This “Bodybuilding Yogi” Explains Why Mindset Trumps All | Ben Pakulski on Health Theory

The same the people who truly thrive in life are the people who are willing to do the things no one else is willing to do. And that's including the ability to sit and meditate for an hour. And that's including the ability to go to the deepest depths of the hardest sets in the gym. And those are the people that succeed, man. And most people aren't able or willing to do that because of the story they tell themselves as to why they can't. Oh, this hurts or that hurts. I don't have the genetics or I don't have the time or I don't have the ability. It's always stories you tell yourself around why you can't. Um and if there's a story behind why you can't, you must. Must I guess it. If you can't, therefore you must. Um so it's so important to challenge your own [ __ ] rules. Everybody, welcome to Health Theory. Today's guest is Ben Pakulski. He's an IFBB professional bodybuilder who won the Mr. Canada competition in 2008 and competed in both of bodybuildings most prestigious shows, the Mr. Olympia and the Arnold Classic, where he placed in the top 10 at three years running, making it as high as second place. He's been featured in countless magazines, including Inside Fitness, Flex, Muscle Mag, and Fitness RX, to name but a few. And dude, while you have the pedigree of your typical professional bodybuilder, I would say you are anything but typical. And I love that you call yourself a bodybuilding yogi. Yeah. What do you mean by that? So, for 20 years of my life, as I was just telling you, I was very myopically focused on this objective of I want to be the best bodybuilder in the world. I want to be the biggest bodybuilder in the world and I want to be the, you know, win the Mr. Olympia. And uh I accomplished a lot of cool things as you, you know, mentioned in the intro and uh I accomplished a lot of goals. I accomplished a lot more than most people ever believed I would. I was that kid who didn't have the genetics. I was that kid who didn't come from the right family. I didn't come from the financial background. I came from Canada, so most people are like, "Oh, you can't do it." And I did it. So, like, if you had have told me when I was 15 years old that I'd get there, walking on the Olympia stage, people I I would be like, "Oh, that'll be my life dream and I'll be satisfied and fulfilled. And I was probably the most empty I ever was in my life walking on stage at Mr. Olympia. I remember not wanting to take off my shirt the day before because I felt so insecure like people were going to be judging me. And there's a lot of emotional stuff there. So, that feeling alone was a gift to me, right? Um because it allowed me to have the presence of mind and the consciousness to go, well, obviously this external journey isn't going to fulfill me. So, what is it? You know, and I started taking this internal perspective of, you know, shine a light on myself now rather than shine a light on the external objective. And so many people do that, you know, they they send they assume that the things outside of them are going to be the thing that accomplishes that fulfillment and that that um just gratification. So, it's the accomplishing of, you know, making money or building body or whatever it is. And you realize like you know that and it's not. Like you could have all the money in the world and it's nice. It gives you good things. It gives you opportunities, but until you start taking that journey inside, nothing feels good. And so, I was very blessed to accomplish some goals young relatively. Um and then I just realized, man, that's that's not what's going to fulfill me in life. So, it allowed me to start stripping away the layers of the onion, the layers of the ego, and start looking deeper inside. And um so, now my journey is very much about um finding myself, finding my true essence, my soul, um and realizing that at the core of myself, just as the core of yourself, you are love. And how can you get your insecurity and fear out of the way to let that love shine through. So, now my journey is about, you know, teaching people all of these the mistakes I made along the way in fitness cuz I still love fitness and bodybuilding. I think it's still a beautiful thing. I just see it from a different different perspective now, right? Rather than focusing on the end goal, focus on today. And how can you be the best person you can in this workout, in this interview, in your relationship, and be present? How can you be with your family and your kids? How can you be present in your business? Cuz that's how you build the best body in the world. That's how you build the best business in the world is not being absent and on the phone and and with your mind somewhere else when I'm in this moment. Like the only thing I'm thinking about when I'm sitting here with you is this conversation with you and delivering the best result I can right now. So, if you're failing at anything in your life, it's because you're not able to focus, right? You're having a hard time being present and focused. And and and for me, yoga was this amazing eye-opening experience because, you know, I was 310 lb when I started doing yoga, which is funny, but at the same time, it was very difficult. And my one of my things that I say you know often is, you know, if you can't, you must. So, I started taking on this this belief that, man, I really need to do yoga because I'm not good at it. And I got better and better and better. And the real thing that I that I accomplished or that I saw was the the necessity of being present. Otherwise, you can't hold those poses, especially when you're that big. You know, so it really forced me to be present with my breath, to be present with my thought, to be present with my positioning. Otherwise, I'm