#785 - Jimmy Rex - The Reality Of What It Takes To Become A Better Man

22:20But when you kind of expose it and you're able to go like, Hey, you know what? Here's what happened to me. Here's like my story. And we think people will love us less. We think like every guy like that I've ever coached says the same thing I call man. If people knew who I really was, they wouldn't love me. And then they tell it and you're like, dude, what if none of us are worthy? What if all of us just are okay because we are? You know, I think one of the things that's helped me a lot is a, I think God laughs at me. I think He takes humor in my mistakes. and I've just taken this like a role of that because I switched my relationship with God where he just appreciates me.

22:52He appreciates the dumb shit I do, he appreciates the good stuff I do and he's just like, he sees me as a character. And I think I would think about my kid. If I had a kid, just always getting in trouble, but like trying shit and screwing it up and all the time just being a jackass, but like he's so loving and he's trying his best, like how could you not love that person? And I think of God like me, like thinking of me like that. And so for me, it really empowers me. And so every day I start with a prayer where I go, God just lead me to the people that need me. And if that leads me to weird things that I do, that I shouldn't have done or like just, you know, being an idiot sometimes, then I can laugh about it and just go, you know what?

23:29God appreciates this. I'm okay with it. And that's the opposite of shame. Shame is where you just feel like, you know, I'm not worthy of doing this. Like I can't be the one to do this. But like as you've seen, the most amazing people are simply people that are willing to take action without knowing it's gonna work. It's like people that can give themselves grace when they fall. They can, you know, be okay with, you know, not having all the answers or not getting it right the first time. And so for me, shame is what keeps us in this dark place. And it festers in the dark. And nobody wants to talk about it.

23:58And so you got to find people that are willing to listen to you and not judge you and be able to be curious about why, you know, anytime you get somebody's story, bring a brown talks about this all the time. It's like the second you start leaning into somebody, you're like, oh, they're worth a living. I've never met somebody that once I leaned in and got their story weren't levable. Yeah, it's strange to think shame is if people could see me, they won't love me. But by doing that thing, people don't connect with you. So the thing that you are fearful of is the thing that you are making happen.

24:31Yes. Yeah, that's because the universe only hears, you know, like the energy of that, you're going to repel anybody that's trying to connect. And so you're exactly right. It's like the thing we want most, we avoid giving. I always say to people, whatever you want the most, I've given away. If you want more money, give it away. If you want more time, give away your time. If you want more love, give away love, because what happens is you energetically, you let the universe know, hey, I see this thing in abundance. I have so much money, I can give it away. I have so much time, I can donate my time.

25:01And all of a sudden, it becomes this abundant thing in your life as opposed to this thing that you have this scarcity around and this weird energy around. Yeah, I think as well just to kind of really drill home that No, it's where he's going in his comfortable and his skin and having fun while he's going there they're like comfortable in your skin thing the the thing that is going to make you I believe the most lovable and the most accepted by people and the most liked Is going to be your ability to say things that in the wrong hands would make you unlikable Like that is the cool thing. All of the best friends that I've got, we've bonded over, I remember here's one story.

25:40So you, Seth, been on the show like 50 times, he was one of the most common guests, one of my best friends in the UK. He heard his lower back one time. We both got bulging discs. And when you have that, it's like your whole back seizes up. So the spine, the erectors in the lower back just lock so that you can't do any more damage to the spine because obviously it's super, super important and he just wants to protect you. So super painful, it's basically impossible to kind of stop happening. And he messaged saying that this had gone on and I was like, oh, fuck man, like I know what you're going through.

26:14And I was on my way to work. I was gonna open up one of our events, one of our club nights in Newcastle. I was like, oh, okay, well, I'll tell you what, I'll drive to the corner shop that's near his house, buy him some malt loaf and some sort of gate raid Lucas Aid things and some, I believe, I gave a pain like gel stuff that'll help and maybe something else. And I texted him and he was like, oh don't bother coming to see me. Like I'm late in bed and I was like, I'm coming to see you. So like opened the door, went up set and he like couldn't really walk because it kind of shuts down the way that your body is able to move.

26:47And I think that was the moment that our friendship really, really went to another level because I was like, look, I don't care that you look weak and vulnerable and pathetic and you know your fragile and broken. What I want is to be a friend, like I'm here for you, I want to do this thing. And I think about that a lot. I think about that gesture from me and he's done similar stuff for me too. And you go that moment of him being broken was actually the bit where I was like, I see humanity in him. I see this part of him that is like that is deserving of love because the person that's completely all just super competent all the time.

27:25I don't know, I can't really relate with that person. Well, we actually love people that we serve. And so a mistake that guys make in dating a lot is they try to do everything for the girl, they don't let her do anything for them. Because we actually love something more when we're invested or we get to serve them, we get to do things for them. I tell a story in the book about my best friend Travis and same thing, he's like the most good -looking dude. He's got the supermodel wife, amazing kids, seven figure job, part owner of a telecom company. of it just just just rushing it. Yeah. Every single guy that's a part of your inner circle that I met has got like 10 out of 10 big teddy wives.

28:00Like what is in the water in fucking Utah? There's some good breeding in Utah. It's not bad. My God. A gene pool. What was it that someone taught me that evening Utah's got the hottest single mums in America?

28:15You know, I've always been grateful for the beautiful women in Utah. I will say that. I've been to 106 countries now, so I've seen what's out there and I always come home to Utah. It's like, it really is. There are some beautiful women there. But it's funny about this guy is there was this little bit of, he's always a little bit too cool, right? Or a little bit too done together, not with me, but with a lot of people. We're just a little bit intimidated, even though he's not that way. But so one night he comes to us. He's about to become a dad. He was about a month away and he pulled me and my other two best friends into a room and he says he starts crying.

28:47He says, Hey guys, I don't feel worthy of like being a father. I'm really worried that I'm not going to be a good dad. He said my, my leveling, which is words of affirmation. Can you guys just pour in a little bit? It was so innocent. And I was like, Oh my gosh. And I see you. Yes. And we just started telling him how amazing he is. And I can get emotional thinking about it because it was like the moment I've never loved him more than in that moment. It was like, Oh, this dude does need me. Like, and I need him. And you know, and like we need each other. And it's like, Oh my gosh. Like But this is such a beautiful thing.

29:16Like he's in his moment of weakness, he's asked for support and allowed me to be that for him. And that is a different level of friendship. There was a, I think it was Dr. Robert Glover again. He is on his third marriage now. And he, I think it's like a Mexican lady, some sort of Central American South American lady. And maybe he's got enough money for a maid or maybe he's able to take out the garbage. There was some sort of normal household chore that he had said to her like no Don't bother. Oh, it was ironing the clothes. It was ironing the clothes And you're like I'm gonna get them made to iron the clothes and she basically said something to the extent of like I want to iron your clothes like I want to feel like I'm contributing to your life Yeah, and I'm sure that there's a women listening that like I fucking don't iron his clothes, but You know it those active service a lot of the time make you feel like you're contributing to somebody's life Yeah, well, I've literally like, I've been on dates before where I used to fake like, I got a headache one time and I faked like I was fine and it was throbbing and I just tried to power through the date.

30:19Can't let my date know I've got a headache, you know? And then I kind of learned this concept and I was like, so the next time I got a headache and it was a year or a later, but I'm like, I'm just kind of kind of lean into it. I was like, hey, I'm so sorry. I have the worst headache and she goes here, let me rub your head and I'm next to you knowing my head's in her lap and she's kind of giving me a massage and she's taking care of me all night. And now you're feeling love like it was, no, it weren't. And now you're manifesting headaches when you don't even have one to get yourself into the lap of women.

30:42But isn't that funny though? It's like, you know, we think we have to have everything put together, but women want to serve. Like a good woman wants to contribute. She wants to be a nurture. She wants to contribute to your happiness and make you happy and do things for you. So, there's like, I mean, thinking about competence a lot and how people, it's in a lure and in an attraction and stuff. And I'm very attracted in my friendships and in my relationships to people that are competent, people that are able to do stuff. And I think that there's too much of a matter around men being competent and women being incompetent.

31:14I think that it's seen as like that sort of mastery I need to do a thing thing. If you're with a check that is an unbelievable pickleball player or is like a really good driver or something like that, that's fucking sexy. That's cool. And the same thing goes for a guy where it's like, hey, this dude crushes him business, he's really confident, he's in good shape or whatever. but he can't dance. And it's like, that's kind of charming. Like to actually embrace that side of him, and the wife or the girlfriend that he's out in a date with, he's like, look, you're gonna have to take the lead here, like you're the one that can dance, I can't.

31:52And that's cool because your incompetence is polarized against all of the stuff that you crush at. And I think that a lot of the time, what guys are trying to do is cover up their incompetence with fake competence as opposed to just saying, these are the areas in which I am good. These are the areas in which I am bad. Love me for both of them as opposed to, like, don't see this over here. And it's such a, it's like a very fragile, tenuous sort of broken view of yourself. It's like, oh, you're fucking self -worth lies on such a knife edge that even the slightest hint of some weakness this means that you're now no longer valuable.

