The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1901 - Steven Pressfield

00:00:01.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!

00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:06.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

00:00:12.000 Good to see you, man.

00:00:13.000 What's happening?

00:00:14.000 It's good to see you, Joe.

00:00:15.000 With a nice stack of books here.

00:00:17.000 What do we got here?

00:00:18.000 Government Cheese, a memoir.

00:00:20.000 Is this your memoir?

00:00:20.000 This is my memoir, yeah.

00:00:22.000 Ah, exciting.

00:00:24.000 Of my 27 years in the wilderness. 1.00

00:00:27.000 And Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be. 0.98

00:00:32.000 That's sort of like a war of art type of book, as you can tell from the size of it and everything. 0.98

00:00:36.000 After writing The War of Art, because you also wrote Turning Pro, right?

00:00:42.000 Yeah, and a few others.

00:00:43.000 Yeah, but along the same vein.

00:00:46.000 You just felt like you have more to squeeze out of that.

00:00:52.000 It's such an important subject for artists and for creative people.

00:00:56.000 I mean, that book, The War of Art, changed so many people.

00:00:59.000 Let me ask you, Joe, why did that resonate with you?

00:01:03.000 Well, there was some stuff that he talked about that it was almost like unspoken.

00:01:08.000 And one of them is the concept of resistance.

00:01:12.000 And that the fact that you treated the muse as if it was like a real living entity.

00:01:20.000 Which I think it is.

00:01:22.000 Yeah, she is.

00:01:23.000 She is.

00:01:24.000 Whatever it is.

00:01:25.000 That thing where if you show up and you put in the work...

00:01:31.000 Creativity just sort of gives birth.

00:01:36.000 It sort of erupts.

00:01:37.000 It comes out.

00:01:38.000 It manifests.

00:01:40.000 There's something to it.

00:01:42.000 I kind of always had this inkling that that was a thing or this thought that that was a thing.

00:01:48.000 But until I read your book, it was like you had...

00:01:53.000 You made it real.

00:01:55.000 You laid it out, and you're like, here's the problem.

00:01:59.000 This is what's going on, and this is what you gotta do. 0.99

00:02:01.000 You just gotta show up every day and put in the work and be a damn professional. 0.94

00:02:06.000 And so many people that I gave that book to, I used to have a stack of them in my old studio, and I would just hand them to people. 0.93

00:02:13.000 Dude, just read this.

00:02:14.000 Trust me.

00:02:16.000 And it wasn't a hard read.

00:02:18.000 It wasn't a giant book.

00:02:19.000 But it was so valuable.

00:02:21.000 Because it just, like...

00:02:23.000 I guarantee you, there's so many people...

00:02:25.000 There were so many days where people sat in front of their computer or notepad where they wouldn't have because of that book.

00:02:33.000 Like, it got people to where they needed to go.

00:02:36.000 Whether they stayed there, you know, whether they kept up the...

00:02:39.000 No, that's not your...

00:02:40.000 Did you yourself, let me ask you, like, as a comic...

00:02:44.000 Did you experience resistance to getting, say, up in front of people or in the writing of the material?

00:02:50.000 Or was that an area where you could relate to it?

00:02:55.000 Yes.

00:02:56.000 All of the above.

00:02:58.000 You experience resistance in like, oh, I want to take a day off.

00:03:02.000 Oh, I don't feel like going up today.

00:03:04.000 I know a lot of comics are really good comics and they're always canceling There's work and then there's spots, okay?

00:03:11.000 So the spots are important because the spots are what get you better, tighten your material, and how you create new material that keep you sharp.

00:03:22.000 Now, are spots when you actually perform?

00:03:23.000 Is that what a spot is?

00:03:24.000 Yes.

00:03:24.000 Okay.

00:03:25.000 So this is what I mean.

00:03:26.000 A spot is, say, if you're going to go to the comedy store.

00:03:30.000 And on a regular night in the comedy store, there might be 15 comedians.

00:03:34.000 And each one of them is doing 15 minutes.

00:03:37.000 So it's a long-running show.

00:03:40.000 It starts from 8 p.m.

00:03:41.000 It goes on all night.

00:03:43.000 When you're doing that, that's a spot.

00:03:46.000 It doesn't pay very well.

00:03:47.000 I think it pays like $50.

00:03:49.000 So you just go down there and there's a lot of camaraderie.

00:03:53.000 We're all hanging around with each other and joking around in the parking lot and in the hallway.

00:03:58.000 And you're really just trying to stay sharp and work on new material.

00:04:02.000 And the Comedy Store has three rooms.

00:04:04.000 There's the belly room that seats about 70 to 90 people.

00:04:09.000 There's the main room that seats about 400 plus people, and then there's the original room that seats, I think it seats about 170. And you do shows in each room, like people do spots, like sometimes people do three spots a night.

00:04:25.000 So those don't pay well, but those are the ones people cancel.

00:04:30.000 So a lot of comedians, they're like, oh, I don't feel like going up.

00:04:34.000 And they'll call in the store, I'm canceling.

00:04:36.000 I'm going to cancel.

00:04:37.000 I'm not feeling well.

00:04:38.000 I'll cancel.

00:04:38.000 And it's really just resistance.

00:04:40.000 It's this thing that keeps you from showing up.

00:04:43.000 But the resistance for writing is way stronger.

00:04:47.000 That's really strong.

00:04:48.000 That's the work that you're talking about.

00:04:49.000 A spot and then the work.

00:04:51.000 Well, no, no.

00:04:53.000 Spots are short sets that you do in town.

00:04:56.000 Work is when you're on the road.

00:04:58.000 So the work is, say if you do a weekend at a comedy club.

00:05:02.000 Now, that pays well.

00:05:04.000 That's where the majority of comedians make their living is doing weekends on the road or maybe even days on the road.

00:05:12.000 So then you're doing a show.

00:05:13.000 And the idea is that you've crafted all this material on your own, in writing, and then in front of the crowd, doing spots, and doing it around town.

00:05:27.000 And then when you go on the road, then you have a show to put on.

00:05:31.000 And that's work.

00:05:33.000 What's interesting to me, here's my question, when do you actually sit down and write the thing?

00:05:40.000 For me, it's two times.

00:05:42.000 It's either late at night when everyone's asleep in my house, or lately it's been in the morning.

00:05:48.000 Lately I've been doing it first thing in the morning, and there's, I don't know, sometimes I have my best ideas first thing in the morning for some reason.

00:05:57.000 I can't quite imagine.

00:05:58.000 What is it like?

00:05:59.000 Do you have like a theme that you think is funny that you're going to work on?

00:06:04.000 No.

00:06:05.000 I just sit in front of the computer and write about subjects.

00:06:08.000 I just have like essays.

00:06:10.000 See, I used to try to just write jokes.

00:06:13.000 But it seemed too limiting creatively, like the format is so limited that I was missing out on some ideas.

00:06:24.000 And so then I started writing blog posts.

00:06:27.000 And one of the things that I realized in blog, when I write blog, which is essentially essays, is that I could extract good ideas from those essays.

00:06:36.000 And those would become my bits.

00:06:38.000 Mm-hmm and so now that's how I write when I write I just sit down and I just like like a Right like I'm doing this idea about riots lately riots and protests and so I just start writing about riots and protests and I'm just writing and I'm writing about what kind of people go and what we know what motivates someone to put a buffalo hat on and try to break it in the capital and and as I'm writing Then I'll go,

00:07:05.000 that's a chunk, and I'll take that, I'll pull it out, and I'll copy and paste it in another folder, or another file.

00:07:13.000 And then I'll go on stage and try to give those life.

00:07:19.000 And so then I take those and I try to figure out the best way to present them.

00:07:23.000 And oftentimes, like, you think you have it right, but then you go in front of the crowd and they don't think it's funny. 0.95

00:07:30.000 Or they think the setup is funny, but the punchline sucks. 0.90

00:07:33.000 It's weird. 0.98

00:07:34.000 Or they think...

00:07:37.000 Maybe the way they laugh makes you think there's another layer to this, and you come up with more stuff on the fly.

00:07:46.000 So you really create in front of them as well as by yourself.

00:07:50.000 You need them.

00:07:52.000 You can't create comedy in a vacuum.

00:07:55.000 You really need an audience.

00:07:56.000 What's the feeling like when you're on stage?

00:07:58.000 Are you scared?

00:08:00.000 Is it fun?

00:08:01.000 No, it's fun.

00:08:02.000 It's fun.

00:08:03.000 Maybe it'd be scary if I hadn't done it a lot.

00:08:05.000 It was definitely scary when I first started doing it, but now it's fun.

00:08:09.000 It's just fun.

00:08:10.000 Like, they're all paying to see you.

00:08:12.000 It's fun.

00:08:12.000 It's a good time.

00:08:13.000 As long as you've done the work, as long as you're prepared, it shouldn't be scary.

00:08:18.000 It should be really a good time.

00:08:19.000 You're there to make them laugh.

00:08:22.000 But I've also been doing it 33 years, you know, 34 years.

00:08:27.000 It's a long-ass time.

00:08:29.000 I mean, I know that my accountant always tells me that his comedians, they all write off their psychotherapy bills.

00:08:37.000 In other words, he's saying to me that these are the ones that it's not easy being a comic.

00:08:45.000 Yeah.

00:08:45.000 I don't know, man.

00:08:47.000 No?

00:08:47.000 You seem like you enjoy it and it's fun.

00:08:49.000 Yeah.

00:08:50.000 It's different.

00:08:51.000 I mean, what does that mean?

00:08:52.000 It's not easy being a soldier.

00:08:54.000 Okay?

00:08:55.000 It's not easy being an EMT. It's not easy being a police officer.

00:08:59.000 It's not easy being a school teacher in an inner city school.

00:09:02.000 It's not easy being a heart surgeon. 0.98

00:09:06.000 Comedy is not that fucking hard. 0.99

00:09:09.000 There's this old expression, I don't know who the fuck said this, but I've repeated it ad nauseum. 0.99

00:09:13.000 The hardest thing that's ever happened to you is the hardest thing that's ever happened to you. 0.97

00:09:17.000 Or the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you.

00:09:20.000 And that worst thing could be you're a little kid and your toy breaks.

00:09:25.000 Or it could be your family got killed in a war.

00:09:29.000 You know, it really depends.

00:09:30.000 And so what level of resilience you have is entirely dependent upon what your life experiences are and what you've come to expect.

00:09:39.000 And there's a lot of people that are comedians that really seem to think that what they're doing is so goddamn difficult.

00:09:46.000 And yeah, it's not the easiest thing in the world, but Jesus Christ, what a great life! 0.82

00:09:51.000 You know, you're telling jokes.

00:09:54.000 You're making people laugh.

00:09:55.000 It should be wonderful and celebrated.

00:09:58.000 But a lot of them, they do a really poor job of mental management and of assessing their own psychological issues and coming up with real methods of mitigation.

00:10:11.000 So why do people bail out on the nights that they're not...

00:10:15.000 Resistance!

00:10:17.000 They're afraid of bombing?

00:10:18.000 They're afraid of getting up there?

00:10:19.000 No, they're just not being pros.

00:10:21.000 That's really what it is.

00:10:23.000 That's one of the reasons why your book resonated.

00:10:25.000 So much.

00:10:26.000 It's because, like, it's just...

00:10:27.000 There's a thing that you described that you just nailed it, and you called it resistance, but there's this feeling that you just don't want to sit and write.

00:10:37.000 You don't want to work.

00:10:39.000 You know, like, when I get in front of my computer, there's, like, an urge, like, hey, let's go see what's in YouTube.

00:10:44.000 Hey, let's go work and roam around on...

00:10:47.000 Let's go to dig.com, see what the wackiest stories are.

00:10:50.000 Let's go to CNN. You know, that...

00:10:54.000 That is part of the resistance.

00:10:56.000 It keeps you from just sitting down and working.

00:10:59.000 And I don't know what that is because you know in the back of your head that if you do the work, you'll have more ideas.

00:11:05.000 If you have more ideas, you'll have more material.

00:11:07.000 If you have more material, you'll be able to pick the best material and your show will be better.

00:11:12.000 And then the audience will have a better time.

00:11:14.000 Your career will go better and all these things.

00:11:16.000 And yet that doesn't matter, you know?

00:11:18.000 I mean, you still feel it, right?

00:11:19.000 Yeah.

00:11:19.000 And it's totally universal, I can tell you, from the emails that I get, from the letters that I get.

00:11:24.000 And not only is it universal in that everybody experiences it, but they all seem to experience it with the same script.

00:11:32.000 You know?

00:11:33.000 You're not worthy. 0.99

00:11:34.000 You're too old, too young, too fat, too thin, whatever. 0.99

00:11:38.000 Or let's do something else. 0.92

00:11:40.000 Let's distract ourselves with something else.

00:11:42.000 So everybody gets the same thing.

00:11:44.000 I mean, I always say that it's a force of nature.

00:11:49.000 You know?

00:11:50.000 It's not personal.

00:11:53.000 It's not specific to you, even though that voice in your head sounds like it is specific to you.

00:11:59.000 It's saying, Joe, and then it's hitting you right in the points that are your sore points, you know?

00:12:03.000 But it's really not personal.

00:12:05.000 Everybody seems to experience the same thing.

00:12:09.000 What do you think it is?

00:12:10.000 When did you write The War of Art?

00:12:12.000 2002. And in that time after writing that, I'm sure it's obviously been a very successful book.

00:12:19.000 So...

00:12:20.000 You've had time to think about this.

00:12:23.000 What do you think is going on?

00:12:24.000 Why is that a force of nature?

00:12:27.000 What is it?

00:12:29.000 This is my lengthy explanation, but I'll give you my theory.

00:12:33.000 If we think of the human...

00:12:35.000 Bear with me.

00:12:36.000 This takes a minute or two.

00:12:38.000 If you think of the human psyche...

00:12:41.000 We got the ego, which is like a little black dot in the middle of a greater thing that we would call the self, like the Jungian self with a capital S. And the self contains the collective unconscious, all the aspects of the unconscious, right?

00:12:57.000 The hero's journey, the archetypes of the unconscious, all of the sort of intuitive stuff, right?

00:13:03.000 When you, I would imagine, Come up with great comedy material or any kind of material.

00:13:08.000 It's coming from that self, coming from that deeper place, right?

00:13:12.000 And even when Jung or Joseph Campbell describe the self, I have a little diagram in The War of Art where adjacent to this larger self, they'd have like three arrows and the arrows are coming from what they call the divine ground.

00:13:28.000 Which I take to mean whatever greater force is out there, you know, that will come to you.

00:13:34.000 So, this is a long way of saying that the ego, which is, right, your I part, the part that identifies with this body and with the ego, wants to be in control, right?

00:13:49.000 The ego is where you drive down to the store, you get whatever it is, right?

00:13:54.000 But when you're trying to tap into that greater intelligence, like if you're writing, if you're a musician, if you're any kind of creative person, you're trying to surrender to that self, to that greater self.

00:14:07.000 And I feel like...

00:14:09.000 The ego hates that.

00:14:11.000 The ego knows if you make that shift to identify with that greater self, then the ego is out of business.

00:14:19.000 So I think, this is my theory, that the ego produces resistance to try to stop you from From connecting and trusting and believing.

00:14:28.000 Because it is a leap of faith, right?

00:14:30.000 To get to that other level, wherever it is.

00:14:33.000 So the ego says to you, who do you think you are to try to tap into that thing?

00:14:37.000 Who do you think you are to come up with this idea?

00:14:40.000 It's been done a million times better than you'll ever do it.

00:14:42.000 You don't have the chops to do this.

00:14:44.000 You're going to fall on your...

00:14:45.000 I think?

00:15:00.000 Into that greater self.

00:15:02.000 That's when you really are starting to tap into great stuff.

00:15:05.000 That's where the great stuff comes from.

00:15:07.000 And that puts the ego out of a job.

00:15:09.000 At least this is my theory, Joe.

00:15:12.000 So I think that the ego produces it.

00:15:15.000 I mean, it's interesting sort of animals don't experience resistance.

00:15:20.000 I'm sure they don't, right?

00:15:21.000 Right, but they also don't really experience creativity.

00:15:24.000 True.

00:15:24.000 But they're in that greater world, I think, naturally, you know?

00:15:29.000 Right.

00:15:30.000 They're free.

00:15:31.000 They're in that God energy, you know?

00:15:33.000 An eagle or somebody that's flying, you know, you watch like the tiniest little wings or feathers even, you know, control it.

00:15:39.000 They're not thinking about anything, right?

00:15:41.000 When they're hunting or whatever it is.

00:15:44.000 So anyway, that's my theory on what resistance is.

00:15:48.000 Now, Seth Godin, you know he is.

00:15:50.000 He's a believer that it's the… Who is Seth Godin?

00:15:53.000 I do not know who he is.

00:15:54.000 Seth Godin is a kind of a marketing guru, one of the earliest guys on the internet.

00:16:02.000 From way back when, when it first began.

00:16:04.000 And is a great teacher of marketing and stuff like that.

00:16:09.000 And also a wonderful guy.

00:16:11.000 There he is.

00:16:12.000 In the sense that he is a highly ethical dude.

00:16:16.000 Like when he talks about businesses, startups, and all the things that he's kind of helping people with, Ethics is a huge part of it.

00:16:26.000 So I really respect the guy.

00:16:28.000 And he's a great deep thinker, too.

00:16:30.000 Now, he thinks it's what he calls the lizard brain, the amygdala, which I'm not even sure what that is.

00:16:35.000 I guess it's the reptile brain at the back of your head, that that's what's producing something.

00:16:40.000 It wants producing resistance.

00:16:42.000 But anyway, I respect his thinking on that, but I think it's what I just explained to you.

00:16:49.000 What you're saying makes a lot of sense.

00:16:51.000 And the ego, whatever that thing is, it's so interesting how it's not able to see that it would actually benefit the ego if you didn't have resistance.

00:17:07.000 Yes.

00:17:08.000 Which is really weird.

00:17:09.000 Yeah, it's weird, isn't it?

00:17:10.000 Yeah, because if the ego was wise and had, like, foresight, it could see the future.

00:17:16.000 Oh, if we just, like, just give in and relax and relinquish control, then we're going to come up with better stuff, and our life's going to be better.

00:17:25.000 Be able to buy a nicer house.

00:17:27.000 Yeah.

00:17:27.000 You know, maybe be able to go on trips.

00:17:29.000 Your work will do well.

00:17:31.000 Everything will be good.

00:17:33.000 It's a deep subject, because also, if you think about...

00:17:37.000 The ego's view of what life is.

00:17:40.000 You know, I'm going to go into some deep stuff.

00:17:43.000 You don't have to clarify.

00:17:45.000 The ego has a whole view...

00:17:48.000 The ego believes that this material world is all there is, right?

00:17:55.000 The ego believes in death.

00:17:57.000 The ego believes that when this body dies, we die, right?

00:18:00.000 The ego believes that this flesh can be hurt, you know, can be maimed, can be broken, etc., etc.

00:18:08.000 So the ego naturally lives in fear.

00:18:11.000 I think that the predominant emotion of the ego, if we're living in the ego, which is 99% of people do, our predominant emotion is fear, right?

00:18:22.000 And fear, even though we might not know it, Fear of death, which is kind of why people want to achieve, I think, right?

00:18:30.000 Let me make a name for myself, blah, blah, blah.

00:18:32.000 Why people want to have children, children will live on. 0.98

00:18:35.000 Why they have insurance, why they try to succeed and have a big house, and this and that and the other thing, right?

00:18:41.000 That's all sort of coming out of a mindset of fear.

00:18:46.000 Whereas this giant self, in my opinion, the bigger self that is connected to the thing, Its predominant emotion is love, if you ask me.

00:18:56.000 Now the ego, another thing the ego believes is that I am separate from you, right?

00:19:02.000 We are all separate individuals, right?

00:19:05.000 I could hurt you and it won't hurt me.

00:19:07.000 That's what the ego thinks, right?

00:19:09.000 That's why so much of the evil that happens in the world comes out of that, right? 1.00

00:19:13.000 We can torture these sons of bitches and it won't happen to us, right? 1.00

00:19:16.000 Nothing bad will happen to us. 1.00

00:19:17.000 But the self, Believes exactly the opposite.

00:19:21.000 Once you get into that deep level, right, that we are not separate from one another, that you and I are bound together in some kind of way along with all of humanity and all of the animal life and all of the planet, all of the oceans and all of that.

00:19:34.000 And so the predominant emotion in that self is the emotion of love.

00:19:39.000 So the ego, this is my belief anyway, The ego being centered in fear is going to try to hang on to what it's got, right?

00:19:48.000 If the ego thinks that it's living our life, it's calling the shots, it's going to hang on to that, you know, out of fear.

00:19:56.000 And that's why I think it's so strong.

00:19:59.000 Resistance is so strong.

00:20:01.000 When you – the closer you get to moving into that self, into that greater space, like if you're sitting down and trying to write a novel and you get into kind of a flow of it, that's what the ego is really afraid of because it's such a kind of empowering and intoxicating experience.

00:20:19.000 The ego says to itself, shit, if this guy stays over here very long, he's never going to go back to – You know, to where I call the shots.

00:20:28.000 So I think that's why it makes itself... 0.99

00:20:31.000 It puts such an intense shot at you to stop you from getting there.

