He Got Everything He Wanted. Then Realized He Wasn’t Free. | Garrett White

30:51Like, I got trapped, man. I got trapped. And by June last year, like, I just got to this place, so I was like, I can't, I can't keep, I can't keep doing this. What was your first move at that point? Sit. Say that again for the audience. Sit. I sat, we were in Mexico. My wife goes with the kids, she's like, what are you doing? I was like, I'm just gonna sit here. Like, what do you mean? I was like, I just need some time. Can you take the kids? Just let me sit. What was going through your mind and your soul when you were sitting? Fucking hell. Tornwall. What were the things you were saying to yourself, though?

31:34What the fuck are you doing? I was all over the place inside. That's rooted in so much shame. Tons. You understand? Like I have been leading 91 ,000 men in the last 14 years to one outcome. Have it all. That was the message. Have it all. Body, weaponized. Being, connected, certain. Balance, marriage, communication, sex, intimacy, children, leadership. Business, scale. Of the thousands of men to this place, only to arrive at a place where we were not free. You know, one thing is resonating with me in all this. And it's not a judgment. It's actually comforting to me. You've trained so many men to have it all.

32:34Meanwhile, you're fucking crumbling. Yeah. How do you carry that? Well, I had it all. the thing that I missed that never once registered in 15 years on a Waco board was freedom. What does freedom look like to you? Oh, freedom is not a looking. Freedom is a feeling. That's why freedom is not about having anything. Freedom is a way of being. For the last 14 months, this has been my pursuit. What does it mean to be free? I know what it means to have it all and not be free. Never once had I considered in all these times and all these events that I should ever experience peace. It says war, you're on a fucking chest for 15 years.

33:27My whole world has been war. I thrive on it. I thrive on conflict, confusion, chaos, battling, dominating. This has been my world. So the idea of waking up the beginning of 2026 with the idea that I want peace? There's a big piece in my mind that's like, you pussy. Ah, there it is. What do you mean you want peace? We don't do peace. We do the hard shit. Joy. What's that? The fuck is joy? Happiness? Mm-hmm. That's for people in meditation retreat centers and pussies that run psychedelic camps. Mm-hmm. Let them be in peace in their ketamine and their ayahuasca. Let me go build. Let me go build some shit.

34:12Let me go to war. Let me battle. But dude, I turn 50. I have a grandchild. Call it age. Call it wisdom. Call it retarded behavior. Call it whatever. I got to a place where for the first time I want peace. I want joy. I want to feel something different. Have you found peace? Have you found joy? Starting. Feel something different. Starting. Mm. To find it. Mm. But the challenge with it is we live in a world that completely compels all of us to more. You know, your programs teach men that they should never have to sacrifice their body for business and their marriage for ambition. Yeah. All four. What is the one that you're so afraid of that won't stick for you?

35:16Surrender to Christ. You're afraid that won't stick? It hasn't stuck. I have interviewed hundreds of guys in the last seven months, pastors, men who say they walk with Christ. I say, what does it mean to surrender to Christ? and they will tell me something that sounds neat. Then how do you know? How do you know you're surrendered to Christ? What evidence would you have that you are surrendered to Christ besides saying it? I've sat with pastors around very large churches and asked the same question. It sounds great from a pulpit and from a sermon on stage on Sunday. But what does surrender actually mean?

36:04What does surrender to God actually feel like? And my experience is that for a man like myself that has built a monument unto himself, that the only way for this surrender to occur is for the collapse of the monument that I built, to collapse the prison I've created for myself. And so I've been dissecting the monument I built unto Gary J. White. And how are you doing that? Piece by piece. Dismantling the companies. Dismantling the way I operate. Selling shit. Getting rid of things. Cutting away. The only way you can see something is to get clear, and the only way to get clear is to get rid of the chaos around you.

36:55So for the last 14 months, I've just been shooting shit. Gone. Gone. until I could get to a place where I could actually start to see. It's too hard to see. Man in arena tours. Yep. Big conferences. So I just stopped doing it.

