#851 - Chris Bumstead - Discipline, Motivation & The Champion’s Mindset

23:00You know, and setting authentic goals to myself. What are my authentic goals? Winning the Olympia sometimes is a little more an authentic than me truly trying to just push myself to be my best. Do I still enjoy that? Absolutely. But that was a more of the need to be great little ego. The thing that I'll die not needing but the entrance it calls that are Regardless of things out of my control, you know, win lose beat him. Don't beat him What's in my control of just being myself and who I am showing up at my best knowing that I can go to sleep at night knowing out myself? We talked about pressure as a privilege last time, but this is actually the same, but in reverse, this is privilege as a pressure.

23:43The privilege is a pressure. Yeah, the privilege you have carries along with it, this pressure in order to perform, while your parents didn't have this opportunity, think about your six -time Mr. Olympia, you're really going to think about maybe not going for seven, why wouldn't you leave it the most dominant athlete in history, why are you going to drop it? You know, like privilege is a pressure. And it's one of the odd byproducts of anybody that's doing really, really great things, that a lot of people are driven by this unconscious assumption that they're not enough, unless they do do great things.

24:20And it'll cause you to go and do great things, but to what end? What's the outcome? What's the texture of your mind like when you go to sleep on a night time? Do you really want that? feel great doing great things, you feel like shit, you can do great things. What's the worth? What's the price? Do you think you're a, I can odd person to become a world champion? I think so. I don't know if I've ever. I think so. You're a fucking way to be a world champion. I totally agree. I think most people will be like, they're so fucking way. This guy's gonna be a blessing. If they were my literally this little bitch, you know, but I don't know.

24:54I think in my opinion, what I've learned very deeply over the years, is that confidence is just truth. You know, it's just being honest. And there's people who put on this false provato of arrogance of being like, you know, they were fifth place at the Olympia last year. Don't pick out the whoever was fifth and pick on them. But someone not winning, I'm gonna show up and I'm gonna win this Olympia. I know it in my heart. It's like, you don't know that you're lying. It's not confident it's just a lie. Whereas when I've speak to myself truthfully and I'm like, I don't really know if I can do this.

25:25Like, I have doubt. I have fear. I just wanted X, Y, and Z and I'm like being honest to me, that exemplifies real true confidence. And you're being realistic with yourself. You know, if you tell yourself you're going to do something you don't think you really can do, your creating this gap between your beliefs and your reality and it just creates more stress in yourself and an inability to perform in my opinion. Unwavering confidence is a lie. The fears never go away completely. They just don't linger as long. What's that? Did I quote? Do you? You wrote it. I mean, it sounds fantastic. That's beautiful.

26:00I mean, that's kind of in that same boat. And maybe I'm just a weird champion who's not like that, but I still am full of doubt all the time. And I've tried to find ways to believe I wouldn't have doubt. I've tried to like, talk in ways where I don't have doubt. I've tried to everything. And there's always just lingering doubt in my mind of being like, well, fuck what if you don't, what if you can't. And it's just the truth of my mind and regardless of that over the past five years, I've still been able to perform Progress and be the best in the world with that on my mind So who's to say that I can't have that doubt on my mind while being a champion.

26:36There's no rules to it So I've always said the champion mentality the rules of being a champion is that there are no rules It's just whatever the champion does to win. Mm -hmm Yeah, there's a great story from Matthew Sired. So he's a sports reporter he's obsessed with tennis and he went to Wimbledon a few years ago and a unique aspect of tennis over the last decade or so has been that you had Jockovich, Federer and Nadal, three goats, three potentially literally goats all at the same time all interchanging and exchanging who won on this court or this tour with this surface and he went to go and watch them warm up and you go in and you see Nadal and he's just ripped absolutely shred it's all a aggression, it's pure sort of raw, animalistic energy.

27:23And then you go and see Jockovich and he's sort of robotic very precise, very curated with the way that he moves. Nothing is wasted and then you go and see Federer and he's playing trick shots and he's laughing with the guidance woman. He goes, okay So if you were to take any of those three approaches and say in order for me to become a world champion I must be a b or c Well, you can't be all of them and all of them are successful. So what does it mean to say that A or B or C are the right approach in order for you to be successful in the sport of tennis? It doesn't. It means that each different athlete has found a way that works for them.

28:01And when you try and take that format and apply it to yourself, what you end up doing is it's like trying to put on somebody else's pair of shoes. You go, I'm a size 10 and there are size 8 and this is not going to work. Well, the truth is that A, B, and C are all wrong answers. Anything out there is wrong answer. You have to build it in yourself. You know, and like I talk about the cookies of the intuition, you know, over time, you just, you build intuition. When you can get into a flow state of just trusting yourself to show up as you are and if it's playful, if it's intense, if it's quiet, if it's loud, if it's doubtful, if it's whatever, if it's just who you are and you're not needing to put on any of this ad You are able to release that mask and show up in a flow and chest your instincts and act on instinct.

28:45I don't think you can be beat. What do you say to people who often feel fear? You mentioned the fears never go away completely. Feeling fear sucks. Not very comfortable. Yeah. Nobody wants to feel fear. I don't want to feel fear. But as somebody that's intimately familiar with that and pressure, what do you say to people who notice it come up or what do you do yourself? I would say when I start to feel fear about something now, I get it. I turn into excitement because in the past when I've started to feel fear, it's because something big that I've worked hard for, that's really important to me.

29:18I started to come creeping up closer. And there's something beautiful about the human experience of stress and anxiety, nervous fear and all those things and just trying to embrace that and lean into it is the best way I've been able to handle it when it comes to performance. But when there's stuff that's actually like impending fear of my health, let's say, something that I can't just be like lean into the excitement that you might have a health problem or something. I've found, again, I've tried to embrace it and just feel it and sit with it and feel feelings as we've talked about many times and that's helped.

29:49But there's another level of giving it the validation that it deserves. The feeling of validation it deserves and that to me that's being able to vocalize it out loud. I think this is different for everyone, but for myself I'm very introverted person and I tend to keep things to myself and I have a brain that's very logical. So it's like, well, I'm scared about my health. Well, you have no reason to be scared about your health. You're healthy. You do these tests and all these things. Well, I'm so anxious and I'm like working through it logically, my brain and I try and just like diminish the feeling that I have logically and work through it myself.

30:19And it's just, it's a dance, and it works a little bit, but it doesn't fully go away. Just push it down. But when I'm able to vocalize it and express it out loud and get the actual words out of my mouth and share it with someone, typically my wife, and able to regulate with my partner. And she's able to listen to me, and you know, validate my feelings of how I, what I'm going through. And of course, you feel like that, you know, X, Y, Z. This is, this is very normal. I'm like, oh, yeah, you're right. And then it's just all of a sudden, like, East. And I'm like, wow, I feel a lot better now. You know, I feel a lot more calm and relaxed that I've released it.

30:50So I think a big thing for me was not feeling feeling numbing, trying to feel feelings, but kind of logically man's planning it over myself in my head. And then it was actually letting it out, giving it like the attention it deserves to be put out to the world and communicate about it was someone who I trust and cares about me. Do you ever get or feel shame about feeling the fear? Like, oh, this is so stupid. Why are you beating yourself up again? Why are you so worried about this? You should be stronger. You shouldn't be worried in this sort of a way because I think first -order emotions are bad, but the really, really bad ones are the second and third and fourth -order emotions.

31:25You know, you're shame about feeling fearful and you're guilt about feeling shame about feeling fearful and your frustration about feeling guilt about feeling fear, but it's that, it's all the way up. I think I used to, but in the last couple of years of my attempt to just honor things that come up as they come up, it's gotten a lot better myself. And I've been able to catch myself now and mindfulness and other buzz words that people over use. But if you're mindful enough to catch yourself, which was first, second, and third, emotions and watch them come up and be like, did I just say that to myself right now?

31:59That's crazy. I felt something and I called myself an idiot for feeling that and I called myself a pussy for thinking of an idiot for feeling that. And that's an insane thought. If someone were listening to your brain right now, they'd put you in a hot mental hospital, you know? And just being conscious of that and being able to listen to your own thoughts sometimes help alleviate them so much and you're human. And the more you're able to communicate them with other people that you trust and then be like, yeah, me too, I have the thoughts to you, you know. And you feel a little bit less crazy.

32:26You know, like we were joking about intrusive thoughts on the drive here And I was like do you ever just think about like turning your car into oncoming traffic and just seeing what happens And I had to use thing with having a baby sometimes I'm like, what if she just what if I just I'm holding on what if I just dropped it and she's died and I'm like holy fuck Yeah, yeah, you have these crazy thoughts, but then I say that to my wife. She's like, oh my god I literally was I had a dream that I threw her off the roof or something I'm like, that's a little crazy, but me too, you know, yeah, and it's normal.

32:52We're human It's our brains just overthinking, putting ourselves into a position to feel fear, and then trying to make ourselves actively avoid that fear so we don't get there. It's a human response to avoid pain. I think this is one of the reasons that people have sort of resonated a lot with your story, which has been this very sometimes overly transparent approach to opening up about the, So again, sort of boring fears, you know, there's boring successes, but there's also the sort of very, no one's going to give you any accolades for not dropping your daughter. It's like, oh, congratulations.

33:34You didn't drop your baby. Oh, you did, you're a monster. But yeah, just talking about the real finer points of psychology when you're a bit of an introspective person. So going back to the idea of confidence and fears, what do you think life would have been like for you if you hadn't gone for it? Whatever that means to you?

33:59The excellent question. I was thinking about that the other day of how like Like again most of the thought I was having was when we were young we were told we can be anything And then we realize it's a lie. And then we realize we're telling ourselves it's a lie because we actually just realized how much work it's going to take. And we'd rather believe it's a lie than we're not willing to work hard enough to achieve these things. And then it's kind of like this back and forth of like, can I or is it just too hard or am I just too weak? And it's back and forth. And you know, I'm just so grateful I fell into something that I was so passionate about that took a lot of effort and work, but that I also loved to do.

