Order of Man - How to Make Fear Your Ally

00:00:00.000 Guys, fear is something every single one of us deal with on a daily basis, but unfortunately,

00:00:05.140 too many men consciously or even unconsciously allow fear to keep them from going after what

00:00:10.880 they want the most. So the question is, how can you use fear to your advantage as opposed to a

00:00:16.760 hindrance? And that's exactly what I talk about today with my guest, Akshay Nanavanti, the author

00:00:22.380 of Fearvana, How to Turn Fear into Health, Wealth, and Happiness. We cover the critical importance

00:00:28.320 of becoming aware and accepting fear, flawed mental health, the idea that there are no bad or

00:00:35.500 negative emotions, why you need to learn to explore the edges of life, and ultimately how to make fear

00:00:41.760 your ally. You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest, embrace your fears, and boldly chart

00:00:47.420 your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time. You are not

00:00:53.280 easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is who you are.

00:01:00.460 This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call

00:01:05.780 yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Michler, and I am the host and the

00:01:11.340 founder of the podcast and the movement that is Order of Man. I want to welcome you here and welcome

00:01:15.880 you back, and I'm glad you're tuned in. We are having some absolutely phenomenal, phenomenal

00:01:22.220 conversations over the past several weeks, and that's evident because the engagement and the

00:01:27.840 downloads are up, which means that, well, I hope that it means that you guys are enjoying the

00:01:32.200 conversations that we're having, but more important than just enjoying them, that you're actually

00:01:36.240 applying the information and the knowledge and the expertise that some of our experts are sharing.

00:01:41.720 If you are new to the show, we're having these conversations. We've got guys like Jocko Willing,

00:01:47.360 David Goggins, Ed Milet, Andy Frisilla, Tim Kennedy, Dakota Meyer, John Eldridge, Mark Manson,

00:01:55.660 Ryan Holiday. As I say, every single week, the guys who have joined us is absolutely phenomenal.

00:02:02.340 So if you're not already subscribed to the podcast, make sure you get subscribed so you never miss

00:02:06.660 a single episode, including, of course, this one with my guest, Akshay Nanavati. We've got a great,

00:02:12.600 great conversation about fear. I'm going to get to here in just a minute, but before I do,

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00:03:19.960 All right, guys, let me introduce you to Akshay Nanavanti. He is a Marine veteran. He's a speaker.

00:03:26.500 He's an entrepreneur. He's an ultra runner. He's a skydiver. I mean, the list is, it just goes on and

00:03:32.540 on. He's also the author of the book, fear of Ana. Many of you have probably already been familiar

00:03:36.560 with it or read it, but he's overcome so much, including a drug addiction after a service,

00:03:42.180 a blood disorder that doctors told him could likely kill him in bootcamp. And of course, combat,

00:03:47.820 one of his jobs was to walk in front of vehicles to find IEDs. I don't know how he got put on that

00:03:53.200 duty, but he did survive. But he's dealt with PTSD, survivor's guilt, alcoholism, depression.

00:03:59.560 And after all of that has somehow found the power to overcome all of that and really just live a life

00:04:06.020 of adventure and fulfillment. He's been skydiving and mountain biking and scuba diving and rock and

00:04:12.260 ice climbing. He's done it all. It's phenomenal. It's amazing. So you're definitely going to enjoy this

00:04:16.840 conversation and use what actually teaches us as fuel to light your own fire, man. Yeah. I'm glad

00:04:24.080 we could connect. I've been looking forward to it for a while and I know we kind of played back and

00:04:27.200 forth and then Jordan reconnected the dots for us. So I'm really glad that you did. I actually listened

00:04:32.540 to your conversation with him and caught a little bit of your conversation with Mike Ritland too.

00:04:38.420 So yeah, I love your story, man. I think it's very powerful. And I think a lot of guys will,

00:04:42.380 we'll get some value from it for sure. Thank you, brother. No, I'm really glad to be here.

00:04:46.700 You were saying before I hit record, I wanted to make sure I got this in time, but you were talking

00:04:51.020 about being in Jersey and kind of the epicenter of what's going on with this coronavirus. But I think

00:04:55.540 before I interrupted you, I don't want to lead or put words in your mouth, but it seems like you're

00:04:59.900 going to say something about some of the challenges that you've done in the past and how it's prepared

00:05:03.460 you a little bit for this or brought things into perspective. Yeah. The one I was just starting to

00:05:07.880 mention is not too long ago, a few months ago, I spent seven days in pitch darkness, isolation,

00:05:13.240 and silence. So just in a silent room, like tiny little room, pure darkness. And I went in there

00:05:19.260 to confront my fear of stillness. What had happened was, and the real trigger to push me there was

00:05:24.600 about not last year, the year before last, I went through a very challenging divorce and went into some

00:05:29.720 dark spaces after that. I ended up breaking my sobriety and I didn't like that. And when I break,

00:05:34.700 I break hard. So I'm talking downing liters of vodka, just drinking mean a bottle a day for weeks

00:05:40.820 on end. And I didn't obviously like that version of me. So I knew something was missing. And so I

00:05:45.880 really wanted to go deeper within at this point in my life. I'd already done a lot of stuff, right?

00:05:49.260 So I wanted to go really deep within. So I found the most intense and extreme way to do that. And it

00:05:53.980 was a profound, I mean, obviously intense and challenging experience, but profound, man. Incredibly.

00:05:59.880 Yeah. I think about that. I'm like, I don't, I don't know if I can handle that. Cause I'm

00:06:03.980 here in my office and I've got, you know, it's well lit and I've got my computer and I've got

00:06:08.740 plenty of distractions and I've got books and all the things I like. And my kids and my wife are

00:06:14.360 just outside of the room here. Yeah. And even in this little box, I go crazy. Sometimes I'm like,

00:06:20.180 I got to get out of here. I got to go outside. So I can't even imagine what it would be like to

00:06:23.900 just sit in darkness with your own thoughts, free of noise, free of, of, of any sort of stimulus.

00:06:31.860 Yeah. It just sounds, I don't know. It sounds like one of the most challenging things actually

00:06:36.840 somebody could probably do. It definitely was. It ranks up there. I mean, even from, you know,

00:06:40.680 running all the ultras, joining the Marines and all that kind of stuff, because in this one, I mean,

00:06:44.380 actually for the first few days in the darkness retreat, I was doing, I was working out. So I was

00:06:47.980 doing burpees and things like that. And then I realized in the room, in the darkness room. Yeah.

00:06:52.480 But I realized that I was using that as an escape from the stillness because it's more comfortable for me

00:06:57.340 to work out. I mean, I train a lot. I'm an ultra runner, but that was- And you can distract yourself

00:07:01.820 with that. Exactly. Sure. Exactly. So you can make time go by. You can distract yourself. So I

00:07:06.700 actually set a rule that no working out. So for the last five days or so, just sat there. And the

00:07:12.300 reason I chose darkness as opposed to the silent retreats, I don't know if you've heard of like

00:07:15.460 those vipassanas, the silent retreats. No. Oh yeah. I mean, it's some silent retreats. I'm not

00:07:20.380 way familiar, but I've heard a little bit about it.

00:07:22.340 Yeah. Those are much more common. I've heard people do that, but in a silent retreat, you're

00:07:26.560 still seeing things. You're still, your eyes are open. You're still seeing the world. With

00:07:30.180 darkness, you have nowhere external to go. So your consciousness can't attach to anything

00:07:34.720 outside of yourself. You can't look at a wall and say, that's a wall, right? So your consciousness

00:07:38.980 has nowhere else to go, but within. And that forces you into some very intense, but beautiful

00:07:44.220 places. I mean, for me, the stuff that showed up was, you know, I had confronted a lot of my demons

00:07:48.260 from the war, like the survivor's guilt. And I had sobered up except for obviously breaking

00:07:52.920 the sobriety, but generally had sobered up and confronted a lot of stuff. But what really

00:07:56.540 showed up for me kind of paradoxically in the darkness was light and greater light and

00:08:02.140 a feeling that it was okay to be happy. Cause for a long time in my life, you know, I was

00:08:06.920 born to a good family in India, relative silver spoon in my mouth. And then I went out in the

00:08:11.600 world, joined the Marines and I've worked in leper colonies, worked with child soldiers,

00:08:15.580 victims of sex trafficking, like seeing extreme poverty, really seeing suffering within and

00:08:19.480 without, you know, being in a war zone in Iraq as well. And so for a long time, I felt guilty

00:08:23.820 for my life. You know, why, why do I get this? Why do I get this shit? What have I done to

00:08:28.720 earn it? I was just born where I was born. Why does that other kid who was born in the

00:08:32.140 hell in a war zone? Why did he, you know, why did he get that? And so I've really struggled

00:08:36.260 with that for a long time. And so kind of paradoxically in the darkness, I found as maybe simple

00:08:41.960 as it sounds permission to, to be happy and almost recognizing that happiness is not going

00:08:47.140 to change the fact that it sounds really obvious, right? But happiness is not going to change

00:08:50.680 the fact that other people in the world are suffering. If anything, it will give me greater

00:08:53.520 fuel to stay in the fight and to, to fight harder and fight longer. You know, so how do

00:08:59.020 you reconcile that idea? Cause I mean, frankly, that's never that, that thought of like, why

00:09:04.760 do I get this? Isn't something that I can remember ever thinking like it is what it is.

00:09:12.120 And it, it seems like if I, I do feel blessed, I feel like I've got some great fortunate events,

00:09:18.740 but I've always felt like, okay, well, it's my responsibility to make the most of these

00:09:22.080 things. So I've never felt like you felt with like, why do I get that? So I'm really curious

00:09:26.940 how you reconcile the idea of, I have all of this and there's other people who don't have

00:09:31.480 any of this. So like, like, how do you, how do you make the connection there?

00:09:35.980 You know, I mean like one, one very concrete example of this that really hit hard was, uh,

00:09:40.700 right before the darkness retreat, a few months before that I was running 167 miles across Liberia

00:09:45.600 to help build a school out there. It was about a marathon a day for a week. So the first day I'm

00:09:49.740 running a profound experience, by the way, post-war Liberia. I mean, again, the country had been

00:09:54.900 through hell, Ebola, civil war, poverty. I mean, at one point I was working with former child soldiers

00:09:59.840 who've just seen the depths of human evil that, you know, most, many of us can't even fathom.

00:10:04.360 But anyway, so day one of the run, right? I'm out there running. And a lot of times these kids

00:10:07.640 would come start running with me because say strange dude running on, on the streets,

00:10:11.640 like what they were going on. So they would come running with me. And there was this one kid,

00:10:14.460 like these two kids, they started running blessing and Emmanuel were their names.

00:10:17.800 And they still, we started kind of start chatting as much, you know, while we're running and

00:10:21.100 blessing was telling me that he wanted to go to med school. The other kid wanted to go to

00:10:25.220 vocational training school. And one of the kids blessing, I think he had lost his father in the

00:10:29.700 war. His mother then left. And so now he was staying with the other kid in this tiny little

00:10:34.440 village, right? In this middle of Liberia, the odds of them actually going to medical school

00:10:39.100 minimal, you know? And I remember in that specific moments, like as I continued running,

00:10:44.280 because obviously when you run a lot, you have a lot of time to go into your head, right?

00:10:46.940 So I was thinking to myself, like, why, what makes me different than blessing? You know,

00:10:51.440 that was a really concrete moment that stands out in my mind that just thought like,

00:10:54.940 I was born to good parents in India who loved me, given me a great life.

