When Reality Hits with Jax and Brittany - Jax Speaks Out w/ Scott Kaufman

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

In his first episode since leaving an in-patient treatment facility and revealing his bipolar disorder diagnosis, Jax sits down with his friend and life coach Scott Kaufman to talk about his experience.  Follow Scott! @scott_thebridge Check out our great sponsors!! Nurture Life: Looking for a meal subscription for babies and kids? Head to NurtureLife.com and use code REALITY for 55% off your first order. G-Defy: Need comfy shoes? Visit GDefy.com and use code REALITYHITS for $20 off your order of $100 or more Knix: The #1 Leakproof brand in North America! Go to Knix.com/reality for 15% percent off! Progressive: Quote at Progressive.com to join over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey guys, welcome back to When Reality Hits with Jacks and Brittany. Okay, well, it's been a minute since I've been here. A lot has gone on. You know, it's, well, I guess let's just get into it. Yeah, a lot is going on. That's for sure. I mean, everyone listening, I'm sure I've heard already that, you know, back in July, I checked myself into a mental health facility.

I was in an inpatient facility for about 30 days. It was a very, very scary step for me, but it really, really needed to happen. It's something I've been holding it on to for many, many years. Gosh, this is going to be tough to say. So I was in the inpatient facility for 30 days, and I'm sure we can all relate. It's all something that we have all gone through. I knew something wasn't right with me. and I was really, really scared to find out really what it was.

I've known for years that there's been something wrong, but I just kind of just didn't want to know. And, well, during my stay, I kind of found out a lot about myself. You know, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I now have a little bit better understanding of my mental health struggles. I've been put on some serious medication that's actually been helping me out a lot. And, you know, in time, I'll definitely speak more about it openly. But right now I kind of just need to, you know, deal with this process.

I'm doing a lot of, you know, reading up on it. and research on it because this is a serious, serious disorder. And I know a lot of people are out there are going through this kind of thing. And, you know, I want to hear from other people. I want to talk to other people about it and how they deal with it. However, though, I will touch on a few things

to give more context of what my stay at the facility kind of looked like because people are asking. There's a lot of speculation online. So at the facility, I was allowed to have my phone during specific hours when I wasn't in therapy. My therapies were approximately seven hours a day, and I was allowed outside the facility for like an hour each day. So I'd go to the gym. I was accompanied by like a nurse, and yeah, I would go to Crunch every single day, probably, I think, for like an hour.

A driver from the facility took me and chaperone me the whole time. But every facility has different, different rules. And this one allowed me to, like I said, use my phone when I wasn't in therapy. So those 30 days were an incredible experience. My days were very, very structured. I realized that's something I really needed in my life, you know, some structure. I woke up every morning. I had four to five eggs for breakfast.

I had some oatmeal. Took my medication. I was at the gym by 8 o'clock. And then I would be back, you know, around 9, 30, 10 o'clock for my therapy sessions. And I would do that usually for about seven hours, you know. So, but just because I went to the facility for 30 days definitely doesn't mean I'm coming out cured or changed man by any means. Although I wish it did work that way, I will not say I'm a work in progress because I think we can all agree. I've said that online way too many times.

However, I am committed to trying to be a better version than I was yesterday. Small steps, trying to use coping skills. I was taught in therapy, trying to get through the day. Okay, so let's get into this. I know that Brittany addressed our current situation on last week's podcast. It's been a really, really, really rough week. anyone that has gone through a divorce will understand how difficult this is. Brittany did file for divorce.

I understand why she did, and I agree that this is the right decision for our family. I will always love and care for Brittany. I mean, she's the mother of my beautiful son. All I want for us is to be amical co-parents and even hopefully really, really good friends one day. I know I'm an amazing father, and I know that I will make an excellent ex-husband. So that's all I'm going to say about this right now. And that's that. All right, let's get started with today's podcast.

Today I have Scott Kaufman here. He's a coach, mentor, and works with various people who are committed to growth. We met through my buddy, Jesse. He's worked with Jesse through his divorce. Scott, how you doing? I'm great, man. Thank you for having me. Give me a little bit of what you do.

So I work with people in identifying and working with their unconscious patterning. I work with the universal laws of the universe. The things that guide us that maybe we don't recognize are at play. The understanding of the laws of attraction, the laws of vibration, understanding the laws of impermanence. These are really important as you're going through your process to understand how to let things go, how to embrace new things, how to create space.

When you're dealing with something like you're dealing with, presence is really an important thing. Learning how to get present at the drop of a hat, learning how to meditate, learning how to understand that you're the creator of your thoughts and that the world's not happening to you, but you're actually creating your life. And it's really important when you're dealing with

the feeling of when you're getting amped up, as you have been diagnosed bipolar, how to ground yourself, how to create situations where you're being held accountable, understanding that you can only grow as tall as your roots grow down. And so working on growing your roots down is really important and being held accountable by people who really care about you and are actually working towards your best,

as you are then working towards their best, is really a valuable thing. And a lot of people just don't know about it. They don't know that these things exist. I've always known there was something wrong with me. Like I've always known, But I'm one of those guys, I'm like, like your typical guy. You know, I don't want to go to the doctor.

