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Building a More Meaningful Life with Dave Rossi · Building the Best You

0:04
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Building the Best You, a destination for you to reimagine what is possible in your life and then create it.
0:17
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the show, everybody.
0:18
SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Gene Collins, and today we have Dave Rossi on.
0:22
SPEAKER_02: And this is really exciting for me.
0:24
SPEAKER_02: I know I say all my guests are amazing, and they all are super special, but we're going to talk about men's health.
0:30
SPEAKER_02: And we spend a lot of time on this show talking about women's health, but we're going to talk about men's health.
0:34
SPEAKER_02: And so don't jump off if you're a woman, because we have men in our lives, and this is super applicable.
0:41
SPEAKER_02: And ironically, Dave has a new book out.
0:43
SPEAKER_02: And when I was reading some of his book, it did not need to be about men.
0:46
SPEAKER_02: I have to say, everything that he was talking about completely applied to women, women in leadership, how you find balance in your life, how you live a more fulfilling life.
0:55
SPEAKER_02: And Dave's story is super cool.
0:57
SPEAKER_02: So definitely don't jump off.
0:58
SPEAKER_02: So Dave, it's so great to have you on the show.
1:01
SPEAKER_00: Gene, thank you for having me.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: And hopefully I can keep this interesting enough for the women as well.
1:05
SPEAKER_02: Oh, you absolutely can.
1:06
SPEAKER_02: So before I forget, your book is called Alphas Die Early, which is so exciting.
1:10
SPEAKER_02: We're going to talk about your book.
1:11
SPEAKER_02: But before we get to your book, I want to make a connection for people as to how I know you.
1:16
SPEAKER_02: So you are the brother of one of my favorite guests, Daniel Stanton.
1:19
SPEAKER_02: And Danielle has been on my show twice.
1:22
SPEAKER_02: And Danielle is a perfect example for me of someone who is the CEO of her own health.
1:28
SPEAKER_02: She totally advocates, she researched, she is so passionate about it.
1:32
SPEAKER_02: She gives back with her business, fuel forever.
1:35
SPEAKER_02: And just her mission to make life better for everyone, no matter their age, is so it's inspiring.
1:42
SPEAKER_02: It really is.
1:43
SPEAKER_02: And she is amazing.
1:44
SPEAKER_02: And we have become what I will call Instagram friends.
1:46
SPEAKER_02: And I think almost every single day we DM each other.
1:49
SPEAKER_02: She lives in California.
1:50
SPEAKER_02: I live in Connecticut.
1:51
SPEAKER_02: We DM almost every day.
1:52
SPEAKER_02: We know everything about what's going on in each other's lives.
1:54
SPEAKER_02: And it is the power of social media and the power of a podcast.
1:58
SPEAKER_02: And so she posted about you on one of her stories.
2:01
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, who's that guy?
2:02
SPEAKER_02: That was really cool.
2:03
SPEAKER_02: I'd love to talk to her.
2:04
SPEAKER_02: She's like, oh, that's actually my brother.
2:06
SPEAKER_02: I was like, great.
2:07
SPEAKER_02: Can't wait to talk to him.
2:08
SPEAKER_02: So that is the connection.
2:09
SPEAKER_02: So thank you to Danielle.
2:11
SPEAKER_02: And the bar is high.
2:12
SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry.
2:13
SPEAKER_02: But I know you're going to be a great guest.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: Well, I always tell her she's my favorite sister, albeit she's my only sister.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: She's still my favorite sister.
2:20
SPEAKER_02: She is.
2:20
SPEAKER_02: And I love her.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: She's really, really great.
2:22
SPEAKER_00: And she she is very inspiring to be around.
2:24
SPEAKER_02: She is.
2:25
SPEAKER_02: She has incredible energy.
2:26
SPEAKER_02: So, all right, enough about her.
2:28
SPEAKER_02: We're going to focus on you.
2:29
SPEAKER_02: And I love to start with people's stories.
2:31
SPEAKER_02: And your story is so great and so wild.
2:35
SPEAKER_02: And before we got on here, I talked about how I meet so many people that are really successful in business and especially in leadership.
2:43
SPEAKER_02: And they're kind of at the top of their game.
2:45
SPEAKER_02: And I describe it as they are one event away from a total breakdown in life.
2:49
SPEAKER_02: And I said, I love your story because your story is kind of like that too.
2:53
SPEAKER_02: And you corrected me and you said it was not a breakdown.
2:56
SPEAKER_02: I want to say you said it was a catastrophic failure in your life.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: Yes, definitely.
3:01
SPEAKER_02: I can't say that about you, you to yourself, about your own life.
3:05
SPEAKER_02: But since that's the lead up, share the catastrophic failure that happened in your life.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: What a what a wound up.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: There's, I mean, uh, there's so much there to unpack.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I think my catastrophic failure really is probably better categorized as a catastrophic success.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: I think, you know, coming from the ashes, the Phoenix rises.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: And clearly at the time, nobody realizes that.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: I had uh 17-year marriage, three kids, four houses, two buildings, a business, you know,$40 million in revenue a year for the past 17-something years, uh, built this giant life, boats, you know, vacation houses.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: And slowly things began to erode.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I realized my marriage was wrong really early, early on, but you know, kids and businesses and houses and those kinds of things kind of keep you trapped.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: And you kind of get number those things.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: And so eventually, from the death of my best friend, who I was, you know, I would call him my soulmate, in fact, to not reconciling that loss of my life.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: And then my business suffering through the recession, my health began to suffer.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: My wife at the time, that kind of divided me from my friends and my family, wasn't really talking to my family.
4:17
SPEAKER_00: And here I was alone, about to have back surgery with a feeling business, a miserable marriage, uh, health issues, heart pressure medication, 50 pounds heavier.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: I began to find that I did everything to be the opposite of where I was.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: I tried so hard.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: I was talented, I had work ethics, I had great family, I had great education.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: And everything that I tried to do, I literally hit the opposite.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: My life was where I was supposed to be.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: And I pulled the plug in my marriage and I began to find um different ways to live life besides the ways that everyone told me I needed to live.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: And so the failure was kind of like a choice, in a way, when I announced divorce and said, I'm leaving and um, I'll sell you my half of the business.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: And my wife said she's not buying it.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, I'll buy your half.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: And she said it's not for sale.
5:02
SPEAKER_00: It's okay, business goes, goodbye.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: I go, goodbye.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: We'll figure out the kids.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, she had jockeyed money in certain places.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: So I basically had no money.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: All the houses were in trust.
5:14
SPEAKER_00: The business had uh a lot of debt.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: So my primary residence, I lost to pay off debt.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: I didn't have a job, I didn't have any money.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: She managed our finances, so legitimately she she kind of cornered the market with money.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: So here I was, uh pending back surgery, uh, pending divorce, lawsuits with my business, poor health, and wasn't talking to some of the most important people in my lives, my family.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of where I where I started from.
5:40
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
5:41
SPEAKER_02: And uh okay.
5:43
SPEAKER_02: So first of all, I'm sorry.
5:45
SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry.
5:46
SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm sorry, first of all, that that had to happen to you, yet grateful that it did, because I know it has completely changed who you are, the life that you live, and what you do with yourself and your business, your career, everything about what you do for a living is not the same as what it was before.
6:02
SPEAKER_02: You're in a completely different industry doing something different.
6:05
SPEAKER_02: And I am sure your relationships with your children have evolved to be in a better place, at least more aligned with who you are now.
