The One You Feed - How to Unlock Your Potential with Anthony Trucks

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

In this episode, Eric talks with Anthony Trucks as they delve into the world of personal growth and mindset transformation. Discover how Anthony overcame adversity and pushed past his limitations to become the person he aspired to be. Anthony unpacks common myths of personal transformation and reveals the truth behind personal growth and mindset development. In this episode, you will be able to: Cultivate a positive mindset and unlock your full potential for personal growth Learn the power of being present and intentional in every aspect of your life Discover strategies to overcome limitations and push past challenges, pushing you towards success Build inner strength and consistently improve yourself, creating a solid foundation for growth. Develop the mindset and skills to embrace fear, preparing you for future opportunities Discover the keys to building resilience and bouncing back stronger from setbacks in life Learn how to embrace uncertainty and navigate change with confidence and adaptability. To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When I feel something affecting my piece, that's when I kind of start making adjustments. But it's always every day going to happen. And eventually you get good at kind of swatting flies, we'll call it. But you don't walk out there thinking there's no flies. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.

We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Anthony Trucks, a former NFL athlete, American Ninja Warrior on NBC, and international speaker, host of the Aw Shift and Shift Starter podcasts. He's an author and founder of Identity Shift Coaching. By teaching audiences how to turn roadblocks and obstacles into opportunities, Anthony inspires and teaches people to unlock their full potential and achieve success and happiness. Hi, Anthony. Welcome to the show. Hey, thank you for having me. It is a pleasure to have you on. We're going to be discussing your book, which is called Identity Shift, Upgrade, How You Operate to Elevate Your Life,

and just your work in general. And I'm excited to get to that. But before we do, we'll start like we always do with a parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with her grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. They think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

Oh, yeah, man. I think it's the human investment bias, right? It's whatever you put in will come out kind of thing. There's this one thought I used to have about like the subconscious and the emotions and the feelings. We live in a world where we consume a lot, right? I love the idea of like what you feed is going to survive. And I think we have a lack of comprehension of what's being fed into our minds, the social media, the TV, the radio, the news, but you can only grow from what the seed that

was planted is, right? So if you plant a seed of a lemon, you're going to get a lemon tree. And so if you want to have something great, an amazing, you know, tree that has, I don't know, whatever cherries on it, you can't seed weeds. So I think that what I hear in that is you have to make sure you're being very cognizant of what goes into your mind to make sure you have an amazing life come out of you. Yeah. I mean, that is such an obvious point and yet one that so many of us overlook. We think either that these things are neutral that we're putting in or that they are not problematic. And again, everything I think is a matter of degree. It's not like for me anyway, I don't think I should be pumping only

uplifting spiritual personal development content into my mind 24 hours a day because it's just, it gets to be too much, right? There's a time and a place for me to watch some Netflix and tune down, but it's for me, it's all a matter of degree. There's a time and a place to pay attention to the news so I know what's going on in the world. But there's a very clear tipping point for me where that becomes very negative. I agree. 100% agree. I think for me, I don't even like to watch the news, to be honest. I don't either. My best friend, he'll put the news on in the background. And I started noticing this a couple of years ago where I would, in fact, be in a room and go, why don't I feel uncomfortable?

Like I'd be at, you go to you go to hotels to breakfast thing going on. And so I'm at breakfast and I'm like, why don't I feel, I started noticing I wasn't even paying attention to the news, but it was just there. Yeah. And it's like 17 people, this happened to them. And then back in this country, this happened. It's like, oh my, it just, so yeah, it can subconsciously just kind of float in there because you're still listening to the world.

Even just for purpose of survival, you're paying attention to noises and little by little, it comes in without you knowing it. Yeah. I'm the same way. I mean, Ginny really likes to have the news on. I think it makes her feel connected to the world and I'm like to each of their own, right? It's just, I notice I react to it. I noticed that it's just relentless. Yeah. Always awful news. I said to her recently, I was like, do you think that anchor guy goes home and just sobs at night? Like, I mean, because it's just an hour of like, just heart rending stuff. And again, it's not about pretending that none of that stuff is happening, but I think it's worth knowing what we're more sensitive to.

And I think I am more sensitive to that sort of thing. I am more sensitive to advertising. Like it doesn't make me go and buy things, but it plants seeds of unrest in me. Yeah. Do I need that? Yeah. Yeah. Thinking I want something or comparing myself.

Am I as happy as the people in the Ozempic commercial? Right. And so for me, I just kind of know what works well for me, you know, kind of what I need to feed. I think it's being in touch with yourself too, right? I think that probably a lot of people that stopped and thought about it, they can think to a moment of like, oh, that did happen. They felt that we just have connected the feeling to a conscious thought now. Yeah. And I didn't always.

I'm not going to say I always had that because I just, you know, had the news on, no big deal. But I started kind of, I would say, evolving in a way of like how I just, I saw myself as a man and a husband and a father and as a coach and a leader in the world. I got to protect that because what comes out of me affects people's lives. Especially in a podcast like this, you know? So it's like, I got to make sure I'm really aware of what I'm having come out of me and process all of it. And so I find that actually when I'm having like, I don't listen to a lot of the news at all. The radio in the morning, my kids will listen to like the whatever radio station, even that stuff. I'm like, like I don't listen to a lot of the news at all. The radio in the morning, my kids will listen to like the whatever radio station, even that stuff.

I'm like, this is trash. I don't care what Kim Kardashian decided to do in her TV show yesterday. Like it's crazy that that's what our world thinks about. I'm very, like you are cut off from the world. I get my news from couple sources that are usually readable, that are on platforms that are unbiased as I can get it.

I just need the information. I don't need your processing of the information. And so if I can do that, then I stay up to date. I know what's going on and I function properly in the world, but I'm in control of my energy. Yeah. I think you made just a really important point there that I think is central to all the work that you do, that I do in this personal growth, spiritual space, which is that ability to connect what is going on around us to what we're actually feeling and making that more conscious. Because it's amazing how much I can be affected and there can be this undercurrent happening in me that I'm not even conscious of or aware of.

And so much for me is about being able to bring that what's happening in the unconscious. I mean, different people use different words for it. The pre-conscious, you know, pre-conscious often meaning that which is in consciousness and is available to consciousness, but just not, not there yet, but connecting that to kind of how I'm feeling and what's causing what, and just being aware of that. I find so helpful, but so hard also. Yeah. Yeah. It is. Cause I think at the same time is right when you get to know the voice, you change and the voice changes and because the world's also evolved and they say you can never step in the same river twice because the man's not the same and the river's not the same. But there can be awareness to it.

And then I think also life changes around us. And so what's important changes or accessing changes, the vision we had, we get to and achieve it and go, oh, we got to have a new vision. So 100% agree with that. And also I've noticed that in my journey when I've actually felt like, oh, I get to know it, it's a short-lived knowledge. Not that I don't have any insights, but I'm like, because of what I accomplished, where I got, you're introduced to new forks in the road you didn't realize existed. And so now you're

reprocessing and reanalyzing. You look back and you go, gosh, I thought I knew it all five years ago and I was an idiot then. And so it just progresses up the ladder. Yeah, 100%. And I think you talk about this a lot in your work about how there's not like this point where you get to a place and then you're like done. You did a thing on one of your shorter podcasts recently around like winning is just a beginning, right? Yeah, yeah. But it points to the same thing, which is that the work of awareness and the work of

connecting what we're feeling and what we're thinking with what's going on around us with our behavior, that process never ends. It is an ongoing process. It's one that is in a way fresh in every moment, even if it does seem like we're sort of in the same habitual thought patterns and loops. We may be in them for a while, but the more we're conscious of what's happening, actually the less time we spend stuck there. Yeah, I would agree for sure. I think you start learning the process to navigate it, right? Because I think there's a skill in understanding the process of navigation of it all.