I don't want to know what's wrong with me. I know there was something there, but I just didn't want to know. And I think, I mean, it was always like, I could be depressed. I could be sad. I could be bipolar. I could just be crazy. You know, I knew I was a little bit of all these. And I think, you know, I always told myself, yes, I'm going to go, I'm going to get checked

or I'm going to get worked on. And then I let a couple weeks would go by. Then I'd have an episode. And then I'd be fine for a couple weeks. And I have another episode. And I can't get in. to too much, you know, what's been going on lately, but it's been happening a lot more where my anger. My anger is a huge, huge thing for me. I just spiral. And it's, and it's, unfortunately,

it's been taking a toll on my marriage. And that's obviously why we've come to what, you know, has happened here. I just have these anger issues. And it's not even about my wife. That's the, that's the crazy part. It's just whoever's in the line of fire. And actually, well, I mean, And unfortunately, you know, my wife is the one that I come home to every night, you know, so if something angers me throughout the day, whether I go to the grocery store or whether I go to, you know, to my bar and something's not happening or I just get angered. I don't deal with it right then and there. I take it home with me and then I take it out on my wife.

And it has nothing to do with her. You know, all the arguments that we usually have, have 90% of them have nothing to do with her. I'm angered about other things going on in my life and I take it on on her. And, you know, unfortunately, she's had enough. And I don't blame her at all. I mean, I can't believe she's been with me this long as it that we've stayed. To be honest, I mean, you know, and I, to be honest, I, and when she decided to leave, I was

kind of in shock. I shouldn't have been in shock, but I was in shock. She's like, I got an Airbnb. I'm out of here. And I'm like, okay. And then people were coming at me, like, why did you leave? Like, she got an Airbnb and just took off. I had no idea she was even doing this.

So people were kind of giving me a hard time about that. Like, why didn't you give her the house? I definitely would have. and now I have. I moved out. Yeah, so I moved out, got my own place, which is weird. I haven't lived on my own in 10 years. But I'm just still, like you said, and I've been working with you.

I just started working with you actually. And you worked with my friend Jesse and you have filmed on our show. And it was really eye-opening. Man, I got really emotional. I think I've cried more in the last eight months than I've ever cried in my life. And it's tough. It's important that we recognize that people are only ever operating from the state of consciousness that they're employing. So when you're angry, you're operating from that place. But if Brittany's not operating from that place, it can be really jarring. Right. She's not an angry

person. That's not her nature. Right. So we're like ying and yang. And I'm just so, go, go, and do this, do that. And she's very chill and relaxed. I think she just just had enough. enough. And I don't, like I said, I don't know if it's the pressures of what I do for a living. It's gotten worse over the last, I would say, since I left the show Vanderpump rules. And then obviously COVID happened. My wife was pregnant, lost my job. All these pressures, you know, then I had resentment towards her. I didn't know what we're going to do financially. And then, you know, I lost my mother and my father at the same time. My mother's still alive, but I haven't spoken to her since my father's funeral.

I grew up in a, in a, my childhood was, it was nice on the outside, but looking back, my parents were, they went at each other a lot. They went and then they hit it by taking us places or buying us stuff. So, you know, yeah, I think I grew up in a household that was very, a lot of tension, a lot of anger. So anger is an unconscious pattern. That's my drug. My drug of choice is anger. Like that's, it gets you high. It gets me hot.

Yeah. I thrive in chaos. Well, gets you high. It gets me high, gets me hot, gets me to all these. Like, I need the chaos. It, I don't know if I need it, but when I'm in it, I hate it, but I crave it. And I self-sabotaged. Every time things are going well, I'm like, something's going to happen.

I'm going to have to sabotage those things that shouldn't be going this well. Why do I do that? Well, because I don't know that you have ever set up the question in your mind of what do you, what do you want to create your life to be? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I haven't been happy.

The last time I was happy was when my son was born. That's incredibly scary to me. That was the last time I was happy. And then before that, couldn't remember. But most people that aren't doing a lot of work on themselves don't live in the question of, if I could have it all my way, how would I create my life? Because a lot of, most of us live by the understanding that life is happening to us and we're just reacting to life as it happens to us.

I'm going through the, I'm just going through it. Right. I'm just going through the motion. But remember, Jax, you're writing the story. You're writing the story. So the responsibility ends up lying on you. This doesn't make you wrong. When you said something's wrong with me because I'm bipolar, that's not the truth.

The truth is that you have a different opportunity than other people do because you're faced with different challenges that other people have. And you get to overcome that. And because of the situation you're in, you get to be a model of how to work through that. So it's not a thing, it's not something's wrong with you. It's very easy to fall into a victim place when you get a diagnosis of something that's pathological. That's one thing I don't want to do. I'm not trying to play the victim here.