falling over. Uh and I can I use it as kind of this daily test to come back and see like, you know, if you're not able to do these things, where is your mind, right? To be to be able to hold those poses for long periods of time really requires presence. And uh that's allowed me to shift in my business, in my life, in my relationships, uh in my body, you know, like allowed me to get uh so much more focus, so much more output in less time. So, now I don't have to train twice a day like I did for 20 years. I can train three and four times a week, get way better results. You know, it's not as as focused, it's not as much volume, it's not as much food. Um so, it's a different objective, but I can still get great results and great workouts in much less time. Jesus. Okay, so there's a whole lot in there. No, no, no, that was [ __ ] amazing and it's it really shows exactly what I'm talking about in terms of your approach is just so different and I want to go back to something that you said which gave me that real like sense of dissonance based on what I'm used to in life. When a guy of your size and stature says, "We're all love, I want to know what you mean about that. Sure. I think it's a hard um thing especially as a strong um man to be vulnerable and to exude love and and show people that you um actually care about them and and you know this realization that we're all one and all I want people to know is that if I come into any situation, it's sincere, I have integrity and I'm bringing love and that's it. I have opportunities in business that I know are going to make me a tremendous amounts of money, but if it's not with the right person because I don't feel good about it, I'm not doing it. You know, like if I can make way more money in my life working with [ __ ] but I feel like [ __ ] Right? At the end of the day, you still have to want to feel good about yourself. I've made a lot of money in my life and didn't feel good about it. So, I didn't want to I didn't sleep well at night. I didn't wake up feeling great. I'd rather make less money and not everyone may agree with that, but I think if you can come from a place of sincerity and honesty and love and bring that to the world because people will feel that, man. People will feel that in you uh and they'll want to work with you and they'll want to help you and they'll want to contribute to your mission and we all help each other contribute to this bigger mission, right? So, rather than coming at from a place of uh anxiety and fear and lack, you're coming at from this place of abundance and say I'm coming at you with uh I'm just going to help you. I'm going to give selflessly. That's what love means to me. You used another word when you were talking which I find really interesting and and obviously knowing a little bit about you and and doing the research, I think I know where you're going Um define integrity. Integrity is a word that has been slapping me in the face for the last 5 years. It's when you say, you do. Right? And I think you know, in the world we live in that no very few people live with integrity. Um so, if you say, "Hey, I'm going to wake up tomorrow at 4:00 a.m. or I'm going to wake up tomorrow work out even though I hate it." you know, your thing, Do do it. And nobody gives a [ __ ] if you do. But you know. You always know. So, I'm learning every day that if you give your word on something, and that could be in passing, as something as simple as I'll be there at 11:00. You do it. You know, and and I'm The reason I say it's slapping me in the face is cuz there's times, man, when I'm there 11:05, and I'm like, that's not integrity. So, it just keeps like, you need to learn to live with integrity. I'm getting those daily lessons cuz I feel when I don't live with integrity. If I say to my kids, I'm going to be there for your ballet recital or your gymnastics or your hockey or whatever, right? I must be there. I move heaven and earth, when I look at my value system, to to meet that those obligations to me. Cuz at the end of the day, nobody knows if you did meditation this morning. Nobody knows if you did your yoga. Nobody knows if you did your workout, but you know, right? You know, man. And nobody knows if you ate that Snickers bar, but you know. So, I think that to me is integrity, and that's so valuable because it it doesn't matter what you do to the outside world, but the only one person in the world that matters knows. The thing that I find so interesting about bodybuilding is you want to talk about say something, you better do it. You're going to be up on stage in essentially a Speedo, yeah. And like, it really is there for people to see whether you were consistent or something with something, and you see these guys and women who can have this extraordinary level of discipline to do what they say they were going to do in one area of their life, but then it doesn't carry over to other areas. Um, do you think that comes down to value system? Does it come down to just like a self-awareness about why you're doing it? Like value. I think it's also degree of pain, you know, like people who are in the fitness space often have a massive degree of pain somewhere, and it's pain avoidance. So, like, they have insecurities, they have fears, and they're running away from them, and this is their way of masking it. So, the fitness industry, um, for better or worse is one of the most um egocentric industries in the world, right? We're we're very asleep. We're very unconscious, typically, right? So, and I would live that way for 20 years. It was so myopically focused on I have to work out, no matter what happened, I'm cutting away everything in my life. Nothing else mattered but that thing. Uh and to me it was very unconscious. Like I didn't go in there and I wasn't present in my workout. I tried to tune I did turn