32:34Well, and it gives women permission to not have to have everything figured out. Like when you can't do certain things, they're kind of like, oh, I can relax around this guy. I can go and go back to what I said before. It's really nice when you can just be yourself, right? I mean, men have to be competent in certain areas. Like no woman's gonna be like, oh, that's cute if he's incompetent at making money, right? Like, yeah, yeah. It's so cute how you continue to spend a house deposit on gambling. Right, exactly. But like when it comes to other things, yes, it's okay to be like, you know, One of my favorite things is a woman that's passionately engaged in something she loves.

33:06It doesn't matter what it is. If you see a woman and she just loves her thing and she's amazing at it, it is beautiful. When a woman can play the piano or sings or just be a great mother. Yes, whatever it is, it's just like, oh my gosh, that's so beautiful to watch. I always say, I look for women that are passionate just like they love to do their things. Instead of, a lot of times we get caught up with the wrong things. but for men, there is certain things you want to be confident at. But the rest of it, the word I like to use is playful. Like the most attractive state a man can be in as a playful state.

33:39Because you're just, it's, you're never in a negative emotion when you're being playful. You're not taking itself to see it. Yes, you're allowed to just kind of screw shit up a little bit and kind of have fun with it. You know, it's in my mission statement for my life is to be a playful human because I think it's one of the most important. It's like, when I was a kid, I remember I'd go into my friends' houses and like everyone's had this experience, but their parents are miserable and they're just hard to be around. You're just trying to stay down stairs because the dad just came home from work.

34:03And I remember thinking even as a kid, like, man, I just want, I want to be an adult. It's fun. I want people to run to me. I want people to be excited when I show up. Oh, Jimmy's coming? Yeah, that's gonna be fun. Yeah, exactly. And I believe I've accomplished that, but that's what I want. It's just like we're little kids run to you. And they're like, they know, you know, I have 200 kids that call me Uncle Jimmy because it's the guys I coach as kids are my best friends kids. And I love that. I just did an Easter hunt for my clients last Saturday for Easter. and I have a helicopter coming drop 10 ,000 eggs on these kids and do their full of candy of jelly beans.

34:32It's so funny. I mean, kids are getting pelted in the head. And that is like a core memory for a kid. Yes, but it's like a core memory for a little kid, right? Like the Easter time, an egg hit him in the face for my helicopter. But I have, you know, little kids will run up and I had this one lady, she came to me during my fireworks show that I do last year and she said, my son just said something, say it again. And he's like, I just want to be like you would I grow up. And it's like, that's the greatest compound I've ever had. Like a little kid aspiring to have this fun, playful life as an adult, because it's what I always wanted when I was a kid.

35:03I always wanted to be that. And so I've really built a life around doing that. You mentioned negativity. Why so many people negative as a default? There seems to be a culture of cynicism at the moment. Yeah, I think it's hardwired to in us. Like, I mean, look, when you think about humans as their whole purpose is to replicate and survive, right? And so to survive, what are you doing? your natural DNA kind of screws you over, but it looks for what's going wrong so that it can fix it, so it can be aware of it, so it can look out for it, be danger, or whatever it might be. And so I think we're hardwired to look for what's wrong.

35:35It's why we're attracted to the car wreck. It's why we're attracted to the news. But you have to hijack your own brain. Tony Robbins talks about this all the time. But like if you can hijack your brain to look for what's right, then you can live in a state of gravity. And he said the way you do that is by being grateful. Like, and so, you know, One of my coach, my best coach I've ever had, she would always just say to me, anytime I remember one time, this one of my friends had betrayed me and this whole thing and I was so mad and she said, where's the gift in this? I was like, we're not playing this game right now.

36:04I get to just piss for a minute, yes. She goes, no, we're not gonna get off the phone till you come up with 20 gifts. I'm like, there's not 20 gifts in this. But the time I got off the phone with her an hour and a half later, I came up with 26 gifts that happened from this moment. And so it's like whatever we focus on, you we feel, we know this, but we are naturally wired to look for the negative, or look for what's wrong. It's a defense mechanism to keep ourselves alive, but it keeps us from happiness. And so. It's not just the seeking the negative, though, that I'm talking about. It's also like the promulgation of the negative.

36:37It's the downplaying of other people's successes. It's the mean comments on the internet. What's the, yeah, so that one, I believe. So when we see somebody having success, so people can look at your podcasts. They have to say one of two things. Either, wow, look what he accomplished. He must be amazing. Or they have to go, he must have got lucky. And the reason why they say that or they try to come at you or they're negative is because you have to look your own life and you have to realize, okay, you either have to change yourself or you got to make everybody else wrong. So it's easier to just be like, well, he must have got lucky or he probably cheated to get there because the opposite of that, the alternative of that is you got to look at your own life and go, what do I need to change so I can be successful?

37:18So I can be rich, so I can have a great podcast. And people don't want to do that. It's easier to try to make the other person wrong. And so people naturally default to that person must have done it, you know, illegally, that person's not who they say they are. They try to make that person wrong. Yeah, because they don't want to change themselves. It's more work to, you know, people don't want to look at themselves. And I think that's a really interesting point. Yeah, I think that's why, you know, Jocco Willick talks about this all the time, that extreme ownership is it's the opposite of being a villain.

37:43Like the only thing that's like a commemorable or like you know that's good about being a victim is getting over it. It's like when you overcome it like this is the only thing that's you know really admirable about being a victim. And so people will do anything to fight for that victim's story because it allows them to not have to change themselves. If I'm a victim I don't need to change like this is why this thing's having to me and I can just make everybody else wrong around me. Like the second you take ownership of your own stuff you got to fix it. you got to make changes and that's harder for most people.

38:12And so they'd rather just assume everybody else is wrong. You mentioned Tony Robbins, Brunei Brown. You've worked with a ton of coaches. You do the stuff yourself. Can you take me through the most high leverage? Mantras, approaches, fundamental frameworks and philosophies that you've learned from all of the time that you've been doing this coaching is there? A few things that you always come back to that are fundamental to your worldview. Sure. Yeah, you know, one of my philosophies and I kind of talked about the the formula for transformation in my book. There's really five steps to it and kind of goes with this.

38:47I'll kind of share that. But step number one is you have to take a moral stand. You have to decide like, you know, what's right and what's wrong. First off, you have to be honest about what you're doing. How do you do that? I think we know it our core. I think it's just really having self -awareness. You know Gary Ve talks about that the most important quality human can have a self -awareness. It's just being honest with yourself. Hey, you're not doing the things you need to be doing. If you're fat, it's not because you're jeans or because of this, because you're eat wrong, it's because you don't exercise.

39:12You gotta be honest, right? If whatever the thing might be. So I think that step number one is just being honest and just going, okay, you know what? I can admit that I'm not doing things I need to be doing or I'm doing things I shouldn't be doing. Number two is you change your behavior. Like you have to decide what the alternative to what you're doing is going to be. And we used to live in a world where that was a little bit difficult, the skills and the actual information was hard to get, it's not now. It's very simple. There's a million different ways to get it. Now it's more about executing on what you already know.

39:39And then the third step is having accountability because it can be very difficult to change on your own. And so accountability is, you know, most of the good coaches, none of them say anything that's world breaking. I've had people that, you know, signed up for my program. They're like, you're not saying anything I don't know. I said exactly. But I'm holding you accountable to being on the Calgary Week and just the very active showing up and being here, you're going to get inspiration for your own life of what you need to change because you're thinking about what you can do better, what you can do differently.

40:05And so just putting yourself in that environment is creating that change for you, or at least that inspiration to know what you need to change. The fourth one is having support. That's where my community comes in for me, exactly. But like everybody, like you can't do these things on your own. Like I tell a story, I told the at the conference that you spoke at, you know, we climbed out Kylm and Jarrow and one of my buddies that I met on that trip, this guy Kiwi had one leg. And he was getting to the top of this mountain with one leg and I won't tell the full story because it took me 20 minutes But long story short, there's this former NFL football player Dave Vibora that trained him for six seven months leading up to it and the second day we were hiking Dave I was hiking and you know when I talked to the guy with the one leg He said he wanted to you know do it for the other Military people that take their lives every day 22 military guys take their life every day He said I wanted to show them they have something to worth you know living for so I'm like damn This is that's a big why this guy's gonna get to the top and so I'm talking to Dave the next day And he says look dude, it's deeper than that.

41:04This guy's called me twice as wife is called me twice in the last six months He's had the gun in his mouth and he's like he's he's struggling if he doesn't get to the top of this mountain I think he'll be dead within a couple months. I'm like holy shit She's got a lot bigger than climbing a mountain, you know, and I was like stuck because we were doing it with Jason Kelsey who's kind of become like a Hype of stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and like Chris long these amazing humans that I was excited to meet them but all of a sudden my whole thing was about getting this guy at the top. Well, long story short, we get to the sixth day, which is when you summit.

41:31And the problem with altitude is it doesn't discriminate, man. You get up there. I had, we had a defensive back for the Titans that was done. He was shitting himself and just all sorts of a mess. We have other guys that, I mean, some of the most athletic dudes in the world. We had a Marine with us that turned back to give you an idea how difficult this is. Literally a Marine. Like, they don't turn back. Vince Young, though, like one of the all -time college football players the year before, he turned back. I mean, this is a very difficult hike. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. So I'm watching Q all night, the guy with one leg, he's climbing this mountain and he fell hundreds of times, keeps getting up, keeps getting up.

