The Mindset Mentor - Take Control of Your Life w/ Tucker Max

Episode Date: October 12, 2016

Episode 179 -  Tucker Max is a 3x NY Times best selling author. In this episode we dive deep into psychology and how he was able to change his life and his happiness by diving into his deep psychological issues first. Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Hey, real quick, before we start today, are you struggling with achieving your goals or have you ever set a goal or New Year's resolution and then not achieved it? Well, I have a free ebook for you called Hack Your Goals, The Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving Success that you can download like thousands and thousands of people already have. Just go to mwfmotivation.com and download it there. Okay, I'll get you to the podcast right now. Welcome to the MWF Motivation Podcast, one of the top-rated motivational podcasts in the world. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I come out with a short, to the point, no BS podcast designed to transform you from who you are today into who you want to be. There's no

fluff here, just life-changing content. My name is Rob Dial, and the podcast starts now. Welcome to today's episode with Tucker Max. I am excited to bring this to you. Before we dive in, I will tell you there is quite a bit of cussing in it. So if you have children around, you might want to listen to this episode at another time. Tucker Max is a three-time number one New York Times bestselling author. He is one of only three people in the world to have three nonfiction books in the New York Times bestsellers in the exact same time. So all three of them at the same time we're in it. And originally, I wasn't going

to have Tucker on because I felt that he didn't fit with the audience. If you know his stuff, it's very crude. It's very funny, but it didn't make sense with what we have. But I started to realize and heard through other things and friends of mine, mutual friends we have, that he's dove into his psychological issues and really has been into psychology and went to a psychoanalyst four times a week for four years to dive into some of the problems that he had. And it's a great conversation. This is half of the conversation that we have together of just great psychological stuff, what makes him happy, what's turned him into the person

that he is now. He's extremely successful and extremely open about all of his psychological barriers that he's had to conquer and everything that he's gone through as well. So it's an amazing, amazing episode. I'm so excited to bring this first half to you. Before we dive in, if you are interested in group coaching or one-on-one coaching, once again, send me an email, rob at mwfmotivation.com. And if you want to join in on some of our Mindset Mastery webinars, go to mwfmotivation.com slash webinar. But without further ado, I am so excited to bring you this episode, this interview with Tucker Max. Welcome everybody to today's episode. I'm excited to have Tucker Max on today. And before

we dive into it, I'll tell you how this interesting interview got situated. So Tucker, just so you know, I had your guy, I think his name's Adrian, reach out to me like five or six times. And I never emailed him back because I was like, I don't... I've read Tucker's book. It was one of the... Honestly, the funniest book I've ever read in my entire life. I was on the train in 2012 when I was backpacking Europe. And I remember literally laughing out loud so much that I thought people were going to think that I was crazy by myself. And that's what I knew of you.

And I was like, he does not fit my audience in any sort of way. There's no possible way. And then your names kept coming up. And we kind of have a lot of people that overlap. You were at a mastermind that I was at. And then also, you know, Jeff Woods. I went and had a bit with Jeff Woods not too long ago. And he's like, yeah, I'm going over to Tucker's tomorrow. And then a couple days later, I talked to him and he's like, Tucker changed basically the entire company through one brainstorming session.

And I was actually out to dinner with Jeff and with Nathan Latka. And I was like, yeah, they've reached out to me. I'm not sure if he fits. I'd rather go into some of the psychological stuff. And they're like, no, no, no. You have to get him on and you have to start listening to his stuff. So I'm excited because you've become very open with psychology and digging into your own and psychoanalysts and stuff like that. So I'm actually really excited to dive into it, which is a complete 180 from it first. I was like, I'm not emailing this guy back, but I appreciate you being on and having time now that we got linked up, even though we have had some technical difficulties today. Yeah, dude. No, I'm excited to be here, man. So let me dive into this. So first off, you're known for writing something that you didn't even,