00:10:58.840 He was born where he was born. And as a result, he went through hell and his dreams,

00:11:05.040 the odds of him actually achieving that because of where he was born was minimum.

00:11:09.860 Yeah. I mean, that could very easily have been you or me, anybody who's listening to this podcast.

00:11:15.720 Exactly. So only, I mean, the way I now kind of handle it is like, and again, it may sound very

00:11:20.180 simple, but it took me a little bit to really, and I sometimes still wrestle with this because to me

00:11:24.500 also sometimes, and I'm not saying everybody should approach it this way, I think the guilt

00:11:28.660 or the, um, is fuel. I, even my survivor's guilt has become fuel from losing a friend in the war.

00:11:33.580 But like the feeling that I have to earn this life to me, the shit that I would have, the luxuries

00:11:39.200 are not just a right. They're not just a privilege. I have to earn it. So I earn it through doing some

00:11:44.160 work in service of something greater. But I also kind of reconciled it by saying, look, this is,

00:11:48.840 this stuff is so much bigger than me, man. I can't, who am I? I'm one tiny human being in the,

00:11:52.700 in the cosmos, right? How can I possibly, and whatever everybody's belief about God,

00:11:57.140 the universe, this, that, and the other thing, I can't possibly fathom why I was born where I was

00:12:02.080 born. So to your point, all I can do now is do something about it, man. Like earn this life,

00:12:07.940 you know, do something meaningful in service of the greater good in service of our human family.

00:12:11.840 And that, so I kind of stopped asking that question and the darkness retreat was really helped

00:12:16.140 unearth that. I mean, I wasn't as consciously aware of it. It helped unearth it. And then

00:12:20.980 I kind of processed it, if you will. And now it's like, look, I can't explain that shit. But what

00:12:25.420 I can say is like, I got to do something worthy. You, you said that you broke sobriety. So I'm just

00:12:31.020 trying to figure out the timeline. How long were you sober for? It had been a few years since. So

00:12:38.300 what happened was, you know, after I came back from the war, I was Marines. What year was that,

00:12:42.780 that you were there? I went and I went to Iraq in 07. Okay. So I, I was, I was in Iraq. I was in

00:12:48.400 Madi in 2005, 2006. So it would, it would have been after that. Okay.

00:12:53.200 Yeah. So I was in 07, 08 in the, uh, in the Ambar province.

00:12:56.840 Which is, yeah, we were in the Ambar as well. Yeah. So.

00:12:59.480 Got you. Okay. Yeah. So I was there towards the kind of closer to the end of the war.

00:13:04.200 And when I came back, struggled, uh, struggle with life back home, hated this world, wanted to go back

00:13:09.720 to war, kept trying to volunteer to go back to Iraq, trying to go back to Afghanistan, just get back in

00:13:14.380 to fight as much as possible. What did you hate about civilian life or were you a civilian at

00:13:19.000 that point? Or were you still in the Marines? I was still, I was in the reserves when I got back.

00:13:22.280 So I had, I had a, about a year and a half left on my contract. So I finished, I went to grad, I went,

00:13:27.980 well, I had one year left in undergrad. So I finished my college degree and coming back to college, man,

00:13:32.720 like, you know, at this point I recognize that we all do the best we can with our level of awareness.

00:13:37.100 So you can't blame a college student for not having your perspective after you've just come back from war.

00:13:41.520 But back then I wasn't as self-aware, let's say. So, you know, you've got college students

00:13:46.300 whining about the dumbest shit and you're just like, fuck man, like, you know, nothing like,

00:13:50.440 and forget about what my own struggles in war. I mean, you know, you've been there. War is obviously

00:13:53.700 not easy. It's adversity, but like the people who suffered so much out there that you interact

00:13:57.880 with, you know, so you kind of, so that was one part that was challenging. Part of it was also just

00:14:02.340 the guilt that feeling like I hadn't suffered enough in the war. You know, I lost a friend out there.

00:14:07.340 I didn't get shot. I didn't lose any limbs. I didn't really like, what, why did I get to come

00:14:12.560 back home? And I felt like I hadn't done enough. I hadn't, you know, gone in through, gone into hell

00:14:18.360 enough, if you will. So I wanted to go back to, to get something, to earn something. I mean,

00:14:24.700 truth be told, when I went to Iraq, I went out there with the very, um, not to putting it mildly,

00:14:30.300 not the healthiest mindset. Like I went out there not expecting to come back alive. Like, so again,

00:14:34.660 to give us some context. So right when I joined the Marines in 2004, I gave him to my unit and I

00:14:39.900 got really close to a buddy of mine. This guy, Neil, we became really close, like brothers,

00:14:44.480 trained together, did everything together. But whenever we trained, so when we ran the PFT,

00:14:48.740 the physical fitness test, I would beat him like a few, by a few seconds on the run or on the rifle

00:14:52.880 range. I'd beat him by a few points, you know? So we'd always compete, stuff like that. We went to

00:14:56.480 one Marine Corps ball. He had to buy me and my girlfriend a drink because I beat him by a few

00:14:59.560 points, that kind of thing. Right. And so we were the only two in our unit volunteering to go

00:15:03.480 every chance we could get. Twice the Marines told us we're going last minute, they canceled it.

00:15:08.120 And one summer I was off in India vacationing, like my family, I'm originally from India. So I was with,

00:15:13.700 you know, was visiting my family over the summer and he finally ended up finding a unit to go with.

00:15:18.880 And, uh, he was a good Marine. So he got promoted to corporal. As a result, he was in a seat that got

00:15:24.060 hit with an IED and he was killed. So I always felt like, man, I, I had no right to be off vacationing.

00:15:32.840 I should have gone there with him. Had I been here, I would have been in that same unit.

00:15:36.120 And, you know, and I admit it, like admittedly, I get rationally that I could have gone with him.

00:15:40.020 You know, he could have still died. I could have come back, but emotionally didn't change the fact

00:15:42.960 that I felt like I should have gotten that promotion instead of him. And I should have

00:15:46.600 been in that seat instead of him. So when I finally got my chance to go to war three months after he

00:15:52.240 was killed, I was like, fuck it, man. If somebody has to, and again, naive, like I understand this is a

00:15:56.800 very naive perspective on war because you can't control where bullets fly. But nonetheless, I went out there

00:16:01.140 with the mentality that if somebody has to die, I'd rather be me than anybody else. So I like gave

00:16:05.340 away all my shit. I was like, fuck it, whatever happens, you know, happens. And again, that's not

00:16:10.660 the healthiest way, obviously healthiest man. I wouldn't say it was suicidal, but it wasn't a

00:16:14.960 healthy approach by any means, if that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, do you feel like you were unhappy

00:16:19.020 with, with your current life at that point? Or was it more just, Hey, I have to shoulder this

00:16:24.660 responsibility or on the other hand, was it, I'm not happy with my life and this is a great way to

00:16:30.500 go serve and fulfill all these other things. And, you know, I'm not happy anyway. So if I die, like

00:16:36.040 all's well, it was like, no, yeah, no, it wasn't that I was unhappy. You know, I loved, I loved my life.

00:16:42.860 I had a great, great parents, great family. College was going great. Good friends. Like I didn't,

00:16:49.000 I didn't, uh, I didn't hate life. I loved my life, but to me, I mean, even why I enlisted in the

00:16:54.300 Marines in the first place, again, kind of going back and give it, giving that some context I had,

00:16:58.640 when I, when I came to the U S I was about 13 years old and got pretty heavily soon into drugs

00:17:03.940 and alcohol right after, uh, right after moving here about 15 years old. I mean, I was very

00:17:08.340 self-destructive. I still have scars on my arm from cutting myself, burning myself, very self-destructive.

00:17:13.680 How did that come into play? I mean, it sounds like you came with your parents. I'm, I'm assuming,

00:17:17.560 right. Yeah. Yeah. And it sounds like they were great parents. So like, did you just get them in

00:17:21.860 with the wrong crowd or like, how did that, how did that come about? You know, when I moved at 13,

00:17:26.080 I had lived in, at this point I'd lived in Bombay, Bangalore, Singapore, and Austin. So four cities at

00:17:29.840 the age of 13 years old, good life though. But I was very lost and moving around, trying to fit in,

00:17:34.840 in every place, trying to adapt in every place. Not sure who I wanted to be. I wasn't one of those kids

00:17:40.040 who, you know, entrepreneur at seven started lemonade stand, that kind of thing. Like none of that,

00:17:43.780 no clue who I wanted to be, no idea of my path. So, and I was always to some degree,

00:17:48.680 this kind of person who were pushing the lines. You know, when I was a kid playing rugby in India,

00:17:52.860 every time I would get cut, I would like love my, I would love my scars as there was war wounds.

00:17:57.200 You know, I love my scars or in Singapore, I used to run barefoot on rocks just to test myself.

00:18:02.580 And so when I came into the U S again, very lost to trying to fit in, trying to adapt.

00:18:06.280 And I got in again, like I don't, I take responsibility for my behavior today,

00:18:10.800 but as a young kid, you're very impressionable. So I don't blame my friends, but I got into a

00:18:15.880 crowd that, you know, my parents have asked me, how could, what could they have done differently

00:18:18.900 to prevent it? And truth be told, probably nothing. I mean, if I had gotten to a crowd of,

00:18:22.200 let's say ultra runners or mountaineers back then, I probably would have gone all in into ultra

00:18:26.220 running, you know? So I got into a crowd and I being this kind of person who pushes the extremes,

00:18:32.060 I was me and this one other guy were the first two in our group to start going into harder stuff.

00:18:36.280 And he is no longer alive today. I lost two friends to drug addiction and like very easily

00:18:41.740 could have been me. Did a lot of self-destructive things that could have easily killed me. You know,

00:18:46.560 what changed? And so like, yeah, what, what changed was when I watched the movie Black Hawk Down.

00:18:50.920 You've seen it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of, you know, incredibly powerful,

00:18:55.600 powerful movie and watching that scene where Gary Gordon and Randy Sugar, you know,

00:18:59.540 Medal of Honor recipients who volunteered to go on the ground to set up that defensive perimeter for

00:19:03.380 Michael Durant and they, they died and they sacrificed their lives knowingly, but that

00:19:07.560 thousands of arms, you know, enemy were heading their way. It just triggered something in me that

00:19:12.140 what kind of human being would have that courage to knowingly put themselves,

00:19:17.380 you know, to sacrifice their lives for somebody else. And here I was living this at this point,

00:19:22.160 very selfish, meaningless, worthless existence, you know? And that was the trigger. I, after watching

00:19:27.400 the movie, I read the book Black Hawk Down and just started devouring book after book after book

00:19:31.460 on military and life and combat. And that was, that was right before you went, that was before

00:19:35.520 you went into the Marine Corps then. Yeah. So that was, that's kind of what led to it.

00:19:39.220 That was the trigger to, to, and so that kind of was giving the context about why I also had this

00:19:43.080 mentality that to me, like watching this movie, I mean, it was the inspiration to join was two

00:19:47.900 guys who sacrificed their lives for somebody else, you know? And, and that was, and reading book

00:19:53.620 after book on, I mean, I remember reading this book, SOG, this studies and observation group in

00:19:57.720 Vietnam, you know, these guys who were special operations soldiers, like they had more

00:20:00.860 medal of honor recipients in that unit than I think any other unit in history, just seeing the

00:20:06.120 courage of men in combat, sacrificing their lives for others. It was to me, like war to me, and I'm

00:20:13.580 not, you know, not saying this is sort of war junkie kind of mentality, but experiencing the edges of

00:20:17.500 the human condition reveal the essence of the human spirit, if you will. Like war brings out the very

00:20:22.700 burst, very best and the very worst of humanity. We see people do awful shit, right? Like atrocities,

00:20:27.340 horrible things, but we also see people jumping on grenades to save their fellow human beings.