42:05We finally, we're about three, four hours behind. We get to this fault summit, it's about 600 feet from the top and if you've ever climbed Killy, the hard part is you're now up in the altitude to the highest you are and you have to walk for about an hour around the rim basically to get to the actual top. And I'm listening to Chris Long who was kind of the guy in charge of our whole group. And this guy named Orca who was in charge of basically all the Sherpas and stuff. And they're like, hey man, he's done. We gotta send him down. And I'm sitting there and, you know, I was at the time, I was just a realtor.

42:35I'm like, what am I gonna say basically? You know, and so I'm finding, I'm looking for my buddy Dave, who's like this six, five, five, back, or just freaking beast of a man. I run up to him, I said, hey, they're trying to get cute to go down. Like, you gotta do something. And this dude comes over and he grabs Q and he's like, dammit, Q. You're not done yet. We came here to go to the top of the summit. We're going to the top of the summit and he looks at or he goes He's going to the top. He looks at Chris He's going with me. We have to carry his ass. That's what we're doing We're not stopping 600 feet from the top and he goes, Q you good.

43:04He goes, yeah I'm good and so we end up throwing an arm around this dude We get him to the top of the summit and it took about two hours and we're all just dying and hurting and it was like I'm bawling like watching this like you know, Dave is there from and I talk about in the book I said who is going to be your Dave Vibora? Like when you're done, I mean this guy gave everything it was like he was spent He gave everything he had but somebody in that moment loved him more than he could love himself like somebody said I don't care if you're done We're gonna carry your ass from here and got him to the top because he knew what was on the line So that's the whole point of having mentor.

43:38So that step five is fine a mentor, right? Having a day of a board having somebody in your world that can help you when you're done That's where your community picks you up and says no, we're not done yet, dude We're going to make this happen. And so that's the formula for transformation. That's the whole reason coaching is so valuable. And you know, the mentorship part, the last piece is essentially you want to find somebody. That's why I hired Edmila to be my 101 coach because you want to find somebody that's where you want to go, where you want to be. That's been where you are. And then you just find a way to create enough value to be in their world.

44:08And they can compress that time. You can skip a lot of the hurdles they had to, you know, a lot of the grenades. They had to fall on for you. And you can get where they're going so much quicker. And so I just look for people that inspire me for people that are doing things that I want to be doing and then I just figure out how to create And have value to be in their life and that's how I find mentors That's how I find like people like you man's like it my podcast is like I'm 570 episodes in but I'm like shit Man, look at my crazy like I'm so inspired by you're never satisfied. You're always pushing You're always doing more you study like the you the way that you articulate things and I'm learning from you I'm like I that's why I reached out to you I'm like, I'm gonna get in this dude's world.

44:46I know how to create a value for him because I appreciate that he's doing this at the highest level and I wanna learn from him. I wanna be, most people become friends with who lives next to him or who, you know, their kids play ball together and that's their parents. I'm like, no, no, who is just killing life? Who inspires me? I'm gonna figure out what they're doing because that's gonna make my life so much better. And so that's where coaching or mentorship and all that stuff comes in. I love the idea of being friends with people who believe in you more than you do. Oh yeah. And that's so rare.

45:14Like, okay, you want a partner who believes in you more than you do. You want friends that believe in you more than you do. You want support that is more encouraging than it is pitying. It's like, look, I hold you to a high standard because I know that you can get that. I know that you can do this thing and that you can make this work. Even if you don't, that's cool. I did my launch party for my book last night. One of the guys came up to me. So three weeks ago, we did an event and we did a hike and this dude's out of shape. He's the oldest guy in our group. He's never, he does 3 ,000 steps a day to give you an idea.

45:46Like that's not very many. He's to the fridge and back a few times. And on the way back from the hike, we had to carry him. Like, and I pulled him aside. I said, listen, man, I said, I know how much you love this group, but you cannot be a liability. We can't ever have to carry you again. I said, here's the deal. 10 ,000 steps every day. If you miss your out of the group period. I love you enough that I'm going to do that to you. I will kick you out if you miss. You got to text me every day. He has not missed a day. You came out to me last night at the event give me a big old hug and he said dude Thank you for loving me enough to actually hold me accountable to this.

46:17It's changing everything Like he's this last night. Just literally came into me last night. How cool. You mentioned there about This my never satisfied Approach I'm really trying to unpack at the moment the difference between holding yourself to a high standard and being grateful for the things that you've done for finding this balance between wanting more and demanding high achievement of yourself and yet having the grace and the acceptance to allow yourself a little bit of room if you do fall short or to just know that, look, no one PRs that work out every single day. Like that's not the way that it works and that's not the way that life works either.

47:02Have you, how have you come to think about this balance between in a desire for excellence in grace when you're falling short. Yeah, I think a lot of it is the energy behind it, like where it's coming from. So I tell my guys, I say, look, you're enough and you're capable of much more. Like I start with that, right? But so for me, again, there's another story from the book, but when I was a kid, my dad really wanted me to get a held back in eighth grade to be a star baseball player. My brother had been the two -time state MVP, so he's like, I'm gonna hold you back for a year, and then you'll be that much better.

47:30You'll be able to be a star, and I didn't want him. I had good friends. I was one of the older kids already. I was a pretty smart kid. So eventually long story short, my dad put all this pressure on me to get held back and I told him no. And he looked me in the eyes and he said, okay, well just so you know, you're not good enough, you'll never play baseball again. And all I heard was you're not good enough. So I wrote it on my hat room and I wore that for three years. So now as an adult, I know the power of affirmations and words and things. I'm like, oh my gosh, I hadn't seen this had a thought of it in 17 years.

47:57But it drove me for 20 years of my life of not feeling like I was good enough. And so I had this never -ending ambition just to try to prove that I was worthy, that I was enough. And it was interesting I was doing a journey one time with some of my friends. It's actually my first ever journey. And I saw this hat and I had this voice like come to me and it was really beautiful. It said this has served you but it no longer does. It's time to let it go. And I was like, oh my gosh, like I don't have to prove myself every day. I don't have to be the best at everything. I don't have to be number one.

48:28And I did and I kind of just let it go. And from that point on, it did become much harder at first to find my motivation to do things. Because you're not running away from something. Exactly. Because it was coming from fear of not being loved, right? So it wasn't until I came up with my new motto, which is the name of my company, We Are the They, that I fully like was coming out of doing things out of love. So now I work harder than ever and I'm more ambitious than ever, but it comes from a different energy for me. And so it feels healthy. It doesn't feel needy. It doesn't feel like I have to do it.

48:55I just want to do it. And I think that's the difference. Like, I don't, there's no need to do this. It's like I want to give everything I have to this because of what it's doing But it no longer feels like if I don't like if I stopped tomorrow I wouldn't feel like I was a failure. I wouldn't feel like I let anyone down It was like that thing was so beautiful while I did it And so I think the energy that you come out something with is a big indicator Yeah, there's sort of two elements there that I think about a lot the first one being Lots of people have I did when I was younger a concern that if I gave myself too much grace and too much room and didn't castigate myself when I fell short that I wouldn't be driven to go and do great things.

49:37And I think that that's just a fundamental misunderstanding about how your drive works. For the people who want to do great things, it's not you couldn't turn that furnace off if I fucking paid you. Like you are obsessed with that idea. Correct. They love, they all they want to do is become better. They want to improve. They want to contribute. They want to crush it. Whatever whatever it is, they're obsessive, they work hard. And you think that by allowing yourself to feel a little bit of pleasure or gratitude or to give yourself some grace if you don't succeed, that's going to dampen that down.

50:11Absolutely bullshit. And then on the second side of that, let's say that giving yourself a little bit more room and a bit more grace did reduce down your drive. Let's say that it did do that. What have you gained and what have you lost? like you are sacrificing the thing you want, happiness, for the thing which is supposed to get it, which is success. So if you are able to make yourself happier without chasing success, that's a W as well. Like if you're okay, so ultimately what we're looking to try and achieve, I think in life, is like enjoyable emotional states. I think that's broadly what it is.

50:46You just want to feel sort of peaceful in a life, right? Okay, well if that's the case, I can get there From a million different routes, I can maybe get there by hitting new subscriber numbers on my channel I can get there by having sex with lots of women or I can get there by raising a family or I can get there by succeeding in business Or I can get there by racing cars faster whatever it is whatever the thing is that makes you do that Okay, but what if there was a quicker route? But if there's a shorter route what if you didn't need so much stimulus outside of it What if instead of trying to go faster with the successes you took the breaks off all of the the shame and the guilt and stuff that is sitting around you that's driving you to do that in the first place.

51:22Either of those seem like a win to me, but certainly releasing the break before you press harder on the accelerator, that's the smart approach. Well, going back to Marcus earlier, it's one of the reasons why I love the Stoics and those emperors and those people because their whole idea was not to need more. It was being okay with less. It was like when you need more stimulus or you need more accomplishment to feel that way, you're in a little bit of a tough spot, right? One of my favorite things that I've learned is there's three things that money can't buy. That's a peaceful mind, a healthy body, and loving relationships.

51:56It's why rich people go nuts because they don't have any of them. And it's where they get in all their trouble because they're trying to buy those three things. But you have to earn those, you have to go out and get those. And I think those are ultimately the three things that bring you fulfillment. And Tony Robbins again, but he says success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. And that quote is just driven in me. I success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. It means you can win the whole world, but if you're not happy about it, then you're just that much bigger of a failure.