00:20:36.000 So this greater self...

00:20:41.000 What do you think that is?

00:20:43.000 If the greater self is all about love, and the greater self is what recognizes the connection between all of us, what is the greater self?

00:20:51.000 Okay, it's a great question.

00:20:52.000 I know that you're a guy that's into psychedelics to some extent, right?

00:20:56.000 I mean, when you...

00:20:57.000 Now, my only experience with psychedelics is back in the 60s, you know?

00:21:01.000 So I haven't done any of the stuff that people are doing now.

00:21:03.000 You want some?

00:21:04.000 No, thank you.

00:21:06.000 I'm too old for that.

00:21:07.000 You're not too old.

00:21:08.000 But one of the things that you know from LSD or from mescaline or anything like that is you suddenly see a whole other world that was not there before.

00:21:24.000 Even though you're looking at that wall, all of a sudden that wall becomes so beautiful Right?

00:21:30.000 That you can't even say anything except, wow.

00:21:33.000 Right?

00:21:34.000 So that, I believe, I was thinking in those moments, this must be the way Jesus sees the world, or the Dalai Lama sees the world, or God sees the world.

00:21:47.000 And when I come back to my regular self, And I see this kind of normal, shrunk-down world.

00:21:53.000 That's not the real world, right?

00:21:55.000 There's another world that's greater.

00:21:57.000 And so that's sort of my feeling about it, Joe, that when the self, when you enter that, there is a greater world.

00:22:03.000 We're living in that greater world right now.

00:22:06.000 We just can't see it, you know?

00:22:09.000 We just see what's in front of us.

00:22:13.000 Another aspect of it to me—you would know a lot more about this than I do, being more in the present of this—is that if you're living in that kind of psychedelic world, you really can't drive a car.

00:22:23.000 You really can't operate heavy equipment.

00:22:25.000 You really can't handle the stuff you have to handle.

00:22:28.000 You can't do your taxes, right?

00:22:30.000 So in order to kind of live, you do have to sort of shrink— Shrink that world down, right? 0.99

00:22:36.000 To, you know, push all the beauty aside and all the amazing shit aside. 0.96

00:22:42.000 But that doesn't stop the fact that that stuff is there, right? 0.98

00:22:45.000 I always wonder what was it like before we were born and what's it going to be like after we die?

00:22:52.000 Are we going to live in that world?

00:22:54.000 Are we going to enter that world again?

00:22:56.000 And what will that be like?

00:22:59.000 Do you think that this narrowed-down world that you're talking about when the psychedelics wear off Do you think that's an artifact of the cold, hard reality of being an animal living amongst predators and other violent human beings on Earth where in order to survive,

00:23:22.000 in order to raise your children and protect your village and provide food to each other, you kind of have to have this very...

00:23:33.000 It's simplistic, just, as you said, narrowed down.

00:23:38.000 You can't just wax euphorically about the concept of the universe and life and love.

00:23:47.000 I do.

00:23:48.000 I do believe that.

00:23:49.000 Yes.

00:23:49.000 And I think that's why, again, like what I was saying about the ego being...

00:23:54.000 Being dominated by the emotion of fear, right?

00:23:57.000 And also our parents, right, and our society, our school, everything for our own good as we're kids growing up tells us all that, right?

00:24:06.000 It kind of indoctrinates us into that world.

00:24:09.000 For our own good, right?

00:24:10.000 It wants to protect us, you know?

00:24:12.000 On your way walking to school, nobody's going to beat you up, blah, blah, blah.

00:24:16.000 So, yeah, I do think that's the case.

00:24:18.000 It's kind of a strange world, isn't it, that God created for us?

00:24:21.000 I mean, on the one hand, there's this beautiful...

00:24:24.000 Other dimensional reality out there, but then there's this hardcore world of predators, you know, in order to, you know, like what did you just have on Instagram today?

00:24:34.000 An alligator taking off the leg off a deer?

00:24:37.000 I mean, that's that.

00:24:39.000 Did I? You don't even know if it was there, but it's there.

00:24:42.000 We just saw it a few minutes ago.

00:24:44.000 I had it on Instagram?

00:24:45.000 Yeah, I think so.

00:24:47.000 Oh, it was...

00:24:48.000 Diana had it showed it to me.

00:24:49.000 Oh, no, no, no, no.

00:24:50.000 Yeah, there was a crocodile that took a pig and snapped it in half.

00:24:53.000 Oh, is that what it was?

00:24:54.000 Like that.

00:24:55.000 Yeah, I didn't see it.

00:24:56.000 It's a terrifying video.

00:24:57.000 But that's the world, right, that God gave us, right?

00:25:01.000 Yeah, predators and prey and monsters.

00:25:03.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:25:04.000 Yeah.

00:25:05.000 So here you are, Joe.

00:25:07.000 I mean, you're a fighter, right?

00:25:09.000 You're a UFC, MMA, that's in that world of predator versus prey.

00:25:14.000 But you're also a comic, and you're also a podcaster where you're reaching out into this other world, you know?

00:25:20.000 That greater world of who knows what it is.

00:25:24.000 Yeah.

00:25:25.000 You know, it's one of the things I admire about you, about what you do on this show, that you really go into every direction possible, and you're talking to every kind of people, every kind of person that's got any kind of a theory about anything, which I think is great, because we all need everything that we can possibly bring in here.

00:25:39.000 Well, I think I certainly do.

00:25:40.000 I certainly need as many different points of reference and different perspectives as possible.

00:25:46.000 But I'm just very lucky that I'm genuinely curious and then I have a platform to bring in people like yourself or other people and have conversations with them.

00:25:57.000 And it's been very enlightening for me to encounter all these different perspectives and to interact with all these different people that think about the world in a different way and it makes me You know, reconsider my own ideas or reformulate or,

00:26:12.000 you know, just sort of reevaluate.

00:26:15.000 Yeah.

00:26:16.000 And I think people can be very rigid in how they view the world and very rigid in how they, you know, the rules that they set for themselves and for other people and because it allows you to...

00:26:29.000 When you have less options, you have less things to think about, and sometimes you can be more successful that way.

00:26:35.000 There's a lot of people that do things very rigidly, and they've found great financial and physical success doing it that way.

00:26:45.000 I mean, think about various religions that have such, you know, you can only eat this, you must wear that, and on Wednesday you do this, and it really helps you because you don't have to make any decisions.

00:26:57.000 I'm sure it's a happier life in a way, but...

00:27:02.000 What is it, you know?

00:27:03.000 Yeah, there's something to it.

00:27:04.000 You know, me and my friends, Tom and Ari and Bert, we do this thing every year called Sober October.

00:27:13.000 And generally we come up with, when we do Sober October, we come up with some sort of a challenge.

00:27:18.000 And one year was we had to do 15 yoga sessions in the 31 days of October.

00:27:25.000 And, you know, 90 minute yoga sessions.

00:27:27.000 And then the other, the next time we had to do a fitness contest where We counted up the amount of energy.

00:27:33.000 Each one of us, we were using an app and we were trying to compete in the winter, you know, whatever.

00:27:39.000 So we did that and then other years we've done different things and then this year we decided what we're gonna do is we're gonna work out seven days a week.

00:27:48.000 Every day you have to burn 500 calories. 0.97

00:27:51.000 So we've kind of decided that a competition is too fucked up because I'm kind of crazy and I get Over-competitive is not fun. 0.99

00:27:58.000 Not fun for my family, not fun for me because I go crazy. 0.98

00:28:02.000 So it's way better to not be competitive and just we all are held accountable to this one thing.

00:28:09.000 So this one thing was you had to do a hundred push-ups every day and you had to burn 500 calories in a workout.

00:28:14.000 And so everyone did it.

00:28:16.000 We sent each other screenshots of our apps and we all talked about it.

00:28:20.000 And one of the things we all came out of at the end of it was like knowing that you had to do this thing.

00:28:26.000 Was so different than just going, oh, I probably should work out today.

00:28:31.000 Maybe I won't. 1.00

00:28:32.000 Maybe I'll fuck off. 1.00

00:28:33.000 Like today, for instance. 1.00

00:28:35.000 I was up late last night.

00:28:37.000 I got home from the comedy show.

00:28:40.000 I did a little mushrooms.

00:28:41.000 And then I did a little writing.

00:28:43.000 And I didn't go to bed until like 2.30, 3 o'clock.

00:28:48.000 And so I woke up at 10. I was like, God, I should work out.

00:28:51.000 But I don't fucking feel like working out. 0.91

00:28:54.000 I go, let me just get in the sauna and do the cold plunge, which is my minimum amount of things that I do every day. 0.96

00:28:59.000 But then after I did that, I was like, you should have worked out, man.

00:29:02.000 But I didn't, right?

00:29:04.000 So I didn't, but if it was the sober October month, I would have had to.

00:29:08.000 Because I had those nights during sober October where I was up late, and I only got like six hours sleep, but I still got that workout in because I had to do it.

00:29:18.000 When you have a thing that you must do every day, that's how you get productive.

00:29:23.000 And what we found, all of us found, is there's this alleviation of anxiety that comes from doing these workouts every day.

00:29:31.000 That was like, we were all talking, I was like, if this was a pill that I could take, I'd take that pill all day.

00:29:37.000 If it had no side effects.

00:29:38.000 In fact, this pill makes you healthier, but instead of a pill, it's an hour to an hour and a half of arduous physical work.

00:29:47.000 Like, very difficult physical work.

00:29:49.000 You're pouring sweat, and when it's over, you're exhausted, but healthier.

00:29:55.000 And then the anxiety level is like nil.

00:29:59.000 Like, nothing bothers you.

00:30:00.000 You feel so good.

00:30:01.000 You've taken your tension like your body's a wet rag, and just rang out all the tension.

00:30:08.000 Just dripped it out.

00:30:10.000 And the fact that you have to do it every day...

00:30:14.000 It kind of eliminates this whole resistance thing, because you can't entertain it.

00:30:19.000 And because we're all accountable, and we're all texting each other, and we're in a group text, it was great!

00:30:26.000 It's great!

00:30:27.000 So why not do it 12 months of the year?

00:30:30.000 I don't know if it's sustainable, but what I am doing is five days a week.

00:30:34.000 So five days a week I do it now.

00:30:36.000 So instead of seven days a week, I do it five days a week.

00:30:39.000 Which is because I travel, do stuff.

00:30:42.000 It's more sustainable, but it seems very effective.

00:30:45.000 So today, I bitched out.

00:30:47.000 So now I know that I only have six more days.

00:30:50.000 Well, you know, I worked out yesterday, but there's only a certain amount of days in the week, right?

00:30:56.000 So now I've got three more days that I must get in.

00:30:59.000 No ifs, ands, or buts.

00:31:01.000 Those have to be done. 0.99

00:31:02.000 Because I did Monday and Tuesday, and then I fucked off today. 0.97

00:31:05.000 So I've got other days. 0.96

00:31:07.000 But it's not the same.

00:31:09.000 If you're doing it every day, like if it's a religion, which is why I understand why people would get up in the morning and you have to pray.

00:31:18.000 Get up in the morning, you know, face the East, get on your hands and knees and bow. 0.97

00:31:23.000 Like, there's something to that that hijacks all of that resistance shit. 0.97

00:31:29.000 All of the things that hold you back from finding your greater self. 0.96

00:31:34.000 All the things that hold you back from accomplishing your true potential in this life.

00:31:40.000 Yeah, and I think what that is, to me, is an exercise, like a ritualistic exercise, in overcoming resistance.

00:31:49.000 Yes.

00:31:49.000 And in getting into that other, that greater place, right?

00:31:52.000 Yes.

00:31:52.000 When you say wrung out, you're wrung out of every ego thought.

00:31:57.000 You're wrung out of all your negative thoughts.

00:32:00.000 You're not being jealous of anybody else.

00:32:02.000 You're not being competitive of anybody else.

00:32:05.000 I'm not a meditator, but I imagine that's what that's all about.

00:32:10.000 You get up every morning, and you center yourself, and you do all that sort of thing, and you get to that place.

00:32:17.000 I'm a total believer in what you're talking about, Joe.

00:32:20.000 Yeah, I think that's probably with people who have—whoever the original writers of various religions, the way they crafted it, I think all of those rules and regulations and not just keeping society order— But keeping you ordered,

00:32:41.000 like keeping your mind ordered, like they knew there was something.

00:32:45.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:32:46.000 There's like a disconnect between what you can do and what you're going to do.

00:32:50.000 Yeah.

00:32:50.000 What your potential is and, you know, where you're going to actually find yourself fall.

00:32:55.000 Yeah.

00:32:56.000 They know there's a devil out there.

00:32:58.000 I would call it resistance.

00:32:59.000 But it's those negative thoughts that you can spiral into, right?

00:33:03.000 Nothing good ever came out of that, you know?

00:33:06.000 It's always it's hate the other guy, create the other and hate them, or take our own selves down.

00:33:11.000 I mean, I fight it myself.

00:33:12.000 I'm lying in bed in the morning, you know, and those thoughts come to my mind.

00:33:16.000 I mean, I don't know if you're...

00:33:18.000 Are you familiar with Paramahansa Yogananda's stuff at all?

00:33:21.000 No.

00:33:21.000 From Self-Realization Fellowship?

00:33:23.000 I mean, he's one of the great gurus.

00:33:25.000 He actually died in like 1952 or something like that, so he's not a contemporary dude.

00:33:30.000 But one of the things that he says is, when you wake up in the morning, get out of bed right away.

00:33:37.000 Do not lie there thinking any kind of thoughts, because those thoughts only are negative and are only taking you bad, you know?

00:33:45.000 He says, get up, start your day.

00:33:48.000 And I'm definitely a believer in that, too.

00:33:50.000 Why are they negative when you wake up and you just lay there?

00:33:53.000 Why do you think that is?

00:33:54.000 I don't know where it is, but somebody asked me, when in your day do you first experience resistance?

00:34:01.000 And my answer is, the minute I open my eyes.

00:34:05.000 It's right there, you know?

00:34:06.000 Which is also really interesting.

00:34:08.000 I don't know the answer to this.

00:34:09.000 If you think about the sleep state, whatever that is, there's no resistance in that state.

00:34:16.000 You know?

00:34:16.000 I don't know why.

00:34:17.000 Maybe we're in that greater world, you know, that unconscious.

00:34:21.000 It's only when we come into consciousness, all of a sudden, that resistance thing is there.

00:34:26.000 The devil is there. 0.97

00:34:28.000 Those shitty thoughts are there. 1.00

00:34:29.000 Those negative thoughts are there. 1.00

00:34:30.000 Which is why, like, your Sober October is really, let's do something to counteract that shit right away. 0.99

00:34:37.000 Before it grabs us, you know? 0.95

00:34:39.000 Or even if it has grabbed us from 6 o'clock till 9 o'clock, now we're going to work out and we're going to do our thing and we're going to overcome it, which you can overcome it.

00:34:49.000 Thank goodness.

00:34:51.000 It also has that aspect of religion where you're all in it together.

00:34:54.000 Yeah, that's true.

00:34:56.000 Because it's ritualistic.

00:34:58.000 You can also do it alone, you know?

00:34:59.000 Yeah.

00:35:00.000 Oh, you definitely could do it alone.

00:35:01.000 But we had real camaraderie in the fact that we were all doing it together.

00:35:06.000 Yeah.

00:35:07.000 It's like the military in a way, right?

00:35:09.000 Yeah.

00:35:09.000 And we were accountable to each other, too.

00:35:11.000 So we knew that we were accountable to each other.

00:35:14.000 Yeah.

00:35:16.000 Wouldn't you think that...

00:35:18.000 Just for the sake of survival, like from an evolutionary perspective, when you wake up in the morning, that would be the last thing you would want to do is like lay there.

00:35:30.000 Just stay put.

00:35:32.000 Like, you would think that evolution would favor thoughts that, like, immediately launch you into action.

00:35:38.000 Yeah, you would think so.

00:35:39.000 That you would be wary and ready to get...

00:35:41.000 On the other hand, if you're in the cave and you're under a nice, you know, bearskin thing, you know, and your old lady is there beside you, maybe you don't want to get up and get into that cold world.

00:35:52.000 Well, I get that you wouldn't want to, but I would think that, you know, fortune favors the brave.

00:35:59.000 Or fortune favors the one who's most active.

00:36:02.000 I would imagine in the tribal world, they had somebody standing watch.

00:36:08.000 24 hours a day, you know?

00:36:09.000 And even if you or I might be asleep, there would be some young kid that was at the mouth of the cave, you know, keeping his eyes open.

00:36:15.000 Yeah, before they figured out doors, they probably had to do that.

00:36:19.000 Yeah.

00:36:19.000 But it just still seems like it doesn't...

00:36:23.000 I mean, maybe it's just the puzzle that you have to solve.

00:36:28.000 In order to tap into the full potential of the mind because the mind has so many different functions and there's so many different things that it's doing.

00:36:36.000 And then we're also living in this world that's entirely unnatural.

00:36:41.000 It's like entirely of our creation, the world of society and civilization and cities and cars and buses.

00:36:49.000 We're not living in a world that we're engineered for.

00:36:52.000 We're engineered for the world of the wild.

00:36:55.000 And so for us to exist in this other world, there's this battle between these sort of deep-seated human instincts that are designed to help us survive.

00:37:15.000 Versus what we know we can do creatively as a modern human in terms of accomplishing great works of literature and And creating comedy, and creating music, and all the different things that humans can do in this modern era,

00:37:31.000 especially when you record things, when you write things down, and then you can spread it to millions of people, like your books.

00:37:38.000 Like, it's really an extraordinary ability that didn't exist until fairly recently in human history.

00:37:46.000 So we're not really designed for these thoughts and feelings.

00:37:49.000 No, it's like where you have two separate We have the animal self that's the evolutionary self.

00:37:54.000 We're still cavemen, right?

00:37:56.000 We still have the same thing, but yet we have this other potential.

00:37:59.000 Let me ask you something, Joe.

00:38:01.000 Where do you see yourself in five years or ten years?

00:38:05.000 Or let me put it a different way.

00:38:08.000 It's clear to me that you are exploring something and you're trying to project your mind into another greater realm.

00:38:20.000 What exactly, how do you see this odyssey that you're on right now?

00:38:25.000 What are you aiming for?

00:38:27.000 What are you hoping to achieve five years, ten years from now?

00:38:31.000 Who do you hope to be?

00:38:32.000 I don't.

00:38:33.000 I don't think like that.

00:38:35.000 You don't?

00:38:35.000 No, I just do things that I like to do.

00:38:37.000 I'm very simple.

00:38:40.000 No, legitimately.

00:38:41.000 I don't have goals like that.

00:38:43.000 I try to do better at everything that I do.

00:38:46.000 Like, I would like to be better at archery.

00:38:48.000 I would like to be better at playing pool.

00:38:51.000 I'd like to be better at stand-up comedy.

00:38:53.000 I'd like to be better at being a podcast host.

00:38:55.000 I'd like to be better at doing UFC commentary.

00:38:58.000 So every time I do a thing, I assess my performance, I think about it, I write things down, I work hard at it.

00:39:07.000 And I do the same with being a father.

00:39:09.000 I do the same with being a husband.

00:39:11.000 I do the same being a friend.

00:39:13.000 I do the same with being an employer.

00:39:16.000 I think you may be overly modest here now, because I know that you're, just from the people that you bring on the show, you're exposing yourself to all kinds of different points of view, right?

00:39:28.000 But I'm also exposing the world to them.

00:39:30.000 That's part of my goal, too, when someone's interesting.

00:39:33.000 Like you say, you have a great curiosity.

00:39:35.000 You're not doing that because you're not interested in it.

00:39:38.000 Right.

00:39:38.000 You're interested in it, right?

00:39:39.000 I'm definitely interested, yes.

00:39:40.000 And you're also exploring kind of inner worlds, your own inner world, you know, with the help of chemicals or whatever it is.

00:39:46.000 So it's more than just getting better at something, isn't it?

00:39:50.000 Yes, but I'm genuinely not trying.

00:39:52.000 I don't have a goal.

00:39:54.000 I genuinely don't have a goal is what I mean.

00:39:56.000 My goal is to just get better at all the things I'm doing and to understand life.

00:40:01.000 Which is probably impossible, but I'm trying to understand it better than I do.

00:40:06.000 And I definitely understand it better now than I did five years ago, ten years ago, fifteen years ago, twenty years ago.

00:40:12.000 Like, I feel like every year I get better at it.

00:40:15.000 And I think as long as you don't Define yourself.

00:40:21.000 Some people say, well, I'm 46 years old.

00:40:25.000 This is about as smart as I'm ever going to get.

00:40:27.000 This is me if I'm still smoking cigarettes and drinking every night.

00:40:32.000 This is me.

00:40:33.000 I don't buy into that.

00:40:35.000 I feel like you're a living human being.

00:40:38.000 If you're alive, you can get better at everything you do.

00:40:41.000 You get better at being a person.

00:40:43.000 I think there's an art to being a person.

00:40:45.000 And I think that the more things you encounter, the more disciplines you take on, the more you focus on whatever craft it is that you're obsessed with, that you find creatively satisfying,

00:41:01.000 the more you do that, the better you get at all the things you do.

00:41:04.000 That's what I think.