What is the book called? I think it's called The Power of Habit. It talks about how the habit for some people, like of navigating situations and changes is unique. But this is one moment where they talk about these people who are, they're in hospital beds and they just had hip surgery or something. And what they had to do was they had to figure out how to get to the front where people would go visit them. So for half the group, they said, hey, we're going to let you go to the front.

But we want you to think about in advance all the different stages you have to walk through to get to the front. And so they would think through it, right? And then the person who didn't, you know, they just were sitting in the race. So somebody would show up and they'd be said, told them, hey, go to the front now. The people with no plan, like they left the room, first obstacle, they just were sitting in the room. So somebody would show up and they'd be said, told him, Hey, go to the front. Now the people with no plan, like they left the room first obstacle. They sat down, the people left the room, the journey, have a couple done, but they'd always face something that wasn't a new ones they'd expected before. But because they had the skill of planning for having done it before they could plan in the

real time to move forward. So the cool thing, and they always got to the front of the building, right? The cool thing is like, that's how I think we do it. We have these plans and you get good at the plan, the process and the navigation that you're talking about. And then you face something and you go, I've done it before and you do it in real time. And then all of a sudden you can move past the sticking point. Yeah. I think the other thing embedded in what you just said there is the expectation of obstacle, right? Just the recognition that it's inevitable. You know, when I used to do a lot of one-on-one coaching with people on habits, I would say,

you know, there's going to come a time that you don't do this behavior. It is inevitable. It is not a question of if, it's a question of when. Sooner or later, life's going to get in the way or something's going to happen and you're going to get a little off track. So knowing that, let's think about what are we going to do when that happens? And I think it A, sets the stage for the planning that you're talking about. And it sets the stage for just knowing like that's part of life. And very often, particularly when a significant obstacle comes up that I did not see coming at all, there's almost a stunned period where I'm like, wait, wait a minute. Like that's not supposed to happen. You know? And I think the more we recognize that obstacles are just a part of life, the more gracefully we can

handle them. I fully agree with that. I mean, 1000% agree with it because they say life is what happens between your plans, right? It's just, there's a reason that cliche exists because it is. That's what makes life, life. It was something I knew all the time. It wouldn't be fun. Like the nuance of like seeing you have to navigate stuff because it does teach your skills but you also get a pride for having accomplished it which is pretty cool but yeah i think that the the we'll call it the nuances to life of it never being perfect if you can embrace that that's the reality of it all then yes you handle them with more grace a lot more patience and you actually have a lot more peace and for me peace is the key.

I don't live in chaos. I don't even like when chaos is around. We're talking about the news. I think the news is bringing chaos into my life. It literally is bringing chaos to the world, like telling you what's going on. And so when I feel something affecting my peace, that's when I kind of start making adjustments. But it's always every day going to happen.

And eventually you get good at kind of swatting flies, we'll call it, but you don't walk out there thinking there's no flies. I just know I'm good at swatting flies to protect my peace. Matter of fact, a buddy of mine, Trent Sheldon, is saying it's to protect your peace. So it's funny I said that, but I get where it comes from now. But that's the idea is you create that and then you protect it, but you don't go into the world thinking nothing's going to affect it. You go into the world going, I can handle this. Jordan Peterson has this statement. He says, it is better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war. It's a cool one, right? And I go, oh, it's awesome. Because essentially it's saying like, I got the ability to be peaceful,

but I have the skills to protect it. Yeah. Yeah. And being a gardener in a war is no good. No fun, I would say. So let's back up a little bit and let people get to know you a little bit better because you've got kind of a strong backstory. And I'm wondering if you could sort of just start with your childhood. Tell us a little bit my wall, and it simply says, smooth seas never made skilled sailors. And I think it rings true for all of us because we all have things we just crappy people really early on. Things that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemies, to be honest. And so by six years old, I was a pretty shut down emotionally kid. Wasn't very happy. Didn't know that life could be joyous. I thought I was a punching bag, quite literally. No one loved me. I didn't feel like I had a place that made me feel comfortable. So I navigated this up and down world for 11 years. I was adopted at 14 by a very poor all-white family. And through those years, like the developmental years,

when you actually get to the point of like, you understand what love is and care and emotion, that's when you're developing and turning into a man. So I didn't have a lot of the foundation, man. I was literally robbed of a lot of it. And I had to grow up between like 14 and 20, robbed of a lot of it. And I had to grow up between like 14 and 20, like really quickly and in not the best environments. My mom was diagnosed with MS. My dad was working all the time to be able to pay the bills because she wasn't able to. And so I just, I was pretty much off my own, getting in trouble, doing dumb stuff. Got arrested at one point for breaking into cars with some people, just dumb kid things. While also trying to find a way to feel like I mattered. When you're giving away in foster care, the one thing that you know is you don't matter

to your own mom and dad. My dad had left my mom before I was even born. My mom gave me away. So you start questioning, if my own mom didn't want me, what do I matter to this world? And so I was settling into some weird, funky spots. It took a lot of love from my mom mom unconditionally, my adoptive mom, to have me not be a statistic. Because if you go to any prison in America, 75% of the inmates are former foster kids like me. Half our homeless population spent time in foster care. I think less than 1% of us graduate from college. And so the numbers attached to me

as a human, because of all the foster care stuff you could imagine, we're not very good. And so like my upbringing and reason I work a lot in identity and it's because I had to battle that for years of my life. I didn't even really find and create my identity until I was in my thirties. Yeah. And so, you know, we know that a lot of like really early developmental things happen, you know, zero to five and does not sound like it was not a good time for you, right? Because even before your mom gave you away, it must've been terrible for her to get to a point where she's going to do that. What has the process been like for you to actually internalize at a deeper level that you are not unlovable? That's the core message there, right? I'm not lovable.

Yeah, man. You know? Two poking things in the morning. That's the core message there, right? I'm not lovable. Yeah, man. Two poking things in the morning. What's that? Look at you poking things in the morning. Yeah. If we're going too deep at any point, feel free to, you know, it's just that thing. And it's the sort of thing, at least for me, and I didn't go through the same things you did, but I certainly have what I would consider, you know, like some bonding trauma. It's like I can consciously know and achieve and be good. And that helps. Yeah.