52:22The key is happiness. The key is fulfillment. It's not what you can acquire, what you accomplish, or what you do. It's like, are you at peace? Do you actually enjoy your life? Do you wake up and you're just happy to be you? For some people, you know, I used to live in Mexico for two years and I was on the border. It was a very interesting time because I got to see the contrast of people coming across the border from the US. They were always trying to, you know, consume or get something or come buy something or they were just and they were so miserable in mean and these people in Mexico that literally I mean dirt floors Outhouses nine kids in a living room sleeping and they were so happy and content And I'm like which one of these people is successful?

53:01It's not the people from the US coming across the board I can promise you that and so ultimately I think you know if you're not happy with little you're not gonna be happy with more Just money is gonna magnify it and and so like in life success you say this is good as anybody, but like you chase this thing, but you give up the things that really make you happy for the success, and you're hoping the success will make you happy. It's like, no, no, you were there. Like just go back and do the thing you want for the thing that's supposed to get it. Exactly. Dude, I see it so much, and I see it myself as well.

53:29It's like, is there a quicker route to this? There's an interesting queue that one of my friends gave me while we were in the gym, so we're doing like high side plank. So when you've got sort of one hand down on the ground, one foot on the ground, and the other hands up, and it was in the middle of some awful mat carn, and I'm like 25 minutes in, and he's super fit, and I'm like, I do push -pull legs now. Like I'm on my bro split era. I'm in my rich piano years. I'm not doing this stuff. And I was like sweating and shaking and like sort of grunting to myself, and you know, like really sort of gripping hard.

53:59He shouted over and said, hey, what would this be like if it was easier? I was like, ah, that's interesting. What would this be like if it was easier? I was like, well, I'd smile. And I'd like sort of grip less hard because it's not really helping my performance. I'm like digging in where I need to, but I'm actually having that much fun. And the other day, I was playing pickleball and it was mixed doubles and the chick that I was playing with, we were two to best of five. And I sort of walking back to the baseline as we're about to begin the fifth game. And I'm like, so her forehand is like a little bit extra light to keep it on her back and it doesn't seem like he's driving.

54:33So when we drive, we need to come up to the net together at the same time. We need to do the rest of the way. She's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And also, let's not forget to have fun. I was like, yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, very good. Very good. Thank you. It's like the, what is it like, men will try and win until the arbitrary pickleball game rather than go to therapy like that. And it's that compulsion and you catch yourself and you go, what if this was easier? What if this was more fun? What if it's not about gripping onto things really hard? What if it was about kind of just allowing things to happen?

55:05Yeah, I think a lot of people, they almost feel like real, I was in real estate for almost 20 years and so I sold almost 3 ,000 houses and I would see realtors do this all the time. On the other end of the day, they just try to make problems. I don't know if they were trying to justify their commission or they just needed it to be difficult because that's the way they are in life. But they would just cause problem after problem. I can't tell you how many times I've said, listen, I need you to just do nothing. Like literally sit on your hands for two days. When you pull them back out, go grab your check and cash it for $14 ,000.

55:33But you need to stop. like your causing issues that don't exist, but they almost needed it to be difficult to try to justify their own purpose or their own existence within it, you know. Yeah, I've got a great story about this. So they did a study with TSA agents and they, I think it was like a training scenario, but using the current technology. So they had pretend passengers come through and over time the passengers had fewer and fewer infractions up to the point where there was none. There was zero infractions, right? The job of the TSA, guys, is to find people who are not, who are contravening the rules.

56:15And in the beginning, sure enough, they're finding stuff, pulling bags to one side, opening them, checking them, so on and so forth. And over time, fewer and fewer people broke those rules, so you would assume that the TSA agents were allowing more and more people to go through. But the ratio stayed the same. So as there were fewer problems, there's scrutiny for problems increased. It's like there's this sort of baseline level of how much work I need to be seen to be doing, and they're optimizing to fill that as opposed to the actual thing. So they're using how many people do I pull to one side as a proxy for how secure am I being?

56:54But that's not necessarily what it is. Same thing happens if you're on a group Zoom call. I hate Zoom calls. I've got any more than two people on them. Because any more than three maybe you end a call and Everyone's agreed on something a new piece of artwork that you're gonna put out for a business or a new email Mark campaign or whatever it is that you're doing and you get to the end of the call and if everyone's just been like Do you know I love that? That's really great. That's really great. That's really great Person number seven goes. Yeah, but what about this? Oh, fuck dude. It was fine.

57:22It was fine But there's this sense that if we don't push back against something we're not working. It's like, this can't be that easy. And sometimes you need to continue to push, and there are people that push that limit. And I'm definitely that guy. When it comes to the can design, it took like a million different versions. But there are other areas where you're like, good, that's good, let it go. Yeah, well I think we see this with, you know, police officers a lot of times. It's like the good cops, they're whole job is to just create community and to like make sure there's no problems. But like when there aren't problems, they start to kind of create the problems.

57:55I've seen this in my life a few times and you're like, dude, go away. Everybody's fine. We did the government did this with the whole COVID thing. It was just like they just created so many issues and problems. I think it's just to file these people to have purpose. Joe Rogan talks about this on his podcast about the homeless problem in California and there's so many people. They create a bigger homeless problem because they all have to justify their multi -six -figure incomes. And so they just, they don't want to fix issues. and all of a sudden we either create problems that don't exist, or we make a problem that exists like harder to solve than it needs to be because we're almost just trying to create enough value of our own self -worth or need for us to be there.

58:37How do you come to think about fear and the role of fear in a man's life? I think that fear is one of the biggest things that holds people back. But I think fear is an emotion and of itself, it's not good or bad. I think it can teach us a lot, it can help us a lot. But ultimately, I think you have to get a healthy relationship to fear. When you understand, when you can feel the fear and you go, okay, I know it's happening, I'm feeling afraid. So when I was in college, I remember there was this cutest girl in the cafeteria of where I went to school and I didn't go talk to her and it beat me up for two days.

59:13I'm so mad. I was like, I'm going to make a rule. No matter what, when I see a cute girl for now on, I'm just going to approach. I got three seconds to go talk to her, period. And I spent the next four years doing that very thing. And I mean, you just overcome any fear of doing that thing. With my guys in the coaching program, again, our first weekend together, I have them jump off this giant cliff. You know, I'm taking 25 guys to Africa next week. We're doing bungee jumping off a bridge into a river, the Zambizi River. We're doing this gorgeous rope swing. I'm taking them to just do some crazy things.

59:41We're doing white water rafting where there's like crocodiles in the water and stuff. because when you get over that initial feeling of like, oh no, I can't do this. Like, I make him skydive. I make him walk on hot coals, all the above. Cliff jump, all of it. Because every time you overcome that fear, your ability to hear it, to feel it, and then to overpass it becomes that much easier. So I have one guy he had never done anything scaring his life. And he had a really crappy relationship with his son. But he never had a real conversation with him. He never actually sat down. And so we taught him the skill of like being a little vulnerable first.

1:00:13And so instead of being like, what's going on with you? Are you upset? Being like, hey man, I remember when I was 14. Here's something that was hard in my life. I don't know if you're experiencing something similar. So all of a sudden he's connecting, right? But then the kid opens up because the dad, but the dad had this really tough conversation. They're starting to heal this relationship because the dad finally leaned into his own fears. Like if I can get you to jump off a cliff, I can get you to talk to your kid. If I can get you to swim at tiger sharks, then I can probably get you to have a tough conversation with your boss or I can have you, you know, I got guys that when they start my program, I'm having sex with their wife and over a year.

1:00:42They don't talk about it. Like, how have you not discussed this? It hasn't even come, they're afraid to even approach it. For fear, what are you gonna lose? Like, you're already not having sex. Like, you can't go worse than this. That was kind of how I approached the whole thing with talking to girls. I'm like, if I don't go say something, I've already, I'm at my worst case scenario right now. Like, my worst case is you think that you're afraid of happening is already happening. Yeah. It's like, if I don't go say anything, I've already lost. Like, I didn't connect. But anyway, and so I think with fear, I think the key is putting yourself in positions where, you know, and a lot of things have the appearance of fear, but they're not actually dangerous.

1:01:14You don't want to put yourself in actual dangerous situations, right? You don't want to go 150 on the freeway, you don't want to drink and drive, you don't want to, you know, walk around the wrong place at the wrong time and night. But like, ultimately, if you can put yourself in healthy situations, like, I had a guy today because I was coming here to this podcast, I run my weekly call. I called one of the guys, he's never hosted a coaching course. And I said, hey, man, I'm going to have you do the call today. And he's retired, he's killing life, but he's never publicly spoken. and it was all about finance.

1:01:41And he texted me afterwards on my way over here to the podcast, he said that was so empowering, thank you. Like, you know, he did something that was really scary for him, but his ability to do that now going forward is gonna be so much easier. And so every time you lean into the fear, it's you get a little bit better and a little bit better at doing that. And everything we want really is on the other side of fear. Like leaning into the thing that we're afraid of, that's where your work needs to get done. And so I just encourage people to always have the tough conversation. share the thing that you think you know, it makes you the most unworthy of being loved.