6:12
SPEAKER_02: Not knowing, but I'm just guessing.
6:14
SPEAKER_02: But what I find so fascinating that you said, as we started in the beginning, talking about, you know, men's roles versus women's roles, as you're saying all this and you're saying the woman, your wife managed all the money.
6:25
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I can't even tell you how many women I know who are in that same position because the men manage all the money.
6:32
SPEAKER_02: And then all of a sudden, a divorce comes and the women have no idea.
6:36
SPEAKER_02: They have no money, they have no job, they have no earning income.
6:39
SPEAKER_02: They like everything that you described, it doesn't have to be because this happened to you because you're a man.
6:44
SPEAKER_02: This happens to people, people in general.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: Let me put it in perspective.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: I I went to get some money to pay a lawyer for a retainer to file a divorce.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: And I took out$20,000 of a bank account that had maybe, you know,$800,000 of cash, you know, investment money and savings.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: And she called me, what are you doing?
7:08
SPEAKER_00: What are you doing?
7:08
SPEAKER_00: So I need to file for divorce.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about this, you know.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: We've won a business together for 17 years.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: We can deal with this in a professional way.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, but put that money back.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: You gotta put that money back.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: Well, I need some of it.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, you don't need 20,000.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: Well, I need 10.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: Okay, take 10.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you need to do.
7:23
SPEAKER_00: So I put 10 back.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: I took 10.
7:25
SPEAKER_00: And then the next day there were$16 in that account.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: And I said, What what happened to all that money?
7:30
SPEAKER_00: Um, well, I took it.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: Well, why would you take it?
7:33
SPEAKER_00: Because I didn't want you to take it.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: So I called her a financial advisor and I said, Hey, what what's up with this?
7:38
SPEAKER_00: He says, Well, it was a joint account, and either of you could have done that.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and she put it into account I don't have access to.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: So sorry.
7:46
SPEAKER_02: Oh my.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: So I was 46 years old.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: My company was being shut down.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: There are lots of lawsuits, and I had$16 to my name at that moment.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: It was, it was, it was a very sobering experience.
7:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is.
8:00
SPEAKER_01: So what did you do first?
8:51
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, the first thing does the comp so we did sell off part of our parts of our company, and they offered me a job to help transition.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: So there was some income for me.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: And so I had that income.
9:01
SPEAKER_00: And then I kind of took that income and took some time to figure out what life was all about.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: And I'd already kind of built up some spiritual practices to get to that point.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: So it the announcement of divorce took a lot of effort to get there.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: And it was and and I think when that happened, you know, having$16 really gave me a lot of perspective to to women in these situations, to other men in situations, to anybody in a midlife to then have no money and what that meant.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: And for me at that stage of my spiritual practice, it was don't panic.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: It was let's let's start putting pieces together.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: But that that might not have happened six months earlier.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: And I think the pivotal move for me, and maybe your audience can can relate to this.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: And I I hope people, and most of my work now is that people don't have to go through what I went through to change.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: But it was a Leo Tolstoy book, The Death of Ivan Illich.
9:52
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not sure if you're familiar with the book, but at the end of the book, Ivan looked up at his family.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: He always wanted to be a musician his whole life.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: And he was a judge.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: And his whole life, he made decisions based on what others wanted for him.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: And I felt that way.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: And I heard this line.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: He looked up at his family and he was on his deathbed.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: And he said, What if I lived my whole life wrong?
10:15
SPEAKER_00: And I looked up at myself and I said, I'm living my whole life wrong.
10:19
SPEAKER_00: I'm living the wrong wife, the wrong parenting style, the wrong house, the wrong business, the wrong job, the wrong friends, the wrong family engagement.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: Everything about my life is wrong.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: And I'm living it based on other people's choices.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: And I learned, and I legitimately walked down the stairs.
10:36
SPEAKER_00: And the only reason why that hit so hard for me is because I also remember at the time hearing the phrase, don't be afraid of the outcome, that I hadn't done this because of the outcome.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: And I remember those two things lining up and walking down and stairs saying, Hey, I'm done with this marriage.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: This is it.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: I'm done.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: Because I realized every second I was living the wrong life was one second I wasn't living the right life.
10:56
unknown: Yeah.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: And that was a pivotal moment.
10:58
SPEAKER_02: It's true.
10:59
SPEAKER_02: It's true.
11:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
11:00
SPEAKER_02: But it takes serious courage.
11:02
SPEAKER_02: And many times it does take a very low, it takes a bottom before you can connect the dots and everything has to be aligned.
11:12
SPEAKER_02: Where did you find support for yourself at that stage?
11:16
SPEAKER_02: Because you don't trust yourself.
11:18
SPEAKER_02: Like there's not a lot of trust going on.
11:19
SPEAKER_02: And there's no matter how spiritual you are, there isn't a lot of trust in the universe that it's all going to just be okay.
11:24
SPEAKER_02: There might be a little, but it's really hard.
11:27
SPEAKER_02: So where did you go for support?
11:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think that's a good question.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: And I think the support was nature and the support was books that I read.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: And I do have I don't have any regrets for the path I took.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: I can't even explain the differences in my mindset.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: And it's like looking at life from black and white to color.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: It's that stark.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: I and I I can't express and it's difficult.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of what I write in my books is to try to explain what life is like once you experience these changes, these equidisillus and these life lessons and these incredibly painful things that happened, all the suffering.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: And so to answer your question, I would go outside my house.
12:05
SPEAKER_00: I I lived on a six-acre house in Saratoga, a big, you know, a very fluent area and an 8,000 square foot house, what I was losing.
12:12
SPEAKER_00: And I would walk behind the house in the mountains and I would legitimately just sit and cry on top of the mountain.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: And I was applying all my spiritual practices, which was acceptance, accept that my life is effed up.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: Just sit there and cry and say, I know it's messed up.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: Accept it.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: Accept that life is don't don't lie about it, don't obfuscate, don't sugarcoat it to yourself, don't, don't like rationalize it.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: It effing sucks.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: Like it sucks.
12:36
SPEAKER_00: Like just deal with it.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: So that was a really powerful practice to institute reality, like objective reality.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: And then just books.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: Like I didn't have my parents to talk to.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: Um, I wasn't really talking to my sister, who we were always really close.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: I didn't have a lot of friends.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: My um, my ex-wife was pretty good at, you know, controlling and controlling the narrative and gaslighting.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: And so didn't have a lot of friends.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: It was basically just myself.
13:01
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know that I could have done it without a lot of the books that I read.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: And my background and my my parenting, my my parents parenting me in terms of having the courage.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: And I think courage is a big big part of that.
13:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
13:14
unknown: Yeah.
13:15
SPEAKER_00: Courage is chosen though.
13:17
SPEAKER_00: Oh you can choose courage.
13:19
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
13:20
SPEAKER_02: You you have to.
13:22
SPEAKER_02: It's not just everyone has the potential for it, just like everyone has the potential for almost everything you talk about in your book.
13:29
SPEAKER_02: And everyone has the potential within them, but they have to make that shift to decide that they want to walk the path and make the changes themselves.
13:38
SPEAKER_02: No one's going to do it for you at all.
13:40
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
13:40
SPEAKER_02: But I love that books helped you because you've become an author.
13:45
SPEAKER_00: Have you never really read before?
13:46
SPEAKER_00: My parents would teach me that I they don't even know that I knew how to read.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: And then be being a contractor, right?
