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Sean Kanan- Karate Kid III, Cobra Kai, The Way of The Cobra · Caught on the Mike...

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Disclaimer.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they reference that under the description is advanced.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: You have seen this note.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Studio City on Amazon Prime.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: But most of my listeners will know my next guest as Mike Barnes, the bad boy of karate, from karate did three and cobra time.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: I now know him as my new friend John.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: John Faden is on the show today.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to talk about his book, The Way of the Cobra.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: And welcome to the Kumite.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: I can't wait for you to hear this.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Ladies and gentlemen, this is Caught on the Mic.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: So earlier this week, I was recording a podcast with UFC veteran Ted Tucker, Elliot Marshall.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: If you Google Elliot Marshall, you've seen all the great fighters that he's coached.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: You hear about his historic UFC career.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: But the thing that came up over and over and over again was how he was inspired to get into martial arts and then later on in life, mixed martial arts, through being a fan of the Karate Kid franchise.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're not going to spend a ton of time talking about that franchise because it's more about the man that is sitting in front of me right now, Sean Kanan, aka the bad boy of karate, Mike Barnes.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Sean, how are you, man?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, brother, how are you?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me on.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: No man, thanks for being here.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: What's the weather like in sunny California today?
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm actually uh down in Palm Springs right now, and it's actually a little bit gray.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it's usually hotter than hell down here.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: I remember last year I took a picture of the TV.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: It was 123.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it's really nice right now.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: I I have never lived on a coast or in an area with really nice weather.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Usually I'm stuck in the Midwest where it's either cold and sub-zero temperatures, or this year it's been unseasonably warm.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: I just want it to feel like Christmas, man.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I get it.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: I went to school in Boston and I grew up in Pennsylvania, so I know cold, which is probably why I'm here.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I tell all my friends you get to pick one.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: Which one do you want to bitch about?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to bitch about the heat or do you want to bitch about the cold?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: But you can't bitch about both.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna kind of take a grazing pass at some of the great work that you've done.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people know you, obviously, as Mike Barnes from Karate Kid 3 and the Cobra Kai franchise that has had a tremendous effect on all of our lives, and as I'm sure it has had a tremendous effect on yours.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: But you've also were a martial artist before that, which has taught you a lot of discipline.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: And currently you are promoting a new book, audio book called Way of the Cobra and a new program.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd like to spend more time talking about that because I'm all about mindset.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about it.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: So uh Way of the Cobra is my third book.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it came out a couple years ago, but it just it just uh dropped on Audible uh two or three days ago.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and then there's a sequel to that book called Welcome to the Kumite.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: And Cobra is an acronym formed from the words character, optimization, balance, respect, and abundance.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: And the book is set up that I'm the sensei, you're in my dojo, the chapters are divided into belts.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a combination of uh philosophy and strategy because one without the other is relatively ineffectual.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's uh it's it's necessary to have the philosophy to be able to properly utilize the strategies, and the strategies without the philosophy to guide them um is kind of like uh you know a wildly slashing katana without the you know the discipline of the samurai uh directing it.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so you know uh I always tell people before you think I'm you know levitating three feet off the ground on top of a mountain in Kathmandu, uh I've learned all of these things and and I guess if you want to say acquired some wisdom, because I'm the kind of guy that has to bang his head against a brick wall a bunch of times.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: And after having done it a bunch of times, um, you know, I I started to get it.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: And um and this is the sum total of what I used to significantly turn my life around uh at a point when I was really struggling.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I want to pass it on and try and help as many people as I can.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of people, specifically in the 35 and up, more so in the 45 and up age range, are kind of spinning their wheels.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, we just we just lived through a pandemic, but there's another pandemic that's kind of happened concurrently, and that's the mental health pandemic that was a result of everything that happened with COVID-19.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: So that has a tremendous effect on how people view their own body image, the routines, uh, the things that they get into.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: I know it it kicked my ass.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like it when the gym shut down, it was like my world ended.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: It was a pathway of personal experience that led you to putting this program and this book together, wasn't it?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I um I turned 50 and uh I was given a star on the Palm Springs Walk of Fame, and there was a big event.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, the mayor spoke.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: Martin Martin Cove from uh the Karate Kid Films in Cobra Kai flew down and he, you know, he spoke.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, after uh the fog of all the parties and everything cleared, um I was looking in the mirror and I was thinking to myself, what's next?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I really didn't know what my next move was.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I, if I'm being completely honest, I felt a lot like a fraud.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I was 35 pounds overweight, I had no prospects for uh acting work at the moment, and I felt myself rapidly slipping into a place of mediocrity, and I realized that the only person who was gonna save myself was me.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: And there was gonna be no more of this, you know, waiting for my ship to come in bullshit.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: I was gonna have to build the damn ship.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_02: I just had to figure out how to figure out how to do it, and I figured it out.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, I would I would like to tell you that it all came together like mom's cooking in a New York Minute.