34:35And my body was built for and my mind was built for it. I was clearly genetically built to be bodybuilder mentally physically environmentally my relationships all everything flowed perfectly for me to be in this perfect position. And I think it's just it's hard to say where I would end up without this life. And it's I don't even like thinking about it because it's hard. But the effort that I put into this would be really hard for me to put into something I didn't love. So if I hadn't gone for it, which would be for me back in 2017 when I've been college drinking, partying, doing all the things and being like, you know what, I'm not.

35:08I'm gonna stop this. My friends go out, I'm gonna go to sleep. I'm gonna wake up early, I'm gonna go to the gym. I'm gonna eat six times a day. I'm gonna spend my money on tuna and chicken breasts, rather than six packs of beer and all these things. And I'm just gonna drop out of school and I'm gonna travel and I'm gonna try and get sponsors. I'm gonna try, when shows I'm gonna do all this and I'm gonna take every risk I can. And I didn't even think about it. You know, when you're young, luckily you're at the greatest opportunity your life to take risk into fail and then you're like, well, I'm 24 now, I can just go restart.

35:38I suppose you're ignorant to the price that you're going to have to pay as well. Oh yeah. Do you think that you would have done it? Had you have known what it was going to? Obviously not knowing the outcomes because that's put you where you are, where you're really happy. But going, oh, this is what it's going to entail. This is the price that you're asking me to pay. I don't know. I mean, I mean, I would have been too ignorant to say no. So yes, I would have for sure. Yeah. You can't know until you're in it. young, dumb and full of hope. Yeah. What was it you used to say? Full of magic and rubber or something?

36:10Yeah, made of rubber and magic. A lot of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What it is, dude, you know, you... All of the things that happen to you, the bruises that you get when you're younger just seem to bounce off in some ways more easily. And then you go through this sort of period of not hiding from the stuff that insults you or that damages you and you go, oh, okay, this thing has now happened and I need to actually deal with it as opposed to just using momentum or inertia or distraction or whatever to get me through it. And then the goal is to come out the other side and to actually have done that work and now be anti -fragile.

36:47Right. So you go from like unconscious competence in the beginning to conscious incompetence and then hopefully to conscious competence, which is where you've got full control. You know that it's happened. You've fully sort of transcended and included whatever that whatever that challenge is. Mm -hmm. But yeah, it's It's funny to think about the weird decisions that you make One time decisions so for me moving to America 33 years old like I know should I not have had my life together by then feels like I probably should have done I really be Dicking about trying to change careers and move is this not the age by which you're supposed to have all of your life got together and you're gonna move to this country on your own.

37:30It's like talk to people on the internet and try and make it into a career in like the most competitive city in the entire world to try and do it and see if it's gonna work with no, it didn't even have the visa when I moved out here. It was like under review or whatever, living in an Airbnb and yeah. Do you think it's possible to discover the limit of truly what you're capable of? Like do you think you'll achieve a point I achieved everything else capable of. And are you working towards that or are you just working? Hmm.

38:08It's going to be hard to do it within this industry and it's one of the reasons that I love sport. Increasingly, I'm using sport as an analogy for lots of other things in life. Because you have very tightly defined parameters of success and failure. Right? You're either one or you didn't. But a podcast can always be a little bit better. Your physique on stage three and a half weeks time could be a little bit better But if you win That's really all that matters in them I will say that from my experience there are moments where you win and yes, and then you go back and you're like my feet could have been a little bit better Wow, so you even in the active winning you've found a way to Sort of want more for sure Wow So I don't know I am There's a part of me that is, I mean, this has been the hardest I've ever worked.

38:53This last 12 months, since we were basically, since we were last together, it's just been unrelenting. And good, and there's a part of me that I want to look back with pride of a time when I had the energy and the lack of responsibility and the youth and the time that I could dedicate to something like this and go, yeah, I pushed myself as hard as I could. I got out of this, everything that I could too. But after a while you do start to think, okay, what are the sacrifices that I'm making for this? And how can I get 98 % of the outcome that I'm looking for, but with only 50 % of the pain? You know, where are the areas where I'm pushing in necessarily that I can claw back some quality of life?

39:38And especially in, I guess this is the double -edged sword, for you, you tightly defined parameters of success and failure, which means that it's easy to work out whether or not it was a W or an L. But on the flip side of that, you, it's such a zero -sum game that pulling back even a tiny little bit will risk whatever the outcome is going to be. Whereas when you're doing something like in business, right, it's not about being the number one supplement brand or the number one energy drink brand or the number one clothing brand or whatever. It's about reaching a, creating a cool company that you're proud of that facilitates the lifestyle that you want and is maybe able to give back and do cool things within the industry that you like being a part of.

40:19So people there's some people. Maybe for you the energy drink is like you're a little like there's less pressure on me to have to be the best because I just want to build something cool but the podcast is where all the pressure is not have to be the best so it's almost like you're able to alleviate some pressure on some effort you put into the business but some people the business is their number one thing like I need to be the number one energy drink in the world That is true. Related to that, you said, I found greater fulfillment in the journey of pursuing my goals than in the moment of achieving them.

40:48Why? I'd say that comes to like the question I asked you of discovering what I was capable of. You know, there's been so many times where I've been in a prep and I felt way too far behind to win. And I'm like, I had an injury last year when I tore my lat, tore my on it and like there's no way that I can do this. Like it's impossible. And if I were to ever ask myself in the past, like do you think you could win or get through this and do this? I'd be like, no way, it's impossible. But I was in it and I did it and I accomplished it and I was like, I'm capable of so much more than my mind understands.

41:25And I think that's just the greatest part of the journey that I've achieved is like that understanding of what I'm capable of and that belief in myself is what I can accomplish. And it only came through the journey, didn't come through the winning, it come through the challenge that came along the journey and coming through it and fighting through it and the beauty of all that. And off top of that, there's just been so many moments in the midst of things where like, it's a workout or it's a diet or I'm starving or I'm just doing checkings or something and I'm just like, this is incredible. Like I'm peak condition in the world right now, fighting to be the best in the world and I'm living in that moment right now.

42:04This is what it takes when people see something on stage. This is what they don't see or what I'm feeling in my mind about no one will understand what it takes to get there I get to experiences every day and I think it's just part of the human experience of Feeling in life that's just so beautiful It was boring normal victories that contribute to the really impressive ones exactly the boring victories. Yeah, they're important man, you know

42:29Yeah, I think I think having away the people could celebrate those on a daily basis. Me and a friend came up with this idea of a well done list. So you can have a done list, which is the shit I did today, but a well done list allows you to note down. So I got through my training session even though I felt really crap this morning when I woke up and my mind was mean to me. Like no one. Where does that go? Right? But it's not grand or ceremonious enough in order to justify an Instagram post. Maybe you'd be able to tell a particularly mindful partner about it, but it's, you don't even tell your friend, you're going out.

43:08After you told your mindful partner it was five days on our other day. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you miserable every day. Yeah. Shut up. But yeah, I think the opportunity to give yourself a pat on the back, like a well done for today. I've written on a post it note on my bathroom mirror what went well today, which is my reminder for the world un -west and yeah, when I think about it when I actually do that practice, which I need to do more, but when I do that practice on an evening time, I come up with the most boring victories, you know, the most mundane things. That person in the Starbucks was annoying and I didn't react.

43:46Yeah. You know, all right, I dealt with it with grace or whatever like little things like that that I do think over time Actually contribute to you being a pretty impressive human and a human that you're proud of as well Which is maybe even more important. Mm -hmm. I've had those moments someone come up to me And like I didn't know who to tell I just wanted to come to you because like I felt safe talking to you And they like to tell me something and I walk away and like I feel good about myself You know, I'm that person that they wanted to come to I don't give a fuck.

44:15Yeah, there's definitely something about the pursuit of girls being more important than the achievement of them as well, that Ryan Long told me this story where he says, there's three men on the ladder, one at the bottom, one in the middle, and one at the top, which one is best to be. He said, the one that's still climbing. And I think that having things isn't that fun, getting things is fun. Yeah. And you know, that's where it's sort of the vicious other side of doing anything for the purpose of achievement that when you end up getting to the achievement, you realize that the achievement wasn't anything.

44:53It was literally just the end point that gave you direction. And as soon as you do get to that, you know, the idea of false peaks in mountaineering. So it's when you think that you're at the top and you go, you realize, oh, fuck, I've got to go down here. I've got to go back up again. But this one seems higher. It's like every achievement is basically just a false peak the whole way up. So that's what I really like hit me and I thought was really cool about. I've always wanted to be a dad. I've always wanted to be a parent. And then having a baby, it's not having the baby. Like I did it. I have the kid.

45:23I'm a dad now. I'm done. It's like no. Being a father of the what I want to be, what I'm excited to be is how you show up every single day for that kid's entire, for the rest of your life, essentially. If you're lucky enough, then you just show up every single day trying to be your best and that's what being a dad is every single day showing up It's not just the day your wife conceives as a child, you know? Trust really is everything when it comes to supplements a lot of brands may say that they're top quality But few can actually prove it which is why I partnered with momentas They make the highest quality supplements on the planet They're literally unparalleled when it comes to third -party testing what you read on the label is what's in the product and and absolutely nothing else.

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46:37A checkout that's L -I -V -E -M -O -M -E -N -T -O -U -S .com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom. A checkout. Talk to me about dad life, how is it? It's been good. It's been really good. The first thing that hit me is just absolute love and appreciation for my wife, especially watching her go through through the birth process and everything, holy hell, women are incredible, it was crazy. Experiencing that was the most insane thing I had ever experienced in my life. How so? She wanted to do it naturally. She did it just all on her own naturally. That means without pain killers? Yeah, just as nature is.

47:17I'm like nothing in her. So she was in a town. Roll dog, piss, but. She was raw dog and it's so much pain and there were so many moments where like she was just shaking in pain and like losing it. And I thought she was gonna like snap it. I need the drug. They need the epidural or whatever. And I was like, come on, you can do this. Lock it in. She was like, you didn't tell your wife to just lock in. I told her to. Absolutely. Bro, just lock in. Come on, bro. She had me pinching her like traps is harder. Like literally I was like white knuckling her trap to try and distract from the pain. Trying to distract from the pain.