37:17When you're snipering off pieces of you. Yeah. The man in the arena. Because, you know, it's funny because I didn't realize you had stopped. I just thought you were on a break because I was used to seeing it. Now it's making sense. I stopped this year. It's beautiful. I just unplugged. Fucking beautiful. When you shoot each specific thing, do you feel like a part of you is dying? Yes. How does that feel? Horrible. It feels horrible. There's nothing good about it. It doesn't feel good at all. Is there panic? Yes. Anxiety? Yes. But you have to trust and surrender too? This is the process I'm in.

37:58I've not arrived there. Dude, I love this so much, man. Fuck, dude. I might arrive there. Maybe I'll never arrive there. I don't know. But that's okay. Yeah. Because you're consciously making that move. You're in the middle of it. In the middle of it. In the middle of it. And the destination doesn't freaking matter. I don't even know where the destination is. I truly don't even know where the hell I'm going. What I do know is that what I have done, And this is the fuck all of the brain. Because there's a piece of me that feels like a horrific fucking liar. A man who built a movement based on truth.

38:39Looks back at the 15 years of leadership and goes, was I fucking lying the whole time? And I didn't even know it? Did I lead 91 ,000 men to a cliff? To our own fucking deaths? And then my mind goes crazy, you fucking piece of shit. What the fuck is wrong with you? Beats me up in my brain, and then the guilt and the shame come baptizing in like I'm a fucking wretched piece of shit. And then this other beast starts to speak. Hey. Shh.

39:15Sit. Breathe. And then more considerations come in. I did the very best I could with what I knew at the time. and this is what I've been committed to from the beginning whatever I know right now Sean I'm gonna do that two years from now it might be very different than what I know right now and then I'm gonna do that but that's hard because people identify you as this and then they see you doing this and they go what is this and you're like yeah that was me and this is me also but that was me then yeah but why were you doing this over here but you're now doing this I said because I couldn't see shit over there.

39:52I could only see level three. Now I can see level five. So at level five, level three shit doesn't make sense anymore. So I'm gonna do level five. Yeah, but that's weird, dude. I knew you was level three. You're like, yeah, but I'm not level three. I mean, I was level three because that's where I was and I was the best I had at level three, but now I'm level five. And your wife's confused and your kids are confused and your teams are confused and your clients are confused and everybody's confused. And now I'm confused. That's a lot of weight to carry, man. Oh, shit. Fuck, man. It's like, all these people are confused because I'm supposed to be this for that motherfucker.

40:27Yeah. Well, I am. They're at level one trying to get to level two. I've done level two, level three, level four, level five. So they're stuck at one trying to get to two. I'm like, yeah, I know the path to two. I can get you to two. And I can get you to three and to four and to five. And by the time you get to five, I'll be at eight. And what I thought was true of five will be different at eight. How many levels are there? I have no idea. You don't know, man. Infinite level. You just keep counting, right? No. Who even knows these numbers I'm making up right now? They're just bullshit. They're just examples.

40:56But this is the thing that I love about this conversation. It's because it's real. Because there's too many people out there that won't admit what you're admitting right now because they're afraid of the collapse. But to your point, the collapse has to happen. And you have to be free. You have to have peace. You don't have to have it. Most of us won't. Most men won't. Most men will never experience peace and happiness. Never. Most men are so committed to just trying to get their penis in the vagina of their wife and make sure they got enough money and a couple trophies. And because that's so difficult to keep that going, wife gets older.

41:35My wife's 43. She's very different than what she was even at 40. Body's changing. She has different attitudes and energy around sex. We got the toddlers and the teenagers, and we got all the things going on at once. It's a lot. Man, I am jacked up. LSU football is finally back and Death Valley is about to be electric. This season's even more fun. And because it's NFL stacked September on price picks, new promos every day, guaranteed picks every Monday, plus profit boosts and daily discounts all month long. I'm making my lineups, picking more or less on player projections, and I'm locked in. Download the app today and use code TDS to get$150 instantly in lineups if you win your first$5 lineup.