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: It didn't, but once I made the conscious decision to make uh changes in my life, um, I did start getting resulted rapidly.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, it's like most things in life, the challenges that we face.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the solution is generally simple, but rarely easy.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, I made some I made some pretty distinct changes in my life.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, my life is largely unrecognizable now.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: And um I am full of gratitude that I was able to do it because I wasn't sure I was gonna be able to change things, to turn it around.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: And uh what's worse than that was that the people who loved me were starting to lose faith in me.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: And that's really that was that was that was catalytic for me.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, I I remember my my wife said to me, my wife was uh she was never hard on me, but she said, you know, I love you and I put everything into this, but please tell me I didn't get back the wrong horse.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_02: And that just you know resonated with me down to my core.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I was like, there is no way that this woman who I love more than anything, I'm taking her down.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's not gonna happen.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: And um and I I changed, I changed almost everything.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I I'd struggled with alcohol for a long time, and somebody said something to me, and it's it's so simple, and and but it it just resonated with me.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_02: Somebody said, Would you give up one thing to have everything?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I gave up that one thing and I have everything.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I'm glad you brought up that point about your wife because I was going to ask you where you draw inspiration from.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because sometimes we land on these self-motivation, self-triggering moments on our own, but other times, you know, some people draw inspiration from music, draw inspiration from movies.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's a great speaker.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Is there somebody specifically that just spoke to you and inspired you and that kind of helped you get into that leg of your journey?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: My wife is definitely one of those people.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: She's probably one of the most brilliant people I've ever met.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, she's also incredibly self-aware and has a tremendous amount of um emotional IQ.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: And and I've always been a fairly self-aware guy, but I would get in my own way.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um and she said to me, it was funny, we were talking about it the other day, and I was like, you know, God, you just really stuck it out.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: And she's like, I always knew that this was who you were, and I always believed that you were gonna arrive at this on your own.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: I just helped direct it.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I thank God that she did.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um because there were definitely times when I was like, I don't know that I can see, it wasn't like a I've been in almost irrecoverable uh goose maverick tail spins before.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: And and I've crashed and burned and managed to resurrect.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: This wasn't this wasn't an unrecoverable tailspin.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: This was a a slow but definite descent.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um and you know, I also said to myself, at 50, I don't know how many more of these I've got in me.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I don't know how many more times people are gonna give me a break.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: You know, when you're 20 and you, you know, you F up, people get it, you know.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: You're you're 20, you're an idiot.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: You're supposed to, and I don't mean that as being pejorative to anyone in their 20s, but like you're supposed to do stuff and make mistakes as a way of deciding what you do and don't want in life, right?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: But at 50, you know, people start looking at you like, like, what's the deal, man?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like, why aren't you getting it?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: And and they start to just quietly close doors.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know what I mean?
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: So you wake up one day and go, this is the life I have.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um so uh she was she was very instrumental in it.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, um I worked very hard.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I I it was a concerted effort over a couple of years.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: And when I when I ultimately came to a place where I had made substantial changes in my life, I was finishing Way of the Cobra, and you know, I still had some stuff to work on.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I can't put this book out unless I'm leading my life in accordance with what I'm saying.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think I think on some level at different times we all you know behave in a way that is, you know, a little hypocritical.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's not it's not entirely in line with who we want to be.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_02: But I I was like, I I can't I can't do that because um I can't do it for myself.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: And if people are gonna read my book and I'm gonna elevate myself to the place of being a sensei, a teacher, they have to want what I have.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: And and I think one of the reasons the book has resonated so much, uh, Way of the Cobra and Welcome to the Kumite is because I've been very honest about my journey.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: You know, my book is not rah-rah, pom-poms, you can do it.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I mean, there's some of that, but but but my book is like, listen, you know, I've been where you are or worse.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm gonna give you some advice that comes from a guy that has definitely stepped in it a lot of times.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: And if I can, you know, it's not about pulling somebody up the mountain, it's about showing them the path and maybe pointing out um, you know, where where the the potholes and the rocks are so they can avoid you, still gotta, you still have to do the work.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's kind of crazy because people, when they self-assess in those different situations, have a little bit more of a disadvantage now because the way we communicate now is so instantaneous.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: We have we have social media that puts a magnifying glass on every little element of our lives if we choose to participate in it.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: And really, we're at a place in society now where you you almost can't have it because so many people use it as a primary form of communication.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: So when you are in that process of getting out of your own way, I love that term, by the way.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: I use that a lot with people that I mentor to.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, get out of your own way, and magical things happen.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: When we are mentoring people in that mindset, unfortunately, they can go back and look on at the negativity and kind of feed into that and not make progress forward.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: So your program has been sustainable for you, and this has obviously worked really well for you.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: How would a person, without giving away elements of both books, how would a person make it sustainable for themselves?