13:52
SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden engrossing myself in spiritual books, having never had any spiritual practice or religious practice, to then believe, you know, I think I believed what I read for a couple of reasons.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: One, I was an engineer in in background in terms of construction, and I would find similarities in pattern recognition between older books like the Upanchaj or the Dhamanpada or the Bhag Bhagavad Gita and some of those older texts, you know, um, the sutras.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: And then look at modern texts or or mid-century texts, you know, David Hawkins, Dr.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: David Hawkins, or like Neville Goddard or Napoleon Hill, some of these kind of authors, Viktor Frankel, you know, and then see similarities between them and then modern thinkers, you know, Eckhart Tolle and some of these modern thought people, and then my own experiences.
14:39
SPEAKER_00: So when they all lined up really well, I could say to myself, I could get behind this.
14:44
SPEAKER_00: I feel this, I've read this, I understand this, I contextualize this.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: There's there is there is symmetry with it, there's coherence with it.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: Let's let's let's buy into this, let's hold on to this and let's trust it.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: And I think that trust had a lot to do with tenacity and the ability to overcome fear to step into courage.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: Cause really courage is is getting past, I call them in in my book, a jail of thoughts, a prison of thoughts.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: The bars are made of ideas and thoughts that you can't cross them.
15:10
SPEAKER_00: And and I think having that that trust in certain concepts helps dissolve those thoughts, which are aren't real.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: It's not real, steel is harder to break through than thoughts, although thoughts are probably more painful to break through.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's kind of where it all came from.
15:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, which is really powerful.
15:27
SPEAKER_02: So I love that you use the word spirituality all the time as you're speaking and it's in your book and everything.
15:32
SPEAKER_02: But I feel like in the male world, spirituality is like that is a fluffy woo-woo thing.
15:39
SPEAKER_02: And so I love that you have a book that really talks to men, even though all the principles apply to everybody.
15:44
SPEAKER_02: But I love that you have a book that that almost normalizes this language and the practice for men.
15:51
SPEAKER_02: And you very specifically come from a very high place, a place of great success, great wealth.
15:58
SPEAKER_02: You know, you live in a very affluent part of the country.
16:01
SPEAKER_02: And I think you can then normalize it for lots of other very successful CEOs and leaders, what it might be like.
16:10
SPEAKER_02: So I am curious, if someone said to you, What is spirituality?
16:16
SPEAKER_02: What would you say to them?
16:17
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I think that's a great question.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: And it's something that eluded me for a long time.
16:21
SPEAKER_00: And before I answer that more directly, it took me maybe a year to be able to explain clearly consciousness and what that meant and to understand it enough to say, this is how I can explain it where I can actually agree with what I'm saying.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: And I think understanding consciousness is understanding spirituality and understanding awareness and how these words kind of interact together.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: I use spirituality and I talk about this in the book.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: I talk about it if you're running or exercising, whatever, whatever you're doing, your body gives you feedback.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: So you're running, your legs are tired, and lactic acid is pushing around and your heart rate is high and your face is flush.
16:56
SPEAKER_00: And this is biological feedback that your brain receives and says, Hey, we're we're getting kind of tired.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: We should stop.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: That voice in your head is the voice connected to your body, the 3D world or the biological body that's receiving feedback.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: And very quickly, what happens if you're an athlete or even just someone training, you might say, No, no, no, I'm gonna keep going.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: It's not that bad.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: And you and you begin to assess the legitimacy of those words that you're hearing in your head.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: Now, both are you.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: Granted, you think both are you, but both kind of aren't you.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, the the the body says stop.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: It's responded to feedback, and the spirit says move on.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: That's a spiritual act to move on.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: That is that is acting and behaving beyond feedback or the body.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: And I call that spiritual behavior.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: And that that spiritual act, that spiritual behavior, is the same response to fear and jealousy and anger and scarcity and all jealousy, all of these emotions that we have are still feedback from our brain receiving input, just like galactic acid and a heart rate.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: And then a voice that says, wait a minute, I don't really need to listen to that voice.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: I don't, I can bypass the feedback.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: The feedback is being filtered through belief structures and patterns and scripts and old life, you know, experiences.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: And those might not have been the best experiences for me to interpret this data.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: Maybe jealousy isn't a good emotion here.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: Maybe anger isn't the right emotion.
18:21
SPEAKER_00: Maybe feeling ripped off isn't the right emotion.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: So let me have some spiritual behavior and bypass the feedback and choose something that's good for me, that's helpful for me.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: And now you can't stop this biological feedback and running, and you can't stop it with emotions as well.
18:37
SPEAKER_00: But you can slowly decide how your brain interprets that information by changing beliefs.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: And you can also decide what to do and how to respond.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of that really came from Viktor Frankel and his book, Man's Search for Meaning, you know, where he has a quote between stimulus and response is a small moment in time.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: And in that moment in time is where all of your growth comes from.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of a proof mathematical that he proved in Auschwitz.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: And so I kind of bought onto that.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: Said, wait a minute, I do have the power to act and behave in my best interest and not be a slave to feedback.
19:07
unknown: Yeah.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: That's how I explain spirituality.
19:10
SPEAKER_02: Which is really kind of cool because it's not woo.
19:13
SPEAKER_02: Your analogy from a sports perspective, I think everyone can relate to if you've exercised it all, the concept of just one more rep or, you know, one more block while you're running, or five more minutes, or one more song.
19:26
SPEAKER_02: Like I've done all the things, you know?
19:28
SPEAKER_02: Let's just get through one more song on the elliptical.
19:31
SPEAKER_02: So I think that is everyone can understand that.
19:35
SPEAKER_02: But what I also love about what you said is you're not talking about never having these emotions that we might air quote negative, never having fear, never having anger, never having jealousy.
19:46
SPEAKER_02: Because I didn't hear you say you should never have those emotions.
19:50
SPEAKER_02: But what I loved you say is that you have the control with how you're going to respond to those emotions.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: And I would probably change the word and I uh control to choice.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: And I think control is a great word, don't get me wrong.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: But I think from where I am now, the word choice denotes that it's not a struggle, that it's actually my choice.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: Instead of, you know, people can can adopt these principles through atomic habits and through discipline.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: And that's okay, and that's great.
20:16
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the start of a lot of it.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: But ultimately in spiritual work, I think it should convert to choice and say, I have the power of choice.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: I can choose beyond eating.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: God, that donut looks really, really good right now.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: I love donut.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: It's not really what I want to do.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: It's choice, right?
20:33
SPEAKER_00: And I think discipline, you know, is the anti-spiritual word because discipline is fighting something that you want to do.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: I really want to eat that donut, but I'm not going to.
20:43
SPEAKER_00: And that's that's fight.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: The the way to flip that mindset is my practice is not to eat donuts.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: That's my belief structure now.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: So my choice is to get what I want.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: And what I want is this life.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: So now I'm not fighting something that I want.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: I'm going in alignment with what I want and how I behave.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that it's not also hard.
21:03
SPEAKER_00: There's still sugar still tastes good.
21:05
SPEAKER_00: But it's a little bit easier to make it a choice rather than fight willpower.
21:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
21:09
SPEAKER_02: Oh, totally.
21:10
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
21:10
SPEAKER_02: And I love your reframe of that.
21:12
SPEAKER_02: And I know that's one of your 15 plays in your chapter 11.
21:15
SPEAKER_02: So, which we're going to get to because those are some really good things.
21:18
SPEAKER_03: Great.
