In this episode, we are joined by Kevin Ross, a long time member of the UFC Welterweight and Light Heavyweight division. We talk about how to prepare your shin for a fight, how to deal with shin injuries, and how to prevent them from happening in the first place. We also talk about some of the most common injuries that we see in the UFC and what to do about them. We hope you enjoy this episode and don't forget to subscribe to our channel! It helps spread the word about the podcast and keep us in touch with the people who need to hear it! If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe, Like, and Share to stay up to date with what's going on in the world of MMA and all things UFC and Mixed Martial Arts! -Jon Bones Jones and Jon "The Notorious" Bones discuss his recent injury and recovery from UFC 246, and talk about his plans for UFC 246 and UFC 246. We also discuss how he plans to return to the UFC in the future and what he's looking forward to in his next fight, and much more. Thanks for listening and support the podcast, Jon and Jon's efforts to make this podcast a better place for you guys! . . . Thank you Jon Jones for being a part of the MMA and Muay Thai family. - Jon Bones Jones - Thank you for supporting the podcast! Jon Bones is a great guy. Jon talks about his training and being a great human being a good human being, and a great fighter, and we hope you all enjoy this podcast and we all have a great time in this episode. Thank you all of your support and we really appreciate it. . Jon gives us some great advice, Jon is a lot of love and we appreciate you, Jon does a lot, Jon talks a lot more than that, so much, so thank you for being kind and he's a great person, Jon's advice is so much more than you can do it, we appreciate it, Jon s advice is really good, so we really helps us, we really appreciates it, really really well, really good guy, really appreciate you. , Jon is amazing, really does, really means it's good stuff, Jon really does it... Jon does it all, thank you, really, really much, etc., etc.
00:00:41.000What you need to, which is overall conditioning, overall strengthening of the bone.
00:00:50.000All you're really doing is deadening little spots in your nerves, but that's the worst thing you can do without strengthening your bones.
00:00:56.000You're deadening the nerves, but not strengthening the bone overall.
00:00:59.000And if you're not doing that, You're going to think your bone's a lot stronger than it is, but it can't handle the impact.
00:01:05.000So with a sandbag, you're covering much more surface area and applying it in a realistic situation where you're able to throw kicks repeatedly at this thing.
00:01:16.000And what you really want to do is do it to a degree that it's...
00:01:20.000Causing a certain amount of pain, but you're able to do this daily with repetition because that's how you continually develop, just like getting stronger at anything.
00:01:32.000You've got to just do this every day, just at the end of your session, knock out a few kicks, and then again tomorrow and again the next day, and you slowly and steadily are able to go harder and harder and develop the strength and conditioning in your shins.
00:01:48.000So the idea is that you're making like these little tiny micro fractures, right?
00:01:52.000And yeah, like I said, you want to be able to cover a good surface area so you're hitting it all kind of at once as opposed to like little spots, which is what happens when you just whack it with a bat or something like that.
00:02:06.000My experience with whacking it with a bat is everybody kind of quits.
00:02:10.000You're like, hey, I'm going to condition my shins.
00:02:11.000And then they just go, what the fuck am I doing?
00:02:14.000Well, the thing too with when you're able to kick like that is you can kind of slowly build up.
00:02:20.000You know, you start a little bit lightly and develop a little bit stronger.
00:02:24.000And you kind of create a little bit of a crease.
00:02:26.000And, you know, as you get going, you...
00:02:30.000Your brain can kind of wrap itself around it a little bit better and then you start going harder and harder and by the end of your 5-10 minute session, you're putting some serious weight into that and you're not noticing it as much.
00:02:42.000Yeah, we were talking about your knee, that you had a fracture in your knee that you didn't realize you had.
00:02:50.000The thing that disturbs me maybe the most in kickboxing, and I've only seen it a few times, is when someone checks a kick and their leg snaps in half.
00:02:58.000Like Tyrone Spong when he fought Gokhan Saki.
00:03:01.000Or Anderson Silva when he fought Chris Weidman, same thing.
00:03:11.000Obviously, it's one of those just freak things that happens.
00:03:15.000You know, clearly with those guys, you can have the most conditioned shins in the world, but you catch them the wrong way at the wrong time.
00:03:23.000They can happen, and it's rare, but it does happen, and it doesn't really matter how long you've been doing this, how strong your shins are.
00:04:04.000Just blindly pick their shin up as opposed to paying attention to where it is on your shin that it's hitting.
00:04:10.000Just like when you're kicking, you need to pay attention to what piece of your leg you're hitting with, which piece of your shin you're checking with, and the higher up on your shin it is, the harder it's going to be.
00:04:52.000Yeah, and you know, the funny thing is, it doesn't matter how long you've done this for, we watch these fights and assume that they don't feel pain and that it doesn't bother them.
00:05:02.000But even guys with hundreds and hundreds of fights, you see them the next day and they're gimping around pretty good.
00:05:07.000You know, we have this idea in our brains that eventually you're going to get to a point when you just don't feel pain and it doesn't bother you.
00:05:14.000Eventually you realize that never happens.
00:05:16.000And it's better to get that out of your head now.
00:05:19.000Muay Thai and kickboxing and anything that's bone on bone, it's going to be painful.
00:05:46.000When you think about the entire world, it's an enormous world, and people have been fighting in this enormous world from the beginning of time.
00:05:55.000And this one island, they said, hey, I got an idea.
00:06:27.000And that completely changes their mentality about it.
00:06:32.000And that's why when you go there, it's like obviously the skill for sure, but the mentality and the reasons for doing this, it's so different.
00:06:41.000Yeah, and they start so young and they're basically sent to these camps and they start fighting like, you know, before they're like 10 years old.
00:07:14.000I've always been fascinated by the way that tie spar as well because I think it's really interesting that given that they do fight so often and their livelihood depends on it and that it is not a game they've really figured out a bunch of things and one of the things they figured out is Hit the pads hard,
00:07:35.000There's give and take to everything that we do and we're trying to maximize our learning and minimize the damage or the risk of injury that we're taking.
00:07:49.000We have the opposite approach here in America.
00:07:51.000We just beat the shit out of each other, and that's good.
00:07:55.000That's how you're going to get better.
00:07:56.000But you don't really develop when you're going hard like that.
00:07:59.000You're learning how to be tough, and you're learning how to take damage, and you're learning how to be in the fire like that, which is important.
00:08:08.000When you're playing, when you're practicing, when you're not thinking about getting injured or knocked out, you're able to...
00:08:16.000Learn and apply new things and new techniques and practice things that you normally wouldn't.
00:08:22.000It's like when you're worried about getting hurt, you're only going to focus on the things that you're really good at.
00:08:27.000You're not going to try these different approaches and that's what really limits a lot of our development.