1:02:11Like that's what people are the most afraid of. And that's where my program, I get them to do, you know, I mean, guys will talk about stuff. Like I had one guy get up in front of our group after a breathwork session and he said, he starts bawling, he says, I've never shared this before, but he said, even this week I had a gun to my head. He said, I've been suicidal for five years. He said, five years ago, I convinced my girlfriend to get an abortion. I didn't think we could hand a taken on the kid. He said, I've never forgiven myself. He said, it's even worse, I gas let her in to think it was her decision.

1:02:39And he said, I'd spend hard, and he now has three kids with her. They've got married since. He's like, I've never forgiven myself. Well, in the breath work session, he talked to the unborn child or whatever and said, hey, it's all good. Like, you know, you did what you had to do to feel safe probably. And anyway, so he gets up and shares with us. He's like, I've never shared this outside of my wife. No one knows. And he shares it with 50 guys in a room in a cabin. And instead of being judged, everybody just swarms him and loves him. And he gave another guy permission. He said, hey, I did the same thing.

1:03:07You know, I convinced my girlfriend to get an abortion. And all of a sudden, this thing that he was carrying so much shame for, that he was literally about to take his life for all of a sudden, he was like, he no longer had to be afraid of people knowing that about him. Because he saw it, he felt it, and he felt immediate love and just empathy for a guy that was, you know, obviously not the best choice in the moment, but did what he'd felt like an eater to do at the time. And so I think any time you get people to share I've had probably a dozen guys get up and talk about being molested As kids that they'd never shared it and they have break they go home and they tell their wives who never knew I had one wife call me She's just bawling and she says I'm so sad.

1:03:45He had to go through this by himself Thank you for creating a space for him to just talk about this She's just bawling she was on the side of the road just crying and she's just like I'm so sad He's just been going through this by himself. They're marriages just a hundred times better than it ever was But it's because the thing we fear the most the thing we're afraid of Once you actually share it or lean into it. You're just it's okay like and most the time nine and a percent of the things we worry about are we're afraid of they just never actually Have any reality to them so you know It's the old saying like we die a thousand deaths the coward dies a thousand deaths because Every time you your body doesn't know the difference between the reality or it happening like when you die It's gonna be pretty damn fast like But if you are always worried about it or worried about that thing, then you've experienced it as if it happened to you.

1:04:30That's why when you watch a scary movie, you actually feel the intensity of it. If you were there in the room, it's the same kind of concept. It seems like one of the powerful tools that you're using here is community, but we're hearing a lot about loneliness, both for men and women, but I think specifically for men, I think the highest risk group of suicide in the UK may also be in the US as well is men aged 45 to 55. And I think that's probably a good sized chunk of the guys that you work with. What have you come to think about the male loneliness problem in the modern world also rolling down to millennials Gen Z as well and their problems with screens?

1:05:11Yeah, it's huge, man. I mean, we saw this during the pandemic, you know, I believe that the devil divides us and God gets us together. Like I just think we're always better off being around other humans. You know, when I launched my program, I only wanted to have 50 guys and I didn't know if I'd be able to fill it. So I launched it November 1, 2021 and I gave myself a month to start it. So I didn't start till December 3rd because I needed a month to sell it. It was like 50 guys, it's not the cheapest program. So I was like, man, I hope I can get enough guys, you know, I knew if I worst case, I can sell, I'll get on the phone and, you know, I called my friends, dude, I had 147 people apply for the 50 spots in eight hours.

1:05:47I didn't even get to do 90 % of my marketing. I was like, oh my gosh, I have stumbled across something here. And the reason I knew to start this program, I'd been selling real estate for 17 years, and it was actually almost five years ago. I sold the most expensive home ever in Utah. It was $32 .5 million. In Utah, I sold, basically, it was a couple of mountains with houses. It was a crazy sale. It took me seven years of my career to sell my first home ever a million. and in 20 minutes I sold a house for 32 and a half million. Like I hit the peak of my career. And it kind of felt a little bit empty because I knew I could do something more impactful.

1:06:19But it was interesting, because I had no idea what it was gonna be. I spent about two years working on it, trying to figure out what do I wanna do, how do I wanna help people? And it came to me, like the reason it came to me is men kept reaching out because of my podcast and previous book I'd written. And they kept saying the same thing, they kept saying, where do I find a group of friends like you guys have? I want to find friends like you they don't exist in my world and I started watching a couple of my nephews And they didn't have close friends like I did like I had eight best friends since high school to this day were all best friends I'm going to climb In June and the mountains in in Congo and in Uganda to go look at gorillas with with a bunch of them like we're the windy impenetrable forest I think it's called the some not I don't think that's what it's called But I went to Uganda to see gorilla like the boonday impenetrable is yeah, I snuts Uganda And I think Rwanda too, but anyway, it's a place I'm talking about.

1:07:12Yeah, you stay in Rwanda, you go to Uganda for one night, yeah, it's a place that I went to. Yeah, cool. So to this day that we get a trip once a year, like two of them came to my party last night, like they are my closest friends, and I mean, we've been together since we were 12. And I look at a lot of the younger generation, they don't have that anymore. It's just doesn't, you know, society doesn't really favor them like it did for us. There was, you know, they have so many things that unfortunately distract them, so much noise out there. But so for me, that was how I knew I needed to start a men's group because it was like, oh, that's who I can help.

1:07:40It's like these guys that just don't even know where to find community. And I always took for granted how easy it was for me to make friends. And so I just always had friends. But it was like, oh, damn, like I know how to teach this. I know how to go deep with my friends. I know how to quickly create a very unique bond where we really care about each other. We get to know each other. We get to see each other. And so that was kind of really what gave me, because I kind of felt like an imposter or two before, they're like, what am I going to coach people? But once I knew it was that, I was like, I know exactly how to show people how to make friends.

1:08:11And so that became my whole motivation. How can people be more decisive, I think, indecision is something that kind of traps you in a way that can also then cause shame because it's just an action, right? Just do a thing. Do, do, do, make a decision about this thing and, and move yourself toward it. And yet people can be taught for, you know, it's decades in thinking about this decision and not doing anything to move it toward their goal. Yeah, I mean, indecisive enough is going to, indecisive, this is what causes you more problems than almost anything else that you do. Like it really will, because I mean, when was the last time you made a big decision and totally regretted?

1:08:51It's very rare you do, because usually the lesson you got or the outcome you got is, it was worth it. You know, on their deathbeds, they've tested people. They've talked to people others, they've done all these surveys and everything and it's people don't regret the decisions they made I mean talk to any girl that got knocked up in high school. She doesn't regret it And she's got a kid now, you know what I mean very rarely I mean if they're a horrible person but like for the most part nobody regrets the things they did They don't regret the decisions they made they regret when they had an idea or they had a thought or they needed to get out of a job They needed to get out of a marriage.

1:09:21They needed to get into a marriage whatever the thing and it's you know It's interesting because the universe will very rarely reward you for procrastinating very rarely, but it always rewards you for taking action quickly so often. Like it's, you know, and again, I had Ed Mylett speak at our conference that I had you at. And he said he said there's a quality of the most successful people where they're just having ability to take action, not needing to know that it's going to work. And he said they all do the same thing. And there's, you know, it's funny because as you've gotten into this world, I'm sure you've met plenty of people that are doing very well on Instagram or the internet world or whatever else.

1:09:57And they're not any different from the people that aren't doing it. The thing that they have, the quality they have is they're just have this unique ability to go, you know what? I'm just going to do this and they just continually do it. I mean, the reason why your podcast is big, the reason why mine got big is because consistency. It's just you're six, seven hundred episodes in. Of course, people start listening like you, but when you were afraid to, I think it was people are afraid to suck. They're afraid to look dumb. They're afraid to, you know, be bad at something. And it's like, no, if you can embrace the suck and you can look at failure is not trying, then all of a sudden you empower you to do everything.

1:10:31Like I've tried so many things and I quit after like two weeks or a month or two months, like I tried piano lessons and all these other things. It's like, oh, I suck at that. And I don't want to, I'm not. This isn't fun. I thought it was gonna be fun to do. But nobody cares, right? So like when I was a kid, it was funny. I'm not a kid, but like when I was in my 20s, I did a TV show. I had a meat company. We sold steak and chicken door to door. I had a Christmas light business. I had just all these crazy jobs. and it was funny, Chris, all of them, like to the outside world, they're like, did you hear what Jimmy's doing?

1:10:58Like Jimmy's doing a TV show. Jimmy's doing this meat company. And I wasn't making money on any of them. Like they all were a quote unquote financial failure, but I got so much credit from people. They were so like they were just really admired that I was willing to try things. And so I learned, thankfully, in my young 20s, that the reward was in trying it. And so for me, it really empowered me to just go for it with anything, because I got rewarded for that even when it failed financially. And I think most people, they think, oh, this fell financially, I'm gonna be, and I like to talk to people.

1:11:30So I say, look, one of the biggest gifts you can give yourself is to go to rock bottom because you get down there and you realize it's not that bad. Like when the real estate market collapsed and all these other things happened in my life, I was dead broke. I didn't, not only was I broke, I was in debt up to my levels. I had two homes that I had to take the loan on that no longer existed. I mean, I had hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. I was like 25 and honestly life was pretty good still. And it was so empowering because I'm like, if this is my worst case scenario, then I'm gonna send it and I'm not gonna worry about it because when you've been there and you realize it's not that bad, then it can be very empowering to really push you past that point.