00:20:31.640 And I wanted to go on those edges. I want to explore the lines after living like, I mean,

00:20:36.560 great life. I mean, I kind of kid with my parents today that y'all made me soft by loving me,

00:20:40.760 you know, and giving me a good life. Uh, but I like, again, never really suffered. And after that

00:20:45.740 is when I started seeking out suffering in literally every context within and without,

00:20:49.320 but that was going to say you're talking about being soft, but I'm like, I don't know. I mean,

00:20:52.960 you see this guy ultra running, you know, marathons and, and greater than that. And then

00:20:58.080 doing the silent thing. It's like, you're like a glutton for punishment in a way, but it's pretty

00:21:04.240 cool and interesting that you found significance and meaning in it. Cause I think, well, that's what

00:21:09.320 we do as human beings, right? We craft meaning around the experiences that we have, whether it's

00:21:14.180 accurate or not. And usually it's not, it's just whether or not it serves us. Like, I think this

00:21:19.540 means this, and I think this means that, and then you have to ask yourself, does that way of thinking

00:21:23.300 or the meaning that you've attached to it serve you? And exactly, you know, I know a lot of people,

00:21:27.440 for example, who've gone through pain and hardship and it will completely cripple them because the

00:21:33.200 meaning is this is happening to me. I'm a victim. There's nothing I can do about it. It's,

00:21:37.340 it's not empowering versus, okay, here's some negative situations. And it sounds like from your

00:21:42.780 perspective, you've taken those outside circumstances and said, okay, well, I'm going to attach positivity,

00:21:47.680 positive meaning to it and actually use this as fuel to enhance and improve my life.

00:21:52.380 Yeah. But it took me a minute to get there. Like I had my fair share of victim, victim mentality,

00:21:57.100 you know? I mean, even when I joined the Marine, so I had, it took me about a year and a half to

00:22:00.660 get in. Cause I have a blood disorder that two doctors told me would kill me in bootcamp.

00:22:03.640 So I had this blood disorder. I had flat feet. I have scoliosis. I'm like a genetic fuck up,

00:22:08.340 you know? So, so I like, when I first enlisted now, I want one hand I was, I was going to go in

00:22:13.540 the Marines no matter what. But I remember thinking back then like, shit, I'm never going

00:22:17.340 to be that fit. I got this blood disorder, basically transports less oxygen through my

00:22:20.620 body. So I was kind of, you know, victim, woe is me. And I mean, obviously I survived bootcamp,

00:22:25.720 but I ended up graduating infantry school as an honor graduate of my platoon. So that's when it

00:22:29.100 started to shift. You know, I started to say, okay, this is not a barrier. This is an opportunity.

00:22:32.940 It's like today I'm obviously, you know, I'm an ultra runner just blasted just two days ago,

00:22:37.380 man, I ran 50 miles around my cul-de-sac, you know? So I do a lot of crazy stuff. And now having this stuff

00:22:43.240 to me is just an opportunity to transcend the struggle. And that's what it's all about.

00:22:47.440 And even after I came back from the war though, I went through my woe is me phase with the drinking

00:22:50.500 and all that, you know, like a few years after coming back, that's when I was diagnosed with

00:22:53.740 PTSD, struggle with depression. I mean, I was at a point, like I said, just drinking a bottle a day,

00:22:58.200 you know? And I mean, one morning after like five days of binge drinking, I woke up and was

00:23:02.880 minutes, seconds away from picking up a knife and slitting my own wrist. And I just, because I got in this

00:23:09.320 mindset that, you know, like life sucks. I didn't want to be here. I wanted to go back.

00:23:13.140 You know, just that whole victim mindset about my, my, my circumstances. And I had to go through

00:23:18.840 the battle, like climb out of that abyss one step at a time to reframe my experiences. And even the

00:23:24.320 survivor's guilt to find meaning in that. And the guilt never went away. You know, the guilt,

00:23:28.380 I mean, now I've processed it a lot, but for a long time, what I did was I had a picture of

00:23:32.720 kneeling me up on my wall and it said, this should have been you earned this life. And I used this as

00:23:39.080 fuel to help me write my book, Fear of Anna, to finish it, to share this message with the

00:23:42.980 world. But it didn't like the guilt didn't go away only very recently. I mean, a few months ago that

00:23:48.340 I changed it from this should have been, you earned this life to honor his death, earn this life.

00:23:52.820 Because the guilt was kind of going too far at that point.

00:23:55.860 Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, it sounds like when, so when you were at that point, you were drunk,

00:24:00.340 you were hung over, you were completely medicated on alcohol, maybe drugs, I don't know.

00:24:04.460 And you were going to kill yourself at this point. Like what, what's the first thing that you did?

00:24:10.940 Because if somebody looks at you now, they'd probably say, okay, well, this is a guy who's

00:24:14.260 got some things figured out. This is somebody who has control over his emotions, who understands how

00:24:19.740 to harness fear. But that's a road, right? And so I think a lot of the times we just don't see it.

00:24:26.400 We don't see like how you go from somewhere where you're in complete desperation and despair

00:24:31.100 to the point where you want to end your life too. Yeah. Hey, I've got some things figured out.

00:24:35.320 So like, what is it that you did first? Yeah. To build upon who you are.

00:24:40.040 Yeah. Roger that. No, first thing was the first, very first thing was the shock that the thought

00:24:45.200 even entered my head. I mean, I had gone through the binge drinking session before, but never had

00:24:48.980 I thought about, I mean, seriously consider taking my life. So it was just, it was just shocking that

00:24:54.080 holy shit, I entered a state where I actually wanted to kill myself. That was jarring. That kind of

00:24:59.100 worked me out of the stupor, if you will. And very first thing I still remember, man, I walked

00:25:03.640 upstairs, walk, saw my wife in bed and I was just this kind of shame that. Oh, so you were,

00:25:09.960 so you were married at that point. I was married at the time. Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah.

00:25:14.060 You know, we had a, we had a good marriage. I mean, I wasn't abusive or anything like that. Most of my

00:25:17.540 drinking would be sneaking at night, you know, like, like for example, we'd be watching a movie

00:25:20.860 together. Maybe I'd have a beer or two. And then she always knew I was always been kind of in a bit of

00:25:24.460 night out, night out. So she'd go to bed early and that's when, you know, that I'd have bottles

00:25:28.860 hidden under the sink, that kind of thing, you know? And so we had a good marriage, but I was

00:25:33.160 just, I was doing as much as I could to hide it. Obviously, eventually it's, it becomes harder and

00:25:36.980 harder as you go deeper into it. Yeah. But yeah, just, I remember the very first thing was just

00:25:40.880 seeing that, seeing her in bed, sleeping there, feeling this kind of shame that I had hit such

00:25:46.480 a low moment. And that was kind of the trigger that started my climb because I, you know, climbed back

00:25:52.060 out of the dark, but like, to your point, it wasn't a smooth ride. I drank after that. It wasn't

00:25:56.040 like, that was the last time I ever drank. I slipped back down after that. You know,

00:25:59.380 that wasn't even the moment that I decided to go sober. I didn't even think about that. Like,

00:26:03.060 it was just like, you know, something clearly needs to change. At that point, I realized,

00:26:07.180 you know, the fact that I hit such a low. So what I, what I started doing was going a little deeper

00:26:11.240 into re understanding my brain under research in neuroscience, researching psychology,

00:26:16.560 researching spirituality. At this point, by the way, I was already seeing a therapist. I was

00:26:20.200 seeing the VA therapist because what inspired that was I, my, my wife and I were,

00:26:24.540 I was having physical issues, like sexually, I couldn't, you know, I couldn't get it up. And I,

00:26:28.560 it wasn't a physical issue. It was a psychological one. So my wife is like, let's go like find out

00:26:32.440 what's going on, you know, so we went to the VA therapist. And that's when we kind of started

00:26:35.840 processing some stuff. That's when they diagnosed me and all that. But I felt like that wasn't working.

00:26:41.460 They were, I mean, great people, loving people, super wanting to help. I mean, nothing but respect.

00:26:46.740 But as I've come to learn through my own research now, just operating from a very bad playbook,

00:26:50.760 you know, the current models on mental health, in my opinion, are deeply flawed.

00:26:54.540 Generally speaking for many areas, but anyway, so I started kind of delving into it myself, like

00:26:58.420 studying neuroscience, studying psychology, studying spirituality. And it was this slow

00:27:03.220 climb, you know, figuring out things, understanding, like to your point, reframing meanings.

00:27:08.100 I had to bring that stuff. I had to bring the darkness to the, into the conscious, you know,

00:27:13.020 because I hadn't been like, I hadn't processed my survivor's guilt. I hadn't even really thought

00:27:16.580 about Neil. That shit was just buried. You know, one of my favorite quotes that really summarizes

00:27:20.140 this Carl Jung says that until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life.

00:27:24.540 And you will call it fate. Hmm. So most of us are like, that shit is buried back there. Right?

00:27:30.320 So now I had to bring it into the consciousness and that stuff is dark, man. Processing that stuff

00:27:35.460 is hard. It's intense, but you've got to go into those spaces. He also says something beautiful

00:27:39.780 and profound, which I absolutely love. He says, one does not become enlightened by imagining figures

00:27:44.060 of light, but by making the darkness conscious. So you've got to make that darkness conscious.

00:27:49.280 Right. And I started doing that. Exactly. You've got to face it. And I slowly, but surely started

00:27:55.000 facing it, you know, had my slip ups. And that for a little while, I actually learned to moderate

00:27:59.840 alcohol. And, uh, then what would happen as I was kind of got okay with it, but every once in a while,

00:28:04.800 a trigger would hit. And then I'd binge and I'm like, finally, I just realized, look, dude,

00:28:08.080 you're not good at moderation. I mean, everything about my life has kind of proven that over and over

00:28:12.500 again. So I was like, let's just stop this nonsense, you know? Uh, and that's when I finally

00:28:18.460 made making the decision was the start. And, um, and then, you know, shifting my habit patterns,

00:28:24.000 creating a worthy struggle, as I like to call it, like having a path, I call it your, your worthy

00:28:28.940 struggle, you know, having that fight, having that war to still fight. I mean, that war might've been

00:28:33.060 over, but the war never ends, man. Like there's always a worthy war to fight, you know? So finding

00:28:37.260 and living and loving that worthy war kind of became everything. I like that. Yeah. I talk about life

00:28:42.280 in the context of, of battle and just being a battle. And it's funny because you hear people

00:28:46.020 say, Oh, what battle, what battle are you fighting? I'm like everything, battle with my wife, the battle

00:28:51.040 of raising my kids, the battle of Corona virus, the battle of growing a business, the battle of

00:28:56.300 rejection, the battle of wanting to eat all the chips and salsa and ice cream and not doing it. Like

00:29:01.800 everything's a battle, you know? And, and, and, and I don't want life to be grinding, but what I

00:29:07.260 appreciate about what you've done is taken it to the extreme so that, and this goes back to your

00:29:13.060 earlier point about college kids whining about nothing. And I'm not saying all of them do. I'm

00:29:16.980 saying the ones you had exposure to there, it goes back to that, that idea that it's perspective,

00:29:23.520 right? Like if you had, if you had been to war, you wouldn't be complaining that your professor

00:29:29.160 gave you a B because you turned your paper in two days late. Right. That's not what you would be

00:29:35.400 complaining about. Yeah. If you ran a marathon or an ultra marathon, you wouldn't be complaining

00:29:40.660 about having to run, you know, a hundred yards. It's all about that perspective. So it seems to me

00:29:46.300 what you've done is let's take it to the extreme mindset, physicality. That way, when I'm dealing

00:29:53.780 with like real life, it's not going to cripple me. It's not going to derail me because I've already

00:29:59.600 developed the fortitude to overcome these, these things that really aren't that big an issue.