But there come these darker moments where that sort of just tends to want to take over. Yeah, no, it's been there. Where that core gets really poked. Yeah. I think there's a couple spaces I've navigated emotionally, consciously as well. And one of them is there's parts of that kind of guy that linger and I understand them at a level now to make them useful to me in the world. So I'll start by saying I'm a very selfish human in a sense of, I selfishly want a thank you. I want to know I matter. That's myself. I desire to know

that I matter. I desire to know that I've helped you. I want to thank you. Now, what I've noticed is the selfishness that becomes beneficial to the world, to my wife, to my kids, to you, to the people listening, to the people I coach, is I will only get the genuine thank you when I have given everything I can that's going to help you in your life. I share my message. I tell you the depths of my heart and soul. I give to my wife. I give to my kids so they can say thank you. That's what works. It's a good synergistic process. Now, I didn't always do that. At first, my selfishness was I'm going to take, take, take. I'm not going to give, give, give. And so that's just, I was trying to get what I wanted to make my life great because the world took from me. I'm going to give my retribution. That's not a good solution, right? You're not going to get what you want. If it's going to be freely given to you, you don't usually want it. The other part of it was that was driven from a sense of, I want to say like a sense of being angry, you know, you're mad and so you believe you deserve it. You're entitled to this because of what took place.

entitled to this because of what took place. And in order for me to get past the entitlement, I had to get to a point of heavy forgiveness. And the forgiveness is an interesting journey that most people don't want to go down. They're just like, I like holding onto my anger, right? And they want to hold onto it. Well, you can only give out what you have inside. If you have anger inside, it comes out. If you have peace inside, hey, guess what comes out? So I go, how do I get to peace? And I found the how do I get to peace? And I found the thing that was destroying my peace was this anger with my mom, with people that wronged me, you know, all these things. I sat down one time for like a month and just thought through this and thought through it. And I finally found this pathway that I think makes emotional and logical sense for forgiveness

for me. And the way that I looked at it was my mom decided that at one point, me and my three siblings, year after year, she had four kids, four years in a row. She goes, I don't want these kids anymore and give this away. I'm putting shopping carts and pushed down hills, forced to lick people's shoes, like really heinous stuff, man. And I go, why would she do this to you? Horrible. I hated her. I was so mad at her. Right. And then I started like thinking through this process of forgiveness and I go, I don't want to forgive her for that. She doesn't even, I'm sorry for it. And then at another level further, I go, what tools was she given?

I looked at my grandparents, my grandparents are not crazy, amazing people. So I go, gosh, you know, this person who gave me away, like did she actually have the tools to do it right in the first place? Was she given them? Not that she wasn't exposed, but was she given these tools? And I started realizing like, she wasn't given these tools. And I go, why would she give her kids away? And the thing is, I go, well, she didn't know what that was going to happen to me. She thought that she was going to give us to an environment that would be better for us than her. And so oddly, I started going, gosh, well,

this person, while they didn't maliciously try to have this thing happen to me, if anything, it was a selfish thing because they wanted to be free to do their thing, but it wasn't, and the intent wasn't to have me be hurt and, or they weren't given the tools to navigate four kids in four years. And so if I remove myself from that being my mom, it's just a woman. I go, gosh, that's gotta be crazy. At four years, four kids, no coping mechanisms, no tools. Maybe you actually thought that doing it would be good for me. Cause it'd be better than, you know, I'm not going to say this is the perfect answer,

but I started having compassion for the person. And the compassion made me realize like a lot of people in my life, my wife, there was a situation where she had an affair, marriage fell apart, ruined everything. We eventually remarried three years later after a lot of work on both of us separately and simultaneously. But I started realizing, man, she didn't step out to maliciously hurt me. The intent wasn't to make me be angry.

The intent was to find something to fulfill a need that she was missing. Again, if anything, selfishness. What would it have to feel like to go through that darkness to do that, to have to hide yourself and be like, it's a dark space that she was living in. My mom as well. I picture my mom now. she's out in the world. She watches things. I don't know how she does. I always get little weird, you know, butterfly effect things, but like, what's it, what's it gotta be like knowing that your son played in the NFL and he speaks and travels as an author and like, and you can't talk to him, you know, it's like, that's gotta be a heavy weight to carry, a burden that that's as heavy. And so I have a compassion

for that heart. And so for me, what happened over the years is I started realizing that there wasn't this matter of me not being loved and not being like not mattering. It's like, that was a byproduct of this anger I had because of what took place. And then I go, okay, great. Well, if I can give a compassion, I can actually genuinely forgive these people and move forward with peace in my heart. Now I can reframe the way that and move forward with peace in my heart now,

I can reframe the way that I get the thank yous. I'm not doing them for retribution. I'm doing them to serve because that's what wasn't done for me. So I give in a way that wasn't given to me, but now I'm getting what I wanted in the first place anyways. Yep. There's a lot in there. Did you find that part of that process also was to have compassion for that younger you yes for sure the good thing is i didn't do a lot of crazy things where i had to like you know the small

child of me i didn't beat him up i didn't blame him too much yeah there's definitely some things where i go why was i so you know talkative why did i get in trouble at time why did you do this young aunt and so yeah there's definitely a journey there but it wasn't as deep as the other one we'll call it but i i realized for if anything, there was a point in time where when I was like 15 years old, I'm going to climb out of this, man. And I did and I fought. And so as much as the younger guy, I may be mad at most of the time, most kids, it's that 14 to 16 window when they start emerging, they're a little more teenage, they can go, they're not kids anymore under your parents' guidance. That's when most kids go out and do dumb stuff. They're teenagers

just doing dumb kid stuff. Whereas for me at 15, that's kind of when I locked in. I had one or two instances of doing dumb stuff, not a lot at all, but I locked in. So I'm proud actually of how that guy showed up at 15 with a decision to be great at football and turn his life into something as opposed to being pissed that he turned 16 was driving around you know doing drugs and got an accident like you know stuff like that so there is a nuance to where i don't have to go so deep into we'll call it forgiving my younger self yeah yeah i feel like i made it 23 years of doing dumb shit really dumb. I probably got another 25 on top of it with just the mild, mildly dumb stuff. Based on what you just said, it sounds like you and your mother are still estranged.

Yeah. I don't know where she's at, man. Okay. We did a TV show. My wife and I were going to one called Relative Race. It was like on some interesting channel, like BYU TV or something. And we were cast for it. And I have to go find people. And they have skip tracers who find people. I mean, they find everybody. And if not,

they find a death certificate, you know, and they could not find this woman anywhere. They're like, no matter what we try, we cannot track her down. They're like, this doesn't happen to us. So we'd love to have her on the show, but we need her and we can't find her. Now I have a cousin. He's a loopy bean kind of guy. I don't know where he's at in the show, but we need her and we can't find her. Now I have a cousin. He's a loopy being kind of guy. I don't know where he's at in the world, but at some point he reached out maybe a year and a half afterwards and just conversation opened up and he said something about like, you know, she still pays attention to you. If you want to talk to her, I'm happy to connect you.

So he somehow has communication. I don't talk to him too often because he's just, he's a loopy guy. But I was like, nah, man, I got, I got no intention. I don't hate her. I wouldn't get in the phone and cuss her out or anything, but I only open doors to rooms I want to walk into. I don't have a desire to walk into that room. We could all use the occasional nudge, a little wake up from the autopilot we fall into in our day-to-day routine. That's why we send brief text reminders to listeners of the show for free. The texts help you stay on track with what you're learning from the podcast episodes we release on Tuesdays and Fridays. They periodically prompt you to pause for a second and become more

present and mindful and encourage you to engage with the week's podcast topics in a bite-sized, short, and simple manner. We've heard from listeners that these texts help them take a moment to reconnect with what's important amidst the busyness of daily life. Someone said, it feels like a little bit of wisdom is being whispered into my psyche, which I thought was cool. So if you'd like to hear from us a few times a week via text, go to oneufeed.net slash text and sign up for free. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth plus does tom cruise really do his own stunts his stuntman reveals the answer and you never know who's going to drop by mr brian cranson is with us how are you hello my friend

wayne knight about jurassic park wayne knight welcome to Really No Really sir Bless you all Hello Newman and you never know when Howie Mandel Might just stop by to talk about judging Really? That's the opening? Really No Really Go to reallynoreally.com And register to win $500 A guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition

Signed Jason Bobblehead It's called Really No Really and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app On Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You tell a story about, I think around that age of 15 and overhearing someone in your school talking about foster children that was sort of a galvanizing moment for you. Oh, for sure. It's a catalyst for sure. Set the stage for this situation. I had tried football for two years. It was horrible sure, man. It's a catalyst for sure. Set the stage for this situation. I had tried football for two years. It was horrible at the game. It was not good. And when you try something you're not good at, you get one of two options. Option one is you make a really good

excuse for why you don't do it again. And it's believable, right? Yeah. Option two is you step into it against what makes logical sense and you just do it. Most people don't choose that. Most go, and we don't do it consciously. It's a subconscious thing. We know it feels uncomfortable. So we just, oh, it wasn't the right time in the marketplace. Or, you know, I just didn't know I had this solution here. I couldn't find any help. I didn't have the finances, right? We make excuses that people will buy into so we can go to sleep at night and feel good. But the little voice in our head knows. Now, at 15 years old, I had this moment where I was doing football and I go, you know, I don't got the cleats these kids have because we're poor.