I guess, mean to be a part of, but you started something called Fratire, which is a type of book. And as I was reading it, I remember reading it and going, man, there's a lot of the brashness in the, you knowashness in the asshole side of you. I connected with... I wasn't as hardcore as you when I was in my 20s. But I had that side of me because of the fact that I was masking a lot of the problems that I really had with being younger and all of those things. How did you transition from that whole thing into now? It seems like you've gone through a lot of psychoanalysts, but then you've also calmed down. You're not hooking up with a bunch of chicks anymore. You're married. You have a kid. So what's that transition

been like for you? I'm curious. That's a big question, dude. Well, I'll tell you, the best word to describe it is gradual. It's been a gradual transition. And I know for a lot of people who have things to do in their life, it's like one minute it was like, oh, this is the guy that has these funny books about drinking and hooking up. And it feels like the next minute he's like, he's married with kids now. But in real life, in real time, it was a very gradual, slow transition that took a lot of work, man. It just, because that's the thing is that people can absolutely change and they do. It just, change doesn't happen overnight. Change happens slowly and deliberately usually, and that just takes time, man. I've noticed, so when I was doing my research to get some

information on this, I actually could tell a huge difference in the past four years just of you, because I went back and read a Forbes article that was, it seemed like it was the start of your transition about four years ago or something like that. And then I listened to a couple episodes, you were on Lewis Howell's podcast two years ago. And then I listened to Rich Roll's podcast. So it was like, which is not too long ago. So it was four years to two years in one year. And I noticed that it was, there was a, you were slowly transitioning each time that I was listening to you and to, I guess what's the easiest way to say, you sound more like a grown-up and that you've kind of lost the boy side of you. Yeah. Do you feel that's pretty accurate?

Like it was the past four or five years you've gone through this huge transition? Yeah. I mean, I would say maturity is the word I would use, but you're exactly, you're, yeah, you're exactly right. You know? Um, and actually in a weird way, I would say in some ways I'm more boyish just like having a kid has actually reconnected me with like the, the little boy in me, you know? Cause like, you know, I got a two year old son. He doesn't give a crap that I, you know, I might be famous or sold books or he doesn't give a flying crap about any of that. What he cares about are like, you know, like, uh, he cares. So he's super into Halloween. So he cares about bones and ghosts and pumpkins. Now that's his thing. And it's like,

you forget what it's like to do that. It's actually really fun. But then on the other end, it's, uh, so so so like in some ways i'm very much reconnected with that that that childish that sort of boyishness but then you as a parent you always have that other side that deep maturity because you have the life of another human in your hands yeah and like so like i have a ton of fun with him but i'm always thinking all right you know obviously on a fundamental level about safety and then just about helping him understand and explore the world uh and what's missing is what i used to be a hundred percent which is the focus kind of on myself yeah you know or the the deep exclusive focus on myself. Like now it's like deeply focused in the moment

and the experience. And then the background is responsibility and almost nowhere in between is like, well, what about me? It's about me. It's about me, which used to be my career. Right. Wow. That's, that's actually super interesting because when I was reading your story and looking through all of these things, I related a ton to the way you grew up where, and you can give me a little bit more into it, but I guess what it was, was your father was absent and your mom was pretty absent for you as well, but was also an alcoholic. And you were pretty much alone all the time from what I, you know, most of the time you were alone besides with friends and stuff like that. You kind of had to fend for yourself from the beginning. Is that true?

Yeah. So I don't want to over-dramatize this. It's not like – listen, my parents were white. My mom was very middle class. My dad was more upper middle class to wealthy. And so I had food. I had shelter. I don't want to make it seem like I was some abandoned child.