21:20
SPEAKER_02: But uh, what I also love about how you said it is you're thinking in terms of your health, where I think for so many men and even just successful leaders in general, we're kind of last on the list as successful leaders.
21:37
SPEAKER_02: And I come from, you know, the corporate world and the sales world and the executive world.
21:41
SPEAKER_02: And us as people and our own health is always last.
21:44
SPEAKER_02: It's sort of, I need to do this for the business and I need to do that for the boss, and I need to do this to drive sales, and I need where I love the way you use the story of the donut.
21:54
SPEAKER_02: It was really about how is that choice going to hit me personally?
22:00
SPEAKER_02: How am I going to feel?
22:03
SPEAKER_02: So I'm curious because that's just not the way we are honestly raised in a corporate environment and in successful business.
22:11
SPEAKER_02: It's like you're successful because you put the business first.
22:14
SPEAKER_02: And that's just the reality many of the time.
22:16
SPEAKER_02: So, how did you make that mindset shift to decide that you were worth what has to happen and the changes that have to happen and putting yourself first really was the most important thing.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll I'll I'll blow that up even more.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: And I'll add some some research.
22:35
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a fundamental shift in my mindset, and and I am more successful now than I was.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: My business now restarted in 2022.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: We're doing eight figures.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: In business steadily.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: Some of our clients are in the top 10 Forbes wealthiest people in the world.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: We have people in the$200 billion club who are our clients for construction.
22:56
SPEAKER_00: I did very little to acquire these clients besides being what I wanted to embody, not me as a person, but the principles.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: And that we drive for success, we'll get happiness.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: And I think this is a fundamental flaw with a lot of influencers and a lot of information in that everyone talks in absolutes and there's transitions with things.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: And so for happiness, just to say success equals happiness is kind of loaded because happiness can be an emotion, but happiness can also be a state of being.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: And so when people find success or they derive success, they have external happiness, which is, hey, you know, what Dave's going to say next, which is the opposite, happiness equals success.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: Well, that that can't be true because I go slay a big deal and I am really happy.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: That's happiness as an emotion, and that's not sustainable.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: And that's that's an emotion.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: That's, you know, serotonin or dopamine or whatever is being fueled by your excitement of that deal.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: And so the problem with success equals happiness is it's externally driven and then it dies.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: The event the deal is gone.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: So then then what?
24:08
SPEAKER_00: Right.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: And that's like Rockefeller's famous answer, how many millions is enough?
24:13
SPEAKER_00: And he said, just one more, right?
24:15
SPEAKER_00: It's because he's finding happiness in in his success, but it's not sustainable.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: Now, when you flipped a script and it's the opposite, happiness equals success.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: You start doing things for yourself to be internally happy.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: And that's a different, different construct and it's a different mindset.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: And the mindset is derived from removing the things that make you unhappy.
24:34
SPEAKER_00: And you have to do things for yourself.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I did, I went from doing nothing for myself.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: I went from listening to my cell phone ring in my head when I was in the shower to meditating twice a day, walking once a day for now, and working out once a day.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: And so I work a lot less now than I ever have, and my business is more successful.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: And I can 100% attribute it to my mindset shift of being happy and being whole, being sovereign and having a positive, not whitewash, but legitimately a realistic view of optimism and realism coexisting at the same time.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: Optimism in terms of motivation and realism in terms of decision making.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, this is supported by Warren Buffett and Dr.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: Albert Schweitzer, and Buffett talks a lot about this.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: Ray Dalio talks a lot about this, as well as uh Dr.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: Albert Schweitzer, that that happiness truly will equal success.
25:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
25:27
SPEAKER_02: It's flipping it and recognizing that the happiness as the emotion that you talked about, that's going to ebb and flow.
25:33
SPEAKER_02: And if that's going to dictate how you feel at any given point in time, why are we choosing that?
25:40
SPEAKER_02: That's not a choice.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, and it takes courage to flip the script.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: And it takes fear.
25:45
SPEAKER_00: Because I talk about this a bit in the book because we are animals still.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: We are, we are in the animal kingdom.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: And we do have two million years of biology and DNA and Darwinian study that makes us predisposed to argue.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: And our brain looks for predictive outcomes and we look for what's familiar.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: AI even gives us familiarity.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: AI will tell you and use words that you like.
26:07
SPEAKER_00: I even quizzed it.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: It says, yes, my algorithm is to connect with you and give you comfort.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: Like, but you're obfuscating objective reality.
26:14
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Yes, but humans like that.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: And I said, No, I don't want that.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: I want, I want, I want what I'm not comfortable with, right?
26:20
SPEAKER_00: Right.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: So don't do that anymore.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: You know, stop that.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: And so and so we like that.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: And and so the fear of not closing a deal is the same neurotransmitter as the fear from running from a tiger.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: So these are very powerful instinctual things that have been converted into modern-day Homo sapien life versus ancient animalistic behaviors.
26:42
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
26:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they are.
26:44
SPEAKER_02: All right.
26:44
SPEAKER_02: So where along this journey did you decide I'm going to become an author and I need to write a book?
26:48
SPEAKER_02: You actually have two books out, but your latest one came out in January.
26:53
SPEAKER_02: So that Alphas Die Early is the latest one.
26:55
SPEAKER_02: So where how in the world, you as a non-reader, did you decide I need to write not just one book, but two?
27:01
SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell Nonreader, non-writer, yeah.
27:03
SPEAKER_00: Um I so when I announced divorce, I still had been far enough along on my spiritual practice to get to that stage to also recognize and respect that I could be seeing things incorrectly.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: So I took a year to go to therapy to explore, to make sure my decision was grounded, even though I knew every second I was in the wrong life, I wasn't in the right life.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: I didn't need to do anything precipitous.
27:28
SPEAKER_00: I had three kids, I had a this business and employees and the whole thing.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: So I said, okay, let me take the year or the time I need to really go through this, even though I announced it.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: I still live with my ex-wife.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: We lived a separate, we were separated and lived a separated life, but still I wanted to make sure I was not making any catastrophic judgment mistakes.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: Right.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: And I really had very little in my life at the time.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: And so I didn't like being at home.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: So I initially was shocked that that all these things existed and I didn't know them.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: How could I live this long and not realize all these principles are out there, all these books are out there, all these ideas, even the simple ones like seven habits of highly effective people, which I which I read many times, uh, Untethered Soul, which is a remarkable book by Michael Singer, how could this exist?
28:16
SPEAKER_00: And I didn't know about it.
28:17
SPEAKER_00: Like no one taught me this.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: And I thought, you know, I imagine other people are like this as well.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: And then I realized that a lot of the books I read needed some assistance from other books.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: So Untethered Soul, coupled with a little bit of David Hawkins, might make both of their books a little bit tighter.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: So in my boredom at home, not wanting to be at home, I would legitimately drive down the street in my car, get my laptop, and just start typing and sharing ideas to help people discover what I discovered without having to go through all the pain and suffering that I went through.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: It was really driven from a combination of all those things.
28:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:53
SPEAKER_02: Oh, which is a great way to start writing.
28:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:57
SPEAKER_02: And just I love when people, when writers come to the forefront and say, I just wanted to share what I wanted to help other people, because it makes the most authentic and interesting book.
29:06
SPEAKER_02: So let's talk about your second book.
29:08
SPEAKER_02: What in the world does the title mean?
29:11
SPEAKER_02: Alphas.
29:11
SPEAKER_02: Alphas die early.