My mom is sick. I'm a foster kid. Foster kids don't get anything good for our lives. I don't even know any great foster kids, literally knew none. I didn't even know other foster kids besides my siblings. And so you're just like, that's the life of foster kid. That's what I'm supposed to do in life. You know, that's my mark. And I'm in this classroom, and I'd had two years of playing football and realized I wasn't good, and that was my excuse. My mom had been diagnosed with MS, and so I was just coming to class checked out. I got literally sleeping in class. And there's these two girls in class. I do not know their names.

I don't know who they are. I couldn't go back. I know the classroom, though, and I know the teacher, Mr. Howell. We share the same birthday. And in the back right corner, I'm sitting there and there's two girls on this love seat. The one girl says to the other girl, a simple statement that was an amazing gift to me. She says, the reason I'm so bad is because I'm in foster care. And at face value, it's not that big of a deal. However, for me, I got to hear out loud the excuse that I was giving myself inside for why I wasn't doing well.

And oh man, it felt weird. I was like, gosh. And I seriously remember at 15 going, is that the reason I'm going to be like a bad guy or a criminal or whatever? Just because of this thing that happened to me that I had no control over? It sounded stupid. The reason I'm bad is because I was in foster care. That's not a good enough reason in my head. So remember, it sat on me all day long. And I kid you not, this genuine situation transpired. I go home. When I get to my house that day, I'm sitting in a room. It's my bedroom. I have this mirror that, if you can call it, it's at the top of my room. And I'm sitting there going, this is a weird little kind of situation that I look myself in the pupils and it just gets to this point of culmination. I go, Anthony, you're going to be great. That was it. Anthony, you're going to be great. I didn't even know what great was going to be. I don't know. I just told myself this a couple times. I can still picture the room, right? And it was very weird. But that moment was like this really interesting turning point for me.

very weird. But that moment was like this really interesting turning point for me. Because overnight, I decided I want to be great at football. I'm going to find out what it takes. I started watching like, what is great football players doing? It was just a moment where I just snapped out of it. And then from that point on, I turned into a completely different human. It was the effort, it was the energy, not so much that I turned into, but I built into a different human. Through the reps, through the efforts, through the hard stuff I did. And the more I did it, the better I got, and the better I got. And then all of a sudden, it wasn't this magical thing that all of a sudden, I'm great. But over time, it became this thing where I now created this different identity that wasn't the one of the foster kid. It was the guy who was a great athlete, who was faster,

who was stronger. I had this mentality, and it's what I call a dark work mentality. Because what I did in that window, I called dark work. Unseen, unsexy, ridiculed, misunderstood, but it was this work to be a great football player. So when I got on that football field, I had this mentality of I've done too much work in the dark to lose in the light. It's my football, it's my tackle, it's my touchdown. And that was the thing that was a catalyst, we'll call it, to a greater football career, stepping into more, being better, just all these different climb ups. But it all started there. And it started with me making a decision going, I don't want to be what I in my head see myself to be. I want to be better. And in order to be better, I have to do better things, period. Out of character, not normal. But I did those things. And when I did them, I became that person. It's a remarkable story in a lot of ways. And I have a few questions sort of to pull out from there. You know, the first is you talk about saying that when people try something and they're

not good at it, they come up with subconscious reasons to quit doing it, right? Usually, yeah. something and they're not good at it, they come up with subconscious reasons to quit doing it, right? Or they step into it. And you've talked on your short form podcast a little bit about your son being in a moment kind of like this, where, you know, he's not really fully leaning into the things he needs to do to be a great football player. And my question is, I think you're absolutely right. There are times that we want to do something and we're not good at it. And so we talk ourselves out of it. There's also the case where not everything that we try is the right thing for us. True. And I'm just curious how you think about trying to delineate those things, because I find that to be a real thing of discernment, right? Because we do want to apply ourselves in areas that we're likely

to succeed, right? I mean, for me to apply myself to being an NBA basketball player would be a foolhardy endeavor, right? Now, I probably could apply myself if I love the game of basketball to being a really good basketball player. But knowing, particularly given that that process of giving up is almost subconscious, right? We talk ourselves out of it. I'm thinking of an example completely different, but my dad passed in February and we never had a very close relationship. He was just kind of an island unto himself and it was very difficult to have any meaningful conversation.

But I remember multiple times where I'd be like, all right, we're going to play golf this weekend and I'm going to like go deeper with him and I'm going to connect and I'm going to, and I would get there and it would vanish. And I would be like, I don't even want to. The reality was, I just didn't think it was possible. So my defenses came in and said, I don't even want it. Right. So that's that subconscious process you're talking about where, because we're not good at it, we don't think we can succeed. We just suddenly talk ourselves out of it without even knowing it. But that discernment, how do you think about that? Those are two different pieces, right? Because one is, the one's an interesting dynamic of that, because I do the same thing. Like there's moments where I'm doing something, I'm watching my kid,

and I go, gosh, I want to celebrate. I can't wait to celebrate with them. And then I get off the field and I don't do that thing. I give them a high five, good job. But in my head, I want to pick them up and spin around and like, ah, you know. And so, yeah, it may be weird for them, right? But I don't do the action. I go, why don't I do the action, you know? Yeah. So I can gather that one for sure.

And I think there is something to the desire of not having rejection as to why I'll make a statement or failure, we'll call it, as to why I won't do that thing. So if we feel we'll be rejected or feel we'll fail, we will protect. I think there's an ego part of us we have to protect or we do protect. And the ego doesn't want to feel the shame, the embarrassment. So it'll avoid actions that give us the feeling of shame or embarrassment. So that's one piece of it. Then on the other side, you're talking about, which I gathered it this way. It's like working towards something or choosing to work towards something and going like, when is it too much? When should I leave this relationship? When should I stop and sell this business or just get out of the business? When should I quit this job? Right. And so we, we start to contemplate and we give ourselves

decisions and we talk to ourselves that Singer would say it's the untethered soul. Right. So we go back and forth these dynamics in our head. And I, and what I've noticed is whenever I've had situations where I've had to go, this isn't the right thing, it's because I didn't set the destination typically. Somebody else did. I saw something. I compared myself somewhere. Somebody said I should. And that was the reason I set that destination.

And then I'm going towards it, and I'm really only going to be happy when I get it. I'm just going to be happy when I arrive at that place because they said it's going to be great when you get there. And you get there and you go, oh, this is it. I got to the top of the sport in the world, football. I got to the NFL. I wasn't an all-star. I wasn't this guy. I was just a guy. I played three years and got hurt my third year and was a battle. Wasn't a name you'd even know, period. But when I got there, it gave me this realization of like, oh, this whole fame thing is kind of like you watch the guys that are famous. They don't look happy, bro. They're not all joyous.