00:30:04.080 Absolutely, brother. Absolutely. Like to me, you venture out on these edges, you know,

00:30:08.740 you venture out on the extremes and the extremes of all, like I call it the power, this, this concept

00:30:13.080 I call the paradox of singular duality. And the idea in life is that all these dualities, right?

00:30:18.220 Suffering and bliss, darkness and light, life and death, uh, ego and humility, contentment and

00:30:23.700 discontentment. There's all these dualities and exploring the very edges of the human experience

00:30:29.480 of the human condition, pushing far into each duality allows you to then figure out where on

00:30:34.760 that line you sit. So for example, I kind of realized in my life, I was taking the suffering

00:30:39.520 too far and almost getting suffering unnecessarily in every area of my life. So I started delving

00:30:45.340 more into the duality of play, you know, doing lighter shit, like embracing that. And now I'm

00:30:50.620 always going to be somebody who will venture more into the suffering side, but by exploring the edges,

00:30:55.160 you kind of find out where you want to lie on those edges, but you can't find that out by being

00:31:00.020 in the mundane. What is, you said that you said the duality of suffering, but then what would be

00:31:04.340 the, what would be the other side of that? Yeah. You said duality. Oh, play, play. Okay. I just,

00:31:09.720 I just didn't hear you. So I was like, yeah. Yeah. I call it play. You can kind of call it anything,

00:31:13.640 but like every duality, you know, the problem in life and the whole ethos of even fear of Ana is a

00:31:17.480 duality, right? Fear and Nirvana, two seemingly contradictory ideas. They often are framed as opposites. This fear is

00:31:22.920 something bad, but it's not bad. No duality is bad. Stress and recovery. You need both. You need stress

00:31:29.060 just as you need recovery, but we live in a world that demonizes one side of that shit, right? Like

00:31:33.500 fear is bad. Be fearless. You know, uh, don't be scared. Don't stress out, manage stress. Even ego.

00:31:39.480 If you look at the duality of ego and humility, people say ego is bad. Ego is the enemy. And that's

00:31:44.620 nonsense. I mean, the best athletes in the world are the greatest examples of this. Tom Brady, when he was

00:31:49.280 selected for the Patriots said he told the owner, I'm the best decision this organization's ever

00:31:52.700 made. You know, Muhammad Ali used to go say, tell the world I'm the greatest. Like you have to have

00:31:57.440 ego. You have to own your greatness. And that ego is channeled with humility. Athletes are again,

00:32:02.180 a great example. They have the humility to be relentless learners to say, I don't know this.

00:32:06.580 How can I keep improving? How can I keep taking to the next level? So on all these dualities,

00:32:10.400 it's not a bad or a good. There are ultimately no bad or good emotions or bad or good experiences.

00:32:16.040 There's only emotions and there's only experiences and we can do anything we want with them to your

00:32:19.940 point about creating meaning. So guilt, for example, everybody told me don't feel guilty

00:32:23.960 to this day. Guilt is a quote unquote bad emotion, but it's not man. Like my guilt was my greatest

00:32:29.360 fuel, you know? And then again, I took it too far. So I learned to kind of bring it back.

00:32:33.720 So you got to explore the edges. That's why got coming back to the, I mean, external war is one

00:32:38.680 thing, exploring the edges of the human experience, but even the internal war is where you find that

00:32:42.580 those edges of running ultra marathons or even like, I mean, that's one of the reasons why I go to

00:32:46.580 these places like working with post-com, you know, working with victims of sex trafficking in India

00:32:50.900 to former child soldiers in Liberia, you see humanity at the edges, man. And it's a, it's,

00:32:56.700 it's, it's challenging because sometimes that darkness will stay with you and you have to deal

00:33:01.280 with that. But to me, it's like, there's no, there's no better way to live than exploring the

00:33:05.960 very edges of the human condition, man. Yeah. Well, not only that, it shows you what's possible,

00:33:09.980 but I think exploring the edges, like you're talking about, let's take an ultra marathon.

00:33:13.420 Yeah. It's not about the ultra marathon. I mean, that's, that's good. And again,

00:33:18.980 I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but from my perspective, when I've done challenging

00:33:21.920 things, physically, emotionally, all these types of things, it isn't about the activity itself.

00:33:26.460 It's about the lesson I learned using the running or the fighting or the whatever as a metaphor

00:33:32.260 for everything else I need to accomplish in my life. All the internal struggles I'm dealing with.

00:33:36.660 Yeah. A hundred percent agree, man. A hundred percent. Every, every battle, like the, the old,

00:33:41.340 whether it be running ultras, skiing across ice caps, you know, the spending seven days in darkness,

00:33:46.320 it's all bringing the lessons, bringing new awakenings, you know, like it's like you got

00:33:50.360 to stretch and then reflect. So you stretch and then you come back and reflect and you take the

00:33:54.240 lessons and you bring it into the next fight. You get, but you only, you're only going to gain an

00:33:57.960 awakening when you stretch yourself outside what you currently know. You have to shatter the current

00:34:03.340 paradigms because what got you here is not going to get you there, wherever there is. Right. So

00:34:07.660 you have to stretch and then come back and reflect and apply that, take in the awakening,

00:34:11.900 apply to the next lesson. And so that's why I'm always seeking. Yeah. I like the idea of reflection

00:34:16.360 because I think a lot of people don't look at that. Like they take these quote unquote negative

00:34:19.560 emotions and I use quotations because we're taught and I believe that there is nothing negative.

00:34:23.660 It's just feedback for you. Yeah. Guilt is feedback. Anger is feedback. And then you've got to

00:34:28.460 figure out why you're guilty, why you're angry and then fix it. Right. Um,

00:34:33.340 but I think what people do is they'll do one of two things. They'll take it to the unhealthy

00:34:37.100 extremes and they won't reflect on it and let it serve them. They let it hinder them

00:34:40.580 or they won't even acknowledge it all. So like you hear things like fear is false evidence appearing

00:34:45.780 real. I'm like, no, fear is real. Like there's, it's a real phenomenon. Like there's real things

00:34:52.520 happening in your body and the chemistry of your brain that are causing. And if you're pretending

00:34:57.280 like it doesn't exist, that that's not helping you. Like you've got to acknowledge it and say,

00:35:02.340 okay, is this thing going to kill me? And if it is, then maybe you ought to avoid it.

00:35:07.360 Or is this thing just going to make me feel uncomfortable for a period of time? And am I

00:35:12.100 willing to deal with the uncomfort or discomfort in order to have some sort of benefit or gain

00:35:19.960 on the other side of it? Yeah, absolutely. No. And, and, and I think to you, to your point

00:35:24.100 is that because the world feeds this paradigm on these bad emotions, quote unquote, people,

00:35:30.160 people, people, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? People start to believe that

00:35:33.800 they shouldn't feel fear because this, that, and the other quote unquote experts said, you know,

00:35:38.280 you should be fearless. Like I was talking to one dude once who said, I'm just waiting for the fear

00:35:41.920 to go away so I can quit my job and start my business. And I was like, that's your problem,

00:35:46.060 man. You're waiting for the fear. I mean, I can see your facial. You'll be waiting forever.

00:35:48.800 I was like, yeah, you'll be waiting forever. Like that shit is scary. Who cares? I mean,

00:35:52.580 it's not about waiting for the fear to go away. You know, confidence, like I was like,

00:35:56.180 let's say confidence is the result, not the fuel. But we, we, we live in a world that creates all

00:36:00.140 kinds of paradigms about how to be and who we should be and how we respond to the world. I mean,

00:36:04.800 even look at PTSD, for example, there's this great study that Dr. Martin Seligman did,

00:36:08.720 one of the leading researchers in positive psychology. He went into West Point and asked

00:36:12.060 the cadets, how many of you have heard the word post-traumatic stress disorder? And it was 90,

00:36:16.860 95%. And then he asked them, how many of you have heard the word post-traumatic growth?

00:36:21.180 It was less than 5%. And what happens? We've created a self-fulfilling prophecy. And you

00:36:26.880 probably experienced this, man, as a veteran, when somebody finds out I'm a veteran, there's,

00:36:31.000 and I get this coming from a place of love, you know, but it's almost like this, oh, poor you,

00:36:35.900 you're probably all kinds of fucked in the head. You know what I mean? There's this sense of pity,

00:36:40.240 like poor me that, you know, you know, woe is me. I'm, I'm poor veteran guy. There's this paradigm

00:36:45.900 that's created that war equals disorder or trauma equals disorder. And in my own healing,

00:36:50.040 I started to learn that post-traumatic stress does not mean post-traumatic stress disorder.

00:36:54.680 Like survivor's guilt is a normal human response to losing people we love. It's not just veterans.

00:36:58.600 Anybody who loses somebody we love, we often ask why, why them, not me, or being jumpy when

00:37:03.800 there's loud noises. That's not a disorder. That's a normal human response. That's a human reaction.

00:37:08.140 Exactly. I mean, we spent seven months in a war zone where my brain said loud noises equals death. So

00:37:12.820 fucking be ready. If loud noises comes, that could be death, but that they use those symptoms to say

00:37:18.060 this equates to disorder. So simply by removing the label was one of the tools that helped me

00:37:23.480 look like none of this, all this stuff going on. It's not a disorder. It's a normal human response.

00:37:27.600 Cause then what I can do is I can let go of the judgment attached to it. You know what I mean?

00:37:31.200 The problem is not the, not, not that fear. It's not the jumpiness of loud noises. It's then the

00:37:36.120 judgment we get around that by letting go of that. I could be like, all right, cool. This is just there.

00:37:40.140 It's just normal. What do I do with it now?

00:37:42.060 Yeah. I think that's the point is like, yes, you can let go of the judgment and that's good. Cause you

00:37:46.600 aren't putting yourself under unnecessary scrutiny. Some scrutiny is good, but not unnecessarily.

00:37:52.520 Uh, but it's the fact that you can actually move on. Right. Because if I hear disorder, I'm like,

00:37:58.560 well, I got a disorder. That's why I'm screwed up. No, maybe you're just making bad choices.

00:38:03.600 That's nothing to do with your disorder. Maybe you're just dumb. Like you keep doing the same

00:38:07.480 things over and over again, expecting a different result. And it has nothing to do with any sort of like

00:38:11.820 disorder, you know, but then you let go of that. And then you, and then you put the power where it

00:38:16.840 belongs, which is not the disorder. The power is with you. Okay. So intentionally, look, I think

00:38:23.120 about, I think about stressful situations. I think about this conversation. If I don't change because

00:38:29.520 of this conversation, even to the slightest degree, then like, I guess my humanity is gone. Like we all,

00:38:36.900 we all respond to everything. People listening to this podcast, whether they're going outside and

00:38:43.540 going for a swim or a run today, like you, you, you, we have a corner here just outside. There's a lot

00:38:49.780 of accidents out there. Like if my kids don't see that and change their perspective about driving a

00:38:55.340 car, I would question whether or not they're human beings. Yeah. Of course that's going to change them

00:38:59.900 and it should change you. You should take that stimulus and respond differently in the future.