47:52Just like it was incredible. I love the solution to pain being more pain. Be more pain, all right? Her doctor really shouldn't be doing that. But she'd tell me to, I'm not gonna say no. Exactly. You tell her to tell me not to. But it was just incredible to experience all that and to see her in such an empowering moment and overcoming so much, like there's zero chance, I would've gone through that. Like it was so much pain and she just handles it like a champ. And then you go home and you have to take care of a child, you're not sleeping and you're doing all these things and there's so much more that comes into it.

48:18So I think I just, I developed so much appreciation for, or moms, women, my wife, being able to see all that. And it's been really cool. And another kind of wake up call that I had and like there's two things I'll explain. The first one is there's this concept I thought of that your children eventually will know exactly who you are. For an extended period of time, they're gonna think of you as like a hero as a god. It's perfect. Like your parent who knows everything. And then they're gonna turn to a certain agent or as a human and there's a lot of shit you don't know. and any like burdens you have, anything you try and hide from them, they see through it all, because they see you all the time.

48:55There's no hiding anything from them. So you really have to, like, be on your best. You have to work on your shit, solve your problems, not be a passive -aggressive asshole, not do whatever your faults are. You need to fix them so you don't pass them onto them and they're gonna see them eventually, because you can't hide from them. You can put whatever you want on social media. You can be nice and public to all these things, but at home, there's no hiding anything. they're gonna know exactly who you are. And I think that, like, just responsibility that with hell within that is just powerful and beautiful and exciting.

49:27There's nowhere to escape, right? It's accountability. Yeah, it's like a Navy SEAL hell week that never stops. You have this permanent instructor over your shoulder all times, the tiniest little interaction, how you deal with that one nappy change, that one evening that's four weeks after the trip to the hospital at three in the morning, that you didn't sleep all night. You have multiple kids, one screaming, one throne. Should I use a food all over you that you burn the food? There's nothing to eat all this shit. And then like, how are you going to react? Could they see it? And they're going to remember.

49:58You know, it's like it's all being watched. Like there's cameras in that. Trust you. Trust you to be able to turn fatherhood into a performance sport. Not meant to be a performance. And accountability to be your best. Yeah, yeah. That's the first lesson. Um, the other one was, it's more of a moment. It was a moment, I'm already getting emotional thinking about the moment. It was, she was like a night where she'd rally with being fussy. She was like crying a lot and I took her in the back room and I just laid with her, walked around with her and she calmed down and I just laid down and she wouldn't sleep, but she fell asleep on my chest.

50:32And I remember lying there and like just putting my hand on her. And I was like, like if you could ever just without being able to put into words, experience what love is like it couldn't be more powerful than that. I was like this is like I can't there's no way I can put it into words because I wouldn't do justice. It was just pure love in that moment. I was like how can I love this little thing so much. It was the most beautiful moment and all it was lying here with her sleeping on my chest. It was incredible and out every like stress about work, travel, Olympia, all these things they just like wash away and you're like it It doesn't matter if I have this.

51:07This is it. This is like what I've always wanted. This is all that matters. And it was the most perspective -changing little moment from matter of minutes while she was not being on my chest, but it was the most incredible thing. And I think it's just allowed to alleviate a lot of pressure I put on myself to perform to succeed all these things. It allowed me to separate that. And when I talk about the extrinsic goals of winning competition versus the morals and values, like it just made my morals and values of fame. and love so much stronger. And if you fail over here, you have this, and it's all that matters.

51:42I think the gym oddly enough is that for a lot of guys when they first start going. I know it was for me. I remember that when I first started going to the gym when I was at uni, it gave me kind of like a safe haven that I knew if I'd face planted in some presentation that I had to give if the girl that I was seeing broke up with me, if all of this stuff went wrong, at least I got a good training session in. So in one area of my life, I was making relatively forward progress. Even if everything else had gone to shit, the rest of it's a total dumpster fire. This one area is siloed off, it's compartmentalized.

52:20And for a long time, maybe that was one of the safe havens for you. And now that is one of the things that can be part of dumpster fire, maybe the best dumpster But the rest of them are down here too, and then there's this one and then there's another safe haven now Which is even more indestructible for sure. Yeah, it's the most I can look at picture if I ever am feeling down nervous scared now I can look at a picture of her and I feel better. It's just like this is amazing. We spoke last time You're in a bit ago about the oh No, it was when we trained earlier on this year about how when And dads get to see their kid for the first time.

53:02Sometimes this sort of fatherhood compulsion doesn't kick in immediately. And I told you that story about a meeting that I'd been to and one of the guys put his hand in the air. It was this business meeting with a ton of high powered entrepreneurs, everyone's a millionaire or a billionaire, as like the poorest, stupidest person in the room. And they said, anyone got any questions that wants some advice for and this one dude put his hand up. And I was thinking it was going to be about the cash flow conversion cycle for his business or accounting or some stuff like that. And you went, my wife's eight months pregnant, and I don't feel like I'm gonna be a good dad.

53:30And I was like, what? Now I'm interested. And you said you'd have this conversation with a lot of different guys, and it's quite normal. It seems to be very typical for future dads, wife's pregnant, cascade of hormones, all of that's going on. But they kind of aren't even sure, is there a baby in there? Like you're just getting fat. Like what's happening here? I'm not feeling anything. I haven't seen anything. I haven't held anything. How quickly did that switch turn on for you?

54:07It's hard to say that I thought it turned on really quick and then it just kept ramping up. It was a dial. It just kept going and I was like, holy shit, I didn't nearly like I thought. But there was a moment at one point where like I saw this joke online and then it was like, My husband does the things I can do and he does the things I can or whatever and it's like I breastfeed because he can't he sleeps because I can't and there was just a moment where she was like the baby wanted Courtney to cry the baby wanted to breastfeed she was taking care of her I was in prep I needed sleep I needed to rest I needed to go in the office I need to travel all of these things and I felt like useless and I was just like fuck like I'm just just like I'm peasant over here, this youthless being over here, you know?

54:49And I, like, I'm just not able to help her going through all this stuff. And I started to feel this weird, like, pull up almost like guilt of being like, she's a little bit more connected. It wasn't so much about connection, it was just more so about my ability to help her going through such a challenging time, feeling helpless, because my wife is overwhelmed trying to become the best mother she can be, going through the physical hormonal, lack of sleep transformation, everything, all the chaos. and I'm just over here like shit, what can I do over here? And kind of made me feel a level of guilt on an aspect and like, and she's so incredible.

55:20I can like talk with her and she will try and suit me. I'm like, I'm not trying to ask you to help me right now. Yeah, I'm just trying to say, I feel shitty that I can't help you. Can you help me feel less shitty about not being able to help you? It's like, come on. But no, I was like, no, I just want to be able to be there for you more. She's like, you just need to be easier for me. That's it. I'm like, all right, I won't be here. I definitely think that the, like, totally uselessness that you end up feeling as you're on the sidelines watching your wife give birth kind of just extends out. Look at me talking, like, as a guy that doesn't have kids talking about this.

55:54But it seems like that kind of just continues to extend out from, you know, the next six to nine months because you're there as a well -meaning coach on the sidelines. Go on, honey. Great work, you too. Yeah, yeah, hooray. You're basically moral support. One of those mascots in the big fluffy outfit that comes in at the half -time show and maybe gives a bit of alleviation. And then the players go back out under the field. I do the work. Good job. How have you found being able to let go of perfectionism in other areas of life, given that you dial in an awful lot, whether it's with business or branding or copyrighting or the way that you and Calvin film your content and put that out in a sort of nicely controlled curated way, the way that you step on stage, your knowledge of your diet, and your sleep, and your training, and your macros, and all that stuff.

56:45And then you've just got this thing, which is not subject to Chris's desires, and we'll do what it's going to do. And also your self -assessment of your own performance as a father, and desire to be as good as possible and so on. And so is this just another domain for you to find holes in your own performance in?

57:10To help a question. It's funny, because in aspects of my life, I'm the least perfectionist person ever. I'm very just like, it's good enough, just send it. And then the things that are really important to me, I can be a huge perfectionist, but which is where bodybuilding relationships, all these things, I can start to be a little overly hard on myself. So I think even that contrast of balance of different sides of my personality has helped me alleviate it I'm not not everything needs to be perfect. I'm like that stuff the YouTube video get there Calvin I worry about that these guys help me with the basics.

57:44That's all fine. This is what I need to do perfect on So at least it's not everything But even within that just being able to compete at such a high level for so many years. I've seen so many people who have been so obsessed with being especially in bodybuilding where everything is weighed, everything's about a look. Like when it's something where like, you know, something's on your mind, so you lost 30 minutes of sleep last night, you didn't enter a deep REM sleep, so you had on some water, had higher cortisol and you wake up and you look different the next day. Like that's how specific a physique sport is when you're that lean and dialed in that anything can change it.

58:18You can really start to get in your fucking head about it. And I've seen so many people overthink of to the grain of rice being perfect and eating at the same time every day and everything needs to be so perfect and just the stress of that making them worse. That I pulled back from the perfectionist of it and just tried to be like, where's diminishing returns? What's going to keep my mental peace where, what cookies are going to leave you enough stress that's actually more beneficial than eating health? Where does that balance lie? You pull and you test and you tug and you go back and forth a little bit and you just figure it out over the years and luckily I've just learned to trust my intuition and a lot of things and I think in being a dad now, my intuition is that I started being Mr.

58:59Olympia. So I'm re -figuring that one out. Yes. Luckily, my wife is just an incredible mom as she is. So a lot of the time. Well champion, I just ask her. If I don't hold to it, I do have like two out of a dude. Are you saying that Colony is Johani for child rearing? Oh yeah. For sure. She could be anyone's coach for child rearing somehow. She's just built for it. It's funny that the point you're making, I think, is the stress of trying to be perfect effect will damage your performance more quickly than the imperfections will. Yes. Which is where the cookie comes in. The cookie. All important cookie.