There are some, obviously, they're happy. Don't get me wrong. It's cool. But I would see more of like a stress and anxiety to stay and be there and do the thing, right? And I'm not saying you shouldn't want that. There are some guys that handle it amazingly and they do phenomenal. It's beautiful to watch them handle that, right? I would love to be in their shoes, we'll call it. But then you start having just a different way of

understanding what the fame and the money and all the notoriety does. And it's like, well, do I want that? And also, how do you treat people when you have that? Like in the world I live now of the speaker, the coach, the author, I love that I'm able to enter this world having been in a different world and seeing what it's like to really be known, right? Because there's some people I see get known and they, boy, they do a lot. They're doing the most, I call it. You know, they got to have like their entourage with them. It's like, dude, you just talk on a stage, man. The only people that know you are the ones that are inside of this group of people that, you know, you're not the guy, you're not the girl, but it's, it's good. But it's your moment, it's your Superbowl. And I'm not knocking that, but I get the mentality around that.

I get what they're fighting for. And then what I realized is the ones who are the most peaceful in the NFL when I saw them are the ones that have an amazing family. The people they can go home to and they can be quiet and they can hang out. They're just, hey, go out and take the dog for a walk. Can you go take the trash to the sidewalk? Those kind of people, there's a balance of like, that's all good out there, but the game will end. The clock will tick zero. You'll come home from practice and the majority of your life will be lived in a different space. Is there peace there? That's one piece of it I look at. And so there's, there's one way where I go, like, if that's what you think it is, right? So there's that part of it. There's another part of it where I think there is the necessary need for discernment to go, am I doing this properly? There are things that we also do

choose. It's my choice. I want to do this thing. And then what I'm doing is I'm setting a destination. And then I think the problem is, is people fall in love with the destination, not the day. They set, this is what I'm going to get and I want this. And they wake up every day unhappy for not being there. And so what I do in life is I go, where do I want to go? Cool. That's going to depict the actions I take. But my intention is to have a really cool day. Now, if I can make a day that has steps that lead me there, I'm in a beautiful place because I'll eventually get there. If I just work and I love to work and I love the things I'm doing, I'm going to get to that place.

There are going to be days that suck sometimes, part of the journey, right? But then I'm just, I'm enjoying the process. And at some point in time, because I'm not married to the outcome, I can make a discerned choice and go, is this really going to get me there? I just want to help people.

Okay, well, I'm telling myself this has to be the way I help people. But what if that's not the way I help people? What if I could do it this way? So I'm open to making a change because I'm telling myself this has to be the way I help people, but what if that's not the way I help people? What if I could do it this way? So I'm open to making a change because I'm going to keep doing things in my day, but I love my day, and I'll just change the destination. And then I'm not feeling guilty or bad because I told someone, I'm going to do this, and I changed to this. And they go, see, you're incongruent. I don't promise the outcome of what my life's going to be. I just say, I'm going to live every day amazing.

I'm going to serve people. I'm going to show up and be transparent and honest and open. I'm going to love my wife and love my kids. I'm going to have plans to go in this direction to make an impact in the world. And I do have goals. I set things I want to work towards, but I can move the target. And so because of the way that I'm choosing to live in the here, in the now, in the way I choose to live here, I love my days. And because I love the days, they're heading in a good direction. Little by little, I can do the things that get me to a point where I end up somewhere amazing. But I also realize this, at some point, the clock tips zero.

The game will end. There'll be something I accomplish. And if I loved the preparation, if I loved the journey there, it's fine. But I'm gonna have to come home to my wife and my kids. And I love coming home to my wife and my kids because I does stuff every single day to make this amazing. And that's kind of the way I look at what my choice is, what I go towards, how I move. And so for me, it's more of this, I want to spend my days doing things that are phenomenal and I enjoy them with great people like yourself, knowing they're heading in a good direction, but I'm okay to change the destination if need be. I love all that because one of the things I've thought a lot about and weaves its way into many,

many of these conversations is how do you be a person that has ambition and wants to grow and wants to change and wants to accomplish things and be a person who can enjoy where you actually are, right? Because those things, if we're not careful, can be very much at where you actually are, right? Because those things, if we're not careful, can be very much at odds with each other, right? You can be in that destination mindset all the time. It's always got to be more, more, more, different, different, different. And you've got the ambition piece figured out, but you don't have the day-to-day contentment piece, right? When you're in that mindset, whatever destination you hit, you'll be like, well, that's nice. And then you just set your eyes on the next one, which is not a bad thing.

Not always. But your point is that you said this in a recent episode, the question comes if winning is just a beginning, right? When I win, I then just set another goal and keep going, right? If winning is just a beginning, when do you smell the roses? And you were like, I think you smell them all along the way. All along the way. You know, and I think that's a really important point. And it gets to trying to love the process.

Yeah, heck yeah. Trying to love where you are, what you're doing, and not being so fixed on what is going to happen. And that takes a fair amount of, at least in my case, a fair amount of working, particularly with my fears. Because fear comes up and goes, well, if I don't get that, what's going to happen? And that tends to take away the peace, right? It tends to take away the peace. I can see that for sure. For me, the time to have ever thought through that process, which I have before, is the fear of the judgment or letting people down. And when I look at it also, I go, well, I just have to ask myself, like we've always say, if you gave your all and lost, like

you didn't lose, like you had lost on the board, but like if you gave everything you had and you know, you give everything you had and it didn't come in your favor, like that just was the way the chips fell. You don't have to feel so bad, but if you lose that game and you know, you kept some underneath and you reserve some of the tank, you have reason to feel bad or just regret that. And so, yeah, I get the idea of kind of navigating that whole, you know, flow of like the energy that I'm giving. But if I don't accomplish it, it's usually, I've usually given my all to it, right? Some of the fears that I will have in that is going to be based on whether or not I made a prompt to somebody or said I was going to do it and I didn't do it or I didn't follow through or I don't get that done or I didn't communicate why I chose a different direction. And then when I removed the

whole thought of that and the judgment of other people, at the end of the day, I just want to be happy and make me and the people that matter to me happy. And the world, we're always basing our self-worth off of how many people like us or view us or follow us, right? That's kind of the norm nowadays. I don't have that built into me. I genuinely care about the people who care about me, my wife, my kids. And so the only time I will have like a feeling like that is like if I let them down or something goes off there. Now there are promises to the world,

but I think one of the things that I also, outside of fear, it's like also framing for me. When we talk about doing the hard things and the fear, I try to frame my day in a way that makes it enjoyable by going, hey, there's things I do not want to do, right? I don't feel like filming 35 videos. I got to film some crazy amount for a course, right? Maybe there's days I don't feel like traveling out and talking to people. There's days I wake up on speeches.

They're going to pay me $25,000 to be there. And I go, I really don't want to do this. I've had that moment. Not often, which is thankful. But there's days I go, I'm just tired or been traveling a lot. Or my wife and I are, you know, kind of a little meh. And then I have to frame, this is my go-to. I don't fear messing up on stage. I don't fear not following through in something. It's not what I do. I try to frame it again because my framing is usually at this moment on me. How do I feel? What am I looking at? What's going on with Anthony?

