Discipline, Confidence & The Champion’s Mindset - Chris Bumstead (4K)

this is going out the day after the Olympia what do you hope happened yesterday well I certainly hope I won definitely easiest answer to give this year is just very important to me to really want to bring my best package you know it sounds cheesy to say but I've been working hard going through a lot of adversities and challenges over the years and every Year's had something kind of like get in my way and felt like it would holding me back this year's had a few earlier on in the year but at this point point I'm feeling pretty good feeling pretty set so just want to be able to stride into this one I want to be able to enjoy it I want to be able to you know get off stage kiss my wife hold my baby know that I became the best in the world and maintained a beautiful relationship through it how important is it to share the success with somebody else as opposed to just doing it for yourself it's hard to say how important it is because I haven't had the success without her but I can't imagine it in any other way I think you know in the meaning we find in life it's beautiful to do hard things and to accomplish things but if you were to do it alone it's just not the same as being able to share with someone I think there's a level of you know codependence and regulation that can be healthy and can help you push through be more present not have to shut off and numb so much you know I think a lot of people who going through hard things trying to accomplish really big levels of success numb a lot to get there and I think being able to have a partner in which you can regulate yourself with and share and communicate and lean on prevents you from having to numb brings you closer together which is its own experience as well as the experience of whatever you're working toward so it's like double the amount of joy that you get to feel growing in two ways at once exactly yeah and who doesn't want a big hug after you accomplish something you know yeah that's cool what will you be talking about in your speech hopefully in my speech hopefully it's a good question I would say just talking about this year I've been thinking a lot about the sacrifices that come with success you know like nothing comes for free and I've reflected a lot over the years of how much of my mental peace I've had to sacrifice to accomplish what I've accomplished and it's just been a lot of like waking up at 5:00 a.m. going through the day wake up weigh myself weigh my food do my check-ins in the mirror like go to the gym work out how WR everything is like am I good enough am I being enough am I doing enough to win the Olympia right now it's all just compared to being Mr Olympia to that level of success and you know people talk about what you sacrifice to be great at things and they normally like you don't get to go hang out with your friends you don't get to go party go go do these things but I think for me the biggest sacrifice has just been the my me my mental Peace So the goal this year has been trying to find that maintain it have the mental peace while also thriving at a high level and seeing how I can do that as as efficiently as possible and you know I'd like to be able to say I did so successfully talk to me about the the tension of being as high of a performer the best in the world of what you do whilst also so not having that neurotic drive that sort of ambient anxiety that you can never switch off because it seems like that anxiety is precisely what creates the perfectionism approach that allows you to cover all of those bases is it possible to have one without the other I'm not sure I still have a level of neuroticism in me even though I've been succeeding for like five six years now and it's definitely gotten better you know I I don't focus on perfection I focus on just being doing the best I can but even within that I have that voice in my head that will look at myself every now and then be like it's not that I'm a shitty person but if I'm trying to be Mr lumpy like you're not doing enough and it creates a like a impeding anxiety upon myself like I'm not doing enough and that's not like an overwhelming thing all the time it's it's a drive for me to keep being better and keep pushing more and more but it's a lot so I think being able to manage that is one of the most challenging things of maintaining success for an extended period of time you know there's two different mindsets when you win something there's oh I won I did it I'm done and then there's oh like I better I got to do better than this one now I have to maintain this not only maintain this but this is the bare minimum of what's expected of me and I got to do better now so there's the balance of all that and I think over the last couple years I've been able to really be able to fix my perspective on just being grateful for the privilege of it you know there's been times where I thought I was going to stop competing because the pressure felt so high and then when I started to step away from it I was like I would really miss this pressure like there something I love about it there something I love about being put back against the corner like knowing that there's a lot of work I have to do feeling like I can't accomplish my goal and you're going to have to do it there's something so like simple and beautiful in the meaning of just doing something that difficult under that level of pressure that you're choosing to do you know people say you find meaning in suffering and I think if you put yourself into like a meaningless suffering it's kind of just it's dumb there's no point you're just hurting yourself for no reason but if you can find your meaning in Just Doing Hard that are as close as possible to suffering that you're still benefiting from and you still enjoy I think it's beautiful that's one of the vicious double-edged swords of having success if you have that kind of mentality which I know all all too well that anytime you reach a new high or achieve some new kind of bar MH hooray we did it immediately the next thought after that is oh I now need to do it again but better that's now the next minute mhm yeah and I've I've had conversations with many people about the possibility of not having that and just being able to enjoy and relieve the pressure on yourself and you know there's all these studies that come out talk about motivation and drive saying that you can get more from coming from like a secure place rather than beating yourself up and it's like it depends on what your version of success is like can these people correct live a life to be more happy and fulfilled yes but will they be Michael Jordan have six championships dude I probably not you know I love this topic I love it so much and uh I think the bottom line is that if you're talking about beating everybody else on the planet to a thing what you're actually talking about is what are you prepared to sacrifice psychologically physically existentially relationally socially in terms of your self-esteem your confident everything right all of that because if you're if there's even a part of you that's thinking well I'm going to do this I'm going to balance it because I want to feel satisfied I want feel comfortable with myself and so on and so forth that's fine for as long as it contributes to your performance within the domain that you're competing in but as soon as you sacrifice any output in that that's just an opening for somebody else that's the competitor that's going to come in and get it because I use this example of Eddie Hall World's Strongest Man uh 2017 or 18 I think and he's there you know he's worked hard toward this final goal he wins it once and he's crying and he's saying Nana this is for you his grandma that passed away recently something like that and he says if he hadn't won that year he thinks that he would be dead Divorced with no relationship to his kid because the weight he was at and the way he was pushing his body with Pharmaceuticals and stuff was ridiculous he was working so hard and training so much that his relationship with his wife was in the toilet and he spent no time with his kid uh so you think okay in order for you to beat Eddie Hall you have to be prepared to sacrifice all of those things or not have them in the first place yeah so that's the price that he pays to be him do you want to do you want to win world's strongest man cuz that's the price right there yeah it's powerful and that's what it comes down to like what are you willing to sacrifice at the end of the day you know people don't understand the level of sa sacrifice it's going to take and there's been moments where I realize that there are competitors I'm going against I'm sure and people in my league who are doing things that hurt their body more than I'm willing to do because I'm not the person anymore I can't say I'm willing to sacrifice everything to win the Olympia like hell no I have a family you know there things I care about am I willing to sacrifice a lot my own like selfish mental peace and a lot of joy and a lot of things and working really hard absolutely but my health taking years off my life to not be with my family and stuff those are the things that kind of like hold me back now and is that going to make me better or worse I don't know but again you know I've always focused on building my own definition of what success means to me you know it's in like we were saying in competition there will always be I'm trying to be the best in the world that means I need to beat these people that means I'm good enough or I'm not good enough in comparison to something external of myself but interally the values of the truth of what you hold in yourself of what really success means to you in your entire life those are the things that you kind of have to balance and weigh out and kind of lean into one or the other and I compete because I want to win I love winning I love being the best in the world I've sat many times trying to find the balance of what I want within all this if I was losing I wouldn't be competing I'm here to win and it is what it is I I love what I do but at this point it's taken away a lot that I just really love winning more than I love more than I dislike the work so it's fine I can do it but my values are still bigger than that my success at the end of my life is beyond hurting myself now to do so so it's a constant check-in with myself of making sure I'm lining up my values and I'm not going to sacrifice winning to do so and I need to be smart enough that when those start to disbalance I need to pull away from one focus on the other and know one to check out so what happens next what next in life take it year by year and we see you know I've been saying I think 2019 was the year I finished won the Olympia went home and I was like I'm done I'm retiring and that that was the year I was I was over it I was done in 2018 I almost done and then 2019 I like it I'm going to go win one I won one came back all I felt was relief I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I still was getting a little sick from autoimmune I didn't know how to manage my health properly back then and it was just so much stress about my health because of 2018 when I was in the hospital for my autoimmune that I was like this isn't worth it to me I'm not doing this anymore and ever since then I've been like if I do one more then I'm lucky to do one more and I'm G to take it one year at a time and so every year I've been grateful enough to be able to do one more at a time if my health has gotten better every single year and you know every year I find that drive and that excitement behind that pressure to be better and better and I'm still enjoying it I haven't sacrificed anything beyond my values and my truth so I'm here doing my best it'll be maybe even more of an impressive feat to be able to do it without sacrificing that stuff and it's very UNG glories you know what I mean it's it's got nothing to do with how peeled you are when you step out on stage or oh my God look at how much back development he's accumulated from last year or whatever it's one of those very odd private victories yeah you know like I I I always think about this um these weird insults that we have to ourselves on a daily basis that that no one is ever going to give you any Applause for so um you get caught up in traffic in a way that wasn't your fault and then when you get there the person that you're dealing with something goes wrong with that and something else goes wrong with this and something else goes wrong the whole day all the way down and no one of these is impressive or grand or magnificent in any way and you managed to sort of weave your way through the day keeping your cool and you don't lose it and you managed to kind of make the best of that whole day and you get to the end of it there's no one applauding you for having got through that and yet you look back at the day and you go holy like I'm really proud of myself that myself well yes yes I think a lot about normal private victories mhm like that and it's a shame it's a shame that there isn't a better way I guess journaling gratitude practice would help but um I mean I would argue a really close relationship where you're able to share everything and they're able to see the struggles that most people don't ever see is another experience where when you boring wins boring you can share them together you know my wife is a hell of a lot more proud of me for being myself and being genuine than I ever winning olympas you know so I think that's another how we started off the podcast way to experience something with someone else I was talking to benjiro yesterday and he sort of reminded everybody just how much his wife who's like a accomplished doctor and they've got four kids or whatever gives absolutely zero shits about what he does he said that there' been this week where he'd been to he'd filmed some really impressive documentary thing over in Europe and then came back and was currently the number one rap artist in America yeah uh in the same week and he got home and talking to his wife and saying how's your week been she's explaining about oh this happened with the kids and such and such a things how was your week and he says yeah pretty busy I think and uh he explained she's like I'm currently the number one selling rap artist and he was like yeah yeah that's good the bins need taking out yeah think go they of the trash yep yep that's a beautiful relationship I think it's cool that's awesome and she probably also knows him well enough to know that Met's probably not a victory that he holds High his heart as well so it's not like I finished a book that I worked on for a long time was super proud of it I'm sure she would support him for it but she's like all right you have enough eego blast you're competing with Nikki Minaj No One Cares uh talk to me about this prep how's this prep been this prep has been good you know it's been a struggle up and down at moments as they always are I started a little bit late this year I feel you know I spent my winter down in Turkey getting a new hairline and didn't go look sweet dude a little straighter than last time little what do they call me the Lego Rob BL character the comments love it but um it took a couple months off at the beginning of the year and kind of developed a little bit of pressure behind me feeling behind and allowed me to kick my ass and go through it but you know I feel good my body's healthy and I'm ready to roll what are your biggest cheats for this stage of prep or biggest insights around fat loss I I imagine the hunger that you're dealing with is pretty ugly what what calories you want at the moment I'm eating about 2, 2200 calories right now okay and we're what 3 weeks out three and a half yeah so that's going to go down to, 1500 1600 it depends every year probably though I still have to lose nine pounds in three weeks so yeah so probably get he cut down a little more how do you deal with the hunger because it doesn't matter people don't need to be trying to