59:35About your wife, you said, being with someone who allows others to be their best selves in your presence will quite literally change the world around you. I get to wake up beside that someone every day and every night I go to sleep with more reason to be grateful for you. You will always be my life's greatest blessing. what's your advice for choosing a good partner? I think that sounds like the summary that everybody wants to do that. But so many relationships don't seem to have that positive dynamic in it. So what was it about Courtney that made you choose her? Or are there any fundamental principles that you think people should be looking out for?

1:00:14I would say before what you're looking at for is what you're putting out. You know the law, I don't understand the law of attraction exactly how it is, but what you put out you tracked. If you're being your authentic self, or about the word today, you're being your true self, you're speaking about what's really important to you, you're putting out the energy that you care about, that you want to get back into the world and you're being real, you're going to get that back. If you're putting on a show and you're chasing these inauthentic goals that are for other people or to keep up with society or Pressure as a parents or whatever it might be You're gonna start attracting people who are attracted to those goals in that energy Which isn't your real self rather than who you really are and the incredible thing of how me and Courtney met was I put out my first Like YouTube video crying Talking about something really emotional that I had gone through the year I was in the hospital talking about a really scary time, how fearful I was, being really raw.

1:01:13Like, first time ever talking about it, the therapy session on camera crying, and she saw that, and she's like, wow, this guy's different. Like, I remember, like, this guy just came secondly and limp, and he'd put on a video crying, but like, his emotions going through this, like, that's different. I like that. And then she reached out to me, and that's how we, that's what attracted to us. It was that energy of authenticity and emotion and rawness and realness that attracted us together and that was the foundation of our relationship with how we were going to build things going forward. So I think instead of what I was looking for was what I was putting out in that moment and she was attracted to it because that's who she is.

1:01:49When I say, she's the light that lets everyone be their best self. She's a type of person where all go to the bathroom and come out and someone will be crying. It'll be like, or the store clerk checking out her groceries, telling her about her child who X -Fighting, you know, I'm like, I'm like, what are you, she, I didn't say anything. People should tell me all There's stuff. I'm like, but it's beautiful. So you will just feel so safe and comfortable around there because she's such an amazing like loving selfless person. It's just who her it's her nature and she doesn't need to be anything other than that.

1:02:18It's just always she's always been and I just love that and I I'm like the protector of that energy because she gives it so much so I try and like protect her and then in the confines of our home She gives me the space to be myself and be my raw self of what she saw and protects me in there. It's so funny that If you'd tried to be somebody else, the person that ended up making you a better version of you wouldn't have even been interested. Like, if you'd tried to put on some sort of a show, if that video hadn't been there, if you'd kept on closing down your emotions, that was the very thing that she was going to be most attracted to.

1:02:53I think this is one of the problems again with the Jockovich, Nadal, Federer, way that this is the way that you're supposed to attract. We understand what it is that women are attracted to. And like maybe on average, but you can only put on a facade for so long. Yeah. And everyone's different. Yeah, you're going to end up in a relationship with somebody that loves you for not you. And it's going to be exhausting. Yeah. So people might not like that version of Courtney. A lot of women might think I'm, I would think overly emotional and weak or something and then that's fine. But they're not for you.

1:03:23And you're not for them. Yeah. And I think one of the cool things I've discovered in our relationship is your ability to be a burden to your partner is important. Like for you to feel safe to be a burden to your partner and for them to still show up in love you and then you're like, oh wow, like I don't need to give you anything in return. You're not expecting anything in return. I can put my burdens on you and you love me. That makes me feel safe and love you. So when you put your burdens on me, I'll do the same. It just becomes this like burning circle of love. You know, he's just, I feel like that's such an important thing to find someone who you just feel safe being a burden to.

1:04:01Not going to intentionally be a burden, but if you sometimes you suck, you know, sometimes you're a burden. And if you don't even feel safe being like that around your partner, you have to just withhold things from them and put on that show. You're never going to feel like safe around them and you're not going to want to be there for them as much when they're being a burden as well. Just become these two people dividing and conquering all your problems rather than taking on the world together. I really like that idea that here I am not fully competent, slightly broken, in need of help. Oh, and you're still here.

1:04:37Yeah. You didn't leave. Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty beautiful. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Function. I wanted a better way to track what was happening inside of my body. And that is why I partnered with Function. They run over 100 lab tests every year, covering heart, hormones, nutrients, thyroid, and even detecting 50 types of cancer at stage one. That's five times more testing than a regular physical. Best of all, your results are charted over your lifetime and explained in one simple dashboard. Lab testing like this would usually cost thousands, but with function, it's only $500.

1:05:12I rely on function because it's evidence -based and run by a team of expert physicians, so you can trust that the data and insights you receive are scientifically sound and unbiased. Plus, Dr Andrew Hubern is the scientific advisor and Dr Mark Hyman is the chief medical officer. Function has a 300 ,000 person waitlist, but every Monday they open a few spots for modern wisdom listeners. You can bypass the waitlist right now by going to the link in the description below, or heading to functionhealth .com slash modernwistim. That's functionhealth .com slash modernwistim. What do you wish more women knew about how they can help their man become a better version of himself because it seems like Courtney is very much able to do that for you.

1:05:55What do I wish more women knew? Yeah, I think the relationship that you guys have, which is very open and emotionally honest, seems to be one that a lot of women would want. Obviously, guys too, but I don't hear a massive amount of advice for women about how they can cultivate an environment that allows a man to flourish emotionally in the way that you are. What do you wish more women knew about how they could help their man be more emotional safely? To a good question.

1:06:32I think being able to both understand and for the woman to be able to express in an honest way and Chesa believed this that like I was talking about how like confidence is the truth. You know, you might want a strong man up white night on his horse, but if he's not how he feels, if he's not really that person, then he's not really confident. He's just putting it on facade to please you. So if you can truly show him and share with him and communicate with him that even when he's feeling down and when he feels low, when he feels emotion on all they think him being able to share that with you. It's actually confidence and strength, which men want to always exemplify.

1:07:17You're teaching him a new way to exemplify that strength that he wants to be. And even if it's only within the confines of YouTube, no one else needs to know about it, but you tell him like, when you share it with me, that you feel like shit, that you're emotional, that you hate yourself, that you don't think you can do this. When you share that with me, I think you're strong. Like, I think you're capable, and I think you're strong just for sharing that. Not because I know you can overcome it, but just for saying that out loud, that's strength. And the man who'd be like, wow, like shit, you know, the woman has to believe that.

1:07:48You know, those are my beliefs, they're sharing that as strong. And there's a lot of things where I would still feel judged and nervous to say how I feel online, not on a podcast, with hundreds of thousands of people listening, but to my wife, no, you know, I feel I share something with her and she's going to always see me as who I am. and it's strong to share and that I'm safe to do so. Strange that a lot of people would feel more comfortable sharing that stuff with somebody that wasn't their partner. Or what if they changed the way that they see me? This isn't holding a masculine frame. This isn't being the protector provider, dominant alpha that I'm supposed to be or need to be in order to be able to keep her attraction triggers or whatever it is going.

1:08:32Yeah. A sad. It is it is sad and it's everything's a moderation and balance in its life, you know, you can't be a puddle on the floor 24 hours a day. Yeah, you'll puddle on the floor 24 hours a day, you know, there it's What where your weaknesses are you always a strong masculine person? You can't show what are you always a puddle on the floor and you need to work on being more masculine There's someone where the other you got to find that balance and everyone's on a different end of the spectrum and everyone's partner will want to different spectrum and then you just got to find the person that fits in there.

1:09:04And obviously over the years now I've proven to Courtney that in those moments where I've broken down and feel like I'm worthless and can't do something, I've risen up and done it. And I've always shown up, I've always stepped up to the plate, I've always been what she needed, I've always done what I needed to do and I've proven to her that no matter how crumbled I feel in the moment, I've still become a better man and grown, whether or not I've accomplished what I've wanted, I've still grown, been a better man and shown up for her where and when I could. So she has a trust in me now, whatever weakness I show her, there will be strength too, you know.

1:09:36If my life was a movie and someone were to watch it, I hope they'd be in spied to take risks, not just risks to achieve success, but embrace feeling, both pride and shame, fear and excitement. Personally, I want to experience as much life as possible, and that only happens when you embrace the highs and the lows. And this is your thing about not just numbing the bad, but numbing the good, numbing the joy. Just revisit that for me, because I think a lot of people feel like if zero to a hundred is the range of human experience, they kind of sit in 40 to 60. What did expanding that window out look like?

1:10:16Yeah, I mean, this kind of hit me a few years ago when I was thinking about, I felt like I had a glass ceiling of joy that I could feel. I feel happy, but I'm not overjoyed and excited and ecstatic. And then my therapist put it back on me. She's like, well, what about the floor? Do you have a floor of negative that you're willing to feel? I'm like, yeah. I'm like, I don't wanna feel the bad shit. She's like, well, they expand at the same time. You open up a broad spectrum of emotion and you build your heart to feel these things. And if you don't have a high, you don't have lows, it doesn't come.

1:10:50If you numb the bad, you numb the good. And that's kind of where that all came from. So learning to embrace all those things and the funny thing is when you learn to embrace them, they're way more fleeting than you realize. To sit on something in your mind for a while, to stress about and not want to feel it, lingers for a long period of time, but to just embrace it and to feel it, to cry, to express it to whatever, whatever however needs to express It's off out of you. It happens a lot quicker than you think and you're able to move through it. And then when you look back at it, you're like, that was kind of beautiful.

1:11:21You know, like people love watching sad movies and crying sometimes and you're sad in the movie. You know, like, that was really sad. But you go back and you watch another sad movie. You know, we like feeling things. We enjoy emotion. It's the human experience is highs and lows. There is no high without lows. And I think just being able to accept that, that there's inevitably going to be shit times in your life and the more you can lean into them and feel them, the more you can lean into feeling to the high ones as well. And it's just part of the journey. It's interesting. Personally, I want to experience as much life as possible.