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I want to give away the elements of the books.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, look, the knowledge, the knowledge in my books is autobiographical and specific to me, but the the overarching concepts aren't mine.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: They're the universes, they're gods, they're the it's stuff you already know.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I start in the beginning of the book by saying, I got good news and I got bad news.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're like me and Don Corleone, you insist on getting the bad news first.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_02: So here it is.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have a magic elixir or a silver bullet that's going to instantly turn you into the beast that you want to become.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_02: But the good news is it's like the Zen riddle.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: How did the ship get in the bottle?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: It was always there.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: Everything you need is within you.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: You just have to chip away at the crap.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's like the um it's like the story about how Michelangelo created David.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: He said, I stared and stared at the block of Carrera marble until I saw David, and then I chipped away everything that wasn't David until there was only David.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so everybody has this inside of them.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so, like I said, I want to give this information away.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I think you're probably right now going, okay, well, give me a couple pieces of it.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: So I think the first thing is um you got to accept some truths.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: And the first truth is uh your life is your fault.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: Where you are right now in life is the sum total of all the decisions you've made and the actions you've taken, both the good ones and the questionable ones.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: And if you don't like where you are, it's not your mommy's fault who didn't hold you enough.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's not your daddy's fault who used to tell you you'd never make it in front of his friends.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's it's your fault.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: And you're gonna get yourself out of it.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just gonna help you.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, the other thing that you have to accept is that life is not fair.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: Life isn't unfair.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: Life is just life.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: And the sooner you realize it, the better you will be at dealing with life when it seems like it's unfair.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: And we live in a society now that has become, you know, it everyone people like to be a victim.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and you know, in the short term, there are some there's some positive attributes that go along with victimhood.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you you might get uh some empathy and compassion from people, um, it gives you a group to identify with, uh, all sorts of stuff.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, the the thing that I repeat again and again and again in my book is you are not a victim.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: You may have been victimized at a certain moment in your life when you experience something, but the choice to perpetuate that is a choice.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: So that's kind of like philosophy stuff.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'll give you a piece of strategy that I live my life by.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm a big proponent of if you build a bulletproof process for anything, yeah, you can stay out of the results.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: If you want results, ignore them.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'll give you an example.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: So you and I don't know each other very well, but I'm gonna guess that we drive a car about 99.5% the exact same way.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: We unlock the car, we sit down, we put the seatbelt on, um, you put it the address in the nav if you need to.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: You check your mirrors, you throw it in reverse, you back out, you throw it and drive, you obey the street signs, and you don't grip the uh steering wheel going, oh my God, I hope I make it, I hope I make it.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: The reason is you expect to make it because you've built a bulletproof process for driving a car, right?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you don't do it blindfolded, you don't do it with a bottle of gym beam between your legs, you know, there's things you know how to do.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: And if you do that correctly, you expect to get your result.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: So, what I'm all about, whether it's weight loss, whether it's relationships, whether it's how I learn my lines for bold and the beautiful, I have a bulletproof process that if you apply effectively and consistently while still constantly examining it, doing self-diagnostics to tweak what's working and what's not working, you don't need to worry about the results.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: The results will come.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: They may not look exactly like what you anticipate, they may not happen exactly when you want them to happen, but you've got an extremely good chance of having them happen.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's amazing because everything you just described is also what goes into building the tenets of good leadership as well.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because I tell people constantly let's say I'm managing a business.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: First thing I'm gonna do on day one is clean the bathrooms.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: Why would I clean the bathrooms if I'm the person managing the business?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because I want the people under my mentorship to know that I am not to ask them to do something that I'm not willing to do myself.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: If you go on my Instagram feed right now, you will see a picture of me with a toilet brush on my knees in front of the man! And you know, and you know, here's the thing it's like from one thing, no 10,000 things.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's like I used to tell, you know, my kids, my my stepkids and my daughter, I said, I want you to make your room, clean your room, make your bed.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, because I don't want it to be messy.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_02: But I need you to understand that if you can discipline yourself to do that every day, that will translate to other things.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and I'm a firm believer in that.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: There's there's a reason why if you can do the little things, if you're not afraid to get your hands dirty, um that's that's an incredible way to engender um you know, a spritical corps and respect among others for leadership.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, for sure, for sure.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it's those little actions every day.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like people think that they can, you know, read a few motivational quotes, watch a couple of motivational videos, and they have their lives together instantaneously, but really it's small actions every day.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: I want to do this 1% better tomorrow.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: That way I'm 2% better two days worth.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's funny, it's funny you say that because the the theme of welcome to the kumite, we all we all know kumite from blood sport, right?