win the Mr Olympia for the sixth year in a row or whatever anybody that's on a cut deals with really difficult hunger uh and most of them don't have World Championship driving them yeah what's your best ways for coping with hunger and cravings and stuff like that when you're deep into a fat loss phase I mean it's hard to answer in that aspect because I always have had World Championship as my driving passion stoping a stopping a stopping a yeah like you're don't be a little don't need it you know but I would say the momentum is absolutely huge being able to do something consistently I've been doing this consistently for a decade you know almost everything I've eaten has been weighed out to a tea and planned and for a reason for 10 years now and if I had stopped and eaten whatever I want for five years and come back and be like okay diet for an Olympia it would be extremely hard for me mentally to handle that every year has gone a little bit easier because I've gotten used to it I know what it takes I know what comes with it we were just talking about you said Mike isra tell says the same thing you just you stop caring about food even in my offseason I don't like eating food because I'm eating so much food so I don't look forward to the food that I eat I just make sure it's something edible that I can get down if I have to put like bone broth on it with some sriracha and just eat it really fast and then when I come down into prep and I am hungry I still not excited to eat the food it's just it's just some chicken breast and some meal make it super plain and it is what it is get through the day and you're fine and you also got to create like exciting daily victories for myself you know I weigh myself like three times a day and I don't get obsessively worried about it but I'm like okay I'm going to weigh myself right now I'm a pound heavier than I was yesterday you can't even think about eating anym today like you're heavier than yesterday like you should probably eat less today even go do some more cardio push it a little bit harder and then you just track daily victories and every single day trying to be a little bit better a little bit better checking the scale doing your check-ins going to the gym seeing how you feel and there's something in bodybuilding that's a little like sadistic where you just when you start to get to that point where you're so tired and like I was telling you like I Dro something on the floor and I'm like look at it and I'm like I can't pick that up I'm like it's too far I do not have the I'm literally wearing birken stocks dragging my heels across the ground walking courtne he's like 20t ahead of me I'm like I can't catch up I'm too tired but there's something about that where you're like I'm going to be shredded if I'm this tired if I feel like this for weeks my body is burning fat it has nothing and it has no energy I'm just holding on to muscle and there's just something exciting about you know achieving that level of like leanness and trying to beat path versions of myself so it's all mental for me at this point you know there's no really crazy diet hacks I eat the exact same thing every day it just reduces the amounts over time and go with the flow what does a I don't know whether I've ever seen a rebound day for you I don't know whether you've ever vlogged it if you have I I've missed it a refeed day yeah like a rebound day the day after the olymp you know there's always these I imagine that you're the sort of person that doesn't do a ridiculous binge because it would actually wreck your stomach yeah but what does what do you even have that I look forward to eating dot dot dot I I definitely still do at times and I I can I'll say this now because it will come out after the Olympia but I I never I don't think I've said this public it's funny but my coach is very I've been very on when I have a refeed it's the same food I eat every day but more of it but every now and then I'm like I just want a cookie you know I just want a muffin so my coach like what' you eat today I'm like 400 grams of rice but like realistically I had like I had a bunch of chicken breast and then I had three cookies with it you know it's the same amount of carbs but I'm like I'm just going to have some cookies today it you know and I go for it and I let myself have that now you know there's a there's a level of intuition I've developed over the years of doing what I do where like I might have stressed about that in the past but it's going to affect me more and now I'm like you know you're doing you've done this for 10 years you know what's going to hold you back what's going to not I'm going to enjoy my cookie with my wife I'm going to eat this I'm going to go to the gym trans some I know it's good for me it's good it's fine and I'll be good it's the same for me with the show with prep for the show there's you know there was a long period still now when I'm in less of a mindful place where I just need to know more I need to be better prepared I need to have more stories I need to have done more reading even if it's not about the guest just in other areas uh and then there's other times where I go I I've got this you know I did five episodes in three days in New York this week and uh getting toward the end I was sitting down with Casey nead like he's literally a pro conversationalist that's released an unlimited amount of videos this is going to be the easiest conversation in history you don't need to come in with all of these different interesting ideas and stats and all the rest of it so I it's the only equivalent I can find to your I have the same equivalent with this podcast too because when it was coming up I was like in the past I've done a bunch podcast and in the last year or so I was like I don't want to do anymore I felt like I was trying to learn things to be articulate to say to sound smart to sound cool motivational and I was like I don't want to live like that anymore I just want to live life to live life not to present it to people I would learn something and be like I could say that on YouTube or something it would sound cool and I was like that I don't want to do that anymore and then you hit me up to do the podcast I was like oh I haven't been doing that am I going to have anything to say yeah but then I was like you know I'm not the smart guy I'm not the guy who went to school and how intelligence and these crazy stories and all this stuff I'm just the guy who talks about his truth and his his own stories and reality so as long as I can bring that out we're good to go don't overthink it over the span of about a year I tried pretty much every Green strength that I could trying to find out which one was best I came across ag1 and I've stuck with it for over three years now because it's the best most comprehensive highly tested and rigorously formulated one scoop of ag1 contains 75 vitamins minerals and Whole Food Sauced ingredients including a multivitamin multimineral pre and probiotic green superfood blend and more that all work together to fill the nutritional gaps in your diet it increases energy and focus aids with digestion and supports a healthy immune system all without the need to take multiple products or pills best of all there is a 90-day money back guarantee so if you're not sure you can buy it and use it every single day for 3 months and if you do not like it for any reason they will give you your money back right now you can try it completely risk-free with that 90-day money back guarantee plus get a Year's free Supply vitamin D3 K2 and five free ag1 travel packs by going to the link in the description below or heading to drink a1.com slod wisdom that's drink a1.com slod wisdom I've gone back through your Instagram over the last few months and you've done some really cool stuff you've started putting pretty nice insights in captions of videos that are pretty enjoyable to read They're a nightmare to go back and try and actually write down because they're moving pretty quickly so I want to go through some of the best stuff I've learned from you over the last few months the first one is exactly what you were just talking about if I could go back I'd tell younger me you're going to do some pretty great things but you do not need to be great all you have to do is be yourself that will always be enough what's that mean to you you know I've had a lot of different thoughts that have come into my mind now having a child when Courtney was pregnant thinking about raising a child myself when I was a child and all these things and I think I always felt like I wanted to be good at everything I did and be great at what I did and I never expected to be as good as I was so it would just be such an interesting relief to be able to give myself to be like you are going to be great you're going to have all these things that you want but you're also going to realize that they're not as important as you think they are you know like you're going to come to the realization where the relationships and your values and everything that you enjoy and the experiences everything aren't going to come down to those spectacular moments on stage at the Olympia they're going to be much more simpler than that there's just going to be those moments where you're being yourself and the people who love you for that is going to be everything you do not need to be great that compulsion that necessity that's sort of being pulled forward the lack I am not enough as I am and if I achieve these great things and if everyone thinks I'm cool or says that I'm successful then I am worthy of acceptance and validation and praise and adoration is that the subtext below that quote like yeah essentially yeah that's um it's just a drive of selfworth you know it's a kind of a buzzword of what's going on right now but I think it's you know we were all kind of raised in a self self-esteem Society of being like you can do anything you can be anything go be this X Y and Z and it almost built expectations that we had to be these great things because we could be and our parents didn't have these opportunities and the privileges so we go do all these things and there's just no need for any of it you know and I think when you were able to alleviate that pressure from it like we were talking about the difference of like the extrinsic goals is trying to be the best in the world versus just trying to be my best self you know and setting authentic goals to myself what are my authentic goals winning the Olympia sometimes is a little more unauthentic than me truly trying to just push myself to be my best do I still enjoy that absolutely but those are the more of the need to be great the little ego the the thing that I'll die not needing but the intrinsic goals that are regardless of things out of my control you know win lose beat them don't beat him what's in my control to of just being myself and who I am showing up at my best knowing that I can go to sleep at night knowing I was myself we talked about pressure is a privilege last time but this is actually the same but in Reverse this is privilege is a pressure that thee is a pressure yeah that the privilege you have carries along with it this pressure in order to perform well your parents didn't have this opportunity think about you six time Mr Olympia you're really going to think about maybe not going for seven why wouldn't you leave it most dominant athlete in history why are you going to drop the you know like privilege is a pressure yeah and uh it's one of the odd byproducts of anybody that's doing really really great things that a lot of people are driven by this unconscious assumption that they're not enough unless they do do great things and it'll cause you to go and do great things but to what end what's the outcome what's the texture of your mind like when you go to sleep on a nighttime you really want that you feel great doing great things do you feel like doing great things what's it worth what's the price do you think you're a like an odd person to become a world champion I think so I don't know if everyone I think so you think you're we guy to be a world champion I totally agree I think most people would be like there's no way this guy's going to be Champion if they were my literally this little you know but I I don't know I think in my opinion what I've learned very deeply over the years is that confidence is just truth you know it's just being honest and there's people who put on this false bravado of arrogance of being like you know they were fifth place at the Olympia last year don't pick out whoever was Fifth and pick on them but someone not winning like I'm going to show up and I'm going to win this Olympia I know it in my heart it's like you don't know that you're lying that's not confidence that's just a lie whereas when I've Speak to myself truthfully and I'm like I don't really know if I can do this like I have doubt I have fear I just wanted X Y and Z and I'm like being honest to me that exemplifies real true confidence and you're being realistic with yourself you know if you s tell yourself you're going to do something you don't think you really can do you're creating this gap between your beliefs and your reality and it just creates more stress in yourself and an inability to perform in my opinion unwavering confidence is a Lie the fears never go away completely they just don't linger as long what's that you're my cl to you sounds great you wrote it I mean it sounds sounds f fantastic that's beautiful um I mean that's kind of in that same boat and maybe I'm just the weird Champion who's not like that but I still am full of Doubt all the time and I've tried to find ways to believe I wouldn't have doubt you know I've tried to like talk in ways where I don't have doubt I've tried to everything and there's always just lingering doubt in my mind of being like well what if you don't what if you can't and it's just the truth of my mind and regardless of that over the past 5 years I've still been able to perform progress and be the best in the world with that on my mind so who's to say that I can't have that debt on my mind while being a champion there's no rules to it which why I've always said the champion mentality the rules of being a champion is that there are no rules it's just whatever the champion does to win that's it yeah there's a a great story from Matthew Sayad so he's a sports reporter he's obsessed with tennis and he went to Wimbledon a few years ago and a unique aspect of tennis over the last decade or so has been that you had jovic federa and Nadal three goats three potentially literally goats all at the same time all interchanging and exchanging who won on this court or this tour with this surface and he went to go and watch them warm up and you go in and you see Nadal and he's just ripped absolutely shred it's all aggression it's pure sort of raw animalistic energy and then you go and see jovic and he's sort of robotic uh very precise very uh curated with the way that he moves nothing is wasted and then you go and see uh federa and he's playing trick shots and he's laughing with the guy that's woman he goes okay so if you were to take any of those three approaches and say in order for me to become a world champion I must be a b or c well you can't be all of them and all of them are successful so what does it mean to say that A or B or C are the right approach in order for you to be successful in the sport of tennis it doesn't it means that each different athlete has found a way that works for them and when you try and take that format and apply it to yourself what you end up doing is take it's like trying to put on somebody else's pair of shoes you go well I'm a size 10 and they're a size eight and this is not going to work yeah well the truth is a B and C are all wrong answers anything out there is a wrong answer you have to build it in yourself you know and like I talk about the cookies of the intuition you know over time you just you build intuition when you can get into a flow state of just trusting yourself to show up as you are and if it's playful