1:11:55I think when people think about experiencing lots of life, it's adventures, and it's travel, and so on. But the range of human experience, you can have regardless of what circumstance you're in, regardless of the situation or the flight or the destination or whatever. A lot of that is capped just by are preparedness to feel different things. And, yeah, there's an awful lot of adventure kind of to be had just by opening yourself up to different experiences. I often think about how many people sort of go through life just within that 40 to 60 % range of emotions. Yeah. And you think, oh my god, you know, you had this unique machinery up there in your head for 60, 70, 80, 90 years.

1:12:38And you got to explore this one square of it over and over and over and over and over again. Yeah. And why are we told that sadness is bad, you know? Why is fear and sadness have to be a negative motion? I was thinking about the other day and I have no idea. But if you were to erase someone and somehow not connecting the concept the bad negative to sadness and fear and anxiety and all the things that it just being like, it's just an emotion. It's just an emotion. There's not good emotions, there's no mad emotions, there's just feeling. I wonder if you could raise someone to have that belief in them what it would be like, because the reality is it's true, there are no bad emotions.

1:13:21Everything has a purpose and why it comes up and it helps process events in our life. Something happens that we don't on our process, we are feeling an emotions around it and in thoughts come afterwards. It's just how our brains operate. Again, it's not the fear or the shame. It's the guilt about the fear. And it's the agitation about the guilt about the fear. Because somewhere we've been taught that we should have guilt and fear and shame about the shame and guilt and fear. Where does it come from? I don't know, man. I think, you know, a lot of the time we don't feel comfortable to open up about that stuff.

1:13:56We are ashamed. I think shame is a really big driver. Shame in fear, a two sort of fundamental drivers to a lot of bad emotions. I'm worried about what will happen if I allow myself to feel this thing, there's the fear. And I feel guilty and less for having that emotion. That's the shame. Those to me, at least personally, are massive drivers that I don't want to appear weak or vulnerable or incompetent or not in mastery. I don't want to risk this. Maybe this is the real me. Maybe this version of me that doesn't have it all together. Like, oh my God, should you not have it all together? You're not supposed to be someone that's, you know, that is a big driver, I think, for a lot of people.

1:14:44And it's... You've found it more difficult as your success and popularity and eyes on you have grown. Have you found that more difficult? That battling with that shame of how you need to be and whatnot? I think so. Yeah. It waxes and wanes. This period to where it's better and period to where it's worse. Currently going through a period where it's worse. like this year's just been an awful lot of uncertainty, like personal uncertainty. Like a pullback, health's been like really rough autoimmune moldy stuff this year, which we need to talk about on the vlog, has just been so scary because it's the main thing that it takes away.

1:15:30It's like it's literally like somebody designed a personal pathology just for me. one of the main areas of the brain that it impacts is your ability to recall words. It's like that's my only fucking job. My only job. That's what's affecting you right now, you think? Yeah, all the time. So my only job is to recall words when I'm either writing or speaking. And I forget people's names. Like I miss remembering people's names all the time. Trying to find a word and having to substitute it for something else, which wasn't the thing that I meant. It's so annoying, it's so frustrating. and that has sort of pushed me very quickly into a place of fear, which is, oh my god, like, what if this is the way that you're going to be forever?

1:16:11The only reason that people like you is because you're able to say these things, you're going to be competencies being taken away. In that, it cuts at the very epicenter of what I presumed and assumed that my value was to be able to offer the world. And it's just about managed to get yourself to a place where you achieved something that you were proud of and the very thing that allowed you to achieve it has now been risked, been taken away from you. It's scary. Yeah. Has the intention behind the goals you're thinking changed over the years that I felt like it impacted that mentally? Does it feel like your path doesn't line up with your like authentic to goals nearly as much?

1:16:58No, I don't think so. The reason that I started the show originally was I didn't understand myself and I was hoped that if I spoke to enough people that were experts, maybe they'd be able to help. And that's still the case. You know, these conversations, the ones that we've had, the one that we had last year, the training vlog we did earlier this year, all of those things I take a little bits and pieces away that help me understand myself and the world around me. then you do start to sort of layer on top of that hope and expectation and like performance in a good way, you know, stepping up to the plate wanting to really get the best conversation you can and this pressure that sort of comes along with that.

1:17:44It's very much still the thing that I think I was meant to do, but I don't know it would be like being a bodybuilder and tearing a lot before you're about... You're just like shrinking. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Out of no sort of choice of your own and really they're not... You'd sort of scrambling around trying to find a solution to fix it. And, uh, yeah, it's rough. I bet. Why don't connect any of my value to your intelligence, Chris? Any of your value to your intelligence? Well, I appreciate that. Don't stress in the face of adversity. make adversity something you desire for an opportunity to grow.

1:18:21It sounds an awful lot like probably what I need to take a little bit of advice from. It could be interpreted in a... you can still stress about it. It's okay to feel the stress. More so the stress that leads to avoiding the adversity. Because you know, the other funny thing that I've thought about very related to this is going through adversity. My life is very revolved around competing in Olympias. When I go through adversity now, I'm like, this could be a part of my speech, you know? I tore my lat last year. I'm like, when I win this Olympia and I stand up on stage and I tell people I tore my latin' middle of this prep, they can make, oh my God.

1:19:02And it's going to make this story that much cooler. You know, it's going to push me beyond the levels of which I know that I'm capable of accomplishing. It's going to show me that when something feels impossible, it's not until it's not. You know, I got to keep pushing through and figuring it out. So the stress is okay to feel in adversity. It's where the stress leads you that you need to avoid. You need to prevent the stress from being strong enough to make you avoid adversity in the first place. If you start to feel stress about adversity, I think diving right into it is like the secret for growth.

1:19:38If your definition of success is win or lose, giving everything you've got and growing your learning along the way, then you're setting yourself up for success. I really think the biggest cheat code in life is just going after it and not being concerned of whether or not you fail at one specific task. Instead, understanding the big picture, what your long -term goal is and knowing if you keep driving forward and never fucking quit in the end, you will succeed.

1:20:05Great quote. I've based a lot of my life in the past about my definition of success and my definition of being a champion, my definition of winning, and I think it all just comes down to, you know, again, your values. When I'm old, what's the end of this look like? You know, my values of being the best partner, father, person I can be, 50, if I have 5 or 6 or 7 or 8 or 9 or 10 Olympias, are any of those affected by that? No. So in this short term goal of this moment of me wanting to win is it's very important, yes, but is the pressure of my life and value and worth dependent on that? No, it's not.

1:20:50It's the big picture of my life that I'm focusing on of who I want to become going through all these things. So if I win an Olympia, how do I want to win an Olympia? Who do I want to be when I win that Olympia? How do I want to win it? How do I want to show up my relationships? If I lose that Olympia, how do I want to lose? Who do I want to be when I lose? Who am I becoming through all these little challenges and goals along the way that aren't the big picture? Who am I becoming? Which is the big picture? And I think that's so important to for me to understand that everything that you choose to do and how you handle it is shaping who you're becoming.

1:21:26And at the end of the day, when you're old and have grandkids and Charlie in your life, you're the culmination of everything you've accomplished, but also how you accomplished it and how you reacted to it. What's the big picture? Who do you want to become? Isn't it interesting that you could have, you know, the same mantel piece above the fire that's got, however many Olympias on it. And objectively, when grandkids are bouncing on your knee, they can look and see the same thing. But the person behind them and the experiences that they went through and who they became in the process can be totally different.

1:22:01Which kind of shows that the outcomes that you get really are in the end kind of arbitrary. And it's the person that's behind the grand kid that kind of matters. Yeah, exactly. If I had a picture of myself and I had never won on Olympia and then I had to picture myself that one six Olympia. And my kids were looking at me, holy shit, you or jacked at, that's where other thought ends. It's not like you got five, you had six, you had seven. It doesn't matter, you know? That's cool, you're jacked, but who are you? And how do you show up in my life every day? Yeah, you know? And how did those pursuits, how did the goals that you tried to achieve or did achieve change you?

1:22:38Yeah. How did they cause you to be a different sort of father or grandfather or husband or friend or business partner or whatever? And what lessons did you learn and take from them that you can give to me so that I can learn from them? and hopefully not go through with much pain, while still learning the same lesson. Nothing disrupts your sleep more than being too hot or too cold and it is hard to find that perfect balance, which is where eight sleep comes in. You just add their brand new pod for ultra to your mattress, your own mattress, like a fitted sheet and it will automatically cool down or warm up each side of the bed up to 20 degrees.

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1:23:40You can get $350 off the pod for ultra by going to the link in the description below, or heading to 8sleep .com slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom. A checkout that's e -i -g -h -t sleep .com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom. A checkout. This is a pretty important one. Everything changed for me when I realized that we're not meant to feel excited and perfect all the time. I started accepting that where I am right now is where I'm genuinely meant to be. Tough days are all a part of the process. Lean into them. Bad days are also part of a very good and meaningful life. So on my toughest days, I think about getting through one more day, one more workout, one more rap.

1:24:24Yeah. I think, I mean, this applies deeply in the, I mean, on a smaller level of the starvation of prep when you're trying to get through it and you're just, you're just trying to get through one more. What was the first part of that? Everything changed for me when I realized we're not meant to feel excited and perfect all the time. Yeah. This This was the idea of pursuing happiness, not leading to happiness. You pursue things that have meaning in life and think that you care about, love, challenges, relationships, and happiness might ensue, but you don't pursue the happiness itself because it's inevitably not going to be there all the time.

1:25:08So if you're just constantly seeking more happiness and it's not there, then you're seeking something that's never going to be there. But if you're able to just stick in what you're doing right now, and in those hard times, believe in, they're going to lead to good times, it creates a lot less friction in your life. You know, and I think whenever we're going through a hard time, we just want it to end. But it's still a moment that allows to appreciate the good ones. What would you say to someone who's going through a string of bad days or bad weeks or bad months?

1:25:43So it's okay. You're not alone.