1:12:06Because people, that's the only reason why people, you know, they're playing defense. They're so afraid of losing this life. They don't even like. I'll tell you one quick story. There's this guy in Tennessee, this doctor hit me up. It's got six girls, six daughters. and he hit me up and he said, I need to come out to you, I need to meet you. And listen to your podcast for two years, you're my guy, I need to talk to you. So I'm all right, come out. So this guy comes out, is about three years ago. And we go to lunch. He says, Jimmy, he said, you know, when I was young, I had the love of my life.

1:12:32And I went on a Mormon mission for two years. And when I got back, we rode each other every week. And we were gonna get married, but my dad said I was too young to get married. So I broke up with her. He said, I regretted every day since she was the love of my life. But five years later, I was still single. And now I was kind of panicking that I was single. So I just got married to get married. He said I was never really in love with my wife and then she started getting mad We had a couple girls a couple kids and she got mad at me because We weren't making enough money so she wanted me to be a doctor.

1:12:59I never wanted to be a doctor So I became a doctor. He's but I'm a terrible doctor. I hate being a doctor. He said he's like a foot doctor He said the only The only people I can work on are the people that are like on hospice because they send me out because no other hospital would take me because I'm terrible at it And he's like, I need, I'm just drowning. I'm miserable. I've never made one decision that's mine my whole life. And I said, dude, well then make a decision. I said, why are you hanging onto this? Like, I told him he's equipping a doctor first off. I said, the only reason you're still being a doctor is because there's a part of your ego that likes to tell people you're a doctor.

1:13:30I said, but you're miserable doctor. So what the hell? It's not what's the point, you know? And he wanted me to help him kind of find a new thing. And I said, the second you quit until both me and the universe that you're serious about change, then I will absolutely turn over mountains to help you with what's next. You got to quit first being a doctor because you're hanging onto this thing. And people will just hang onto these things that make them miserable and they don't do them any good, but they're so afraid of the change or so afraid of the unknown. It's like I used to work at the Center for Women in Children in Crisis and it was a bunch of battered women.

1:14:00I think I had 150 women come through and 150 went back to the guy that beat him. And what I realized is that part of us that's just trying to keep us alive, it knows so these women knew they could survive the abusive relationship, which was a sad sad thing, because it wasn't a good thing, but they knew they could survive it. And that was less scary than the unknown, what would it be without. And so humans again will do whatever they need to fill alive or to stay alive. So these women, even though it's a horrible situation, we're not wired to for happiness. We're not wired for a good life, we're wired to stay alive.

1:14:32And if they knew they could survive that, most people will stay in that place, even though this doctor's miserable, these women were getting battered, than the unknown of what's next. The idea of real failure being not trying is a lovely frame. I had an audio book. I'm not a Tony Robbins stan. I'm not deep in his work. I'm starting to get into it more. And a friend sent me, it's a weird version of an audio book. It must be like an audio workbook from Awakened the Giant Within. It's only about an hour and a half long. I'm pretty sure that the Awakened the Giant within is like 10 hours long and something.

1:15:09And he He was like, hey, just give this a listen for me and let me know what you think. He has a framework for making decisions. You may even be familiar with this already, but he basically says, look at what the situation that you're in now has cost you in the past. Look at what the situation that you're in now is costing you right now and look at what it will cost you in the future. Front load is much pain as you can. He talks pain pleasure principle. So you're struggling to make a decision, load as much pain onto this particular decision as possible. What's it cost you before? How much life have you lost?

1:15:45How much time have you spent ruminating about it? How shameful do you feel about what's it costing you now? How much of your day is spent with you thinking about this thing? What's it going to cost you in the future? How much is it going to hold you back? How much is your life? How much are you going to regret it in the future if you don't make this decision? And then you said, now turn it up to 11, find, go on the internet and find story. So my friend, my friend that was doing this wanted to stop biting his nails. So he thought about all of the times in the past that girls it's sort of like turned away because his hands weren't sort of nice and attractive and he thought about how much shame he found now and about how in the future you know as he's getting his wedding ring put on he's going to have this hand that he doesn't feel very it is cool and then he went on the internet to really dial it up to 11 and he found the most awful photos that he could have people that had sort of bitten their nails down and he really really sort of sat in it and then he did the opposite and he thought about okay and how much pleasure would you get if you ever came this thing?

1:16:33It's this vice that he's had for 20 years and he's thinking right, well, you know, think about how proud I would be and how cool it would be when I hold hands with my girlfriend and like, how attracted she's going to be to me when I do all of these things. And so that's a really nice frame to think about front load as much pain and then front load as much pleasure. But Robbins just has this really great analogy where he says a decision isn't a decision until you've taken an action to move yourself toward it. So a lot of the time people say, I've decided I'm going to leave my job. So, have you?

1:17:01What's that mean? What does I've decided I'm going to leave my job mean? What I'm going to leave my job? Okay, when? Well, in the future. Okay, so what have you decided? You've decided nothing. Like that's, it's literally nothing. And maybe if you want it to be like, lexically precise, you can make a decision. Like I can decide that from here I'm going to go and get an ice cream after this. like in some way it's true, but functionally it's totally false. And I think that optimizing and changing your definition of making a decision to when I make an action that moves me toward it. So it's, and this can be small because you think, okay, so what?

1:17:44You just want me to quit my job as soon as I feel like I should quit my job. That's a lot. But something like, I'm going to schedule a meeting with my boss. Anyone can schedule a meeting with the boss. So, okay, well, that's, I've taken a step toward doing it. That's me actually moving myself toward doing this thing. And just that reframe, that reframe of, there's no such thing as a decision until you take in an action that moves you toward it. Yeah, I tell the guys I coach, I say anytime you make a new decision or a goal or whatever it is, you have to take an actual action in the moment towards it or else it doesn't count.

1:18:17So like if you decide you're quitting alcohol, you need to go to your house, you need to pour all the alcohol you have down the drain. Like get it out of your house. How big of a problem is alcohol for your guys? Not much, to be honest. Most of the guys, you know, I grew up again and I had my first drink at 34. So I grew up in a very alcohol, was like, you just didn't do it, right? Like at all. And so it was interesting when I was 32, is when I kind of left out religion, I kind of thought to myself, like, well, I'm not going to start drinking now. What kind of loser starts drinking at 32, you know?

1:18:46But then a couple years went by, I'm like, wait, how do I honestly feel about this? Is this my own decision? or is this just the way I was wired to believe? And so I start drinking. And what I do is I'll take a few months off every year. At our events, I allow celters, but not anything else because I'm like, you can only get so drunk on a celtzer. But it's like definitely not a place to drink drink. But look, alcohol's one of those things that I have the weirdest relationship with because it is the devil in so many cases. And it is not good for you. And you will make worse decisions. And you're very rarely going to be better off be fucked because of it.

1:19:20And it also can be such a beautiful thing to break down barriers and egos and walls and things like that. Like I've had some of my most amazing nights drinking with friends, right? We're just more at ease. And so I try not to put anything like that's like a must. There's only been one or two guys that have had a problem with alcohol and we just pull them aside and we love them enough to say, Hey man, we love you. We're worried about this. Let's make a change and do something differently. But In my particular community, it hasn't been too big of a question. I certainly feel like we've turned a corner with alcohol use among younger people in the last decade.

1:19:55So when I think about when I went to university, which is 18 years ago, and it was classic, Larry, Louty, British, Drinking Culture, right? Drinking is our national sport. And I think that maybe for older generations, which is why I was interested in your guys' is screwed because you do have like a good chunk of like men as opposed to young guys. And I thought, I wonder where that's gone and I'm really glad. I'm really glad that it seems to be dissipating because as a person that's tried quite a lot of drugs, alcohol ranks quite low down in the ones that are enjoyable. Yeah, you know, it's interesting.

1:20:34Here's, I have this philosophy that it's kind of new, but I'm working on. I want to research it some more, but I think the alcohol companies screwed up when they started really marketing to the women and girls. Because over the last 25 years, alcohol use amongst women and girls has totally ticked up and it's drastically higher. They really made it popular to drink with the branches and all these different wine get together for women. I think men see women drinking and it's more obvious that drinking is a problem. I think when men see men drinking, sometimes when you feel it's part of being a man.

1:21:09It's just Jimmy, he has a beard. Yes, but I think where they screw it up, and I think it's where it's getting a lot of kickback now, because there is this huge push, a lot of the influencers, a lot of the people that, you know, there's a lot of doctors that are like, hey, you're poisoning yourself, like, stop it. And so I think there is this new belief, and also it's the rise of other things like, you know, plant medicines that, you know, up your frequency is a whole screen wall, right? Team Shroomal Day. Yes, exactly, same. And it's funny in Utah, they just legalized therapy for MDMA and psilocybin through a couple of hospitals.

1:21:40Yeah, and we were pushing really hard to help. I mean, this tattoo on my finger was the first time I ever did plant medicine. It was the day, I mean, my life, just like everybody, just changed my whole life. And so, like, once you've done that and you realize, wow, there's another higher frequency you can be at. Going to those lower frequencies, like alcohol, really doesn't hit the same way. And so, I think the alcohol has a definite problem as far as they're going to be in trouble with their marketing because people are waking up up to like, this is a poison. This is, this has a lot of it. It's kind of not that cool anymore.