00:39:04.300 Yeah, absolutely, man. Like always be seeking, seeking that stimuli and, and then taking

00:39:09.900 responsibility for that. Like to your point, you know, you, you, you don't beat yourself up about

00:39:14.380 the emotions you don't control, but it's not just becoming that victim and woe is me, you know? So

00:39:18.860 in the sense that, you know, I like to call this the, the, the, the really a good way to kind of

00:39:23.040 put, put the ribbon on this is something that I call a second dart syndrome. So Buddha once said that

00:39:28.080 we're all stabbed by the two darts of suffering. So the first dart is the one I don't control. Like if I

00:39:32.300 stubbed my toe against the door, the toe hurts. The second dart is the one that when I start saying

00:39:37.100 things like, you know, why do bad things only happen to me? This door is stupid. House is stupid.

00:39:41.540 God hates me. This, that, and the other thing. And we do the same thing with our emotions. So

00:39:45.740 right now, if I'm sitting in this room and somebody shows up here with a gun, my brain's

00:39:49.200 going to respond with fear. That's a healthy response to a dangerous situation, right? Now the

00:39:54.080 question is that's the first dart, but what happens is many of us will feel fear. Like I've worked with

00:39:58.940 people in various contexts, they'll feel fear on a simple hike. Or I worked with one,

00:40:02.640 one guy who was felt fear for traveling to Iceland on his own. First time just going on a lone

00:40:06.540 vacation. Now he was feeling fear. And then, and the problem was he was judging himself. Like

00:40:10.440 what's wrong with me? Why am I feeling fear? Cause he may be, let's say, compare himself to me,

00:40:14.380 right? I'm working with him and I do a lot of these crazy shit, climbing in the Himalayas,

00:40:17.960 all kinds of dangerous stuff. And he's like, I'm, you know, you, you do that. I'm doing this.

00:40:22.160 Why am I feeling scared? But the problem is his brain didn't have the references. My brain did.

00:40:26.140 Like when I went climbing with my ex-wife, it was a very simple climb. So I felt no fear

00:40:30.620 because my brain was a, I was a climber. My brain didn't perceive this as a risk. She did. So what

00:40:35.560 happened was we came back from the climb and after we were in the car driving away, she started beating

00:40:40.240 herself up for feeling the fear. You know, what's wrong with me? I shouldn't have felt fear. You

00:40:44.020 weren't scared. And that's the problem. So you got to watch those second darts. I call the second.

00:40:48.800 So every time, you know, feel the emotion, whatever it is, who cares? Like, I don't care if fear shows up

00:40:53.320 now in any context, fear, anxiety, stress, whatever, let it show up. Then notice the second

00:40:58.300 dart in response, in response to that. And that's where you got to really take responsibility for

00:41:03.180 that shit. Because we currently live in a culture where it is so alluring to be the victim, man. It

00:41:07.720 is so alluring to be the victim. Because if I'm the victim, then, you know, like, oh, it's, I got the

00:41:12.340 disorder. I got this label that now there's been told. So I can't do this because of this,

00:41:17.300 that, and the other label that's been assigned to me. And shit, man, like the victim mentality

00:41:24.280 and this idea that, oh, I can't do this because this person said I had this mental health disorder.

00:41:28.740 And we get trapped in that because it's so alluring. It just feels comfortable. I'm a victim.

00:41:33.180 That's why I can't do it. Because the other option is shit, I got to take responsibility.

00:41:36.860 And that's fucking hard, man.

00:41:39.960 Men, as I do every single week, I want to hit the pause button on the conversation really quickly.

00:41:44.240 The iron council guys continues to grow as more and more men are seeing the power of what we're

00:41:49.420 doing by banding with other men who are willing to hold each other accountable to accomplishing the

00:41:55.540 most out of their lives. We just had Jack Donovan join us this morning for one of our exclusive iron

00:42:00.760 council sessions. And we're in the process of bringing on more incredible men to join us for

00:42:07.500 our exclusive weekly calls. So you'll definitely want to get in on those. In addition to that,

00:42:12.620 we're going to give you the framework and the network to transform your life from what you've

00:42:17.120 always wanted to what you're actually experiencing. And that is our whole objective. It's to bridge the

00:42:24.580 gap between what you know you should be doing. And if I know you and the guys that listen,

00:42:30.300 you have ambitions, you have goals, you have desires, you have a vision for your future life.

00:42:34.340 We want to help you bridge the gap between that and what you're going to be experiencing

00:42:38.940 through your actions and then holding you accountable to those actions, giving you the

00:42:43.260 roadmap and teaching you the strategies and systems that transform from thinking to doing

00:42:49.580 to experiencing. So if you want to learn more about the iron council and lock in your spot,

00:42:55.540 then join us at order of man.com slash iron council. Again, that's order of man.com slash iron

00:43:02.280 council. You'll want to do that right after this conversation, but for now, let's get back to it.

00:43:07.280 It is. But you know, like once you step out of that victim mentality,

00:43:12.200 you begin to realize like how repulsive it is. Oh, I 100% agree. And look, and here's the thing.

00:43:18.120 When I say things like that, people are like, Oh, you're not being very empathetic. No,

00:43:21.000 that has nothing to do with the fact that there are genuine victims out there. I believe that there

00:43:26.260 are, but what I have a problem with is somebody who a chooses to remain perpetually a victim or makes

00:43:34.980 themselves into some sort of victim or martyr that they're not exactly that, that to me is a

00:43:42.080 problem. And you're right. Somebody will always come in and rescue these people. And the other

00:43:45.520 thing I see is there's this weird thought where people have begun to conflate victimhood with

00:43:52.880 virtuous living. Like if I come from a shitty situation or background, then I am inherently

00:43:58.220 virtuous. No, you just came from a bad situation. The only thing virtuous is overcoming it,

00:44:04.420 not coming from it.

00:44:06.320 Yeah. No, I love the way you put that, man. Love the way you put that. It's what you do with it.

00:44:10.620 Me and my Marine buddy, we're just talking about that the other day. Like, you know,

00:44:12.860 just going to war doesn't make you some fucking hero. And I don't claim to be like some hero by any

00:44:16.540 stretch of the imagination either. You know, like we went into war with the, after coming back,

00:44:21.760 we had a very different perspective on, let's say this, that, the other medal or something.

00:44:24.960 This again, not to talk trash about veterans, obviously, but it's like, it like just experiencing

00:44:29.700 to your point, you, the virtue is transcending the struggle, experiencing that and, and rising

00:44:33.700 from it. And like, dude, some of the most extreme examples of this, I've seen these young women who

00:44:38.020 I totally work with, you know, in India, some of them are victims of sex trafficking or daughters

00:44:41.240 of sex workers. I mean, they've been through hell and back, like rape multiple times, just every,

00:44:46.880 and these are young kids, like 12, 13, 14 year old girls. It is fucking awful what they have been

00:44:52.960 through. And some of these girls, man, like they've come out, like one of them is now a Zumba

00:44:57.120 instructor. She's teaching Zumba to these young kids in slums in India. And like the smile she gets

00:45:02.680 from teaching these young kids and the, the, they, they are not victims in the sense that they don't

00:45:08.040 let this break them. And to me, I mean, they're some of the most inspiring. I go there often to

00:45:12.140 teach them fear of Ana, but I mean, they inspire the shit out of me. Like they have all the reasons in

00:45:16.780 the world to be victim. They have seen at a younger, at a young age, what no human being should go

00:45:20.680 through, man. Like it's absolute human evil at its worst. And they come out of that and say,

00:45:25.560 I'm better off for this. Not to say that obviously we want that to anybody. It happened now. I'm

00:45:30.680 better off for it. And I'm going to use that. And I'm going to, and then the way they're using this

00:45:34.380 to do all kinds of great things. Some of them have gotten scholarships in all kinds of colleges all

00:45:37.760 over the world, teaching Zumba, going out there, starting like working with nonprofits. I mean,

00:45:42.160 they're just some of those incredible human beings I've ever come across, man.

00:45:45.880 Yeah. It's, it's pretty incredible to see individuals who have overcome just amazing

00:45:50.860 and insurmountable odds and what they choose to do with themselves and then see others. And look,

00:45:55.180 I've fallen prey to this is see others who come from a relatively good background, you know,

00:46:00.300 had to worry about food or a roof over their head. And some of these people are the, like the

00:46:06.020 biggest complainers that we, that we know it's like, what are you complaining about?

00:46:11.300 Well, that's the paradox of the world today, right? Because the things are getting more

00:46:14.260 comfortable, softer, and easier. We're much worse than we've ever been. Like there's beauty

00:46:18.120 and struggle. We need to experience adversity. Evolutionary speaking, we lived in a world where

00:46:22.360 survival was a constant threat. And now with this, there's a, there's this double-edged sword to,

00:46:27.200 to, to not having to worry about survival. It's a luxury and a burden because now you have the burden

00:46:31.920 of pondering the existential meaning of why we are alive. And that leads us to all kinds of spaces,

00:46:37.120 unless we consume ourselves to your point about the battle and the war. I mean, just like you said,

00:46:41.840 some people, when I talk about things being a battle or a war, they're like, no, they find

00:46:45.540 that too intense, right? That language. But to your point, it is a fucking battle, man. Everything

00:46:49.380 is a battle. Our mind is going through internal battles, whether we like it or not. So you might

00:46:53.860 as well make that shit conscious and seek out that worthy struggle. You know, that's the, that's the

00:46:57.900 problem is that we're, we're getting softer. And I mean, everything about the culture, like everything,

00:47:02.060 we live in a world that feeds the easiest way to get to the result. You know, you'll see this shit like

00:47:05.720 walk 14 minutes a day and get six pack abs, you know? And, and it's missing the whole point.

00:47:10.660 It's not even about the six pack abs. It's not about getting the, or all this shit. You've seen

00:47:15.060 this online. Here's the quickest, easiest way to make a million dollars. It's missing the point,

00:47:18.940 man. It's about the struggle that gets us there. But the mentality is how do we get there as quick?

00:47:23.920 So we want the quickest, easiest path to get there, right? Everything. We want the quickest,

00:47:28.220 easiest path. The other day I was chatting with somebody, I think it was an interview and somebody

00:47:30.720 was asking me like, he gave me a specific scenario. You know, what if somebody going through a divorce,

00:47:34.460 what would you tell them? And my point was, regardless of the scenario you give me,

00:47:38.120 you give me any scenario. The fundamental problem is we are looking for the easiest way out of that

00:47:43.480 scenario. We think when I get there, wherever there is million dollars out of this divorce,

00:47:48.220 whatever the bear is, then I'll be happy. But you won't, you will experience new problems. So I

00:47:53.040 always like to frame it in the context saying progress is not the elimination of problems.

00:47:56.700 Progress is the creation of new problems. So seek out new problems, look for new problems,

00:48:00.600 because they're fucking coming whether you like it or not. So embrace that, seek it out.