I'm really not. And I don't want to come off that way. I'm just, I've been this way for a very long time. And I'm finally just learning how to deal with it, learning how to be in the right medication. But like I said, at 45 years old, I'm learning new tools at this age, this part of my life. It's tough. It's tough to restructure to rebuild who I am. So I have this house.

this frame, I think we talked about it, like, I'm rebuilding it. And I'm learning different steps. I'm learning different, I got like this new brand new tool belt. That's when I went to therapy. It's my thing. I went to Home Depot and I got all these brand new tools. And now I have to use them. And it's tough.

Like I'm going through each day trying to figure out, okay, what did I learn in therapy? What steps should I take here? Because I'm still having those triggers. I know I keep saying I'm a working progress. That's the running joke with me. I'm a work in progress. I'm always going to have the scaffolding around me. I'm always going to have that.

I'm aware of that. I'm always going to have issues. We all are. For lack of a better word, there's nobody that you've ever met that doesn't have a little war going on inside of them that they're battling. What if you looked at the tools,

the Home Depot tools, as toys that you get to play with? Rather than I have to. But it's overwhelming. Because there's so many things. Like when I went to therapy, I realized, yes, I went in and I'm saying, I have anger issues,

but I'm like, wow, I have this problem. I have this problem. Like, wow, I do this too, and I do this. Now I have all these things. I'm like, man, I'm not a good person. Like, I'm, I just don't think I'm a good person. I'm just not.

I think I have a good heart. I think that, you know, I'll go out of my way for people, but man, I'm, I'm a shitty person. You have, you have a lot of deep-rooted trauma, dude. And there's no such thing as a bad person. And from a, from a highly conscious place, there's almost no such thing as a problem. There's a situation, and you have a situation, and your job is to now address that situation. It's not, if you look at it as a problem, then you're not going to want to address it.

You're going to be in resistance to addressing it anyway because it has a, it has a negativity. Right. It's like we fight. If I said to you, you have to be at work at 10. Okay. There's a negative connotation and I have to be at work at 10 because you're obligated to be there. And you're going to resist that because you're an angry dude. Right. So you're going to be like, fuck that. I'm, I don't want to be there at 10. Right. Fuck that. Okay. Okay, we're all going to be meeting at 10. You in? Sounds a little different. Yeah. Right? Well, this is the dialogue that you get to change inside of you. You get to become a camp counselor to yourself. Right. As opposed to a bad manager, which is what you are now. You're a mean manager to yourself.

I just, yeah, I'm mean. I'm angry. I wake up angry and I've already set myself because in my ways in my head, I wake up that way and I'm going to have a bad day. And if you tell yourself something, then that's what's going to happen. Well, and also, let's be fair to you for just a moment. You operate in a world where everybody has a microscope, a telescope, a telescope, and a looking glass on you. and they've pathologized you as the bad guy. I've been the bad guy, you know, quote unquote villain. Right. For a very, very long time. Right. You know, that's how I made my living.

Uh-huh. And it's, you know, I've been successful at it, but I've also been punished for it. Well, you identify as it. You forgot to identify as Jack's. You identify as Jack. I don't know who that person is anymore. Okay. So why don't we go on a mission, a fun mission to learn who that is, the new you,

create a little neuroplasticity, start to change some belief systems. and begin a new process of, you know what if I wasn't the villain? What if there was a redemption story? I just don't feel like anybody would like me. Who cares? What if you liked you? Yeah, I just, I'm so, I've said this to you before. I'm so used to being the lead singer of the band.

And that's kind of what I say. I would love to be the backup dancer, you know, the bass player, the triangle guy. I just, I'm tired of being that. I always make a joke. I'm tired of being the number one guy. I was, it's, I was to say, because I feel like if I'm not that person, then I feel like people will fall off and they won't. Like, I feel like I have to be the life of the party all the time and it's exhausting. Jacks, I want to tell you something.

There's no room that you go into that eventually you're not going to end up at the top of the room. That's who you are. Accept that. Yeah. Don't fight that. I was like, I just wish I could just sit back and not say anything. It doesn't matter. It's an energy.

An alpha is an energy and an alpha almost always comes from trauma. When you look at the alphas of the world, I can go point to a traumatic experience that put them in that place. Now, the thing is, is that you're operating from I want to be happy, which means that you are looking for external validation and gratification. So that looks like people telling you that you're good, people telling you that you're bad, people telling you that you're this, going to the bar and having conversations that people are like, oh yeah, I know that guy, that guy's famous, right? This is external validation. Alcohol is an external validation. It's outside coming in. The thing about external validation and using that to create happiness is that it can always be taken away from you.

