like, pot makes you stink. Pot makes you a dummy. Maybe it does that for you. Okay, but it doesn't do that for me. For me, it makes me nicer to my friends. It makes me want to pet my dog. It makes me want to chill out. It's like, it makes me want to have fun with my friends.

It makes me want to laugh. It doesn't make me stank. Well, it probably makes me stink. But it doesn't make me any dumber, that's for sure. And it makes me more inquisitive. It makes me more interested in, for sure, subjects that I have no understanding of that are fascinating, like cosmology. There's nothing like getting high and watching a space documentary just to try to put it into perspective. Like what it is we're living in.

And what is the reality of the physical universe and its majesty that's above your head every day? Like that is, when you're high, you're like, how am I not paying attention to this? This is really a crazy thing that this is probably the most profound experience that a person could ever have in their lives is like being on a planet going through space

and we completely take it for granted. I think to a degree, it's good to have some kind of cadence where you have something that allows you to kind of step back from yourself. Yeah, I think it's good. be some mushrooms could be just meditative like breathing exercises yoga class yeah doing something or running that's what i think that's a lot of the high of running you know when people like

really exert themselves like you're just thinking about your breath you're just getting after it and you're five six miles in and when you're done you're like wow that runner's high is 100% real 100% real and that's how they're getting it and that's how they're separating themselves and I think a person who can regularly run on a regular basis

miles and miles miles that's a special person that's a very unusual person that's a person of will you know a person could just at any time you can just tag them let's go run and they can run like that's what Goggins

and Cam Haynes do to each other these fucking psychopaths Cam Haines like calls Gogg and say, hey, I'm in Vegas. Let's go running. And so Gagins calls out a spot check. Like, if you have a true friend, he spot checks you. Those motherfuckers ran a marathon in the streets of Las Vegas. They ran 26 miles. Just because. Yeah, at like a six-minute mile pace. Like, bananas. Just bananas. Like, out of nowhere. Like, you didn't know I was coming. I call you. Let's go. Let's go running. Let's see what's up. And two fucking complete total psychopaths running, running 26 miles in the Las Vegas heat.

Nuts. Yeah. So there's people like that out there that are just different. And their journey to be different is taking a long time to get to where they are right now. What are your beliefs around, because I have mine just from my experience, what are your beliefs on where they were before they were born? Do you think that this is, they have something in them because of a previous life? Oh, I don't know. That's a good question.

If previous lives were proven to be true, which right now they're not, it's like just an idea because you can't know. How could you know? But a lot of people and a lot of religions and a lot of different cultures have believed in reincarnation. There's actually, I think, what university? Maybe University of Virginia, there's a whole department that's studying people who've had these like near-death experiences that are going back and talking about previous lives. It's an interesting question, but there's no evidence, right? There's no data. Jamie, I don't know if you've seen this or her.

of it well i mean even if these people have stories unless they have stories that match up with historical facts yeah well i think it is oftentimes i think it's like you have like some kids who are just telling you about someone else's life and they should not know it but they like i have heard those stories yeah but i don't know if those are real because one of the problems is people bullshit and they you know they make things out to be a little bit more profound than they are so it makes for a better story and if you're a true believer, maybe even juice up the results a little bit. It's hard to know.

But I'm not opposed to the idea of a reincarnation. And I'm not opposed to the idea that some people are just special. Because it seems like that's real. It seems like there's certain people that just emerge and there's just something about them and it's not necessarily just the hard work. You know, it's not necessarily just the mindset.

There's something going on. I like the framework of it, of thinking about this infinite game. You know, because then someone, it's like, well, why am I going to do this work? It just sounds like a lot of work, all this self-introspection. It's like to understand that like you're playing this infinite game. If you deal with your shit now, then your life is going to be more peaceful and have more flow in the future.

If you don't deal with it, this is just, you know, you're just kicking the ball down the road. Yeah, well, that's true. At least it is true in this life. And I don't know. I feel it could be true in your next one as well. If you have a next one, I mean, that's the thing. It's like maybe it's not as simple as that. We're just assuming every time we wake up that we're in the same timeline.