00:48:04.300 Yeah. I think of it in the context of a relationship, you know, somebody who goes

00:48:07.960 through, through a separation or a divorce and they don't fix the underlying issues. Well,

00:48:12.640 you're probably going to get married again. And guess what? You're going to fall in love with this

00:48:15.680 woman and you're going to get divorced again. And you're going to now, now what you're going to do

00:48:19.260 is instead of saying, what's wrong with me, you're going to start thinking all women are

00:48:23.900 bitches and all women are evil. And then you're going to start externalizing

00:48:27.960 like the lowest common denominator in all of your relationships, which was you.

00:48:33.700 You're the only one in common here. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, that comes back to,

00:48:38.200 you know, taking a hundred percent responsibility, man. You always got to be asking yourself

00:48:41.100 what, like taking own, owning your world, owning your reality. Ultimately, there's only two things

00:48:45.940 you can control. So just to simplify, you can control either your actions or your attitude.

00:48:49.540 So always be looking at what can I control here? Like in a war zone, which, you know, you've been,

00:48:53.360 we, we granted, we may have chosen to go there, but once there, I can't control my actions for the

00:48:57.540 most part in the sense that I can be dead tired and not want to go out on a mission. But if my

00:49:00.880 major says, get your ass out there, you're going on a mission. You know what I mean? So you don't

00:49:04.240 have that freedom. So you, but you can control your attitude. And I learned that even in Iraq for

00:49:08.700 the, I mean, I was miserable for the first two months in the war. And then I said, look, I can sit

00:49:11.480 here and bitch, whine and complain, or I can just embrace it. It is going to be what I was going to be

00:49:14.920 and learn to love it, you know? So you can control your actions or your attitude. So always be asking

00:49:19.240 yourself, what can I control here? And if you're not in some extreme scenario, you, you have the luxury to

00:49:24.100 control both more often than not. And if you don't, then okay, ask myself. So I always like

00:49:28.740 to also say, you know, so let's say for example of a divorce, I'm in a relationship that's not going

00:49:32.560 well. I could either leave or, or, or go, you know, or stay in this relationship. Now, either path is

00:49:38.320 going to have some hardship. So the question to always be asking is which struggle am I willing to

00:49:43.020 endure? The thing is, it's not about which passion to follow. It's about which struggle am I willing to

00:49:48.060 endure in any context with this job I hate, you know, or, or stay in it, you know, quit a job to start a

00:49:53.180 business or stay in this job. Either path is going to have struggle, which struggle do you want to

00:49:57.120 endure? And then once you embark upon that path, ask yourself, what can I control my actions and my

00:50:01.460 attitude, but always bring it back to you, always be bringing it back to you. And then once again,

00:50:05.480 to give it some structure, you know, as you're on this path of growth, there's only two ways to grow.

00:50:10.100 So when you're doing this, always be looking for these two things, find the problem, fix the problem,

00:50:14.760 find what's working and do more of it. So always be looking for that problem, find the problem,

00:50:18.900 fix the problem. As an example, you know, I just, as I mentioned two days ago, I ran 50 miles around my

00:50:22.980 cul-de-sac just going around this damn 0.05 mile loop, psychological torture. And, uh, and my legs

00:50:30.480 were killing me. My legs were killing me, you know, now granted there's going to be pain running a 50

00:50:34.760 mile or no matter what, but I, but I was looking, okay, what's the one specific problem? One gap at

00:50:39.000 a time. Cause there's millions of gaps always in our lives. What's the one gap? Okay. You know what?

00:50:42.980 I got to strengthen my legs. I got to spend more time doing single leg squats, single leg deadlifts,

00:50:47.400 get in the gym more. Cause I'm always going to choose running over gym times. You know, I love running,

00:50:51.080 but now it's like, okay, that's the gap. So find the problem, fix the problem and then find what's

00:50:55.640 working and do more of it. So it, it takes a good bit of strength in my mindset to be able to run 50

00:51:01.000 miles around a 0.05 mile loop. I can celebrate that shit. I can own it. I can tap into my ego and

00:51:05.960 be like, great. Okay, cool. Now how do I take it to the next level? That's it. All growth is those two

00:51:10.180 things and keep looking for those two things. It's interesting. And you talk about in this context,

00:51:13.920 you're talking about running versus the gym. And what it's reminding me of is that all of us are

00:51:18.360 individual too. Like we have to look at this as an individual journey because for me, you're talking

00:51:22.560 about running over the gym. I'm like, hell no, I would much rather go into the gym than run at all.

00:51:28.900 And I'm not right or wrong. You're not right or wrong. Yeah, exactly. I probably could stand some

00:51:33.840 more running. You could probably stand some more, maybe strength training or something. So it's all

00:51:38.720 individual, but I do want to go back to something you said, and I'm taking notes here. And we were

00:51:42.880 talking about hardship and how in modern times, we just don't have it. This is why we need to

00:51:48.520 manufacture hardship. Like you're talking about running across Liberia or whatever.

00:51:54.620 A thousand years ago, there was people, they were actually going across Liberia because they had to,

00:52:03.420 right? To stay alive or to find some new place. Or they were under threat of a neighboring tribe or a

00:52:10.120 village. And now you're talking about doing it like for fun, but that is, yeah, you know what I'm

00:52:17.040 saying? No, totally. But let me say it this way. You're doing it not out of necessity. Exactly.

00:52:24.320 Right. Other people were doing it out of necessity. So because we live in these relatively easy times,

00:52:30.960 we need to manufacture hardship that other people may have just had to deal with out of necessity.

00:52:39.080 They had to or die. Yeah. We, I mean, I could not agree with you more. We got to seek out that war.

00:52:44.800 You know, we got to seek out a war to fight always because one, if you don't seek out a worthy

00:52:49.540 struggle, struggle is going to find you anyway. We are going to go through struggle one way or another,

00:52:54.480 but if you seek out a worthy struggle, now you're conscious, now you're pursuing it. Now you're

00:52:58.300 engaged in it. It's your fight. It's a fight of your choosing. And that's how you grow. I mean,

00:53:03.320 the human animal evolves through stress. So we absolutely need to seek out that suffering.

00:53:07.920 And that's, I mean, that's where all the learning lies and it doesn't have to be, again,

00:53:11.340 it doesn't have to be running ultra marathons. It could be anything. I mean, it's just seek out

00:53:15.740 your own version. After joining the Marines, I started looking for it in every context. So I

00:53:18.800 went mountaineering, I went ice diving, ice climbing, caving. I had diarrhea in a cave once

00:53:25.220 after 12 hours in there. That was horrible. Spent a month dragging 190 pounds sled across an ice cap.

00:53:29.760 So I was looking for, you know, all kinds of ways to suffer, but it's in that, that you find the

00:53:35.420 evolution. Not to mention, it also trains you to handle the suck of life, that life throws,

00:53:39.900 you know, life throws you curveballs. And now you're falling in love with suffering. The value

00:53:43.800 in seeking out that suffering, seeking out that war, is it teaches you to build a positive

00:53:47.420 relationship to it. And that is fundamentally the most important skill to master. Any other skill,

00:53:52.380 the most important skill to master is a positive relationship with suffering. Because if you can

00:53:55.880 suffer well, like that's my kind of mantra is suffer well, then you can not only face the challenges

00:54:00.800 of whatever you want to pursue, building a business, writing a book, running a marathon,

00:54:04.860 whatever the goals you want to pursue, it will be struggle along the way. You can face those

00:54:09.000 challenges, but you can also handle the suffering that life throws your way. Because you will start

00:54:13.240 to fall in love with the process of overcoming struggle, of engaging struggle, as opposed to looking

00:54:18.880 at it as a barrier. And this kind of leads to another context about how our modern world is shaped.

00:54:24.020 You know, we, we look at the pursuit of happiness as an ideal. And that causes us problems. Because

00:54:30.000 when we're looking at pursuing happiness, struggle and suffering becomes a barrier to the way of that

00:54:34.740 happiness. Instead of pursuing happiness, pursue meaning, pursue meaning, what is your mission? What

00:54:39.820 is your worthy fight? What is your worthy struggle? When you pursue meaning, and suffering is not a barrier,

00:54:44.660 it's not an impediment, it's not an obstacle to that thing. It's a part of the adventure. It's a it's a

00:54:49.140 it's a it's incorporated into the adventure. It's a learning part of the adventure. Whereas if you're

00:54:52.500 only looking to be happy and comfortable, then any kind of suffering is a barrier to that. And that's

00:54:57.160 why we struggle with suffering. But if you view it differently, now suffering, you fall in love with

00:55:01.820 the with the suck, you embrace the suck, as we all say in the military, right? Yeah, no, I like your

00:55:06.540 distinction of happiness, because you did use the term happiness in your book, turn fear into health,

00:55:11.700 wealth and happiness. And I actually wanted to ask you about that. Because I agree with your last

00:55:15.940 statement is like, I don't, I don't want to be happy. Like, I don't want to be happy. Because when I

00:55:21.960 think of happy, I think about, you know, like, I don't know, frolicking around on the beach. And

00:55:26.740 like, and I don't know, whatever, like, things that just don't really appeal to me. I want to be

00:55:31.960 fulfilled. Yeah. And in order, and I know, at least I've defined it this way, that in order to find

00:55:37.640 fulfillment in my life, I think you'd probably say meaning, maybe they're synonymous in the way

00:55:41.400 we're talking about it. Yeah, is that there, there has to, there has to be suffering, there has to be

00:55:47.440 a villain or an enemy or a dragon or however you want to look at it. Yeah. Because only you can

00:55:53.840 only find the meaning or the fulfillment in overcoming the hardship or slaying the dragon,

00:55:59.900 or again, however you choose to look at it. Yeah. Yeah. How do you know if something's worthy

00:56:03.920 though? How do you know if it's a worthy struggle? Because there's all kinds of things that we could

00:56:07.100 do and participate in. And people are asking me to do this and do that. Yeah. Like, how do you know

00:56:11.700 if this is something worthy of your, your time, attention and energy? Great question, man. You

00:56:17.280 know, part of it is you're going to learn along the experimentation, the journey of life. I mean,

00:56:20.800 there are those people who like, I have a friend, she's a super young under her twenties, and she's

00:56:24.800 about to become a grandmaster in chess. She just knew it at an early age. Good for her. Awesome. Like

00:56:29.660 best wishes. So some of us knew it. I didn't, I didn't have clarity on my fear of bound up path

00:56:34.220 till I was 33. I joined the Marines wanting to go career Marines, you know, that all that plan

00:56:38.560 obviously changed. So to some degree, the experimentation of life will take you along

00:56:43.620 that path. And you'll figure it out, you know, you'll, you'll get there as you figure it out.

00:56:48.400 But another good way to figure out is to look for references around you because our brain is always

00:56:52.340 operating in references anyway. So look at other people, look at the world. I mean, from a young

00:56:56.480 age, we're learning from the world around us, right? So look at the world. Who is, who are people

00:57:00.500 who are living a way you would want to live, like work backwards in the future. So start with looking at

00:57:04.620 the lifestyle. What are people, who are people kind of living the lifestyle you want to live? And, you know,

00:57:08.340 so some people, let's say, for example, you might want to travel a lot. You might, or other people

00:57:11.660 don't want to travel. They want to be at home with their family. Again, no right, wrong, bad about it.

00:57:15.560 But you look at how are, how are people living? Who are people living a kind of lifestyle? And you

00:57:19.360 start looking at wherever you are on your journey, however old you are, start by thinking about things

00:57:23.580 you don't want, because it's often easier to know what we don't want than what we do want. So we start

00:57:28.200 plugging off. Okay. I don't want to run across fucking countries like Akshay, right? So I don't want to do

00:57:33.780 that nonsense. Yeah. I fall into that camp for sure. Roger that. Yeah. Scratch that off. Right.