00:41:05.000 Okay.

00:41:06.000 I'll accept that.

00:41:08.000 If I had, like, this goal, like, if I had a goal ever, it was the beginning of my comedy career was, like, I want to be a professional.

00:41:17.000 I want to be able to make a living telling jokes.

00:41:20.000 Because, you know, me and my friend Greg Fitzsimmons, we started out at the same time, like, a week apart from each other in Boston.

00:41:27.000 And we would sit around and we'd talk, man, imagine if you could just pay your bills doing stand-up.

00:41:32.000 Because he was working in catering, and I was driving limos, and we would get together after shows and just hang out, maybe have some dinner or something, and we'd be just like, someday, man, imagine that?

00:41:44.000 Just being nothing but a comedian?

00:41:46.000 That's how you make your living?

00:41:48.000 That would be so amazing!

00:41:49.000 So that was the only goal we ever had.

00:41:52.000 The idea of a career seems so preposterous.

00:41:57.000 What career?

00:41:59.000 What does that mean?

00:42:01.000 But then once we started making a living and then we started doing better and then things started happening, And Greg went on to win Emmys for writing, and he's got comedy specials,

00:42:17.000 he tours all over the world.

00:42:18.000 It did eventually become a thing where you are a professional, and then you have these sort of goals inside that profession.

00:42:26.000 Like, I'd like to do a new comedy special within the next 12 months.

00:42:31.000 I think my material's ready.

00:42:32.000 So we talk like that, but I don't...

00:42:34.000 I don't ever say, like, in 10 years, I want to be this and that.

00:42:38.000 In 15 years, I want this.

00:42:40.000 I don't think like that.

00:42:41.000 I just keep going.

00:42:42.000 I keep on trucking.

00:42:44.000 That's what I do.

00:42:46.000 I'll tell you what I feel about that, how I feel myself.

00:42:52.000 You know, I go from project to project, at least from the time that I finally actually was able to make money as a writer and be a writer.

00:43:00.000 I go from one to another, and each one is like an actor that's cast in a movie or something like that, where you're in that world completely, in that lane completely while you're doing it.

00:43:11.000 And I never know what the next one is going to be, but that's sort of...

00:43:17.000 I'm a believer in a higher dimension of reality.

00:43:21.000 I'm a believer in the muse, as we were talking about earlier.

00:43:25.000 So I don't have a goal in the future either.

00:43:27.000 I don't say to myself, five years from now I want to be this, ten years I want to be that, because you never know what trolley is coming down the track, what the next kind of assignment for me from the muse is going to be.

00:43:41.000 What's the next book going to be?

00:43:43.000 All I know is I'm on the lookout for it.

00:43:47.000 You know, the cosmic radio station to send me a message?

00:43:50.000 And then I'll do that.

00:43:52.000 So if at any point in my writing career, if you had asked me what I would be doing five years in the future, I would have been completely wrong if I had ever projected.

00:44:03.000 Completely wrong.

00:44:05.000 So, I never know what's coming up ahead.

00:44:10.000 But I do know, just like you, that you can't stand pat at any point, you know?

00:44:16.000 Then you start getting old.

00:44:18.000 And then you start going down the grease thing, you know?

00:44:22.000 But I think as long as you're...

00:44:26.000 Still following that impetus, that creative impetus, whatever it is, which is scary, right?

00:44:31.000 It's always a risk.

00:44:32.000 You never know what's going to happen.

00:44:35.000 Then you're okay.

00:44:36.000 So that's all I want to do is be able to keep doing that.

00:44:41.000 If I make any money, I say, okay, that's enough so that I can keep doing it, you know?

00:44:49.000 And I never would have thought that when I was 20 years old or 40 years old, but that's how I feel now.

00:44:54.000 What would you have thought then, you think?

00:44:56.000 Of course then I was struggling.

00:44:57.000 I was just trying to stop driving a cab for a living, you know?

00:45:03.000 Yeah.

00:45:03.000 I think projects are really important for people.

00:45:06.000 Because things to concentrate on that's like a solid, tangible thing.

00:45:12.000 Yeah, it's like you're sober October.

00:45:14.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:45:16.000 Or a book, right?

00:45:17.000 Or a comedy special.

00:45:20.000 I think if people just have sort of open-ended things and just like, oh, I'm trying to eat ham.

00:45:30.000 How are you trying to lose weight?

00:45:32.000 What are you doing specifically?

00:45:34.000 What's the program you're on?

00:45:37.000 Show me the program.

00:45:38.000 Well, you know, I try to get to the gym more.

00:45:40.000 No, no, no, no, no. 0.99

00:45:41.000 Every fucking day. 1.00

00:45:43.000 Show me what you're doing. 1.00

00:45:44.000 Let's go.

00:45:45.000 Show me what you're doing.

00:45:46.000 Let's form a real program.

00:45:49.000 And if you do that, then you see the real changes.

00:45:51.000 That's when you see people lose 100 pounds and start getting really healthy or write a book. 0.98

00:45:57.000 You finish the book and then you read the book like, holy shit, this is great. 0.97

00:46:00.000 Because you realize they had a goal. 0.99

00:46:02.000 They got together with that mindset and they went to work.

00:46:07.000 And if you just kind of dilly-dally and you don't have a very specific goal and direction, it's very hard to make real headway.

00:46:15.000 It's very hard to really accomplish a thing.

00:46:18.000 The other thing to me, and I'm just speaking for myself, is it's not enough to have just a generic goal, a goal that anybody else could do, like I'm going to lose X number of pounds or I'm going to do that.

00:46:31.000 I think it needs to be something creative that's coming from with you that only you could do.

00:46:36.000 Even if it's a business, you know, if you're going to design motorcycles, you're going to build a motorcycle, whatever it is, because then...

00:46:46.000 When you have a project like that, like a book, right?

00:46:49.000 You start, you're going to write a book, right?

00:46:51.000 That book has a life of its own.

00:46:53.000 Or you make a movie or you start a business or whatever it is.

00:46:56.000 That thing has a life of its own.

00:46:58.000 And particularly if it's coming out of your heart and your inner self, like for me or for anybody that writes a book, Nobody else could write that book, whatever it is.

00:47:09.000 You're in your own lane, tapped into something that's coming from you, from your deepest self, you know? 0.97

00:47:15.000 And as the weeks and months go by, shit comes into you from all kinds of places that you never knew you had in you. 0.98

00:47:24.000 And that's an amazing experience, you know? 0.99

00:47:26.000 And by the end of that book, you look at it and you go, I wrote that.

00:47:31.000 Or you even say to yourself, that's not me.

00:47:35.000 Where did that come from?

00:47:37.000 But it is you, because you did it.

00:47:38.000 Or if you start a business, and suddenly it becomes whatever it becomes.

00:47:44.000 I think it's more important than just something generic, like lose weight or something like that, or run a marathon.

00:47:52.000 Not that there's anything wrong with that, but if you can pull something out of your own heart, that really lives within you, that's tremendous.

00:48:01.000 And the other thing I'll say, At least in my experience, When a book comes along and I sort of get the orders from the goddess, it's always a surprise to me, the subject matter of the book, you know?

00:48:15.000 Like, my first book was about golf, right?

00:48:18.000 The Legend of Bagger of Hands.

00:48:19.000 Then what came after that was Gates of Fire, a book about the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae.

00:48:25.000 I would have never have thought of either of those books coming out of me.

00:48:30.000 Those subjects were...

00:48:31.000 It wasn't like I dreamt of that my whole life.

00:48:34.000 So...

00:48:35.000 I say to myself when that happens, where is this coming from, you know?

00:48:39.000 What is this all about, you know?

00:48:41.000 Why did that come out of me, followed by that, followed by that?

00:48:47.000 And I still don't know what it means, but it's fascinating, you know?

00:48:53.000 You look back at a thing like Bruce Springsteen's albums.

00:48:56.000 If you could write them all down on a page, you go, why did that come after Tom Jode and the river and the darkness at the edge of town?

00:49:08.000 It's a mystery to me.

00:49:09.000 I don't know.

00:49:10.000 But projects are great things.

00:49:15.000 Because they really show you who you are.

00:49:19.000 Yeah.

00:49:20.000 And they give you something to concentrate your creative energy on.

00:49:25.000 Absolutely.

00:49:25.000 They do something.

00:49:27.000 They ground you completely.

00:49:28.000 And, you know, and even just physical fitness projects, you wouldn't think that that would be a creative endeavor.

00:49:33.000 But there's something about...

00:49:35.000 There's something about...

00:49:38.000 Forcing yourself to acknowledge that your life, that there's a thing in your life that you have to address, that it sort of frees up the mind in some sort of a strange way, you know?

00:49:50.000 And the concept of the muse, I think, also frees up the mind in a strange way.

00:49:56.000 And I love the way you think about it.

00:49:57.000 Because you, and I don't want to disrespect it by saying you treat it like it's a god, because you do think it's a god.

00:50:04.000 You think it's like a goddess.

00:50:06.000 I do. 0.97

00:50:07.000 Right, so I'm not saying you're silly. 0.99

00:50:09.000 No. 1.00

00:50:09.000 But it seems like I'm saying you're silly. 1.00

00:50:10.000 No, I don't feel that at all.

00:50:12.000 But it does, you know, to a rational person, especially to someone who's an atheist or who doesn't believe in spirits, they would say, well, why do you think about it that way?

00:50:24.000 Just take accountability, just show up and go to work.

00:50:27.000 But there is a real benefit in thinking of it as a muse.

00:50:33.000 Whether or not it's real or not, if you think about it like it's a muse, if you show up at the same time every day and put in the work, it will reward you as if it's a god.

00:50:44.000 It will.

00:50:45.000 It really will.

00:50:46.000 It will.

00:50:46.000 Which is wild.

00:50:47.000 Do you know who Dr. Joe Dispenza is?

00:50:49.000 I've heard of that guy.

00:50:50.000 Ring a bell?

00:50:51.000 Now, he talks about this in a whole other vocabulary.

00:50:55.000 He talks about the quantum...

00:50:58.000 Whatever that is, which is what I would call the muse.

00:51:01.000 It's that greater self, right?

00:51:04.000 So he looks at it from a whole other perspective.

00:51:06.000 He wants to get out of the ego, leave that behind, and it's psychedelic in a way, too.

00:51:12.000 He talks about getting into that world where you are no one and no place and no thing, and the senses are gone, and all that's left is vibration and awareness, you know?

00:51:25.000 So that's his way of talking about that.

00:51:28.000 For me, I'm sort of anthropomorphic.

00:51:31.000 I like to imagine something with a human face, a goddess with that little Greek hairstyle.

00:51:37.000 That's what you think of?

00:51:38.000 Yeah, definitely.

00:51:41.000 So, I mean, but as long as you have a thing that you're concentrating on, that you sort of give up your control of the moment to, and that you respect enough that you're going to show up every day and put in the work and address this thing.

00:51:56.000 Like, you actually have, like, a prayer to the goddess.

00:51:58.000 I do, yeah.

00:51:59.000 Yeah.

00:51:59.000 What is the prayer?

00:52:00.000 Can you tell us what it is?

00:52:01.000 Yeah, sure.

00:52:02.000 It's actually a mentor of mine, a guy named Paul Rink.

00:52:07.000 Gave me this, printed this out, typed this out.

00:52:10.000 It's the prayer from Homer's Odyssey, the opening invocation of the muse.

00:52:16.000 As Homer himself was sitting, if you look at the first 12 lines of the Odyssey, that's his kind of prayer to the muse.

00:52:24.000 And do you want me to say it out loud?

00:52:28.000 Sure.

00:52:28.000 Okay.

00:52:29.000 And I say this every morning out loud.

00:52:32.000 Paul taught me this.

00:52:33.000 It goes like this.

00:52:41.000 I'm getting goosebumps as I'm saying this, of the various-minded man who, after he had plundered the innermost citadel of hallowed Troy, ah, was made to stray grievously about the coasts of men.

00:52:56.000 The sport of their customs, good and bad, While his heart, through all the seafaring, ached with an agony to redeem himself and bring his company safe home.

00:53:06.000 And it kind of continues through that...

00:53:11.000 For his fellows he strove in vain—I'll just skip to the end—make this tale live for us in all its many bearings, oh muse.

00:53:20.000 And what's interesting about that, Joe, there's a lot of things interesting about that, but that sort of paradigm of a story of Odysseus, the various-minded man, if you look at almost any novel, any movie, any legend, anyone— That fits,

00:53:37.000 you know?

00:53:38.000 And I've found that any novel that I've been working on, I don't know how many have done, 10 or 11 or something like that, I say that prayer and I'm amazed that the story I'm working on fits exactly.

00:53:49.000 There's always somebody that's kind of been cast out into exile and is lost and is trying to get home, whatever home means, and is struggling, struggling, struggling.

00:54:01.000 And so Homer, I'm sure he did believe in the muse.

00:54:05.000 I mean, that was whatever it was, 3,200 years ago, something like that.

00:54:10.000 Those gods and goddesses were real.

00:54:12.000 You know, for whatever this is worth, the Spartans, the ancient Spartans, we know they were as hardcore as they could possibly be.

00:54:21.000 When their army would march out on a campaign and they got to the frontier of Leketomon, the name of their region of Greece, they would take the omens.

00:54:32.000 And if the omens were unfavorable, the whole army would turn around and go home.

00:54:37.000 So they took it pretty seriously.

00:54:41.000 And, you know, I do too. 0.93

00:54:44.000 That seems a little ridiculous. 0.97

00:54:47.000 That's just superstitious. 0.94

00:54:48.000 I mean, it's like, but that's the dance.

00:54:50.000 It's like, how much control are you going to give to this idea?

00:54:54.000 Are you going to give it when it benefits you, or are you going to give it to the point where you run the risk of becoming paranoid?

00:55:03.000 True, true.

00:55:03.000 And then you can sabotage.

00:55:04.000 Probably they should have marched out on certain.

00:55:06.000 Perhaps.

00:55:07.000 But all I'm saying is they took it really seriously.

00:55:09.000 Well, perhaps they were aware of something that we weren't, like that maybe there is something.

00:55:14.000 To these signs, and at the very least, maybe there's something to the signs, whereas if they erode your confidence in the mission, and you ignore those signs, then when things go sideways, you won't have conviction in your task.

00:55:33.000 But if you do have signs that indicate you're on the correct path, that the gods are with you, then you will have confidence in your conviction.

00:55:43.000 Yeah.

00:55:43.000 But wouldn't it be interesting, Joe, if it really was true?

00:55:47.000 I mean, if there really were forces that we couldn't see, that shamans or people like that can see.

00:55:57.000 And, I mean, I'm not saying that's true, but it would be, who says that this technological, scientific way that we have of looking at the world is the right way?

00:56:09.000 Over all the course of history, the Egyptians, the pyramids, we still can't figure out how they did it, right? 0.72

00:56:15.000 You had the guests on your show that said that there was a civilization that was destroyed.

00:56:23.000 What if that was true?

00:56:27.000 Yeah.

00:56:27.000 Civilizations were tapped into – who knows?

00:56:30.000 Well, it seems very likely that it was true.

00:56:32.000 I don't know if you've seen his Netflix series.

00:56:34.000 It's out now.

00:56:35.000 It's really amazing.

00:56:36.000 I haven't.

00:56:36.000 What's it called?

00:56:37.000 It's called Ancient Apocalypse.

00:56:39.000 Ah, right, right, right.

00:56:40.000 It is all about all of the evidence that points to a lost civilization that was most likely destroyed by a thing called the Younger Drys Impact Theory.

00:56:53.000 The younger Jairus impact theory was somewhere around 12,800 years ago we encountered comets and they slammed into earth and probably wiped out most of civilization and reset human history.

00:57:09.000 I'm open to an idea like that.

00:57:11.000 Well, there's real physical evidence.

00:57:13.000 It's an interesting idea. 0.74

00:57:15.000 And for the longest time, when he wrote the first book, which was Fingerprints of the Gods, he was widely criticized for it and dismissed as being a charlatan and a crazy person.

00:57:28.000 But now there's a lot of real physical evidence in the form of ancient structures and then also in the form of when the comets made impact, when they do core samples and they look through the Earth, at that same time period they find high levels of iridium,

00:57:46.000 high levels of nanodiamonds that are formed when things impact the Earth with great force.

00:57:54.000 So there's a lot of the Iridium thing is like it's very common in space and very rare on Earth and there's a nice layer of it around 12,000 years ago.

00:58:03.000 Which is also the end of the Ice Age and they think that the Ice Age ended because comets slammed into the ice caps.

00:58:11.000 And melted everything almost instantaneously, causing massive floods.

00:58:15.000 And those are the floods that were talked about in stories, like the Epic of Gilgamesh, Noah's Ark.

00:58:21.000 I mean, many, many, many ancient cultures have these catastrophe myths.

00:58:27.000 And he thinks that that's what those all came from.

00:58:29.000 They all come from a very true thing.

00:58:33.000 So we're talking about things that we can't prove, like the flying saucer up there, that maybe they are.

00:58:41.000 There's something to that.

00:58:42.000 Yeah, well, Jung had theories about what flying saucers were, too.

00:58:46.000 They were manifestations, I think, of the human mind.

00:58:51.000 And that might be real, too.

00:58:53.000 Like, whatever...

00:58:57.000 This idea of like a solid world that you can only measure and put on a scale, well then why is it that when you do call to the muse and you do put in the work, why are you rewarded?

00:59:11.000 Is it simply just a matter of because you disciplined yourself to work?

00:59:18.000 Or is there something in giving up control to whatever it is that causes people to have wonderful ideas?

00:59:30.000 Wonderful ideas are like these little gifts.

00:59:32.000 Whenever I have a new idea for a bit or a new punchline, it's like the universe gave me a gift.

00:59:38.000 Yeah, isn't it?

00:59:39.000 I have a punchline, and I say it, and the audience laughs so loud.

00:59:43.000 You're like, wow, the universe just gave me a gift.

00:59:46.000 What is that?

00:59:47.000 Where's that coming from?

00:59:49.000 I could say, oh, it's just me.

00:59:51.000 Just me and my mind.

00:59:54.000 But there's a benefit in some strange way to saying, no, no, no, no, no.

01:00:01.000 You're just showing up.

01:00:02.000 You're showing up and you're getting out of the way.

01:00:05.000 You're getting out of the way and then the stuff comes through you and then you write it all out.

01:00:13.000 I mean we're sort of – again, we're kind of talking about to me the greater self or the unconscious or that thing.

01:00:17.000 I mean what is it like – I know sometimes I – let's say I've been working all day on something and I go and I take a walk at the end of the day and my mind is emptying and I'm going along.

01:00:29.000 And suddenly it'll come into my mind, there's a typo on page 178. And I'll go, what?

01:00:36.000 And of course it's right, right?

01:00:38.000 As soon as I go back, I look at it, it's there.

01:00:40.000 So some mind, some level of consciousness is operating, right?

01:00:47.000 So below our level of consciousness.

01:00:50.000 So maybe it's just as simple as tapping into that.

01:00:54.000 I think there's more to that, though.

01:00:57.000 I would say...

01:00:59.000 Going back to what you were just saying a couple of minutes ago, Joe, that there's sort of two halves of it.

01:01:03.000 The one half is sort of the airy-fairy half that talks about something coming from somewhere we don't know.

01:01:09.000 But the other half is a disciplined half.

01:01:11.000 The other half is, you know, it's the right brain, left brain, right?

01:01:14.000 Where we've kind of made that instrument, our body, our mind, ready to accept that.

01:01:21.000 You know, to tune into the cosmic radio station and whatever's coming in, To remember it, to take it seriously, you know, to put it down, and then to work with it, you know?

01:01:33.000 So, to me it's like a symphony exists on another dimension of reality, but it takes Beethoven here, who knows how to do it, Knows how to bring it in,

01:01:48.000 knows how to open himself to it, but also has the chops, has the musical chops and the intellectual chops to put it together into a form that you and I can listen to.

01:02:01.000 So to me, it's kind of right brain analytics.

01:02:03.000 Two things.

01:02:04.000 Well, there's a thought too, right?

01:02:06.000 And this thought is, why have people throughout time, why have they gravitated towards these ideas of deities?

01:02:15.000 Is it just because we don't know?

01:02:17.000 We see lightning in the sky and we assume it's God's?

01:02:19.000 But there's more to it than that, right?

01:02:22.000 There's a moral structure that these things give us.

01:02:25.000 There's a thing that we get out of them that doesn't exist in the animal world.

01:02:32.000 The world of that crocodile, Yeah.

01:02:52.000 We somehow or another have a sense that there's more.

01:02:56.000 I think it's an emerging sense.

01:02:58.000 And I think this emerging sense is evolving, just like our ability to see things and hear things and our ability to speak.

01:03:05.000 All these things are helping us understand that there's maybe more to life and that we are somehow or another connected.

01:03:15.000 And one of the beautiful things about your work That I think you'll probably agree with, is that there's a great satisfaction in the fact that your work has helped people.

01:03:24.000 Your work has helped me.

01:03:26.000 Like, me reading The War of Art has absolutely motivated me and helped me, and helped me understand things.

01:03:34.000 And because of that, you, by your work and by thinking and by getting out of your own way and summoning the muse, you've created this thing that is then everybody else's experience too.