42:22Download the app today and use code TDS to get$150 instantly in lineups if you win your first$5 lineup. Price picks. Run your game. Most of us will never experience even the opportunity for this because it is too tempting and too difficult to just try to stay in abundance in the core things in life. How do I not fall apart physically? 50, how do I not fall apart? Okay, how do I make sure I keep making money? How do I make enough money? Now shit, AI's here. Now it's changing the game. Now I gotta figure out how to go this direction. Now I gotta make more money. Okay, shit, now we're losing money.

43:01Okay, great, now I'm losing my body. Shit, I'm going back to the gym. Wait a second, now my wife says I'm not paying attention to me. Okay, I'm gonna take my wife out. All right, I'm gonna commit to my wife. Shit, now the business is going again. Dude, it's a circus. Dude, that right there, because I was thinking before the show, what is the first thing for you that falls when shit gets real? First thing that falls for me when shit gets real. I think it just depends on what area gets real. I mean, for me, I'm at a place now where, like, I just don't let any area slide. I like that. Like, everything is like a giant phalanx for me.

43:34Like, every day. I've been living this way for 15 years. Like, it's just my body gets trained every day. My meditation, I use this tool called stacking that we created that thousands of many is every single morning. It's a mental God-connecting tool. We built it into a software tool called OnePivot. All of this is about helping myself and other men figure this game out. The only thing, the challenge, though, that we came to was not how do I keep my body moving, how do I keep my being and my connection to God and my certainty moving, how do I keep my marriage moving and balance with my kids, how do I keep my money moving.

44:04Once you figure that out, the opportunity to pursue freedom becomes available. You can't pursue freedom in scarcity. No, no. And most of us are in and out of scarcity every other day. Well, I mean, to your point, I mean, you grew up in scarcity. Tons. So did I. It was always yes, but I can't because. And so I fight this battle all the time, Garrett, of yes, I fucking can, but what if I can't? And when that what if I can't comes, I go here like you, warrior. I fight. Yeah. And that I pull myself to two extremes and I break, right? That's when I'm impatient. That's when I get frustrated with my wife for asking a simple fucking question.

44:52At what point is it okay for me or any man to get frustrated at their wife because she asked the same question four times? You're always going to be frustrated by asking four times. The only thing is what are you going to do about the frustration? Yeah. How do you react to it? Now I laugh at her. Now I laugh at her. I think she's funny. This morning she was pissed off because I was snoring. She thinks I should get a sleep apnea machine. I was like, I sleep just fine. She's like, you need to get a sleep apnea machine to help you through sleep. I was like, I don't have a problem sleeping. She's like, yeah, but I have a problem sleeping with you in Nevada.

45:20I was like, well, I'll sleep in the other room then. You want me to sleep in there? She's like, why don't you just get the sleep apnea machine? I was like, I'm not doing a sleep apnea machine. But then I'm asking myself, do I really care about a sleep apnea machine? I'm like, no, I got a story about a sleep apnea machine. Do I actually need a sleep apnea machine? I don't know. So I texted my doctor some morning. I said, do I need a sleep apnea machine? We'll find out what he says. There's things my wife says all the time. My wife, if you look at my narrative of my wife, I was like, my wife is a beautiful Barbie doll who's a critical bitch.

45:46This is my story forever. Her words were fierce. She's very direct. She sees everything from black and white. Everything is like, I can look perfect. And she'll see a little zit right here above my eyebrow from across the room. She can only see. That's why she's good in beauty and fashion because she just has the eye for things. the only thing that changed with me and her was me you know I'm laughing because and my wife listens to this show and baby I'm edifying you not criticizing you same same almost to the point I think that's their mission here it's their job to show us that we can always be better for the family and for them.

46:36The thing that always makes me feel, or I choose to feel,

46:44really pissed off at, is like, I do feel, again, it plays on that program from my childhood, no matter what I do, just not fucking good enough. Yeah. Like, how do I get this to a point where my children don't misread my energy? how do I get to a point where my wife doesn't misread my frustrations level? I think it's okay to be frustrated. Yeah. Why is it a death sentence? Why can't I be frustrated? But I just think that, man, like when you're saying that, you know, you're talking about pimple, but it could be maybe you folded a towel incorrectly or maybe your reaction to one of the children wasn't as favorable as it needed to be.