00:08:34.000You see a lot of fighters, their ability kind of levels off to a certain degree and they don't continually develop as their careers go on and they also don't It doesn't last very long either because of the amount of damage their bodies and their brains are taking.
00:08:50.000Each one of us only has a finite number of shots to the head we can take and shots of the body we can take.
00:08:56.000Do you want to use those in the gym or do you want to use those in the ring?
00:09:01.000I think it's really about finding a good balance between that.
00:09:05.000In the beginning, all I did was just go crazy and spar super hard six days a week leading all the way up to the fight.
00:09:12.000Six days a week, you were sparring hard, really?
00:09:15.000I mean, the smallest guy I had to work with coming up was probably 20 pounds bigger than me.
00:09:20.000And in a lot of ways, this helped me develop and gain a lot of strength and confidence and ability to...
00:09:28.000Take that kind of punishment, but it also did a lot of detrimental things, a lot of stupid injuries, a lot of damage.
00:09:34.000And over the years, I've come to develop and get more onto the Thai approach of things and practice and playing and finding when the time to go hard is and when the time to learn and develop is and what's counterproductive and what isn't.
00:09:56.000I mean, everything that we do is a process of trial and error, you know, and I think once you kind of understand that you can think clearly and apply the things you need to in the midst of that firefight, which,
00:10:11.000you know, is really what shuts a lot of people down in the beginning.
00:10:14.000They can't process the information that's happening because it's so intense and And that is why it's important to kind of have that and have that fight-like scenario in the gym.
00:10:26.000But once you've done that and you've had the experience and all of that, I think it's so much more beneficial to start going towards the other direction, especially if you want to stay in this sport for A good amount of time and not take unnecessary damage for really no purpose whatsoever.
00:10:46.000To me, it should be the exception and not the rule.
00:10:50.000Have those hard training sessions in once in a while, especially if you can get work in with people that you're not used to, because obviously when you fight, you don't know what they're really doing in there.
00:11:34.000Artem, Shoroshkin, the small Artem, we met almost 15 years ago.
00:11:40.000He was actually the janitor at this gym.
00:11:43.000Had just moved from Russia and now he owns three of them and is this amazing gym owner and business person, which is just an unbelievably fascinating story that he has and an inspirational thing and But yeah,
00:11:58.000that's where I'm at now, and I kind of bounce back between San Diego and out here.
00:12:03.000Gina lives out here, so I kind of go back and forth.
00:12:07.000Now that place is, it's called the Boxing Club, right?
00:12:12.000There's another gym out here called Boxing Works, which is the one I train out in Torrance, and same thing, it's a Muay Thai gym, and both these gyms are Muay Thai and kickboxing related, yet they're boxing.
00:12:44.000Yeah, and I've lived all over this country since, you know, I've moved all over the place since I was a little kid, and San Diego was just where I always planned I'd be one day.
00:12:54.000I didn't think I'd move down there until I was done fighting.
00:12:57.000But through the process of a lot of things and, you know, transitions in my life, it just kind of was the right time to go.
00:13:22.000Once you go there, it's tough to want to be anywhere else.
00:13:26.000The energy that's there, the way that people are, you have all those things that are in other cities, but everything that's perfect in one place, it's very unique in that sense.
00:13:39.000I think there's a lot of positive aspects to the military presence there, too.
00:13:43.000Because I think there's so many disciplined people down there.
00:13:45.000There's a lot of health-conscious, fitness-oriented, and disciplined people.
00:13:50.000Because of the fact there's such a giant military presence down there, there's so many people that are involved in the military, and so many people that are involved in the military have a lot of discipline, train a lot, are interested in martial arts in particular.
00:14:26.000You know, like for me, if I leave at around 10, 10.30, I can usually get there in about two hours before traffic hits, but there's this really short window of time, but if you miss it, It's a rough one.
00:14:38.000Yeah, my friend Bill Burr takes a helicopter down there.
00:17:09.000Have you ever been when there's a fire here?
00:17:13.000Not close enough to really feel like that, but around and even just them in the general area, I mean, you realize how quickly they can spread and just take over everything.
00:18:29.000You know, I was up there probably about five years ago when these were going on and they were just popping up everywhere and there were some that were pretty close to the gym and I'm having to like watch and see where they're at because they were close to the apartments we lived in.
00:18:42.000I'm like, we might have to like get out of here because they just pop all over the place and they hop from one place to the other with the wind and everything.
00:19:25.000It's horrible that those things kind of happen and they really make you realize, like, what is important in life.
00:19:31.000And, you know, it's the same thing, like, when you travel overseas and go to third world countries, like, they seem to have a very good understanding of what life should and is about.
00:19:40.000And then we come here, we have everything.
00:19:43.000Everyone has everything and everyone's complaining about everything and we're miserable and we're spoiled and that mentality is so unfortunate.
00:19:52.000It's like the more you have, the more you have to complain about and forget what is important in this life.
00:19:58.000It's weird that it takes something like that to jar you.
00:20:01.000You should be able to learn from that and then carry that lesson.
00:20:05.000But that lesson is like sand in your fingers, man.
00:20:08.000How quickly after 9 or 11 or things like that, how long does it last?
00:20:26.000Well, I mean, to make an analogy with martial arts, one of the reasons why I enjoy being around martial artists and why most of my friends, a good percentage of my friends are martial artists, I feel like training all the time and getting humbled,
00:20:42.000particularly in jujitsu, because you can get tapped out a lot and you just train and you get tapped out and you keep going.
00:20:52.000It's not like, you know, you can only get...
00:20:54.000Cracked in the head so many times in sparring, but you develop this kind of humility that is...
00:21:02.000Everybody kind of understands it, and there's this feeling that you get where you understand...
00:21:10.000When someone's trying to kill you all the time, like on a regular basis, some dude's trying to choke the fucking breath out of you, and someone's got their arm wrapped around your neck, like...
00:21:19.000The rest of the world seems easier, you know?
00:21:22.000And I almost feel like human beings are engineered through evolution.
00:21:28.000We've sort of been designed through natural selection to learn how to survive difficult things.
00:21:35.000And when the difficult things don't exist, we make things that aren't difficult, difficult.
00:21:41.000For me, I feel that training and martial arts and fighting and all these things, it clears the static and the noise out of your life and it allows you to focus on the things that are important and not be so distracted by fluff and nothingness.
00:22:01.000Even a day or two of not training, I feel that stuff seeping back in.
00:22:09.000I don't know how everyone's not running around shooting each other because just a few days of not doing this, I'm like, I want to kill somebody because I allow just the stresses of nothing to get it there.
00:22:20.000To make this sound more consistent, just push that a little bit further, just because you're doing one of those cigarette things like, hello, I don't have a voice.
00:22:40.000You know, since the day I started, you know, I didn't start until I was 23. Yeah.