01:03:45.000 And it helps us all rise up.

01:03:47.000 There's something to that.

01:04:07.000 There's got to be a payoff for that somewhere, right?

01:04:09.000 Because it's all a gift.

01:04:11.000 People are all trying to give something to somebody.

01:04:14.000 And a lot of that gift is the alleviation of pain, I think, you know?

01:04:18.000 Of broken hearts, of fear, of self-destructive things that you read a book or you listen to a piece of music and you go, you know, I'm not alone. 0.95

01:04:27.000 I'm not the only person that's dealing with this shit, you know? 0.98

01:04:30.000 So-and-so actually, there's meaning to it. 0.99

01:04:33.000 It isn't just meaningless.

01:04:34.000 And I hope you're right that we are evolving the human race.

01:04:38.000 On the other hand, I would wonder if when we go back to primitive people, if they had somehow a deeper understanding or a more direct understanding of God or whatever. 0.99

01:04:51.000 Who knows what, you know, Jesus in the wilderness and the desert, what, you know?

01:04:57.000 There's probably something to this deeper understanding because they were less burdened down by dogma.

01:05:06.000 If you really only had the culture of the people that you were surrounded by...

01:05:12.000 You know, that's all you had.

01:05:14.000 Maybe you had less things to consider about, like, I think we're very much burdened by media and the outside world.

01:05:22.000 I mean, think about all the fear-mongering that goes on in the news, because if it bleeds, it leads.

01:05:28.000 Whatever scary is the thing that gets the headline. 0.63

01:05:31.000 So you're constantly taking in all this data that's scaring the shit out of you.

01:05:36.000 Like, Bill Hicks used to have a great...

01:05:38.000 Do you know who Bill Hicks was?

01:05:38.000 No, no.

01:05:39.000 Great stand-up comedian who died young and was one of the most influential stand-up comedians maybe ever.

01:05:45.000 So much so that there was a green room at the Punchline in Georgia, in Atlanta.

01:05:50.000 And when you'd work there in the green room before you go on stage, someone had written on the walls, quit trying to be Hicks.

01:05:57.000 Because so many comedians, they were so blown away by him that they kind of imitated him.

01:06:04.000 It was really common. 0.99

01:06:05.000 But he had this bit about CNN, that you'd watch CNN and it was war, death, famine, disease, and he'd go outside and birds are chirping, and you're like, where is this shit? 0.99

01:06:17.000 He's like, Ted Turner's making all this shit up. 0.99

01:06:20.000 In your life, this didn't exist. 0.98

01:06:23.000 And that you really need to be concerned with the things you actually encounter.

01:06:29.000 But now we're not.

01:06:31.000 Now we're encountering these enormous problems, like global war, Or the temperature, the climate's changing.

01:06:39.000 And it's human beings, and we have to change how we extract energy and information.

01:06:45.000 And what are we doing?

01:06:46.000 Like, totally.

01:06:47.000 And why is there so much crime?

01:06:49.000 And why is there so much poverty? 0.99

01:06:51.000 And why is education so fucked? 0.99

01:06:53.000 And why do these terrible people want to run the planet? 1.00

01:06:56.000 And why are they extracting money?

01:06:58.000 And why are they, like, they're almost dead.

01:07:00.000 They're 80 years old, and they're still concentrating on the same goddamn thing That people were concentrated on when they were cave people just acquiring resources and dominating the other cultures and like we're overrun by so much extraneous data and I think that if we were not and we were living in these sort of tribal environments I think it's more in a line with a natural way of life, 0.58

01:07:30.000 and maybe being more in line with a natural way that the human animal evolved to exist in, that maybe you have more freedom to think about the very source of life, 0.65

01:07:46.000 the very source of these thoughts, the source of love, the source of Yeah, I think of sometimes like 10,000 years ago, the first yogis in the Indus Valley or wherever the hell they were,

01:08:03.000 right?

01:08:04.000 Where they had infinite time, you would think, right?

01:08:06.000 They were okay.

01:08:08.000 And they could just work postures and poses and study, you know, what happens when this little – when you release this little muscle here and when your spine is aligned in exactly the right way.

01:08:21.000 And they had like generation after generation after generation, right?

01:08:24.000 Father to son, mother to daughter, whatever.

01:08:28.000 What did they get to?

01:08:30.000 You know, the energy coming up, the spine, the shock was all...

01:08:33.000 Where does all that...

01:08:34.000 I have no idea what that is.

01:08:35.000 I just have a, you know, a kind of a layman's knowledge of that.

01:08:39.000 But think about hundreds of years of doing that, of just focusing inward, or the great, you know, meditating people that would get...

01:08:46.000 God only knows where they got to, you know?

01:08:49.000 And it's, you know, no CNN, nothing to distract them.

01:08:55.000 It's...

01:08:56.000 And the other thing, The news, CNN and all that sort of stuff, is really the voice of resistance.

01:09:04.000 You couldn't define it more, you know, than what's coming out.

01:09:08.000 It's all fear, fear, fear, fear, fear.

01:09:11.000 It's all us versus them. 0.99

01:09:14.000 You're alone.

01:09:15.000 I'm alone. 1.00

01:09:16.000 These motherfuckers are trying to take what you've got. 1.00

01:09:19.000 That sort of thing. 1.00

01:09:20.000 And because we're all weak, And resistance is like our native tongue. 1.00

01:09:28.000 And I'm guilty of this shit too. 1.00

01:09:30.000 It comes in and I'm hooked on it. 1.00

01:09:33.000 It's washing over me.

01:09:35.000 And I always feel dirty when it's done.

01:09:38.000 Like I need to...

01:09:41.000 Take a shower.

01:09:41.000 Get something out of that.

01:09:44.000 The 24-hour news cycle is another horrible thing, you know?

01:09:47.000 It used to be just Walter Cronkite for a half hour in the evening, you know?

01:09:51.000 But we were uninformed then.

01:09:53.000 That's the argument against that, is that we do live in a complex and ever-connected world, and you should be informed of all of the things that are dangerous.

01:10:03.000 I don't know about that.

01:10:04.000 I mean, what are we being informed of?

01:10:07.000 It's a very limited stuff, you know?

01:10:10.000 It's like, oh, a missile landed in Poland or there was an explosion in Poland yesterday.

01:10:16.000 And you can tell, I'm sure in the newsrooms and the executives, oh, they were ecstatic when they heard that, right?

01:10:22.000 Oh, this will scare the fuck out of everybody, right? 0.91

01:10:25.000 Do you think they think like that? 0.81

01:10:27.000 Absolutely, because like you say, if it bleeds, it leads, right?

01:10:29.000 Right, but do you think they think like that, or do they think it's imperative that we get this information out?

01:10:34.000 They may have brainwashed themselves to believe that as a self-justification, but they know it's gold to them.

01:10:43.000 Right, right.

01:10:45.000 You know, another mass shooting.

01:10:47.000 That's another thing that gets me.

01:10:50.000 Or why does that dominate the news for days, right?

01:10:56.000 And it's always the same stuff.

01:10:58.000 Or even in, like, I live in L.A., freeway chases, right?

01:11:02.000 The guy stole a car, the helicopter's following him as he goes through, you know, all the communities and the cops are after him.

01:11:09.000 And, like, everything else that's on the air is, like, blown off the air completely while we watch that.

01:11:15.000 I don't know.

01:11:15.000 It's just resistance if you ask me.

01:11:17.000 Well, it certainly is a thing that could get away from you and you could just get completely absorbed with all the negative aspects of the world and not concentrate on your own life.

01:11:30.000 Not concentrate on the things that you actually can control.

01:11:33.000 But the thing is, like, should you be a civic-minded person who's, like, concerned about the world and stewards of the land and all that good stuff?

01:11:41.000 How much?

01:11:42.000 Right.

01:11:42.000 But that's the balance, right?

01:11:44.000 To the dominance of whatever it is.

01:11:45.000 But isn't that maybe what's emerging, this understanding of the world as a whole?

01:11:50.000 Maybe it's a part of a thing where we're not quite good at it yet, but we're getting an understanding.

01:11:57.000 We're overwhelmed by it now.

01:11:58.000 Yeah.

01:11:59.000 But that we are all connected in this way.

01:12:01.000 And, you know, there's also an awareness, like, if you buy...

01:12:05.000 Like, someone sent me a video yesterday.

01:12:07.000 My friend David Lucas sent me a video yesterday of these kids working in a factory.

01:12:13.000 And you...

01:12:16.000 We kind of all know that in some countries kids work in factories, but when you see a video of these Chinese kids working in a factory and you look at them like, how old's that kid?

01:12:29.000 Is that kid 12?

01:12:30.000 Are they 11?

01:12:32.000 What's going on there?

01:12:33.000 And you see them doing this hard labor, often 16, 18 hours a day in this factory.

01:12:40.000 It's very disturbing because then it makes you think like, oh my goodness, what products am I buying that are being made in this factory and what am I contributing to?

01:12:50.000 And you can be overwhelmed with grief and with guilt.

01:12:56.000 Yeah.

01:12:57.000 But should you?

01:12:58.000 Or should you just be blissfully unaware and buy your iPhone?

01:13:01.000 Take it beyond that and forget about just the children.

01:13:04.000 What about the grown-ups that are in factories?

01:13:07.000 Or I was just, earlier today, I was hanging out with Ryan Holiday.

01:13:12.000 And he was giving a talk.

01:13:13.000 I love Ryan.

01:13:14.000 He's a great guy.

01:13:15.000 He was here.

01:13:16.000 Yeah.

01:13:17.000 Yeah.

01:13:17.000 He was given a talk to a bank group at the Marriott.

01:13:22.000 So it's one of those ballrooms, you know, where there are tables, tables, tables, and there's probably 250, 300 people, and they're executives, you know, men and women.

01:13:31.000 And I'm thinking to myself, thank God I'm not one of these guys. 0.98

01:13:37.000 And I feel – but that is – in modern industrial society, What the fuck is that? 0.98

01:13:44.000 What is that? 0.95

01:13:45.000 I mean, what is that?

01:13:46.000 Thank God that you have your podcast and all your other stuff, right?

01:13:50.000 You would never sit still for that in your own life.

01:13:52.000 You would never do that, right? 0.99

01:13:54.000 Well, I mean, maybe I would if I was raised that way and I fell into that path, which I think But it's a fucked situation. 0.96

01:14:01.000 We take it for granted, right? 0.98

01:14:02.000 Because we're brainwashed from day one in kindergarten. 0.99

01:14:07.000 But if Plato were to walk onto this scene, or an ancient Spartan or somebody would appear, they'd look around and go, what the fuck is this? 0.98

01:14:16.000 Let me get back to where I was. 0.94

01:14:19.000 Yeah.

01:14:20.000 Yeah, well, you know, one of the things that I, when I was reading a bunch of, I got into a kick for about a year and a half where I read many books about Native American culture and what happened when the settlers made their way across the United States.

01:14:36.000 And one of the things that's fascinating is there was a bunch of people Whether they were trappers or soldiers or just regular civilians that gave up on modern life and were incorporated into Native American cultures.

01:14:52.000 They wound up living with the Native Americans.

01:14:55.000 Some of them were even kidnapped by the Native Americans when they were young and then recaptured by the Americans and brought back to You know, quote-unquote, civilization. 0.90

01:15:06.000 They all wanted to go back.

01:15:08.000 They all wanted to go back.

01:15:09.000 To a man.

01:15:11.000 No one from that tribe wanted to join modern civilization. 1.00

01:15:16.000 But everyone from modern civilization wanted to be a part of that tribe.

01:15:20.000 Once they were incorporated in it, and they lived that life for a while, there's something about it that was far more satisfying and far more...

01:15:30.000 It resonated with them in a way that...

01:15:32.000 And even then, I mean, this is a very primitive society.

01:15:35.000 We're talking about 1860s America.

01:15:37.000 But that was not exciting.

01:15:40.000 That was not satisfying.

01:15:41.000 That was not what they wanted to do.

01:15:43.000 They wanted to live off the land.

01:15:44.000 They wanted to be traveling, you know, hunting buffalo.

01:15:49.000 Can we go back to that?

01:15:50.000 I don't know if we can go back to that.

01:15:52.000 I don't think there's any going back.

01:15:53.000 But it does seem to be the way that the human being is the happiest.

01:15:58.000 Well, I think it's the way we evolved.

01:16:00.000 And these human reward systems are just sort of ingrained in the fiber of our being.

01:16:07.000 Yeah.

01:16:07.000 And the reward systems are, there's a feeling that you get when you catch a fish.

01:16:11.000 You ever go fishing?

01:16:12.000 I have, but I'm not good at it.

01:16:15.000 You don't have to be good at it, but there's a feeling that you get when you get a big fish on the line.

01:16:19.000 It's so exciting.

01:16:21.000 Well, what is that feeling?

01:16:22.000 The feeling is you're going to be able to feed your family.

01:16:24.000 Yeah.

01:16:24.000 So you're rewarded for being successful at that with not just food, but also with this rush of endorphins and these great feelings.

01:16:32.000 And that's what people pursue when they go fishing.

01:16:35.000 And it's so much so that there's like a perversion of it.

01:16:39.000 Where people do catch and release fishing just to get a thrill.

01:16:44.000 So there's tournaments and these guys go out there and they cast a line and they even have a live well on their boat where they take the fish and they put it in this aerated pool on their boat where the fish stay alive so they can weigh them and win the tournament and then they release them back into the lake,

01:17:03.000 which is kind of crazy, right?

01:17:04.000 But it's a...

01:17:07.000 They've hijacked this feeling that you get that is a part of being a person because that feeling was to reward you with being able to feed your family.

01:17:18.000 Yeah.

01:17:18.000 And within the tribe where it's your uncle and your cousin and your daughter and your mom and everybody's together.

01:17:26.000 Everybody's together.

01:17:26.000 Yeah.

01:17:27.000 Yeah.

01:17:27.000 Like the movie Dances with Wolves.

01:17:29.000 Exactly.

01:17:30.000 They really hit that one with a nail on the head with that one. 0.99

01:17:33.000 Yes.

01:17:34.000 That's a great example of that, with that movie.

01:17:37.000 But, you know, the reality of that, that life is so much more satisfying than the life of being a banker.

01:17:46.000 When you're a banker, I mean, I'm not a banker, but I would imagine your reward is you're always looking for new things to buy, right?

01:17:56.000 So you're making enough money that one day you're going to get a yacht.

01:17:59.000 One day you're going to get that Ferrari.

01:18:01.000 One day you're going to get that jet.

01:18:04.000 One day you're going to get that bigger house.

01:18:06.000 You're going to get to a point where, you know, hey, you make enough money, maybe you can buy an island. 0.60

01:18:10.000 You crazy?

01:18:12.000 Like if you've got an island, like Tyler Perry has an island. 0.98

01:18:15.000 Oh, he's balling.

01:18:16.000 No, that guy's got an island!

01:18:18.000 You hear about people with an island, that's ultimate balling.

01:18:21.000 He's got a jet, got an island, got a boat, got a this, got a that, and you just, you know, Tyler Perry's obviously creative.

01:18:27.000 I'm not talking about him, but when talking about someone who's a person who's just acquiring numbers, just acquiring currency, and then what's your reward?

01:18:38.000 What do you get out of that?

01:18:39.000 Maybe you get to play golf on the weekend, and what do you do when you play golf?

01:18:42.000 You're talking about your objects and your things.

01:18:44.000 The things you're acquiring.

01:18:46.000 Have you seen the newest?

01:18:48.000 That.

01:18:48.000 Oh, I'm trying to get one on the waiting list.

01:18:52.000 That's where their good feelings come from.

01:18:55.000 That is the subversion.

01:18:57.000 That's the hijacking of those positive feelings of accomplishment like you get when you're fishing.

01:19:04.000 For them, it's accomplishing something even more difficult to get, like a yacht.

01:19:10.000 And then it's just this trick.

01:19:12.000 This biological trick that's forcing them to keep slaving away under fluorescent lights for 16 hours a day.

01:19:20.000 I mean, I don't know if we're ever going to evolve to some way where we can kind of get back to something like that in some sort of form.

01:19:27.000 Not literally, but, you know, I mean, sports in some way, when they're not perverted into these giant things like the NFL and everything like that, are at least a way of Of artificially acting out the chase,

01:19:46.000 you know, or the tribals, you know, the team, you know.

01:19:50.000 I mean, that's a modern way that sort of taps into those ancient needs, those evolutionary needs.

01:19:57.000 I wonder if we can ever get to that on some culture-wide scale.

01:20:02.000 We certainly don't seem to be.

01:20:04.000 It doesn't seem like it.

01:20:05.000 There's billions and billions of people and, you know.

01:20:09.000 Well, it seems like there's so many people that are living that way.

01:20:12.000 More people are living that way than not living that way.

01:20:15.000 If you, like, did a survey of all the people and their occupation and the enjoyment level of their job and what they look forward to, I would imagine the majority of people do not enjoy what they're doing and they're sort of stuck and they're just doing a thing for money and they don't find it rewarding.

01:20:38.000 I would agree.

01:20:39.000 And they probably have a hobby or a pastime or a love that they're working to be able to do whatever that is, you know?

01:20:48.000 Yeah, that's the thing that excites them. 0.77

01:20:51.000 They get off work and they go fucking axe throwing or something, like whatever the thing that they're into.

01:20:57.000 But what is sort of interesting to me, and it is kind of hopeful to be on some level, Joe, is that there are a lot of people that are taking those individual passions and making them businesses, you know? 0.60

01:21:07.000 Like, I'll go back to the idea of designing motorcycles, you know?

01:21:10.000 I'm sure that, you know, there are guys that love making up some crazy kind of motorcycle.

01:21:17.000 They're artists, right?

01:21:20.000 Yes.

01:21:21.000 Yes.

01:21:23.000 Yes.

01:21:37.000 That gives me some hope.

01:21:39.000 There's a lot of kind of mom and pop people following their dreams, even if they're kind of, they're not, you know, global dreams, but they're certainly dreams that satisfy the soul.

01:21:51.000 Yeah, I mean, they certainly don't have to be global.

01:21:54.000 If you're making motorcycles and, you know, you start doing it in your garage, and then you post a few on social media, and someone says, hey, I'd love to buy one of your motorcycles, then all of a sudden you've got a project to sell.

01:22:05.000 Whatever.

01:22:05.000 I've got a feeling that must be the first one you sell, you know?

01:22:08.000 Yeah, and then because of the internet, I mean, this is like probably one of the more positive things about the internet.

01:22:13.000 Because of the internet, people can find you, and you actually can move from having this very unsatisfactory job to doing something that you truly enjoy.

01:22:24.000 Maybe you start off as a, you know, you're making woodwork, you're making tables and, you know, Various projects and you post them on Instagram and all of a sudden people want to buy them.

01:22:37.000 Now you got orders.

01:22:38.000 You're like, oh my god, I'm thinking of quitting the job.

01:22:40.000 Then you and the wife have to have a conversation like, is this sustainable? 0.97

01:22:44.000 Can we really do this?

01:22:45.000 Well, I'll tell you what, let's give ourselves six months and I'm going to work on it part-time on nights and weekends and it'll be worth the sacrifice.

01:22:54.000 I think I could really get to a point where we can have a real way of life that is very satisfying.

01:23:01.000 Like if you go from being a person who works in a bank, this boring, unsatisfying version of reality that so many people are trapped in, to all of a sudden you're painting and your paintings are selling.

01:23:16.000 And you have a gallery opening and your stuff is selling and you're like, oh my goodness, I think I can make a living painting.

01:23:22.000 Like, what a much more satisfying and exciting way of life that is.

01:23:27.000 Yeah.

01:23:28.000 I mean, I'm a believer, as you know from what I've talked about, the muse and stuff like that, that through each of us, Is flowing an underground river and that river is unique to us and it's our creativity.

01:23:44.000 Let's say it's the guy with the motorcycles or it's a guy that wants to paint lowrider cars that just has or design lowrider cars or something like that and that is flowing through us and if we Don't do it if we stay working in the bank or doing whatever it is.

01:24:04.000 If we yield to our resistance, And our fear, and we don't do that, that river doesn't go away.

01:24:13.000 That underground river doesn't go away.

01:24:15.000 It flows into another channel, flows into a negative channel, right? 0.93

01:24:19.000 And it starts to fuck us up, physically, emotionally, psychologically. 0.60

01:24:23.000 But if we do let it flow, and pretty soon the whole family gets involved in it, right?

01:24:30.000 And we've now created now this energy What you could call God energy, it's coming from some other place, right?

01:24:36.000 Is helping everybody.

01:24:39.000 Everybody's feeding off of it.

01:24:40.000 And I'm encouraged that there are more people doing that than I think there ever were. 0.99

01:24:47.000 Because of the internet, like you say, because of the fact that you can find a market, you can let people be aware of what you're doing, and people will come to you and will buy your shit. 0.97

01:24:58.000 So, God bless everybody that's doing that, you know? 0.99

01:25:00.000 Everybody that does it, don't stop.

01:25:04.000 Yeah.

01:25:05.000 I don't know if it's for everybody, because there's some people out there that truly don't have interests.

01:25:09.000 They don't have a thing that excites them, which is very unfortunate.

01:25:12.000 What is that?