if it's intense if it's quiet if it's loud if it's doubtful if it's whatever if it's just who you are and you're not needing to put on any facade and you are able to release that mask and show up in a flow and trust your instincts and act on Instinct I don't think you can be beat what do you say to people who often feel fear you mentioned the fears never go away completely feeling fear sucks not very comfortable yeah nobody wants to feel fear I don't want to feel fear but as somebody that's intimately familiar with that and pressure what do you say to people who notice it come up or what do you do yourself I would say when I start to feel fear about something now I get it I turn into excitement because in the past when I've started to feel fear it's because something big that I've worked hard for that's really important to me has started to come creeping up closer and there's something beautiful about The Human Experience of Stress and Anxiety nervous fear and all those things and just trying to embrace that and lean into it is the best way I've been able to handle it when it comes to Performance but when there's stuff that's actually like impending fear of my health let's say something that I can't just be like lean into the excitement that you I might have a health problem or something I found again I've tried to embrace it and just feel it and sit with it and feel feelings as we've talked about many times and that's helped but there's another level of giving it the validation that it deserves the feeling the validation it deserves and that to me that's being able to vocalize it out loud and I think this is different for everyone but for myself I'm a very introverted person and I tend to keep things to myself and I have a brain that's very logical so it's like well I'm scared about my health well you have no reason to be scared about your health you're healthy you do these tests and all these things well I'm still anxious and I'm like working through it logically in my brain and I try and just like diminish the feeling that I have logically and work through it myself and it just it's a dance and it works a little bit but it doesn't fully go away it just pushes it down but when I'm able to vocalize it and express it out loud and get the actual words out of my mouth and share it with someone typically my wife and able to regulate with my partner and she's able to listen to me and you know validate my feelings of how I what I'm going through and of course you feel like that you know XYZ this is this is very normal I'm like oh yeah you're right and then it's just all of a sudden like ease and I'm like wow I feel a lot better now you know I feel a lot more calm and relaxed that I've released it so I think a big thing for me it was not feeling feelings numbing trying to feel feelings but kind of logically mansplaining it over myself and my head and then it was actually letting it out giving it like the attention it deserves to be put out into the world and communicate about it with someone who I trust and cares about me do you ever get or feel shame about feeling the fear like oh this is so stupid why are you beating yourself up again why are you so worried about this you should be stronger you shouldn't be worried in this sort of a way because I think first order emotions are bad but the really really bad ones are the second and third and fourth order emotions you know your Shame about feeling fear and your guilt about feeling Shame about feeling fearful and your frustration about feeling guilt about feeling fear you know it's that it's all the way up I think I used to but in you know the last couple years in my attempt to just honor things that come up as they come up it's gotten a lot better in myself and I've been able to catch myself now and you know mindfulness is another buz word that people overuse but if you're mindful enough to catch yourself with those first second and third emotions and watch them come up and be like did I just say that to myself right now like that's crazy like I felt something and then I call myself an idiot for feeling that and I call myself a for thinking I'm an idiot for feeling that and that's that's an insane thought if someone were listening to your brain right now they'd put you in a mental hospital you know Y and just being conscious of that and being able to listen to your own thoughts sometimes help alleviate them so much and just be like you're you're human and the more you're able to communicate them with other people that you trust and then be like yeah me too I have the thoughts too you know and you feel you feel a little bit less crazy you know like we were joking about intrusive thoughts on the drive here and I was like do you ever just think about like turning your car into oncoming traffic and just seeing what happens and that's the huge thing with having a baby sometimes I'm like what if she just what if I just I'm holding her what if I just dropped there and she just died and I'm like holy you know you just have these crazy thoughts but then I say that to my wife she's like oh my God I literally was I had a dream that I threw her off the roof or something I'm like that's a little crazy but me too you know yeah and it's normal we're human it's our brains just overthinking putting ourselves into a position to feel fear and then trying to make ourselves actively avoid that fear so we don't get there corre it's a human response to avoid pain I think this is one of the reasons that uh people have sort of resonated a lot with your story which has been this very uh sometimes overly transparent approach to opening up about the again sort of boring fears you know there's boring successes but there's also these sort of very no one's going to give you any accolades for not dropping your daughter it's like oh congratulations you didn't drop you didn't drop your baby oh you did you're a monster um but yeah just talking about the real finer point of psychology when you're a bit of an introspective person so going back to the idea of confidence and fears what do you think life would have been like for you if you hadn't gone for it whatever that means to you a excellent question you know I was thinking about that the other day of how like like again the thought I was having was when we were young we we're told we can be anything then we realize it's a lie and then we realize we're telling ourselves it's a lie because we actually just realize how much work it's going to take and we'd rather believe it's a lie than we're not willing to work hard enough to achieve these things and then it's kind of like this back and forth of like can I or is it just too hard or am I just too weak and it's just back and forth and you know I'm just so grateful I fell into something that I was so passionate about that took a lot of effort and work but that I also loved to do and my body was built for my mind was built for you know I was clearly genetically built to be bodybuilder mentally physically environmentally my relationships all everything flowed perfectly for me to be in this perfect position and I think it's just it's hard to say where I would end up without this life and it's I don't even like thinking about it because it's hard but the effort that I put into this would be really hard for me to put into to something I didn't love so if I hadn't gone for it which would be for me back in 2017 when I was in college drinking partying doing all the things and being like you know what I'm not I'm going to stop this my friends go out I'm going to go to sleep I'm going to wake up early I'm going to go to the gym I'm going to eat six times a day I'm going to spend my money on tuna and chicken breast rather than six packs of beer and all all these things and I'm just going to drop out of school and I'm going to travel and I'm going to try and get sponsors I'm going to try and win shows I'm going to do all this and I'm going to take every risk I can and I didn't even think about it you know when you're young luckily you're you're at the greatest opportunity in your life to take risk and to fail and then you're like well I'm 24 now I can just go restart I suppose you're ignorant to the price that you're going to have to pay as well oh yeah do you think that you would have done it had you have known what it was going to obviously not knowing the outcomes because that's put you where you are where you're really happy uh but going oh this is what it's going to entail this is the price that you're asking me to pay I don't know I'm I I mean aware to I would have been too ignorant to say no so yes I would have for sure you know you can't know until you're in it young dumb and full of Hope yep well was it what was it you used to say full of magic and rubber or something yeah yeah made of rubber and Magic yeah yeah yeah yeah it is dude you you know you all of the like things that happen to you the bruises that you get when you're younger just seem to bounce off in some ways more easily and then you go through this sort of period of not hiding from the stuff that insults you or that damages you and you go oh okay I this thing has now happened and I need to actually deal with it as opposed to just using momentum or inertia or distraction or whatever to get me through it uh and then the goal is to come out the other side and to actually have done that work and now be anti fragile right so you go from like unconscious competence in the beginning to conscious incompetence and then hopefully to conscious competence You' youed you fuled and included whatever that whatever that challenge is but um yeah it's it's funny to think about the weird decisions that you make one time decision so for me moving to America was 33 years old like I don't know should I not have had my life together by then feels like I probably should have done should I really be about trying to change careers and move is this not the age by which you're supposed to have all of your life got together and you're going to move to this country on your own like talk to people on the Internet and try and make it into a career in like the most competitive City in the entire world to try and do it and see if it's going to work with no it didn't even have the Visa when I moved out here it was like under review or whatever living in an Airbnb and uh yeah do you think it's possible to discover the limit of truly what you're capable of like do you think you'll achieve a point like I achieved everything I was capable of and are you working towards that or are you just working H it's going to be hard to do it within this industry and it's one of the reasons that I love sport increasingly I'm using sport as an analogy for lots of other things in life because you have very tightly defined parameters of success and failure yeah right you either won or you didn't but a podcast can always be a little bit better your physique on stage three and a half weeks time could be a little bit better but if you win that's really all that matters in the I will say from my experience there are moments where you win and yes and then you go back and you're like my could have been a little bit better wow so you even in the act of winning you've found a way to uh s of want more for sure well so I don't know I um there's a part of me that is I mean this has been the most the hardest I've ever worked this last 12 months since we basically since we were last together it's just been unrelenting uh and and good and there's a part of me that I want to look back with pride of a time when I had the energy and the lack of responsibility and the youth and the time that I could dedicate to something like this and go yeah I I pushed myself as hard as I could I got out of this everything that I could too but after a while you do start to think okay what are the sacrifices that I'm making for this and and how can I get 98% of the outcome that I'm looking for but with only 50% of the pain you know where are the areas where I'm pushing unnecessarily that I can claw back some quality of life and especially in I guess this is the double-edged sword for you tightly defined parameters of success and failure which means it's easy to work out whether or not it was a w or an L yeah but on the flip side of that you it's such a zero SU game that pulling back even a tiny little bit will risk what ever the outcome is going to be whereas when you're doing something like in business right it's not about being the number one supplement brand or the number one energy drink brand or the number one clothing brand or whatever it's about reaching a creating a cool company that you're proud of that facilitates the lifestyle that you want and is maybe able to give back and do cool things within the industry that you like being a part of some people there's some people maybe for you the energy drink is like you're little like there's less pressure on me to have to be the best because I just want to build something cool but the podcast is where all the pressure have to be the best so it's almost like you're able to alleviate some pressure on some effort you put into the business but some people the business is their number one thing they're like I need to be the number one energy drink in the world that is true related to that you said I found greater fulfillment in the Journey of pursuing my goals than in the moment of achieving them why I'd say that comes to like the question I asked you discovering what I was capable of you know there's there been so many times where I've been in a prep and I felt way too far behind to win and I'm had an injury last year when I tore my lat tore my bicep was in the hospital like all these different things going on and like there's no way that I can do this like it's impossible and if I were to ever ask myself in the past like do you think you could win or get through this and do this I'd be like no way it's impossible but I was in it and I did it and I accomplished it and I was like I'm capable of so much more than my mind understands and I think that's just the greatest part of the journey that I've achieved is like that understanding of what I'm capable of and that belief in myself to what I can accomplish and i' only came through the Journey didn't come through the winning it come through the challenges that came along the journey and coming through it and fighting through it and the beauty of all that and on top of that there's just been so many moments in the midst of things where like it's a workout or it's a diet or I'm starving or I'm look doing check-ins or something and I'm just like this is incredible like I'm Peak conditioned in the world right now fighting to be the best in the world and I'm living in that moment right now I'm doing the This Is What It Takes when people see something on stage this is what they don't see or what I'm feeling in my mind what no one will understand what it takes to get there I get to experience this every day and I think it's just part of the human experience of feeling in life that's just so beautiful those boring normal victories that contribute to the really impressive ones exactly the boring victories yeah they're important man you know um yeah I think having way that people could celebrate those on a daily basis me and a friend came up with this idea of a well done list so you have a done list which is the I did today but a well done list allows you to note down so uh I I got through my training session even though I felt really crap this morning when I woke up and my mind was mean to me like no one where does that go right it's not Grand or ceremonious enough in order to justify an Instagram post maybe you'd be able to tell a particularly mindful partner about it but it's you don't even tell your friend you're going out after you told your mindful partner five days on a they'd yeah off yeah you're miserable every day shut up uh but yeah I think the opportunity to give yourself a pat on the back like a well done for today I have written on a Post-It note on my bathroom mirror what went well today mhm which is my reminder for the