So you actually are living in the fear of losing it, not even the joy of having it. Right. So hope, right? The opposite of hope is anxiety. Hope is a frontward projecting thing, right? I hope this will happen. But underneath that is, I'm scared it won't. you see that yeah okay so your job now the new jacks would be to cultivate joy which is a context

which is a way of being not happiness because if you continue down this road of happiness you're going to be living in fear now the two um root feelings the primary feelings of anger are sadness and fear so when you look when i see someone who's angry my question is why are they so sad or why are they so scared and so that That's the work, is getting vulnerable and honest with why are you, Jack, so sad and so scared? Because that's where this is coming from. And I, on paper, I got it all. I had a beautiful home, beautiful wife, beautiful child, money in the bank, cars.

I look like I have it all. I had my dream home. My first house I ever bought was my dream home. I had it all. And I was never satisfied. I'm always looking for the next best thing. I'm never living in the moment. I'm never at peace with myself.

I'm never, and then, you know, I never wanted to do anything. Like, we would, like, that's the thing with external. I just couldn't fucking be happening. That's the thing with external validation. What ends up happening is, is you buy a dream home. And then you have the dream home for like two or three years. And everybody comes over and you're like, oh, look at my dog. Yeah. That's what I did.

I love having people over. Look at what I have. I barbecue. Look at my place. Yeah. I want to show it off. But three years later, it gets boring. It gets boring.

And then you got to add a pool. And then you have a pool. And then three years later. And then you got to get the car. And then you got to get the back house. Yeah. Right. Now I'm tired.

It's never ending. It's never ending. And then this is what happened to my marriage. Okay, it's never ending. Now what? Now what? Okay, we got the beautiful home. We got the marriage.

We got the kid. And now I'm not content. And now I'm going back to be the sad again. Because you're going back. Because you're chasing dopamine. What am I chasing? You're chasing. You're chasing dopamine.

You're chasing dopamine. Because you're not cultivating joy from the inside out. Real joy is an inside out job. Happiness, which is an outside in job. So you can have all the cars in the world. How many, How many people you've seen, people in your position, celebrity people have everything,

and they walk around, and you can just look at their face and be like, that guy hates his life. Yeah, a lot. A lot. And before I got into this world of reality TV, I mean, I was just looking at celebrities and this. I'm like, how could that guy be depressed?

Or how'd that guy kill himself? Or how does that guy look like that? And now I'm nowhere near those guys, you know, but I'm on that same platform. Yeah. And now I'm like, I get it. I fucking get it. Like, it's misery.

The more you have, the worse it is. It really is. I make fun. I talked to my buddy Tom Schwartz, and Tom Sandoval all the time, and we used to all live together in an apartment, living paycheck to paycheck, sleeping out of college.

I was happier having nothing. I was sleeping out of my truck at one point. Because you had a dream. And I had so much, dude. I'd say this all the time. I'm like, God, we were so much happier. I mean, yes, we have it all.

We're very grateful, and I can do whatever I want. I can go wherever I want. But fuck, I was just, weren't we happier when we didn't know what we were going to eat for dinner? We had to go to the dollar menu at McDonald's because we couldn't afford that we had to work

and we couldn't go on or anywhere of holidays because we had to work and like, yeah, life was tough. Yeah. But fuck, we were happy. Like, we were happy people. Because being famous can miserable. Because being famous can suck. Yeah, but I didn't know what else I wanted to do with my life.

It sucks. But I didn't know. Like, all my friends knew out of high school, they wanted to go in finance. They wanted to be in business. They wanted this. I didn't know what the fuck I wanted. I was the one that left.

I didn't stay home and went to college and got the kids and went to the nine to five. I didn't do that. It wasn't for me. So I was traveling and I lived in Europe for a while. I went to Australia, went to Miami, New York, trying to figure out what the fuck I wanted to do. And then I fell into this,

if I was modeling for a while, then I fell into this world, I went through a gap where I bartended for a little bit and trying to make, now what? I'm 29 years old. I didn't finish college. What the fuck am I going to do? What am I going to do?

And then the show came. And then I was like, well, here's an opportunity. And here we are, what, you know, 12, 15 years later. And I'm in it. And I'm doing very well. And I'm very blessed. And I'm, you know, but God,

I'm like, is this, is this it? The thing about, well, the thing about getting a platform, which is really what you've done. Yeah, it's, it's been an amazing platform. It's been amazing. And I'm trying to play up for me. I don't want to say that. But now, now that you have this platform, the question is, what are you going to do with it?

It's been doing you. It's been doing you. It's been doing me. Yeah, it's been doing me. But I really, after going to this facility and talking with you, I want to change that. I kind of want to go into, like, helping others and finding more about, the disorder that I have and maybe, you know, taking a different path and maybe helping people that are younger going through this so they don't have to deal with this and figure out what they

have at 45 years old, finding out what they have at 30 or 20 or whatever and saying, hey, try this instead so you don't end up like me at 45, you know? Real easy to say real hard to implement. It is hard, but it makes me feel good. Like talking about this, having you here, talking with you, like it really makes my day. And it's emotional and I like it. And I like to cry and I like to feel this way. because I've never done it.