my brain off. Like I just wanted to go in there, not think, and train. Well, now it's the exact opposite, right? It's this attempt to use every single minute of my workout, every single repetition to become more present, to become more conscious, to learn how to feel my body, connect with my body, feel my muscles, aim to challenge the muscles as most as the most that I can in the smallest amount of time. Um so, you know, that's kind of where fitness has shifted to for me is becoming more conscious, becoming more present, where most people are using it to mute out their pain, mute out their anxiety, right? Which is real. Like and so, we all have pain, we all have anxiety. Um and some people use food, some people use drugs, some people use workouts. It's just coping strategies, right? So, how do we then create a positive coping strategy? And you could argue you could argue that working out is a positive coping strategy for some. In some it's not, right? It's a destructive coping strategy. If you take people's workouts away, they fall apart. And that's where that is is people are using it as a negative coping strategy, just like a drug. You take it away, they're like an addict. They're going to be angry, they're not going to be able to live, they're going to have anxiety, they're going to feel terrible about themselves. So, hopefully we can encourage people to start using it as an opportunity to become present and use it as a positive coping strategy. Last year I climbed a mountain in in uh Mammoth. So, for the first hour and a half, I was dreading it in my mind cuz I hadn't trained for it. I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is going to be terrible. This is going to be the worst thing ever." And for the first hour and a half, I I dreaded it. Like my legs were burning and it was terrible. And then I became conscious. And in that moment, it was like, "What the hell am I doing?" Like I'm in the most beautiful place in the world. I'm with two of my best friends in the world. I'm outside. I'm alive. I have legs. I took a breath and I smiled and I said, "Thank you." In the next 6 hours up the mountain, I floated. Like, if you just have the ability to change your perspective and say, "Hey, I want to be present. I want to enjoy this. I want to realize this is an opportunity to become better or it's an opportunity to to indoctrinate deeper into this negativity that I have, right?" And it's always this this yin and yang that sits in front of you and you have this opportunity to go, "Man, I'm going to use this opportunity today, this pain, this discomfort that I'm bringing on myself to become better." Like meditation, same thing, discipline, right? You can use that as an opportunity like, "Ah, I got to meditate." Or like, "God, I get to meditate, right?" It's It's always there, man. It's always perspective. Yeah, it's interesting, speaking of perspective, the way that you approach transforming the body, transforming the mind, your whole notion of the six pillars, which I was I found really interesting. So, one, what are, just sort of in a nutshell, the six pillars? Um, because I think people are going to be surprised how much of building the body for you comes down to working through the mind. Other stuff, yeah. So, I'm I'm you know, for the last four or five years, I've been really trying to decode all of the things that go into building a great physique, right? Um, so most people are very myopically focused on one. Some people are focused on two. You talk to a nutritionist, it's all nutrition. You talk to a trainer, it's all training. Well, no, right? Like, it's not all all anything. It's not 90% nutrition and and 10% training. It's It's everything that goes in and it's this integration of all the pieces. So, I've really been trying to dispel it down to, well, what are all these things that actually go into building a great physique? So, training is obviously a big piece. So, listing out the pillars, training is a big piece. There's no question. You have to create the stimulus, right? There's no question. And training can be anything from weight lifting to to running to CrossFit to whatever it is for you, man. Um, and then obviously, so walking down the line, this is the hierarchy that I put them in. So, I put training at the top of the list because without the stimulus you're not going to build anything. And then following that down the list, I put sleep very very high on the list. So, because without sleep anything you do, and I'll explain why, anything you do doesn't stick. Below that, I talk about you know, depending how you want to articulate it, I talk about stress and the autonomic nervous system. And that for most people are like, "What the hell are you talking about?" What that comes down to is breathing and meditation, right? So, the way your body is interpreting your environment, your thoughts, the things that go into your body, is all regulated by the autonomic nervous system, right? So, if I'm stressed, what happens? My body releases cortisol, my body releases adrenaline. It's this general adaptation response. So, if I put a gun to your head, it could be a similar response in your body as somebody cutting you off in traffic or as you going and doing a really hard leg workout. Those are all just amplifications, different amplifications of stress, right? So, how I respond to that is extremely important. So, we have this sympathetic branch, which is a stress response, and I have the parasympathetic branch, which is a rest and digest response. So, the tone of these two systems is going to determine kind of the state where my body is right now. So, if you're someone who's always like high-strung and very tense and very anxious, you're more sympathetic. If you're someone who's chilled out and more relaxed and more meditative, you're more