I had this sort of a glass that there isn't really a good narrative for, you know, like if someone grows up genuinely abused or neglected, people I think can understand that. But if someone grows up in a relatively nice house with parents who don't hit them or put anything up their butt or anything terrible like that you're like well how could that be abuse right and it's like it neglect is a is a weird and especially white middle class upper middle class neglect is a very weird thing and so it's like you grow up with a lot of these sort of holes in you and these little traumas but like a lot of times you feel almost like guilty because you're like well how can i complain like look at these patients they don't have food you know or look at like this kid that grew up in some awful neighborhood

and his dad beat the shit out of him every day you know like my life wasn't like that but like um beat the shit out of them every day you know like my life wasn't like that but like um it it's like i think i had this sort of this sort of white suburban neglect that that doesn't seem bad but then like you kind of wake up one day and you're like wait a minute why is my life so fucked up right you know that kind of neglect yeah that's that's actually i've never heard it put that way but i think it's perfect because the way I can relate is is my parents got divorced when I was nine. My father was an alcoholic. My father passed away when I was 15 from being an alcoholic. And then my mom had to work three jobs just to keep us afloat. My sister was six years older than me. So by the time all this happened, she was in high school.

She didn't want to hang out with her little brother. So mine was the same way. It was like we struggled a lot, but it wasn't to the point. I feel the same way. I'm like, I talk about it and people can listen to it like, man, that does actually sound really bad. But then there's a part of me that's saying, yeah, but people have it way worse. I don't want to complain about this, like, as you put it, the middle-class trauma. But what you're saying though, is what you got from it is exactly what I got from it though exactly what i got from it though of always being alone in a sense is just kind of the way that it worked out was you you

got older and you had to you you basically were not a narcissist but in a sense you had to always look out for yourself you've always kind of been alone so it was hard to transition into being into relationship and i remember listening to one of the episodes, you say that, you know, when you first started dating your now wife, there was just times where she'd be like, what the fuck are you doing? And you just wouldn't even notice that you were being completely selfish in the moment. And I've had that with relationships as well. So what was the... It's interesting that you just put it the way that you did. What was the transition? Was it getting into the relationship with your wife or was it your son that completely solidified of like hey i'm not i'm not just into myself anymore um you know the real answer is that it

was neither they did not start that work okay i started that work that started long before them in fact it has to like i know our culture there's kind of a narrative, and I think it's very insidious, that the rogue, scoundrel male is not evil, but just a little bit naughty, and it takes the love of a strong woman to change him. That's fucking bullshit people don't change for other people people change because the you want to know like on a deep psychological level what people change and it's going to sound it's going to probably make most of your listeners feel defensive because i know it did for me for a lot of years yeah people only change when the pain of their current existence is worse than the pain of change.

So true. And, dude, like, as much as I would love to tell you, oh, I'm so fucking strong and I just fucking decided I was going to change and blah, blah, blah. That's not what fucking happened, man. Like, basically, I reached, I mean, I reached the pinnacle of my profession. Like, there was a time from, whatever, about 07 to 2012, about a five-year period where a week did not go by that I did not have at least one book on the New York Times bestseller list, if not three at one time. Like, as a writer, there's nowhere. The only place above me is, like, J.K. james patterson that's it like there's pretty much no one else right and not only that man but it's not like i was some old fuddy-duddy like i did it in my fucking late 20s and early 30s so like my dick

still worked and i was like i had a lot of energy and so dude I went fucking nuts dude I like it was like winning the young guy lottery right you know I won it I had everything you could ever imagine I when I started writing I had an image of my mind in my mind of what success looked like and I at least 10x that image in my mind if not more and then for a while, man, I would be lying if I said that wasn't a lot of fun because it was, it was a lot of fun, man. And, um, but then after a while, things that used to be fun, aren't fun anymore. And then they become kind of depressing. And then it's like, I mean, I, I was basically sitting there the way I described it to my analyst. And this is not a literal description. It's more like a metaphor, like a subjective feeling.

I felt like at the, not at the very top, but basically right at the top, I almost felt like Scrooge McDuck sitting on a pile of gold and like kind of still miserable. You know, I was way happier than when I used to be poor. Like it was much better. So, so like my, my miserable, my level of misery had gone way up, but it was not happiness. It was not contentment. I, I was not living the life I wanted. And it's like, look at this.