01:25:13.000 Is that nature or nurture?

01:25:14.000 I'm not so sure about that.

01:25:15.000 I kind of believe that, you know, maybe not everybody has, like, a specific art that they want to do, but they have some gift, you know?

01:25:24.000 I'm thinking about a friend of mine, a woman who's been a really good friend of mine forever, and has never really worked.

01:25:30.000 She's always been married.

01:25:31.000 She's never had a job, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:25:33.000 But I realized watching her life that her calling is she's like one of those people that of her extended family and friends, she's the one that holds everything together.

01:25:45.000 She's the one that when somebody gets pregnant over here, an unwanted pregnancy, they go to my friend. 1.00

01:25:52.000 And she kind of pulls them together somehow.

01:25:54.000 If there's a death in the family, if there's something like that, right?

01:25:57.000 So that's her calling.

01:26:00.000 Maybe she's not...

01:26:02.000 Making movies or something like that.

01:26:04.000 But that's her gift, and it's a real gift, you know?

01:26:07.000 And so I do believe that everybody's got something like that.

01:26:12.000 Well, that was probably a traditional role in communities.

01:26:16.000 Yeah, it probably was.

01:26:17.000 They probably had a name for it, you know?

01:26:19.000 Maybe she'd be the shamaness or something like that. 0.97

01:26:22.000 Yeah.

01:26:23.000 And it's very valuable.

01:26:25.000 I mean, if you're a person that's in a troubled spot and there's a person who's really good at navigating troubled spots in the community, that's a very valuable position.

01:26:34.000 And for that person who is that person, it's probably very satisfying to be able to help all those people.

01:26:39.000 Yeah.

01:26:39.000 And what's sort of a little sad about that for my friend is that she really doesn't get the credit that she deserves.

01:26:45.000 She should get a lot of credit.

01:26:46.000 They should have a dinner for her once a year, you know?

01:26:49.000 They should come to her house.

01:26:50.000 And I know even...

01:26:51.000 She has saved me at least three times from... 0.99

01:26:56.000 Bad shit, you know? 0.99

01:26:57.000 By just intervening, you know, and just coming in and saying, don't worry, I'll take care of this, I'll take care of it. 1.00

01:27:02.000 And she has.

01:27:03.000 And I know she's done it for many, many others, you know?

01:27:06.000 Nice.

01:27:07.000 Yeah, that's a thing, yeah.

01:27:09.000 And it doesn't have to be a thing that you get a paycheck for.

01:27:12.000 Yeah.

01:27:13.000 It doesn't have to be a thing where you get a little plaque on your desk.

01:27:16.000 Yeah.

01:27:16.000 And it's probably a tribal thing, right?

01:27:18.000 In Dances with Wolves, there probably was, you know, one of the women that was doing that thing, or a man, whatever. 0.98

01:27:23.000 Yeah.

01:27:24.000 Well, the title of my last tour was A Sacred Clown, because there's a role in the Lakota people called the Hayoka.

01:27:38.000 And the Hayoka, the person's job...

01:27:41.000 Was to make fun of all the things that were there.

01:27:45.000 Whether it was the biggest warrior or the chief or everything.

01:27:50.000 They made fun of everything. 0.99

01:27:51.000 Because the idea was that anything that could not be mocked was bullshit. 0.99

01:27:57.000 And you had to figure out what was bullshit. 0.99

01:27:59.000 That's great. 0.98

01:28:00.000 It was important to know what was real and what was important.

01:28:03.000 And what was truly significant.

01:28:05.000 And if you couldn't make fun of it, it was like, hey, don't make fun of that.

01:28:08.000 Don't make fun of me.

01:28:10.000 Like, you knew that person was inflated by ego.

01:28:14.000 And there was a way of, like, letting out the hot air. 1.00

01:28:18.000 And, you know, all the windbags and sort of letting them know that, you know, they're kind of full of shit. 0.99

01:28:23.000 That was a valuable role in the culture. 0.99

01:28:25.000 Yeah.

01:28:26.000 So now you have, you know, comedians.

01:28:28.000 Yeah.

01:28:29.000 Stephen Colbert, somebody like that, right, that takes the piss out of somebody.

01:28:33.000 That's great.

01:28:33.000 Yeah.

01:28:34.000 That's a role.

01:28:35.000 It's definitely a role.

01:28:36.000 That's a role that's not often acknowledged and rewarded and should be.

01:28:41.000 Yeah.

01:28:42.000 The role of a counselor, someone who can counsel you through things, the role of someone who can sort of coach you through life because they've gone through the same shit that you've gone through and they have some valuable information they can share to make your journey quicker and easier.

01:28:58.000 And maybe you can now impart that to young people that you see coming up that are struggling in a very similar way.

01:29:05.000 What do you see for yourself, Joe, like on your podcast?

01:29:08.000 Do you feel like you're performing a kind of a service like that?

01:29:11.000 I think you are.

01:29:13.000 Well, that's very nice of you.

01:29:14.000 I think you absolutely are.

01:29:17.000 I'm sure people benefit from it.

01:29:20.000 I benefit from it.

01:29:21.000 Don't be too modest now.

01:29:22.000 No, but I don't think of it that way.

01:29:24.000 I genuinely don't.

01:29:24.000 I think if I did, it would just get in the way.

01:29:27.000 You might be inflated.

01:29:28.000 It would just get in the way.

01:29:29.000 There's no value for me pondering what great things I've done.

01:29:34.000 There's zero value in that.

01:29:35.000 In fact, there's just nothing but pitfalls.

01:29:38.000 There's value in, and I have the same issue myself, you know, but there's value in valuing what you are giving and what you are doing and really just not inflating it but seeing it for what it is, you know?

01:29:51.000 God bless you. 0.98

01:29:52.000 You are doing a lot of good shit. 0.99

01:29:53.000 Well, thank you. 0.99

01:29:53.000 But I don't think that's something to concentrate on. 0.99

01:29:58.000 With my mind and my ego and who I am as a human, how that works, there's no value in that.

01:30:06.000 I'm the same way.

01:30:07.000 I mean, I know that I'm helping people, you know, with my sort of war of art and stuff like that.

01:30:11.000 But I also don't want to think about that, and I certainly don't want to be in that role.

01:30:15.000 But I must acknowledge, you know...

01:30:17.000 I, you know, say, okay, I'm doing a little something good here, so, you know, okay.

01:30:22.000 I think the reason—well, I know I'm not doing bad, which is nice, but I think the value is in— When I do my best is when I just think about the thing I'm doing and try to do it my best.

01:30:39.000 That's it.

01:30:39.000 To think about, like, look how good you've done.

01:30:42.000 That shit is no good. 1.00

01:30:43.000 That's no good. 1.00

01:30:45.000 I tell comedians in particular, I say, stop reading comments.

01:30:49.000 Don't read comments.

01:30:49.000 And don't even read positive comments.

01:30:52.000 Because positive comments you think are good, but they're not good.

01:30:54.000 Because now you're, like, captured by other people's praise and opinions of you and all that.

01:31:01.000 Like, that's just wasted time.

01:31:02.000 You're just getting in your own way.

01:31:04.000 Like, you should know if you're doing good work.

01:31:06.000 And you should know if, you know, there's a little bit of feedback is good, a little bit of positive or negative.

01:31:11.000 You get to, oh, people didn't like that.

01:31:13.000 Why didn't they like that?

01:31:14.000 You know what?

01:31:15.000 They were right.

01:31:16.000 This is why they didn't like it.

01:31:17.000 Yeah, it was kind of sloppy.

01:31:18.000 Oh, maybe I should have taken more time with that, or maybe I should have thought that out better, or maybe I should have looked at it from other perspectives.

01:31:24.000 And you can genuinely learn and grow from that, no doubt.

01:31:27.000 But at a certain point in time, it's too much, and it gets in the way.

01:31:32.000 The positive or the negative, and I've seen people crippled by negative critiques and negative comments and all these people with their emotional poison just spraying it on everybody they come into contact with.

01:31:45.000 And those are not necessarily the type of people.

01:31:48.000 The type of people that do that are not the type of people that you would be happy to interact with.

01:31:53.000 Those people that say hateful things to people online, they're genuinely like damaged and unhealthy people.

01:32:01.000 That's the only way you're capable of saying horrible things to people you don't even know online.

01:32:06.000 You have to be damaged.

01:32:08.000 Like you were saying that we wanted to pretend that we're separate.

01:32:11.000 And that when you do something evil to a person that has no effect on you.

01:32:16.000 But that's not true.

01:32:17.000 It most certainly has an effect.

01:32:19.000 We are all connected. 0.98

01:32:21.000 And when people are, you know, leaving horrible comments on someone's YouTube video or Horrible comments on Twitter like they're damaged people They're deeply damaged people and they're trying to like get you to feel the way they feel they feel like shit so they want you to feel like shit and You can just simply not take that in hmm. 0.97

01:32:44.000 Don't don't get involved in that But also don't get involved in the praise either don't start believing the bullshit and believe in your own hype and I just concentrate on doing things. 0.65

01:32:54.000 I concentrate on just trying to get better, and it's nice when people show up for my shows, and it's nice that the podcast is successful.

01:33:00.000 That's great.

01:33:01.000 But I don't think about it at all.

01:33:02.000 I just work.

01:33:05.000 Now, I would say, just as a sidebar here about the people that write hateful things, That that's their own resistance.

01:33:13.000 That's where that's coming from.

01:33:14.000 Yes.

01:33:26.000 And they're not enacting it in any way.

01:33:29.000 They're not doing a sober October in any way.

01:33:32.000 So they see you or they see somebody else succeeding and it's like a terrible reproach to them.

01:33:38.000 It's like, how can Joe do that?

01:33:40.000 It's on the unconscious level.

01:33:42.000 They're not aware of it, right?

01:33:43.000 Yeah.

01:33:44.000 He's doing something and I'm not.

01:33:46.000 And so they really hate themselves and they project that outward. 0.95

01:33:50.000 And I know this is true because I've gotten those shitty letters, you know, from people and shitty emails from people.

01:33:56.000 And when I've engaged with them at all, which I rarely do, It's only one or two exchanges before they'll admit, you know, I really felt I really hated you because I thought you were doing something.

01:34:08.000 I've got a book in me and I wish I had written and I hadn't written and that's why.

01:34:12.000 And then they'll actually will become friendly, you know, and I'm so sorry I wrote that to you.

01:34:18.000 I really didn't mean writing it to you.

01:34:20.000 So I think that if you think about the phenomenon of resistance on a sort of national or global level, like It's a big thing.

01:34:31.000 Yes.

01:34:55.000 I'm drinking too much.

01:34:57.000 I'm getting fat. 0.99

01:34:58.000 But it's impossible for most people to accept that about themselves and say, oh, I'm really fucking up. 0.99

01:35:07.000 So they project it. 0.98

01:35:10.000 Onto some other group, immigrants, you name it, right? 1.00

01:35:14.000 Yeah, they just don't have the tools yet.

01:35:16.000 No one's provided them with the tools.

01:35:18.000 There's a great quote, I forget who said it, but I've said it ad nauseum, that all criticism is the tragic result of unmet needs.

01:35:29.000 There's something more to that.

01:35:30.000 Who wrote that quote?

01:35:31.000 Someone wrote that.

01:35:31.000 See if we can find that.

01:35:33.000 Because there's more to it.

01:35:35.000 But that resonates. 0.97

01:35:36.000 That's the reason why people get shitty. 0.57

01:35:39.000 I always say, the people that are killing it in life, you think LeBron James is leaving YouTube quotes? 0.99

01:35:46.000 You think LeBron James is going on comments and fucking with people? 0.95

01:35:51.000 Every criticism, judgment, diagnosis, and expression of anger is the tragic expression of an unmet need. 0.98

01:36:00.000 And this is Marshall Rosenberg.

01:36:03.000 What a great quote.

01:36:04.000 That is such a great quote.

01:36:07.000 Now, I would take it a step beyond that.

01:36:09.000 And it seems like when you say an unmet need, that the person is waiting for someone else or some other force to supply their quote-unquote need.

01:36:19.000 I would say they aren't addressing that need themselves.

01:36:26.000 They aren't aware of it, and they aren't doing anything about it.

01:36:30.000 And that's where that anger and that hatred comes from.

01:36:33.000 Click there where it says the top 25 because it goes even further.

01:36:39.000 There's another, at the root of every tantrum and power struggle are unmet needs.

01:36:45.000 And that's another Marshall Rosenberg quote.

01:36:48.000 I don't like the whole phrase, unmet needs, because it feels to me like we're projecting out to somebody else, expecting them to come and satisfy us in some way.

01:37:00.000 You know?

01:37:01.000 And that's not the answer, I don't think.

01:37:04.000 The answer is Sober October...

01:37:07.000 Yeah.

01:37:07.000 And you yourself addressing that need, whatever it is.

01:37:11.000 Oh, most certainly.

01:37:11.000 That's the answer.

01:37:13.000 But I think by saying unmet needs, it's like they feel like they're supposed to get something that they're not getting.

01:37:18.000 True.

01:37:18.000 I agree with that.

01:37:19.000 Yeah.

01:37:20.000 But it's just what is going to address that?

01:37:23.000 Well, that's one of the things that makes me feel like when I'm on the right path that all I'm thinking about is what I'm doing and I'm not even remotely concerned With getting praise or getting anything else for it.

01:37:38.000 Because all I'm thinking about is doing the thing because I don't have unmet needs.

01:37:43.000 So my cup is full, so all I'm thinking about is the work.

01:37:50.000 I don't want to be recognized.

01:37:51.000 I'd rather not be recognized.

01:37:53.000 I'd rather be able to sneak through a restaurant and have no one know who I am.

01:37:56.000 That's one of the things I like about traveling overseas.

01:37:58.000 It's nice.

01:37:59.000 I can just slip around.

01:38:02.000 So that is because I've been doing the thing that I want to do for so long.

01:38:07.000 All my needs are met in that regard.

01:38:10.000 The accomplishments have been cemented and all the praise and all the success.

01:38:15.000 It's all great.

01:38:16.000 But now I don't think about it at all.

01:38:17.000 Instead of like living in that world of constantly trying to get more and more and more praise and becoming megalomaniac, I go the other way.

01:38:26.000 All I think about is just what I'm doing.

01:38:29.000 Yeah.

01:38:30.000 I'm the same way.

01:38:31.000 I'm definitely a believer from that the work is its own reward.

01:38:37.000 And when you're doing it right, whatever it is, making motorcycles, whatever it is, because it's tapped into that other level, you're getting a salary that In some coin that the gods have minted,

01:38:56.000 you know?

01:38:56.000 And you don't need a salary from the regular world.

01:39:00.000 Well, it's also from a resource management perspective, it's much more efficient to think that way.

01:39:08.000 I never thought about it that way.

01:39:09.000 You'll get more things done and you'll get out of your own way.

01:39:13.000 And that's a big issue.

01:39:15.000 The getting out of your own way is a big issue.

01:39:17.000 How would you define that, Joe?

01:39:19.000 When you say, I know exactly what you mean, but can you articulate that?

01:39:24.000 What does it mean when you're in your own way?

01:39:27.000 Well, your ego and your perception of yourself and how you're viewed by the world...

01:39:36.000 Is this like fluctuating thing and you think about it too often and it gets in the way and maybe it flavors your art in a way where you're actively trying to get more respect or trying to change other people's perceptions of you and alter it.

01:39:57.000 You're getting in your own way.

01:39:59.000 And it's transparent to other people.

01:40:01.000 It makes your art poor.

01:40:04.000 Your ego leaks over into whether it's your music or your writing, whatever it is you're making.

01:40:11.000 And you get in your own way.

01:40:13.000 There's nothing sadder than someone who's brilliant at something.

01:40:17.000 They're really good.

01:40:18.000 Say they're great at making automobiles.

01:40:21.000 They make the best cars.

01:40:22.000 But when you talk to them about it, they brag about it so much it grosses you out.

01:40:25.000 You don't want to buy their car.

01:40:27.000 Mm-hmm. 1.00

01:40:28.000 Like, fuck that guy in his car. 1.00

01:40:29.000 Uh-huh. 1.00

01:40:29.000 You know, he's a genius, but, you know, I don't want to talk to him. 1.00

01:40:32.000 He's annoying.

01:40:33.000 Ah.

01:40:33.000 Like, you're getting in your own way.

01:40:35.000 Let me ask you, Joe, were you at any stage of your life in your own way?

01:40:40.000 Oh, yes.

01:40:41.000 Yes, definitely.

01:40:41.000 And how did you...

01:40:43.000 Was there a moment when you got out of your own way?

01:40:46.000 I am my worst critic.

01:40:50.000 That's the best aspect about it.

01:40:52.000 I know I hate myself, but I am 100% my worst critic. 0.96

01:40:56.000 So I don't allow myself to bullshit myself.

01:41:00.000 And so if I have mediocre results or unfavorable results, I take long, hard looks at what's causing that. 0.95

01:41:11.000 And if you do that long enough, you'll get to the thing like, oh, I'm gross.

01:41:15.000 Like, I did this and that's gross.

01:41:17.000 I said that, that's gross.

01:41:18.000 Like, why did I say it like that?

01:41:19.000 Like, what's wrong with me?

01:41:20.000 I can't do that.

01:41:21.000 Like, I have to really understand what that is and why it's coming up and then figure out...

01:41:26.000 And luckily for me, because I'm a physical fitness enthusiast and I'm so obsessed with that, I have, like, these anxiety alleviation methods.

01:41:39.000 That are tried and true.

01:41:40.000 And in doing that and taxing the body in the way that I do, it allows me this great insight.

01:41:49.000 Because those moments of physical exercise and martial arts training, they're so uncomfortable, so difficult.

01:41:57.000 That it makes the other things seem much more trivial, and it makes them seem more...

01:42:04.000 The stakes are lower.

01:42:07.000 They seem more clear for what the actual issue is.

01:42:11.000 And then I assess.

01:42:15.000 I figure out what I'm doing wrong, and I try to do it better.

01:42:18.000 And over time, I've realized there's certain patterns, and one of those patterns is you get in your own way.

01:42:25.000 You rely on your own ego.

01:42:27.000 You boost up your ego.

01:42:30.000 You're looking to brag.

01:42:32.000 You're looking to do this.

01:42:35.000 You get in your own way.

01:42:37.000 Everybody knows when they're in their own way.

01:42:39.000 So if I'm hearing you right, it's introspection in a way, right?

01:42:44.000 You're looking at yourself, when you say gross, and saying, I'm in my own way, my ego's taken over here.

01:42:52.000 And so that sort of witness mentality is saying, I gotta stop that, right?

01:42:58.000 How can I stop that?

01:42:59.000 So that's how you did it, huh?

01:43:02.000 Yeah.

01:43:02.000 Or do it.

01:43:02.000 So there wasn't any specific breakthrough moment or anything where you...

01:43:07.000 Psychedelics help tremendously, for sure.

01:43:10.000 How?

01:43:11.000 Because they dissolve the ego.

01:43:12.000 When you do a very strong psychedelic trip, one of the most profound aspects of it is the ego is completely dissolved.

01:43:21.000 You're faced with...

01:43:24.000 Such beauty and wisdom of undeniable power.

01:43:33.000 That whatever that thing is that you encounter in the psychedelic dimension is so humbling.

01:43:39.000 And it dissolves your ego and brings you into it.

01:43:43.000 And for whatever amount of time while you're tripping, you relinquish your grip on the material world.

01:43:51.000 And you take into account all these ideas.

01:43:55.000 There's this overwhelming theme of love and connectivity that most people have from these experiences.

01:44:02.000 Mm-hmm.

01:44:11.000 Mm-hmm. 0.99

01:44:16.000 Because you've got such an expansive perspective on things now that you, your own self, looked really tiny and ridiculous, right? 0.84

01:44:24.000 It's expansive, but there's a physical act of dissolving the ego.

01:44:31.000 It really does take the ego away.

01:44:35.000 Those psychedelics, one of the best things that they do is they dissolve whatever that gross id is inside of you that makes you You know, get in your own way.

01:44:48.000 They help you see things in a far more introspective, a far clearer perspective, and they let you look at things from a top-down view.

01:44:59.000 Now, do you ever think, Joe, that when you're in that state, that prior civilizations, if we think of them as advanced civilizations like the ancient Egyptians or somebody like that, that they somehow were able to live in that world?

01:45:15.000 Or at least in more time per day than we do today?

01:45:20.000 Well, there's clear evidence that that's the case, yeah.

01:45:24.000 I mean, we talked about it with Graham Hancock the other day on the podcast, and he was talking about the Blue Lotus.

01:45:29.000 And the Blue Lotus is documented that the ancient Egyptians used this particular psychedelic There's much evidence that the ancient Greeks, in fact, Brian Murorescu, who's been on the podcast before,

01:45:45.000 wrote a book called The Immortality Key.

01:45:47.000 It's a great book about how these ancient societies and the Elucidian mysteries We're good to go.

01:46:18.000 From that Enlightenment period, this is the birth of democracy.

01:46:22.000 This is the birth of modern civilization as we know it.

01:46:26.000 It came from these wise people getting together and having these rituals.

01:46:32.000 And that this has now opened up a field of study at Harvard because of his book and because of the success of the book and his discussions of it.