29:12
SPEAKER_02: What does that mean?
29:14
SPEAKER_02: Well, it means how'd you come up with that?
29:17
SPEAKER_00: Well, initially it was stop being a real man so you could be a real man.
29:21
unknown: Yeah.
29:21
SPEAKER_00: Which was really about dropping bravado and performance and all the things that men think make them a real man, that the social um status things that a lot of my choices were driven by what I understood a real man was.
29:35
SPEAKER_00: And that was an identity that I wore, masculinity, it's gender, but it's also something that society said I was or I wasn't, if I didn't act and behave this way.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: And I realized that all those things didn't make me a real man.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: Being vulnerable, sharing emotion, and I don't mean like walking around like a milktoast, emotions and crying down the street, but I mean saying the things I I needed to say when I needed to say them, staying up for myself, staying up for my boundaries.
30:03
SPEAKER_00: And standing up for my boundaries, even if if it meant loss, personal loss, to stand up for morals rather than gain, to be vulnerable about what that what that felt like and what that was.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: And so it was really about that was the initial title.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: And then I realized that why am I writing this book now was because young men are in trouble.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: The the data is really bad for young men.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: Three out of four suicides are men.
30:25
SPEAKER_00: Drug addiction is up in men, mental health is up in men.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: Higher education rates in both medical and law for men is down.
30:33
SPEAKER_00: And I I'm not comparing to women, I don't, I don't, it's not a woman issue.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: This is a man issue.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: This is categorically confusion.
30:39
SPEAKER_00: This is identity confusion.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: And so I realize that that men want to be alphas.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: It's in their biology.
30:47
SPEAKER_00: Everyone wants to be an alpha.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: Forget the social definitions of alpha is because that definition will change from Japan to India to America to Canada.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a definition that cannot be met.
30:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
30:57
SPEAKER_00: But but any case, that whatever the definition of alpha is, it meant survival of the fittest.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: Darwinian proved it.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: Or Darwin proved it.
31:07
SPEAKER_00: But we're not animals anymore.
31:09
SPEAKER_03: You gotta get off that scale.
31:11
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: It's time to evolve.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: Right?
31:13
SPEAKER_00: Stop being animals.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: Like alphas really aren't the way.
31:16
SPEAKER_00: Look what's happening to men.
31:18
SPEAKER_00: If every man wants to be an alpha, and every man's pretending to be an alpha, and every man is trying to define an alpha as either money or abs or performance or winning, whatever that definition was, it's not working.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: So then I realized that the trends are down and and it's they're not thriving.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: They're not surviving.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: And if the pursuit is to be an alpha, let's get people off of that path.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of how the name got derived.
31:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
31:43
SPEAKER_02: So what path do you want them to shift to?
31:46
SPEAKER_00: The Omega Man.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: The path of the Omega.
31:49
SPEAKER_02: Define what is the Omega Man.
31:51
SPEAKER_02: It's all in your book.
31:52
SPEAKER_02: So everybody's got to read it.
31:54
SPEAKER_02: But we need to at least expose it a little bit here.
31:56
SPEAKER_02: What's the Omega Man?
31:58
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like Nietzsche's Ubermensch with morality and a spiritual ending.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: It's it's um Joseph Campbell's hero's journey.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: Um if you know Joseph Campbell, if you don't, I recommend anyone kind of connect with his work.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: It's Odysseus.
32:14
SPEAKER_00: It's it's the drive to win at war and the drive to be performative, to then go through the trials of life that challenge us to come back sovereign and whole and complete.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: And that that complete is an inner completeness.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: It's a, I can, I can survive without a sword and without a shield because my survival is now, and for Odysseus, it's it's my wife and my family and my sovereignty and my humanity.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: And managing those emotions from a positive perspective versus letting those emotions take control of us and have us do things that are counter to our own success.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: And so the Omega Path is about a series of basics, I call them, a series of challenges to overcome and a series of plays to incorporate into daily life, to make yourself emotionally and spiritually sovereign, to live with a with a level of contentedness that you make solid choices for yourself, that you you know, the performance is not identity, is not an aspect of the decision-making process of how to behave.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: Right.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: If that makes sense.
33:21
SPEAKER_02: No, it makes perfect sense.
33:22
SPEAKER_02: And I think I loved how often in the parts of your book that I read, I loved how often you talked about identity.
33:28
SPEAKER_02: Because I know since I work with a lot of women, what their identity is, especially as you know, women leaders in corporate America, their identity very often gets lost.
33:38
SPEAKER_02: And they are their job title and they're a mom and a wife and a vice president and a CEO or whatever.
33:45
SPEAKER_02: And the who are they as human beings is very common for women to get lost.
33:49
SPEAKER_02: And I loved, I recently did a free webinar about reframing your identity.
33:55
SPEAKER_02: And ironically, one of the men I had worked with years ago on LinkedIn reached out to me and said, I think this is really interesting.
34:02
SPEAKER_02: I need this too.
34:03
SPEAKER_02: And I was so surprised because all of my marketing is towards women and you know, everything is about, I talk about women all the time.
34:10
SPEAKER_02: And I was so surprised.
34:11
SPEAKER_02: But as he was sharing his story, I was like, Well, of course you need it too.
34:15
SPEAKER_02: He's like, I want to be more than just my career.
34:20
SPEAKER_02: And I'm struggling at this stage of life in his 40s with who am I as a who am I as a man?
34:26
SPEAKER_02: Who am I as a person, not just my identity defined to my success as a career.
34:32
SPEAKER_02: And so I love that you talk a lot about identity because I think a lot of people are seeking a way to reframe that for themselves.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: Well, I I'm not, you know, I didn't create these, these philosophies.
34:45
SPEAKER_00: I didn't, you know, I'm just sharing them in a vernacular that I hope people today can understand.
34:49
SPEAKER_00: And I think Carl Jung is someone that really did a lot of work on the persona.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: You know, we we put this persona in front of us, and that persona talks for us.
34:58
SPEAKER_00: Dr.
34:59
SPEAKER_00: David Hawkins talks a lot about this as well.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: But this persona is essentially in front of who we are, but it's also in front of the traumas and fears that we have, the vulnerabilities.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: And so its own creation is to not make us feel awful and uncomfortable.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: And so oftentimes this persona talks for us.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: And masculinity is a persona, and oftentimes this persona is created to mask the fears that we think social and cultural ideology will penetrate our traumas and expose them.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: So we're basically in protective mode.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: If you can be vulnerable, you begin to soften this persona or this mask or this identity, and you begin to talk to the real person rather than like I call in the book the peacock, right?
35:44
SPEAKER_00: You have the peacock feathers, and another female peacock is legitimately going to pick me because how bright my peacock feathers are.
35:50
SPEAKER_00: And as humans, we can go, oh, wait a minute, these feathers didn't work for that peacock last time.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: Hold on.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: Let me let me get some feathers.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: Let me color them and okay, here I am.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: And and they're picking the feathers and not the bird.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: And so we're really good at always presenting new feathers and pretending to be something that we're not.
36:07
SPEAKER_00: And that needs to, that needs to disappear if we want to advocate for ourselves because we're legitimately advocating for protection of our wounds and not advocating for the success of ourselves.
36:17
SPEAKER_00: And I use an Einstein quote a lot because it's not woo-woo and it's not spiritual.
36:21
SPEAKER_00: And he talks about the true value of a human is is their liberation from their determination of themselves, of the self, of the ego.