47:31It's like, fuck. What do I need to do? I'm trying here. What does the new Garrett do to move through those moments? Because I know I want to know. And I know millions of men want to know too. Agree. Worry. This is one of the things I did. Example, this morning sleep apnea machine. You should get a sleep apnea machine. I was like, you're right. You probably should get a sleep apnea machine. No, no, seriously. you probably should. I was like, I don't need a sleep app machine. Yeah, but should you give one? I agree. I probably should. Hey babe, why are you late? I'm not sure. I had to handle some stuff at the office.

48:10Okay, I agree with you. Babe, that's not how you should handle that. Or my wife's favorite statement. That's not how I would do it. Which makes my mind always going to do it. Woman, you have a vagina and I have a penis. Of course you would not handle it the way I handled this. Of course you will never. There's not one time in history or in the future you will ever handle a situation like I do. Ever. That's not the point. That's what my mind wants to say. And that's what I spent all this time trying to be right. I was committed to being right. So we'd get into the conversation. She would say shit.

48:38And my mode was like, be right. I'm going to be right. And you're going to be wrong. And then you're probably going to have sex with me. No. No. You're going to not want to have sex with me. So then the first thing I started shifting, go, wait a second. What if I just didn't care? Not from the sense of I don't care about you. what if I just didn't care about anything you were saying and I just started listening for what I feel when you're saying so now she just says things and I'll be like yeah okay I agree where's she from? from Utah she grew up in Holiday, Utah I'm always from Quito, Ecuador and I and she taught herself to speak English you know when she came to the states for college she went to Florida State and um the one thing she always said to me is i typically do it this way and i need to do better of being like thank you yeah you're like no you just lean in it's like judo you just lean in so it's more than just like agree it's like you're right see for me when i hear that fuck when i hear that though yeah and and me and this individual my father we have reconciled but it reminds me of me perceiving that i'm not good enough for him yeah and i know how hurtful that was for me all these years and so it just brings up it just rips the scab off i start fucking bleeding again yeah and that's why i don't have the most favorable responses it's usually a reaction based on ego and wanting to win and wanting to be right but if i win and i'm right then she's wrong and she loses, but I win.

50:22And now she feels like shit, and she ain't going to want to touch me at all. Of course not. I mean, we're not having any, we're not having naked run around the bedroom fun, if I have to be right. If there is, it's all forced and compulsion, which means now it's obligatory. Yeah. So there's a piece like across the board of life, though, that has shifted for me in a radical way in the last 18 months, where I've just realized how much in war mode I have to be right about everything. My way, my plan, my idea. And what's inserted into that is God's plan has started to insert into my world in a new way.

50:55And it's interesting because as it starts to come deeper into my world, I stop having an opinion about a lot of people in their lives. I'm like, okay. Do you know why? Because nobody really gives a fuck about you, Sean. And nobody cares about me. Not really. You and I both died. This studio blows up. We're gone. Guess what? We're a faint memory. Your show, irrelevant. Wake up warrior movement Irrelevant How do your kids? I have a 7, 10, and a 13 You know what crazy shit about your 7 year old? I got a 4 and a 7 year old 15, 19, and 27 My 4 and 7 year old If I died today Would hardly have any memories of me And your 7 year old I hardly have any memories of you Think about that all the time bro Literally Our women would go on Be with another dude And our youngest children My 4 year old would remember Videos, pictures, and ideas Not back tickles Singing to her last night She don't remember any of this shit like when we get to a place where realized and this has been hard for me because i think i'm a big deal i'm like i'm a big deal dude i'm the initiator of the industry of masculinity don't believe me like ron burton new york putt look at me i'm the standard of man that's been my narrative and i got to this place 18 months ago where i'm like dude you you are not really as you're really not as cool as you think you are and by the way the only person who's thinking about how cool you are as you and most people don't give a shit about you and by the way all the cool impact changed the world you think you're doing the world is a big place yeah you've done some things guess what in the grand scheme of things you haven't done anything so can we kind of pipe this down a little bit and um which i believe is all this process of surrender of realizing that god the infinite creator of the universe and architected this ai that you and i have called our bodies in my mind and the fact that i can eat taco bell not dying somehow my body knows how to shit it out.