But just the idea of going to sleep is really kooky. Yeah. It's really kooky, you know? You just, you decide to close your eyes every night, and you just disconnect from physical reality for hours at a time, and it's necessary. And we all just take it for granted. Where do we go? Oh, normal. I don't know where we go, but I go to a lot of zombies.

Do you really? Oh, yeah. I have a lot of zombie dreams. I have a lot of, last night I had a great zombie apocalypse dream. We need a dream interpreter in here. Yeah. Well, I don't think I have a whole lot of. confidence in the human race keeping it together you know at the very best I'm like 60 40 plus that

we're going to figure it out but that 40 percent in your lifetime or just yeah like maybe this week who fucking knows it's all dependent upon what kind of disaster takes place you know it's all dependent upon what kind of shit goes down and when you look historically shit has always gone down when people thought shit could never go down and that's us right now and that's why zombie movies work yeah and that's why they're making them way infiltrating into your brain yeah i started watching 28 years later jane oh yeah that'll do it i shut that bitch off i was about to go to bed it was like it was like it was like it was like eight o'clock at night i'm like let me watch this i'm i'm like no no no i figured it out 10 15 minutes when they uh i don't want to say what happens

i don't want to spoil you got to watch some barney after that but right away i was like okay this is one where i'm going to have to do hours before i go to sleep because them zombie dreams even watching like the house of dragon the game of thrones like some gruesome before bed. Yeah, like real hardcore, like, realistic violence is rough right before you go to sleep. I mean, just what I know about the mind, how a subconscious works. Like, it's just obvious every time I go to bed, I'm like, you shouldn't have done that. For sure, for sure.

Here's what's interesting, though. I can watch brutal fights and sleep like a baby. That seems weird. I wonder what. That's weird because that's real violence, right? The stuff that I'm seeing in the movies, I know is horseshit. Yeah. For some reason, it feels more controlled.

I don't know. I think I'm just used to it honestly I think it's like everything else I think you know there's a lot of doctors that they'll tell you if they're being honest with you that there comes a time when people die that it doesn't affect them the same anymore you know they're so used to people

dying especially like emergency room doctors dealing with like traumatic injuries and do you get accustomed to people dying I think it's also the idea of like evil though you know if you're watching something you're seeing evil take place versus like for me when I watch MMA I'm like I know these guys like

like I see I love these guys you know I've never met I've never worked with a guy who I don't love they all have great hearts and like I feel this genuine like goodness like I haven't met that many guys I don't know them all but like when I see it I don't see like evil there's a lot of really really really good guys and good women that fight in MMA and it's because of what we talked about before they've gone through something insanely difficult they're a very special person even people that you don't think are like great people like like Sean Strickland's super controversial. Sean Strickland is a fucking great guy. If you get him alone, you talk to him, he's a great guy. He's super smart, super disciplined, saved up a ton of money. You know, I was talking the other day about like he's got like four million bucks saved. Super smart, man. Yeah, so he could like retire at any moment, live a simple life and never work again, you know, and he's not, but he's outrageous, you know, he's outrageous, he says wild shit, but it's also, it's like, what do you expect from the way that guy grew up? He didn't grow up the way you He's got something

on a result of trauma. 100%. And I don't know. This is something that I think some fighters think about. It's like, if I get rid of my trauma,

am I going to be weaker? Right. Do I need this as an edge? I don't believe they do. That's been my experience. Yeah, I don't think they do either. But then again, some fighters,

they go and do ayahuasca and they come back and they're not. Kumbaya. Yeah. I don't want to fight anymore. Kumbaya. They say that happened to Deontae. Deontay Wilder went and did

Ayahuasca. And he came back. It's a little too peaceful. It's hard to say, though, Was that before or after the Tyson Fury fight? After. So that's the problem. It's like we might be drawing a fake correlation here

because those Tyson Fury fights were fucking brutal. Yeah. They were brutal. I feel like speaking of belief, right, he had an identity that was bulletproof, that was unbreakable. And I watch all the excuses. Yeah.

Down to no offense. Yeah, no offense. No offense, but his excuses were kind of crazy. Yeah, I think they're just a byproduct of like he believes he was unbeatable. So he had to come up with something to tell the story about how he lost. For himself, it wasn't, I don't even think it was malicious. I think he was trying to cope with what is this reality now. Yeah.