And then when I go, dude, that's not serving anybody. That's kind of selfish. I look at other people, I go, gosh, what would it feel like if I was in the audience watching me and you knew I wasn't into it? That'd be a horrible feeling for that person to have to watch me. I go, I don't have the luxury of not giving my all to the speech because I could hurt somebody's life out there or at least not give them what they deserve. Or if I show up on this day and my wife and I are something's going on, it's not about me,

it's about the kids or about what she needs. My wife will ask me to do things that I don't want to do all the time because that's how life works. And now as opposed to battling and being angry at her and I want to do this, I will actively try and find something in the task that is joyful. I just do. And it's an active framing for me. Same thing in work. If I don't want to film those videos, I go, I don't want to film these. I go, but my team needs them. I love that my team has work to do, that they have a job. And if I don't do my job, they don't have a job. And also someone's going to see these. They're going to be there in the middle of the night, you know, some other country possibly having a really bad day. And the feed says that based on

what they've been searching for, this is the right video for them. And they're going to see it. If I'm not alive in that video, if I'm not given in that video, they're going to be robbed of a moment they could actually change their life with. So while I don't want to do it, it ain't about Anthony right now. It's about where am I showing up to give? And so in those moments when I don't feel like I want to give the energy or like it's hard to fall in love with the day, I would say, I just reframe. And the more I can reframe in the moments, the more it becomes now my set point to reframe. And I don't have to battle my mind as much. So over the years, I've got better at like immediately framing it in a certain way to where

I start my day and I go, Hey, I can't wait. I got Mr. Zimmer on the podcast. I'm going to hang out with this guy. I got this thing going on. My days will be stacked typically from like 8 a.m. until 2 to 45 p.m. Stacked of stuff. And my best friend goes, dude, your schedule makes me want to throw up. There's just so much stuff you do. And my wife goes, why do you do it to yourself? Make yourself work all day. And I go, you guys don't get it. I enjoy my work. It's like fun to me. And they go, how can it be fun to be doing that? And I go, because I frame it that way. Like I look at the things and I choose the things I want to say yes to. And when I do say yes to it, I say yes to it again, even if I wake up and don't want to. But I frame it in a way of going, wouldn't it suck for Eric to get in this podcast and he could tell I don't want to be here? Like what kind of feeling would that be? And the

person that listens to this to feel that energy also, I frame it outside of me. The fear disappears and now the service comes in. And when you give, usually when you're giving, you feel pretty good. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor we got the answer will space junk block your cell signal the astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer we talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing

back the woolly mammoth plus does tom cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's gonna drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. God bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just

stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's such a fundamental point around this, centering everything around how we feel and what we want. You know, I got sober in 12-step programs and there was a line in the AA Big Book

that basically said, you know, selfishness, self-centeredness, that we think is the root of our problem. And it talked about living in bondage to ourselves. And that is a phrase that resonates so deeply with me. Because I know that when all I'm thinking about is me and what I want, it is like being enslaved to myself. It's an awful feeling. It doesn't feel good. And it's the most natural and easy thing in the world to do. It doesn't turn out well for me. It's not a life well lived. And so there is sort of that reframing process. Are there times where you reframe and you're still like, I fucking don't feel like doing this? Oh yeah, of course. Okay. And then you just do it, right? Because you know. You do. It's the discipline. I'm not magical and like some special human in a sense of like, that hasn't happened to me. I just go, hey, you know what? Hey, buck up. Cause in football, we're at the game. You don't get to have that, which means suck it up, lean in. You need to be great for 20 minutes, great for 30

minutes. And usually I want, I need to be great for 15. And I'm gonna tell you why 15, when I get into a time and I don't want to be in that timeframe, right? What essentially we are doing is we're thinking about the feeling of the future, but we're not realizing it's really just a present feeling. So I go, gosh, I got an hour of this. If you start the hour and your head is already doing that, you're going to drag through the hour.

You're going to look at the clock every five minutes. It's going to look like it's, you're going to think it's five, it's two minutes, you know? It's like, when is this going to be over? And I go, let me just for 15 minutes, just, I want to be great. I want to have fun, like have fun, have fun, have fun. So I tell myself that and I hop in. And so I just, for the first 15, which I don't check the clock at 15, I'm trying to feel good about it. I try to do the thing to be great, to muster for myself, whatever I have to unconsciously bring joy to it. Yeah. Funny enough, that happens. And 15 turns into

50 minutes. You melt away into whatever the energy was you started with. And so I intentionally tell myself, hey, 15 minutes of great energy. It'll be 15 minutes of great. Let's go. And I may have to do it a couple of times that day because some days suck. My wife or the kids are acting up and doing some great stuff with mom where something happened at work and I got to navigate this stupid headache, bad email I got. And I got to tell myself this. And I muster acting up and doing some great stuff with mom, or I'm just, something happened at work and I got to navigate this stupid headache, you know, bad email I got. And I got to tell myself this and I muster it up and I lean in to be a pro. And usually it settles itself out because what also happens is your brain is holding on to that thing that you're stressing off of. And you're trying to put this, this new thing in there, but you haven't let go of this stressful

thought. So while that takes place and it's holding space, this other one can't fit. There's just tension there. So when I tell myself 15 minutes are great, what I'm actually doing is I'm not saying, don't think about this thing, Anthony, and try to put this in and gosh, I don't want to, I don't want to do this, right? I try to put all my focus on this thing here. And what happens is that one falls out of my mind. Yep. And now I don't have the tension. Now it's just, I'm enjoying this. Now the hour concludes, that leaves my mind, oh, this jumps back in pretty quick. It's like, oh, that thing's right. But at least I killed this hour because I refocused. It's like when you have kids and you

tell them, hey, stop playing video games. All they're thinking about is not playing video games, but they're still thinking about video games. As opposed to going, hey, go outside and shoot a hundred basketballs. I want you to try to get, you know, 50% of your shots to go in. Well, they go out there, they shoot it. They're having fun trying to get a hundred shots and get 50 in and dad, I got 44, I got 45, I got 50, I got 60 dad, right? They're no longer thinking about the video games. It's not even in their head. They're having fun now doing something else. And so that simple psychological trigger done for yourself elicits the same result.

That makes so much sense. I say on this show a lot, sometimes you can't think your way into right action. You have to act your way into right thinking, right? Like you just have to do the thing. And very often, once you get doing the thing, the motivation and the desire to do it comes along with it. Yep. You know, there's so many times I have to do that.

Me too, man. I just tend to be a person with sort of a lower mood system. It just seems to be the way I'm wired up. But I've learned to work with it. You know, I've learned to work with it in a way that says, you know, okay, you don't feel like it just gets started and good things kind of come from that getting started. You know, along the same line, you say somewhere at this point in my life, my identity is not tied to what I create. It's tied to my efforts to create. And I really love that idea of like, you're tying what you feel

good or bad about to what is completely in your control. Yeah. That's it. Because all you can do, man, literally, all you can control is how you respond to things. But people know this. This is not new information. It's not some novel idea. It's just not always practiced. We talk about it. We don't practice it.

But yeah, who I am is tied to what I choose to do and how I choose to control. It's not tied to the thing that you say about me. It's not tied to the outcome of whatever took place. Like when people ask who I am, I rarely even liked it. For a lot of years, I didn't even like telling them I played in the NFL. Like it was a part of me, but I'm not that thing I did because that thing, it will consume me. It's kind of like this, in my book, I talk about the tree. And most people assume that we are the fruit of the tree. I'm the fruit, and this is who I am, right? The career, the job, the relationship.