52:49We are nothing. This is hard for a guy and a guy who's an LSU baseball player and a boys state football player who run podcasts and speak on stage and fill up arenas to be like, Sean, good news, bro. Really love you. We're both worthless as shit. Meaning we are not, we don't matter in the universe of things. We don't matter, but in who we are as individuals and our connection to God, it mattered. To think that I have any control over this world, control of my wife, control of my teenagers, my kids are going to do what they're going to do. My four-year-old has the most intense potty mouth of all time.

53:37My seven-year-old does. I wonder where the fuck she gets it from. Her mother. hey hey funny you want your funny story want your funny story yeah so my wife's at the gym yeah right and we dropped her off because she had a training sesh and me and the three kids were in the car I was like let's just wait and we'll go get dinner we'll listen to Camp Rock 3 or some bullshit which I fucking love all right then my seven-year-old goes hey daddy when this song is over can you play pink fucking perfect turn around I go what did you say she was a song fucking perfect I'm like paralyzed I'm like it's perfect and she goes no it's fucking I go can you stop can you stop and and it drives Jackie crazy it drives my wife crazy but like for me I do kind of chuckle at it You know, I don't egg her on, but she's the one.

54:38Like, she is so much like me. Like, I feel her reactions to things when she escalates like that. It frustrates me to no end. But it's like, yo, dude, that's you. Like, that's you, motherfucker. She was sent here to show you what you do to your wife. What you have done to people ever since you've been created. Zero to 100. Like, that. that's my opportunity to heal that's my opportunity to lead her I think that's what's most important in life that's the only path I can find to actually feel peaceful I remember too if the energy and tone we've been running with has been this intense and this hot for so long I've been burning people out my whole life the challenge was I've been burning my wife out I mean this beautiful woman This tiny little 5 foot 305 pound little queen She wrote a book called God is My Ghostwriter A couple years ago she said I want to write my story And people say I can't write my story because I'm not old enough I said fuck them You want to write your story, write your story So we got her an author support She published this book God is My Ghostwriter And I hadn't read it She wouldn't let me read it until it was published And so the published edition came out And I'm laying in bed with her in our condo and I'm reading chapter one, reading chapter two.

56:02I'm reading a chapter every night with her out loud. These are her words and her story from the first 25 years, 24 years of us being together. Times from my mortgage days, I'm working 12, 14 hours a day. I'm working six days a week. She's young. Like just all the things we went through. And I'm reading weeping in bed with her. night after night for 14, 15 straight nights reading this book chapter by chapter because it's the first time my wife has expressed the visceral soul level pain of what it was to be married to me. What it was to be her. The story behind Wake Up Warrior. The journey before Warrior began.

56:48The journey during Warrior. And I'm already getting done with this book with her and I'm like, how? Like, I had no idea.

57:00Like, and the fact that I couldn't be a container for you to even share this with me is sickening to me because that's not what I wanted. Did you feel like you failed at that point? Not now. I feel like I did the best I could and I failed based upon my standard today. At the time, I didn't know. I didn't know. I was just doing the thing I thought I was supposed to do. That's it. And now I'm doing the best again, doing the thing I'm supposed to do right now. And that's different than what it was a year ago. And it's different than what it was two years ago. There's just a desire that's shifting in me.

57:39And it's God for sure. It's God for sure. Like, I just started asking these questions. I'm like, God, what is the path to peace? like how does a warlord who's been at war his whole life how do i how do i let go how do i do it without destroying everything because my experience is only two choices you and i have when god comes knocking and says it's time to pivot one you'll go to your knees and collapse, which was us in the mortgage crisis. I was getting whispers and warnings for a year before. Oh, absolutely. Mentors were telling me to move and I didn't listen to anything. Well, guess what? Last year, I started getting the same whispers and warnings I got in 2007.

58:31Only this time I listened. I said, I'm not going to collapse. You're going to watch. You're going to watch this happen. over the next six to 12 months you're going to watch entrepreneurs that you and i have looked up to for a long time collapse businesses are going to collapse i'm watching dudes fall fucking apart around me every day big name brands and guys calling me going out they're falling apart the pressure the pressure over day after day after day the pressure of social media the pressure of life the pressure is so intense and in this place you can choose to go to collapse or you can do the hardest one, which is choose to contract.