parasympathetic. And if you're putting great food and great training stimulus into a sympathetic stressed state, it's not going to be the same response as if you put the exact same food and the same training into a parasympathetic body. Talk talk more about that. This is so interesting, and I would have called [ __ ] on that three, four years ago. And then my wife went through a whole microbiome issue, and one of the things the doctors kept telling her is if you're eating in a stressed state, you're going to have a negative digestive response. And I just thought, "That's That can't be true." is. So, it is way true. Yeah. And it's just it's just, you know, the study of the autonomic nervous system. So, if as I said, parasympathetic is the state of rest and digest. So, if I sit down to eat and I'm in a sympathetic state, my body is literally shunting the blood to the to the limbs to move, shutting down digestion, mobilizing energy from my muscles and my liver into the blood so that I can it's called the fight or flight system. So, I can fight or flee. Like evolutionarily, what are we doing throughout the day when stress arises, right? Either there's a lion over there, there's a snake, or there's someone I got to fight. There's no car, there's no email, there's no boss yelling at me, there's no IRS, you know? Those things don't exist. So, evolutionarily, we've adapted to have this stress response in in response to like, "Oh, [ __ ] I need to kill something, or something's going to try to kill me." And that's it. And those are always followed by what? Movement and and action, right? So, your body was able to use those nutrients that was sending into the blood for movement and activity, and then once those things were gone, you could go back into this parasympathetic state, and maybe you ate what you just killed, or maybe you get to rest little bit after you just hopefully killed the enemy or whatever, right? Um so, those those actions of the sympathetic nervous system were always preceded by movement. And now, when we get cut off in the car, what's it followed by? Sitting on a butt. So, our body becomes very resistant to those things, and and cortisol stays elevated chronically. So, cortisol naturally has this rhythm of being elevated in the morning and hopefully tapering off throughout the day. But unfortunately, because of the light, because of the stress, because of cars, because of EMF, because of all these things, cortisol tends to stay elevated and never really comes down. And how does that manifest, right? That manifests in a racing mind and a mind that doesn't sleep and if someone who can't fall asleep at night, and someone who wakes up in the morning not feeling rested, or they wake up in the morning feeling anxiety. All of those things are correlates of this highly sympathetic state, not allowing our body to actually do what it's supposed to do when we sleep, waking up in the morning and feeling terrible. Right? So, then and then what do I got to do in the morning? I need a coffee. Why? What does coffee do? Well, it spikes your cortisol. So, it gives you that energy, right? And then guess what happens? Same negative perpetuating loop. So, that's one side of it. Conversely, if I can learn to implement these parasympathetic stimuli so in my life, in my training principles, I'll implement parasympathetic days. So, people take off days, I'm like, "Champions don't take off days. We take parasympathetic days." What's the difference? An off day is sitting on my butt doing nothing or still doing things that are stressful. A parasympathetic day may be I wake up in the morning and I walk or I do yoga or I breathe or I meditate or I do a float tank or I do I I connect with my loved ones and I do things that make me that fill my soul. They fill my cup. I might connect with my kids. Do just being outside. That's a parasympathetic activity. That's recharging your batteries. It's plugging in, right? And that's bringing down that sympathetic tone. A parasympathetic day doesn't include my phone. It doesn't include my email. It doesn't include work meetings, right? Things that I know they're going to stress me out. And you know, man, we all have experienced this without knowing it. You'll go away for 3 days to or for a week to some place remotely with your wife or by yourself and you come back and you go, "Man, I just feel so much better. I don't know why, but my brain works better. My workout today was really, really good. I'm not really sure why that is. I kind of didn't eat all that much while I was away or maybe I ate way more and I got leaner." You know, we all experience that, but we don't really kind of articulate why. We don't really correlate what's happening. Well, that's what it is. So, to understand it for people who are interested in fitness, the sympathetic system is a system of catabolic states. So, it's it's mobilizing energy. That can be useful when it's cyclical. So, it means it's mobilizing more carbohydrate and more fat for activity. That's useful in the morning. That's useful when I'm training. That's useful to potentially burn more fat, but if it's perpetually, your body becomes resistant to it. Starts releasing more and doesn't work as well. This parasympathetic state is is an anabolic state. It's a recover. It's a rest, digest, and recover. So, if we want to be growing, if we want to building muscle, if we want to be recovering, this is the state. So, we literally have to learn how to balance these two states. So, I suggest to most people 2 hours a day sympathetic, 22 hours a day parasympathetic. 