And if that thing falls off, and the fruit hits the ground because that thing fell apart, I lost the job, lost the career, lost the guy, lost the girl. I believe it's who I am. And I feel rotten. I feel like that piece of fruit, I'd rot up and I'd die. And that's how I felt with football at first, in fact. And so when you feel like that, you just, that's what's in you. And what comes out of you is rottenness. And then I realized like, wait, we've never been the fruit. We've always been the tree. We've always been the thing that created those things in life. And so if I go back

to tending to the thing that creates the things, great things get created. And so I'm vastly more identifying myself with the person who's taking care of the tree, the efforts, the actions, what I do. Am I in the right soil and environment? Am I around the right people? Am I cutting the news out, right? Am I pruning branches that don't belong? Am I getting rid of parts of my life that are pulling other ones away or taking attention from those ones, right? Maybe it's cutting a business off or stopping some action or getting rid of a friend that doesn't fit in where my future is going to go. You know, am I making sure I'm taking care of the body of the tree, my health? Could I be here longevity-wise? These little things, when I'm doing them,

that's who I am. That's what I'm doing every day. I am not the NFL. I am not a ninja warrior. I'm not the speaker. I'm not the coach. Maybe that day, if I'm on stage for an hour, I better be who I am, right? But the expression of who I am on a daily basis is the actions I'm taking. When my clock goes off and I say, I'm a good dad, a good dad isn't like a single thing. It's the moments that you put into the day of being a good dad. Like I do a morning routine with my son every morning. Did it this morning. That's what a good dad is. It's not this pinnacle trophy. It's the daily, right? And so for me, it's what am I doing? And if I'm doing the things that are in line with that, I'm great. And that's all I choose to do. Yeah. You say somewhere every single day you are being someone and that someone is also becoming someone. It's a continuous simultaneous cycle

that has always been and will always be present within you. It shows up in your big and consistent actions on a daily basis. So who are you being and becoming right now? Anthony, I am being a good dad, a good husband, a good business owner. Like I'm in like really in the background, I'm seeing these little things take up from my team going through things of, we have a bunch of people we serve that are speakers that want to be on stage serving people. And I have a really good system I teach them with. And I also work with like the Amazons of the world, right? So my being every day is, am I making sure I communicate at a pace that they need? Am I serving what I'm supposed to? Am I being gracious when people need it from me?

And as you do that, you become the things you do because you are what you do. And so for me, the cool thing is, not the best thing sometimes also, is you can be somebody different today and become somebody different tomorrow, right? If I decide to have that one single choice or decision that's kind of off kilter, it's not in line with being gracious, genuine, godly,

then I'm falling away. You never arrive at a place. In my opinion, you're always being. Every day you have actions, you have habits, then I'm falling away. You never arrive at a place. In my opinion, you're always being. Every day you have actions, you have habits, you have things you do, and they will become in a good direction or become in a bad direction. And so my goal is every day to make sure I'm doing things that are in line with the person from yesterday. I'm assuming that yesterday was a good man and he was doing the right things. And for me, I'm stacking days like that. But I do things that are right. And a lot of my work is that whole idea of dark work,

you know, work in the dark, seek a way to the light, but it's also the biblical aspect of what you do in the dark will also come to the light. I think that is the embodiment of the statement. Who you're being is who you become, meaning what you do in the dark will come to the light. There are no conversations. There's no things like no one could walk into my house or my life anywhere and go, oh, you think you're great, but I know this about you. I live my life so clean and so down in because I never want that moment to happen. I never want that moment to happen for my children at any point in time. I never want to have that moment happen when I step in front of my God later on in life. And so my active being is always in line with who I choose to

become in the future, which is a good dad, a good husband, a good teacher, coach, speaker, whatever it might be. But those are daily things I do. And here's the thing. In the beginning, like when I was leaving, you know, it's in that window of my dark times post, I don't know if I talked about it, but post NFL, that wasn't the guy I was. I was not the best human. I wasn't a good father. I wasn't a good husband. I wasn't a great business owner. But that kind of understanding those moments and me desiring to be somebody new, I started doing different things, being better to become better. And so now it's staying in that same flow. And it was hard at first. As you know, you navigate an

addiction. It's hard at first, right? And there's days where it's harder than others, even way beyond it. But after a while, you get into such a good flow and you love the person you become and you have this genuine joy for you and you don't want to let yourself down that it's hard not to do those things. Like it's hard in the beginning, but eventually it's hard not to do it. And it becomes what I call effortless effort. Like you're given the effort, right? But it just feels effortless borderline. And people go, how are you so, I'm not, I didn't wake up today like that. I've just been building into that over time the same way you can. It's hard at first, eventually it's hard not to do. Yeah. I love that idea of effortless effort. I'm doing this project

on a great spiritual book called the Tao Te Ching. And so much of that book is focused on that very idea that the effortless effort you know which sounds like a paradox but there is a way in which it is possible you know and some of this i think is what you're getting at with identity right is that at a certain point your actions are going to flow out of your identity right and if your identity as you've said is to be all these different things then more effort, those positive things emerge out of that. Yeah, it really is. Because we already in this current moment are operating from an identity that feels effortless. You may not think it, but you are, essentially your identity is who

you are when you're not thinking about who you are. That's how I frame it. It's your instinctual, natural daily flow. We have habits, we have action. Now for some people, they're pretty low level. They struggle to get out of bed and they kind of putz themselves around, like they just drag butt everywhere, right? But for them, it's borderline emotionally effortless. They just do that and the outcome kind of sucks. And for some people you go, how do you get done in a single day when it takes me a week to do? And an interesting thing is emotionally and effort-wise, it feels the same for both people. But one person has such a high output. And I go,

what's just like lifting weights? If I go into the weight room and I can't lift a hundred pounds because I'm too weak and I can't lift it, right? Well, over time, if I keep going to the weight room, I get stronger, I get stronger, I get stronger. And one day, a hundred pounds I'm warming up with. Now, if you didn't go to the weight room and you tried 100 pounds, couldn't lift it, and you look at it, you go, this person's, you're great. How'd you do it? You must have been born like this. No, I just stayed in the weight room. You left the weight room. I stayed here and I built up to 100. For now, yes, that's my warmup weight. And so all you're looking at is this person going like, it feels the same for me to move a hundred pounds as for you to move five pounds. I just kept building my strength. Yep. Yep. And I think that's such a key learning and insight, which is because we often will

suddenly compare ourselves with somebody who is way ahead of us and assume that they're there because there's something very different about who they are. And in a way, there is in that they've grown an identity over time, but it's this fixed versus growth mindset, right? I can't lift a hundred pounds, so I'm weak and I'll never be able to lift a hundred pounds versus, well, if I actually want to lift a hundred pounds, there's a path there, right? I'm going to have to figure out the intelligent path for me. And, you know, if I want to get stronger, it's not going to be the same path that Anthony's going to take because you and I have very different body types. I mean, all that kind of stuff, but there's always a road

forward there. Yeah. That's a cool thing. There always is a road forward that this is a matter of, are you willing to take it? Yeah. That I think becomes the age old thing that people need to uncover is if you want something more, you have to become somebody more and becoming someone more. It is an interesting journey. It is difficult. It is hard, but it's so rewarding when you do it because the cool thing is you never go back. And it in fact feels just as easy to live that life. It's not easier than it does to live your current life of mediocrity. Yeah. But you have to go through a phase of the hardships and the difficulty, but most aren't willing to do it. Is there something you can point to that makes people more likely to be able to do that,

to choose to upgrade their identity, to upgrade their life versus the people who don't choose that? Because on some level, everybody has some degree of wanting to self-actualize and be better and right. So that that's there, but some people are much more able to make it happen than other people. And I'm always curious. It's the same question I ask myself all the time. Like, why do some people get sober and others don't? I don't know that there's a really good one answer. Right. But I'm curious if, if there's anything that you've seen or things that make people more likely or give people a better chance. any things you've seen or things that make people more likely or give people a better chance?