00:22:45.000So let's tell your story because it's a fascinating story because I love a guy whose life is fucked up and then he figures something out and then becomes a role model.
00:22:56.000And in a lot of ways, that's what you've done.
00:22:58.000Yeah, it's a long story and I'm actually in the process of writing my autobiography right now, which I've been working on pretty consistently for the last five years.
00:23:10.000Something that, you know, I really was doing it for myself in a lot of ways to have an understanding of the things that I've been through and the things that I've learned and processed and Acquired over these years, which is, you know,
00:23:25.000in a lot of ways, it's been extremely rewarding doing all this, but it's also been very difficult, very painful and emotional going back through all these things that happened to me in my childhood and my upbringing and things that I'm,
00:23:40.000even to this day, I'm still trying to process and understand a lot of.
00:24:30.000When I was a kid, from what I'm told, I have really not much recollection of my childhood because I've blocked so much of this out.
00:24:39.000That's why it's been really difficult for me to write this book because I don't really have many memories.
00:24:43.000I have almost no memories of that time in my life where I felt like a child, that carefreeness of childhood.
00:24:52.000I've had to talk to siblings and friends from back then and Look through photo albums and slowly things start coming together and you know that that's why a lot of this has been really therapeutic but I always loved fighting.
00:25:05.000I always loved boxing and was very intrigued by it and martial arts you know Bruce Lee was always a hero of mine and But I hated violence coming up.
00:25:16.000I hated it, but I was intrigued by it.
00:25:19.000A really good friend of mine, we lived in Colorado for about a year or two, he would get into fights on a weekly basis in school, and I was fascinated by it.
00:25:28.000I'm like, wow, you're so brave and so strong.
00:25:31.000I felt like such a weak, I was very allowed weakness to overtake me throughout the events of my life.
00:25:56.000So I had this strange dynamic where I was drawn to fighting and I was drawn to violence in one way, but I also hated it a lot and was scared by it.
00:26:06.000Um, but, but over the years, you know, I thought about, I was like, oh, maybe I'll try boxing one day and that'd be really cool.
00:26:12.000You know, I was fascinated watching two people in the ring and, and all these people are watching and they're there with each other, regardless of their skill level.
00:26:21.000And then, you know, just thinking about what, what it must be like in there to do that, you know?
00:26:30.000But again, like I said, I love martial arts, so I wanted to be able to kick people.
00:26:33.000I wanted to be able to elbow people and knee people.
00:26:36.000And I never saw any fighting that was like that, you know, as I was coming up.
00:26:41.000I mean, you'd see taekwondo and karate and a lot of points sparring and that kind of thing and forms.
00:26:47.000And, you know, even that I thought was fascinating, but I wanted to fight like boxers did.
00:26:54.000And I just never really saw anything like that.
00:26:57.000And one day, 94, this is right when we moved to Vegas, I was watching ESPN at like 2 in the morning, and they used to have Thai fights on once in a while.
00:29:08.000And that was not to say Americans or anybody else can't teach it, but I was like, if you're going to learn it, you might as well learn it from the source.
00:29:16.000In Vegas that taught Muay Thai, one of the only places that even taught Muay Thai and definitely the only place that had Thai instructors was Master Toddy's gym.
00:29:24.000And I called the gym, you know, went down and talked to one of the instructors.
00:29:29.000And when he let me know how expensive it was going to be, I was like, there's just no way.
00:29:34.000There's no way I'm going to be able to do this.
00:29:36.000And for me, I also knew that if I am going to go after this, I'm going to need to stop drinking, stop partying, completely alter my entire existence.
00:29:48.000I'm probably going to lose all my friends.
00:30:12.000For whatever reason, this one night we were up on the roof drinking and smoking weed, and we got to talking just about life, and he was actually born with a heart defect.
00:30:22.000I can't remember the exact name of the disease that he had, but he was in hospitals his whole life.
00:30:27.000He was eventually going to need to get a heart transplant, and...
00:30:30.000He's like, what do you want to do with your life?
00:30:32.000I looked at him like he was asking me what I wanted to do when I got to the moon.
00:30:36.000I'm like, what do you mean what I want to do with my life?
00:30:39.000I was like, well, I always wanted to fight and expecting him to laugh at me about this.
00:32:49.000I'm too afraid of all these stupid reasons that all of us give ourselves in order to make ourselves feel better about not going after things.
00:33:06.000Almost every excuse we have is total bullshit because there's people with those excuses and with all those reasons and more, and they do it.
00:33:16.000And it just smacked me in the face one day.
00:33:19.000And I was at that point when I could not ignore it any longer.
00:33:22.000And this was going into 2003. So I was like...
00:33:28.000I made it my New Year's resolution to do this.
00:33:32.000One night I was sitting down with my father and he'd get into these long talks with me because I was always very quiet and he'd take me off to the side and his way to kind of Talk to me and get to know me better.
00:33:45.000And he's like, so, why don't you tell me something you've never told anybody?
00:36:07.000And I can't allow, you know, my physical dependency or my doubts or any of these things slow me down because everything I'm doing, I have to play catch up, you know?
00:36:58.000When I'm done, when my life is over, when I can't do this anymore, I can look back and have no regrets that I didn't allow these things to slow me down.
00:37:08.000I didn't allow the excuses that we all have hinder me and keep me from doing this.
00:37:15.000Because one day we're going to wake up and realize we could have gone after these things.
00:37:21.000And we didn't because of X, Y, and Z, but really those things aren't.
00:37:37.000To go from being a guy who's kind of aimless and partying a lot, but knowing that you should do something with your life, to finally doing something.
00:37:45.000What was it like when you finally started training?
00:39:38.000All the windows were like broken, so there's no insulation or anything.
00:39:45.000I was so excited, so nervous, and obviously I wanted to do really well and perform, and everything was so new that I didn't really have a lot...
00:39:58.000I couldn't even really process it, so there wasn't a lot of...
00:40:02.000There wasn't really a lot of thought that was going into it.
00:41:14.000So, like, so much of my, everything in my career has been, like, thrown into the deep end, can you swim kind of thing, and, like, this forced learning curve.
00:41:24.000You know, I didn't get babied into anything.
00:41:30.000And all these fighters are staring at me, watching me.
00:41:34.000I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing, but whatever.
00:41:38.000It was traumatic in a lot of ways, but having to confront that and face that, particularly me, because I'm naturally a very...
00:41:48.000Shy person, a person that doesn't speak ever to anybody.
00:41:53.000I mean, even now, you know, I'm still very quiet.
00:41:55.000But if you knew me back then, I was basically a mute, you know, and I had no interaction with especially strangers and people I didn't know.
00:42:02.000And even the ones that I do, I'd still barely even communicate with.