00:57:39.460 And then you start, once you kind of have some sense of that, you start looking, okay, what do

00:57:42.520 you do? What are things I do want? And then you start looking, who are, who's doing that? Who are

00:57:46.200 people kind of living that lifestyle? And then you can look at, and I would start and really get

00:57:49.500 structured about this. I would start looking at, okay, what kind of jobs, quote unquote jobs. And I put

00:57:53.960 quote unquote, because for a while I wanted to be a mountain bum, which is not a job per se,

00:57:58.280 but I was going to be a sponsor. And I was looking to be a sponsored mountaineer and a mountain athlete,

00:58:02.020 you know? That sounds cool actually. Yeah. There was multiple reasons which I'm happy to get into

00:58:06.920 why I didn't chose that path. And I still mountain climb, but I didn't, I didn't choose to become a

00:58:10.400 sponsored mountaineer. I didn't work hard to pursue that path. So anyway, but I was, but you can look

00:58:15.200 at people who are doing that and then start looking what roles will get me there. Then you start looking

00:58:18.700 at those roles. You find out from those people, what are they doing? How are they doing it? Why are they

00:58:22.440 doing it? How do they think? What do they believe about the world? Like dig deep into the mindset

00:58:26.080 of these people to understand, you know, and then, then start pursuing a path or look at, okay,

00:58:31.080 these are my, let's say three paths. Now I've narrowed it down to, I'll start asking yourself

00:58:35.240 which, which struggle do I want to endure? So which each path is going to have some struggle.

00:58:39.900 Being a sponsored mountaineer would have been a struggle. Spending a career in the Marines would

00:58:43.040 have been a struggle. Now doing what I am doing now is a struggle. Which struggle am I willing to

00:58:46.880 endure? And once you get some sense of that, so this is where it's that constant stretch and reflect,

00:58:50.740 right? You're going to experience it. You have to go out there and do it too. Like whatever it is,

00:58:54.720 you got to go out there. Like you can listen to me on a podcast. You can listen to us. You can read a book.

00:58:59.100 That shit might provide sparks, but you got to get there and take action. And because the greatest

00:59:03.380 lessons are in the doing, like I could have read all the books in the military I wanted, but only

00:59:06.600 by joining the military did I learn about that life, right? And what it was. So you have to get

00:59:11.140 out there and get into the doing and then you'll start learning. So stretch and then reflect and

00:59:15.840 then figure out, okay, is this the struggle I'm willing to endure and fall in love with the struggle

00:59:19.700 and then become obsessed about that path. Another great, like another thing as you start pursuing it is

00:59:24.600 to really get clarity on who you are and who you want to be. I believe there's immense value. Like

00:59:29.040 companies do this, just have mission statements, vision statements. So have a personal mission

00:59:32.680 statement, have a personal vision statement, have a personal philosophy. Like I learned this from

00:59:36.720 this guy, Michael Gervais. I don't know if you know, he has a podcast, Finding Mastery. Awesome,

00:59:41.480 awesome dude. I do. I know the name, but anyways, keep going. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, he also was like

00:59:47.380 the mindset coach of the dude who did that rent Red Bull space jump, you know? Oh really?

00:59:51.460 Yeah. He's Michael Gervais. Awesome dude. Check it out. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing guy. Uh,

00:59:56.000 so anyway, he, he talks about how he helps people. He works with creative philosophy statement. So

01:00:00.100 one statement, one line under 25 words or less his, his model, which I really like. He says is

01:00:05.440 if somebody comes up to you in a dark alley and with a knife saying, tell me your philosophy,

01:00:09.340 you should know it like that. So my philosophy, for example, is the path to inner peace is the pursuit

01:00:14.460 of a worthy inner war. That is my philosophy. That's the ethos of what I believe the path to

01:00:18.940 inner peace is the pursuit of a worthy inner war. And you can see it, it stumbles off my,

01:00:22.260 like I just, that's who I am. So when you have that stuff narrowed down and this comes over time,

01:00:26.980 you might not know it. If you're listening right now, but like, I don't know what mine is.

01:00:29.680 You will see it gets refined as you go. Most people, myself included, haven't even ever

01:00:34.780 haven't thought about it. Exactly. Why would we have most people? Yeah, exactly. Most people haven't,

01:00:38.900 but getting clear on it has immense value because now that becomes your North star becomes your

01:00:43.420 compass. So I can ask myself, did I pursue a worthy war today? Did I do something in pursuit

01:00:48.640 of that worthy war? Right. And then I, you have that, the philosophy, I have a mission statement,

01:00:52.960 all of it. And that's kind of how you start to get a sense for it. And once you, once you,

01:00:56.460 once you know, like today, now I know this is who I am and nothing is going to change that. I'm that

01:01:00.340 clear because I've also experienced a great deal of life to get me here. Right. And now you gotta,

01:01:05.100 you gotta become obsessed and pursue mastery relentlessly on this path and embrace the suck of

01:01:09.520 it, you know, embrace the struggle of it. And it doesn't mean it's always a struggle. I know I talk a lot,

01:01:13.400 obviously I've probably said suffering and struggle. God knows how many times right now,

01:01:16.600 but you balance that shit out with recovery. It's the duality again. Right. So you balance the

01:01:20.940 stress with the recovery and the play, whatever that looks like for each of us. Yeah. Yeah. That

01:01:25.760 makes sense. Yeah. I, you know, I think what people are tempted to do is to dismiss what you're saying

01:01:33.820 because it requires some effort. It requires time. You know, people are like, well, no, really what I was

01:01:41.160 looking for is the three-step formula where I, in the next 30 minutes, I'd know my life's purpose.

01:01:46.860 Yeah. That would be lovely, you know, but, but in my experience, maybe somebody's found it in my

01:01:52.580 experience. And it sounds like yours that there is no three-step formula. It's basically explore a

01:01:59.180 bunch of stuff and then evaluate whether or not you like doing it. Yeah. That's very core. I'd like to

01:02:04.020 your point. Like some people might know it. I mean, I, you know, we have those friends that mentioned

01:02:06.820 this one. I have another, another kid I'm mentoring, 14 year old kid. It was a NASCAR driver. The dude's

01:02:11.120 like been racing since he was good walk, you know, he's going to be like, I guarantee you,

01:02:15.600 he's going to be the one of the best. You're going to hear his name. He's a legend. So he knew at a

01:02:18.520 young age and like, that's awesome. So if you do great, if you don't, that's also okay. It's not a

01:02:22.240 bad thing. You know, like I said, I didn't know my path really till 33. I have, I have absolutely

01:02:26.780 zero regrets. So, well, and not only that, but a lot of people look at their time. So I'm 39 now. I just

01:02:32.260 turned 39. And, and I think a lot of people are tempted to look at it and think, okay, well, I wasted

01:02:36.480 39 years of my life. No, 38 years of your life. We're leading you to where you are now. And you

01:02:45.380 can't like, let, let's say you're fine. You feel like you're on the path. Like you're doing what

01:02:48.880 you need to be doing. You're on track or you're trying to get on track. You wouldn't be there if

01:02:53.740 you didn't have the previous 38 years. Exactly. So none of that time is wasted. It just gave you a

01:02:58.440 new perspective and it's all preparing you for as cliche as it sounds, the moment that you're in right

01:03:03.540 now, everything has been preparatory for what you're doing right now.

01:03:05.960 A hundred percent, man. I wouldn't be here talking to you about fearvana and doing what

01:03:10.000 I'm doing with fearvana. Had I not gone through all this life experience to get me here, you know?

01:03:13.700 So I'm damn grateful for all of it. And it's part of the journey, man. Part of the adventure.

01:03:18.180 Well, let's do this. We jumped, we jumped into it pretty quick today. Um, and I feel like we've

01:03:22.600 danced around like fearvana and what it is, but as we start to wind things down, how do you

01:03:27.720 encapsulate the fearvana mindset? And I think that'll put a little package on what it is that

01:03:33.040 we've talked about for the last hour or so. Yeah. You know how I define it. If I had to

01:03:37.380 sort of put a one sentence definition to it is fearvana is the bliss that results from

01:03:41.780 engaging our fears to pursue our own worthy struggle. So the fundamental idea of fearvana

01:03:48.000 is to help people develop a positive relationship to suffering so they can find, live and love

01:03:53.420 their worthy struggle. And if you think about it, that's life, right? Like find, live, love

01:03:56.700 your path. So helping them find it, live it and love, love it. And that's why I call it

01:04:01.080 a worthy struggle. But you firstly, it starts with developing a positive relationship to the

01:04:04.800 experience of struggle and suffering. That's kind of the fundamental idea. And that's, and

01:04:09.240 through all this life experience, you know, it's those dualities again, these two seemingly

01:04:12.560 contradictory notions that I had come to learn were very complimentary and fear is not

01:04:16.140 the enemy fear. You have to go through fear to experience nirvana. You have to go through

01:04:19.600 darkness to experience light. And perhaps one of the coolest examples of that actually

01:04:22.920 to kind of come back to this was when I, when I came out of the seven days in darkness,

01:04:26.600 you know, after coming out of seven days in darkness, they put me, put a mask on me. They

01:04:30.700 took me out to sit on the, on the deck and I was, this was in Germany. So gorgeous black

01:04:34.120 forest sitting there and mask finally you take off the mask and obviously the light kind of

01:04:38.100 hits you. And it was such a profound experience. I started tearing up with how, just how hard

01:04:43.220 it hit me in the most beautiful way. And two kinds of thoughts went through my mind. One

01:04:46.920 was I wish I could look at the world every day through these eyes. And the other was this like

01:04:52.400 deep knowing of feeling so grateful for every bit of suffering I'd ever experienced in my

01:04:57.340 life. Because I realized in this very visceral way that you cannot look at the light that

01:05:01.940 way. You cannot see the light that way, unless you have been in the dark, you know? And that

01:05:06.280 was this visceral understanding of it after being in dark for seven days, the light, the

01:05:10.680 world looked, I mean, I can't even describe how the world looked after that, you know? And

01:05:15.420 you think about, obviously that's not just literal, but figuratively and metaphorically,

01:05:18.880 you can't understand the world, you can't understand the light unless you've been in the

01:05:22.680 dark. And so helping people kind of navigate that duality and embracing the darkness, not

01:05:26.780 just, not just like eliminating the demons, you can actually make your demons work for

01:05:31.160 you, you know? And a quick, quick story about that too. I mean, when I was running across

01:05:35.000 Liberia, day four, I had this aching pain in my shin. It just kind of hit, I would think

01:05:39.300 I was 17 miles into the run that day. And I stopped to kind of massage it, put some cream

01:05:44.180 and it wasn't going away. So I started limping for about a mile and a half. And I was like

01:05:47.480 nervous, right? Cause I still had a lot of miles to cover over the next three days.