well done last and uh yeah when I think about it when I actually do that practice which I need to do more uh but when I do that practice on an evening time I come up with the most boring victories you know the most mundane things um that person in the Starbucks was annoying and I didn't react yeah you know or I I dealt with it with Grace or whatever like little things like that that I do think over time actually contribute you being a pretty impressive human and a human that you're proud of as well which is maybe even more important mhm I've had those moments someone comes up to me and like I didn't know who to tell I just wanted to come to you cuz like I felt safe talking to you and they like to tell me something and I walk away I'm like I feel good about myself you know I'm that person that they wanted to come to no one gives a yeah I uh there's definitely something about the pursuit of goals being more important than the achievement of them as well that Ryan long told me this story where he says Uh there's three men on a ladder one at the bottom one in the middle and one at the top which one is best to be he said the one that's still climbing and I think that having things isn't that fun getting things is fun yeah and you know that's where it's sort of the vicious other side of doing anything for the purpose of achievement that when you end up getting to the achievement you realize that the achievement wasn't any it was literally just the end point that gave you Direction M and as soon as you do get to that you know the idea of false peaks in mountaineering so it's when you think that you're at the top and you go you realize oh I got to go down and I got to go back up again but this one's even higher it's like every achievement is basically just a false Peak the whole way up so that's what I really like hit me and I thought was really cool about I've always wanted to be a dad I've always wanted to be a parent and then having a baby it's not having the baby like I did it you know I have the kid I'm a dad now I'm done it's like no being a father of the what I want to be what I'm excited to be is how you show up every single day for that kid's entire for the rest of your life essentially if you're lucky enough then you just show up every single day trying to be your best and that's what being a dad is it's every single day showing up it's not 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discount sitewide on everything by going to the link in the description below or heading to liv.com wisdom and the code modern wisdom a checkout that's L IV ment us.com wisdom and modern wisdom a checkout talk to me about Dad life how is it it's been good it's been really good the first thing that hit me is just absolute love and appreciation for my wife especially watching her go through like birth process and everything holy hell women are incredible it was crazy experiencing that was the the most insane thing I had ever experienced in my life how so like she she wanted to do it naturally she did it just all on her own naturally she was that means without pain killers yeah just just as nature is you know like nothing in her so she was in a tough ra dog this both just raw doging in so much pain and there were so many moments where like she was just sh in pain and like losing it and I thought she was going to like Snap like I need the drugs I need the epidural whatever and I was like babe come on you can do this lock it in she like she was just you didn't tell your wife to just Lo lock it in I told her to absolutely bro just lock in come on bro she was she had me she had me pinching her like traps as hard as I could like literally I was like white knuckling her traps to try and distract P try distract from the pain just like it was incredible I love the solution to pain being more pain being more pain I know right her doctor like you shouldn't be doing that I'm like she's telling me to I'm not going to say no exactly you tell her to tell me not to but it it was just incredible to experience all that and to see her in such like an empowering moment and overcoming so like there's zero chance I would have gone through that like it was so much pain and she just handled it like a champ and then you go home and you have to take care of a child and you're not sleeping and you're doing all these things and there's so much more that comes into it so I think I just I developed so much appreciation for you know moms women my wife being able to see all that and it's been really cool and another kind of wakeup call that I had in like there's two things I'll explain the first one is just this concept I thought of that your children eventually will know exactly who you are for an extended period of time they're going to think of you as like a hero as a god is perfect like your your parent who knows everything and then they're going to turn to a certain age and realize that you're human and there's a lot of you don't know and any like burdens you have anything things you try and hide from them they see through it all CU they see you all the time there's no hiding anything from them so you really have to like be on your best you have to work on your solve your problems not be a passive aggressive not do whatever your faults are you need to fix them so you don't pass them on to them and they're going to see them eventually because you can't hide from them you can pull whatever you want on social media you can be nice and public do all these things but at home there's no hiding anything they're going to know exactly who you are and I think that like just responsibility that withheld within that is just powerful and beautiful and exciting there's nowhere to escape right it's like accountability yeah it's like a Navy SEAL hell week that never stops you have this permanent instructor over your shoulder at all times the tiniest little interaction how you deal with that one nappy change that one evening that's four weeks after the trip to the hospital at 3: in the morning it's like you didn't sleep all night you have multiple kids one screaming one throwing at you throwing food all over you burn the food there's nothing eat all this and then like how are you going to react because they see it and they're going to remember you know it's like it's all being watched It's like there's cameras in the house you know we have here trust you to be able to turn fatherhood into a performance sport not meant to be a performance accountability to be your best yeah yeah uh that's the first lesson um the other one was it's more of a moment it was a moment I'm already going to get emotional thinking about the moment it was she was like a night where Bradley was being fussy she was like crying a lot and I took her in the back room and I just laid with her walked around with her and she calmed down and I just laid down and she wouldn't sleep but she fell asleep on my chest and I remember lying there and like just putting my hand on her and I was like like if you could ever just without being able to put into words experience what love is like it couldn't be more powerful than that I was like this is like I can't there's no way I can put it into words because I wouldn't do it justice it was just pure love in that moment I was like how can I love this little thing so much it was the most beautiful moment and all it was was lying her with her sleeping on my chest it was incredible and know every like stress about work travel Olympia all these things they just like wash away and you're like it doesn't matter if I have this this is it this is like what I've always wanted this is all that matters and it was the most perspective changing little moment for matter of minutes while she was noty on my chest but it was the most incredible thing and I think it's just allowed to alleviate a lot of pressure I put on myself to perform to succeed all these things allowed me to separate that and when I talk about the extrinsic goals of winning in competition versus the morals and values like it just made my morals of values of family and relationship and love so much stronger and it leave like if you fail over here you have this and that's all that matters I think the gym oddly enough is that for a lot of guys when they first start going I know it was for me I remember that when I first started going to the gym when I was at Uni uh it gave me kind of like a safe haven that I knew if I'd f planted in some presentation that I had to give if the girl that I was seeing broke up with me if you know all of this stuff went wrong at least I got a good training session in so in one area of my life I was making relatively forward progress even if everything else had gone to the rest of it a total dumpster fire this one area is siloed off it's compartmentalized and you know for a long time maybe that was one of the safe havens for you and now that is one of the things that can be part of you know dumpster fire maybe the best dumpster fire but the rest of them are down here too and then there's this one and then there's another Safe Haven now which is even more indestructible for sure yeah it's the most EXC I can look at picture if I ever I'm feeling down nervous scared now I can look at a picture of her and I feel better it's just like this is amazing we spoke last time a year and a bit ago about the uh oh no so it was when we trained earlier on this year about how when you dads get to see their kid for the first time sometimes the sort of fatherhood compulsion doesn't kick in immediately and I told you that story about a meeting that I'd been to and one of the guys put his hand in the air it was this business meeting with a ton of high powerered entrepreneurs everyone's a millionaire or a billionaire I was like the poorest stupidest person in the room and they said anyone got any questions they want some advice for and this one dude put his hand up and I was thinking it was going to be about the cash flow conversion cycle for his business or accounting or some stuff like that and he went my wife's eight months pregnant and I don't feel like I'm going to be a good dad and I like oh W now I'm interested sh and um you said you'd had this conversation with a lot of different guys and it's quite normal it seems to be very um typical for future dads wife's pregnant casc Cascade of hormones all of that's going on but they kind of aren't even sure is there a baby in there like you just getting fat like what's what is what's happening here I'm not feeling anything I I haven't seen anything I haven't held anything how quickly did that switch turn on for you it's hard to say cuz I thought it turned on really quick and then it just kept ramping up it was a dial it just kept going and I was like holy I didn't nearly like I thought but there was a moment at one point where like I saw this joke online and it was like my husband does the things I can do and he does the things I can or whatever and it's like I breastfeed because he can't he sleeps because I can't and there was just a moment where she was like the baby wanted courtne need to cry the baby wanted to breastfeed she was taken care of her I was in prep I needed sleep I needed rest I needed to go into the office I needed to travel all these things and I felt like useless and I was just like like I'm just this like peasant over here this youthless being over here you know and i' like just not able to help her going through all this stuff and I started to feel this weird like pull of almost like guilt of being like she's a little bit more connected it wasn't so much about connection it was just more so about my ability to help her going through such a challenging time of feeling helpless cuz my wife is overwhelmed trying to become the best mother she can be going through the physical hormonal lack of sleep transformation everything all the chaos and I'm just over here like what what can I do over here and kind of made me feel a level of guilt on an aspect and again she's so incredible I can like talk with her and she would try and soothe me I'm like I'm not trying to ask you to help me right now I'm just trying to say he I feel I feel shitty that I can't help you can you help me feel less shitty about not being able to help you like come on yeah but no I was like no I just want to be able to be there for you more she's like you just need to be here for me that's that's it I'm like all right well I'm here I definitely think that the uh like totally uselessness that you end up feeling as you're on the sidelines watching your wife give birth kind of just extends out look at me talking like as a guy that doesn't have kids talking about this um but it seems like that kind of just continues extend out from you know the next 6 to 9 months because you're there as a well-meaning coach on the sidelines go on honey great work you yep hooray uh you basically moral support you're one of those mascots in the big fluffy outfit that's you know comes in at the halftime show and maybe gives a bit of alleviation and then the players go back out on the field the work good job uh how have you found being able to let go of perfection ISM in other areas of life given that you dial in an awful lot whether it's with business or branding or copyrighting or the way that you and Calvin film your content and put that out in a sort of nicely controlled curated way the way that you step on stage your knowledge of your diet and your sleep and your training and your Macros and all that stuff and then you've just got this thing which is not subject to Chris's desires and will do what it's going to do and also your uh self assessment of your own performance as a father and desire to be as good as possible and so on and so is this just another domain for you to find holes in your own performance in hell of a question um it's funny because in aspects of my life I'm the least perfectionist person ever I'm very just like it's good enough just send it and then the things that are really important to me I can be a huge perfectionist but which is where you know bodybuilding relationships all these things I can start to be a little overly hard on myself so I think even that contrast of balance of different sides of my personality has helped me alleviate it I'm not not everything needs to be perfect I'm like that stuff the the YouTube video will get there Kevin don't worry about that these guys help me with the business that's all fine this is what I need to be perfect on so at least it's not everything but even within that just being able to compete at such a high level for so many years I've seen so many people who have been so obsessed with being especially in bodybuilding where everything is weighed everything's about a look like when it's something where like you know something was on your mind so you lost 30 minutes of sleep last night you didn't enter a deep REM sleep so you H into some water had higher cortisol and you wake up and you look different the next day like that's how specific a physique sport is when you're that lean and dialed in that anything can change it you can really start get in your head about it and I've seen so many people overthink of to the grain of rice being perfect and eating it at the same time every day and everything and needs to be so perfect and just the stress of that making them worse that I've pulled back from the perfectionist of it and just tried to been like where's diminishing returns what's going to keep my mental peace where what what cookie is going to alleviate enough stress that's actually more beneficial than eating healthy where's where does that balance lie you know you pull and you test and you tug and you go back and forth a little bit and you just figure it out over the years and luckily I've I've just learned to trust my intuition in a lot of things and I think in being a dad now I my intuition is not as strong as being Mr Olympia so I'm refiguring that one out yes luckily my wife is just an incredible mom as she is so a lot of the time chion I just ask her if I don't know what to do I'm like what do I do how do I do this are