00:42:32.000And this instructor, he barely spoke English, so it's not like I can say, hey, well, I don't really know what I'm doing and maybe you can show me some things.
00:42:56.000But then once you got some momentum...
00:42:59.000Once you had a couple of weeks under your belt and this started becoming a real normal part of your life, what was that feeling like where you realized, like, hey, I'm fucking actually doing this.
00:43:11.000Well, every day I was taking significant jumps.
00:43:15.000I mean, as I said, I've always been naturally athletic, so I was picking this up, like, quick, really quick.
00:43:23.000I mean, even within a few weeks, people thought I'd been doing it for years.
00:43:27.000And a lot of that does come from my physicality, but my drive to do it and to have my sights set so high that I was taking these quantum leaps every single day.
00:43:45.000So, over the weeks and over the months, it really felt like I was like, oh, I'm on track.
00:44:07.000Everything was pointing in that direction with my development and eventually going into the classes and sparring and all those kinds of things.
00:44:18.000It was always like, when do I get to fight?
00:45:21.000Yeah, so nine months in, there was going to be a fight in Salt Lake City, Utah, and a bunch of the other people at the gym were fighting as well, and we were all going to go up there and compete.
00:45:40.000Yes, headgear, but the funny thing was we had headgear, but we didn't have shin guards.
00:45:45.000We had eight-ounce gloves, and we had knees to the head, which was a trip.
00:45:52.000Anyway, I was like, oh yeah, great, we get to fight.
00:45:55.000I was so excited, and my pops and Gina, and we drove up there.
00:46:04.000Like I said, I really felt like I was on my way, but when we got there, Um, the guy that I was originally supposed to fight, I don't remember if he backed out or it was just that he was closer in weight to somebody else.
00:46:17.000Um, you know, and that was kind of the thing back then.
00:46:20.000We would just show up at places and be like, you gotta fight for me or don't you?
00:46:32.000And, Now I don't have a fight, and my trainer's like, well, is there somebody else you can get?
00:46:38.000And so the promoter, you know, he's calling around, calling around, and finally he's like, well, there's one guy that's going to take it, but he outweighs you by 20 pounds, and he's had about 30 fights already.
00:46:55.000I was like, I didn't do all this for nothing, you know what I'm saying?
00:46:58.000And again, that was just our mentality.
00:47:01.000The way that we came up and the people that we came up under was, you fight anytime, anywhere, anyone, any style, any weight, it doesn't matter.
00:47:11.000So yeah, I didn't even really think about it as far as that goes.
00:47:16.000I get to fight, that's fucking awesome, man.
00:47:20.000I felt confident in a way, but it's also that you have no idea what you're really doing.
00:47:26.000You can train your whole life, but if you've never fought, you don't know anything.
00:47:32.000You have no concept of what it's like to be in there.
00:47:35.000You have the hardest sparring in the world with a complete stranger, and it's night and day between a real fight and sparring.
00:47:45.000Yeah, you want to feel confident going in there, but you have no concept of what it is.
00:48:41.000I was able to last for a while and do a couple decent things in there, but by the third round, he was just battering me, kneeing me in the face, and he just kept clenching me up and just kneeing the piss out of me, and there was nothing I could do, and they finally stopped it in the third round.
00:51:53.000Yes, it was an extreme motivator to be better and not to let that happen to me again, but...
00:52:00.000It really made things clear to me early on, like, what's important here.
00:52:08.000Also, just to get over that, it's so psychologically important that you, like you were saying, you just kept getting sort of tossed to the wolves.
00:52:20.000It was almost symbolic of your journey that you were forced to fight someone who had 30 fights and 20 pounds heavier when you had no experience.
00:52:44.000But when you get your ass handed to you, and then you have to rebuild, and you have to realize, well, there's a series of variables that you're encountering.
00:52:53.000Variables in speed, and in aggressiveness, and in styles, and in...
00:54:35.000It's good to have somebody that believes in you, but that's not necessarily going to help you just because sometimes that might end up hurting you.
00:54:44.000Having people that do believe in you and telling you how great you are and opening doors for you and all of these things.
00:54:51.000In many ways, those things can be extremely detrimental and you don't develop the things that you inevitably will need.
00:55:01.000And there's no one way to get anywhere.
00:55:06.000It's so complex and there's so many variations of things that apply to success in anything.
00:55:15.000I have one favorite day in the weather in Los Angeles.
00:55:20.000The weather in Los Angeles is perfect, right?
00:55:22.000It's just so often it's like 80 degrees and sunny.
00:55:25.000It's like 90% of the time 80 degrees and sunny.
00:55:28.000Me and my friend Brian and my friend Steve Rinella, we filmed this television show called Meat Eater and went on a hunting trip in Prince of Wales Island in Alaska, where it's the rainiest part in North America.
00:55:48.000And I realized this one of the first nights, I had to get up and take a piss in the middle of the night, and I had a headlamp, and I turned my headlamp on, and inside my tent was like it was raining, because there was so much mist.
00:56:02.000There was moisture, like so much moisture, that turning on the headlamp was like you were doing it in fog, like everything was wet.
00:56:23.000Fritos are made with some fucking crazy toxic grease that they work great as lighter fuel.
00:56:31.000If you light them, they stay lit for a long time.
00:56:34.000And then we're taking the inside of logs and using that wood and wood that was maybe under the bottom of other wood so it didn't get as wet.
00:57:30.000Because if you just have these goddamn sunny days, you're like, everybody out here in California, you just spoiled baby.
00:57:37.000Well, it's like the, uh, if everybody's winning, nobody's winning, nobody's losing.
00:57:42.000So if you don't have the good and the bad, you don't even understand, you can't appreciate the good or what the bad can be, the helpful things that it does.
00:57:52.000And yeah, we don't want that, but those are the things that help you grow.
00:57:56.000And those are the things that we inevitably need.
00:58:04.000Well, I don't hate to because I want to do this.
00:58:06.000I'm going to toss a little hand grenade at you and see what you want to do with it here.
00:58:11.000But I've been thinking about this a lot lately and wanting to communicate my story and these things that have happened to me.
00:58:22.000And then this opportunity came up and this opportunity to reach a lot of people.
00:58:28.000There's that quote that says, be the person that you needed when you were younger.
00:58:31.000You know, and Gina has that on her wall and it stares me in the face every day and I realize that I now am the person that I needed when I was younger and if somebody would have opened up their mouth and let me know that I wasn't alone and that I wasn't so isolated and so many horrible things that we all deal with is because we feel isolation.
00:58:55.000We don't think anyone could understand and we don't think that Anyone else is going through these things.
00:59:01.000And if we did, just that knowledge of not being alone would be so significant.
00:59:07.000But when I was 14 years old, I was molested by my stepmother.
00:59:13.000And this went on for well over a year, close to two years.