01:05:50.540 So just kind of struggling with the physical pain and the psychological battle. And then

01:05:54.040 I started jogging a little bit. And then after jogging, I started just sprinting, like

01:05:57.740 booking it. And the whole time I'm saying to myself things like, remember Neil, it should

01:06:02.120 have been you that died in the war. Suck it the fuck up, earn this life. Look around you

01:06:05.880 right now. People are dying. People are, people are struggling in extreme poverty. Who the fuck

01:06:10.400 are you to quit? If you quit now, you deserve a coward's death. And just saying this dark shit

01:06:14.180 about how I should have died, how I shouldn't be alive. But man, that five miles was the

01:06:18.620 fastest five miles I ran the entire trip. Now I'm not saying I always talk like that to

01:06:23.360 myself cause that's some dark shit. But the point is when you engage your demons, when

01:06:28.040 you engage the darkness, you can make both work for you. There are other times where I

01:06:31.560 talk in a beautiful way, like, you know, celebrating myself, looking at the grandeur of life, gratitude,

01:06:36.640 all that good stuff too. But you engage both and then you can choose how you, how you want

01:06:41.140 to use both on the, on the path. Yeah. It sounds to me like you're just using it as

01:06:45.480 a tool. Like it's, it's, it's a tool. It's inanimate really. I mean, if you look at a hunk

01:06:50.040 of metal that's formed into a hammer, that's just metal that was at some point mined from

01:06:54.900 rocks in the earth. Now we've, we've, we've shaped it. We've honed it. We've refined it

01:07:01.380 for a purpose and we're using it as a tool. It's an inanimate object. Yeah. And you can use

01:07:05.860 it incorrectly, right? Like I smashed the shit out of my thumb the other day and you know,

01:07:10.060 I use the tool incorrectly and it was painful. On the other hand, if I'm my, my daughter,

01:07:15.280 I've got a little, a little playhouse we're building out there. And I struck that nail

01:07:19.180 with a hammer and I built it and she looked at it and she was excited and I was proud.

01:07:22.260 And so I use the tool correctly, right? It's just to correctly or smash the shit out of your

01:07:27.320 thumb. Yeah. That's a good point. Exactly. Cause those tools can, can send you to some dark

01:07:32.340 places if you're not careful. Well, let me ask you a couple of questions. One I meant to prepare

01:07:36.100 you for, and I overlooked it cause we jumped right into it. Uh, the question is what does it mean

01:07:39.880 to be a man? Love that question. Um, to me, to be a man is to be a warrior, not that victim

01:07:46.600 mentality that we talked about, but to be a warrior who knows and lives and loves that worthy war. He

01:07:51.780 is fighting, you know, he's fighting that worthy war. And if you don't know it yet, you're at least

01:07:55.140 seeking it out. So a man means to be that warrior to embrace the dualities. Cause a man is also

01:08:00.260 someone who can turn that fight off. There are times to be in the fight, right? Like, I mean,

01:08:03.940 you mentioned you were hammering something for your daughter. If you're playing with your kids,

01:08:07.220 that's not the same person you are when you're in a war zone. So a man knows to take

01:08:11.920 which mask to wear when he is on a particular mission. You know, the father mask, the husband

01:08:17.280 mask is different from the, I'm in a combat zone mask. You know, a man isn't somebody who

01:08:21.740 comes in and beats, beats some kid or beats his wife or some shit and takes it, you know,

01:08:26.320 hurt somebody weaker than them. It's knowing that this is, this is the mask to wear when you

01:08:30.300 need to fight it. And it's like, you're fighting that worthy war in service of something

01:08:33.460 greater. Ultimately it's in service of something greater. You know, I think it's

01:08:37.200 in the Bible or Shakespeare that quote that greater love hath no man than he who sheds

01:08:40.660 his blood for me. So you're fighting for that mission in service of something beyond you,

01:08:46.000 you know, fighting for something greater than yourself. I think it was even Martin Luther

01:08:48.780 King who said, um, if a man hasn't discovered what he's, what he wants to die for, he isn't

01:08:52.660 fit to live. And I'm not saying you've got to fight like in combat. I'm not saying you've

01:08:56.020 got to die for the mission, but you know, have something. It could be your family. It could

01:08:59.540 be the men you're fighting within a war zone. It could be, uh, your tribe, you know,

01:09:04.180 whoever that you're fighting for something, fighting for a mission that's bigger than

01:09:08.000 you and transcending yourself. To me, if I had to like summarize one word, what life

01:09:12.620 is about. And somebody asked me that once, what is life about in one word? I would say

01:09:16.080 self-transcendence. So a man is like fighting that war in transcendence of himself in service

01:09:21.300 of something great with that warrior ethos.

01:09:23.640 It's powerful, man. I like that you're talking about it in the context of the mask. Cause a lot

01:09:27.580 of times when you hear mask, we hear things like mask of masculinity and there's a negative

01:09:32.420 connotation with it. I'm like, it's not wrong to behave a certain way. It's not wrong to be

01:09:37.420 stoic. It's not wrong to be principled. It's not wrong to be empathetic when it calls for

01:09:41.720 it. It's not wrong to be a stubborn when the situation calls. Exactly. Right. So yeah,

01:09:46.420 man, I mean, cause you're going to be different. Like you're going to be different when you're

01:09:48.600 playing with your kids than when you are. I mean, if I'm in Iraq or like it's right now

01:09:52.300 and get into a firefight or some shit, I'm going to be this hard ass, you know, even when

01:09:55.700 I'm running now, if I'm playing with my little puppy, I'm this soft little, you know what I mean?

01:09:59.580 Like I love my puppy or if I'm going on a date or something, I'm not going to be this hard

01:10:03.560 ass, like, like talking to myself, like when I'm running across a fucking country or something

01:10:07.340 like that. You know what I mean? The only thing I would say though, is that, and I like, maybe

01:10:11.940 let's riff on this for a second is that it's not manufactured though. Like for example, for

01:10:17.060 me, when I'm playing with my daughter, like it's not a mask to the point where I'm making

01:10:20.500 it up. Like I genuinely am compassionate and empathetic and kind when I'm playing with her.

01:10:26.620 And then when I'm on the mat training jujitsu, I'm not manufacturing aggression or violence or

01:10:33.400 dominance. Like that actually is part of me. I want to compete. I want to be physical. I want to

01:10:39.280 dominate another individual. That's not manufactured. Like it genuinely is a part of who I am.

01:10:46.140 Dude, totally. 100% agree. You can think of it like Kobe Bryant, you know, when he was going through

01:10:50.360 some shit in his personal life, he created the black Mamba as this alter ego to step onto his

01:10:54.560 battlefield, the basketball court. Right? So when he stepped on it and this is a great interview,

01:10:58.040 he talks about, he's like, when I step on there, when I'm the, like when I've entered that world,

01:11:02.380 don't talk to me, don't touch me. I am in that fucking world. Like he is this in the zone. So

01:11:07.520 yeah, that's not manufactured. That's all. We are all different selves. It's all that duality,

01:11:12.000 right? Like we're different selves. So when I step onto X battlefield, I am that person. It's not

01:11:17.240 that I'm faking my compassion. It's not that I'm faking it, but you're just, you're just being

01:11:21.820 the ego, that version of you, what the situation calls for. You do not want like a Navy SEAL

01:11:27.780 fighting in combat or a Marine or army dude or whatever in war is not going to, and should not

01:11:32.620 be the same person who's playing with his kid at home. You know what I mean? It's not, and it's

01:11:36.740 not that it's fake. It's that both, we're both that's that person. We're both these different

01:11:41.200 versions. We're all of these different versions of ourselves that the key is being conscious about

01:11:45.940 it. So it's not, it happens and you can choose it when you need it. It comes back to what we're

01:11:50.540 saying about the darkness, the light demons, you can choose what, and that requires awareness,

01:11:54.560 right? This relentless process of awareness. I can choose to be, I, one of the things I do is

01:11:58.420 I create triggers. So for example, right before coming on this conversation with you, what I do

01:12:01.980 before any interview I do, I have a trigger that I watched this end scene of Black Hawk down

01:12:06.180 where, uh, where he talks about, he's like, you know, he's, I don't know if you remember,

01:12:09.680 but the end scene, he says, you know, people ask me when I go back home, why do we do it? And he,

01:12:13.280 and the guy says, they don't want to understand, but it's about the men next to you.

01:12:16.820 That's why we do it. That's what we fight. And I watched that scene to remind me, why am I here?

01:12:19.940 I'm here talking to you right now because if it touches one damn light, that's what matters,

01:12:23.540 you know? So I put myself in that zone. So creating triggers to activate, it's like Pavlov's dogs,

01:12:29.620 you know, like Pavlov's dogs, he rang the bell and the dog started to salivate when the bell rang,

01:12:33.980 even if there was no food, we can do that same shit with ourselves, use music, use anything to say,

01:12:38.420 okay, now it's, and I do this. I, if I'm in soft stuff, I have like songs that I use music as a trigger

01:12:42.980 all the time. So I'll have a song that puts me in soft zone or put me or put me in intense zone,

01:12:47.780 whatever it may be to activate the different mask, if you will, not like, and you said,

01:12:52.340 like some manufactured, they're all me, they're all me, but it's all aligned. And that's why coming

01:12:56.260 back, sorry, I'm going to rant because I love this stuff too, but, but like, it's all aligned

01:13:00.300 with my mission, right? My philosophy. So it's all part of that same, that same version of who I am.

01:13:05.460 Right. Right. It's good stuff, man. All right. How do we connect with you? Learn more about what

01:13:09.140 you're up to. Uh, fear of Ana, fear of Ana.com. Uh, social media is fear of Ana. Uh, you can find

01:13:15.240 me on Instagram, YouTube, all of it is at, uh, fear of Ana. Right on. We'll send the book. The

01:13:19.580 book book is, uh, sorry. The book is also on Amazon. And I especially, especially want to mention that

01:13:22.860 because all the profits in the book go to charity. So we've supported these young girls who are victims

01:13:26.180 of sex trafficking to former child soldiers. And the book is, um, on a kiddo Kindle audible paperback,

01:13:31.500 all that good stuff. All the places right on. Yes, sir. We'll make sure we sync it up. So the guys know

01:13:35.600 where to go. Actually, I appreciate you, brother. What a great conversation. I've been looking forward

01:13:38.900 to it. And, uh, the conversation did not disappoint. So thank you, sir. Thank you for

01:13:43.480 spending some time with us. Gentlemen, there you go. My conversation with actually not Avanti. I hope,

01:13:49.060 I hope, I hope that that was enjoyable. I hope that you're walking away with a new perspective.

01:13:53.540 Uh, I know a lot of guys who listen to this podcast have experienced some of what he has,

01:13:58.220 whether it's PTSD or survivor's guilt, or just a general sense of, uh, of being down or even

01:14:04.900 depression. Uh, and I know that those times can be challenging. I've talked with a lot of men who've

01:14:10.480 experienced situations and times like those, but I know that there's also a light at the end of the

01:14:15.700 tunnel. Uh, and I, and I hope that this, uh, podcast helped you see what that light looked like.

01:14:20.600 Um, and maybe even gave you the path that you can experience in your own life in order to find that

01:14:26.540 light for yourself. Cause that's there. I just have to help you find it. So, uh, if you've connected or

01:14:31.220 resonated with this conversation, please reach out to actually reach out to me. Uh, let me know what

01:14:36.080 you thought about the conversation. Uh, let me know what you're going to be implementing in your

01:14:40.080 life. Uh, and just let us know what you think about the conversations in general. Uh, I hope this

01:14:44.780 serves you. And that's always been my goal is to give you again, the tools and resources and

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01:14:54.080 man. So we'll be back next week. Make sure you subscribe, leave a rating review. If you would,

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01:15:23.400 for our ask him anything. Uh, but until then go out there, take action and become the man you are

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01:16:00.640 sun.

Order of Man - June 02, 2020

How to Make Fear Your Ally ｜ AKSHAY NANAVATI

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