you saying that Cony is Johan for uh child rearing oh yeah for sure she's incred she could be anyone's coach for child rearing somehow she's just built for it it's funny that the point you're making I think is the stress of trying to be perfect will damage your performance more quickly than the imperfections will yes which is where the cookie comes in the cookie all important cookie uh about your wife you said being with someone who allows others to be their best selves in your presence will quite literally change the world around you I get to wake up beside that someone every day and every night I go to sleep with more reason to be grateful for you you will always be my life's greatest blessing what's your advice for choosing a good partner I think that sounds like the summary that everybody wants to to do that but you know so many relationships don't seem to have that positive dynamic in it so what was it about Courtney that made you choose her or are there any uh fundamental principles that you think people should be looking out for I would say before what you're looking out for it's what you're putting out you know the law I don't understand the Law of Attraction exactly how it is but what you put out you attract if you're being your authentic self our both word today you're being your true self you're speaking about what's really important to you you're putting out the energy that you care about that you want to get back into the world and you're being real you're going to get that back if you're putting on a show and you're chasing these inauthentic goals that are for other people or to keep up with Society or pressure their parents or whatever it might be you're going to start attracting people who are attracted to those goals and that energy which isn't your real self rather than who you really are and the incredible thing of how me and Courtney met was I put out my first like YouTube video crying talking about something really emotional that I had gone through the year I was in the hospital talking about a really scary time how how fearful I was being really raw like first time ever talking about it therapy session on camera crying and she saw that and she's like wow this guy is different like I've never like this guy just came second in the Olympia and he put out a video crying about like like his emotions going through this like that's different I like that and then she reached out to me and that's how we That's What attracted to us it was that energy of authenticity and emotion and rawness and realness that attracted us together and that was the foundation of our relationship of how we were going to build things going forward so I think instead of what I was looking for it was what I was putting out in that moment and she was attracted to it because that's who she is you know when I say she she's the light that lets everyone be their best selves you know she's the type of person where all go to the bathro room and come out and someone will be crying and it'll be like or the store clerk checking out her groceries is telling her about her child who XY andz and all I'm like how I'm like what do you she like I didn't say anything people just tell me all their stuff I'm like it but it's beautiful people just feel so safe and comfortable around her because she's such an amazing Like Loving selfless person it's just who her it's her nature and she doesn't need to be anything other than that it's just all who she's always been and I just love that and I I'm like the protector of that energy cuz she gives out so much so I try and like protect her and then in the confines of our home she gives me the space to be myself and be my raw self of what she saw and protects me in there it's so funny that if you tried to be somebody else the person that ended up making you a better version of you wouldn't have even been interested like if you tried to put on some sort of a show if that video hadn't been there if you kept on closing down your emotions that was the very thing that she was going to be most attracted to I think this is one of the problems again with the jovic Nadal federa way that this is the way that you're supposed to attract we understand what it is that women are attracted to and I'm like maybe on average but you can only put on a facade for so long yeah and everyone's different yeah you're going to end up in a relationship with somebody that loves you for not you and it's going to be exhausting yeah some people might not like that version of Courtney a lot of women might think I'm I would be overly emotional and weak or something and that that's fine but they're not for you they're not and you're not for them yeah and I think one of the cool things I've discovered in our relationship was your ability to be a burden to your partner is important like for you to feel safe to be a burden to your partner and for them to still show up and love you and then you're like oh wow like I don't need to give you anything in return you're not expecting anything in return I can put my burdens on you and you love me and that makes me feel safe and love you so when you put your burns on me I'll do the same it just becomes this like burning Circle of Love You Know It's Just I I feel like that's such an important thing to find someone who you just feel safe being a burden to you're not going to intentionally be a burden but if you it's you're sometimes you suck you know sometimes you're a burden and if you don't even feel safe being like that around your partner you have to just withhold things from them and put on that show you're never going to feel like safe around them and you're not going to want want to be there for them as much when they're being a burden as well just become these two people dividing and conquering all your problems rather than taking on the world together I really like that ideaa that here I am not fully competent slightly broken in need of help oh and you're still here yeah you didn't leave yeah yeah that's pretty beautiful in other news this episode is brought to you by function I wanted a better way to track what was happening inside of my body and that is why I partnered with function they run over 100 lab tests every year covering Heart hormone nutrients thyroid and even detecting 50 types of cancer at stage one that's five times more testing than a regular physical best of all your results are charted over your lifetime and explained in one simple dashboard lab testing like this would usually cost thousands but with function it's only $500 I rely on function because it's evidence-based and run by a team of expert Physicians so you can trust that the data and insights you receive are scientifically sound and unbiased plus Dr Andrew hubman is the scientific adviser and Dr Mark Heyman is the chief medical officer function has a 300,000 person weight list but every Monday they open a few spots for modern wisdom listeners you can bypass the weight list right now by going to the link in the description below or heading to function health.com slod wisdom that's function health.com slod wisdom what do you wish more women knew about how they can help their man become a better version of himself because it seems like Courtney is very much able to do that for you what do I wish more women knew yeah I think the relationship that you guys have which is very open and emotionally honest seems to be one that a lot of women would want M uh obviously guys too but uh I don't hear a massive amount of advice for women about how they can cultivate an environment that allows a man to be to flourish emotionally in the way that you are what do you wish more women knew about how they could help their man be more emotional safely that's a good question I think being able to both understand and for the woman to be able to express in an honest way and she has to believe this that like I was talking about how like TR confidence is truth you know you might want a strong man up White Knight on his horse but if he's not how he feels if he's not really that person then it's not really confident he's just putting on a facade to please you so if you can truly show him and share with him and communicate with him that even when he's feeling down and when he feels low when he feels emotional and all these things him being able to share that with you is actually confidence and strength which men want to always exemplify you're teaching him a new way to exemplify that strength that he wants to be and even if it's only within the confines of you two no one else needs to know about it but you tell him like when you share it with me that you feel like that you're emotional that you hate yourself that you don't think you can do this when you share that with me I think you're strong like I think you're capable and I I think you're strong just for sharing that not because I know you can overcome it but just for saying that out loud that's strength and the man could be like wow like you know the woman has to believe that you know those are my beliefs that sharing that is strong and there's a lot of things where I would still feel judged and nervous to say how I feel on online on on a podcast with hundreds of thousands of people listening but to her to my wife no you know I feel I share something with her and she's going to always see me as who I am and it's strong to share and that I'm safe to do so it's strange that a lot of people would feel more comfortable sharing that stuff with somebody that wasn't their partner that or what if they change the way that they see me this isn't holding a masculine frame this isn't being the protector provider dominant Alpha that I'm supposed to be or need to be in order to be able to keep her attraction triggers or whatever it is going yeah it's sad it is it is sad and you it's everything's in moderation and balance in his life you know you can't be a puddle on the floor 24 hours a day can't be a puddle on the floor 24 hours a day you know there there's where where are your weaknesses are you always a strong masculine person you can't show it or you always a puddle on the floor and you need to work on being more masculine so one way or the other you got to find that balance and everyone's on a different end of the spectrum and everyone's partner will want a different spectrum and then you just got to find the person that fits in there and obviously over the years now I've proven to Courtney that in those moments where I've broken down and feel like I'm worthless and can't do something I've risen up and done it and I've always shown up to I've always stepped up to the plate I've always been what she needed I've always done what I needed to do and I've proven to her that no matter how crumbled I feel in the moment I've still become a better man and grown whether or not I've accomplished what I've wanted I've still grown been a better man and shown up for her where and when I could so she has the trust in me now whatever weakness I show her there will be strength too you know if my life was a movie and someone were to watch it I hope they'd be inspired to take risks not just risks to achieve success but Embrace feeling both pride and shame fear and excitement personally I want to experience as much life as possible and that only happens when you embrace the highs and the lows and this is your thing about not just numbing the bad but numbing the good numbing The Joy just revisit that for me cuz I think a lot of people feel like if 0 to 100 is the range of Human Experience they kind of sit in 40 to 60 yeah what did expanding that window out look like yeah I mean this kind of hit me a few years ago when I was thinking about I felt like I had a glass ceiling of joy that I could feel I was like I can I I feel happy but like it's I'm not like overjoyed and excited and like oh like ecstatic and then my therapist put it back on me she's like well what about the SE what about the floor do you have a floor of negative that you're willing to feel I'm like yeah like I don't want to feel the bad you she's like well they expand at the same time you open up a broad spectrum of emotion and you build your heart to feel these things and if you don't have highs you don't have lows it doesn't come if you numb the bad you numb the good and that's kind of where that all came from so learning to embrace all things and the funny thing is when you learn to embrace them they're way more fleeting than you realize to sit on something in your mind for a while to stress about and not want to feel it it lingers for a long period of time but to just embrace it and to feel it to cry to express it to whatever whatever however needs to express itself out of you it happens a lot quicker than you think and you're able to move through it and then when you look back at it you're like that was kind of beautiful you know like people love watching sad movies and crying sometimes and you're sad in the movie you're like that was really sad but you you go back and you watch another sad movie you we like feeling things we enjoy emotion it's The Human Experience is highs and lows there is no high without lows and I think just being able to accept that that there's inevitably going to be times in your life and the more you can lean into them and feel them the more you can lean into feeling to the high ones as well and it's just part of the journey it's interesting uh personally I want to experience as much life as possible I think when people think about experiencing lots of life it's adventures and it's travel and so on but the range of Human Experience you can have regardless of what circumstance you're in regardless of the situation or the flight or the destination or whatever uh a lot of that is capped just by our preparedness to feel different things yeah and uh yeah there's an awful lot of Adventure kind of to be had just by opening yourself up to different experiences I often think about how many people sort of go through life just within that 40 to 60% range for sure of emotions and you think oh my God you know you had this unique Machinery up there in your head for 60 70 80 90 years and you got to explore like this one square of it over and over and over and over and over again yeah and who why are we told that sadness is bad you know why is fear and sadness have to be a negative emotion I was I was thinking about the other day and I have no idea but if you what if you were to raise someone and somehow not connecting the concept of bad negative to sadness and fear and anxiety and all these things and it just being like it's just an emotion it's just an emotion there's not good emotions there's no mad emotions they just feeling I wonder if you could raise someone to have that belief in them what it would be like because the reality is it's true there's no there are no bad emotions everything has a purpose and why it comes up and it helps process events in our life something happens that we don't know how to process we have feelings and emotions around it and then thoughts come afterwards it's just how our brains operate again it's that it's not the fear or the shame it's the guilt about the fear and it's the agitation about the guilt about the fear because somewhere we've been taught that we should have guilt and fear and shame about the shame and guilt and fear where does it come from I don't know man I think you know a lot of the time we don't feel comfortable to open up about that stuff uh we are ashamed I I think shame is is a really big driver uh shame and fear are two sort of fundamental drivers to a lot of of bad emotions I'm worried about what will happen if I allow myself to feel this thing there's the fear and I feel uh guilty and less for having that emotion that's the shame those to me at least personally are massive drivers for that I don't want to appear weak or vulnerable or incompetent or not in Mastery uh I don't want to risk this maybe this is the real me maybe this version of me that doesn't have it all together like oh my God should you not have it all together are you not supposed to be someone that's you know