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: I talk about that in the film.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: But the idea is that you are going to defeat your greatest opponent in the battle of your life.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: Well, who's your greatest opponent?
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, it's you.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: How do you defeat that opponent?
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: You do that by having a metaphoric death every day.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: You extinguish the individual you were yesterday, and you emerge as a wiser, kinder, stronger, more empathetic, and self disciplined individual every single day.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a never ending loop.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: And some days you'll have a high degree of success, and other days maybe.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Not so much, but it's in the self-awareness and the never-ending quest to do that that you know is it produces a constantly evolving human being.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: So what led to this heart of servitude?
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's also a lot of what fuels this is having that servant's heart to help other people and extend this process forward.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because I find that in myself, even as well.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like if I get locked into a really good gym routine where I'm listening to a lot of audiobooks, then I find that I'm sharing more audiobooks with other people.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: I find that I'm coaching my friend, saying, hey man, you need to get your ass up at 4:30 in the morning and get to the gym with me.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what has kind of inspired that for you?
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: I've always liked helping people.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: I've been given a lot of help in my life.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: I believe that the way to build self-esteem is by doing estimable acts.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: I believe that the fastest way to get what you want is to help other people achieve their dreams and not with not with any subterfuge or ulterior motives or Machiavellian angle to it.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll tell you, in my life, every time I have done something with an ulterior motive, it has on some level or another come back to bite me in the ass.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: And every time I do something out of you know true service, um the universe opens up to me.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: And and I talk about my morning routine.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, I always feel like I have to uh qualify this.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: This is not a theological um discussion, but for me, I I you know I have a relationship with my creator, and every single day, the first thing I do is I get on my knees and I thank my creator for five things.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: Why do I do that?
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: First of all, um, it reminds me that I live in a world of abundance.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um it keeps me rooted in gratitude, which keeps you in the present.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: When you're in the present, you are not concocting bullshit stories between your ears, projecting a future that you have no idea whether or not it's gonna happen, which causes anxiety.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, that's the first part of it.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: The second part is I'm a firm believer in the universal laws.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: Now, everybody knows the law of attraction because it's got a great publicist in that book, The Secret.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: But but the law that I really believe in is the law of vibration.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: And the law of vibration basically says that everything vibrates at the subatomic level, even a rock.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thoughts and words and emotions all have vibrations.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: The lowest emotional vibrations are anger, hate, jealousy, envy, and the highest ones are love, empathy, compassion.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um and when you're living in gratitude, see only with magnets do opposites attract.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: In in the universe, like attracts like.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and if you're putting out a vibration of gratitude and abundance, the world of the universe matches it and it gives you more abundance.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_02: So you may, for instance, really want to have a lot of money, but if you're walking around all the time going, God, I'm always fucking broke, I don't have any money, you know, I'm never gonna dedicate all the universe hears is oh, you live in scarcity, you must want more of it.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: And it heaps more of that on you until you change your vibration.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so I have found in my life that um by living in gratitude, I am given more things by the universe than I could have ever imagined.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: And here's the irony of it.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_02: Now that I'm given all of these wonderful things, um some of the material, the material ones have uh, you know, infinitely less importance to me than they did a long time ago.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: And yet I get more of them.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: What has importance to me, for instance, are my coaching clients.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm incredibly invested with my personal coaching and my seminars, um, because I I truly do like to help people.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_02: And when you see someone who looks bereft of hope and just doesn't know what their next move is, and you can help them figure it out, um, it is unbelievably rewarding.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I do have a selfish motivation for that because you know, when I when I help people and work with my clients, it helps me.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: It keeps me accountable.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_02: And and and so that really is the essence of the way of the Cobra.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's to learn the information that I'm teaching, which you know already.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: You might have forgotten it or maybe you haven't discovered it yet, but it's already within you.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: And then to pass it on to somebody else, and in turn, they do the same.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_02: And that never-ending circle is the basis for what I call our dojo.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone who is uh, you know, one of the readers of the book and you know, uh subscribes to what we would say you're in the dojo.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and and it's it's integral to be able to pass that on to other people.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's no secret that you have been a part of anti-bullying campaigns.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: And despite playing a bully yourself in a few movie roles, notably Mike Barnes, you're a huge advocate for overcoming that adversity.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, having having my own life experience ahead of that, do you think that that's led to the sense of empathy that you have now with this program and wanting to share this program and move things forward so people can unlock that self-confidence that does exist within them?