36:29
SPEAKER_00: And the true value of a human is to Einstein is based on your ability to see the difference between this persona and who you really are.
36:37
SPEAKER_00: And I everybody needs that type of training.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: And I can tell you, your life, your choices, if made beyond pain, if made beyond vulnerability, if made beyond protection of a persona, are going to be better.
36:49
SPEAKER_00: Your relationships are going to be deeper and more interactive, both on a positive and a deeper sadness level.
36:56
SPEAKER_00: You'll feel more and you'll be happier more.
36:59
SPEAKER_00: And then work, you're you're legitimately honest.
37:02
SPEAKER_00: You see objective reality more.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: You're not converting numbers to closing a deal for something else.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: That the persona crutches numbers.
37:10
SPEAKER_00: And it's often, often a lie.
37:12
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I talk a lot about that.
37:14
SPEAKER_00: I think that's really important.
37:15
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I do too.
37:16
SPEAKER_02: I do too.
37:17
SPEAKER_02: All right.
37:17
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to run out of time, but we before we do, we have to talk about chapter 11, your 15 place in the book.
37:25
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
37:26
SPEAKER_02: So we can't cover all 15, but I found them so insightful.
37:32
SPEAKER_02: So what are a couple of your favorites?
37:35
SPEAKER_02: And can you explain what they are and also explain, you know, how you encourage people to look at them and the activities that they should do to try to become aware of them in their lives too?
37:48
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think the basics roll into that.
37:50
SPEAKER_00: And the basics are things like awareness, authenticity, vulnerability, you know.
37:53
SPEAKER_00: And I think when you can institute those, and the book talks a lot about what awareness is.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: It's also a word that's very confused, what authenticity is and what vulnerability is.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: Um, one of my favorites, just because it's the easiest to practice, is live with funeral wisdom.
38:08
SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of people can relate to that because they go to a funeral, especially with someone really close, and they it legitimately changes them.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: They they realize how how short life is, and they begin to talk to themselves about this loss and what it means to them and how they want to change your life because of this loss.
38:30
SPEAKER_00: And then, like a day later, you're back to not living that way.
38:34
SPEAKER_00: Right.
38:34
SPEAKER_00: And so they live every day with funeral wisdom.
38:37
SPEAKER_00: And I think um, I think there's a Mark Twain quote that said, we all have two lives, and the second life starts when we realize that we only have one life.
38:47
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's funeral wisdom.
38:49
SPEAKER_00: And what funeral wisdom does as a practice, everything's about a practice.
38:53
SPEAKER_00: Do you need to have the awareness of when you're not living funeral wisdom?
38:56
SPEAKER_00: So that's where the basics come in.
38:58
SPEAKER_00: Wait a minute, I'm arguing over like this this like towel on the floor.
39:02
SPEAKER_00: Like, why am I why my spouse leaving the towel?
39:04
SPEAKER_00: Hey, what does that's not funeral wisdom?
39:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:07
SPEAKER_00: It's like it's not that big of a deal.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: Like, how many seconds does it take to pick up the towel?
39:10
SPEAKER_00: Like it's not a big deal, right?
39:13
SPEAKER_00: And so I think living funeral wisdom wisdom makes life easier for yourself, for the people around you.
39:18
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then when you do pick up that towel for your spouse, though likely they're gonna say, hey, thank you.
39:22
SPEAKER_00: Maybe not the first time, but at some point, you know, five seconds a day to honor someone you love, to live funeral wisdom will make your life better.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: It's something as simple as that.
39:33
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
39:34
SPEAKER_00: So that's a real, a real favorite of mine.
39:36
SPEAKER_00: I think another big one is for a man, I think for women, don't compete.
39:42
SPEAKER_00: And I think competition is very animalistic.
39:45
SPEAKER_00: But the first, and I was incredibly competitive as a as a younger person.
39:49
SPEAKER_00: And I remember that competition would drive me to say bad things about my competitors to make myself feel better.
39:55
SPEAKER_00: And and looking back now, I realize how silly that was because there's enough to go around.
40:00
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, the opposite of not being competitive comes with a lot of animalistic behavior and territorial behaviors and identity behaviors and rigidness and closed-mindedness.
40:13
SPEAKER_00: So it's a very simple practice, but it kind of has a very penetrating practice towards lots of other aspects of your life.
40:20
SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of a favorite of mine as well.
40:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
40:23
SPEAKER_02: And that is a good one.
40:24
SPEAKER_02: And there, so I'm gonna share a couple that I liked that you're gonna be.
40:27
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I'm thinking, yeah.
40:28
SPEAKER_02: Because I'm a big like energy person and the energy you put out, you know, how we don't realize how much energetically we are creating our own reality.
40:37
SPEAKER_02: And so you have one that talks about complaining.
40:40
SPEAKER_02: I I think people definitely do not realize the negativity of complaining.
40:46
SPEAKER_02: And and it's not even just verbally complaining, it's the narrative that happens in your head of complaining.
40:53
SPEAKER_02: And it's like, that's that's what you're spending your brain power on.
40:57
SPEAKER_02: And and when you look at it from a funeral perspective, right?
41:00
SPEAKER_02: Like, is that really what you want to be, is that really what you want to be doing?
41:05
SPEAKER_00: No, I wasn't asking which one do you like?
41:07
SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you shared it.
41:08
SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to put you in the spot, but I'm really glad that you're gonna be able to do that.
41:10
SPEAKER_02: No, oh, I have a I have a few more.
41:12
SPEAKER_02: And then the avoiding, avoiding arguing, avoiding argument.
41:16
SPEAKER_02: And I think that's similar to competing, but I think a lot of people argue for the sake of arguing and being defensive.
41:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
41:25
SPEAKER_02: And that also ties into one of the other ones, which was another favorite.
41:29
SPEAKER_02: I have two more that I wrote down.
41:30
SPEAKER_02: Validation, which I think is so important.
41:32
SPEAKER_02: Not be looking for outside sources to validate your value and your worth internally.
41:36
SPEAKER_02: And you share about how to go through exercises to recognize that and how to flip that narrative and change your mindset about that, which is a big one.
41:44
SPEAKER_02: And then my last and absolute favorite one was meditating.
41:47
SPEAKER_02: So many people are like, I can't meditate.
41:49
SPEAKER_02: So can we talk about meditating?
41:51
SPEAKER_02: How did you figure out how to meditate?
41:53
SPEAKER_02: Because someone as successful as you were and you are is not your typical poster child for meditating, because there's a lot going on in your brain.
42:01
SPEAKER_02: And that's why a lot of people say they can't meditate.
42:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
42:03
SPEAKER_00: I I think that's probably one of the misunderstood things in society today.
42:09
SPEAKER_00: To begin with, if anyone does not meditate, I challenge you to DM me why every famous person, successful leader, from Oprah to LeBron James to Jerry Seinfeld to Simone Biles to Michael Phelps to Ray Dow, you name you name the famous person.
42:28
SPEAKER_00: They meditate.
42:29
SPEAKER_00: DM me and tell me why you're not doing it, and all of them are.
42:33
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
42:33
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
42:34
SPEAKER_00: But what it comes down to is that meditation is not, people say doesn't work.
42:39
SPEAKER_00: And I'd often say, Well, what was supposed to happen?
42:42
SPEAKER_00: I'm supposed to relax.
42:44
SPEAKER_00: No, the opposite.
42:45
SPEAKER_00: I legitimately would almost vomit meditating when I was going through tough stuff.