01:46:40.000 It's really amazing stuff.

01:46:42.000 But it points to that people throughout human history, in order to gain great insight and wisdom, have turned to these what they call plant medicines.

01:46:53.000 You know, in my Greek books, Of course, you read about and research the hallucinian mysteries.

01:46:59.000 And it's so, I mean, maybe you know more about, I think they were such, so secret that it's not like there's any book that you can read.

01:47:09.000 Right.

01:47:09.000 That what they did, who knows what they did.

01:47:11.000 Well, because it was all squashed by the Romans. 0.99

01:47:14.000 They squashed all that, and they wound up moving to other countries in Europe.

01:47:19.000 There's great evidence that they moved out of Greece, they moved into Spain, and that they had these rituals in other countries as well.

01:47:26.000 So they found these similar type of reliefs and similar pottery.

01:47:33.000 And inside the vessels, they've also found this ergot and wine and various psychedelics that were, you know, there's trace residue of them.

01:47:41.000 Have you studied the Hermetics at all?

01:47:44.000 No.

01:47:44.000 Ah.

01:47:45.000 Are you interested?

01:47:46.000 Yes.

01:47:46.000 Have you heard about them at all, this thing?

01:47:49.000 Please.

01:47:50.000 Have you heard of a book called The Kabbalion?

01:47:52.000 No.

01:47:53.000 Well, this should be right up your street.

01:47:55.000 The Hermetics were Egyptians. 1.00

01:47:58.000 It's where the Freemasons came from and the alchemists and the people in the Middle Ages who preserved, you know, the culture when the Dark Ages came. 0.80

01:48:08.000 And the Hermetics comes from Hermes Trismegistus, Hermes Thrice Great, who was supposedly the wisest man or avatar or god from the Egyptian period.

01:48:23.000 And the Kabbalion was their book.

01:48:26.000 I don't know if the actual Kabbalion still exists.

01:48:29.000 I have like one little short book of it.

01:48:32.000 But they had a whole deep philosophy that is a lot like this.

01:48:38.000 You want me to talk about this for a second?

01:48:40.000 Sure, yeah, please.

01:48:40.000 I mean, there were like...

01:48:42.000 I think the Hermetics had like seven principles.

01:48:44.000 Let's see if I can remember what they are.

01:48:46.000 The first one is...

01:48:50.000 That you and I have no physical existence as entities.

01:48:57.000 We exist entirely as thoughts in the mind of the all or God.

01:49:02.000 Sort of like the analogy they use is like in the mind of Dickens is Mr. McCawber and Pip and David Copperfield and all that.

01:49:10.000 And that you and I only exist as thoughts in the mind of God.

01:49:14.000 Oh, they believed that the universe was entirely mental.

01:49:17.000 That's what this was.

01:49:19.000 That there really is no physical existence.

01:49:21.000 And that it was all vibrational.

01:49:25.000 And that one of the things they believed was that there's no such thing as opposites.

01:49:30.000 Heat and cold are not opposites.

01:49:32.000 Fear and courage are not opposites.

01:49:34.000 They are just points on a continuum.

01:49:36.000 And that the difference between fear and courage is entirely in the vibration.

01:49:41.000 And so, this is where the alchemy came in.

01:49:44.000 They believed that if they could change their vibration, or change the vibration of lead, that they could change it into gold.

01:49:52.000 And they had, their other things was, you know, everything vibrates.

01:49:56.000 The other thing was that everything swings on a pendulum.

01:50:00.000 Everything goes back and forth from one thing to another.

01:50:03.000 And they also believe that everything is male and female, that everything that's created comes from the union of male and female in the highest levels. 1.00

01:50:11.000 Anyway, it's great shit. 0.99

01:50:13.000 And, you know, at one point, apparently, in ancient Egypt or before that, this was... 0.99

01:50:21.000 This was what they believed.

01:50:23.000 And it somehow got wiped out or just held on in various little pockets of the occult knowledge and stuff like that.

01:50:32.000 So it's the ancient hermetics, and the book is the Kabbalion, K-Y-B-A-L-I-O-N. Fascinating shit. 0.97

01:50:41.000 I think there are many cultures that were tapping into this at some point in time. 0.99

01:50:46.000 Even Joe Dispenza that I was talking about before, what he talks about is when you get to that state of no mind, no thing, no presence, that the only thing that exists is vibration and consciousness.

01:51:01.000 And that would be straight out of hermetic philosophy.

01:51:06.000 Yeah.

01:51:07.000 Yeah, those reoccurring themes, they exist in so many cultures.

01:51:11.000 And, you know, one of the things that Graham Hancock brings up that's really fascinating is that as we develop more of an understanding of human evolution, we realize that anatomically similar humans We go far back,

01:51:28.000 back far further than we originally thought.

01:51:31.000 With the original assessment was that like we, I think remember when I was in high school, they thought it was like 50,000 years ago.

01:51:38.000 Like that anatomical human sort of emerged 50,000 years ago and then human civilization emerged like 6,000 years ago.

01:51:44.000 And now They're finding all this evidence of advanced civilization like Gobekli Tepe, which is this uncovered site in Turkey, this massive structure that existed 11,000 something years ago.

01:51:57.000 And this was the first ever thing that they could date that they know for sure is older than the pyramids by quite a bit, at least older than the conventional dating of the pyramids.

01:52:09.000 And so there was advanced civilization that was capable of building these immense, huge structures, giant pillars with these huge stone things that had cut into them reliefs of animals that were three-dimensional, which is very complicated because instead of carving them into the stone,

01:52:27.000 they carved the stone around them.

01:52:29.000 So they had like these lizards and these creatures that were crawling up these stones that they had cut the stone out.

01:52:36.000 And we're talking about like 20 foot tall, massive, hundreds of tons.

01:52:41.000 I mean, I don't know how much these things weighed.

01:52:43.000 Huge things, like very advanced people that were capable of construction methods.

01:52:48.000 And they did these concentric circles with these things, and they don't know why they did it.

01:52:53.000 They don't know what they were doing with them.

01:52:54.000 But that...

01:52:56.000 If anatomically similar humans existed half a million years ago, that gives them so much time to evolve and become that.

01:53:05.000 And this catastrophe theory sort of makes sense because there was probably some really advanced thinking and really advanced science that we don't totally understand because our science has gone in this sort of Industrial age,

01:53:22.000 technological direction, whereas their science probably went in a completely different direction, concentrating on vibrations of things and sound and probably some lost technology that we don't understand yet, but we may in the future.

01:53:38.000 And it'll probably put the pieces together, but it's taken us thousands and thousands of years to relearn things that perhaps these people that lived 10,000, 20,000 years ago had already figured out.

01:53:50.000 I mean, if you think about somebody like LeBron James, somebody that is at a level, right?

01:53:56.000 An amazing level.

01:53:57.000 What if there were guys like this that were thinkers and philosophers or meditators or whatever they were, and they were at that level of being able to tap into whatever it is, vibration?

01:54:07.000 We don't know anything about it, right?

01:54:09.000 The elite of the elite of thinkers.

01:54:10.000 Yeah.

01:54:10.000 What could they do?

01:54:11.000 Right.

01:54:12.000 I mean, it always seemed to me crazy that the human race only goes back 150,000 years or 300,000.

01:54:18.000 It can't be right.

01:54:19.000 It can't be right that there was, you know, just only the great apes and all of a sudden 300,000 years ago or 150,000 years ago.

01:54:27.000 It doesn't make sense to me.

01:54:28.000 Well, there was a recent discovery.

01:54:29.000 I'll send this to Jamie.

01:54:31.000 They found evidence that human beings were cooking fish 700,000-plus years ago, which is really wild.

01:54:40.000 That makes a lot of sense.

01:54:41.000 Oh, yeah.

01:54:42.000 Here, I'll send this to Jamie.

01:54:44.000 It's really wild because...

01:54:46.000 And it was trout almondine. 1.00

01:54:48.000 That's the amazing shit. 0.99

01:54:50.000 No, it was Chilean sea bass. 1.00

01:54:52.000 No, that's not really a sea bass.

01:54:56.000 780,000 years ago.

01:54:58.000 That's the evidence.

01:55:01.000 Yeah, it's fascinating stuff.

01:55:03.000 The other thing is how much of those ancient civilizations were about...

01:55:06.000 Oh, you found it.

01:55:06.000 Jamie found it.

01:55:07.000 Early humans may have cooked fish in ovens 780,000 years ago.

01:55:13.000 Remains of fish teeth...

01:55:15.000 That cheers me up.

01:55:17.000 Remains of fish teeth at an archaeological site in Israel appear to have been cooked with controlled heat rather than directly exposed to fire.

01:55:25.000 So that's very advanced in our sense of what people were capable of doing.

01:55:31.000 780,000 years ago.

01:55:33.000 We've developed a methodology that allows us to identify cooking in relatively low temperatures as opposed to burning.

01:55:40.000 She says you cannot immediately correlate the control of fire with cooking unless you show that the food has been cooked.

01:55:48.000 Wow, researchers have previously suggested that humans were cooking meat 1.5 million years ago, based on the discovery of charred animal remains, but that doesn't necessarily mean people were heating food before eating it, says Zohar.

01:56:02.000 Evidence of charred material doesn't mean cooking, it just means the food was thrown into the fire.

01:56:08.000 Zohar and her colleagues have studied a 780,000-year-old settlement in Gesher-Bano-Yal...

01:56:15.000 How do you say that?

01:56:16.000 I don't know.

01:56:17.000 In Israel's northern Jordan River Valley, no human remains have been found there, but based on its age and the stone tools at the site, the inhabitants are most likely to have been Homo erectus.

01:56:32.000 Amazing.

01:56:33.000 Amazing stuff.

01:56:34.000 So, you know, if you think of those early humans and like when did they become anatomically modern humans?

01:56:41.000 Was it half a million years ago?

01:56:42.000 Whatever it was, it gives us a lot of room to learn things and figure things out before, you know, natural catastrophes wipe civilization back to the Stone Age again.

01:56:52.000 Yeah. 0.96

01:56:53.000 The other thing I was just saying was that if you think about what we know about these civilizations is stone seems to have a lot to do with this shit, right? 0.93

01:57:02.000 Whether it's South America, Mesoamerica, whatever, it's stone pyramids and stone this and stone that. 0.90

01:57:08.000 And stone supposedly is a vibrational material like something that could be the equivalent of a battery.

01:57:16.000 At least I've heard that.

01:57:17.000 We're talking about imaginative stuff here.

01:57:20.000 But who knows what they knew about It gets very woo-woo without everything.

01:57:27.000 It does. 0.96

01:57:28.000 But, you know, every time something is disproved, like when they said Homer's description of Troy in the Iliad was a bunch of bullshit, right? 0.95

01:57:39.000 It couldn't have been that big, right? 0.81

01:57:41.000 And then Schliemann digs up the remains of Troy, and it's exactly like Homer said, right?

01:57:47.000 The gate is right here, the other gate is here.

01:57:49.000 So every time we think...

01:57:52.000 Oh, these previous generations couldn't have known that.

01:57:55.000 And then we finally dig it up and go, they were way beyond what we thought.

01:57:59.000 Yeah, the discovery of Troy's was very eye-opening because now you have to take into account, well, what about Atlantis?

01:58:04.000 When you talked about Atlantis, was that real, too?

01:58:06.000 Was there really an advance?

01:58:08.000 We're getting out there, Joe.

01:58:10.000 Why are we going to this place?

01:58:12.000 I don't know.

01:58:13.000 Well, I mean, human beings are constantly innovating and constantly improving.

01:58:18.000 And if there was a time in history where we had achieved some immense level of, through some method that we don't understand, of advanced civilization, and then, you know, it all got wiped out, and this is the new manifestation of human creativity and ingenuity and innovation,

01:58:37.000 it's become this thing that we see now.

01:58:43.000 Yeah.

01:58:44.000 But we're just ignorant to the past.

01:58:46.000 Yeah.

01:58:46.000 Very possible.

01:58:47.000 Yeah.

01:58:48.000 And interesting.

01:58:49.000 Very, very, very interesting.

01:58:51.000 Like that show that Graham Hancock has made, I believe it's the number two show on Netflix now, which is giant.

01:58:58.000 I mean, that's pretty crazy that an educational show about an ancient catastrophe has become the number two show on Netflix.

01:59:07.000 And it makes you wonder why do contemporary audiences respond to that so much, you know?

01:59:12.000 I think it resonates with us.

01:59:13.000 I think it makes sense, you know?

01:59:15.000 Yeah, we hear it and we go, there's something to this, you know?

01:59:18.000 Or at least there could be.

01:59:19.000 He describes us as a species with amnesia.

01:59:22.000 Ah.

01:59:23.000 Yeah.

01:59:24.000 Sometimes it feels like that, doesn't it?

01:59:26.000 Yeah.

01:59:27.000 I mean, I'm a believer in previous lives while we're getting far out here.

01:59:31.000 So I sort of sometimes think that that amnesia is from lives that we've lived, you know?

01:59:37.000 Maybe it's that, too.

01:59:38.000 Maybe it's history and from lives that we live.

01:59:40.000 Maybe they're all combined in some sort of a strange and unknown way.

01:59:44.000 Yeah.

01:59:44.000 Now, when you say you're a believer in unknown lives, what specifically do you mean?

01:59:50.000 I mean past lives, rather.

01:59:53.000 I just sort of feel like, you know, if you look at, let's say you have three kids in your family.

02:00:01.000 Each one comes out of the womb as a fully formed personality.

02:00:05.000 Wouldn't you agree with that?

02:00:06.000 Yeah.

02:00:07.000 It's not like you can mold them into whatever it is, right?

02:00:11.000 Right.

02:00:11.000 They already are something.

02:00:13.000 And you also feel, and I feel this about myself, like they come into the world with their own issues, right?

02:00:21.000 There's something, you know, one of them may be angry.

02:00:23.000 One of them may be very peaceful, you know?

02:00:26.000 But So where does that come from?

02:00:29.000 I mean, it would just pop out of nowhere? 0.99

02:00:31.000 I mean, I love this shit just because it's stories. 0.99

02:00:36.000 I love to make up stories, right? 0.99

02:00:38.000 But like in my book, The Legend of Bagger Vance, it really was about previous lives.

02:00:44.000 It went back to the continent of Moo and all that sort of stuff.

02:00:49.000 And as I'm writing this, and it's coming out of me, I don't even know I believe it until I see it on the page.

02:00:55.000 So by the time I was still writing that, I sort of felt like, you know, I believe in this.

02:01:00.000 I think there's something to it.

02:01:02.000 And I also believe, for whatever this is worth, That we don't go through previous lives just as solitary individuals.

02:01:10.000 I believe that we might have like a group of four or five souls that are kind of migrating with us through these lives, you know, and have this, you know, like a constellation of souls that have a same—we might have a mentor that's with us You know, through various lives.

02:01:26.000 Again, I can't prove this in any way.

02:01:28.000 But I sort of have that feeling, you know?

02:01:33.000 Where does that feeling come from?

02:01:34.000 When you say you have that feeling, how does that feeling manifest itself in your mind?

02:01:39.000 I find myself writing it, right?

02:01:41.000 And I don't know where it's coming from.

02:01:43.000 And as I'm writing it, I feel like that makes sense to me. 0.95

02:01:47.000 This doesn't sound like bullshit to me. 0.53

02:01:49.000 This sounds like, you know, reality. 0.96

02:01:53.000 And...

02:01:55.000 So again, I can't base this on anything other than I'm sort of inspired with it from somewhere.

02:02:01.000 You're just saying it resonates.

02:02:02.000 It resonates with me.

02:02:03.000 It rings true to me.

02:02:04.000 What do you think the soul is?

02:02:06.000 Boy, that's a great question.

02:02:08.000 I mean, it certainly exists, right?

02:02:13.000 There is such a thing as a soul, even though we can't weigh it, right?

02:02:16.000 We can't find it.

02:02:17.000 We can't put it under a microscope.

02:02:19.000 But there's certainly something there other than the ego, right?

02:02:23.000 And everything I've been talking about today, about that underground river and the greater dimension, that to me is soul.

02:02:31.000 And if we live by soul, We're going to be happy and we're going to be productive. 0.99

02:02:37.000 And if we dismiss soul, we're fucked. 1.00

02:02:41.000 If we stay in that ego, we're fucked. 1.00

02:02:43.000 And I think what you were talking about earlier, Joe, about you don't want to get in that place of I'm listening to praise or blame or anything like that. 0.99

02:02:55.000 That's our instinct.

02:02:56.000 The soul, I think, doesn't have anything to do with that. 0.97

02:02:59.000 Doesn't give a shit about that, right? 0.96

02:03:01.000 Just as operating, you know, it's got its own North Star that it's going toward, you know? 0.98

02:03:07.000 That's what it seems like to me.

02:03:09.000 And it seems like it's much wiser than we are.

02:03:13.000 I think when we tap into that, we tap into like.0001.

02:03:19.000 And it blows our mind, it's so much to it, you know?

02:03:22.000 I think there's, you know, it's some greater cosmic unity, I don't know what.

02:03:30.000 But it's real.

02:03:32.000 So when you write, this is like a repeating theme that resonates in your mind that leads you to believe there's truth to this.

02:03:42.000 Yes.

02:03:42.000 Or at least it's a great story, you know?

02:03:45.000 Yeah.

02:03:45.000 It makes a story.

02:03:47.000 It's certainly a great story, but it also exists throughout human culture for some strange reason.

02:03:54.000 It's something that we've concentrated on from the beginning of time.

02:03:56.000 It's part of Hinduism, great... 0.99

02:03:58.000 Great civilizations and religions that have been around for tens of thousands of years believe it absolutely.

02:04:04.000 It's not airy-fairy to them.

02:04:06.000 And do you think that they came to that conclusion from the same sort of process of when you think about it or you contemplate it and write about it, it seems to resonate, and then when you say it to other people, they're like, Yeah,

02:04:22.000 there's something there.

02:04:24.000 I mean, if you bring in psychedelics or what you were talking about, about who knows what the ancient Incas and all these cultures, whatever they used, right, to get to that state where they were seeing, you know, the global thing beyond everything,

02:04:39.000 maybe they really...

02:04:43.000 Experience that, you know?

02:04:45.000 Maybe they could travel back and relive those lives, you know?

02:04:50.000 You know, in the Bhagavad Gita, there's one great stanza where Krishna, who's God, is saying to Arjuna, the great warrior who's his protege, he says, you and I have had many lives, Arjuna.

02:05:05.000 I remember all of mine, but thou dost not.

02:05:09.000 So, I don't know.

02:05:11.000 I mean, it's a great religion.

02:05:13.000 It's been around a long time.

02:05:14.000 They believed it.

02:05:15.000 I was having a conversation with someone when we were talking about this concept of imagine if you lived the same life over and over and over again until you got it right.

02:05:25.000 Because some people do believe in that.

02:05:26.000 And this person I was talking to was like, God, that's terrifying.

02:05:30.000 And I go, is it though?

02:05:32.000 Like, if you're living this life right now, like all throughout your life you've been living this life and just having fun and doing things and having fun with your friends and living your life and having a family, doesn't it...

02:05:49.000 Don't you like it?

02:05:50.000 You like it, right?

02:05:51.000 If you're doing it right, you should enjoy it.

02:05:53.000 So why would it bother you if that goes on forever?

02:05:57.000 Isn't that weird?

02:05:58.000 Like you want it to go on while you're alive, but the concept of it going on forever and ever and ever and ever until you get it right is terrifying to people.

02:06:08.000 But why?

02:06:09.000 Why is it terrifying if the current existence, If you're living in the moment, your current existence, like, you don't want this to end.

02:06:18.000 Like, most people are scared of dying.

02:06:20.000 So you don't want this to stop.

02:06:22.000 But why are you scared of living the same life over and over and over again until you get it right, if you're not scared of living this life right now?

02:06:31.000 I mean, I guess you're scared of the idea of sort of stasis, that it never changes, right?

02:06:37.000 That you're not getting anywhere.

02:06:39.000 Because you get better at it.

02:06:39.000 But the idea of...

02:06:42.000 If you have an issue that you're working on, the idea that it takes a few lifetimes to do it, I don't think there's anything scary about that.

02:06:51.000 It's kind of a story that has a season one and a season two and a season three.

02:06:56.000 Yeah, but there's a terrifying connection.

02:07:00.000 There's a terrifying feeling when you contemplate infinite time.

02:07:05.000 And infinite time being Steven Pressfield.

02:07:10.000 That's scary.

02:07:12.000 Yeah, see?

02:07:13.000 This is you forever.

02:07:15.000 Like, what is that?

02:07:16.000 Why does that freak people out?

02:07:19.000 But it does.

02:07:20.000 I got a question for you, Joe.

02:07:21.000 Do you believe that there's a moral dimension to the universe?

02:07:25.000 A moral dimension.

02:07:26.000 A moral dimension.

02:07:27.000 Is there justice?

02:07:30.000 Now, this goes along with previous lives, right?

02:07:33.000 If you think about previous lives, you think usually that there's maybe a crime.

02:07:38.000 You committed a crime 25 lives ago, and you're sort of paying, coming to an understanding.

02:07:46.000 Hopefully, you evolved to a point where you've reached forgiveness or whatever it is, right?