that is a a big driver I think for a lot of people and uh have you found it more difficult as you're success and popularity and eyes on you have grown have you found that more difficult that that battling with that shame of how you need to be and whatnot I think so yeah um it waxes and wanes MH there's periods where it's better and periods where it's worse um currently going through a period where it's worse like this year has just been an awful lot of uh uncertainty like personal uncertainty uh like a pullback health spin like really rough autoimmune moldy stuff this year which we need to talk about on the Vlog uh has just been so scary because it's the the main thing that it takes away it's it's like a it's literally like somebody designed a personal pathology just for me one of the main areas of the brain that it impacts is your ability to recall words it's like that's my only job my only job that's what's affecting you right now your thing yeah all the time so my only job is to recall words when I'm either writing or speaking and I forget people's names like Mis I misremembering people's names all the time trying to find a word and having to substitute it for something else which wasn't the thing that I meant it's so it's so annoying it's so frustrating and that has sort of pushed me very quickly into a place of fear which is oh my God like what if this is the way that you're going to be forever the only reason that people liked you is because you were able to say these things the competence is being taken away in that it it cut at the very epicenter of what I presumed and and assumed that my value was was to be able to offer the world and it's you just about managed to get yourself to a place where you'd achieved something that you were proud of and the very thing that allowed you to achieve it has now been risked being taken away from you it's scary yeah has the intention behind the goals you're thinking changed over the years that it felt like it impacted that mentally does it feel like your your path doesn't line up with your like authentic goals nearly as much no I don't think so um you know the reason that I started the show originally was I didn't understand myself and I hoped that if I spoke to enough people that were experts maybe they'd be able to help and uh that's still the case you know these conversations the ones that we've had the one that we had last year the training Vlog we did earlier this year all of those things I take little bits and pieces away that help me understand myself and the world around me uh then you do start to sort of layer on top of that hope and expectation and and um like performance in a good way you know stepping up to the plate and wanting to really get the best conversation you can uh and this pressure that sort of comes along with that uh it's very much still the thing that I think I was meant to do but I don't know it be like being a bodybuilder and tearing a lat before you start shrinking yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah out of no sort of choice of your own and really they're not you sort of scrabbling around trying to find a solution to fix it and uh yeah it's rough I bet well I don't connect any of my value to your intelligence Chris any of your value to your intelligence I appreciate that don't stress in the face of adversity make adversity something you desire for an opportunity to grow it sounds an awful lot like probably what I need to take a little bit of advice from it could be interpreted in a you can still stress about it it's okay to feel the stress more so the stress that leads to avoiding the adversity because you know I and the other funny thing that I've thought about very related to this is going through adversity you my life is very revolved around competing in olympias when I go through adversity now I'm like this could be a part of my speech you know I tore my lat last year I'm like when I win this Olympia and I stand up on stage and I tell people I tore my lat in the middle of this prep they're going be like oh my God and it's going to make this story that much cooler you know and it's going to it's going to push me Beyond to the levels of which I know I'm capable of accomplishing it's going to show me that when something feels impossible it's not until it's not you know I got to keep pushing through and figuring it out so the stress is okay to feel in adversity it's where the stress leads you that you need to avoid you need to prevent the stress from being strong enough to make you avoid adversity in the first place if you start to feel stressed about adversity I think diving right into it is like the secret for growth if your definition of success is win or lose giving everything you've got and growing or learning along the way then you're setting yourself up for success I really think the biggest cheat code in life is just going after it and not being concerned of whether or not you fail at one specific task instead understanding the big picture what your long-term goal is and knowing if you keep driving forward and never quit in the end you will succeed great quote I've based a lot of my life in the past about my definition of success and my definition of being a champion my definition of winning and I think it all just comes down to you know again your values when I'm old what's the end of this look like you know my values of being the best partner father person I can be when I'm 50 if I have five or six or seven or eight or nine or 10 olympias are any of those affected by that no so in this short-term goal of this moment of me wanting to win is this very important yes but is the pressure of my life and value and worth dependent on that no it's not it's the big picture of my life that I'm focusing on of who I want to become going through all these things so if I win an Olympia how do I want to win that Olympia who do I want to be when I win that Olympia how do I want to win it how do I want to show up my relationships if I lose that Olympia how do I want to lose who do I want to be when I lose who am I becoming through all these little challenges and goals along the way that aren't the big picture who am I becoming which is the big picture and I think that's so important to for me to understand it everything that you choose to do and how you handle it is shaping who you're becoming and at the end of the day when you're old and have grandkids and CH in your life you're the culmination of everything you've accomplished but also how you accomplished it and how you reacted to it what's a big picture what do you want to become isn't it interesting that you could have you know the same mantle piece above the fire that's got however many olympias on it and objectively when grandkids are bouncing on your knee they look and see the same thing but the person behind them and the experiences that they went through and who they became in the process can be totally different which kind of shows that the outcomes that you get really are in the end kind of arbitrary and it's the person that's behind the grandkid that kind of matters yeah exactly if I had a picture of myself and I hadn't never won an Olympia and then I had a picture of myself that w six Olympians and my kids were looking at holy you were Jack dad that's where their thought ends it's not like you had five you had six you had seven it doesn't matter you know that's cool you're Jack but who are you and how do you show up in my life every day yeah you know and how did those Pursuits how did the goals that you tried to achieve or did achieve change you yeah how did they cause you to be a different sort of father or grandfather or husband or friend or business partner or whatever and what lessons did you learn and take from them that you can give to me so that I can learn from them and hopefully not go through as much pain while still learning the same lesson not nothing disrupts your 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wisdom and using the code modern wisdom a checkout that's EIG ghts sleep.com wisdom and moderns wisdom a checkout this is a pretty important one everything changed for me when I realized that we're not meant to feel excited and perfect all the time I started accepting that where I am right now is where I'm genuinely meant to be tough days are all a part of the process lean into them bad days are also part of a very good and meaningful life so on my toughest days I think about getting through one more day one more workout one more rep yeah I think I mean this applies deeply in the I mean on a smaller level of the starvation of prep when you're trying to get through it and you're just you're just trying to get through one more what was the first part of that Quan everything changed for me when I realized we're not meant to feel excited and perfect all the time yeah this was the the idea of pursuing happiness not leading to happiness you know you you purs you pursue things that have meaning in life and things that you care about you know love challenges relationships and happiness might insue but you don't pursue the happiness itself because it's inevitably not going to be there all the time so if you're just constantly seeking more happiness and it's not there then you're seeking something that's never going to be there but if you're able to just stick in what you're doing right now and in those Hard Times believing they're going to lead to Good Times it just creates a lot less friction in your life you know and I think whenever we're going through a hard time we just want it to end but it's those moments that allow us to appreciate the good ones what would you say to someone who's going through a string of bad days or bad weeks or bad months say it's okay you're not alone you know I think sometimes a quick word of just looking them and being like I know you're not alone give him a hug and be like this is right now and it's okay but you're not alone what does lean into them mean lean into the bad days I think specifically nowadays it's so easy to numb there's so many distractions so many things that we can just avoid feeling things with you know staple being your phone you you want to cry you you fight your tears you're feeling stressed you're overthinking something so you just pull up Instagram and you doom scroll for 20 minutes you get distracted you see a funny video of a cat close your phone and you forget about it that's not gone those feelings are still there they're just pushed down from a couple Instagram videos that are distracted and next thing you know a couple days go by and you just feel this anxiety over yourself and you're like why do I feel anxious I just feel like I can't I can't sleep and wake up at 5:00 a.m. overthinking like I don't know what's going I have no idea people like well are you stressed about anything like No And this is something that I've had to call myself out on if you ask me if I'm stressed half the time my answer is no you feel are you stressed no I'm fine I feel great and then if you look at me like do you feel calm do you feel at e do you feel relaxed I'd be like no so where where where am I feeling and for some reason stress to me is like numb but it's stress so I don't really feel it and it's typically from not allowing myself to lean into the shitty time the thoughts the shitty days and being able to sit with them and be with them accept what they are and process them properly rather than just numbing them so funny that you Ed the word lean into them uh Ben Bergeron in chasing Excellence says uh lean into discomfort as if you invited it through the door and I it's a phrase that's stuck with me because it feels like you are in control of the frame like okay and you come and let's do this yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah as opposed to again the fear that you have around being guilty or the agitation you have around being shameful or the distraction that you need to do in order to be able to get away from it it's uh it's an interesting one to think about how bad days are also a part of a very good and meaningful life that it does really frame the story at the end both you and hosi have said the same thing in the last two episodes I've spoken to you about which is the bad days create the story that I'm one day going to tell myself about what I got through you know what I mean yeah without the bad days the story would be way more lame there would be no glory in overcoming anything cuz what did you overcome it was all just 40 to 60 you know vanilla ice cream mush gray like existence yeah I mean it's like the concept of the fear exposure therapy when you're trying to build confidence about something you're afraid of being exposed to the fear helps you overcome that but actively choosing to take that fear on head on as actually What It Takes I can't throw a spider at you and you not afraid of spidered but you choosing in your own mind to actively go to that Spider by yourself makes you actually grow from it so you choosing to take power of what little you can when you're feeling like when everything's crumbling around you and you feel powerless and helpless well what can you take control of you can take control of opening your door and letting that embracing that you know leaning into that hard time like I'm going to choose to feel this it's here I didn't choose that but I'm going to choose to feel it and I have power over the choice of what I feel and then you take your power back and you can build your confidence from there I had a conversation recently with a guy called Dr Jim Zaki who wrote a book called hope for cynics um and it's interesting thinking about how widespread skepticism cynicism are uh skepticism being the good version of cynicism cynicism being kind of uh total blanket coverage everything is everything sucks everybody is evil and out for themselves and uh you had a bit of a rant one day where you said everyone's hypocritical and terrified to do anything and put themselves out there and fail so we hyper analyze hyper criticize become paralyzed and end up doing nothing sitting in our basements watching Tik toks of other people's lives pretending that they're happy I was having one of those cnic days and felt like ranting a little but honestly there's optimism here for some low barrier of Entry personal growth stop analyzing stop criticizing both yourself and others and Go fail at some go give someone a good job for sucking at something because at least they're trying maybe it will even give yourself permission to do the same we find meaning in trying difficult things not just in succeeding at them how do you avoid being too cynical it's widespread it's everywhere how do you avoid it don't get stuck in the simulation uh I mean it's all it's all there's a million things it's perspective checks it's environment who you choose to surround yourself with what you choose to consume you know like are you choosing to consume false simulations of someone's life on Tik Tok compare yourself to it and think you're not doing enough are you choosing to live in the real world having conversation with good people who are being realistic and taking risks are you choosing to be around negative people or positive people you know every every single day you you choose who you surround yourself with you choose what you do you you're in control of a lot more than you believe you are and I think people like to get caught up in routine and norm and feeling obligated to their old friends or family or this or that and staying kind of where they are but pushing yourself out of that sometimes is exactly what you need and I think it's it's just scary for change sometimes but you know there's the concept of living life is just so simple you could take the words live your life and expand on that into a million page essay and just do it but just getting out there and living and experiencing life and doing the things that are difficult and challenging and cause you to grow and to you know if you think of the person that the person that I envy the most and I enjoy being around the most is