42:50
SPEAKER_00: I would sit down for 20 minutes and my body.
42:53
SPEAKER_00: So look at it this way.
42:54
SPEAKER_00: So, so, so blood is to the heart to keep us alive, like air is to our lungs to keep us alive, like thinking is to our brain to keep us alive.
43:03
SPEAKER_00: So, thinking it's all just thinks.
43:04
SPEAKER_00: So, I would think so heavily to survive that I will I would almost vomit.
43:09
SPEAKER_00: I get nauseous meditating.
43:10
SPEAKER_00: Meditation is the is the practice of not listening to your brain and showing your brain that you have a little bit of self-control, a little bit of self-mastery, a little bit of sovereignty to stop listening to the blather of what the brain's trying to do to save you.
43:27
SPEAKER_00: So if you feel nauseous or it's hard, that means it is working.
43:30
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
43:31
SPEAKER_00: End of story.
43:32
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't, and I and I I did this with my son who's in college, we're at dinner, and he and I said, hold up your cup of water.
43:38
SPEAKER_00: And so that's your emotions and that's your mind.
43:40
SPEAKER_00: And I started pouring more water into the cup.
43:42
SPEAKER_00: I said, Is it getting heavy?
43:43
SPEAKER_00: He says, It's getting heavier.
43:43
SPEAKER_00: I said, more water getting heavy, it's getting heavier.
43:46
SPEAKER_00: I said, okay, hold it there for 50 years.
43:49
SPEAKER_00: And tell me how heavy is.
43:50
SPEAKER_03: Right.
43:51
SPEAKER_00: Meditation is dumping the water out, putting the cup down for 20 minutes, getting a little bit of break to get some perspective and tell the mind, and it goes back to a Buddha quote: either you control your mind, your mind controls you.
44:04
SPEAKER_00: This is training.
44:05
SPEAKER_00: This is brain training.
44:06
SPEAKER_00: This is hitting a tennis ball against a wall or a ping pong ball or throwing the pass a thousand times.
44:12
SPEAKER_00: It's training.
44:13
SPEAKER_00: And that's it.
44:14
SPEAKER_00: Simple as that.
44:15
SPEAKER_02: It is.
44:15
SPEAKER_02: And it's a lifestyle.
44:16
SPEAKER_02: And it becomes and not ever.
44:19
SPEAKER_02: I think what you said that's so important is it's redefining your expectations of what is supposed to happen during meditating.
44:27
SPEAKER_02: And I think so many people think I'm supposed to turn my mind off and I don't have that kind of mind.
44:32
SPEAKER_02: Therefore, I can't.
44:34
SPEAKER_02: It's just like success leads to happiness.
44:36
SPEAKER_02: It's like this drives this.
44:37
SPEAKER_02: And they think there's a linear correlation to it.
44:39
SPEAKER_02: And it's like, no, you know, and I know for me personally, sometimes my mind really is very quiet.
44:44
SPEAKER_02: And I get very deep into my meditation.
44:46
SPEAKER_02: I'm very into my Body.
44:48
SPEAKER_02: And other days, my mind is like idea, idea, idea, idea, idea, idea.
44:52
SPEAKER_02: Like, but I also find sometimes those ideas that go flying around, the ones that I can remember after the meditating, I'm like, oh, maybe that's a good idea.
45:02
SPEAKER_02: Like maybe like, oh wow.
45:05
SPEAKER_02: Whoo, I I solve a lot too.
45:08
SPEAKER_00: So look at this way.
45:09
SPEAKER_00: When you're when you're running, if you couldn't hear your voice say keep going, and all you heard was stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.
45:17
SPEAKER_00: And you couldn't hear the, hey, you got some more entertainment.
45:20
SPEAKER_00: This is gonna make you a bed runner.
45:21
SPEAKER_00: If you couldn't hear that voice, you would just stop.
45:24
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
45:25
SPEAKER_03: Right.
45:25
SPEAKER_00: And and emotionally, that's what happens if you don't have meditation.
45:28
SPEAKER_00: You hear you're angry, you're jealous, you're mad, you're afraid, you you have to do something, you have to put them in their place.
45:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm a real man, I gotta tell that guy.
45:37
SPEAKER_00: Instead of having compassion, I'm gonna have anger, right?
45:40
SPEAKER_00: The the soft voice and meditation turns the volume down to turn that quiet other volume up on emotional debates.
45:48
SPEAKER_00: And so it looks kind of like instead of saying, I'm gonna immediately get anger, and I and I had a temper, right?
45:52
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure if my sister told you, I jumped to a glass window in high school.
45:56
SPEAKER_00: I know she did not.
45:58
SPEAKER_02: She did not.
45:59
SPEAKER_00: Rage of temper, you know.
46:01
SPEAKER_00: So I had a really, really violent temper.
46:03
SPEAKER_00: So I came from that to really turn the volumes down of anger and all those other emotions to saying, I can still have that emotion, but the volume up of uh maybe some compassion might, maybe this person's having a like, I know they cut me off, but maybe like their wife's dying, they have to go save her.
46:20
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe their kid is sick.
46:22
SPEAKER_00: Like, why am I to get angry if some guy cut me off?
46:24
SPEAKER_00: Like, how's that gonna help me?
46:26
SPEAKER_00: Meditation gives you that break and that practice to say, I 20 minutes this morning, I practiced ignoring thoughts.
46:33
SPEAKER_00: So I can ignore the thought of anger for this guy cutting me off, and I can approach this from a different way, maybe a spiritual behavior and act beyond my impulse.
46:44
SPEAKER_00: And that's a spiritual behavior.
46:45
SPEAKER_00: It helps you be spiritual meditation.
46:47
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it does.
46:48
SPEAKER_02: Well, and also helps you make different choices because how is it really helping you?
46:52
SPEAKER_02: And I know you talk a lot about anger.
46:53
SPEAKER_02: So we're gonna direct everybody to your website and you talk a whole bunch about and your book talks a lot about anger too, which I think is really important.
47:00
SPEAKER_02: And I think people don't realize the impact that anger has, not only on the energy they put out, but the energy in what they're telling their body and the the fight or flight that they are raising their body to be in a constant state of, it makes it that much harder to react.
47:14
SPEAKER_02: But I think if you really start to read and understand the things that you're talking about, it's sort of the mindset shift of if I choose anger, what's that really giving me?
47:25
SPEAKER_02: Like what am I really getting from that?
47:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
47:28
SPEAKER_00: I I really like that you you picked up on that.
47:30
SPEAKER_00: And I really like that you uh meditate because I think that's very helpful.
47:35
SPEAKER_00: I think you know this.
47:35
SPEAKER_00: I think your listeners should know this.
47:37
SPEAKER_00: That it takes practice.
47:40
SPEAKER_00: This is not something that you say, hey, I started doing this and it didn't work.
47:44
SPEAKER_00: Everything takes practice.
47:45
SPEAKER_00: And I can use anger for me.
47:47
SPEAKER_00: I can see the delta of where I was at that point and where I am now.
47:50
SPEAKER_00: And and I can still even see a change in me, you know, four years ago than where I am now.
47:55
SPEAKER_00: I remember my kids still triggering me and getting upset at times and raising my voice.
48:00
SPEAKER_00: You know, my my anger now is a tone or a voice.
48:03
SPEAKER_00: And and then I finished saying, I really wish I would have had more compassion.
48:07
SPEAKER_00: I wish I would have, I would have been more effective how to use these words and not those words.