2 hours a day is in the workout, right? Train train hard. Intentionally create that sympathetic state. But then I need to be able to calm down and be present and be calm and be able to have a conversation that's not anxious and fearful and and reactive rather than responsive. And that's a parasympathetic reality. And the way you can measure this now, you can quantify this stuff with your heart rate variability, right? People have probably starting to hear more about HRV. I'm a massive fan. I've got my aura ring everywhere I go. I'm measuring your HRV. So, HRV is a direct correlate with this autonomic control. So, if I see I have low HRV, it means my nervous system is doing this in this really small flux and I'm not getting a lot of sympathetic stress and I'm never really coming down into a parasympathetic state, which is where most people live, low heart rate variability. Where what I want is a high amount of heart rate variability, right? the ability to get really really amplified for those hard intense sets in the workout, and then I want to be able to calm down and almost be a yogi in my calm state, right? So, this idea of the bodybuilding yogi. I want to be able to be very very um explosive and and strong and fast and be able to work really really hard acutely, and then I want to be able to be completely zen on the other end. You said something that really hit me. Champions don't take days off. I love that. Uh your mindset around excellence and pushing is does not seem to have diminished at all even though now you're no longer pursuing bodybuilding, but even the way that you're approaching business or even the way that you approach your family, like there's this desire for a level of excellence. I've heard you talk in interviews in a way that I find so intoxicating about how rarely people push themselves, how they don't want to do the hard things. Um what is the role of doing difficult things in your life? Why does it matter? And and I guess encompassing all of that, like how does a champion live? I I have this very blessed life where I get to surround myself with people like yourself who who are just pushing the limit of physical ability, of mental ability, of even spiritual ability. So, I'm sitting back and watching how people um act and they operate. And and to see the people who truly thrive in life are the people who are willing to do the things no one else is willing to do. And that's including the ability to sit and meditate for an hour. And that's including the ability to go to the deepest depths of the hardest sets in the gym. And those are the people that succeed, man. And most people aren't able or willing to do that because of the story they tell themselves as to why they can't. Oh, this hurts or that hurts or I don't have the genetics or I don't have the time or I don't have the ability. It's always stories you tell yourself around why you can't. Um and if there's a story behind why you can't, you must. Must like I said, if you can't, therefore you must. Um so, it's so important to challenge your own [ __ ] rules. Right? And this is where the integrity comes back. If you really want to succeed in anything, and if there's a fire in your heart pulling you to do something, it's going to take way more than you think. And you talk about this with your success with with quest. Like it talks it's going to take so much to succeed. So much more than you think. It took so much more than anyone sees for me to be a great bodybuilder. Like there was days where my soul was crushed. Crushed. And I, you know, maybe I had a hard moment and I was like, let's go. I found that way to recover, go deep in my soul. And now I've been able to quantify that, right? It's like those hard moments are are your soul calling for this parasympathetic activity. Those moments where you're just like, "Oh my god, I can't do anymore." Good. Say thank you. Go do a breath. Go do a meditate. Calm down. It's not just a matter of not doing anything. It's a matter of learning how to go deep within your soul and and recover. So, this active parasympathetic activity allows then the higher amplification of the other end, right? This chasing intensity. And so people, especially these strong men, are afraid to sit down and meditate. They're afraid to be bold enough to say, "Dude, I do yoga because it makes me be able to work harder in the other end." Like if I don't recharge my batteries, I can't be present for my kids, I can't be present for my wife, for my business. And here's a great test. For a long time, my kids they're my kids are amazing. They're the most wonderful human beings that I've met in my life. And they're energetic. And there's days where they're screaming and they're yelling and they're banging and they're breaking stuff. Irritates you. But that's not a reflection of them. That's a reflection of my inability to to respond and react to that stress, right? So that I I've been able to see this now. Definitively, if there's days when that stuff bugs me or if your your wife is irritating you, that has nothing to do with her and everything to do with the way your body is sensing that. I want to talk more about self-narrative. So, hearing you say there were moments where your soul was crushed or even in the beginning where you're talking about you're about to walk on stage for one of the biggest shows of your life and you're so insecure to take your shirt off where literally 99.9% of humanity would stab somebody to look like you look. How do you begin to build yourself back up? In fact, when I was researching you, this is probably the most interesting thing you said and it really [ __ ] hit me. That every day, the first thing you have to do is build your mind. I thought, "Whoa, that's so interesting to think about that." It gave me the chills just thinking about it now. To have to build your mind every day. What do you mean by that? I literally sit down and I did this for a long time in my career um and create the person I want to be. I can take 30 seconds to 5 minutes before I come in here and I can tell myself who I am. What I what I