1:25:49I think sometimes a quick word of just looking in them and being like, I know, you're not alone. Give them a hug and be like, this is shit right now. And it's okay. But you're not alone. What does lean into them? I mean, lean into the bad days. I think specifically nowadays it's so easy to numb. There's so many distractions, so many things that we can just avoid feeling things with, you know, staple being your phone. You want to cry, you fight your tears, you're feeling stressed, you're overthinking some things that you just pull up in the Instagram and you doom scroll for 20 minutes, get distracted, you see a funny video of a cat close your phone and you forget about it.

1:26:37That's not gone. Those feelings are still there. They're just pushed down from a couple Instagram videos that are distracted. And next thing you know a couple days go by and you just feel this anxiety over yourself. And you're like, why do I feel anxious? I just feel like I can't sleep. I can't wake up at 5am over thinking. Like I don't know what's going on. I have no idea. People are like, well, you stress about anything, but no. And this is something that I've had to call myself out on. If you ask me if I'm stressed out the time, my answer's no. You feel, are you stressed? No, I'm fine. I feel great.

1:27:04And then if you look at me, like do you feel calm? You feel like leaves, you feel relaxed. I'd be like, fuck no. So where am I feeling? For some reason, stress to me is like numb, but it's stressed so I don't really feel it. And it's typically from not allowing myself to lean into the shitty times, the shitty thoughts, the shitty days, and being able to sit with them and be with them, except what they are and process them properly, rather than just numb in them. So funny that you use the word lean into them. Ben Bergeron in chasing excellence says lean into discomfort is if you invited it through the door and it's a phrase that stuck with me because it feels like you are in control of the frame.

1:27:52Okay, any come and do this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, as opposed to again, the fear that you have around being guilty or the agitation you have around being shameful or the distraction that you need to do in order to be able to get away from it. It's an interesting one to think about how bad days are also a part of a very good and meaningful life, that it does really frame the story at the end, both you and Homosie have said the same thing and the last two episodes have spoken to you about, which is the bad days create the story that I'm one day going to tell myself about what I got through. You know what I mean?

1:28:32Yeah. Without the bad days, the story would be way more lame. There would be no glory in overcoming anything because what did you overcome? It was all just 40 to 60, you know, vanilla ice cream mush, gray, like existence. Yeah. I mean, it's like the concept of the fear exposure therapy when you're trying to build confidence about something you're afraid of being exposed to the fear helps you overcome that, but actively choosing to take that fear on head on is actually what it takes. I can't throw a spider at you, not afraid of spider, but you choosing in your own mind to actively go to that spider by yourself makes you actually grow from it.

1:29:14So you choosing to take power of what little you can when you're feeling like, when everything's crumbling around you and you feel powerless and helpless, well, what can you take control If you can take control of opening your door and letting that, embracing that, you know, leaning into that hard time, like, I'm going to choose to feel this. It's here. I didn't choose that, but I'm going to choose to feel it. And I have power over the choice of what I feel. And then you take your power back and you can build your confidence from there. I had a conversation recently with a guy called Dr. Jimiel Zackie who wrote a book called Hope for Sinek's.

1:29:47And it's interesting thinking about how widespread skepticism and cynicism are skepticism being the good version of cynicism, cynicism being kind of a total blanket coverage, everything is shit, everything sucks, everybody is evil and out for themselves. And you had a bit of a rant one day where you said, everyone's hypercritical and terrified to do anything and put themselves out there and fail. So we hyper -analysed, hyper -criticized, become paralyzed, and end up doing nothing, sitting in our basements, watching TikToks of other people's lives, pretending that they're happy. I was having one of those cynical days, and felt like ranting a little, but honestly, there's optimism here for some low -barry, eventry personal growth.

1:30:29Stop analyzing, stop criticizing, both yourself and others, and go fail at some shit. Go give someone a good job for sucking at something, because at least they're trying. Maybe we'll even give your self -permission to do the same. We find meaning and trying difficult things not just in succeeding at them. How do you avoid being too cynical? It's widespread. It's everywhere. How do you avoid it? Don't get stuck in the simulation. I mean, it's all, it's all, there's a million things. It's perspective checks, environment, who you choose to surround yourself with, what you choose to consume. you know, like are you choosing to consume false simulations of someone's life on TikTok, compare yourself to it and think you're not doing enough.

1:31:19Are you choosing to live in the real world, having conversations with good people who are being realistic and taking risks? Are you choosing to be around negative people or positive people? You know, every single day you choose who you surround yourself with, you choose what you do. You're in control of a lot more than you believe you are. And I think people like to get caught up in routine and norm and feeling obligated to their old friends or family or this or that and staying kind of where they are. But pushing yourself out of that sometimes is exactly what you need. And I think it's just scary for change sometimes.

1:31:51But you know, there's the concept of living life is just so simple. You could take the words live your life and expand on that into a million page essay and just do it, but just getting out there and living and experiencing life and doing the things that are difficult and challenging and causing you to grow. And if you think of the person that the person that I envy the most and I enjoy being around the most is just that like old wise man who has all these crazy stories who's lived his all this life and it's just like the happy the seven -the -park bench and talk to random people about what he's done.

1:32:28You know, it's, if that's a person I respect, how do I become that person? It's not from doing nothing, it's from doing something. It's funny that we kind of see the trajectory that everybody's on, because we can all see old people. Now, old people that seem to be content. We think, well, if that's where I'm going to end up, is there not a way that I can just speedrun bringing some of that into? Into that? Now, yeah, you know what I mean? We also see old people who are in content at all. And now you see a lot of old people now who are even more sucked in some young people into the simulation of the hyperality of their phones and their content and just being like stuck into that and you also don't want to.

1:33:09You want to see yourself spend to the future? What if that's a path you're on? Well, it should be a caution retail, right? That should be the route that you want to try and avoid as much as possible. had a conversation with David Sanra who just found his podcast, he's broken down 300, 400 famous people from history and he read all of the books on them and then he talks about them on his podcast. And I was asking him about how people do, mostly people he learns about successful in one form or another, basically how people do success wrong. And he just has endless stories of people who achieved a ton of worldly success and seemed to have absolutely zero fun in the process.

1:33:51Non, non at all. And, you know, there was this one story about this dude, I think worth billions and billions of dollars and was in his late 70s had maybe grandkids, maybe even great grandkids at this point and was still showing up to conferences, you know, sort of beating down deals on the door at 78 years old, you know, with this illustrious career behind him. And he didn't, David didn't think that this was coming from some well -balanced desire to maximize his calling in life, which was to be the best business leader salesperson, but just this as yet unalcomized compulsion, to need to be busy and to be seen and for validation and for recognition and for success and so on and so forth.

1:34:37And I used to say, you know, from my old life as a club promoted that there was nothing really sadder than seeing some guys in their 40s for whom the single best part of their life was getting a bag in with the boys on a weekend, the same place, the same clubs, the same parties, weekend, week out for decades and decades and decades. But I actually think that the 78 -year -old guy that has yet hasn't alchemized is just the more seductive, more publicly acceptable version of that, which makes it even more dangerous. because there's few people, fewer people that are going to say, well, you know, at least you're not going out and getting a bag of cocaine with the boys in 78 -year -old man.

1:35:19But yeah, it's a cautionary tale, I think, that we should all be pretty scared about. It's a challenge, because I mean, I made the joke about the simulation, but like it's so easy now for us to see other people's lives in such a specific narrative that they want us to see. And it's like a responsibility for people who have a platform and followers to be honest, but they have no reason to be. They don't have to be. So if we're looking up to these people who have worked 40 years of their life to become this billionaire and they talk about like maximize efficiency. Be as like use everything for this.

1:35:56Optimize this. Be perfect in this. All these things. And it's all about optimization efficiency. Make more money work harder. Wake up earlier morning routine. Everything. All these things. and it's like, well, that'll get me to his life. What if that dude's fucking miserable, you know? What if he's optimizing rich as fucking drives that nice Ferrari, but he hates his life, you know? Well, never know. Maybe he's very different from me. And maybe his goals and his morals and his values are completely different than me. And I'm not going to, I can't project onto that. But we'll never really know the truth of if those people are happier, not.

1:36:27But these young kids are watching the story, watching this journey. And they're like, that's why I want to be. I want to live like that. I'm going to work like that until I have that. Very, very dangerous using anybody as a role model that doesn't seem to be being transparent. You know, I think tired though. Of course. And you don't know whether the transparency is performative, how much of this is, how much self -knowledge do people have anyway? Like how transparent are we to ourselves? And then on top of that, how much do we allow ourselves to tell them people? And then how much of that do we allow to go into a public platform?

1:37:00You know, there's so many filters. It's kind of amazing that anybody says anything truthful ever. You know, there's so many incentives and obfuscations that don't allow us to see what we believe or feel. Even if you're not numbing with boring stuff like Instagram, you could be efficient and optimizing your life enough to have a morning routine, a night routine, a workout enough to never have a spot for introspection of genuine introspection. You can think of like, this is a cool quote about business and working hard, but not really about how you feel. And you could live your life in a very efficient, beautiful, well articulated manner and have no idea who the fuck you really are.

1:37:45Busy calendar is a great hedge against feeling feelings. You know, if you just bounce from meeting to meeting, look at how important I am. All of these people need me. They all want me. I've got all of these things going on. There's no, you know, to go back to sort of the drugs analogy, there's no point where you're at the come down after the after party, you know, as the cocaine's wearing off or as the hangover's kicking in. There's no hangover. You're just permanently in dopamine party mode for however many, you know, decades of life. And, yeah, I think busy calendars for a lot of people protect them against the existential eyewide pain of having to work out.

1:38:31I'm actually, why am I doing this? Am I doing this for the right reasons? Is this what I'm supposed to be doing? They really enjoy this, sir. You mentioned, especially now that you've got Daddy Daycare duty, that you're having to learn to say no more. I think you said previously you said no 90 % of the time and now it's 99 % from the time. So thank you for saying yes.