00:59:20.000It was obviously detrimental to me and these are things that I'm just now finally starting to be able to understand.
00:59:31.000Realize what happened to me and realize how young I was at the time.
00:59:35.000When I meet a 14-year-old kid, you're a fucking baby.
01:00:06.000I saw a study that said one in six males are abused by the time they're 18, which means every one of us probably knows somebody that this has happened to.
01:00:20.000Devastating it is to women, but to men, it's such a different thing because it's almost viewed, well, when it happens from a woman, it's almost viewed as a good thing.
01:00:41.000We're not able to really understand it and understand the damage that it does.
01:00:54.000If I wouldn't have felt so alone and so isolated at the time, I don't necessarily know if things would have changed, but I definitely would have Wouldn't have felt so alone.
01:01:08.000You know, it wouldn't have felt like there's nobody in the world that could possibly understand this.
01:02:01.000As I said, I started drinking when I was 12. This really just derailed me so much and made me internalize and put up these barriers and walls around me and things that, like I said,
01:02:16.000I'm only even just at this age starting to understand, like, the negative...
01:02:24.000Habits that this created in me of distrust and of negativity and of having to be alone and not trust people and so many things like that.
01:02:41.000Gene is probably the only person that I've ever talked to in depth about this.
01:02:46.000I mean, a couple of people in my family know and almost none of my friends know.
01:02:54.000I try to go to a therapist once and talk about this, but I started realizing this therapist is getting more out of our interaction than I am.
01:03:05.000He's an overweight person that needs help.
01:08:46.000Such a betrayal and such a traumatic thing that I didn't even really...
01:08:53.000Understand how damaging that was after the fact until really till recently, you know, because I myself would rationalize it.
01:09:02.000Well, you know, he didn't want to like, like be an asshole and like send her off and like she was an alcoholic.
01:09:08.000And, you know, he's just trying to make this horrible situation okay for all of us.
01:09:16.000And, you know, I didn't really think about how fucked up he was in the whole situation and how much more damaging it was in the long run to me by not having my father protect me.
01:09:28.000Like, if this happened to my child, I would fucking murder a woman that did this, you know?
01:09:36.000I certainly wouldn't keep her around, and I certainly wouldn't just handle it the way that he did.
01:09:46.000It magnified the damage that much more so because of the way that it was handled.
01:09:55.000To not be taken care of by adults, by not being taken care of by my father, By the people around me that were supposed to love me and take care of me.
01:10:46.000So I'm going to do everything in my power to make it happen.
01:10:49.000And that way I can't say I killed myself, but I was killing myself every day and putting myself in situations that were extremely dangerous and detrimental and damaging.
01:11:10.000I'm trying to use this second part of my life to make up for that, make up for the damage that was done and to try to Turn a horrible situation and a negative situation,
01:11:28.000something that I could easily point to and allow, destroy my life, which is what I was doing, and trying to do the opposite.
01:11:38.000Again, with the fight approach, it's like you have a loss, you have a horrible thing happen, you have an injury, what are you going to do with it?
01:11:44.000Are you going to let it destroy you and break you and never do this again and be depressed and bitch and complain and whine about it?
01:11:50.000We're going to say, yeah, shitty things happen to all of us.
01:11:53.000Fucked up things happen and we all have the excuse to let it destroy our lives and to use it to make ourselves feel better about drinking and drugs and just being an asshole.
01:12:08.000We all have reasons to be dicks and we all have reasons to take it out on other people.
01:12:16.000But that doesn't mean that you should, and that doesn't mean that you don't still have a choice.
01:12:23.000And this is something that I just started understanding, because, you know, that term victim mentality, I'm like, yeah, well, I'm a fucking victim.
01:12:30.000But what victim mentality really is, is feeling like you don't have a role to play.
01:12:39.000Yeah, you might not have been able to control these terrible things that have happened to you, but you do have control over what you do from there.
01:12:46.000You have control over whether you use that to go into a more positive light or you use that to drastically damage you and, you know, be this burden that you carry.
01:13:00.000Well, sometimes I think When someone like you goes through something like this and comes out on the other end, what you can do by talking about this can set a path for so many people to understand that,
01:13:18.000you know, someone looks at you, you know, they see you fighting on television and they see you on the internet and, you know, successful Muay Thai fighter and, you know, you look cool, you have this beautiful girlfriend, everything seems so positive.
01:13:33.000When you're a young kid and your life is shit, like mine was, clearly like yours was, you look at these people like they're nothing like you.
01:13:47.000The world's opened up to them so easily, and they're better than you.
01:13:53.000When someone hears you talk about your experience, the alcoholism, the abuse, the isolation, the feeling like a loser, and all the things that are so relatable to so many people, when you can talk about this, you're setting a map That other people can follow.
01:14:13.000And this is something that's so important in culture and in human beings.
01:14:19.000We're all part of some strange evolution of the human race.
01:14:23.000And the things that our grandparents went through were likely unfucking believably horrific.
01:14:30.000The things their grandparents went through were probably magnitudes worse.
01:14:35.000And this is just how human beings have gone from being monkeys To being what we are now, and it's happening very rapidly.
01:14:43.000And one of the things that accelerates this understanding of consequences and of the ability to rise to the occasion and overcome obstacles and to be able to use adversity as a tool to better yourself is someone like you.
01:15:00.000What you're doing right now is very, very beneficial to so many people.
01:15:04.000Millions of people are listening to this right now.
01:15:06.000And so many of them, this is going to resonate with them.
01:15:09.000They're going to say, oh, this guy who is this fucking badass kickboxer, excuse me, Muay Thai, right?
01:15:15.000Badass dude who's this, like, you know, like, people admire you.
01:15:19.000And to hear this is so, it's so powerful.
01:15:38.000Yeah, and that's always been a motivational thing for me, to try to be honest with the things that I deal with, the ups and the downs, and to show my losses, to show my injuries,
01:15:54.000to be vocal about the doubts that I have, that I still have, that I still deal with.
01:16:01.000It's easy to look at these people in the spotlight and be like, They don't deal with fear.
01:17:11.000You're supposed to be this superhuman being or you're supposed to be extremely confident or you're supposed to only put on A-plus performances and you're not allowed to fail.
01:17:20.000You're not allowed to be human anymore.
01:17:22.000And when we can We've humanized these things and it lets people realize that they can do it too.
01:17:33.000We're not necessarily made up of anything different than anybody else.
01:17:37.000We've just gone through a process of learning and developing and diving off of cliffs that we didn't know where they were going.
01:19:06.000So keep talking, but I'm going forward.
01:19:09.000Is there a time will you ever get past that and you understand that you're never gonna quit and instead just concentrate on the task at hand?
01:19:18.000Or do you think that that that voice that you're duking it out with that you take that motherfucker to the grave You definitely take it to the grave.