need to bring to this conversation. What I need to bring to this environment. So, I can't go into my daughter's bedroom when she's two or four or five now and be the same man that I am going into my leg session. I can't be the same man that I am going into my business. Like I have to literally create these little versions, like these little multiple personalities, if I really want to thrive, right? Cuz if I'm the same person, there's going to be a terrible overlap. Something's going to go terribly wrong. So, I need to learn to sit down and map it out. Like, who do I want to be and what does that feel like and what's my posture and what's my breathing and what's my cadence and how do I create that in every different scenario? That's the way you succeed and that's hard in the beginning, right? That And so, I I I I I try not to use that term. Like, I don't believe anything is hard. I just believe you need to practice. Right? Like, nothing is really hard. What's hard? It just means you haven't practiced enough yet. So, I sit down in the beginning and like, man, it's really hard to really hard to create this mind that I want to be to be a champion bodybuilder in the gym. It's really hard to create this mind that's this romantic, caring lover with my wife. It's really hard to create this this dad who's able to play dolls and dance with my daughter. You know, but it's not. It just takes consistency, practice, intelligence. And this is where meditation comes in, man. Like, if I'm not meditating, I see the difference. You're not showing up with your A game to talk to Tom Bilyeu. You're not showing up with your A game to talk with your daughter and they're going to notice. I want to hear more about these avatars. I've never heard anybody talk about that before and it's one of those things as soon as you say it, it sounds immediately true. And when I think about myself, certainly there are different sort of sides of my personality that I would bring, but I've never intentionally created sort of individual um avatars. Yeah. Give me like the actual words or or maybe it's images, I don't know. You talked about breathing, cadence, but like the part where you're saying, "Who am I?" Um and especially as you use it in those moments where you feel broken or lost or scared or whatever, how do you cultivate a an avatar that's going to be there when you need it? And then when you need it, how do you call upon it? Is it to say words? Is it to stand a certain way? Is it to picture the avatar? Like, what does that look like? all of those, right? So, um I can anchor any different thing to become that person. So, it's like when I stick my keys in the door and I hear my keys jingle, I'll pay attention to my keys for a moment and I'll breathe and I realize I'm anchoring dad, right? And I have this other benefit as I say, as I open the door my kids would always run like, "Daddy!" And I'm like, "Ah, how can you not feel your heart, right?" And then I'm dad. So, what does that look like? Well, that means I'm not stressed. I'm not bringing work home with me. I'm not thinking about anything other than how can I fill my kids' cup? Because I know I don't get 24 hours a day with them, right? I'm not a stay-at-home dad. I wish I was. I'm not. I I get 4 hours a day with them and I want every minute to be present. And man, I'm not perfect. Like there's days where I'm like, "Oh man, I got this to do. I got to catch up." And I'm like, No, cuz what are you telling them, right? You're saying, "Hey, you're not as important as this." And we're all so addicted to this, right? To our phone. No, man. I want my kids to know they're the most important thing in my life. Um, and then obviously in training there's, you know, for me for a long time I sat in my car and everyone's like, "Dude, what are you doing?" I'm like, "I sit in my car for 5 or 10 minutes." Like cuz I have to Sometimes it takes really digging deep into your soul to to understand your why. Like, why am I going to go in there and have the hardest workout? I'm tired. I don't want to go. I'm a hungry. There's a million places I'd rather be than going to the gym right now to do this leg workout or whatever it is. What do I have to do? Who do I have to become? Who am I? Right, why am I here? Why did I start? And I literally write it down, man. I have a journal in my my glove box and I'd sit there and write it down. Why did I start? Why am I here? Who am I impacting? How am I helping the world? Why am I doing this? All those things are just things that I journal on and I'd say, you know, we just be like this expression of my soul. Why don't I want to do it? Like what what are the reasons why I don't want to do it? Sometimes I look at those and those are the fire. Those are the fuel of the fire. Those are the kindling, right? Um, but Oh man, I I want to be great. Like anything I do, I want I want to be not just okay. How do you deal with self-doubt? I struggled with that for a very long time. We all experience it, myself included, yourself included, and all the listeners know should know that. Like it's not something that's exclusive to you sitting at home. It's everybody. Um I I think um feeling where it's coming from and not being afraid of it, not being um don't try to bury it. I think explore it, right? I think um Where's it coming from? Why is it there? And realize it's probably some story that you're telling yourself about you know, something maybe someone in your past put on you or some belief that has been um kind of cast on you from your parents or your someone in your past and it's not a bad thing, you know, maybe it's it's fuel. Um maybe it just requires you forgiving the person who put it there. Uh and then thanking them and being legitimately truthful and and grateful to them to say, "Man, thank you for making the person me the person that