I grew up in a world where men don't cry. We don't face our problems. Like I said, we talked about this earlier. Mental health, it hasn't really been talked about, especially for men, especially for men until the last five years. In my life, we just don't, you grew up at the same time.

We did not talk about it. My dad said, shut the fuck up, deal with it, move on. Like, it just wasn't, not because my dad was a bad person. It was figured out. His father was to death. And I want to break that cycle

because I do not want my son to grow up in that world. I want him to be like, dad, I have an issue. I want to talk about it. But we didn't do that. We got to break that. And I want to be the first to do that in my family. Okay.

So this is how you heal generational trauma. So my dad was a lawyer and he was miserable. And he told me if you ever go to law school, I will disinherit you. You're out. And so I ended up, for the similar thing, I had a gift of sales and I had a gift of connecting with people. So I ended up working at a car dealership. And I was just killing it.

Yeah. And I was the most miserable person you could have ever imagined. There are jokes. People used to call me Diablo because I was so miserable and I was taking it out on everybody I could. And, you know, I was like a top guy in the world or whatever it was. It was a big deal in the turn. But I was so miserable that I had a business partner and I had to leave, I had to leave the office that we shared and sit in basically a closet so that I wouldn't be around the energy of being in a car dealership. because as I broke out of the unconscious pattern, I became more sensitive to the energy around me.

And I started to recognize that. Eventually, I leave the car dealership during COVID and I start coaching. And I had been working towards it for a long time. I had been on a really crazy journey because I had a headache condition and I was really close to hurting myself. And I got into a lot of deep meditative psychedelic work. And I just started to focus on what's really important. and the question started to show up what's really important. Did, was there, did you find this out yourself?

Did you have a moment? Was there, was there some kind of, obviously, was there, was there an aha moment? Was it like, did somebody say something to you? Or did, like, did you just say, I can't do this anymore? Well, I actually, did something happen? Like, was there something that happened like me? Like, I actually got, no, I actually got laid off. It was interesting because my partner and I sold like an ungodly number of cars a month,

but I sold more of the cars and he sold cars for more money. So, and it was right at the beginning of, COVID and everybody kind of knew, like, there's going to be no cars for a year. Right. So they're like, we're going to keep him. Because ultimately, together, we cost a lot of money for the dealership to keep employed. So they laid me off. And then, you know, it was back and forth and there was a back and forth and all the things.

And I took six months. And I really, I really went on like a journey. Yeah. Like a real journey. And I would go and I would go on a hike every day. And then I would go and I would go to the driving range. And I would just hit golf balls. And I would get golf balls until my hands bled.

Can I see? Were you married at this time? Yes. And did your wife know you were going through this? And did you have to set her aside and be like, listen, I'm going through something? Be patient with me? She was completely supportive. Because she also saw how miserable I was and that I was, basically.

Was it causing some friction in your marriage? Of course. How could it not? Right. But what ended up happening is when this happened, I had a paradigm shift. And the paradigm shift was I was working when I was at, at the dealership, I was working for status and money. Right.

That was my driving for. That's every man's. That's every man's driving. Until this started to happen, and it started to happen years before, and it started to change into impact and scope of impact. So how can I make an impact in the world and how big of an impact can I make? And when it went to impact and scope of impact, and then I had faith that the money and status would come if it was to comment, if it wouldn't, it wouldn't.

So there's a concept that was written in the Bhagavad Gita, which is the pre-Hindu Bible. Basically, it literally is a guidebook for life, how to live your life. And there's a concept called karma yoga. And karma yoga basically means do what you're going to do to the absolute best of your ability with no attention on results, and the results will come and they'll be what they are. And if you operate from that place, you will always end up in a good place. that's how that's that's that's basically the guide to the working man and if you because if you are attached to status and income aren't you a slave to status and income yes but yes it's just we

live we live in Hollywood right we live in a world where it's just just it's fast it's just everyone thrives on money and success and that's that's what's ingrained in our head how's that how's that working out it's look at me it's not it's not just you look at that we thought that for so long. That's that's the status. Making a lot of money, being successful, that's the status symbol. And that's how you're looked at. And then now you get there and then you're like, this is not what I fucking want anymore. Like this is, this is misery. This is absolute misery. But why does everybody want this? Well, because here's, here's the interesting thing. So my, my attention is status or is, is income and scope of income. I'm now sitting here with you. Yeah.