59:15Contraction and collapse look the same because they both go off the cliff. One stops halfway down and allows you to retain life if we pivot. Collapse requires you to your knees. And unfortunately for most of us and most of my life, the only way I could listen to God's pivot in my life was collapse. It required the loss of everything. That's why most men cannot pivot in their attitudes and behaviors in marriage until their wife leaves them, has an affair, cheats on them, they get fucked. They can't make a pivot in business that's too hard until they go bankrupt. They can't make the shifts in their body until the doctor says you're going to die.

59:56We are just bent and coded as men to go to the ground before we will turn. That's why I meet dudes every year. Every year I meet dudes every month. They'll share with me your situation. I was like, I'll tell you where you're going. You're going to collapse. And it may not happen this month, but within the next 12 to 18 months, this whole thing that you have built will be gone. This woman you're with will be gone. Your world won't plow. Some of them listen. Most of them don't. And then I get the phone calls, the text message from the broken guy at the bottom of the pit, 12 months to 18 months later.

1:00:34Wife is gone. companies collapsed addiction running rampant like Garrett I wished I'd have listened I said dude I don't need you to listen I was just sent as a warning I'm not here to save you I'm not here to save your life I am not Jesus Christ but I have seen the patterns of man for 15 years in a very unique way and they are predictable I am predictable you are predictable we look different but we're predictable and inside of this God I believe is creating a new awakening new revival of savages from the front line a generation of souls to Paul men that aren't scared to talk men that aren't afraid of money men that aren't afraid of the topic of sex they're not moved by strip clubs, they're not lured, they don't buy into it as they were all of it.

1:01:41In that place God's asking men to speak, a new generation of men, called to speak his truth into the world in a new way, inside the church. Church has its role, the pastors have their roles, but even that if it had worked, we would not be where we are. and so you're seeing it happen entrepreneurs all over the globe being called to the front lines of a voice a tone that god is speaking through men speaking to you speaking to me you're one of those voices as well as platform the things you've built we build all the things we have sean because we think this is what we're supposed to do only to get them built and recognize the ultimate intention of it might be radically different than what we thought when we started.

1:02:30Warrior was built for one reason, to wake me up. And you thought it was a different reason? I thought it was to help men. I built a system to wake my soul up. And after 15 years of running it, the training wills of Warrior are no longer necessary for me. And all the men that I've gotten to help, it's been amazing. I'm grateful that God was able to use me and the system to help them. But to keep Wake Up Warrior the way it's been would to keep me in prison while I've enjoyed 15 years of leading men and being called into something new, which is always hard. Yeah. Just like leaving sports. That's a feeling, dude, that destroyed me.

1:03:25You know? Dude, thank you so much, bro, for coming in. Appreciate you. This has been such an amazing conversation. Like, I'm just blown the fuck away right now. I knew it was going to be good. I didn't know it was going to be this vulnerable. And I appreciate it. Like, this has been one of my favorites, dude. Got one more question for you. I need you to finish this sentence. Yeah. Determination is.

1:03:55Say it again. Determination is. What does it mean to you?

1:04:09Huh. Listen, I could put some fancy words in the box. my mind is very good at that I'm a linguistic master in communication I could put them in words no I get nothing in everything determination is nothing it is everything at the same time the only thing I can compare it to I've never answered the question that way I've never been asked what is determination but when I think at all I see I see nothing, I see everything it's like my very first psychedelic journey I was nothing and I was everything determination is nothing and it is everything. Our determination is nothing in comparison to God's plan for us.

1:04:48And yet it is everything because it's what gives us purpose and drive to move. Without a determination, we go nowhere. And yet our determination in the contrast to God's power is nothing. That's one of the best fucking answers I've ever heard. Because I never looked at it like that. Me neither. All I've, as far as I've went with it, for me, it is everything it is the basis of this show but in the big scheme of things it is nothing Gary White man, thank you so much brother love being on the show man it was amazing share this show with someone you know, love and trust and until next time stay determined