just that like old wise man who has all these crazy stories who's lived this all this life and it's just like happy to sit on the park bench and talk to random people about what he's done you know it's if that's a person I respect how do I become that person it's not from doing nothing it's from doing something it's funny that we kind of see the trajectory that everybody's on because we can all see old people now old people that seem to be content we think well if that's where I'm going to end up is there another way that I can just speedrun bringing some of that into now now yeah you know what I mean we also see old people who aren't content at all you know you see a lot of old people now who are even more sucked than some young people into the simulation of the hyper reality of their phones and their content and just being like stucked into that and you also don't want to you want to see yourself spent into the future what if that's a path you're on well well it should be a ction retail yeah right that should be the the route that you want to try and avoid as much as possible had a conversation with David SRA who just found his podcast you know he's broken down 300 400 famous people from history and he reads all of the books on them and then he he talks about them on his podcast and uh I was asking him about how people do most of the people he learns about as successful in one form or another basically how people do success wrong uh and he just has endless stories of people who achieved a ton of worldly success and seem to have absolutely zero fun in the process none none at all and you know there was this one story about this dude I think worth you know billions and billions of dollars and was in his late 70s had maybe grandkids maybe even great grandkids at this point and was still showing up to conferences you know sort of beating down deals on the door at 78 years old you know with this illustrious career behind him uh and he didn't David didn't think that this was coming from some well balanced desire to Maxim his calling in life which was to be the best business leader salesperson but just this as yet un alchemized compulsion to need to be busy and to be seen and for validation and for recognition and for success and so on and so forth and uh I used to say you know from my old Life as a club promoter that there was nothing really sadder than seeing uh some guys in their 40s For Whom the single best part of their life was getting a bag in with the boys on a weekend the same place the same Club the same parties week in week out for decades and decades and decades but I actually think that the 78-year-old guy that as yet hasn't alchemized is just the more seductive more publicly acceptable version of that which makes it even more dangerous because there's few people fewer people that are going to say well you know at least you're not going out and getting a bag of cocaine with the boys in 78y Old Man uh but yeah it's a caution retail I think that we should all be pretty scared about it's a challenge because I mean I made the joke about the simulation but like it's so easy now for us to see other people's lives in such a specific narrative that they want us to see and it's like a responsibility for people who have a platform and followers to be honest but they have no reason to be they don't have to be so if we're looking up to these people who have worked 40 Years of their life to become this billionaire and you know they talk about like maximize efficiency be as like use everything for this optimize this be perfect in this all these things and it's all about optimization efficiency make more money work harder wake up earlier morning routine everything all these things and it's like well that'll get me to his life what if that dude's miserable you know what if he's optimized and Rich As and drives that nice Ferrari but he hates his life you know we'll never know may maybe he's very different from me and maybe his goals and his morals and his values are completely different than me and I'm not going to I can't project onto that but we'll never really know the truth of if those people are happy or not but these young kids are watching this story watching this journey and they're like that's who I want to be I want to live like that I'm going to work like that until I have that very very dangerous using anybody as a role model that doesn't seem to be being transparent you know I think tired though of course and you don't know whether the transparency is performative uh how much of this is how how much self- knowledge do people have anyway like how arent are we to ourselves and then on top of that how much do we allow ourselves to tell the people and then how much of that do we allow to go into a public platform you know there's so many filters it's kind of amazing that anybody says anything truthful ever you know like there's so many yeah incentives and and uh uh obfuscations that don't allow us to see what we believe or feel yeah even if you're not numbing with like boring stuff like Instagram you could be be efficient and optimized in your life enough to have a morning routine a night routine and work hard enough to never have a a spot for introspection of genuine introspection you you can think of like this is a cool quote about business and working hard but it's not really about how you feel and you could live your life in a very efficient beautiful well articulated Manner and have no idea who the you really are busy calendar is a great hedge against feeling feelings you know if you just Bounce from meeting to meeting look at how important I am all of these people need me they all want me I've got all of these things going on there's no you know to go back to sort of the drugs analogy there's no point where you're at the come down after the Afterparty you know as the cocaine's wearing off or as the the hangover's kicking in there's no hangover you're just permanently in dopamine party mode for however many you know Decades of life and uh yeah I think busy calendars for a lot of people protect them against the existential eye wide pain of having to work out I I actually why am I doing this am I doing this for the right reasons is this what I'm supposed to be doing do I really enjoy this or Yeah you mentioned especially now that you've got Daddy Daycare Duty that you're having to learn to say no more I think you said previously you said no 90% of the time and now it's 99% of the time so thank you for saying yes um uh what would be your advice for people that struggle to say no perennial people Pleasers and those that struggle to advocate for their own needs or put their uh desires first how can people be better nosers it's a good question because it kind of took me into a cheat code to really get good at it and that's leverage you know it's in at least in my like professional performative life I I I said yes more but I guess from the beginning if I really think about it I've always worked hard to just say yes to things that I actually cared about you know I tried not to be in starting out as like an influencer I tried not to be a sellout you know I got offered a lot of money I've turned down some crazy deals that I'm still like holy like few hundred grand a month deals and I just said no because it's not a product that I would use without the money and that's like it was inauthentic to me and I was like but over time saying not of those things have opened up more doors and more opportunity I still haven't got a contract that big but I haven't sold out and people still trust me at least and I'm standing behind Brands only that I love or that I own so I think just being able to stick true and checking in with yourself being like who am I what do I care about what are I think authentic goals is like a huge word of mine now what's truly authentic to me one of I working towards it something I care about rather than things I think other people were care about for me and I think that's absolutely huge and you know also I've worked really hard over the past decade of my life to be in a really high highly successful position to have a healthy amount of Leverage where now when I say no to people I get a better offer back when I say no I get a better offer back like can you come to the trip we'll give you 50 Grand I'm like no we'll give you 100 no we'll we'll get you private J give you 150 I'm like why maybe you know and it's leverage whereas before if they're like you want to come up no like all right you we don't care Y and it's different but I've had to work really hard to get there and to put yourself in that position you know I I there's times where I've said no in the past and people haven't given a at all and over time now I'm at a point where if I say no it's there's a little more leverage behind what I can do and I can I can fangle it a little bit more but that has also come from me sticking to what was authentic to me and saying no so I built a trust behind what I represent and what I do now in my life yeah your no now being worth something is because you still said no when it was worth nothing previously mhm and along the way I was working hard to make it worth more on the back end I made it worth it yeah that's such a a funny point I kind of brought this up a couple of weeks ago on the show that uh no one ever gets credit for saying no to things that people don't know about so you know the we got this offer a while ago to bring somebody on the show I've never never once paid anybody or taken money to bring anybody on the show and we got offered a six figure sum to bring some guy on to talk about oil or something to do with like something to do with energy or maybe it was the Middle East I something like that and it just stank of deep State Saudi Iranian some Putin conspiracy thing I was like this is this is so weird first off I'm not taking the money but secondly there's no world like I'm not I guess I'm saying it now but this was like a year and a half ago or something and I'm not saying it to flex I'm saying it's an interesting example but no one is ever going to give anybody credit you know the world the word grifter and shill get thrown around so much on the internet it makes me cringe but no one ever gets to see all of the stuff that people turn down yeah like you get called out for anything that you're associated with and never get credit for anything that you're not associated with now all of the guests that didn't come on the show mhm all of the the brand deals all absolutely famous people who would gotten you so much views but they didn't line up with you that you that I didn't want to bring on the episodes that I recorded that I didn't release the people that wanted to come on that I decided not to the money like so much money that we've turned down on the show cuz I go I don't think this product is legit and I don't use it so I'm going to say no uh meanwhile that anything that you ever uh participating in becomes a vector for attack and all of the things you didn't participate in are not vector for Commendation you go you want to SC I want to rip my face off but on the back end you can attribute way more of your success to those nose oh absolutely because even now you starting a story and saying someone offered me money I can't even imagine you sitting across from someone and having a conversation and just knowing that you paid him you would probably be like here's your money back I'm leaving halfway through the podcast if you even got there I don't care about your oil uh yeah it's just I I I wish it's kind of a little bit like uh somebody accusing you of not giving enough money to the homeless and you saying but no no no I just I just gave loads of money to the homeless over there see how virtuous I are and then they go well no you just done that because you could take a photo and talk about you go well in that case I can't win you know what I mean um it's very it's it's interesting I I think uh I understand why everyone's kind of Griff and shill Radars hyper tuned on the internet and rightly so because not everybody's got everybody's best interests at heart but um there is what's the term gri and chill shill i l heard so I actually asked I two terms that I never use largely because I think that kind of like uh know racism in the modern world it gets sort of so overly used that you actually end up diluting it down so it means everything and nothing at the same time uh I asked on Twitter a while ago what grifa or shill means for the people who do use it and I think the best uh the best example was uh a person who is affiliated with a product or Serv service that they wouldn't use if they weren't paid for it I was like huh okay that's an that's a an interesting um like framework to put into it uh but it's a term which now covers a whole range of sins yeah um you know interestingly it's kind of dependent on who the two worlds are that are coming together for instance when Rogan got his Spotify deal the first one six five and a half six years ago there was no one that called him a sellout for going to Spotify well why well because there is an assumption that both Spotify and Joe have so much positive brand Equity that there's no no one's taking advantage of the other it's like both quite high value cool Brands coming together um Nike comes in and sponsors some huge NFL player or whatever uh no one goes oh my God I can't believe that you sold out to Nike but if it was I don't know some Russian gas company then they might they go oh my God so the inherent in the deal is this sense of alignment of value and credibility and sort of cool of brand coming in uh like you you got the new gym shock deal talk to me about that when I was in 2018 and they reach out to me I remember being very ecstatic about them reaching out to me because they were the brand you know I always wanted to be a part of them they had the cool events the cool athletes all this stuff and I was like they reaching out to me this is really exciting and then over a few years I felt like they stepped away from being like the workout gym brand you know like I was like a bodybuilder I like to train and it seemed like they were straying away from wanting to be a part of the gym culture so much and it wasn't really lining up with me and I didn't really want to be a part of Brands as much anymore I was owning my own companies and all these things and I just I just stepped away from that and I feel like as I did they were I've heard now they were going through the internal process of thinking hey we're stepping too far away from the gym we need to lean back into the gym more and they were like Chris is leaving like blah blah like it wasn't just about me but then over the year and a half I was gone or whatever they were like we're diving all back into the gym we want to bring the gym to the world which I think is so incredible because all my successes owed to the gym you know if I had stepped in a gym I wouldn't be sitting here I wouldn't have met Courtney I wouldn't have my businesses like it's all because I stepped in the gym it's helped me so much that's us that's just a physical success aside from the mental and everything it benefited me from and I think anyone stepping into the gym is only going to make life better so I just love the their concept of now their literally concept of bringing the gym to the world not only that but I've grow grown a little closer to Ben and to n over the years talking to them so sorry to hear that I know right but having my own businesses and seeing the scale at which they've grown theirs while maintaining majority ownership of it starting in Ben's Garage in the UK to the scale they are now like I can't even understand the level of professionalism that they have to have come from nothing at his age where I'm working my ass off with people way smarter than being in business who aren't even close to their level of success and they're just crushing and I just have so much respect for how they built their business the way they operate their staff behind the scenes you know I I kept in contact with a lot