02:07:52.000 But that would imply that there was a moral dimension to the universe.

02:07:58.000 Actions have consequences, right?

02:08:00.000 There's karma.

02:08:01.000 Do you believe that?

02:08:02.000 Or do you believe that everything is just, you know, you do what you do and it doesn't matter?

02:08:09.000 I don't know.

02:08:11.000 I mean, when you go over human history and think of the horrible people that have succeeded and lived long lives, you think of Genghis Khan and what he did. 0.81

02:08:25.000 There didn't seem to be a lot of negative karma coming his way.

02:08:30.000 Maybe not in that lifetime.

02:08:31.000 Maybe, right?

02:08:32.000 Maybe in the next life he suffers.

02:08:34.000 Maybe he lives his life over and over again until he becomes a monk.

02:08:37.000 I mean, the Greeks, the ancient Greeks, they certainly believed that there were the fates, you know, and that there were these gods and goddesses that were enacting justice, you know, one way or another.

02:08:52.000 So...

02:08:53.000 I'd like to think that's true.

02:08:55.000 Well, that gives us a feeling of order.

02:08:57.000 Yeah.

02:08:57.000 There's rules to things.

02:08:59.000 But are we just making it up or is it real?

02:09:01.000 I mean, what do you think?

02:09:03.000 I don't know.

02:09:04.000 I don't know.

02:09:05.000 I definitely feel like from an individual's perspective, if you do something, like say if you steal money from someone you know, If you're not a sociopath, you're going to feel guilt from that.

02:09:22.000 It's gonna haunt you.

02:09:23.000 If you lie and you're constantly repeating that lie and trying to get people to be convinced of that lie, that is gonna haunt you.

02:09:32.000 And I think it's going to rob you of the present.

02:09:36.000 It's gonna rob you of being in the moment. 0.95

02:09:38.000 You're always going to be burdened down by this feeling that you have That you are a fraud, or you are a thief, or you're a bad person.

02:09:50.000 You have done bad things, but you stealing that person's money ruined the fact that they've worked really hard and saved it, and you just came along and snatched it. 0.97

02:10:00.000 So you've done this horrible, selfish thing, and maybe you feel justified because the world has fucked you over, you know?

02:10:07.000 And so you feel like it's okay to break the window of that store and jump in there and loot Take everything that you feel like I want that why don't I get that and everyone else gonna do it? 0.69

02:10:18.000 Let's go.

02:10:19.000 Let's go do it, but I think in doing that you can't appreciate yourself as Like an accomplished product You're not a finished thing.

02:10:37.000 You're not what you wish you were.

02:10:40.000 You're not admirable.

02:10:41.000 You're not anything that people would look at and go, wow, I wish I was that guy.

02:10:46.000 Nobody's like, wow, I wish I was that thief. 0.98

02:10:48.000 Wish I was that liar.

02:10:50.000 Nobody thinks like that.

02:10:52.000 They want to be someone who other people admire.

02:10:56.000 Now, I wonder...

02:10:57.000 Is that because we were taught that by our parents or by our schools?

02:11:02.000 Or is that natural?

02:11:04.000 You know, do we naturally feel if we hurt some other kid that, oh, I did something wrong, you know?

02:11:12.000 I wonder.

02:11:13.000 I don't know.

02:11:14.000 I think it goes back to this thing that we are all connected and that in doing something hurtful or evil to someone, you are causing pain.

02:11:25.000 And again, unless you're a sociopath, that pain you feel.

02:11:30.000 You feel that pain.

02:11:31.000 And you get this lesson out of that, and you're supposed to get that as your child.

02:11:37.000 You say something mean to someone, and then they feel bad, then you feel bad.

02:11:40.000 Like, why did I say that?

02:11:41.000 And then you learn, like, don't do that, because you're spreading negativity.

02:11:46.000 You're pushing out this emotional poison on people, and it does affect the quality of your own life.

02:11:52.000 Because we are connected, and that's the evidence that we're connected.

02:11:56.000 But I don't know.

02:11:59.000 I can't say I believe anything.

02:12:04.000 I say there's clear evidence to me in my life That when I'm kinder and nicer and more friendly and doing things in a better way, that things work out better.

02:12:15.000 And it seems like my interactions with people are better, I feel better, I feel better about myself, and I feel genuinely like I'm on the right path.

02:12:25.000 When I'm more disciplined, when I get work done, when I show up and respect the muse, I feel better.

02:12:32.000 So I feel like my life resonates correctly with me.

02:12:38.000 I feel like the universe is saying, exactly, that's how you're supposed to do it.

02:12:43.000 That's what you do.

02:12:44.000 You do the right thing, eat the right foods, get your sleep, live healthy, be nice, put in the work.

02:12:51.000 Overcome resistance, get your creativity going.

02:12:55.000 You feel better in living like that.

02:12:59.000 I think there's probably something to that, that people throughout history have gravitated towards these sort of inherent life lessons that exist in And moving through this world the right way,

02:13:15.000 the correct way.

02:13:15.000 And that's probably why all of these religions have a moral structure.

02:13:22.000 They have an ethical structure and they're teaching you how to live your life with the least amount of harm to others and the most amount of service to God and service to the people around you.

02:13:33.000 Now what I wonder sort of is, are those religions that teach that, which is every religion, Inculcating that into kids and into everybody as they grow because the human being by nature is savage and evil and selfish.

02:13:53.000 And so this needs to be indoctrinated or conditioned or raised or socialized.

02:14:02.000 Just a question.

02:14:03.000 I don't know the answer.

02:14:04.000 Because I certainly...

02:14:07.000 As a teller of stories, movies, books, whatever, books and movies all have a moral dimension, right?

02:14:15.000 There's always something, there's payback, or if there isn't payback, when you walk, if the bad guy prevails in the end, you walk out and you go, oh boy, that's, you know.

02:14:26.000 Right.

02:14:27.000 Unsatisfying.

02:14:28.000 But then the question sort of is, Are the artists who are writing these things because they know that human beings are basically rotten and don't have that moral dimension?

02:14:44.000 I don't know the answer.

02:14:45.000 It's a really good question.

02:14:46.000 I think human beings are most certainly capable of being rotten and human beings are most certainly capable of being great and being kind and being generous.

02:14:58.000 And we're aware of both of those things.

02:15:00.000 And one we admire.

02:15:02.000 We admire the Martin Luther King Juniors of the world.

02:15:05.000 We admire the philosophers and the poets and the musicians that inspire us and the people that live their lives in a moral and ethical way.

02:15:14.000 Those are the people that we admire.

02:15:16.000 Those are the people that we aspire to be like.

02:15:20.000 No one's aspiring to be like Hitler.

02:15:22.000 You know? 1.00

02:15:23.000 The people that live their life in a horrible way, well, they're probably fucked up too. 1.00

02:15:28.000 But you know what I'm saying? 1.00

02:15:30.000 It's not attractive to a healthy person.

02:15:33.000 A healthy person is attractive to the person who is succeeding and who is...

02:15:39.000 They're improving and they're representing an admirable life that you can aspire to try to live in a similar manner.

02:15:50.000 That's what resonates with most healthy people.

02:15:54.000 But then also there's people that grow up in entirely unhealthy ways.

02:15:58.000 If you're living in some sort of a war-torn, terrifying country that's run by dictators and all you've ever seen is violence, it's probably very, very, very difficult to develop this sort of moral structure and ethical structure.

02:16:12.000 I guess the story of Job in the Bible is that, right?

02:16:15.000 Where the bet is, you know, if we break this guy Job's balls badly enough, you know, he will turn against you, God, and he will curse you. 0.69

02:16:24.000 Let's put him to the test, right? 0.97

02:16:27.000 So, I don't know.

02:16:28.000 It's an issue that we don't know what the—but it does connect to the idea of previous lives.

02:16:33.000 Are we working something out?

02:16:37.000 Over various lifetimes.

02:16:39.000 Yeah.

02:16:39.000 To try to come to some understanding.

02:16:41.000 Or is there only this one life?

02:16:44.000 I don't know.

02:16:45.000 But just the fact that we have this one life.

02:16:48.000 Just the fact that this one life itself is so bizarre.

02:16:53.000 So bizarre and so...

02:16:56.000 I always say that if life wasn't real...

02:17:01.000 If life was a psychedelic trip, it would be the wildest psychedelic trip ever.

02:17:07.000 It would be so bizarrely strange.

02:17:08.000 If we didn't exist in a physical material world and there was a drug that you could take that allowed you to exist in a physical material world and interact with modern society, it would be such a trip.

02:17:23.000 Oh my god, this is so difficult to navigate.

02:17:26.000 What a bad trip I'm having.

02:17:29.000 But we We do exist, at least as far as we're aware.

02:17:36.000 We do.

02:17:37.000 So the idea that we...

02:17:39.000 That this is the only life you get.

02:17:42.000 Says who? 0.65

02:17:43.000 This is weird enough as it is.

02:17:46.000 Why is it so extra weird if you've lived a thousand lives and that every time you're born you are picking up where you left off?

02:17:55.000 Or you are born into a new situation where you are now going to be the victim Of all the injustices that you caused in the world.

02:18:08.000 And then you'll have a chance in the life after that to live a more righteous life.

02:18:13.000 But you're going to have to now go through this and try to find peace in the lessons that like say if you're a banker and you stole everybody's money.

02:18:20.000 Uh-huh. 0.96

02:18:20.000 You're going to come back as a person who gets fucked over by the government, gets fucked over by banks, and you're going to experience this immense frustration. 0.96

02:18:28.000 I mean, there's a lot of people that believe that, that people that are living terrible lives right now that just get awful rolls of the dice and their life sucks. 0.97

02:18:35.000 It's because of what you've done in past lives.

02:18:38.000 And the people that are extremely fortunate is because of the positive seeds that you sowed in your past life, which is very convenient.

02:18:46.000 I don't know if I believe that, but it's interesting, too.

02:18:48.000 I don't know what I believe. 0.97

02:18:50.000 I mean, it's fun to talk about, but so much of it is just like, who the fuck knows? 0.92

02:18:57.000 Maybe it'll all come clear at some point. 0.90

02:19:00.000 Hopefully.

02:19:01.000 I don't know.

02:19:01.000 I don't know either.

02:19:03.000 But I do know like what makes you feel good, right?

02:19:06.000 What makes you feel good is community, love, friendship, and then the satisfaction of work, the satisfaction of overcoming what you call resistance, of having discipline in your life.

02:19:20.000 My friend Jocko, he has this quote, discipline equals freedom.

02:19:24.000 Ah, yes.

02:19:25.000 It's a great quote.

02:19:26.000 That's his book, yeah.

02:19:26.000 Well, it's true.

02:19:27.000 Yeah, it is true.

02:19:28.000 Yeah.

02:19:29.000 And that's a whole other sort of mystery is why did God or whoever designed the universe make it such that in order for you to feel good about yourself and whatever, you have to do something that's hard, you know?

02:19:41.000 And if you do something that's easy, if you eat sugar, if you do whatever it is, You're not going to fail.

02:19:47.000 Why does it work that way?

02:19:49.000 But it's true.

02:19:50.000 That's an absolute rule.

02:19:52.000 It certainly does physically with humans.

02:19:55.000 You know, the people that I know that are the most miserable are obese, sedentary, indulgent, and they are emotional messes.

02:20:04.000 They're just a wreck of angst and anxiety, and they're filled with medications, and they're constantly going to the doctor for a new thing.

02:20:14.000 And they haven't made that connection.

02:20:17.000 They just live this awful, anxiety-ridden life, and they think that this is life, because that's their baseline.

02:20:23.000 They don't know what it's like to live a life that's free of that.

02:20:27.000 And even those who...

02:20:31.000 Have overcome that.

02:20:33.000 That temptation is always there.

02:20:35.000 Always there.

02:20:35.000 That cliff is always there.

02:20:36.000 It's like an alcoholic, one drink and it's over, you know?

02:20:40.000 And not even for people that have overcome that, but for people like myself that have never fallen prey to it.

02:20:48.000 I've never had a sedentary life, but still to me, every time I go to the gym, I'm like, oh boy, here we go.

02:20:56.000 I know now that I just have to do it.

02:21:00.000 It doesn't matter how I feel, I'm going to do the work.

02:21:04.000 Because I've just established that.

02:21:06.000 When I get there, As soon as I get there, it's go time.

02:21:10.000 Let's go.

02:21:11.000 And then once I get moving, and once I'm three sets in, four sets in, and I'm covered in sweat, now we're fine.

02:21:19.000 Now we know what to do.

02:21:20.000 And now I embrace the exertion.

02:21:23.000 And all is good.

02:21:24.000 But I have to do it all over again the next day.

02:21:26.000 And the next day is the same thing.

02:21:27.000 My friend David Goggins, who's probably one of the most disciplined humans that's ever lived, he talks about, he goes, it ain't easy. 0.99

02:21:34.000 He goes, when I see my shoes in the morning, sometimes I stare at those motherfuckers for a half hour for Even he. 0.98

02:21:42.000 Even he. 1.00

02:21:43.000 He'll stare at his sneakers for a half hour, but then he'll go run 50 miles.

02:21:46.000 And that's the difference between a person who can overcome and a person who gives in to those feelings.

02:21:54.000 And some people have never overcome.

02:21:55.000 So they don't even know the beautiful feeling of accomplishing something that's difficult because they've never done it.

02:22:01.000 They've sort of embraced the idea that it's fun to be lazy. 0.96

02:22:05.000 It's great to be a slob. 1.00

02:22:07.000 It's great to live in this world and That's the last thing I'd ever want to do is exercise. 1.00

02:22:12.000 Get the fuck out of here. 0.97

02:22:14.000 And they'll pretend that they're wise in their choice, that there's some sort of Frivolous nature to physical activity, but physical activity is mental activity. 1.00

02:22:26.000 You just don't think of it that way because your mind is forcing your body to do the work.

02:22:32.000 You just don't think of it that way.

02:22:34.000 You think of it as being physical brute grunt work for, you know, for cavemen.

02:22:39.000 But the reality is it's the mind that forces the body to do that and you must have a strong mind in order to get that done.

02:22:48.000 So a strong mind is not just one that can do calculus.

02:22:51.000 A strong mind is not just one that can write books.

02:22:53.000 A strong mind is one that controls the body and all of its inherent weaknesses and all of its urges to be lazy and sedentary and self-destructive.

02:23:04.000 That's a strong mind.

02:23:06.000 So if we put it back into terms of resistance, let me try and phrase it in that sense, again, the body wants to stare at those gym shoes for half an hour, right?

02:23:20.000 The body doesn't want to do it.

02:23:22.000 That's the force of resistance that, in my opinion, is spawned by the ego, right?

02:23:28.000 So as we overcome that and go to the gym and get that sweat going or whatever it is that we're going to do, We defeat the ego, and we're allowed to move into that greater, into the soul, into the self.

02:23:41.000 And so that's the battle, in my terms of resistance, that we fight every day.

02:23:47.000 We wake up in the ego, right? 0.98

02:23:50.000 Our eyes open, oh, fuck, I'm in this body, you know, I don't want to go to the gym, I don't want to work hard, I don't want to do anything like that. 0.99

02:23:57.000 But we know that we have to do that, right? 0.99

02:24:00.000 That that's the path to getting out of this thing that will spiral down into the toilet bowl, right?

02:24:07.000 So we do it.

02:24:08.000 We go to the gym, we work out whatever it is, and we get into the self.

02:24:13.000 We get into the greater mind.

02:24:14.000 We've defeated that demon for that day.

02:24:18.000 But it will come back again.

02:24:20.000 And that seems to be, at least to me, That's what life sort of is, you know?

02:24:25.000 At least in terms of our own, you know, our own physical body.

02:24:29.000 Forget about the family or the community.

02:24:31.000 That's a whole other thing.

02:24:33.000 But at least within our own little physical envelope of the body, that's the nature of the game every day and it never ends.

02:24:40.000 Yeah, you're in a constant state of struggle, mentally and physically, every day.

02:24:44.000 And you can take steps to mitigate that struggle.

02:24:48.000 And make it manageable, and make your experience better as a human being on Earth.

02:24:54.000 But it requires work.

02:24:56.000 And the same work that you discuss in The War of Art with Resistance, I think that applies to many, many things that people do during the day.

02:25:04.000 How many people are out there that want to start a business?

02:25:07.000 They have a desire to do this thing, but there's something that keeps them from doing it.

02:25:12.000 There's this little thing, they get lazy, they want to watch TV, they eat ho-hos and And drink Coca-Cola and just don't ever do it. 1.00

02:25:20.000 And then maybe tomorrow, maybe one day.

02:25:22.000 Well, in 2023, as soon as January comes around, that's my New Year's resolution.

02:25:29.000 Why do New Year's resolutions exist?

02:25:31.000 They exist because you're not living right now.

02:25:34.000 If you were living correctly right now, you wouldn't need a New Year's resolution.

02:25:39.000 You would just live.

02:25:40.000 You would just keep on trucking.

02:25:42.000 That's what you would do.

02:25:43.000 But we all have it inside of us.

02:25:46.000 We just have varying levels of it.

02:25:48.000 No one is a fully actualized, 100% realized potential.

02:25:54.000 No one.

02:25:55.000 You do the best you think you can do given what you have available in terms of resources right now, but maybe you could have been better.

02:26:04.000 And if you don't think that way, you're not going to get better.

02:26:08.000 Now, the positive side of that is, if the positive side of our resistance that makes us want to fuck off and eat ho-hos or whatever it is, the positive side of that, as I was saying, is that there is this underground river Flowing inside of us, 0.96

02:26:25.000 which is our own creativity and our own soul's expression, whatever that is, which could be, you know, painting lowriders or doing your own motorcycles or writing a book or making a movie or having a podcast or whatever it is. 0.84

02:26:43.000 It doesn't come out of nowhere.

02:26:45.000 It comes to me out of a response to a dream that is not being fulfilled or not being addressed, not being taken care of, whatever that is.

02:27:00.000 That doing the work is not generic or not random.

02:27:04.000 It should be something towards something really specific that we, a dream that we have, a creative dream that only we could do.

02:27:13.000 You know, only you can do what you're doing, Joe, and only I can do what I'm doing.

02:27:17.000 Nobody else can do it.

02:27:18.000 But that's there, that creative seed.

02:27:21.000 You know, it's that river that's flowing towards the ocean.

02:27:25.000 And so if we can just believe in that river And then take the steps, like you say, whatever, you know, and it's always difficult because it's always in the teeth of resistance.

02:27:38.000 Whatever positive force there is, resistance is like an equal and opposite force trying to push us back.

02:27:44.000 So if we can just keep that, you know, believe in that positive force, believe in that dream, that creativity, and push resistance out of the way, it's like we were talking before about project by project, whatever that project is, To surrender to it, believe in it,

02:27:59.000 and do it.

02:28:00.000 Yeah, there's a real value in that.

02:28:02.000 And there's also a real value in the way you've sort of defined it and laid it out so people could see it.

02:28:09.000 It's like that old expression, it's okay to have a snake in the room as long as you have the lights on.

02:28:14.000 I've never heard that before.

02:28:15.000 Yeah.

02:28:16.000 Well, there is going to be a snake, that's for sure.

02:28:18.000 Yeah, but you turn the lights on.

02:28:19.000 Like, look, there it is. 1.00

02:28:21.000 Like, it's always going to be there, but let's get over this fucking thing. 0.99

02:28:26.000 Like, and you can do that. 0.99

02:28:27.000 And you can do it by showing up every day and putting in the work.

02:28:31.000 And then in your other book about it, Turning Pro, be a professional.

02:28:35.000 Like, this is what I do.

02:28:36.000 Here's the guidelines for how to become a professional.

02:28:39.000 But you can apply that to so many different things.

02:28:42.000 Everything.

02:28:43.000 Yeah.

02:28:44.000 It's a weird thing about the human mind, that resistance thing.

02:28:48.000 The other crazy part about resistance is that It really has no strength of its own.

02:28:56.000 It's not like we're going up against a dragon or a lion or whatever it is.

02:29:01.000 Once we confront it, just like you get that third set and you start to sweat, it just goes away.

02:29:07.000 It just dissolves, right?

02:29:09.000 So we become afraid of it.

02:29:14.000 And the fear stops us from doing it.

02:29:17.000 Yeah.

02:29:17.000 But all it really needs to be is just dismissed, you know?

02:29:21.000 And I'm sure that's what the Dalai Lama does or any great avatar just, I dismiss you, I dismiss you, you know?

02:29:27.000 Yeah.

02:29:28.000 And it goes away, so...

02:29:30.000 But yet, if we don't do that, it'll defeat us and run us right into the grave.

02:29:35.000 It's wild, right?

02:29:37.000 Yeah.

02:29:37.000 Out of all your years of discussing this and talking about it, isn't it fascinating, though, that it still has a grip on you?

02:29:45.000 Absolutely.

02:29:46.000 I mean, it's not fascinating, but it's true.

02:29:48.000 I mean, I'm facing just as much.

02:29:51.000 I don't think it ever goes away.

02:29:52.000 It's a law of nature.

02:29:54.000 It's a force of nature, like gravity.

02:29:56.000 If I lift this thing, it's going to fall, you know?

02:30:00.000 When you get up to right, what is the feeling like to you, the resistance feeling?