1:22:13And it's very strange, you know, if you to think, and this might be my bubble, you know, there might be people may see things differently. And I'm sure that in different areas of the country and different friend groups and whatever. But I really think that we've turned a corner with it. And if you'd said that to me 18 years ago, I would have been like, are you mad? Like this is the drug. There's a hypothesis about human culture called the beer before bread hypothesis, which is that it was easier to grow grain to make beer than it was to make it to grow bread, to create bread. And the idea being that, here's some interesting stuff actually about alcohol.

1:22:50So one of the interesting effects that it has, it reduces your ability to lie because the PFC prefrontal cortex gets tuned down a little bit. So your capacity to keep all of the different plates spinning of your elaborate construction, they don't exist so much. But interestingly, it makes people better lying detectors. So you are better at detecting deception when you're drunk than when you're sober, and you are worse at deceiving when you are drunk than when you are sober. So it's this perfect. It comes out exactly, exactly correct. So people are more hyper attuned to it. And I thought, wow, that's really interesting.

1:23:34Like that's a function that this thing has. And it's evidently been super important to the development of human civilization. But you also have a big corner, I think that gets turned in the middle ages when coffee houses became a thing. Because during the middle of the day, is it supposed to go in and drinking with your friends and having beer or ale or something? You would be able to go and have something that actually enhanced your cognition instead of dold it. And yeah, my point being it's been such an important part of human civilization forever for as long as we've had civilized culture and for you to go, yeah, and that's kind of going to become uncool and push back against.

1:24:11I would have never predicted. Well, think about when we were kids, right? Smoking was cool. It was. And smoking became the least cool thing you ever heard. Mark Normans joke about smoking. He's like that basically smoking has been swapped with weed and that if someone saw you down an alleyway smoking a cigarette and they were like, what are you doing? and you'd be like, uh, killing a hookah. And he's like, it's true though. But, you know, and that happened. I'm smoking when you were a kid, every, you know, like all the old movies from the 60s and 70s, they were always, you know, Marlon Brando, or whatever it was, they always had a cigarette.

1:24:39It was just a cool thing to do. Now it's like, you're gross. What's wrong with you? And so I think the same thing can be having the alcohol, you know, the gift of my life was not drinking till I was 34. Like I never became dependent on it. I never became a vice. It never became something I needed to mask emotions. I think I kind of accidentally nailed it with alcohol because I'll drink it when I celebrate or with homies or whatever, but like it's just not a thing. Very intentional. Yes, I've never had a bad experience drinking. Like if I'm being honest. You don't have to do that. Well, actually, I had one.

1:25:08You want to hear? Yes, sure. Well, so my first time I ever drank, I was undercover. I used to go undercover with a group. We'd go help rescue kids being sex trafficked in foreign countries. And I'd never drink. So we're in this strip club bar in Latin America. And one of these traffickers brings us a thing of beers. me and my buddies and I've never drank so I'm like shit if I drink this am I gonna spill the beans that were undercover like I have no idea how I'm gonna think I'm funny you would I do you didn't know idea what the effect of all zero and I'm 34 it's about big and it's yes yes so I take the beer and like nothing happens right I'm like oh shit and so then I'm like well okay so when we go home from that trip I'm like okay I do want to try drinking now but I was like I don't want to get drunk and not know how to act.

1:25:51So funny that your introduction to alcohol was through a sex child trafficking. It's crazy, right? I know. I think I know. Well, it's like you can't say no to a bear if you're undercover, you know, pretend to do that. So I end up deciding I'm gonna get drunk by myself so I know how it feels. So I buy one of everything, dude. I buy you an rum whiskey, you know, all of it. And I end up taking about five, six drinks and I don't really feel anything yet. I'm just by myself on my couch. I'm like, well, I'll try some more. I try it every day. I probably took 15 drinks and I wake up. I'd blacked out.

1:26:25I'd probably almost killed myself. Literally the first time I actually drank, people would have found me and got my alcohol level. They'd be like, he must have been so depressed. It was literally an experiment. It was a bizarre self -experiment. I know. And I didn't want to drink again for like a really long time because it was just I felt so awful. But yeah, that was the only time I've had a real negative experience drinking. But it was bad. I was so stupid, but yeah, I just didn't know. You know, it was interesting, the whole thing with, when we would go into cover though, you know, the guys I went with the same thing, none of them had ever drank either, because we all kind of like, had grown up in the same religion and all that kind of stuff.

1:27:00But yeah, it was a trip, man. If I had only one bad story from drinking alcohol, that would be, I would have to get rid of 999, because, you know, I was in the trenches for a while. One of the other things I've been thinking about a lot, and I know that you think about this as presents, having your mind rest where your feet are. And it seems that that's increasingly hard to achieve. We're permanently distracted. We're always thinking about the next thing. We're in our dopamine versions of ourselves as opposed to the serotonin versions of ourselves. How do you advise people to become more present?

1:27:33Yeah, it's funny. You said that's my word of the year is present. So every year I do a word and try to really focus on that. So in fact, the last time I sat this studio I was with Stefano, Stefano's, and he was the first one that mentioned this to me, but he said, you know, God speaks to us through solace and silence. And so we really, we live in a world where we're soaking, we really are plugged in. And so he would encourage me to spend two hours a week just by myself in nature with no phone. And so I started doing it. It was so hard, much harder than I ever thought. And last year about the beginning of July, I ended up, I decided I was going to rent this cabin at Sundance Utah.

1:28:08It's where they do the Sundance film festival. So that's beautiful in the woods, river, the whole thing. And I didn't take my phone for two days, I just sat at this cabin. And it was probably the hardest thing I've ever done, dude. And I literally, it was funny. I didn't miss Facebook, I didn't miss sports, I didn't miss my friends. I missed being connected. It felt like I was unplugged from everything. And I was like, oh my gosh, we literally are plugged into this thing that really is like a matrix. And so I've really tried to work on this idea of just, just, you know, it took me almost two years of trying to meditate before I could get to 20 minutes before I could sit there.

1:28:43Now I can do it every day and I do. But I think we just have to be super intentional. I go for a walk every morning without my phone. I, you know, I try not to use apps and things to mark my steps. It's like, but you want to. I want to get this goal. But if I don't wear my thing, then I won't count it. And so, but like, just being without those things, like yesterday, I was kind of stressed as I was getting ready for my party. and I just went for a 20 minute walk without my phone, just kind of like let it kind of just walk. And then I was good, you know? But we really have so much noise, there's so much combustion like you said, we live in a dopamine nation.

1:29:15And one of the concepts I cover in the book again is, I said the goal is not, that we've made the goal to try to feel better. So we're constantly doing things to feel better. The goal should be to try to feel more. So anytime we're masking those feelings and we do that through a dopamine spike. So it's you know, I did a four day fast last year my one takeaway was oh, I just do this to feel better I like the feeling I get when I eat it's a dopamine hit and it wasn't about being hungry It was about getting a dopamine hit and so it's like I've tried to stop myself You know guys that I teach that you know if you have like a porn issue It's like hey if you can stop yourself long enough to go wait what's happening?

1:29:51Why am I seeking this out same thing with bad food same thing with alcohol anything that's basically video games, gambling you name it, right? Like random hookups, all these things that we know we shouldn't do that aren't really in our best, you know, best thing for us. If we can stop long enough to go, wait, what am I truly feeling? Because what we're truly doing is we're just masking our feelings. And so if we can start thinking about it as, hey, instead of trying to feel better, let me try to feel more. Let me feel a little sad. Let me feel a little lonely. Let me let me feel whatever that might be.

1:30:23Then we can kind of work through it. and then eventually once you let it kind of pass through, it goes away. Yeah, but trying to hide it, I don't think does make it go away. Oh, no, I think it stays. Yeah, yeah, 100%. That's the problem. That's the problem with the world we live in. That's where people, I mean, that's where, you know, we deal with alcoholism and overweight and people that just kind of get caught up with all these vices and things because yeah, it does, it's whatever we resist persists. So it's gonna stick around until we deal with it. Whatever we resist persists, that's interesting.

1:30:52Yeah, so like if you're coming again, like I use the porn issue locks a lot of the guys that come to me That's what you know they want to overcome and it's like all day long They're literally obsessed with not looking at porn so I'm like, well, what do you think about all day then porn? Like that's what you're trying not to do all day. I said dude You need to get to the underlying thing. What are you feeling? Are you sad? Are you lonely? What's really going on and once I can heal that then you're just it quits becoming this big thing you've almost put on a pedestal or this ritual around it and it just goes away.

1:31:24You just normal people don't think about porn all day. You're just like, you might get triggered looking at the freaking discovery page on Instagram, wink one off real quick and go on with your day, but you're not going to be thinking about. You haven't created this big story around it. Exactly. It's an interesting one actually. So I kind of have built a number of stories about some of the things that I did when I was in my 20s. I like party a lot and you're like just young party boy stuff, tons of cocaine, tons of MDMA, and good bit of boozing, and never one point did I ever feel like I had a problem.

1:31:55It was always me that was in control. And I did this quite infrequent, but I would do it heavily when I did it. And that's like classic, you know, like club promote a meets personal development dude early, you know, like prototypical or proto personal development guy. And I think I've told myself a story about many of the things that I did back then. So I still have this slightly antagonistic relationship with alcohol, where I see it is kind of like the low vibration thing and it's kind of like dumb and it's like juvenile and immature. And when I think about even MDMA, which a drug I've never done sober, but is, was developed for psychotherapy, it was developed to help people overcome trauma as an open up.