of their staff just everything the way they operate in their business is just something I respect you know the morals and values they uphold the athletes that they choose to bring on I think they really care about the the way their athletes represent themselves the way they represent the brand and it just it just lined up perfectly and when they hit me back up and they're like what do you think I was like this feels perfect you know and you're a part owner now yeah very small but part owner yeah big company very small is very good my who was it I think it was like an old friend or something they like are you a equal owner equal partner in like yeah they gave me a billion dollar they gym shark but no it's it it's it's good I'm I'm super pumped feedback and they made their clothes better I was buying their clothes by myself with my own money on the website and then they're like Chris are you wearing dream Shir again I was like yeah this is shirt's dope and they're like did you buy it I'm like yeah they like we would have sent it to you I'm like I liked it they have made a big pivot which has been pretty good I don't know it's a it's an interesting time for training in sort of gym culture I think uh certainly you know Downstream from uh you and and your era that we're in right now CrossFit kind of was a I think a big influence on that that young uh people culture for a while but that really seems to have pivoted off and now it's all if it's not bodybuilding it's hybrid training and highrock running yeah yep Nick barar and George heon man those two guys have a lot to answer for you know from fashion and and Trend and training modality and run clubs yeah huge huge big deal now they even my partners and raw they're trying to do Iron Man and they're building we're built an insurance line under raw like just cuz they're so passionate and love it and they're like trying to convince me to do an Iron Man when I'm like 35 40 and retire and I'm just like you want me to run for how long like no I'll pass I might do like a crossfit style thing in the future but no Iron Man for me you the perfect build for an Iron Man yeah you think I right now this is exactly the time when you should do it yeah I don't know uh it is uh we're going in two directions as well we spoke about this last time about the it it got even worse I'm not on Tik Tok so I don't see this but I know the world of Psalms apparently like people that have got affiliate codes and stuff for uh again I only hear this third hand through you know my housemates sending me videos and blah blah blah but uh it is odd to me that we've got sort of the leader of the sport being unbelievably sort of emotionally open vulnerable talking about trying to get as much out of as little as possible pharmacologically and then this other world which is affiliate deals Galore for uh you know teenagers on performance enhancing drugs of varying degrees of toxicity and research it's very strange yeah I haven't seen a lot of I the weird thing is I know the companies are associated with selling those arms but people only promote like peptides like healing peptides and stuff but I I'm not on there either to develop into that but it's definitely a strange slippery slope I feel like for it's like a Gateway the Gateway peptides you know yeah I don't know um I'll be interested to see sort of what gym culture does because I probably wouldn't would I have predicted it I probably wouldn't have predicted you know 10 15 years ago the Jeffs side ziz era stuff uh Simply Shredded bodybuilding.com for I probably wouldn't have predicted CrossFit coming in I certainly wouldn't have predicted H rocks and run clubs and and and uh hybrid athlete training there's no way that I would have seen that coming back around um so I don't know what I can kind of understand the the jogging craze coming back cuz people are like it's almost like a post failed meditation app Phase that led to running working cuz like true good running is a meditation being able to be with your breath and to be with your pace to not go too fast you know everyone every running coach says you don't run fast to get faster you run slow for longer you have to match your pace it's a meditation is mindfulness it's keeping on track restrained patience yeah and I think I think there's something very beautiful meditative about running and I'm horrible at it but I can I can kind of understand why in such a in a world with so much distraction and so much going on why people would be drawn to this moment of the day where they're out in nature outside peacefully getting exercise in a meditative State yeah I think run clubs there's a there's one in Austin that's fighting with the city council at the moment I mean it's massive they do 500 people every Saturday it's huge yeah it's offensive but uh I said to the guys I was like if if they don't allow you to keep doing this I would go complete scorched Earth with Austin Council I'm aware that you don't want to burn your Bridges but everybody's worried about young people's mental health about isolation spending too much time in technology obesity rates blood glucose diabetes all this stuff you're offering a solution to all of the dating like all of these things are fixed in one form or another with some kind of group fitness activity whether it's Barry's Boot Camp or CrossFit or gym or run clubs or high rocks or hybrid whatever this is the solution to it and in the same sentence they're saying we're really worried about young people's mental health and physical state and also one guy doesn't like the fact that he can't look out of his front garden for 30 minutes every Saturday without seeing young people looking sweaty running past yeah I don't know it it just seems like it's disappointing to sort of see that it's not being facilitated or or encouraged in that way it's like they're not graffitiing things it's not a it's not a one of those low rider drive by things where everyone's making loads of Music at 1 in the morning out of super loud subwoofers and stuff it's just young people running yeah it's disappointing but it's not surprising yeah yeah it's the same you've been here before is there anything in your experience that I don't know how much you've gone into the science you might just be someone who happens to be super effective at doing the thing as opposed to knowing the thing uh are there any areas of training or diet or Fitness that seem to be surprisingly uh not what the science or evidence or typical advice would agree with rep ranges periodization like overload any of that stuff is there any areas where you think huh like this ends up really working for me but I don't think most people would think that it would work it's hard to say when something's very like nuanced I have been diving a little bit more into proper like science behind it I've had this guy named Justin King helping me with my training and he's very science-based and very like evidence-backed and and every time you bring that up in bodybuilding you go back and forth between thinking too much and being able to work hard enough and back and forth and what I've noticed specifically in especially on tired days deep in prep or whatever it might be if you're so focused on getting absolute deep stretch with a 4-second negative proper perfect execution all these things 100% or mentally that's fatiguing and to do that for let's say optimized periodization you're going to do a four-week program of 18 to 20 reps and then you're going to bring it down to 6 to 10 once your volume's high and you're building your strength with X Y and Z if you can't get there mentally because mentally you're too fatigued to go to failure on that set and you're like thinking too much like you just stop versus just like turning your brain off and just going Full Tilt to failure you're not getting as much benefit but are you failing because your muscles are failing or because mentally you're you can't keep thinking about the 4sec negative for long enough you know yeah so it it seems obvious but if you're holding yourself back by thinking too much then you're not doing good enough and I think you know you try and reinvent the wheel a million times and it just doesn't work so you you got to find the balance within it every's a little different that's cool that uh you can try and be as optimal as possible but there's a time for just sort of pure aggression yeah and I think what there was I you might even know it and you probably figure it out better than me but there was a study that took people and they were testing how high of a step they thought they could step over and and it was it was just like guess how high of a step you can step over and they had to guess and they put one group through a bunch of like physical and mental fatigue and one with just a fresh group and the group with mental and physical fatigue severely underestimated what they could step over like oh I could only do like two feet and then they got four feet or and they were just underestimating what they were capable of and I mean that's literally bodybuilding prep you know like the day where i'm like I can't pick that thing off the floor I'm like this can is too heavy like can you throw this out for me I'm tired I'm moving in slow motion but I need to go to the gym and dumbbell press 150 lb dumbbells like how does that translate my mind doesn't think I can do it I'm severely underestimating my strength that I can't pick this can up but when I get to the gym I need to overpower my mind and just do it I need to understand that I still have the muscle I still have the strength I'm just being a lazy little right now and I need to pick up that weight and do it and overpower it and sometimes when you're getting in there and you're overthinking and all these things come in too much of like have to do this this and this I have to do a four second netive oh my God that's going to be so hard I should drop the weight then like no just get in there know what you can do bust your ass and get out of there sometimes overthinking it holds you back there's a like beautiful stupidity that I see with a lot of athletes y you know that that there are certainly very smart people that have been super successful in their sport but there's also a kind of cultivated idiocy that they're a you know they're like a a sort of channel that in you know the midwit meme do you know what that is no so it's a bell curve and on the left is this guy that looks like a neander throl he's got a brow like mine and then the guy in the middle is this sort of raging um midwit that's trying to over optimize things and failing and the guy on the right is a sage who's got a HUD up he looks like a Jedi and the joke is that the guy on the left and the guy on the right always agree that the master and the idiot always end up arriving at the same thing so it's like uh eat protein lift weights eat protein lift weights I must ensure that my pre-digested way is consumed 30 it's intra workout with the optim you know it's just eat protein left weights is that and it's the this sort of uh yeah cultivated idiocy or whatever where people just I am not going to overthink this coach said go in there and LIF to failure I'm just going to go in and left to failure just going to go do it yeah yeah and it comes down to the experience of trusting your inition you know I know what my body needs I've been here for 10 years I can just feel it I pick up a weight I feel a certain way in the day I know what I need to do and you just got to trust your instincts and do it overthink it sometimes I heard you say there's only one thing I dread not to be worthy of my sufferings what's that of me trying to be very philosophical there's a few meanings behind that I think it's how you handle your sufferings you know when you're when you're going through something really challenging how do you show up within it do you choose to become a victim of complaining and misery and shitty or do you find meaning in how you show up in the suffering you know and this isn't really my line of thinking this is like man search for meaning Victor Frankle kind of talked about this and I read that book last year probably when I said this and I reflected a lot about this honestly when Courtney was going through labor and she had had the child and I was like holy like you were going through this absolutely like like I'm I've never experienced that much pain in my entire life and she just remained calm controlled her breathing did what she needed to do change positions when they told her she needed to do within the tub with on the bed with doing all these things and was just dialed she was locked in lock in bro lock lock in and I I just was like you are suffering but you were choosing to find meaning in how you handle the suffering and that makes you so worthy of those sufferings and it's such a beautiful thing to experience and you know when life throws some at us you're having this baby you're not choosing not to have this baby you're going to go through this pain you're going to go through this suffering how are you going to choose to show up like I was talking about before there are things out of your control what's in your control how can you take that power back into your own hands and what are you going to take from it what kind of meaning can you find from taking power out of what you feel powerless in I heard this rumor from a friend that after women give birth they have a a flood of hormones that allows them to um color the memory of it so that it's less painful in retrospect is this true it's crazy mother like this is all the nurses it it doesn't happen immediately but all the nurses were like ah give it a few weeks and you'll forget about you're going to want to do it again and then court and Courtney was like after she's like she's like why the did I do that naturally she like why didn't you take the epidural like that sucked and then like a month or two ago she was like it was that bad I think I'll do it again like that and I'm like are you that that bad that bad for me just to be in the room beside you and her mom was with that too she's like we have to go through that again cor's like it's fine I'm like what the but it's got to be true I mean if you were to go through that much pain you never want to have a kid again it must be something that's like just whatever the science is it makes just completely foret it was uh Andrew Schultz he talks about it on his new live show and uh he he the same thing you know he's there stood on the sideline just being like hopefully useless yeah uh you know the cheerleader I don't think he even got to pinch the traps and uh it's like you got this honey good job and then she gets this flood of whatever the Men in Black flashy thing like neurochemically and it fixes her and changes the way that she she feels about it in r R and he's like I remember but I what about me where's my flood of hormones because I saw the person I love the most in the entire world go through all of this and now I'm being gaslit to say that I'm making it out to be worse than it was it's like only one of us has got a rational memory of what actually occurred during this situation that's hilarious I've never heard about it before and now apparently it's not a I hadn't heard about it either but the nurses weren't saying it was science they were just saying like you're going to wor it's just going to happen I was like damn yeah intense women's Minds retconning their own experience of childbirth is wild I mean we wouldn't probably have enough people on The Thirst if they didn't yeah Chris Bumstead ladies and gentlemen dude I appreciate you so much I know you're in the middle of prep so I'm really grateful that we got to have another sit down this year me too I said I wasn't going to do any more podcast but here we are two weeks stayed awake so it was an honor I appreciate you having me back I appreciate you too man thank you thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode you will love my full length conversation with the one and only Dr Mike Israel right here go on