02:30:07.000 I'm afraid to do it.

02:30:10.000 It's just like going to the gym.

02:30:12.000 It's like I have all the excuses.

02:30:14.000 I don't feel like doing it today.

02:30:15.000 I haven't got enough time, blah, blah, blah.

02:30:17.000 I have all the distractions.

02:30:19.000 I have fear.

02:30:20.000 I say to myself...

02:30:22.000 This thing you're working, you're going to work three years on this thing.

02:30:25.000 You're only going to embarrass yourself. 1.00

02:30:27.000 It's a piece of shit. 1.00

02:30:28.000 You know, it's that kind of thing. 1.00

02:30:29.000 All that sort of stuff.

02:30:31.000 But I will say, having done it for 30 years or so, like you at the gym or whatever, I know.

02:30:39.000 If I do the work, I'm going to feel good at the end of the day.

02:30:42.000 I know it because I've done it so many times.

02:30:45.000 And so I just have to keep reminding myself of that.

02:30:47.000 And then I have my various little tricks to help me, you know, get over it.

02:30:52.000 But it doesn't go away, ever.

02:30:54.000 You know, I don't think it ever does for anybody.

02:30:56.000 It's a force of nature.

02:30:57.000 It's there.

02:30:58.000 Yeah, and momentum really helps.

02:31:01.000 Momentum is tremendous, yes.

02:31:02.000 If you're doing it a lot.

02:31:02.000 It's everything.

02:31:04.000 Momentum and habit, which are the same thing, really.

02:31:07.000 Habit is just momentum Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

02:31:11.000 Yeah, that's why I hate vacations.

02:31:14.000 Yeah, me too.

02:31:15.000 Me too.

02:31:17.000 I like them in that I actually do enjoy some aspects of it.

02:31:21.000 But there's always this part because I think we do need a mental reset, especially if you're a person like me that's really kind of burning the candles at both ends all the time.

02:31:31.000 Like sometimes I just need to sit on a beach with a margarita and just relax.

02:31:35.000 Yes.

02:31:36.000 But that's the part... 1.00

02:31:39.000 There's a little fucking demon in my head that's like, what are you doing? 1.00

02:31:42.000 You ain't doing shit. 1.00

02:31:44.000 You ain't doing shit. 0.99

02:31:45.000 You're not getting nothing done. 0.98

02:31:46.000 And then it's hard to get right back to work again.

02:31:50.000 Yeah.

02:31:50.000 It's hard to like...

02:31:51.000 Once I'm working all the time, then it's almost like I wake up and I'm just ready to go to work.

02:31:56.000 I'm ready to go.

02:31:57.000 But if I just take a long time off and I'm not doing it, it's like...

02:32:01.000 Ooh, it's difficult.

02:32:03.000 Did you ever know Eddie Giuliani?

02:32:05.000 No.

02:32:06.000 The bodybuilder?

02:32:07.000 No.

02:32:07.000 Who just tragically died a couple of years ago.

02:32:09.000 He's from Arnold's generation.

02:32:11.000 And he was a sort of a protege of Jack LaLanne.

02:32:15.000 And he said that Jack LaLanne used to say to him, it's okay to take a day off from training, but on that day you're not allowed to eat.

02:32:24.000 Oh, Jesus.

02:32:25.000 And he also said, every day that you take off equals six days once you get back on it.

02:32:32.000 So that's probably why, whether that's right or not. 0.94

02:32:35.000 That's ridiculous. 0.54

02:32:36.000 When we take vacations, you know, we feel it, right? 0.96

02:32:39.000 Yes. 0.99

02:32:40.000 What a psycho. 0.99

02:32:41.000 You can take a day off training, but you're not allowed to eat. 0.99

02:32:43.000 You're not allowed to eat.

02:32:44.000 Wow. 0.96

02:32:45.000 Well, Jacqueline was such an animal. 1.00

02:32:48.000 That's the guy right there?

02:32:48.000 Yeah.

02:32:49.000 Jesus.

02:32:49.000 That's Eddie Giuliani.

02:32:50.000 Shredded. 0.96

02:32:51.000 Yeah.

02:32:52.000 Yeah, he's shredded.

02:32:53.000 But the thing about Jacqueline is like when I think he was 90, he was pulling boats.

02:32:59.000 Yeah, tugboats with his teeth.

02:33:02.000 Yeah.

02:33:02.000 How old was he when he was doing that?

02:33:03.000 Something like that.

02:33:04.000 Something crazy.

02:33:05.000 Yeah.

02:33:06.000 Like he basically did that until his body like went, enough!

02:33:09.000 Yeah.

02:33:10.000 Check, please!

02:33:10.000 Here's my theory on vacations, for whatever it's worth.

02:33:13.000 And I'm like the worst vacation taker in the world.

02:33:16.000 I feel like people ask me sometimes, what do you do between books?

02:33:22.000 And my theory is there should never be a between books.

02:33:25.000 You should, on the day that you finish this one book, you start the next one.

02:33:30.000 Call it whatever project, whatever, whatever.

02:33:32.000 But what I feel is like, say I've started a new one, right?

02:33:37.000 I just want to keep working until I've got some momentum going.

02:33:42.000 Like I've got a beachhead on that new book and I say, okay, I've got my toes on the ground, then I'll take a vacation.

02:33:50.000 When I know I've sort of got enough momentum that if I stop for a week or I stop for a period of time, that momentum will still be there.

02:33:59.000 But I feel guilty every day That I'm on that vacation.

02:34:03.000 It's crazy.

02:34:03.000 Yeah, I know.

02:34:04.000 It's crazy.

02:34:04.000 I do, too.

02:34:05.000 But I've gotten way better at it.

02:34:07.000 My wife's helped me with that.

02:34:08.000 She doesn't feel guilty at all.

02:34:09.000 Women definitely help you. 1.00

02:34:10.000 Yeah, right.

02:34:11.000 I don't know why women don't feel bad about that, but they don't. 0.98

02:34:14.000 I don't know.

02:34:15.000 So your thing is finish the book, start a new book, get it going, and then you can take your vacation.

02:34:20.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:34:21.000 That makes sense.

02:34:21.000 And in fact, I'll go a little farther than that.

02:34:24.000 While you're finishing book number six, let's say, you should already be starting book number seven. 0.86

02:34:33.000 Outline it or whatever you need to do so that there's not ever that day when you look at the page and you go, what the fuck am I going to do now?

02:34:44.000 Get something started so you've got, you know, 20 pages, 40 pages, whatever.

02:34:50.000 So you feel, okay, no problem.

02:34:52.000 I've already been working on it.

02:34:53.000 I've already got a beachhead.

02:34:55.000 I'll just keep going.

02:34:56.000 That's the same thing that most comedians do.

02:34:59.000 Oh, do they?

02:34:59.000 Yeah, when I'm writing a special, like if I'm finishing a special, I already have like five or ten minutes for the next special.

02:35:06.000 Oh, that's great.

02:35:06.000 Or five or ten minutes for the next act.

02:35:09.000 So I'm not starting from like, what am I going Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:35:12.000 There's something, and then from there, I've got a scaffolding, and then I'll build off of that.

02:35:17.000 Yeah.

02:35:18.000 Oh, I didn't know that.

02:35:19.000 That's interesting.

02:35:20.000 Well, I certainly agree with that.

02:35:21.000 Yeah, a lot of guys, like, say if you have a, like, I was just talking to Chris Rock, and he has a new special that he's working on, and he's currently doing sets where he's doing as much as, like, I think when he was in Austin, he did an hour and 40 minutes.

02:35:38.000 But his special will only be one hour.

02:35:40.000 So what he's going to do is he's going to tighten that down and edit that down to the very best one hour that's possible out of that hour and 40 minutes of material.

02:35:51.000 But once that hour special comes out, now Chris has 40 solid minutes of other material that he can tour with and that he could add on to.

02:36:01.000 And so for a guy like Chris Rock, adding 20 minutes onto that, not that hard.

02:36:05.000 And then he'll probably do the same thing.

02:36:08.000 We'll probably develop an hour and a half, hour and 45 minutes of new stuff, then film a special, and then still have another 45 minutes of stuff.

02:36:16.000 So you've always got bread in the oven.

02:36:20.000 You've always got something cooking.

02:36:22.000 Boy, it would be a fascinating documentary to put the camera over Chris Rock's shoulder and ask, why did you pick that one?

02:36:31.000 How did you structure this?

02:36:33.000 What were you thinking?

02:36:34.000 It would be intrusive though, I think.

02:36:37.000 Like probably, I don't know.

02:36:39.000 Maybe, but it'd be fascinating.

02:36:41.000 It'd be fascinating for us.

02:36:42.000 But for someone that's like in the middle of the creative process, like if you did that with a Gary Clark Jr. or something like that, like, why are you playing that?

02:36:49.000 Like, what's it like? 0.98

02:36:49.000 You're like, get the fuck out of here. 0.98

02:36:50.000 I'm trying to play. 0.98

02:36:51.000 I think for a lot of artists, they're in the moment, right?

02:36:56.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:36:57.000 To stick a camera in their face while they're doing it would kind of like fuck with the thing. 1.00

02:37:03.000 Probably. 0.99

02:37:04.000 You know, it's like when they talk about quantum physics and they talk about the observing of the thing changes the thing.

02:37:10.000 It's probably a quality of that with everything.

02:37:13.000 Maybe there'd be a way to film it and have him not talk about it in the moment, but afterwards.

02:37:19.000 Yeah, perhaps.

02:37:20.000 But even just the presence of cameras constantly filming him would probably be...

02:37:24.000 Be self-conscious. 0.99

02:37:25.000 You go and get in there and you start to fuck yourself up. 0.99

02:37:27.000 You get in your own way. 0.99

02:37:29.000 Yeah, you need a certain amount of real freedom in that regard.

02:37:34.000 Oh, I know what I meant to ask you, Joe.

02:37:36.000 I heard a thing with Sam Kinison.

02:37:40.000 He was talking about writing his material and he said the hardest part was the transitions.

02:37:46.000 Could you talk to that for a second?

02:37:49.000 Do you agree with that?

02:37:50.000 Yeah, I don't think that's the hardest part.

02:37:53.000 No, not for me.

02:37:54.000 The hardest part for me is the initial premise.

02:37:58.000 Those are the hardest.

02:37:59.000 Those are basically patches of fertile ground.

02:38:03.000 You need to come up with these patches of fertile ground and then you can grow things in them.

02:38:07.000 So when I have a premise, like whatever the premise is about, now it's just once I know that things are growing in it, I'm like, okay, good.

02:38:15.000 We got something.

02:38:16.000 Now let's formulate it.

02:38:18.000 But to think about a thing to talk about and to have that thing worthy of an extraordinary amount of time.

02:38:24.000 Because if I'm going to develop a bit, like I used to have this bit about a guy who broke into the White House.

02:38:30.000 And that big took months of my time to figure out how to say it right and all the twists and turns and saying it in a way that it's the most palatable to people that are listening to it and the funniest.

02:38:43.000 You gotta find a premise.

02:38:44.000 But once you find a premise and that premise, you smile when you're thinking about it, then you got fertile ground.

02:38:51.000 And the transitions, I mean, it just requires some creativity.

02:38:55.000 I don't think it's that hard to transition from one thing to another thing.

02:38:59.000 I don't think it's that.

02:39:00.000 But, you know, Sam's time was, you know, he's from the late 80s, right?

02:39:06.000 And Sam Kinison really became famous in, like, 86. And there was no one like Sam Kinison before Sam Kinison.

02:39:13.000 So his style of comedy...

02:39:16.000 I have benefited from the fact that he existed and that Bill Hicks existed and that these guys who kind of had that similar sort of rambunctious, energetic, introspective, brilliant Set this this this this way of doing stand-up that was very different than say Bob Hope or Jerry Seinfeld observational comedians like these

02:39:46.000 guys already carved the path and So maybe for guys that came up like myself after Kinison, it's not as difficult.

02:39:57.000 You can kind of see how to do it better.

02:40:00.000 They've blazed the trail.

02:40:03.000 How do you come up with a premise?

02:40:06.000 It depends.

02:40:07.000 Like sometimes there's an interesting thing that is in the news or that I've encountered or seen in a museum or read an article about, and then I'll just, like again, I'll write essays.

02:40:20.000 I'll write essays and from that essay I'll extract something and that something is actually viable.

02:40:26.000 There's something there.

02:40:28.000 Sometimes it's just an encounter in the real world.

02:40:31.000 It's like something that's happened to me. 0.99

02:40:32.000 Sometimes it's from a discussion I've had with a friend and then I'll say something and they start laughing and I'm like, I gotta write that shit down. 0.94

02:40:41.000 So do you feel like you're sort of always on the lookout for premises? 0.97

02:40:45.000 Yeah, particularly like now because I just recorded something.

02:40:48.000 So particularly now, now I'm like in that period where I'm just constantly searching around.

02:40:52.000 And then once I develop like a real set, then it transitions to concentrating on those bits all the time.

02:41:02.000 Try to make them as good as possible.

02:41:04.000 Like to always think, is that the right way?

02:41:05.000 Am I doing it the right way?

02:41:06.000 Maybe I should change it.

02:41:08.000 Maybe I should shorten it.

02:41:09.000 Maybe I should lengthen it.

02:41:10.000 Maybe I should put it in the beginning.

02:41:12.000 Sometimes a bit changes when you move it around your set.

02:41:15.000 Like sometimes of a bit that's like you're doing 40 minutes into your act, it does well.

02:41:20.000 But if you did it 10 minutes into your act, it does even better.

02:41:22.000 Ah, interesting.

02:41:24.000 It's weird.

02:41:26.000 It's like things have their place and you don't know where that place is until you move them around.

02:41:30.000 Like, you ever rearrange your office?

02:41:33.000 Like, maybe my desk over here and put my plant here and then you do it like, I like this better.

02:41:38.000 I don't know why.

02:41:39.000 You know, what is that?

02:41:40.000 You know?

02:41:41.000 Something.

02:41:42.000 Can you teach comedy?

02:41:44.000 You can't teach someone who's not funny.

02:41:46.000 I don't think you can.

02:41:48.000 But you can show people there's certain principles of comedy like the economy of words, surprise, the way you say things.

02:42:02.000 Jokes are not just a joke.

02:42:04.000 It's the way the joke sounds.

02:42:06.000 Just like a song is not just the words of the song, it's the sound of the voice.

02:42:10.000 Yeah, that's true.

02:42:12.000 Yeah, there's something to the way things sound and the pacing and the timing, and you can get better at that.

02:42:20.000 But unfortunately, there's some people that just aren't funny.

02:42:23.000 And I don't think you could teach them that, and I don't know why.

02:42:26.000 I don't know why.

02:42:28.000 It's just a thing.

02:42:31.000 The problem with comedy classes is the vast majority are taught by people who aren't funny.

02:42:37.000 I think that's true, yeah.

02:42:39.000 It's true.

02:42:40.000 Chris Rock's not teaching any comedy classes.

02:42:42.000 He does every time.

02:42:44.000 He's working on his own stuff.

02:42:45.000 Dave Chappelle's not teaching any comedy classes.

02:42:48.000 You can learn things from other comedians, but generally they don't share those things with you unless you've achieved a certain level of competence.

02:42:57.000 You know, it's...

02:43:00.000 One thing that comedy classes do, though, even if they're taught by people who aren't that funny, is they give you an opportunity to get on stage.

02:43:08.000 Most comedy classes, what they'll do is they'll, you go through a course for a few weeks, and then you practice, and then one day you'll go to a show, and you'll have like a showcase.

02:43:17.000 Well, everybody invite family and friends, and there'll be, you know, 50, 100 people in the audience, and then every student will go up and do five minutes.

02:43:25.000 And that's very valuable because then you get your feet wet and you start thinking about it like, I think I can do this.

02:43:31.000 I think I can be a comedian.

02:43:32.000 And then it goes on to be something you do regularly and then you get better at it, just like everything else, like playing golf or writing books.

02:43:41.000 But if you don't have the spark, you can't make a fire.

02:43:45.000 And I don't know what that spark is.

02:43:47.000 I don't think anybody knows because everybody's is different.

02:43:50.000 Were you always a funny kid?

02:43:52.000 Not necessarily.

02:43:54.000 No, I don't think I was.

02:43:55.000 I learned how to be funny mostly during my martial arts time because it was like gallows humor.

02:44:05.000 I was the one who was making everybody laugh when we were riding a bus to a tournament.

02:44:10.000 We were all going to compete in this martial arts tournament or when we were all about to spar.

02:44:14.000 I was the one who would be cracking jokes to cut the tension.

02:44:18.000 And then one of my friends, my friend Steve Graham is still a good friend of mine today.

02:44:23.000 He talked me into doing it when I was, I was like 19 when he first said it to me.

02:44:28.000 He's like, you should be a comedian.

02:44:30.000 I was like, really?

02:44:32.000 I was like, you think I'm funny?

02:44:33.000 Like, my sense of humor is only good for psychos.

02:44:36.000 I'm like, you think I'm funny because you like me. 1.00

02:44:39.000 I go, if you didn't like me, just think I'm an asshole. 0.99

02:44:43.000 But he was like, I'm telling you, man. 1.00

02:44:45.000 Like, the way you can do impressions, the way you fuck with people. 0.99

02:44:49.000 He's like, you're really, you should be a comedian. 0.99

02:44:52.000 And I never even considered it.

02:44:54.000 I always loved comedy, but I never considered it until he brought it up.

02:44:58.000 Well, it's a big leap. 0.94

02:44:59.000 I mean, that's not something that, you know, your mom and dad say to you unless you're like the class clown.

02:45:04.000 My mom was the opposite.

02:45:05.000 My mom said I wasn't funny.

02:45:08.000 Yeah.

02:45:08.000 She's like, I never thought you were very funny.

02:45:10.000 I'm like, Mom.

02:45:11.000 Come on.

02:45:14.000 This is when I was like 21, just starting out, and she was worried for me.

02:45:18.000 She was worried that I was trying to become a comedian.

02:45:20.000 She was like, wow, you're already successful as a martial artist. 0.89

02:45:23.000 She didn't want you to be disappointed.

02:45:25.000 Stick with what you're doing.

02:45:27.000 Parents, they always want to play it safe.

02:45:30.000 They always want their child to have a safe life.

02:45:35.000 Yeah, it's hard.

02:45:37.000 It's, you know, it's hard to give people advice because you don't know their mind.

02:45:41.000 You don't know their life.

02:45:42.000 You don't know, even if you know it, you really don't know a little.

02:45:45.000 You know what you've seen and what they show you.

02:45:48.000 You don't know what it feels like to be them.

02:45:50.000 You don't know how their mind works.

02:45:52.000 And so to give someone advice on, I think you should go start a business about X. Like, says who?

02:46:00.000 Like, who knows?

02:46:01.000 Like, they have to figure it out on their own.

02:46:03.000 But I think what you've done, Particularly with the War of Art is you've given people tools.

02:46:09.000 You've given people an understanding of the landscape and you've given people some tools that they can use to better themselves and to create better art and to create a better life for themselves, to get over the bullshit that holds a lot of us back.

02:46:24.000 Well, I hope that's true.

02:46:26.000 It's true.

02:46:26.000 But certainly...

02:46:28.000 I think the medium of a book, and actually a podcast like we're doing now, is a good way to expose a new idea to somebody because they can absorb it in the privacy of their own mind.

02:46:44.000 Nobody's pointing at them and say, do this, right?

02:46:46.000 So they can read in a page and say, you know, that's me. 0.99

02:46:49.000 I'm fucked, you know? 0.99

02:46:50.000 And say to themselves, you know what? 1.00

02:46:52.000 I got to change that.

02:46:53.000 You know?

02:46:54.000 And nobody has to see that.

02:46:56.000 They're not embarrassed by that.

02:46:59.000 They can maybe make a decision and say, okay, I'm going to do a Sober October or I'm going to do something like that.

02:47:06.000 So a book is a great way to do that because it's such a private medium.

02:47:11.000 Yeah, that's a good point.

02:47:13.000 Well, thank you very much, sir.

02:47:15.000 It's always good to see you.

02:47:16.000 I really appreciate you.

02:47:17.000 I appreciate everything you've done, and I'm glad we got to do this again.

02:47:20.000 Hey, thanks, Joe.

02:47:21.000 Thanks for having me.

02:47:22.000 My pleasure.

02:47:23.000 Keep me in the Rolodex.

02:47:24.000 I will.

02:47:25.000 And if we haven't exhausted everything, we'll do it again soon.

02:47:28.000 We'll certainly do it again.

02:47:29.000 But seriously, like I say, if it wasn't for you, the War of Art would not have reached the level that it could.

02:47:35.000 Every time you say something nice about it, it sells a few more copies.

02:47:40.000 So thank you very much.

02:47:41.000 And thanks for your faith in that and in me.

02:47:44.000 Thanks for everything you've done.

02:47:45.000 I appreciate it.

02:47:45.000 All right.

02:47:46.000 Likewise.

02:47:47.000 What you're doing, don't be so modest.

02:47:48.000 What you're doing is a great thing.

02:47:50.000 Thank you.

02:47:51.000 All right.

02:47:51.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - November 22, 2022

Joe Rogan Experience #1901 - Steven Pressfield

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