1:38:55What would be your advice for people that struggle to say no, perennial people pleases and those that struggle to advocate for their own needs are put their desires first. How can people be better, no sayers? The good question. It kind of took me into a cheat code to really get good at it. And that's leverage. You know, it's in, at least in my like professional, performative life, I said yes more. But I guess from the beginning, if I really think about it, I've always worked hard to just say yes to things that I actually cared about. You know, I tried not to be, and starting out as like an influencer, I tried not to be a sellout.

1:39:45You know, I got offered a lot of money. I've turned down some crazy deals that I'm still like, holy shit, like a few hundred grand a month deals. And I just said no, because it's not a product that I would use without the money. And it was inauthentic to me. And I was like, fuck, but over time, saying no to those things have opened up more doors and more opportunity. And I saw him going to contract that big. But I haven't sold down people's still trust me at least. and I'm standing behind brands only that I love for that I own. So I think just being able to stick true and checking in with yourself, being like, who am I?

1:40:17What do I care about? I think authentic goals is like a huge word of mine now. What's truly authentic to me? One of my working towards it, something I care about rather than think that I think other people will care about for me. And I think that's absolutely huge. And you know, also, I've worked really hard over the past decade of my life to be in a really highly successful position to have a healthy amount of leverage where now when I say no to people, I get a better offer back. When I say no, I get a better offer back. Like can you come down the triple, give you 50 grand. I'm like, no, we have you 100.

1:40:51No, we'll get your private jet, give you 150. I'm like, why? And it's leverage whereas before if they're like, you want to come up, no, but all right, fuck you, we don't care. And it's different. But I've had to work really hard to get there. And to put yourself in that position. You know, there's times where I've said no in the past and people haven't given a shit at all. And over time, now I'm at a point where if I say no, there's a little more leverage behind what I can do and I can, I can finagle a little bit more. But that has also come from me sticking to what I've authenticated to me and saying, no, so I built a trust behind what I represent and what I do now in my life.

1:41:24You're now being what something is because you still said no when it was worth nothing previously. And along the way, I was working hard to make it worth more on the back. And I made it worth it. Yeah, that's such a funny point. I kind of brought this up a couple of weeks ago on the show that No one ever gets credit for saying no to things that people don't know about So you know the we got this offer a while ago to bring somebody on the show I've never once paid anybody or taken money to bring anybody on the show Mm -hmm, and we got offered a six -figure sum to bring some guy on to talk about oil or something to do with like something to do with energy or maybe it was the Middle East.

1:42:06I got something like that and it just dank of deep state, Saudi, Iranian, some put in conspiracy thing. I was like this is so weird. First off, I'm not taking the money. But secondly, there's no world. Like I'm not, I guess I'm saying it now, but this is like a year and a half ago or something. I'm not saying it to flex. I'm saying it's an interesting example. But no No one is ever going to give anybody credit. The word grifter and shell get thrown around so much on the internet, it makes me cringe. But no one ever gets to see all of the stuff that people turn down. You get called out for anything that you're associated with and never get credit for anything that you're not associated with, all of the guests that didn't come on the show, all of the brand deals.

1:42:56All the famous people who are guiding so much of you, but they didn't line up with you that you didn't have. Correct, I didn't want to bring on. The episodes that I recorded that I didn't release, the people that wanted to come on that I decided not to, the money, like so much money that we've turned down on the show. Because I go, I don't think this product is legit and I don't use it. So I'm gonna say no. Meanwhile, the anything that you ever participating in becomes a vector for attack and all of the things you didn't participate in are not vectors for commendation. You go, you wanna script, I wanna rip my face off.

1:43:27but on the back end, you can attribute way more of your success to those notes. Oh, absolutely. Even now you starting a story and saying someone offered me money, I can't even imagine you sitting across from someone and having a conversation and just knowing that you paid him. You would probably be like, here's your money back. I'm leaving half way through the fucking point. If you even got there, I don't care about your oil. Yeah, it's just I wish it's kind of a little bit like are somebody accusing you of not giving enough money to the homeless and you saying, but no, no, no, no, no, no, I just gave a little money to the homeless over there, see how virtuous I are.

1:44:01And then they go, well, no, you've just done that because you could take a photo and talk about it. And in that case, I can't fucking win. You know what I mean? It's very, it's interesting. I think I understand why everyone's kind of grift and chill radar's high -pronounced on the internet and rightly so, because not everybody's got everybody's best interest at heart, but there is a... What's the term grift and chill? SHILD SHILD. I heard that. So I actually asked, two terms that I never used, large beaks, I think that kind of like an erasism in the modern world, it gets sort of so overly used that you actually end up diluting it down, so it means everything and nothing at the same time.

1:44:37I asked on Twitter a while ago, what grifter or SHILD means for the people who do use it. And I think the best example was a person who is affiliated with a product or service that they wouldn't use if they weren't paid for. And I was like, huh, okay, that's an interesting framework to put into it. But it's a term which now covers a whole range of sense. do. You know, interestingly, it's kind of dependent on who the two worlds are that are coming together. For instance, when Rogan got his Spotify deal the first one, six, five and a half, six years ago, there was no one that called him a sellout for going to Spotify.

1:45:23Well, why? Well, because there is an assumption that both Spotify and Joe have so much positive brand equity, that there's no one's taking advantage of the other. It's like both quite high -value cool brands coming together. Nike comes in and sponsors some huge NFL player or whatever. No one goes, oh my god, I can't believe that you sold out to Nike. But if it was, I don't know, some Russian gas company, they might. They go, oh my god. So the inherent in the deal is this sense of alignment of value and credibility and sort of cool of brand coming in. Like you, You got the new gym shock deal. Talk to me about that.

1:46:06When I was in 2018 and they reached out to me, I remember being very ecstatic about them reaching out to me because they were the brand. You know, they always wanted to be a part of them. They had the cool events, the cool athletes, all this stuff and I was like, shit, they reaching out to me. This is really exciting. And then over a few years, I felt like they stepped away from being like the workout gym brand. You know, like I was like a bodybuilder. I like to train and it seemed like they were straying away from wanting to be a part of the gym culture so much and it wasn't really lining up with me and I didn't really want to be a part of brands as much anymore.

1:46:38I was only my own companies and all these things and I just I just stepped away from that and I feel like as I did they were I've heard now they were going through the internal process of thinking hey we're stepping too far away from the gym we need to lean back into the gym more and they're like fuck Chris is leaving like like what's just about me but then over the year and a half I was gone or whatever they were like we're diving all back into the gym. We want to bring the gym to the world, which I think is so incredible, because all my success is owed to the gym. You know, if I had stepped into the gym, I wouldn't be sitting here.

1:47:09I wouldn't have met Courtney. I wouldn't have my businesses. It's all because I stepped into the gym. It's helped me so much. That's just a physical success aside from the mental that everything it benefit me from. And I think any more stepping into the gym is only going to make their life better. So I just love their concept of now they're literally concept of bringing the gym to the world. Not only that, but I've grown a little closer to Ben into Noll over the years talking to them. So sorry to hear that. Hi, all right. But having my own businesses and seeing the scale at which they've grown theirs while maintaining majority ownership of it, starting in Ben's garage in the UK to the scale they are now, like I can't even understand the level of professionalism that they have to have come from nothing at his age, where I'm working my ass off with people wayfuck as far as the main business, who aren't even close to their level of success.

1:48:04And they're just crushing it. I just have so much respect for how they built their business, the way they operate their staff behind the scenes. I kept in contact with a lot of their staff. Just everything the way they operate in their business, it's just something I respect. The morals and values they uphold, the athletes that they choose to bring on, I think they they really care about the way their athletes represent themselves, the way they represent the brand. It just lined up perfectly. And when they hit me back up and they're like, what do you think? I was like, this feels perfect, you know?

1:48:32And your pot owner now? Yeah. Very small, but part owner, yeah. Big company, very small, very good. Who was it? I think it was like, an old friend or something, like, are you equal owner, equal partner? and you're like, yeah, they give you a billion dollars. They can do them, sure. But no, it's good. I'm super pumped through back and they made their clothes better. I was buying their clothes by myself with my own money on the website. And then they're like, are you wearing a gym truck? And I was like, yeah, this is a shirts dope. And I was like, did you buy it? I'm like, yeah, we would have sent it to you.

1:49:06I'm like, well, I liked it. They have made a big pivot, which has been pretty good. I don't know. It's an interesting time for training in sort of gym culture. I think certainly downstream from you and your era that we're in right now. Crossfit kind of was I think a big influence on that young people culture for a while, but that really seems to have pivoted off. And now it's all, if it's not bodybuilding, it's hybrid training and high rocks. Yeah, fucking Nick Bear and George Heatonman. and those two guys have a lot to answer for, you know, from fashion and trend and training modality and run clubs.

1:49:49Yeah, huge, huge big deal. Now, they even, my partners and rather, trying to do Iron Man and shit, they're building, we're built on endurance line under a raw, like just cause they're so passionate and love it. And they're like trying to convince me to do an Iron Man when I'm like 35, 40 and retired. And I'm just like, you want me to fucking run for, how long? like no, I'll pass. I might do like a crossfit style thinking the future but no Ironman for me. You're the perfect build for an Ironman. Yeah, you think? I right now this is exact the time when you should do it. Yeah, I don't know. It is, we're going in two directions as well.

1:50:28We spoke about this last time about the, it's got even worse. I'm not on TikTok so I don't see this, but I know the world of Psalms. Apparently, like people that have got affiliate codes and stuff for, again, I only hear this third hand through, you know, my housemates sending me videos and blah, blah, blah. But it is odd to me that we've got sort of the leader of the sport being unbelievably sort of emotionally open, vulnerable, talking about trying to get as much out of as little as possible, pharmacologically. and then this other world, which is affiliate deals galore, for teenagers on performance enhancing drugs of varying degrees of toxicity and research.

1:51:12It's very strange. Yeah, I haven't seen a lot of... The weird thing is I know the company that associated with selling those arms, but people only promote like peptides, like healing peptides and stuff, but I'm not on there either to develop into that, but it's definitely a strange... pretty slow. I feel like yeah, it's like a gateway, the gateway peptides, you know, I don't know. I'll be interested to see sort of what gym culture does because I probably wouldn't, would I have predicted it? I probably wouldn't have predicted, you know, 10, 15 years ago, the Jeff sides, Ziz, era stuff, simply shredded bodybuilding .com forums.