01:19:29.000I think we feel like we get farther away from it and we get stronger and we get more confident, but you never get farther away from it.
01:19:54.000And that's why it's so important to, you know, you look at people on the streets and things like that, but like, you know how easy that can happen?
01:20:00.000Like how many bad days or bad situations would it take to turn a successful person into that?
01:20:08.000Like we're all just balancing on this very delicate thing that, um, It seems like we're all strong and safe and all this, but when the power goes out, the world's going to go to hell like that.
01:20:24.000We just pretend like it's not because that's how we get through the day.
01:20:30.000I don't think we're ever any farther away from those things that held us back before.
01:20:35.000We get stronger and we learn how to process them and we understand it more and we understand the series of things that will take us down that road or get us farther away from it, but it's just right there.
01:20:50.000No matter how much we learn and develop, I think sometimes that makes it even more scarier.
01:20:58.000It's like the higher you get, the farther you have to fall.
01:21:02.000And the more you can be aware of that, that you're never going to get farther away from it.
01:21:09.000You always need to be diligent, that you always need to...
01:21:13.000Do things that are going to steer you in a more positive way.
01:21:17.000I think that is the goal to not falling back on that.
01:21:21.000I think the worst thing that we can do is have this belief that we're past it.
01:21:40.000I did think one day I would be so far away from it that it would never be a thought anymore, but by knowing that it's always right there, that keeps me sharp.
01:21:51.000It's like you need that thing to keep you at your best, or else we start to get lazy.
01:21:57.000It's that same concept of having people that push you in the gym or in life or etc.
01:22:02.000If you don't have somebody pushing you, you can only ever push yourself so hard.
01:22:07.000You might think you're pushing yourself really hard, but you don't really have a basis for where that is.
01:22:12.000So like for myself, I always run my sprints on a treadmill because a treadmill doesn't lie.
01:22:17.000This is how fast you're going, and this is how long you're doing it.
01:22:20.000Now, you can go out on the street and say, I was going as fast as humanly possible, but you're always going to hold yourself back a little bit.
01:22:27.000That's just the way we are as human beings, that safety net that we have ingrained in us to not go over that edge.
01:22:35.000But if you're not pushing that edge, you're not developing, and you're always holding yourself back a little bit, a little bit, and no matter how hard you think you're going or how honest you think you're being, unless you Have somebody.
01:22:48.000It's so important to have people in your lives that keep you in that sharpened state, that question you, that push you.
01:23:00.000For me, Gina's always been that way for me.
01:23:03.000That person is like, she's not going to look at me and let me bullshit, keep me honest, sometimes to an extreme extent.
01:23:11.000I'm like, give me a little bit of a break here.
01:23:23.000I don't want to sit on the beach and drink beers and do all these things.
01:23:26.000But is that going to help me get to a better place in my life, a better place in my mind, in my heart?
01:23:34.000No, that's going to allow me to just be a lazy piece of shit and just drift off and die and be no benefit to myself or anyone else for that matter.
01:23:44.000So as uncomfortable as it is to be pushed and as uncomfortable as it is to be pressured and to want to excel, we all need those things.
01:23:54.000You're either improving or you're declining.
01:23:57.000I think that's such an important thing to keep in mind.
01:24:28.000It forces you to be diligent about all these things and to constantly be trying to find it.
01:24:33.000And the more you try to find that, the more you're going to develop and learn ways that aren't the right way and then finding what does work.
01:24:43.000It's like trying to find your calling and your passion in life.
01:24:47.000It's like you don't have to necessarily know what that is, but Whittle it down by, what don't you want to do?
01:26:56.000Make sure that you approach life with a learned perspective.
01:27:01.000Like you're a better person than you were the day before.
01:27:04.000And whatever you're trying to do, whether it's fighting or whether you have an art form that you practice, whatever it is that you're doing, You're trying to do better every day and you never, even if you accomplish some amazing work of art,
01:27:21.000The next day you got to go back to work.
01:27:23.000Like if you have a world championship fight and you've trained for eight weeks and you win by knockout and the spectacular result and you're very happy with the result, you got a day or two to relax.
01:27:35.000You've got a day or two, and then you're like, fuck, okay, now what?
01:27:38.000Well, now you've got to get back to work.
01:27:40.000And if you think that there's some place, like a movie, where you're holding hands with your loved ones and the fucking sunset's going on and the credits roll, that's horseshit.
01:27:50.000And we have this idea in our head that there's this place that you can get to where you've...
01:27:56.000And I'm here to tell you, that motherfucker doesn't exist.
01:27:59.000I mean, obviously I'm not the most successful person in the world, but on paper, I've accomplished a lot of shit, and it doesn't mean a goddamn thing.
01:28:07.000Every fucking day, every fucking day I get up and I'm like, alright, I've got to figure out how to do this, I've got to work on this new bit.
01:28:40.000As soon as you get there, you're like, geez, I'm just as far away from that thing that I thought because as you develop, the things that you think you want develop too.
01:28:48.000Like, oh, one day I'm going to be rich, but the richer you get, the richer you want to become.
01:28:53.000Well, then you start filling up your life with these meaningless destinations, right?
01:29:39.000The struggle of a hard-working person that can get done with a day of hard work and have a feeling of accomplishment and then go home to your family and get going again, knowing you have to get up in the morning and do it again, knowing you don't have enough money to buy a yacht, but knowing you have enough money to put food on the table and there's a satisfaction to be able to provide that,
01:29:59.000Well, that's the thing with why it's so important and vital to travel and go to these third world countries.
01:30:06.000These people literally have nothing and are inviting perfect strangers into their homes and giving them things that they do not even have themselves.
01:31:18.000That's why, you know, when you look at, one of the things that people look at, when you look at people that are extremely materialistic, that, you know, wear the most fancy jewelry and drive the most fancy cars and the biggest houses, we always think they're shallow.
01:32:13.000I mean, becoming a great fighter is hard, but it's worth doing.
01:32:16.000Because once you do do it, and you realize, like, there's an expression that I've used before, but my Taekwondo instructor said to me when I was a little boy, he said, martial arts are a vehicle for developing your human potential.
01:32:51.000Are capable of making it through a brutal camp and getting up in the morning when you know you don't want to, that alarm clock goes off and you're like, I don't want to fucking run.
01:33:00.000You go out and run and you do it every day and you get through it and then you're successful.
01:33:05.000And you realize that you have this incredible endurance because of the discipline that you put in.
01:33:09.000You realize that you have this incredible skill and this understanding of how to fight correctly because of all the time and the hours and the focus.
01:33:15.000You're a better person because of that, right?
01:34:14.000You, in particular, that you can explain it to people, having gone through this horrific adversity, and come out on the other end with a message.