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's definitely part of it.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: That's for sure.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, I think a lot of times people tend to see the tip of the iceberg and they don't see the 90% of the iceberg that is below water.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: And and I I think that there are times that people might look at me and say, you know, here's this guy, he's on a couple TV shows, you know, beautiful wife, da-da-da.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: He's got it all together.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_02: And they don't realize that, you know, I was one of five Jewish kids in uh a pretty hard-scrabbled um um steel town in western Pennsylvania.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I was chubby, I had glasses, I had a bad haircut.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, not exactly the trifecta for popularity.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so I do have a lot of empathy because I know what it's like to be the other and to be, you know, uh preyed upon.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: And again, you know, at a certain point in my life, you know, I took my first step into a martial arts dojo and it was like, I'm going to save myself.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it never left me that I just have a visceral dislike for bullies and for cruelty.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, there's so much of it right now.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um so much of it.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's truly saddening.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and you know, you never know what private war somebody is fighting in their life.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: And that that's why, you know, you just take a little more time and just a second to try and understand somebody else before, you know, implementing that nanosecond lightning fast thought process that we've become acclimated to because of the internet and social media, not to use that same thought process when dealing with other people.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's crazy because I look at it from the vantage point of being a parent of teenagers right now.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: I've got four teenagers, and whenever uh whenever I first had kids, I was like, man, I'm so glad my kids didn't grow up in the day and age that I did.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: And now I'm like, holy shit, I don't know if I would have made it through the day and age that they're going through, you know, because of those things.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_02: There's I mean, there's there's so many different ways that I could I could take this conversation with me.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's crazy.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, uh, two of my kids are are in martial arts themselves.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we do we practice that gratitude, we practice that sense of community, and it's like, you know, be what you want to be in life, but above anything else, just be a good person.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_02: Be a good person, you know, it's it's funny.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: I I I talk a lot to adults, obviously, but I talk to kids too.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so, and it's it's it's much in the same way as what Cobra Kai does, how it straddles that age demographic.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I have to try and sometimes be able to sort of pass on a concept that's digestible, not just to adults, but to kids, but is not so remedial that the adults tune out.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I think you know, I've given a lot of thought to what it takes to be successful, and I've distilled it down to a couple things.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: And the first one we all learned in kindergarten.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's the golden rule do one to others as you would have them do one to you.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_02: The next one is act with integrity.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_02: Say what you mean, mean what you say, be dependable.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: Your word is your bond.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the next one is what I was just talking about.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, live your life with empathy and compassion.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, uh an analogy I give is you know, we've all had we've all been in line at the pharmacy or something, and some older person pulls out a checkbook, and like if you could be arrested, if you could be arrested for the thoughts in your head, and oh my god, I'm as guilty of that as I'd be, you know, I'd be like an axe murderer, like in the hole for the rest of my life.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: But here's the thing you don't know if that elderly woman is writing a check and deciding whether she has enough money to buy her her husband's medicine or they eat.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: And compassion, so important.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: Compassion is probably the last best hope for our planet.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and the last thing is to grind, to get up early, to work hard, to give 100%, to be the first person there, the last person to leave, and always, always figure a way to bring value to every transaction.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's very few times in life when things are a zero-sum game where you have to lose for me to win.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_02: That happens in certain there are certain times that that happens.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_02: Physical combat is one of them, generally speaking, but not always.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: But if you can get what you want while helping somebody else still achieve what they want, even if you're in an ostensibly adversarial negotiating position, for instance, um, and certainly if you're in a sales position, you know, I tell everybody, look, it's not that hard to get over on somebody one time and best them.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: But if you can, if you can find a way to help them get what they want, what you get, what you want, you build rapport.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: And by building rapport, you can then build trust.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_02: And by building trust, you can build a relationship.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're in sales, that means lifelong customers.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_02: And if that means, you know, you know, you might have somebody that doesn't like you personally, but they'll respect you.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I would much rather be respected than liked.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: There are so many parallels to the way you and I think.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: Good, go out and buy the damn book.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that is one of my questions that I ask people when I'm interviewing them to hire them for a job.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: I say, what is more important to you, being liked or being respected?