With how many, however many hundreds of thousands of people are going to be watching and listening to this thing. Right. Okay. How's it working out? I mean we're making it we're making it work I think this is the first time I've done a podcast where I'm truly enjoying myself too we're making it work and I'm happy to I'm really really happy to be here now I come in and I talk about stuff on TV and whatever whatever but I feel like we're actually ever since I don't know if it's you know the world's coming together I don't if it's a sign for my father but I feel like I feel good I feel good when I talk to you I feel good when I we talk about these problems these things and I think more men need to talk about stuff like this yeah you know it's there's a shift there's a huge shift there's a huge shift you I feel you shift going on, I think, in the world. The world's a different place right now. It's very hard to live here. It's very hard to be on this planet. The world's very small with social media, the way the world is. There's more catastrophic events that happened in the last five years than ever in the world, which creates a lot of pressure. Huh? Sure. Pretty wild. Yeah. I mean, we're constantly dealing with every week politics, you know, how the world is run. It's just everybody at each other. The country's

50-50 divided. I mean, we could go to war at any time. It's a really stressful time. All this is going on. But all while it's the best time in the history of the world to be alive. You don't have to cook. You don't have to hunt. You don't have to do anything. But you've got to make money to have all this stuff.

But the actual of living, by the way, this is part of the, part of if not all of the reason this is happening is because life is too convenient and it gives us a lot of time to live in our heads. If we were out hunting for our dinner, would you be thinking about your your problems or would you be out hunting? Will you be out hunting? Well, so that's the point is that when life gets too easy, it's our job to synthesize challenge.

And you do a pretty good job of it, right? You go to the gym. I'm assuming you hit structure. I have to have structure. You have to synthesize challenge. If I derail from my structure, if I don't get up in the morning, make my bed, have my cup of coffee, go to the gym,

take my son to school, you know, check in, check my emails. I have to have that. And if I don't have that, then I go off to my rails. Okay. But then, see, you know, you know the medicine. The medicine is structure and accountability. Yes. But now it's up to you. So when you go into a cold plunge and you do it and you do it for three or four minutes and you're freezing your ass off. Right. And you're like, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. This sucks. I hate this. Yeah. But then you do it. And you come out the other side, you're telling yourself, I can do it. I'm a winner. When you say I'm going to hold myself accountable. and you do it. You're saying, I can do this. I'm a winner. When you, when you don't want to,

it's the thing you don't want to do that you do, the one that the thing that's good for you, they really don't want to do, but then you do it, you begin to, it's called neuroplasticity. What you begin to do is you create new neural pathways. And when you create these neural pathways, that then can lead to my diet changing, can lead to, okay, now I'm going to add the sauna. And now I'm going to add, you know, a morning routine where I do 100 push-ups, 100, air squats and now I've got dopamine for you know the first six hours of the day I recognize that dopamine is now leaking and now I'll go back in the cold plunge I'm going to get myself through to the night right and you just keep doing this and you keep doing this and you keep stacking wins on wins on

wins the thing is is that we become short term we think that this is going to happen in a day right we were talking about Shawshank I'm I I like let's fix it band-aid yeah and the first thing that I've ever worked on in my life the thing that I fully got through was was rehab I wanted to leave the first week. I'm like, this is not fucking for me. My ego is fucking huge. I can barely get through the door. I walked in there. I don't want to fucking be here. I'm not like these people. I don't need this. It took me about three to four days before I like, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm

paying for this. I'm going to, I'm going to let this work. I'm going to, you know, just let my guard down a little bit because I've had problem with therapy before. I had a woman that I dealt with that kind of out of me. I told, I let myself go. I never wanted to go to therapy. I was against it. I'm like, I'm not going to tell a fucking stranger about my fucking problems. Like, no, I'm not going to open up. And I did, got fucked. She went and told everybody my story.

So then I took about nine years off and then obviously all this is going down and I'm like, okay, you need to try therapy. You need to try it. And now I'm opening up and doing it again. But I couldn't allow myself. When I got there, I fucking hated it. And then I just let myself. And then I loved it. I didn't want to fucking leave.

I really, really didn't. I was so sad leaving. I was crying. I'm like, I don't want to go. I was scared to leave those front doors because I had, I got up in the morning. I had my breakfast structure, structure every day. I knew what I was doing. I was reading.

I was in that world. I'm like, God, I know the world. It's going to hit me like a ton of bricks. And I got to go back to filming my show. And I know everybody's mad at me and they're going to come at me. And I was just like, I'm so scared. I'm so scared. And it's, it's been happening, but I've been dealing with it.

But it's, it's scary. It's scary to work on yourself. It's scary to tell people that you have problems. I have a lot of similar when I get unconscious. My patterning is very similar years. I can get very angry. I can get very sharp. Yeah.

I'm, you know, I see things from 30,000 feet. So I can call. I can call you out real easy, real fast for whatever reason. And if people don't see the way you see it, and you get frustrated. I get frustrated with everybody. And even this morning, I'm like, why aren't you getting it? It's like, you know, like, this is how I want it. Why aren't you seeing that?