I've made all this money and i have all this wealth and success and fame and power and influence it cannot be i could why did i i didn't do it to feel this way right you know like this can't be why i did this right and that was when it was it wasn't a one-time thing it was kind of like a slow realization and that was when i realized you know what like actually then i even tried to fix all my exterior and in fact the piece that you wrote read about in forbes i was still kind of coming in that phase i could tell yeah where i was like okay like getting it i got into and i was already in decent shape but i got into stupidly good shape you know i'm walking around at 35 years old with like eight% body fat and like training with

professional MMA fighters and all this stuff. And like, that's great. I mean, it's healthy. There's nothing wrong with that. But it was definitely like I wanted to fix my I wanted to find a way to fix my issue without confronting my issue. And I did. And I fixed everything in my life.

And then I got to the point where it's like, literally, there's no way for me to make anything in my life better. Like it's so, it's so perfect. And I'm still, I'm not miserable anymore, but I'm not really very happy. And, and so at that point, man, like I kind of had to just turn the gaze inward. You know, if everything on the exterior is right and you're still not where you want to be, the only place to look is yourself and look inward. And so I did. And that's really not only when I started psychoanalysis, but I got really serious about it. And I really kind of dove in and, um, faced the things inside of me that I did not want to face for a long time, because that's painful shit. Does that make sense?

A hundred percent. You're literally preaching the stuff that I say all the time for where everyone... I'll give you an example. Last night I had dinner. I took out to... This guy's in Texas. I'm not going to name him, but he's a billionaire, lives in Texas. And I took him out to dinner last night. And we were talking about success and the accumulation of money and all of these things. And what he said is the exact same thing you said in a different way. But also what I say on the podcast all the time is that people go in search of success and try to make the outside world as perfect as they can. You try to make your body as perfect as you can.

You had accumulated tons of money. And then they think that by fixing all of the, or by conquering, quote unquote, the outside world, that they're going to somehow fix all of the problems on the inside. And it seems like for everybody, even with him, he was talking about people. He's talking about ridiculous, where he's talking about a dinner. He's like, I was at dinner with that guy. He owns Virgin. I can't remember his name. And I'm like, Richard Branson? He's like, yeah, we were at a dinner with a bunch of billionaires that were around. And it's crazy that some people can be at what others see as the pinnacle of success, but they're the most miserable people you've ever met. Oh, yeah.

And it's interesting because it seems like those people... It's actually a question that I had for you is, I noticed that a lot of people that are extremely successful, not all of them, but a lot of them come from terrible backgrounds. It's actually why they're successful. Right. And so my question was, why do you think that it is that people that are so successful or can have such terrible backgrounds end up going... Do you think that it is that people that are so successful or can have such terrible backgrounds end up going do you think it's because of fact they're trying to fix their internal world by conquering the external dude exactly it go through history it's not just

recently man go through history i want you to name a conqueror who did not have a really shitty childhood. Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Alexander the Great. Like, tell me about their relationship with their father, and I'll tell you exactly how and why they became the conqueror they became. Dude, I'm not talking about middle, like, normal success. I'm not talking about someone who does, you become a doctor or like a, uh, you know, some sort of professional or whatever. I'm talking about people who strive for a huge outsized success, uh, like billionaire type success, conquer type success, celebrity type success.

Everyone who does that intentionally is trying to fill a hole in their soul created by some kind of trauma every single time without exception. And I don't mean that judgmentally because God knows I fall directly into that. Like I'm a shiny example of that, man. Uh, I mean the, every single one is without exception. And the ones who figure that out and do the work to solve their issues can confront their issues at least, can then be kind of happy. But most people don't, man, because, dude, I'll tell you, man, there's almost nothing more poisonous to actual self actual self healing and actual work than success. Almost nothing. Because what success does is it convinces you, you are amazing. You are invulnerable. Your ideas and opinions and, and, and, uh, uh, uh, frameworks are the best, and no one can tell you anything. And, dude, possibly the most painful moment or period of my life was after there was a movie made about my life.