I am and allowing me to be stronger, allowing me to be resilient to stress." Um so that I think a lot of people try to bury the fear and the negativity and the anxiety rather than sitting with it, right? So when you have anxiety, what do you do? You take a pill. Why? Why not say, "Why is this here? Yes, this is incredibly uncomfortable, but this too shall pass. How do I sit with this and use this as fuel?" If I have anxiety, there's a reason that anxiety is there. How do I use that to propel? Like I literally will say, "Thank you." I'll smile and I'll go, "What's going on? How do I make this better? Like is it my is it my family? Is it my finances? Is it What are these things that like what is it and how do I address it now?" Fuel. You got a quote. I'm going to get it a little bit wrong, but I'll get the idea right. In the depths of your darkest moments, smile. Yeah, in the deepest depths of your your darkest hour is your greatest opportunity to become your greatest self, right? And there some iteration of that, right? Yeah. Um so when things get hard, when all of the clouds are rolling in, the thunder starts to roll, man, this is this is where I grow. This is where I thrive cuz if there's something that's hard in your life now, it's because you need to grow. Right? So, I you intentionally try to bring those things into your life. You're like, "Whoa, this is going to be hard. All right, hold on tight, man. Let's go cuz I know at the other end either I'm going to die or I'm going to be stronger. Right? And And if you accept death as part of a of a reality of life and not fear it, well, if I die, hm, okay. But otherwise, I'm just going to come out stronger, man. And that that is something that bodybuilding taught me and some efforts and really amazing people in my life who've brought that mentality into my life. Um and I think in our current society, we put death at a distance. Like we try not to embrace it. Well, like I think if we all learn to keep death a little bit closer to us and respect it, we would live our lives a little bit more uh consciously, a little bit more on purpose. That is not where I expected that answer to go in the best possible way. That's so interesting. So, I think a lot about death in the sense of I want to live forever and I try to like put the Not put the notion away from me because I actually do think about it and I find it pretty intriguing and I try to um like you were talking about with heart rate variability and working hard and going from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic. I try to swing that hard to both look at my life from the perspective of how would I be if I could live forever? Um and and for me, that's an exercise in potential. Like I'm willing to like impact theory for me is I think of it as a 70-year plan. Yeah. Okay, so at my age, that's probably not true unless something might radical happens, but it to me, it makes sense to act as if. But shouldn't you live today like you're going to die tomorrow? Exactly. And so, there's a meditation I often do that sometimes people have a hard time feeling gratitude and it was a big a hugely impactful for me that I still do it often. Think about if if you died right now and you had that one moment to come back and spend a minute with your family. You had that one way to come back to be present with the people you love. Just meditate on that. Like if you if you if you you died right now, and you never got to come back and see them again, what would you give to come back for that one moment? And meditate on that tomorrow morning, and tell me how you feel. And tell me you can't wake up and be grateful. You're going to wake up with a smile on your face, and you're going to run toward the people you love and go and like spring tears to my eyes like, "Thank you." Right? And if you can't do that, I suggest you should you do. I want to look at the flip side of the the sort of um facing death coin. When you were talking, the thing that first hit me, I don't know if you um have heard Will Smith's quote, "The reason that I succeed or whatever is because I'm willing to die on the treadmill." Yeah. I always found that so interesting. And part of what I find so interesting about that is the fact that it is a treadmill. So, it isn't just that like, "Oh, I'm willing to die for my family or for something so grand." It's when you first said it, I imagined you going into a leg workout, which you're obviously pretty famous for. Like going in and hitting these workouts in a way that's like makes people queasy at the very thought of it. If I were to have to tell somebody like, "What is the champion mindset?" I would say it's that. It's the willingness to die on the treadmill because you have such a strong why. There's something that you find so compelling that you're willing to push forward. Yeah. If you're going to succeed at something, it's going to take a long time. It's probably going to be a lot of long hours, a lot of long days that are probably going to look very very similar. That's the treadmill, right? And it's this idea of I just want to give my all whatever it happens to be that day. And uh it's very challenging to be present in current society because there's so many things pulling our attention. And I think it all has to start with that. It has all has to start with being present and finding your why. Um and then that, hopefully, if that why is strong enough for you, will pull you. And uh it does for me, man. I'm so blessed to be alive, and I feel so grateful to have this opportunity that I have. Like I feel like I've been reborn after bodybuilding. Not because I had I regret bodybuilding in any way, but I feel like for so many years I was myopically focused on this one thing and now I have this opportunity to go and do the next 50 years, 100 years, whatever it is, day, one