1:51:53I probably wouldn't have predicted CrossFit coming in. I certainly wouldn't have predicted high rocks and run clubs and hybrid athlete training. There's no way that I would have seen that coming back around. So I don't know what I can kind of understand the the jogging craze coming back because people are like it's almost like a post failed meditation app phase that led to running working Because like true good running is meditation, being able to be with your breath and to be with your pace, to not go too fast. You know, every, every running coach says, you don't run fast to get faster, you run slow for longer.

1:52:36You have to match your pace. It's a meditation of mindfulness. It's keeping on track. Restrained patience. Yeah, and I think there's something very beautiful, meditative about running. I'm horrible at it. But I can kind of understand why in such a, in a world with so much distraction and so much going on, why people would be drawn to this moment of the day, whether out in nature, outside peacefully, getting exercised in a meditative state. Yeah, I think run clubs, there's one in Austin that's fighting with the city council at the moment. I mean, it's massive. They do five in group people every Saturday.

1:53:08It's huge. Yeah, it's offensive. But I said to the guys, I was like, if they don't allow you to keep doing this, I would go complete scorched earth with Austin Council. I'm aware that you don't burn your bridges, but everybody's worried about young people's mental health, about isolation, spending too much time in technology, obesity rates, blood glucose, diabetes, all this stuff. You're offering a solution to all of the dating, like all of these things are fixed in one form or another with some kind of group fitness activity, whether it's Barry's bootcamp or CrossFit or gym or run clubs or high rocks or hybrid, whatever.

1:53:43This is the solution to it. And in the same sentence, they're saying, what we're really worried about young people's mental health and physical state. And also, one guy doesn't like the fact that he can't look out of his front garden for 30 minutes every Saturday without seeing young people looking sweaty running past. I don't know. It just seems like it's disappointing to sort of see that it's not being facilitated or encouraged in that way. It's like they're one of those low rider drive by things where everyone's making loads of music at one in the morning out if super loud sub -offers and stuff.

1:54:22Yes, just young people running. Yeah, it's disappointing, but it's not surprising. Yeah, it's the same. It's been here before. Is there anything in your experience that, I don't know how much you've gone into the science, you might just be someone who happens to be super effective at doing the thing, is opposed to knowing the thing. Are there any areas of training or diet or fitness that seem to be surprisingly not what the science or evidence or typical advice would agree with, rep ranges, periodization, overload, any of that stuff? Are there any areas where you think, huh, this ends up really working for me, but I don't think most people would think that it would work?

1:55:08It's hard to say when something's very nuanced. I have been diving a little bit more into proper science behind it. I've had this guy named Justin King helping me with my training and he's very science -based and very evidence -backed. Every time you bring that up in bodybuilding, you go back and forth between thinking too much and being able to work hard enough and back and forth. and what I've noticed specifically in especially on tired days, deep and prep or whatever it may be. If you're so focused on getting absolute deep stretch, it was a four second negative proper perfect execution. All these things are 100 % or mentally that's fatiguing.

1:55:48And to do that for, let's say, optimized periodization, you're going to do a four -week program of 18 to 20 reps and then you're going to bring it down to six to 10 once your volume's high and you're building your strengths, X, Y and Z. If you can't get there mentally because mentally you're too fatigued to go to failure on that set and you're thinking too much, like you just stop, first just like turning your brain off and just going full tilt to failure. You're not getting as much benefit. Well, are you failing because your muscles are failing or because mentally you can't keep thinking about the fucking four second negative for long enough, you know?

1:56:19Yeah. So it seems obvious, but if you're holding yourself back by thinking too much then you're not doing good enough. And I think you know, you try and remit the wheel a million times and it just doesn't work. So you got to find the balance within it. Yeah, that's a little different. That's cool that you can try and be as optimal as possible, but there's a time for just sort of pure aggression. Yeah. And I think there was, you might even know it, and you probably figured it out better than me, but there was a study that took people and they were testing how high of a step they thought they could step over.

1:56:51And it was just like, guess how high of a step you can step over and they had to guess and they put one group through a bunch of like physical mental fatigue and one with just a fresh group and the group was mental and physical fatigue severely underestimated what they could step over. They could only do like two feet and then they got four feet and they were just underestimating what they were capable of and I mean that's literally bodybuilding prep. You know like the day where I'm like I can't pick that thing up the floor. I'm like this can is too heavy like can you throw this out for me I'm tired I'm moving in slow motion but I need go to the gym and dumbbell press 150 pound dumbbells like how does that translate?

1:57:29My mind doesn't think I can do it. I'm severely underestimating my strength that I can't pick this can up. But when I get to the gym I need to overpower my mind and just do it. I need to understand that I still have the muscle. I still have the strength of just being a lazy little bitch right now and I need to pick up that way and do it and overpower it. And sometimes when you're getting in there and you're overthinking and all these things come in too much of like after this this and this have to force a negative. Oh my God, that's going to be so hard. I should drop the weight. Then like, no, just fucking get in there.

1:57:58No, you can do. Buster, ask and get out of there. Yeah. Sometimes over thinking it holds you back. There's a like beautiful stupidity that I see with a lot of athletes. You know, that there are certainly very smart people that have been super successful in their sport. But there's also a kind of cultivated idiocy that they're able, you know, they like a sort of channel all there. You know the midwit meme, do you know what that is? No. So it's a bell curve and on the left is this guy that looks like in the underthrow, he's got a brow like mine. And then the guy in the middle is this sort of raging midwits that's trying to over optimize things and failing and the guy in the right is a sage who's got a HUD up.

1:58:38He looks like a Jedi. Yeah. And the joke is that the guy in the left and the guy in the right always agree that the master and the idiot always end up arriving at the same thing. So it's like, eat protein, lift weights, eat protein, lift weights. I must ensure that my pre -digested way is consumed 30 minutes intra workout with the optimal, you know, it's just E -protein left -wise is that and it's the sort of a yeah cultivated idiocy or whatever where people just I Am not gonna overthink this coach said going there and left to failure. I'm just gonna go in and left to failure Just gonna go do it.

1:59:07Yeah, and it comes out to the experience of trusting your new vision You know, I know what my body needs. I've been here for 10 years I can just feel it. I pick up a way, I feel a certain way in a day, I know what I need to do and you just got a trust you're instinct to do it not over think it sometimes. I heard you say there's only one thing I dread not to be worthy of my sufferings. What's that? Me trying to be very philosophical. There's a few meanings behind that I think. It's how you handle your sufferings. When you're going through something really challenging, how do you show up within it?

1:59:51Do you choose to become a victim of complaining and misery and shitty or do you find meaning in how you show up in the suffering? This isn't really my line of thinking. This is like man's search for meaning, Victor Frankl. I kind of talked about this and I read that book last year probably when I said this and I Reflected a lot about this honestly when Courtney was going through labor and she had had the child and I was like Holy fuck like you were going through this absolutely like like I'm never I've never experienced I'm just paying my entire life and she just remain calm Controlled her breathing did what she needed to do change position When I told her she needed to do within the tub was on the bed was doing all these things and was just Diled.

2:00:36She locked it. Lock it, bro. Lock it, lock it, bro. Lock it, bro. And I just was like, you are suffering, but you're choosing to find meaning in how you handle the suffering and that makes you so worthy of those suffering. And it's such a beautiful thing to experience. And you know, when life throws some shit at us, you're having this baby. You're not choosing not to have this baby. You're going to go through this pain. You're going to go through the suffering. How are you going to choose to show up? Like I was talking about before, there are things out of your control. What's in your control?

2:01:05How can you take that power back into your own hands? And what are you going to take from it? What kind of meaning can you find from taking power out of what you feel? Listen, I heard this rumor from a friend that After women give birth they have a flood of hormones that allows them to Color the memory of it so that it's less painful in retrospect. Is this true? Mm -hmm. It's crazy. Well, the fuck, like this is... All the nurses, it doesn't happen immediately, but all the nurses were like, ah, give it a few weeks and you'll forget it, but you're gonna wanna do it again. And then Courtney was like, after she's like, she's like, why the fuck did I do that naturally?

2:01:45She's like, why didn't I just take the epidural, like that sucked? And then like a month or two ago, she was like, it wasn't that bad, I think I'll do it again like that. And I'm like, are you fucked out with hot bad? That was bad for me just to be in the room beside you. And her mom was with us and she's like, we have to go through that again. Cornie's like, he was fine. I'm like, what the fuck? But it's gotta be true. I mean, if you were to go through that much pain, you never want to have a kid again. It must be something that's like just whatever the science is. I can't believe he's so good.

2:02:16It was Andrew Schultz. He talks about it in his new live show. And the same thing, he's there. stood on the sideline just being like hopefully useless. You know, the cheerleader, I don't think he even got to pinch the traps. And it's like, you got this honey, good job. And then she gets this flood of whatever, the men in black flashy thing, like neurochemically, and it fixes her and changes the way that she feels about it in retrospect. respect. And he's like, I remember. But I remember what about me? Where's my flood of hormones? Because I saw the person I love the most in the entire world go through all of this bullshit.

2:03:04And now I'm being gasslet to say that I'm making it out to be worse than it was. It's like only one of us has got a rational memory of what actually occurred during this situation. That's hilarious. I've never heard about it before. And now, apparently, it's not a I hadn't heard about it either. But nurses weren't saying it was science. They were just saying like you're gonna forget that. It's gonna happen. I was like damn. Bro! Yeah. Intense fit. Women's minds retconning their own experience of childbirth is wild. I mean, we wouldn't probably have enough people on the Thursday that they didn't.

2:03:36Yeah. Chris Bumstead, ladies and gentlemen, dudes, I appreciate you so much. I know you're in the middle of prep, so I'm really grateful that we got to have another sit down this year. Me too. I said I wasn't gonna do any more podcast, but here we are. to be kept tested. It was an honor. I appreciate you having me back. I appreciate you too, man. Thank you.