And based on my first book, and I was heavily involved in it, and it did not do very well. And as compared to my expectations for it, it failed. And, uh, um, that was one of the most painful things that ever happened to me. And, but I'm at the end of the day, I'm so happy it did because had that, if that thing had succeeded, I would have been frozen in time psychologically at that period. And no one would have ever been able to tell me again for the rest of my life, anything. Whereas, because that failed, it forced me to really take a hard fucking look at who I was, and the way I thought. And that had happened in 2009. It happened in 2009. That really led to, it's the only reason I'm married to an amazing woman and I have an incredible family. And I'm like at a point in my life internal emotional stability and, and contentment. And it started with that. Um, because without that, I never would have, who could have told me anything, you know, like I, I would have been the guy who went from nothing to turning drinking stories into not just a huge success of books, but success of movies too. You know, you can't tell that guy anything.

It takes a superhuman almost to not just – a lot of people can learn from failure. Man, I don't know a lot of people who can learn from success, and I definitely was not one. That's really good. I love that. And do you think that a lot of the successful people because when you have trauma as a kid uh being alone all the time whatever it is being touched as a kid being you know yelled at whatever it is um like you said there's holes that you're trying to fill like for instance you maybe filled it with alcohol and sex and drugs when you were younger um i know when i was when i was real young i it was basketball like i was obsessed that was the only thing that i did with my time and then it turned into work.

Do you feel like you went for that reason? That was filling the holes? Not the alcohol. Dude, I honestly didn't drink that much. I know it seems ridiculous to say that, but I know what alcoholics look like, and I just objectively was not one. It just wasn't. That wasn't my issue. I don't mean that to put down alcoholics. There's, there's all addiction is a response to pain. It's a coping mechanism for emotional pain. And alcohol just didn't happen to be my addiction.

In fact, I would say if anything, my addiction was attention. Like that's why not even, not even sex so much, but attention. So the books didn't help with that at all when you got a ton of attention then, huh? It's even worse. Well, think about, man, a lot of people drink and hook up and party and have fun. How many of those people intentionally broadcast that and intentionally try to become famous for that? That's not that now it's actually big, but when I was doing that, no one was doing that. That was like super, super taboo. I mean, I fuck it. There's a reason the New York times credited me with starting a literary genre. It's not because I'm some amazing

writer is because I'm the first person to write about a certain subject that then became huge, you know, and most of the people who are famous for an hour women, you know, uh, um, uh, Chelsea Handler or, uh, Amy Schumer, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But like, no one was doing that before me because there was a lot of social shame around that. There was a lot of whatever, but, uh, I didn't give a shit. I cared way more about attention than, um, than anything else. And if you want to talk about filling a hole, I'll tell you exactly what hole it filled in my soul. Uh, for, for me, uh, being neglected by my parents was obviously if for any, anyone being neglected by your primary caregivers is going to be very stressful and very traumatic and so the way i dealt with that was i acted out a lot in school i got a lot of attention in schools a lot of times we're doing good things not necessarily bad

a lot of those kids become like the class clowns or or act out i actually i did some of that but i actually went the other way around. I got a lot of attention by being really fucking good at school. Um, and, and school was so easy for me, man. Cause I, I just looked at it as I never listened to like, Oh, here's the rules. Uh, cause I learned early on that adults don't actually follow the rules and pay attention to the rules because my parents, you know, always let me down. So I just assumed all adults were like that. And it turns out I was right. And that most of them, like the system was not what it appeared. Turns out I was right. I got lucky in that regard. So that was actually a good part of sort of their abuse is that I learned early on kind of how the

world worked. And so I hacked school and I got a lot of attention for being really good at school, not necessarily because I was good at their system. I was good at breaking the system. for being really good at school, not necessarily because I was good at their system. I was good at breaking the system. And then later on, um, uh, like that kind of became the thing where I'm like, all right, I can get the attention I didn't get from my parents. I can get, uh, through writing. And so that's, that's why I intentionally pursued celebrity is it was both a way to fill the hole and a way to show them that I was deserving of that attention. You know, like it was both a way to fill the hole and a way to show them that I was deserving of that attention You know like it did both things and in fact, I'll tell you dude I spent a lot of time in Hollywood and I know a lot of famous people