Well, what he was was a spectacular puncher who wasn't a real fluid and movement-based boxer, right? He wasn't a guy like Usik. Like, Usik is the most fluid movement-based boxer, the heavyweight division is seen since Muhammad Ali, right? So what he was was what Teddy Atlas calls the eraser. Like, all the mistakes he made, it was one. One right hand and they were erased. He's the most spectacular one-punched knockout artist in the history of sport, I think. I mean, his powers, and not a big guy, not in comparison.

He fought Tyson Fury the first time he told me he was 209. That's crazy. And flatlined him in like what, the 11th round? Oh, the 12th, right? Dropped him in the 12th, right? They're like a minute left or something. But that 12th round changed the course of the rematches because Tyson Fury realized that if he goes after Deonté and he gets him on his back foot, he doesn't fight as well.

And so then he figured it out. took it to him and then he took it to him in the second fight and took it to him in the third fight but yeah it's hard when you hear a guy like that make excuses but you understand you do more than anybody the destruction of the belief system and how difficult it is for fighters to manage that yeah but if you do the work to rebuild it afterwards you're stronger right but you have to do the work right and for a lot of guys again they don't totally know where to start like say if they have a camp and inside their camp they have a trainer they have the strength and conditioning guy they have uh you know, different coaches for different aspects of their, whatever they're doing, whether

it's a stretch coach or a boxing coach or, you know, whatever it is. But they don't have a mental guy, you know? They don't have someone who works with you and really make sure that your mind has the tools to manage itself out of there. And they don't know where to start. Like, where do you, if you're a guy in your training, you know, any contender, and then he gets knocked out and he comes back from that knockout and you're rebuilding them. But he's got all these confidence issues now like where do you even look like if you like I got to help this guy get back on track mentally get him back to where he was before you look he got caught it happens but he's still an amazing boxer and he's just got to recover from this and he can still get back on the horse and

still be a world champion but where do they even start you know if they don't know you where they start well I think they start by going through the process just feeling into it and it's always diving into where you don't want to go right it's okay what are the security is coming up now where the fear is coming up with the doubts usually we try to like stay in our head and escape that it's about going into it feeling feeling feeling into it and then seeing what comes up there and even like writing it down and just bring it into awareness going to you have awareness of it then you can actually do something then you can manage it yes yeah so this book how long it take you to write it uh like six months the success code

what was a year but the high performance playbook for eliminating men's mental barriers and scaling your career relationships and health. So did you think about like different approaches to like different kinds of occupations and different kinds of ways people are living their life and how it applies? So the first half of the book is my story. It's kind of like I'm trying to build rapport. So I tell people this is how I learned all this stuff. This is how it worked for me.

These are my client stories. So by the end of the first part, you either like, this guy's full of shit or I believe you. And then the playbook starts. And it is something that anyone can use. because it's simple stuff like it starts with like grade the different areas of your life from one to ten right and then we're looking at closing the gap in each area if you're like my career is at four i want it to be at a 10 okay let's get the low-hanging fruit of like what are some of the things you need to stop doing that vodka all right the vodka let's cut that out right those three glasses

in the morning yeah yeah and just going through that that auditing system of understanding like what's holding you back what need more conscientious about and then i start getting into the training for the mind later on. Do this system, this, writing this stuff down and having these numbers, is this something that you invented? Is this something you learned? Yeah, something I invented. Yeah.

Yeah. So you just, how did you come to that conclusion that that's how you should do it? Works. Yeah. Just works. Works for you. Works for clients. Yeah.

So when you first started doing it, was it sort of like, who, what's the best way to mentally manage this situation for this person? Just trying to solve their problems. That's all I'm trying to do. Just being really creative with my problem solving. And so over the years, I just picked up better tools. I've gotten better at practicing things to be able to solve problems better. I wanted to be full-time at this at 22 years old.

It wasn't going to happen. I just didn't have the experience and have enough tools. That's so young to want to help other people, you know? Most people at 22 are trying to help themselves. Yeah, it worked for me so much. And it transformed my life so much that I was like, well, this is what I'm supposed to do. I want to help other people with this. Interesting. So how did it transform your life? What were the big benefits?