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't want to shit on younger generations, and I'm not going to shit on older generations either, but there is a generational divide on who gives what answer.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I always tell them, I'm like, there's no right answer, but this is the answer that I would give.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: Successful people are the people that find a way to straddle both and make the best out of both worlds.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I think you also have to make a very sharp delineation between being nice and being kind.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, nice has a nice has a place.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: Nice is the social lubricant that allows us to be civil, not of course, now in our current society, but um, and and you know, that's important.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_02: But it is very possible to be kind without being nice.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll give you an example of that.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you're a parent, your kid goes to a party, they're not answering their phone.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: You text them again, they're not answering their phone.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_02: You drive over and say, I'm sitting outside, I want you to come out now.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: They don't come outside.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you walk in, you see kids are smoking pot, there's drugs, there's booze, and you ask your kid one time, now, and they don't do it.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then you grab them by the back of their neck in front of their friends and you march them out like a four-year-old.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: That might not be nice, but it's kind because you're doing it for their benefit.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm a lot less concerned as I've gotten older with being nice than being kind.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_02: Most times, when you're kind, it will be nice.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_02: Most times, when you're nice, it's not necessarily kind, it's a way of expediting um social interactions.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, it's it's an agreed upon set of behaviors, social mores, rules, and civility that we all agree to so that basically we we don't, you know, kill each other and you know that we can get things done.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: So many parallels to things that I try and teach people because what my day job is, I'm creating future leaders for the company that I work for.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: And there's so much more psychology that goes into creating somebody that can be a good servant leader that goes beyond the realms of manual labor or you're the best at this or you're the best at that.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's mindset.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I think a really important thing is um whether you're training someone to be a leader who maybe has always been a worker be, um, and this is a huge uh part of my book.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a huge proponent of understanding the power that stories play in our lives.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, too often people will attach a negative story to an event and it becomes disempowering.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_02: And the stories that we attach to the events in our lives play a huge role in where our lives go.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the problem is that humans are fairly horrendous historians.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like if I said to you, Mike, I want you to tell me a really seminal, profound moment in your life, and I want you to walk me through it, the who's, what's, when's, where's, why's, what it smelled like, tasted like, da-da-da-da.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_02: And you tell me to the best of your ability.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then I take you into a movie theater, sit you down, give you some red vines and some popcorn, and I say, now we're gonna watch the movie of what really happened.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: You probably at best would be 60% accurate.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_02: And the reason is that everybody has a prism with which they view events, and everybody's prism has a thousand facets.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: Now, you and I have certain facets.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_02: We're both met, we're white, we live in the United States, we live in 2023, not in um the dark ages.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, none of those, by the way, are any better than any other ones.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_02: Those are the things we have in common.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_02: We're both family met, etc.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, somebody who can go to the market or call a food delivery service is going to see certain things differently than someone who lives in sub-Saharan Africa and has to go to a river to go get their water.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_02: So if we agree that we're not great historians, let's at least attach stories to the events that happen in our lives that are positive and empowering.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: Quick story.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: There's a woman.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_02: She's uh she's a journalist and she's writing a story about Skid Row, and she's interviewing a guy that is uh just a derelict, homeless bum.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_02: And she says, How is it that you wound up at this place in your life?
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, Well, I had an alcoholic father, drank a pint of whiskey every day, beat my mother, beat my twin brother, couldn't keep a job.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_02: How else would I have grown up?
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_02: And she was so intrigued by this, she tracked down his twin brother.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_02: And when she arrived at the residence, she said, This can't be right.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's this beautiful home.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_02: She knocked on the door.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_02: This very put-together man answered the door with just the slightest hint of um physical similarity to the bum.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, Please come in.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: I want to introduce you, introduce you to my family.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I've been a doctor for 40 years in the community.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: She's just like flabbergasted.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, Well, how is it that you arrived at this place in your life?
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, Well, I had an alcoholic father, drank a bottle of whiskey every day, beat my mother, beat my twin brother, couldn't keep a job.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_02: How else would I have grown up?
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_02: Two individuals, um identical circumstances, but both attaching a completely different story to it.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_02: And that made all the difference in their lives.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so um, you know, that that is what I'm talking about.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_02: So you have to govern the stories that you tell yourself.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_02: The other issue is that, you know, humans aren't real good at seeing the 30,000-foot view.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, they have difficulty seeing over the horizon.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_02: So, one more story, and you might have heard this one.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_02: This is the story of the Chinese farmer.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know that story?
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_02: No, please do.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_02: Please tell.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_02: So there was a Chinese farmer well into his eighth decade, a thousand years ago, lived in some small province in southern China.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_02: He had one horse and one son.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: And one day his horse ran out of the corral, and his neighbor said, uh, what bad fortune?
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_02: And the Chinese farmer said, We shall see.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_02: And the next day, his horse comes thundering back at the head of six stallions right into the corral.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_02: And his neighbor says, What good fortune?
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_02: And the farmer says, We shall see.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_02: Because the neighbor said, You can plow your field now in a seventh time.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_02: So then the farmer's son went out to go break one of the wild mustangs, was thrown to the ground, shattered his leg, life-threatening injury at the time.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_02: And his neighbor said, What bad fortune?