Almost without exception every single person who intentionally goes after that sort of fame and celebrity is doing something very similar. That's just the way that, and I'm talking about intentional celebrity. I'm not talking about like Sully Sullenberger who crash landed his plane in the Hudson and he was kind of thrust on him. The people who go out for it and do the work to get it, not necessarily success, but fame. to get it, not necessarily success, but fame. They are filling the hole that comes from neglect. And it's about showing people that they're worthy of love, especially their primary caregivers. That's so interesting on so many levels, because as you're talking, I'm going,

holy crap, that's probably what I did when I was such a brash asshole when I was number, you know, number one in a company and stand up and say stupid stuff and act a certain way. But then also thinking about your book, where there's certain points where I remember most of your book was kind of like, like attention. It was, hey, look at me. Because like, for instance, the thing I think about is, is the story of when you guys were camping out, I think it was at Duke or whatever it was. And you had a megaphone and the whole time I'm reading, I'm like, this guy's such a dick. Like this is the stuff that you were saying. But in reality, it was you saying, Hey, look at me more than anything else, because you were just craving the attention that you didn't get when you were a child. Yeah, dude. I mean, like it's a little bit more complicated, but if you want

to boil it down to that, that that's, that is directionally correct. That is exactly right. I'm interested. Did you figure that out on your own or was there a certain point where your psychoanalyst was like, hey, I think what it is is you're trying to get attention. And was it like a breakthrough for you where you're like, holy crap, she turned the spotlight on to my problem? a breakthrough for you where you're like, holy crap, she turned the spotlight on my problem. That's not the way psychoanalysis works. Because here's the thing. The way a brain works is your brain is designed, designed by evolution to fool itself. And there's tons of books about this. There's amazing studies for the last decade, decades of studies that show how like your brain is designed to fool itself. And the conscious part of your mind is actually a very small part. And the subconscious and unconscious is substantially bigger.

And generally speaking, your brain is designed to fool itself for two reasons. They both make a lot of evolutionary sense. One is because reality is not actually discernible. So like we have to construct a reality in our head i mean there kind of is obviously there's an external objective outside reality but we only understand uh a small portion of it great example if you look at you can google like visible light spectrum and you'll see a chart that were the, the, the, all the inner right, exactly. So like less than 1% of the, of the light spectrum is visible to humans. Right. And so, you know, like radio waves, TV waves, wifi, you don't see any of that shit, right?

All you see is visible light. Uh, so just one example, there's a million more. Um, so our brain essentially has to construct an artificial reality for us based on sort of the sort of feedback it gets. And so fooling ourselves is a way of short-cutting too much information to make it usable and actionable for us so we can stay alive and reproduce. To condense the hundreds of years of thought into a few sentences. And then the other reason why our brain fools ourselves is because emotional pain, our bodies, we make decisions on emotions.

And we know this because if the emotional centers in your brain are damaged, then people cannot make decisions. They can still think rationally. They can think of both sides of a decision, but they cannot make a they can still think rationally they can think of both sides of a decision but they cannot make a decision it's the craziest thing you can uh like you can google this and see videos of people that are like talking about like what do you want to watch on tv and they'll just go on endlessly about what's on tv and the the the pros and cons but they can't put a fucking channel on right Right. It's so we know like that

emotions are how decisions are made. And so your brain, um, essentially doesn't let you deeply understand a lot of things about yourself because it's not conducive to survival. Right. And so, so anyways, the reason that that all matters is because when someone tells you the truth before you understand it and and experience it yourself it is almost never ever ever going to convince you and if you want to see great proof of this just go look at anyone talking about politics or religion like like you don't ever convince anyone of anything with facts and logic. I mean, dude, you're in marketing. You understand that in sales.