Where did I begin? I would say it started just with coming back to the next season and playing football. I went from riding the bench to becoming a starter to being one of the best players on our team. So it helped me with football first. I was like, all right, cool. That helped. Then I started to get actually confidence from being able to help other people, which I didn't have before. I was never something because football I was like, okay, I wasn't great at it. But once I learned the skill, actually started to build. confidence and just learn to manage my own state, my anxiety, my performance anxiety, and just starting to feel confident. So for the first 10 years or so by knowing about this, probably the first more like nine years, I was mostly using more elementary meditation techniques, some hypnosis, some NLP. It wasn't until I'd say about seven years ago that I started going deep into the beliefs. And that transferred my life in a major way. I mean, one thing I did recently was I had hypothyroidism, and I was able to completely heal that naturally. How did you do that?

Change in all the underwriting beliefs, and then everything, right? Everything I do with any client, it's the same thing I'm going to do for me. It's holistic. So, of course, I went through a huge gut cleanse, right? Because a gut is everything. It's the foundation. So I did a lot of fasting, elimination diet, cutting out almost all foods except for a few boiled chicken, bowl carrots, coconut oil, started slowly noticing how I felt as a

started to increase the portion and start to bring other foods in. I did red light therapy. There's some good red light therapy research out there for the thyroid. If you just put it on, there's a study that showed that people were able to cut their medication half just by using the infrared light therapy. Yeah. It's good for a ton of things. It's great for the gut.

So I just started synchronicity, right? I met this lady on the beach in Miami Beach who studies this stuff, red light therapy specifically for the gut. And I was like, well, what about the thyroid? And she's like, yeah, of course it'll help. It's light. light heals everything so I just started researching it so it was all I did a lot of things I cut out caffeine this year that was a big thing that I don't think caffeine creates hypothyroidism

but for me when I turned on that gene right epigenetics I turned on the gene for I didn't have to have this but like my mom has my brother has it and so I had the gene and I put it on through stress through excessive caffeine and just a very stressful life in my mid 20s so the way he turned off was turn off the things are associated with that stress response so pulling out the caffeine, just put me more on the parasympathetic nervous system, allowed me to relax more. And then, yeah, all this stuff. And just noticing the fears come up when I pull away the things I like, right, the comfort of the food, the comfort of the caffeine, just all my things that I like, all the comfort and just seeing

with the fears that came out through that and just recoding it, recoding it. And this is going to sound very woo-woo, but I was taking the medication because, you know, if you ask a doctor, they tell you you have to take this medication for the rest of your life. Right. And they get mad that you even ask about what an alternative of this. Like, I've had doctors be like, be grateful. You just have to take a pill. Like, get out of here.

But there was actually the experience I had two years ago where a doctor wouldn't give me my medication, even though my blood didn't change. He said, oh, you're going to have to come back in here every three months. I want to monitor it. He tried to put me on a subscription plan to pay more money just to keep getting it. And it was like flip something to me. I was like, I'm not doing this anymore. Wow. I'm going to find a way to get off this medication.

It just... This is something that RFK Jr. is trying to stop. It's financial incentives. The gatekeeper of this medication. Yeah, the financial incentives to prescribe things and then gatekeeping whether or not you can get useful medication. It's kind of crazy. Yeah. But yeah.

So I just had, I did all these things very holistically, right? Mm-hmm. Doing sodom, doing all these things. And then just feeling into my body one day, it was just like, intuitive. Christian just told me, it was like, hey, you're done. You don't need it anymore. Wow. And so what I did, of course, I asked chat GPT. I was like, I can't just stop taking it. And what a chat GPT say? It said take one day on, one day off. I did that. By the third day of taking it again, my body rejected it. I felt terrible. I felt like a depletion of

energy. It's just three days? The third day of not taking it. Really? Third day of taking it. Wow. So I took it. I didn't take it. And the day that I took it again, my body rejected it. And I was like, I get it. I'm done. And I haven't touched since. That's crazy. I think there's a lot of things like that. Well, I wonder if that study that shows that visualization increases physical strength. Like, I really wonder if there's, if you have the ability to accentuate healing, if you just concentrate, like, if you get an injury and the injury is going to heal, but if concentrating on that injury helps it heal more. Oh.