01:34:51.000You know, I think that was one of the benefits of the way I grew up, which was really hard and horrible, but I got to see firsthand both sides of money.
01:35:01.000You know, I went from living in a basement with five other people and living on welfare to living with my father in a mansion.
01:40:57.000We could all be asleep in a dream right now, or hooked up to a machine.
01:41:01.000Nobody knows that for sure, so how can you possibly say anything is factual?
01:41:06.000You can say things are factual with the information that's in front of you, but that information might be bullshit.
01:41:11.000And ten years from now, we might have a completely different perspective on things that we're doing now that we think are right, and this is the way life is, this is the way the world is.
01:41:22.000Ten years ago, people had a very different approach to things.
01:41:25.000What we can say is, as far as we know, this is the case.
01:41:29.000And this is what we know is repeatable.
01:41:32.000If you do this, if you put two bricks on top of two bricks, you have four bricks.
01:42:14.000There's people that are giving advice, and there's a lot of value in motivating people, right?
01:42:24.000When someone's a legitimately motivational person, whether it's Wim Hof, the Iceman, or someone who's really done some things, there's something about them that their inspiration is fuel.
01:42:39.000But then there's a lot of people out there that are just saying shit because they think it's going to be motivating to other people and it sounds like horseshit.
01:43:22.000Dude, I was watching a documentary on one of those guys, one of these internet guys who rents houses and rents cars and tries to pretend he's this big baller and spends all this money and ran a bunch of scam dating sites and all these different things.
01:43:42.000This pursuit of tricking people into thinking that you're more knowledgeable than you actually are.
01:43:47.000What resonates with people is like what you were talking about from the beginning of this podcast.
01:43:53.000When you're talking about your life and how you felt...
01:43:57.000And your own real legitimate experiences and the feelings of inadequacy and then the finding the light at the end of the tunnel and all these different things that are just, you're relaying your life's lessons and experiences.
01:44:11.000Those are extremely valuable for people.
01:46:17.000But if that person can't get to the core of you and really be like, when you tell me something, I know it's truth because you have no other reason to say bullshit to me.
01:47:26.000I don't need to deal with this bullshit.
01:47:28.000I'm going to have these people around me that make me feel good and say yes to me and bring me all the things that I want and give me no stress.
01:47:34.000When I meet people like that, I go, you should do jujitsu.
01:49:09.000You know, it's important for me just to be honest with all the aspects of my life and to not start drifting into that, just this surface, you know, this is who I am and, you know.
01:50:17.000There's so many things that could go wrong.
01:50:22.000When you think about an actual fight itself, I think back to this past weekend with Cowboy and Connor, and looking at Cowboy, the weight of the moment in his eyes,
01:50:38.000you could see him warming up, and he talked about it.
01:50:40.000There's this video that they played before the fight.
01:50:43.000Which he goes through all of the nervousness that he experiences before he fights.
01:50:49.000Goes through all the faking it and smiling and pretending he's cool.
01:50:53.000And meanwhile inside he's freaking the fuck out and all that stuff.
01:50:56.000That adds to this need to make everything look great.
01:51:48.000But he was talking about how when he was a kid, like this guy, he went from being this really, you know, poor kid who was abandoned, no love, a constant crime and terrible poverty around him.
01:52:04.000To all of a sudden, he's getting all this love for doing this one thing, for smashing people.
01:52:10.000And he found himself with one of the greatest boxing minds that's ever lived in Customato, who's explaining to him fear and motivation, all these different things.
01:53:50.000Oh, and then you think about how amazing that was for him as an athlete, but how detrimental that was to him as a human being and all the things he's had to...
01:54:00.000Develop so much later in life and like, yeah, you understand like why he was fucking nuts.
01:54:11.000Like you want these people to be these amazing athletes and these savages and these things, but then when they're human beings on the outside, it's like, oh, well, that's a piece of shit.
01:54:39.000And particularly when you're dealing with people like fighters that are dealing with this insane amount of pressure and this incredible emotional rollercoaster ride.
01:54:50.000And then on top of that, why did they become fighters in the first place?
01:55:13.000And people that come from that thing, they're not...
01:55:16.000The most balanced folks, they're going to make mistakes, you know?
01:55:19.000And compassion and understanding and the ability to forgive, those are some of the most important aspects of community and of friendship and of the human race.
01:55:32.000We have to be able to be compassionate towards people that have experienced a different life than we have.
01:55:37.000And we have to be able to forgive people when they fuck up.
01:57:41.000That's, you know, we're living through strange times, man.
01:57:45.000Well, it's the cancel culture and I view it as the team culture of everything is what's, I think, one of the more detrimental things to humanity is you're either on this side or that side and our side's right,
01:59:04.000But for me in training, it was like, yeah, this person doesn't know what the fuck they're doing, but maybe one day I'm going to face somebody like that, so maybe I should kind of get a little grasp of their mentality, and that just applies to life.
01:59:27.000You've got to take a step outside of your beliefs to understand, is that even what you believe or is it just the way you were raised and the way you grew up?
01:59:37.000Have you ever taken a step outside of them or listened to somebody else's It's hard because you don't get that many conversations with people where you disagree with them and it's not confrontational.
01:59:57.000Usually they're confrontational or you're confrontational.
02:00:00.000So it always starts off on the bad foot.
02:00:02.000I've learned how to do it from doing this podcast and one of the most surprising things about doing this podcast is I've learned how to talk to people better.
02:00:40.000Like, I have some really smart friends, and, you know, I talk to them, and they just fucking interrupt each other, and they interrupt you, and they don't let anybody talk.
02:01:56.000Well, you had a good statement on this, and I think it was your last special where it was like, you have two idiots in a room, it's the more confident one that they listen to.
02:02:07.000And it's that concept of just say more words and have more opinions and you don't have to think, just be loud and make a lot of noise.
02:02:30.000People do it to you and you go, man, I gotta fucking kick my ass in that conversation.
02:02:33.000I'm gonna get better at kicking people's ass.
02:02:35.000And then you get better at sort of bulldogging people or talking over them or talking loud or having these sentences that maybe you can pull out of your ass every now and then to shut people down.
02:02:48.000And it becomes a sport instead of what it really should be, which is sharing ideas and communicating with people.
02:02:54.000I mean, if you're really into the sport of just debating people and shutting people down and insulting people, okay, good for you.
02:03:01.000But people don't like listening to that that much.
02:03:04.000What people like listening to, from my experience, is someone actually talking to someone, someone actually expressing their thoughts, and then the other person considering their thoughts and either agreeing or disagreeing.
02:03:17.000But people are so happy when you can do that without real conflict.
02:04:10.000I've learned more from talking to people on this podcast, both from talking to scholars and scientists and really intelligent people and morons.
02:04:41.000Well, I think that's something that really separates you from a lot of people.