You understand that facts and logic are the veneer that people put on top of their decisions to convince themselves that they're not irrational, emotional creatures. But that's what they are. And so anyway, so the way psychoanalysis works is they don't really tell you what they think very often. For the most part, they just get you talking and ask you questions, and they direct you in such a way by their questions to work these things out on your own and come to these conclusions on your own. It's exactly the way meditation works. Like real, not bullshit mindfulness that people try and hack. I'm talking about real Buddhist meditation. You're sitting there, you're focusing on your breath,

and all these unconscious things come up. And then meditation is essentially the art of sitting with these things, these fears, anxieties, all these things that come up, and recognizing them, giving their space, and not judging them, not arguing with them, not trying to push them away. Psychoanalysis does the same thing, except instead of being quiet with yourself, you're talking them out with someone else. Do you get it? A hundred percent. No, I read a book not too long ago about – I can't remember what it's called. It's something on coaching, and they were talking about how to be a good coach, you can't really tell somebody anything. You have to ask them the questions to make them figure it out because that's the only real way that your brain is going to hardwire the exact thing that they need to do. Where if I were

to go tell them, hey, this is what you should do, they probably won't do it. But if they start making the connections in their brain, their brain will, they'll go, oh, this is it. This is exactly what I have to do. And they're more likely to take their own advice that their brain makes a connection of versus just somebody telling them what to do. Yeah. But no, dude, it's called question thinking. And I think going forward, people are realizing there's no other way. There's actually great studies about this. If you want to ever convince someone, especially in a really heated ish topic, like politics or religion, don't actually try and convince them. Just ask them to explain exactly

why they think what they think. Dude, you want to see someone get really angry? Do that with a religious person. Just ask them, just, no, seriously, just ask them totally sincerely without judgment, ask, you know, explain, tell me why you believe in Catholicism, whatever, right? And then they'll have answers. they'll have about four answers maybe maybe five but if you keep asking well why do you believe that well why do you believe that what you're going to get to is uh them getting deeply angry because they're going to have to confront the fact that they're they believe in any religion because of faith because of belief without proof right and they will either they'll have like some crazy epiphany or they'll want to fight you.

No. Those are the two things that normally happen. I know exactly what you mean. I know exactly what you mean. Because they always the last thing that people always go to is, well, you just have to have faith. And then some people that's not logical for them to just work off of faith. Dude, faith is literally belief without proof. That is exactly what it means. Belief

without proof. So, so that, that's why it creates such a cognitive dissonance for people is you keep asking them why they believe it. They have to admit, I believe something without proof, which for most people in the West is like absolutely untenable. They can't, they can't deal with it. You know, tell me, tell me about this because I've gotten really – in the past year and a half, I've gotten really big into meditation. And everybody says the same thing whenever I – like for instance, I started – I don't know if you've heard about sensory deprivation tanks. Have you ever done those yet? Yes. Yeah.

You know how those started, don't you? No. I have no idea. They started as a torture device. Because people can't be alone with it. That's what everyone says. They started as a torture device. Because people can't be alone with it. That's what everyone says. They're like, wait, so how long are you in there?

Like 10 or 15 minutes? I'm like, no, an hour, an hour and a half. And everyone's like, nope, no way. I could never do that. There's no way I'd have to get up and move around. So I could definitely see that being a form of torture for pretty much anybody that's not on a route of trying to figure themselves out. That's insane. So, well, tell me this, because from your writing for me and you in person, you seem like your thoughts are bouncing all over the place.

And I hear from everybody where they're like, I'm too ADD to meditate. It's impossible. How long have you been doing it? And then what's the process been for you? Was it hard at first? Did it get easier? I know that you use it with your analyzing as well. What's the way that you use it you know why people say that the no one's too 80 to meditate you know why people can't exactly because i'll tell you man uh i have you would have a hard

time finding a therapeutic modality that i have not tested they i mean i'm sure you could but uh at least not a mainstream one and when i mean, all types of talk therapy, all types of everything, man. And meditation, this is going to sound crazy. Meditation is the hardest. Because I'll tell you why. If you do it right, you cannot run when you are meditating. There is nowhere to hide. That's why those motherfuckers tell you they can't meditate.