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_02: The farmer said, We shall see.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: The next day, the local warlord came at the head of a hundred men to conscript all the other young men to go fight in some distant province.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_02: But the farmer's son who had a broken leg couldn't go, saved his life.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_02: The neighbor said, Well, good luck.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: The farmer said, We sh we shall see.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_02: And on it goes at infinitum.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_02: The point being, what initially seems like something that we would relegate as negative or even catastrophic, because humans don't like uncertainty.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: So we qualify things and we tend to be binary, good, bad, positive, negative.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: Well, with the expansion of time, that which starts out ostensibly negative can often prove to be positive.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I look at I was divorced 20 some years ago and it was catastrophic.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_02: It was, you know, the biggest failure I had had up to that point in time.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: But had I known that that freed me up to meet my wife, Michelle, who's my soulmate, um, I wouldn't have undergone as much emotional drama and trauma.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I'm not saying that there aren't things that seem bad when they happen.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm not saying ignore them and reframe the story right away and don't walk through it.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_02: I'm saying don't attach a story that disempowers you for the rest of your life.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, when I a lot of people know the story about how I almost died doing Karate Kid 3 and I wake up in the emergency room, you know, Christmas Day or the day after Christmas, actually, with a 15-inch wound on my abdomen.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_02: And the first thing I thought about was, what am I going to do about the film?
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't have to wait long.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: I got a call from John Avelson, who of course won the Academy Award for Rocky.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_02: He directed the Karate Kid, Karate Kid 2.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I was basically told, get back to work in 10 days or you lose the job.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I could have, I was furious, I was angry.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_02: I was angry at the universe, I was angry at what I perceived to be the injustice of how I was being treated.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_02: And that ultimately became my why, which fueled me to get out of bed and get discharged against medical advice and eventually do all my own stunts.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_02: But the point I'm trying to make is that I could have attached the story at a very young age that Hollywood's full of a bunch of pricks.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_02: You, you know, your only value, your only value is if you're a cog in the machinery that can make money for somebody else, then I could have become very jaded.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_02: Instead, I attached the story that when the going got tough, a part of my character that I never knew existed was revealed.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I not only survived, but I overcame.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so now when things are really difficult in my life, I ask myself, well, is it as difficult as almost dying and being told that you're going to lose the movie?
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, and it puts it in perspective.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_02: So it's effectively something that I wouldn't wish that on anybody, although I'm glad I went through it and I wouldn't trade it.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I've taken that and I've attached a positive story and it's made a profound difference in my life.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_02: So wrapping, coming full circle in this, you know, I tell a lot of my clients that have had significant trauma.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_02: I say, if you do this, it's gonna help.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_02: I said the first thing is write out exactly what happened in the in the event.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: And it can be anything from sexual trauma to loss of a loved one to whatever.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, now write down what the story is that you attached to that event.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: Now write down how that disempowering story has held you back and kept you stuck.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_02: Now I want you to uh reframe that story and come up with a concise sentence or maybe two of what the new attachment to that event is.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I want you to look at that and read it five times a day, ten times a day, until you believe it.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_02: And it will change your life.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: Crazy because I have those, I have very similar thoughts.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: About a decade ago, I became divorced.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: It, you know, my first marriage came to an end.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: And as a child of divorce, I was terrified by that moment because it's like, man, I'm gonna do to my kids the same thing that happened to me.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so I lived in fear, but you know, the power of perspective being remarried, similar circumstances, you finding somebody that was more my match, and um it the power of perspective is a lot better now, and I view that as one of was it a painful thing?
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, did it suck?
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: Did I want to go through it?
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: But was it one of the best changes that I've made in my life because everything that happened concurrently after that?
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: My career got better.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: I became a better dad, I became more focused on the things that mattered, and and it elevated every element of my life.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: So what you're saying is the truth, absolutely.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_02: You look at your your fear about doing the same thing to your kids, you know, armchair quarterbacking.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I can I can just tell you two things.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: You were projecting into the future what was gonna happen with no evidence.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_02: That's the first thing.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then the second thing is, you know, you attached a negative story.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_02: You attached that, you know, well, this is what happened to my parents, and they're supposed to be omniscient, they're supposed to be, you know, uh they're supposed to have it all figured out.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_02: If they can't figure it out, how the hell am I gonna figure it out?