But then, you know, you start yelling at them. I get aggressive for no fucking reason. And I start yelling at people. Yeah. Sister, I yell. And you don't even realize you're doing it until halfway. And then I have to tell my friends, you know that this is how I am, but don't take it the wrong way. But like even the other day, I was like, just the simple things, going to lunch.

whatever and explaining something on the phone. I'm screaming. And I don't even realize I'm doing that. People were like, do you realize you're screaming and yelling at something that's like, I had to write a check the other day for something. It was just the way it was done. It was wrong. Whatever. I was screaming and yelling. And I'm like, kids in the back yard. I'm like, what the fuck am I doing? So here's the way to look at therapy and here's the way to look at when somebody puts this in front of you. And because I'm, because game recognizes game and I have a very similar unconscious pattern as you do, my wife who's who is

pretty much enlightened in a lot of ways she finds silly metaphors to make me see things that I won't see so we have a daughter who's turning five and we read her books every night just like you do with a kid right so we just so happen to have two green eggs and ham books okay if you ever read green eggs and ham? Of course okay so I'm him you're him right

will you try it no will you try it no Will you try it? No, not in a car, not, nah, not, not, not. And then you finally try it and you're like, well, this is great. Yeah. So when you have people that you trust offer you something that you're like, no, no, no. Think of green eggs and ham. Hey, what if I just gave it a shot here?

I just give it a fair shot. I'm not going to give it a shot so I can prove myself right, that, you know, I'm right because everybody loves to be right. Right. I have to win. I always have to be right. I have to have the last word. How's that working out for it?

It's never worked out. And there's another thing. I don't mean to cut you off. But I went to the gym during therapy, and this is a very small win for me. But you go to the gym, and everybody's in there, there's Agro Alpha male, right? So I was waiting for this machine and the guy cut in front of me. And normally I would fight like, no, I was here, motherfucker. Like, no, no, I'm taking this.

And I would be angry. Even if I got the win, I was angry for the rest of the day. Now I decided to take a different route. No problem, man. I'll go hit something else. And I felt better for doing that. And I talked about it all day. Man, I didn't win.

You brought it to me. I was just like, oh, I'm not changing the world. Like, why am I getting angry over things that are not even worth getting angry about? Like, I get angry over the dumbest shit. Why? Why do I get angry over the gym machine? Or why do I get angry at if I'm at the grocery store and getting angry of that? Why?

And then I make my whole day, even if I win, my whole day is ruined. Of course, because then you have shame. I just because I'm angry about, like, yeah, I got the win, but why did I have to get so angry? And then when I, like, I didn't get that win at the gym, I didn't, I let that guy use the machine. I felt so good about my day. I was like, you know what?

I didn't let that bother me. My day was even better that I got the loss. I don't even want to call a loss, but I just didn't let it bother me. And I was like, man, I wish I can be like this more because I'm tired of having the last, I fucking always have to have the last word or the win. I got a win.

Okay. And it's never worked. So here's something that I tell everybody that I coach. One of the first things I tell them. The most important song that was ever written and was actually a children's song. It was row, row, row your boat gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, life better dream.

So when you, in the morning, if you just think of that song, after what I tell you, you're going to be like, okay, I have a path here. So it's row, row, row your boat, which means always be in action. Okay, makes sense. The boat is what you're living in. That's the construct of what you're living, right?

Gently down the stream. So you're not, you don't have to row hard. You just have to be in action. Right. Okay. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily. So your context, the way you're showing up to the world, is really all that matters. Because it's really all you can affect is the step that's right in front of you and how you're making that step, right?

Merrily, merrily, merrily, and you do it three times. So you're really reinforcing. How am I showing up to this? Because that's your responsibility. It's nobody's responsibility for how you show up to your day and what you're doing other than you. Okay, right? Yeah. Life has been a dream.

We're living in a manifestation of consciousness. Nobody can even prove that this is actually real what we're doing. It's a dream state, right? When you look at it, all you see is the dream state. Right. Okay. So life has been a dream. So why are we taking it so seriously?

You know the quote, don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of alive? We were just talking about National Lampoon, right? Van Wilder. It's a real quote, but it's also Van Wilder, right? So it sticks. Don't take life too seriously. You'll never get out of life.

Yeah. Just think about that. You're headed to a grave. Yeah. What are we doing? Yeah. It's, it's, I know. You're right.

You're right. I just. So let's have some fun. You have a platform. Let's have some fun and help some people. I'm learning that now. And I'm finally, at 45 years old,

I'm finally starting to figure out like, oh, this is what I, I think this is what I want to do. Like I was just, like I said, I'm going through the motions. I'm on a television show. I want a bar.

These are just things that I was like, okay, these are happening. These are jobs. The way to make money. But I'm never, I was never, I'm never happy. I'm really happy talking about this kind of stuff.

Am I good at it? No, but I love talking about it. And I want to be involved to this more. I want to research it more. I want to talk to people more. I really enjoy this. Like I'm even thinking about, you know, starting another podcast about it, like mental health and other men dealing with our issues because it makes me feel good. I'm finally doing something that makes me feel good. Yeah. And I feel like you're in the same boat. You were going through

your situation during COVID and then you got into this. Now, how much of a different person are you now that you took this different road, this route? So you still do the cars thing, right? So I do the cars thing. I broke her car. But now you do this on the side as well. Well, this, so my main job, so I can sell a car in about 12 minutes. Right, you sold me one. In like 12 minutes.