1:32:35I've never done it with alcohol. Yeah, well, if we put both of us together, we'd have a balanced version of how to use it. And cocaine is exactly the same thing. And I was thinking about it yesterday, and I don't know why I was thinking about cocaine. Maybe I was tired. And I thought, why have I got this story around this particular drug? There's certainly our drugs, big class of drugs that I think are dangerous in our body. Should be demonized, like the heroin and stuff like that. And cocaine's not exactly mushrooms or fucking caffeine or something, but still I was like, what if I, why does this story kind of exist in my mind about what those drugs mean and are.

1:33:17And I really started to sort of fact check it. And I think so much of it is just this sense that I want to feel like I've transcended where I was before. And I'm associating the things that I used to do previously with the person that I was previously. I'm like, hey, I think that you're being used by those drugs as opposed to you using them. And this is like the maybe the fifth episode that the sixth episode I ever did on this podcast with a guy called Dom McGregor. So I did a turn of sobriety, elective sobriety, I called it because I chose to do it as opposed to I needed to do it. That's why I had to focus on sleep and personal development and shit.

1:33:53And I had a conversation with Dom who's a guy that did have a problem with alcohol and he was choosing to go sober because he needed to because he was overcoming a dependency. And I came up with this idea and I still think that it's true, which is if you are somebody that's had a problem with substances or with vices of one kind or another, you haven't truly transcended them until you can reintegrate them on your terms. If you are a person who has been addicted to alcohol and now your thing is I am sober and I've been sober for 15 years and I do all the rest of it, I'm like dude, that's phenomenal.

1:34:30Congratulations, that is unequivocably the a significantly better position to be in than the one that you were in previously. But alcohol still controls your life. I can say it's a control of real life. The absence of alcohol is still in control of your life. And totally there are certain people with certain constitutions or histories and patterns who will never be able to reintegrate that. But I also don't think that you can say you've overcome your problem with alcohol. I think that that would be a fiction. I think that overcoming your problem with anything would be being able to see porn and not watching it for 10 hours.

1:35:07Being able to have a drink and not needing to binge for the remainder of the year. And so much of that, again, as I was reflecting on why I had these judgments around particular substances, I think so much of that is the story that we tell ourselves once you get beyond the dependency and the habits and all the rest of the stuff, the destructive spirals. So, hmm, well, what if there was a different story about what I said about this? Not that I intend on, I haven't had cocaine today, but you know, like, I just thought that was interesting. Yeah, I know it was interesting. I kind of, it made me think about like, so you know, I grew up in a religion from the time I was born until I was 32 and I left, but it still absolutely plays roles in my life every day.

1:35:46And it's like, I'll never really lose that. I don't even know if that's a good or a bad thing. It's just part of me, right? I think it's a little bit similar, like an alcoholic, like if they can go 15 years, somewhere somebody that was hooked on cocaine or whatever it might have been, I think that's just going to be part of them from that point on. I think that's one of the dangers of getting into certain things before, you know, really analyzing what that's gonna do long -term. But I think it's always going to be a part of my story and my life. And like it literally creeps into my life somehow every single day.

1:36:13And so it's like, you know, I had a brother that he's very much still in it. And he was kind of mad at me because he's like, you act like you're not, you know, have any problems with it. but I know you do. I said, dude, I absolutely have problems with this. Why I left, but I'm trying not to. I'm trying not to have any issues. I do. I have several problems with it. I don't want to have problems with it. I'd rather it just be a thing just like, I don't think about Islam or Catholicism. I don't give a shit. It doesn't have any emotion to me. This one still does. And I always will. And I don't, there's no way for me to get around that.

1:36:45You know, it's like, I've done a good job of trying to like come to peace with it all, But like it of course I still have issues like so I left Yeah, I don't know kind of no I think it's just strange to consider that even Even the absence of things can still be them controlling you yeah, right because of the sort of obsession in the absence It's this sort of the vacuum sucks you in and you're you're measuring your progress now up against where it isn't as opposed to where it is and Yeah, that's just a yeah If I see anything like any article if I'm on like Yahoo and anything with that church pops I totally want to read it like it just sucks me right in like you said like a vacuum You know, it's like it's part of me Talk to me about the role of devotion Devotion well You know, I think ultimately we have to make a decision of like Where we want to put our attention we can do anything in life, but you can't do everything and I think where people We talk about a little bit earlier, but like anything that is worth doing is worth overdoing like for me I want to go all in on stuff.

1:37:45Except for cocaine. Except for cocaine. But for me, it's like, if I want to do things at the highest level, I want to experience all that life has at the highest levels. And that includes, like, when you talk about devotional, that's love. That's, you know, if you're going to be in a marriage, so I tell the guys that I coach, I say, if that person isn't your everything, if you can't be completely vulnerable or be yourself and fully just be with them, then you're missing 98 % of the good stuff of being with someone. So what's the point? Like, be completely devoted. Be all in on that thing or don't do the thing.

1:38:18And so I don't know if that's a proper answer per se, but like I just believe that, you know, anything you do at the 90, like you can become a semi expert of something, you get 95 % of the way there, you know, in six months. But to get, this is a tweet that I think I said, you put out, but if you're gonna get to 98 or 100%, it's gonna take you 20, 30 years. But find the things that are worth doing that and the rest of them be okay, just like not really having that much attachment to, But the things you really care about, your family, your friends, like, you know, like whatever thing you're passionate about, I think you have to go all in on.

1:38:50That's why it's interesting the first step of your five -step transformation thing is decide on your morals. Decide what's valuable. 100%. Yep. Yeah, decide what really matters. Yeah, I think it's the best way to say that. Because until you've done that, how are you going to know what you should and shouldn't go after down the line? Yeah. You mentioned Stoicism early on. one of the four stoic virtues is wisdom. And that's the most important one because it's the one that chooses what you do with the rest, taking a temperance and justice and stuff. Like, yeah, okay, but the wisdom thing is the deciding in what direction am I going to use these other skills and tools that I have to serve.

1:39:29You know, you can be obsessive and hardworking and doing things incredibly well. But if the thing that you're doing is sniffing cocaine, like guess what, That's not. Yeah, so it's like it has to be a worthwhile goal to be successful. It has to be like a drug dealer can't be successful because in the very act of becoming great at it, it makes you not successful. And yeah, it has to be, it's the pursuit of a worthwhile goal. That's what really what you're trying to attempt to do. I think that's where you want to really be able to, again, going back to the moral issue of like, okay, wait, is this thing I'm doing matter?

1:40:05Like, you know, I think when people are in a job, if they know it matters, if they, I think there's two things really important about picking where you spend your time on. Does it matter? Like, you know, do I have an X factor? Do I have a gift that no one else has that because of that, it matters that I'm doing this thing? And the second one is, is, am I using the gifts that I have for what the thing I work on? Because when you do, when you have those two things present, everything feels like passion. When you don't, it's all feels like stress. Like anytime you're in a job or you're not using in your natural gifts or it doesn't matter to you, it's just stress.

1:40:38But when it matters and when you're doing things you're already good at, that's what I love about my job now. It's like, it's all the stuff I already love doing. And so it's just every day, it's just so fun to go do my thing because it's like, I don't even know if I'm ever working or not, it's just it's all one thing, it's like a cliche. If you love what you do, you never work a day in your life, but it's like it's true. Like if you love what you're doing, I can work 60, 70 hours now and I feel like I just had a normal week, but like when I was doing that in real estate, when you're pounding phones, trying to get for sale by owners of the call you back, you know you're working, you know.

1:41:07And so I think that's a gift that I think everybody needs to find, like, really get clear on, like, what are your gifts? And if you don't know, and exercise I have my guys do, I just have them text five guys in the group or five people they know and say, hey, man, what's a unique gift or talent that I have that maybe I don't see in myself? And you'll be shocked at the answers you get back from me. It's really cool because people will see you in a way. And when you hear it, you go, dang. Oh yeah, I get that. I do do that. And it's really beautiful exercise. They help you feel good. Hell yeah. Jimmy Racks, ladies and gentlemen, Jimmy, I appreciate your work.

1:41:40I think that what you're doing with revitalizing groups of men who really, really need it is super impressive. Where should people go? They want to keep up to date with everything that you do? Yeah, I think the main thing that I'm focused on is the Weirder Day. That's my Coatman's Coaching Group. My Instagram, Mr. Jimmy Racks, my post -along, of the stuff on there and you know and I think that's the best place to find everything. In those links, I did it again this documentary if people get a chance to watch it. wattvid .com and you can really see what we're all about. Pick up my new book just came out yesterday.

1:42:11Super pumped, we're Ed Myledigan did the forward and you know he said he said it's very rare a book comes along at the time when the society really needs it. That's what he said about my book and it's really honored that he did that. But yeah man, I just Instagram's the best place to hit me and I appreciate you and everything you're doing man It's inspiring. Thank you. I appreciate you too, man And Doug here we have the limo emo in its natural habitat helping people customize their core insurance and save hundreds with liberty mutual Fascinating it's accompanied by his natural ally Doug Uh, Lemoo?

1:42:48Is that guy with the binoculars watching us? Cut the camera! They see us! Only pay for what you need at LibertyMutual .com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings vary under it and by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliate excludes Massachusetts.