I think there's like a window between like faith and fear. So some people will fear something so much they want to run away from it, right? It's the run away from pain, run towards pleasure kind of thing. And there's this interesting story I heard from a woman who was golfing. I can't think of her name, but she told me a story about this guy who goes up to a farmer. And the farmer, he's trying to get directions from the farmer.. The farmer's on this little thing here. The guy needs to get to the gas station. He has a dog next to him. He walks up to him. Hey, sir, how do I get to the corner store? He hears this noise and doesn't know where it comes from. The farmer goes, you're going to go down this road right here. The guy goes, hold on. Do you hear that noise? He goes, yeah. What noise? It was that moaning thing. I asked the dog. He goes, yeah, what noise? It was that kind of like moaning thing.

I was, oh, that's the dog. He goes, well, why is the dog making the noise? Oh, he's sitting on a nail. So why doesn't he move? He goes, it don't hurt him bad enough. And so a lot of people are living in a life where they just won't move. They'll complain, they'll moan and groan,

but it doesn't hurt them bad enough. And so I think one of the things is like when the fear or the pain gets enough, we move. For most people, they'll finally move. And that's what I think is a catalyst. For me, it was, I was a foster kid and I go, I don't want to experience this because most people go,

and how'd you believe that you were going to become an NFL athlete? And I go, I didn't believe that. Are you kidding me? I was a foster kid. Here's what I did believe. I had a belief. I believed if nothing changed the place I was going,

I didn't want to end up. That was the belief. That was the genuine 15 years old. I'm like, I don't want to go where this train's heading. That was a belief. The other side of it is you start looking at the guys like the Michael Phelps and Kobe Bryants and these people that are like, they will just subject themselves to years of torture. And you go, how do you do that? Faith. Faith is believing in the unseen. And when you believe in the unseen at that depth, you'll sacrifice for it. That's why people will, as athletes or as business owners, they'll create something. Everybody goes, you're crazy. You want to go to the moon? You want to go to space? Elon, what are you talking about? He had this faith when it was possible that you couldn't see, but he could see. And the belief drives your actions in ways that the regular world would say you're a

crazy person. And then so lo and behold, they make it, right? So I think there's a part where what drives you, there's going to be a fear or pain that you finally becomes enough and you get out of that. You want to run away from it. Or it's a faith that is a belief beyond what people can see that you will subject yourself to craziness to accomplish. That makes sense. It's sort of the being pushed or being pulled kind of idea, right?

You're being pushed by your pain or you're being pulled by a vision. It's two ways. And my experience is a blend of those energies is kind of necessary. You know, it's like I don't seem to get by on just one of them. Although the further I get, the better my life gets, the more I have to rely on the being pulled, right? Because the pushing doesn't work as well because things are pretty good. Yeah, I get it. That's the other hard part too, is you go, well, is it worth the sacrifice when things are pretty good? And then my brain goes to, is it going to be this good in the future? Yeah. And I go, the future Anthony, I've always

noticed he arrives at a situation that is an opportunity and either has what he needs for it or he doesn't. And then I go back to the following level of the day. Can I keep lifting the same weight or do I need to continuously trying to get stronger? Because you can maintain the same strength, but at some point I may be asked to go run a race or do something. And if I haven't been preparing for that strength wise and I'm not able to compete properly. Like I be asked to go run a race or do something. And if I haven't been preparing for that strength-wise, then I'm not going to be able to compete properly. I get asked to go play flag football every once in a while. I'm 40 this year. And these guys are young, 25-year-old, hey, Trunks, you want to come play flag football? And I go, gosh, there were times they'd ask and I'd be like, I can't. I haven't been training for it. I've not been lifting and running at all.

Whereas I got a call two days ago. He's like, hey, can you come out here September 17th and come run with the guys? I'm like, yeah, because I've been lifting and preparing for it. Did I know I was preparing for that? No, but I've been getting it in. I'm ready for that moment when it comes. Life's the same way. There'll be an opportunity that comes. And if I have the financials or if I have the time or I have the notoriety or I have the team and infrastructure, I can take advantage of it. But it's only because I've been consistently building for that. I got normalized to growing my strength over time, if we call it. Yeah. There's a meditation teacher that I've had who says, practice when you can for the times you can't. Meaning like build this muscle of relating to your experience in a particular way while it's easier because the day will come where you're forced to relate to something very, very difficult. And if you haven't been preparing, you're not going to have what you need at that moment. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Is that what I'm saying? Yeah. You won't have what you need when you need. Yep. Yep. So, all right. Final question. What is a fear you're currently trying to overcome?

Right now, a fear I'm trying to overcome. Oh, I got one. I'm in a situation of scaling a business. The way I look at scaling means you're doing pretty well. Things are good at the system level they are. But then to scale means you take on more responsibility, more goes out. The opportunity is high, but the financial risk with it is a team risk where there's more moving parts you have to keep in place to reach that level. So we have like this speaking coaching business that we're like, we can scale, we can add more revenue or sorry, add more ad spend to generate more calls. It'll add more revenue, but that means more coaches. That means more teaching. That means more people who experience this thing in a good or bad way. I can have a hundred new people join, but if a hundred people join and a

hundred hate it, that's not a good join, right? Right. So how to make sure they all have an amazing experience. And so there's a fear going, do I want to, do I want to add spend? Can I keep this level of income and feel good about it? And I go, yeah, I would. But why am I staying there? Is it because I'm comfortable? Is it because it's, and I realize it's because there's a fear of going further and, you know, putting more money out, maybe it doesn't work out or people getting bothered or, you know, not having a great experience or me looking bad than that or hurting people's lives because they invest at a level that we don't deliver. And I go, that's not a reason not to scale. It's a reason to scale because it allows me to go, I'm being faced with an opportunity, opportunity to improve myself, to improve my team. And here's what most people don't see that I try

to see. There's a level beyond that level. There's one beyond that that I can't see that's going to be so amazing and so beautiful. But if I don't get to this next level and push into it, I'll never even know that one exists. It'll pass me by. Yeah. And so that's the one I'm afraid of missing out on. So I go, we got to scale. So when I say these things are my team sending messages back and forth in the background, that's an immediate discussion. Like do we double the ad spend, which means double the calls, double the team for sales conversations and onboarding. And I got to bring more people in. There's a big conversation there and I go, let's do it. Yeah. It's going to be hard. We know it's going to be hard. But like you said, we go in with the obvious understanding. It's inevitably going to be difficult. It'll force me to grow, which I'm looking forward to. It won't be beautiful, but I'm going to love the day.

looking forward to. It won't be beautiful, but I'm going to love the day. I'm going to enjoy the process. I'm going to do the steps. I'm going to enjoy all of it, even if it's not fun now, because I know it'll deliver something greater later. Beautiful. Well, Anthony, thanks so much for coming on. I've really enjoyed this conversation. I enjoy your work. We'll have links in the show notes to where people can find your work, your podcast, your book, all that good stuff. So thank you so much for coming on. Pleasure. Thanks for having me. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits.

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