48:11
SPEAKER_00: I would have been more effective instead of dropping the hammer as an authority to be more uh explanative about why I'm choosing this path for my children.
48:19
SPEAKER_00: And then I would realize, okay, I need to implement some more awareness and implement a better spiritual behavior to these triggers.
48:26
SPEAKER_00: And you have to keep working through them.
48:28
SPEAKER_00: And so it's it's a it's actually a long list of practice that you that you change.
48:32
SPEAKER_00: And if for someone else, if it's jealousy or if it's fear or if it's stress, whatever it is, you can kind of monitor your change with your practice and just keep working on it.
48:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it definitely doesn't happen overnight.
48:44
SPEAKER_02: You have to give yourself grace and patience and don't expect perfection either because it is.
48:49
SPEAKER_02: Yes, definitely, yeah.
48:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well said.
48:50
SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
48:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:51
SPEAKER_02: All right.
48:51
SPEAKER_02: You and I could talk for hours, but we're gonna run out of time.
48:54
SPEAKER_02: So before we do, two quick things for you.
48:56
SPEAKER_02: First is I know there's so much we can cover, but is there anything super important that I've missed, or even just a final message that you think is really important to get out to everyone?
49:05
SPEAKER_00: I think the most important message, and I'm gonna kind of piggyback a Robert Green phrase: people cannot underestimate the power of perception.
49:16
SPEAKER_00: Perception and advertising, perception in other people, perception in their own biases, their own positionalities.
49:21
SPEAKER_00: The way we look at the world is so overly subjective, and you think it's objective.
49:27
SPEAKER_00: Your ability to suspend your own positionalities and to suspend an advertiser's positionality or another person's positionality and look at it more objectively will help you respond and live and navigate through life in a much easier and more fluid way.
49:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
49:43
SPEAKER_02: Oh, for sure.
49:44
SPEAKER_02: I love that.
49:45
SPEAKER_02: And also, because you you mentioned this about being in a car and being angry that someone cut you off.
49:49
SPEAKER_02: You never, as you're interacting out in the world with people, I love to remind people, you have no idea what is going on in that person's life.
49:58
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely none.
50:00
SPEAKER_02: And so to judge them or to label them or to respond to their behavior in a certain way when you have so little information about them, how it once again, to your point, like how is that choice helping you?
50:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think again, very well said, Gene.
50:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
50:16
SPEAKER_02: It's not, it's not helping you at all.
50:17
SPEAKER_02: You have no idea.
50:18
SPEAKER_02: You like you said, you have absolutely no idea.
50:20
SPEAKER_02: And I bet at the time when you were at your catastrophic bottom, if someone ran into you, at the face of looking at you, you would not know that everything in your life was falling apart and you were an absolute rock bottom because you probably still looked like you had your shit together.
50:35
SPEAKER_02: And so it's like you just don't know.
50:36
SPEAKER_02: You don't know what people are going through.
50:38
SPEAKER_02: You just don't know.
50:39
SPEAKER_02: So err on the side of giving people grace and benefit of the doubt.
50:43
SPEAKER_00: And knowing that and practicing that needs to integrate.
50:46
SPEAKER_00: So if you, if you believe that, which I hope obviously you do, I hope your listeners do, to know and believe that that exists, to implement that when the driver cuts you off to say, wait a minute, I heard this in Gene's podcast and I want to implement this.
50:59
SPEAKER_00: So let me implement this and give them the grace of not knowing.
51:03
SPEAKER_00: And I don't have to negatively integrate my negative energy into the universe and pick a different path.
51:08
SPEAKER_00: And I I think that was very well said.
51:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that is wonderful.
51:11
SPEAKER_02: All right, before we run out of time, you've mentioned so many books, which I appreciate.
51:14
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for that.
51:15
SPEAKER_02: But I would love to know if I know it's impossible to pick one or two, but if there's a book that you think outside of yours, which will obviously be linked in the show notes and everything, got to go out and buy his books.
51:25
SPEAKER_02: But is there a book that you think is like, oh, if you haven't read this, folks, you got to start here and on your journey?
51:33
SPEAKER_00: You know, I think everyone's journey, a different book would be helpful.
51:37
SPEAKER_00: I think one of the best books that I can recommend that has the broadest approach to wherever you are on your journey.
51:44
SPEAKER_00: And everyone's a different place.
51:45
SPEAKER_00: It's not good or bad, it's just the way it is.
51:47
SPEAKER_00: Where where I think speaks butterfly to caterpillars the best is Michael Singer's book, Untethered Soul.
51:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
51:54
SPEAKER_00: I I think when I when I read that book and I wrote my first book, I said, I wish I could write and be as clear with my concepts as he is in his.
52:02
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a really, really magnificent book, no matter where you are, to add some, add something to your life.
52:08
SPEAKER_02: Agreed.
52:08
SPEAKER_02: And it's also, I will add to it's also a great book to read multiple times because depending on where you are in your journey, in your stage of life, in your circumstances, you will take different things away from it depending on when it is that you read it as well.
52:23
SPEAKER_02: And so that's why it's a good one.
52:24
SPEAKER_02: It's a good one on repeat.
52:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was on a plane in Seattle, never forget this.
52:28
SPEAKER_00: And I was reading that book for the fifth time.
52:31
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
52:31
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, wait a minute.
52:33
SPEAKER_00: I have never read this paragraph before in my life.
52:36
SPEAKER_00: I have read this book four times.
52:37
SPEAKER_00: I have never read this paragraph.
52:40
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I can't.
52:41
SPEAKER_00: How did this escape me four times?
52:43
SPEAKER_00: Like that to your point, it it was a brand new book the fifth time as it was the first four.
52:48
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
52:48
SPEAKER_02: And it's a dense book.
52:50
SPEAKER_02: There's a lot in it.
52:50
SPEAKER_02: He has a lot of concepts in it.
52:52
SPEAKER_02: And that's why you can keep reading it again and again, no matter where you are in your journey, and you will always learn something super impactful.
52:58
SPEAKER_02: So I love that book.
52:59
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
52:59
SPEAKER_02: Dave, it's been such a pleasure to have you on the show.
53:01
SPEAKER_02: And I thank you for all you're doing, really, for men's health and trying to normalize spirituality and have men really look at themselves differently in this world.
53:10
SPEAKER_02: And everyone, you need to become an omega.
53:12
SPEAKER_02: I love that.
53:13
SPEAKER_02: And also I encourage women, read the book.
53:16
SPEAKER_02: It's there's a lot in it that is that is so helpful to women and also helpful to be able to bring to the men in your lives also to get them to start to get a glimmer and a glimpse of how they can maybe be looking at their own lives differently and living a better, more balanced, happier life.
53:33
SPEAKER_02: And so I thank you so much for coming on the show.
53:35
SPEAKER_02: It's been a pleasure to talk to you.
53:36
SPEAKER_00: And Gene, likewise, and I again I applaud the work you're doing and to get this out there, and I appreciate being a guest on your show.
53:42
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
53:43
SPEAKER_02: You're welcome.
53:44
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
53:44
SPEAKER_02: We'll definitely stay in touch.
53:46
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for joining us for this week's episode of Building the Best You.
53:51
SPEAKER_02: If you are ready to take a deeper dive into transforming your life, check out my Empowerment Fundamentals course on my website, houseofgermar.com.
53:59
SPEAKER_02: Thank you, and I will see you next week with another inspiring guest.