02:04:47.000Yeah, there's shows where people are very opinionated and loud and, you know, people like that and that kind of thing.
02:04:52.000But your ability to communicate and to bring out conversation regardless of what the subject matter is makes it very intriguing.
02:05:01.000And you can learn a lot regardless of who the guest is.
02:05:06.000You learn so much from these people because of the way you're able to communicate with them, the way you're able to Bring out conversation and get in-depth with all of these subjects.
02:05:17.000Well, I'm genuinely curious about most things.
02:05:22.000And I'm genuinely curious about the way I think.
02:06:28.000You know, going to school about whatever the subject they're talking to me about, but also going to school about how, you know, the more people you talk to, especially like this, no cell phones, we're wearing headphones.
02:06:38.000And one of the reasons why I like headphones is because your voice is in my ear.
02:06:45.000And this is exactly the same way that other people are going to hear it, which is a very unusual way to hear a conversation.
02:06:51.000You don't think about it that way, but most of the time when you hear a conversation, your voice is louder because it's closer, and they're over there.
02:06:57.000And you're talking to each other, and maybe you check your phone, or maybe you're distracted by other noises, but when you're wearing headphones, you don't hear anything else.
02:07:59.000I mean, if you're doing it right, your relationships, being a parent, being a comedian, being a fighter, being a doctor, I'm sure, if you're concentrating on it, you get better at it.
02:08:42.000I'm seeking different ways to do things, different ways to think, different perspectives on situations, particularly ones I might be stuck on.
02:08:51.000Like, this is the way I think, this is what I believe.
02:08:53.000I want to explore what my beliefs and feelings and viewpoints are.
02:09:00.000Yeah, I think that is how you gain a better understanding of what this thing is.
02:09:08.000What this thing we're experiencing is.
02:09:09.000Yeah, which nobody knows what the hell it is.
02:09:43.000And then there's the thought that maybe that is what life is, period.
02:09:47.000And that this idea of like, oh, one day we're going to create an artificial environment that we exist in that's going to be indistinguishable from the real world that we exist in now.
02:13:34.000One thing that always trips me out is I think about, like, people we view as lunatics.
02:13:39.000I'm like, what if they are seeing reality and we have blinders on, you know, because when you take into account what a finite percentage of what's really out there that we're able to see with our perception,
02:13:54.000you know, compared to, like, x-rays and gamma rays and all of these things, like...
02:13:58.000We have such a tiny filter on everything that's really going on out there.
02:14:03.000We don't really see shit compared to what's really there.
02:14:07.000And maybe these whacked out people are just seeing more of what's happening.
02:14:12.000And that's what makes them nuts because they're like...
02:14:15.000You're not seeing all these demons flying around and all these colors.
02:14:19.000We have a filter on that so we can process information and it keeps us sane.
02:14:30.000When you think about how small an amount of acid you need to take to completely perturb the way you view the world, I think McKenna described this.
02:14:41.000That the potency of acid is like, it's literally like, in terms of like the amount that you need in order to have an effect, he made an analogy like an ant deconstructing the entire Empire State Building in a matter of seconds.
02:14:57.000Like, that's how potent it is in terms of volume.
02:15:01.000You don't need a couple drops of acid in a huge human body, and you're tripping balls for seven hours.
02:15:09.000That's a chemical disruption of this very delicate ecosystem.
02:15:15.000So if your neurochemistry is off in any way, up or down, sideways, screwy, you got too much of this or too much of that, which we know is the case with everything, right?
02:15:26.000Like some people are born with bad eyesight.
02:15:59.000They process life different because of abuse.
02:16:02.000People that have experienced extreme trauma, extreme violence when they're young, PTSD, they're processing things differently than people that have not.
02:16:10.000Yeah, what's even crazier about that is I read a book called It Didn't Start With You, and it talks about how these things are passed on generationally, from like, trauma your grandparents had is passed on to you through your DNA, and it changes us.
02:16:26.000Like, how much is passed on to us that we have no control over?
02:16:30.000That alters the way we feel things, the way we see things, all of these experiences that people have that just get passed down like that without any outside influence just through that process of being born.
02:17:11.000I thought I was doing this, and I probably was, my whole life to try to show that I had value.
02:17:18.000Because I felt like I was ignored, and I didn't know my dad, and I always felt like an outsider and a loser.
02:17:24.000And I always felt like I would throw myself into things to show that I had value.
02:17:30.000And I would get really good at things to show that I had value.
02:17:33.000And this obsession was like me trying to escape the existential angst of my existence and just the constant anxiety and this feeling of inadequacy.
02:17:48.000Trying to escape it by being obsessed with things, but also trying to prove through getting good at things that I have value.
02:17:55.000Because the first time I ever felt like I was worth anything was when I started getting good at martial arts.
02:18:00.000And then people started respecting me.
02:18:03.000I have a thing that people think I'm good at.
02:18:06.000That I'm good at this thing, that became my identity.
02:19:37.000But he's learned through his DNA that he's supposed to retrieve things and bring them over and that you are happier when he brings things over because that's the DNA that's in his system.
02:20:25.000The components of the lifeform that are passed when two lifeforms breed and they make another one.
02:20:31.000I don't think we really understand it.
02:20:33.000I think we have a rudimentary understanding of the chemistry involved, but in terms of, like, personality, and in terms of, like, the thoughts that are in our heads, like, I was reading something by Rupert Sheldrick, and he was talking about why children are afraid of monsters.
02:20:50.000He's like, children that grow up in the city are afraid of monsters.
02:20:53.000They're not afraid of, like, gunshots and car accidents, things that are really scary.
02:22:04.000Well, so much of that is realizing how little control we have over everything, like how we raise our children, or how we interact with people, and what does and doesn't affect us.
02:22:16.000The fact that any of this works in any remote way is insanity.
02:23:27.000So I don't know how many people that is, how many individuals, but it's a fuckload.
02:23:31.000So all of these different people have come on and expressed all these different ideas, and so many different people are hearing them in their earbuds, whether in traffic or when they're at the gym, and all these ideas percolate.
02:23:43.000Inside people's brains and that it gives them different perspectives and that it makes them maybe explore things.
02:24:10.000And then also me getting better at it is just me.
02:24:13.000It's like it showing me how to extract better information, get out of my fucking way, don't ruin it, and make it better for the people that are listening.
02:25:14.000I think that's why it's so vital to follow your heart and follow the things you feel because everything else, nobody knows what the fuck is going on.
02:25:23.000Nobody can tell you what you should do or shouldn't do to be successful or to be happy or to be all these things.
02:25:30.000You've got to listen to what's inside of you.
02:30:14.000You know, for me, art has always been something that I do it because I love to do it.
02:30:19.000If it starts becoming a job where it's like you need to do this or you need to do that, I think that would make me lose a lot of love for it.