ADD, I got to get up. That's a rationalization because they are deathly afraid of what's going to happen if they stop for a second and have to deal with their thoughts. Well, because most people are just spending their day to day and filling it with... They make up little bullshit problems that really don't mean anything in order to fill their mind, their conscious mind with this one thought so they don't have to dive a level deeper and start scaring themselves with what the real problem is. They don't know. They're avoiding because the problem's there, man. Like, I always think of your problems like your shadow. You can run wherever you want, but that motherfucker is

always going to be with you. You know, like, actually, like, it was so funny, man, I read this interview with Val Kilmer, of all people, and he had this great quote. He said, you know, it doesn't matter where you go, what you do, your parents are always going to be there in the room with you dead or alive. And I read that maybe like a decade ago. And I was like, what the fuck is this fucking actor actually like gonna have to change my life? But meditation is the same way. It's even deeper. Your thoughts and your emotions and your feelings are always there.

And you have two options. You can engage in a lot of behaviors to avoid them. And most of those tend to be at, destructive and at best counterproductive. Um, some people can turn the avoidance behaviors into profit. Those are called workaholics, but that even that catches up to you eventually. Um, or you can turn and face them. Those are your only two options. And for 35 plus years I avoided. And then about five, six years ago, I turned into them and it fucking sucked. And it was really hard. And I'm still battling this every day. Every day I have to sit down and meditate.

I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it. It's like, think about how crazy it is. Sit down with your legs crossed and your eyes closed, focusing on your breath for 20 minutes. And that is the hardest battle of my day, those 20 minutes. Yeah, because you feel like it's – what's interesting is you feel like you're being so unproductive, but it's actually making your life so much more productive by doing it. And there are studies that show that people that meditate are more productive throughout the day,

no matter what, hands down, every single time. Dude, I don't feel unproductive. It's that I – man, I down, every single time. Dude, I don't feel unproductive. It's that I... Man, I know all of this consciously. You know, I mean, I know it really well. And like all the things I just said about you can't run from your fears and anxieties, you can't run from your problems, whatever.

And I still don't want to fucking sit with these. It is really fucking painful to face whatever it is you're holding in. And it's different for different people. My problems are different than yours, which are different than, you know, everyone else's, but dude, um, man, I know this, I know this. It's like, it's something like, uh, imagine like, um, I don't know, like, uh, who's a big health person, Rob Wolf, who like invented the paleo diet. Imagine if this is like him saying I know Exactly how bad sugar and carbs are for you, but man sometimes I'd like I just got to eat a doughnut You know like it's the same thing like I know exactly what my brain is doing and I still

Have to fight myself every day to sit down because that's the thing man man, is the more you work on yourself, the hardier it gets because you go through like, like at the beginning, it's kind of easy and then it gets really hard. And then you kind of cross a point where you feel as really dangerous because you feel like you've done the work, but really you've only just started. It's not even the end of the beginning. It's like the beginning of the beginning. And, uh, and that is dangerous because that's like someone who knows just a little bit, you know? And so, uh, then, then I'm at the point now where it's like, I'm like just the slow, steady climb. Um, uh, well I'm not, I can't fool

myself anymore, but, um, I'm not any, I probably only meditate three or four times a week. I probably miss maybe close to half the time and like because it it is that i'm at the point now where the shit that's coming up is like the stuff that i've buried the deepest and that is the most painful and that is the most hard and it's like a huge pain in my ass it's really hard and i hate it dude i really hate it because it's like every day i sit down i'm like man, I know something's coming. I don't want to think about it, you know? Right.

It's like going, all right, I'm going to go get punched in the face. Let me go ahead and walk and get punched in the face. You know you're about to get something really tough. Dude, excuse me, dude. I spent five years training with pro fighters. Getting punched in the face is way easier than meditating. That's so funny, man. Well, that's it for part one of this interview. The next part

of the interview will be coming out soon. I can't wait to bring that to you guys as well. But until then, thank you so much for listening. If you liked this episode, please share it with someone that you know, and go to mwfmotivation.com for any extra information. Talk to you soon. Well, that's it for today's podcast. If you want the show notes for this episode, they can be found at MWFmotivation.com. Also, if you liked this episode, please spread the love and share it with a friend

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