But how many people actually do that, right? How many people actually, like, really visualize something? Well, even just the placebo effect of thinking you got it. So there's a study, I think it's done on ACL surgeries. It could be meniscus. It was one of these knee surgeries where they took two groups. They give one group, the surgery, the other group. They just cut their knee open and then sewed it right back up.

Same results over whatever the period of time was. Wait a minute. It can't be ACL surgery because ACL is a stabilizing ligament. It was one of these knee surgeries. Yeah. And they had the same results. That doesn't make sense. That seems a little wacky, because ACLs are, that's a, that's the ligament in the center that keeps it from moving side to side up and down. Maybe it's meniscus.

Maybe. That makes more sense. Miniscus surgeries are rough because when they take it out, then you have this hole there. You have like a gap missing, depending on how much you take out. Some guys get a bunch of their meniscus taken out. Guys even get like artificial meniscus put in or donor meniscus. You know? But, I mean, was that book?

I think visualization is a factor. And belief. Yeah. You're not going to regrow your ACL, though, with your brain. No. If it's not connected, get that shit fixed. But, because I know a lot of guys who didn't, and then eventually they did. I know a lot of guys who got their ACL blown out and they just tried to rehab it, but it kept grinding.

So they're always, it's always slipping out. They're always tearing their meniscus more. And it's like, fuck, dude, just get it fixed. Get it fixed. Six months later, you'll be back on the maths. Get your ACL fixed. Yeah. Get your ACL fixed.

Yeah, no, it's wild, though. I mean, if you start going down this rabbit hole of seeing, like, how many placebo studies have been done, that's why it's so hard to find drugs that actually work. Okay. What is this is weird? I think that's sort of saying. Okay. What does it say?

180 patients, osteoarthritis, knee surgery. We're randomly assigned to receive arthroscopic. Debridement? Debridement. Arthoroscopic, lavage or placebo surgery. Patients in a placebo group receive skin incisions and underwent a similar debridement. without insertion of the arthroscope, patients and assessors of the outcome

were blinded to the treatment group. Assignment, outcomes were assessed at multiple points over a 24-month period with the use of five self-reported scores, three on scales for pain and two on scales for function, and one objective test of walking and stair climbing, a total of 165 patients completed the trial.

Results, at no point did either of the intervention groups report less pain or better function then the placebo group. Interesting. But this is just like, I always wonder, like, how bad was their injury? What are we talking about?

How many people were there? How many people were in this group? 165 patients? Conclusions in this controlled trial involving patients with osteoarthritis of the knee, the outcomes after arthroscopic lavage or arthroscopic debridement

were no better than those after a placebo procedure. That's kind of nuts, man. And I think, like, it's weird how we talk about the placebo that way. It's kind of, like, diminishing it. It's like, yeah, look, it didn't work. But that's not what happened. The people believe they got the surgery.

Right. That's the fucked up part about placebo effects. It's measurable. Like, the benefits are measurable. Like, those people did heal. They did have less pain. Yeah, but the question is, like, would they have healed anyway without it? I don't know.

Or is it because they believe that they were healed, that it relaxed them? and then they were thinking, okay, it's healing now. I got the surgery. It's on the right track. It's getting better now. And maybe if they had that mindset, if they could figure out a way to make that mindset without the surgery, they could have just do it.

Yeah, belief. Belief. All right, dude. The success code, did you have an audible or an audio version of this? It's on Spotify's Audible. Did you read it? I did read it. Nice.

It's me. I love when authors. I get to hear all my dirty stories. Read their own stuff. And a bunch of people sing your praises in the back of the book and uh you can look up my name because i rebranded it and i haven't changed the name on spotify so just look at brandy ups and you'll find the book what do you mean you rebranded the book yeah how it's it called on spotify program to fail okay we'll let people know yeah so they could

program to fail on audible success code on everything all right beautiful thanks brother it was fun thank you brother all right bye everybody I'm going to be able to be.