Literally. Yeah, he literally sold me in my truck in, yeah, 10 minutes. Yeah. So that doesn't take much time. So I focus my energy and my efforts on helping people. And then when people call for cars, it's just like, you know, a back and forth. Yeah. It's not, it's not hard.

So that's simple. But you don't, you're not that person anymore. Like, now you, because now you take this. If you knew me 10 years ago and you knew me today and there's before when I started the the real spiritual work when you really got into it. And because of my headaches, I really didn't have a choice. I had to get into psychedelic. It was not it was not because I wanted to and I didn't even really know anything about it. I'd done you know something, right? But I started it. Someone tell you about this? So I actually did a, I was doing a podcast for a minute and I actually

talked to the guy who I read a research thing where there was a guy who had my headaches who was who was pretty close to suicidal the headaches are called suicide headaches and so people get to a point and then he ended up at a music festival he took a bunch of asset at the music festival and he was like shit my headaches are gone and then they came back you know they come back six months or a year later but he had broken the cycle and so I I was kind of at my wits end and my daughter was about one years old and we were in a big big baby group and I ended up talking to a guy and he's like, hey, I know this guy that does these plant medicine ceremonies. You should go. And I said, and I remembered that article. And I was like, okay.

And I went and it took about a year and a half for it to really affect the headaches. But walking into that room, I knew, it's like kind of when you know you're in the right place. Yeah. I was just new and like my dad had always told me like whenever you see a hummingbird, just know the loved one is with you and they're telling you you're on the right track and he had died a couple years before and we had we had had an interesting relationship he was as a young man he was really really hard on me and he was also not there and then he ended up getting addicted to headache pill migraine pills goes to rehab comes out and then when he comes out we have the most special relationship we played golf every Sunday together until the Sunday before he died um and I walk in and

and there's a statue of a hummingbird and then I walk into the house and a woman comes up to me with a pillow and she puts a pillow on my lap and she says, I think you need this and it's a hummingbird. And I'm like, okay, I'm in the right place. Yeah. And in that moment, I felt like the love of the universe, like the real love for the first time ever. And that began a process of me changing how I related to my pain, how I related to myself, how I related to my anger, how I related to my parents, how I related to my life. and it began a process.

And because of the way my headaches worked, I've gone once a month ever since. And if you knew me when I started and you knew me today, you'd be like, A, you physically are a completely different person. And B, you're unrecognizable. And it's not about medicine. It's about being held accountable. It's about getting real with people.

It's about what you're talking about turning you on is the vulnerability. It's about that. It's not about drugs. It's not for me. It's never about alcohol and drugs. There's other stuff that, you know, that's bothering you. That's why we go to that.

Drugs and alcohol are never the problem for anybody. It's, we're going through something and then we use that to, obviously, cope or, you know, numb what we're going through. And that's with me with alcohol. Like, I'm angry, so then I drink. And obviously that makes it more. But I'm not, alcohol has never been the problem for me. Well, and the thing about alcohol and so there's certain drugs that are running from,

you're running from discomfort, right? When people search- Well, yeah, because it numbs it. Like, you don't forget about it, and you become a different person, and then, you know, it's obviously worse the next day, but in that moment, you're fine. Sorry, wrap it up?

Okay. So, yeah, in that moment, you're, you know, you're fine and you're doing, you're okay. And, um, yeah. Well, some of them are running from and some of them are running too. And when you're doing something like, like, like what I do, it's very, it's very clearly and it's,

and it's, uh, it's ritualized in a way that's the other. Yeah. Um, I don't drink. I don't do drugs. I've, I've dab, you know, I've done my shit. Right. Um, I drank for a long time and not, and it was a problem. Yeah.

And my wife brought it to me and I stopped. I, I got, you know, I was, I, I, I mean, we have to wrap up. But there, you know, the thing is, is that when you recognize that you have something to look at, look at it. Yeah. And call other people in to help you. Yeah. We can't do this thing alone.

No, we can't. And, and I'm, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm asking. everybody right now. And I know we're running out of time here. And I'd love to have you back. Maybe we can do like once a month thing or something like that and check in. I would like to get more into relationships next time. Because that's kind of been a huge issue. And I like to rebuild some of them. I like to even, you know, kind of fix things with Brittany. But anyway, I just want to say thank you so much, Scott, for being here. You're helping me out a lot. And thank you for selling you in my truck, by the way. Okay. I love my new truck. Anyway, thank you everybody for listening to this week.

Again, really, really appreciate you guys and having patience with, with Brittany and I going through a hard time right now. But we love you guys, and we'll see you guys next week when reality hits with Jacks and Brittany. Talk to you later.