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_02: Now, of course, changing the story and and staying in the present is simple, but it's not easy.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_02: But you did it.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_02: And because you did it, and here's here's where it gets more interesting.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_02: The fact that you did it and you did it successfully, now it's like from one thing, no 10,000 things.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_02: You now know how to apply that to the next thing that happens, which means you're not gonna probably have to go through all the psychic pain and the lessons because you've already applied it.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that's another big uh sort of central tenant of what I teach is that everything is interconnected.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_02: You know, everything's interconnected.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_02: It goes back to making your bed, you know, it goes back to if you can if you can understand one thing, if you can learn how to build one process, then you can build processes.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_02: You can you can just tailor the process to whatever the goal is.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_02: But what you'll find is you will take certain steps of the process for a goal that ostensibly has nothing to do with the goal you're working on now, and implement those steps because there's certain things that you need to do in every process to be successful.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: My my acting teacher, the late Royal London, used to say, I have more in common with a successful plumber than I do with an unsuccessful acting teacher.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_02: Because almost without fail, I guarantee that some of the things I do to be successful are some of the same things you do, some of the same things a baseball player does and a successful plumber does, and you know, and a successful um, you know, uh computer coder does.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_02: And once you learn those things, then they become part of your acumen.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you've got them.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's the power of reciprocal energy.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it's the domino effect, if you will.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's true.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, this has been great.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_01: Sean, why don't you tell my listeners where they can find more about your books, the way of the cobra, your coaching, and everything online.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a pretty easy guy to find, and that's by design.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I uh I keep my DMs on on Instagram.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_02: You can find me on Instagram.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it's Sean.cannon with a blue check mark, not not the other 50 um imposters out there.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um and uh uh at Sean Cannon on uh Twitter.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_02: And listen, I give people my email address because I love hearing from people.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's Sean.cannon at gmail.com.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um Way the Cobra just came back, came out on uh Audible.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um Way the Cobra and Welcome to the Kumite are both available on Amazon.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're interested in one-on-one coaching with me, uh I'd love to hear what you have to say and see if you're someone that I want to coach with.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so reach out to me because I absolutely love doing it.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: Sweet.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: So, my closing question that I ask everybody that does my show because I love the myriad of answers that I get from all walks of life.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: What's your advice for making the world a better place tomorrow than the world we live in today?
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_02: I wish it was mine, but somebody said the meaning of life is discovering what that special thing that you have inside of you is, and the secret to life is sharing that to make the world a better place.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it all starts with self-awareness, with working on yourself.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_02: You know, um a lot of people are struggling right now, um, you know, coming out of COVID, whatever.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I I tell people that the wise cobra is not afraid to take uh a page out of the lone wolf's handbook.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes you have to go into the cave and you have to work on yourself before you can rejoin the pack and take the lead.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, Joseph Campbell has this quote that I just love it.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_02: He said, The treasure you seek exists in the cave you are afraid to enter.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_02: And that was so true to me, you know, for so long, especially with drinking, I was like, Well, I if I stop, I'm gonna be boring or it's like da-da-da-da.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_02: And had I only known that you know, my life was gonna open up if I went in that cave that I was afraid of and and done battle with myself, which I did.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so I guess what I would say is, you know, first of all, if you're going through a difficult time right now, you're not alone.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody, everybody has a struggle.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_02: And um, I'm gonna I'm gonna suggest a poem, and I hope you read this afterwards, and then um text me or let me know what you think.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_02: This is sure one of my favorite poems.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's by uh a guy named Edward Arlington Robinson.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's a not a long poem, and it's called Richard Corey.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_02: Just read it, you'll get what I'm talking about.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and the other thing too is um for help.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody needs a helping hand sometimes.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't make you weak.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_02: If you get help and become the best version of who you are and can then pay it forward, that is that is one of the best ways I know to make the world a better place.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_01: I love that it all falls to the airplane analogy, right?
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the air mask drops down from the airplane, and the stewardess always tells you, put that mask on yourself before you put it on somebody else.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_02: There's a difference between being toxically and maliciously selfish and taking care of yourself first so that you can take care of others.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, man.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: Sean, this has been beautiful.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: It has been amazing.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: We gotta do this again, brother.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I was just gonna say that.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's been amazing getting to know you.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: You too, brother.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, Sean Kanan, the world's a much better place with you and it, my friend.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, buddy.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I hope we get the chance to uh shake hands and meet in person at some point.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_01: Likewise, yes, sir.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, sir.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for doing the show.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: You got it, man.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think the rules of the world and coexistence are not one size fits all.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: They say don't ever meet your heroes.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think this episode was perfect proof that that rule can be wrong.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: I want to thank my friend Sean Kanan for doing the show today.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: Make sure you check out his book, Way of the Cobra, and welcome to the Kumite.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: On Amazon, Way of the Cobra is available on Audible.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_01: As is this podcast, make sure you give me a follow on all forms of social media at Cot on the Mic.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_01: Follow Sean Caenan, Sean.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: Shoot him a DM, he's quick to respond.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: You can visit me at www.cockonthemic.com.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: New episodes drop every Wednesday.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: Feel free to email me, caught on the mic, M I K E at gmail.com.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_01: This has been hot on the mic with Michael Clark.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Michael Clark.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: Till next time.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.