day, and live it to its fullest and pursue whatever it is I want to do that day, but do it to the best of my ability. I got to tell you, I'm not perfect, man. Like I keep bringing that up, but there's days I'm like, oh, man, you know, or just you make some rationalization as to why you don't do it. Integrity. That's comes back. What do you say to people that don't have a why? That's probably the not in those exact words, but the thing that I get asked the most is like, how do you find your passion? Sit with yourself, by yourself. Turn your phone off. With yourself. Sit with your anxiety. Sit with your discomfort. Look at the things you don't want to do. Cuz that's where you need to go. Um I think most people just don't spend enough time by themselves. Like 1 hour of solitude a day sounds like torture to some people. Right? Sit with yourself, man. Sit with your thoughts. And it may take time. It may take a long time. But I think at some point you'll know what you don't want to do, and you'll know that will start to to chip away at what you do want to do, right? You know, everything in life has polarities. So, in order to experience um bliss, you must experience pain, I believe, right? Other If everything's always just lukewarm, you never really know which direction to go. And I think most people don't ever push themselves towards something cuz they're always in this world of comfort. We've created a world of tremendous comfort, you know, including the way that houses are and everything just easy. So, if you don't intentionally seek out things that are challenging to you, you'll never know like, oh, I like that or I don't like that, right? So, there has to be this polarizing experience in life. It's interesting. I'm super fascinated by the idea of doing hard things, but I think for very different reasons. So, I have a strong feeling that part of what haunts people in a modern context is um you're not being chased by a lion, and so there's nothing that forces you into earning credibility with yourself, which I think the mind has something innate to it that's like you did this [ __ ] hard thing and because of that there's a neurochemical reward. I don't know why that is. I'm sure it has something to do from an evolutionary perspective. The lazy [ __ ] ended up getting eaten. They they weren't hunting. So there's like something in us that's pushing us and propelling us to have a desire to have done something hard if that makes sense. But in a modern context, we can avoid a lot of that. And because we also have in us from an evolutionary perspective the desire to conserve calories cuz we didn't know when we were going to get the next. We have this weird competing desire. The desire But then you experience pain as well, right? Cuz if I avoid the hard things now, I will pay the piper later because I will experience pain from lack of doing things, right? So you know if you push hard now, you just you you you experience the pain now. But if you don't do anything now, what's the pain in the future? Well, I don't have money or I don't have food or I don't have fitness or I'm going to die. Like I don't like myself. I think that's the one that's the one that [ __ ] scares me for people. You either experience the pain of discipline or experience the pain of regret. Right? That's the ultimate reality. Like you either you experience it now or you experience it later, but you're going to experience it and choose it, man. Like I love the idea of being able to choose my pain, choose my discipline. Like oh, I like that. Like let's do more of that and therefore I get better at that thing versus like oh [ __ ] my pain's going to be chosen for me. And I talk to my kids all the time about that. It's like, do you want to choose your life or you want someone to choose it for you? Well, I want to choose it. Great. Well, choose it. Otherwise, if you sit on your ass, I'm going to choose it for you. Right? Like go do it. Whatever you want to do as long as you do it well. Um that's just the reality. I think that's a pretty simple way for people to get it, man. Pick your discipline. Otherwise, the world's going to pick it for you. You know, that that's how we approach um everything with anybody is is um intentionally seek the things that are going hard rather than avoidance. And I think as um many people in our culture don't get the opportunity to have parents who push them that way. So, guess what? Good. Cuz you got to do it yourself. You know, rather than go, "Oh, I didn't have the parents. I don't have the genetics or the money or the time." Good. Cuz now you get to do it. It's a get to attitude. All right. So, talk to me about that person. They don't have the genetics. They don't have the time. They got every excuse in the world. you tell yourself, man. Like, I was obese. My family's alcoholics. They're all overweight. I had a speech impediment and learning disability. Like, talk about like the polar opposite of what you would expect me to grow up to do, right? But I realized I didn't have a learning disability. I didn't have a speech impediment. I was just a really, really fearful kid. So, my dad had an explosive temper. I'd come home and things were just upside down. I'd sit there and I'd shake. And I like anytime I talk to an authority, all the way up until university, I would stutter. Cuz I I didn't have a stutter when I talked to my friends, but when I talked to somebody I was afraid of, I'd get scared. And I was like, "Fuck, that's my dad." And when I finally realized that, it's like, "Okay. So, I don't have a problem. It's just a story I was telling myself." Right? And once you release those fears, once you release that story you're telling yourself, you're like, you're empowered to go, "I just don't have the skills yet." "I can't yet." If you just add that little word at the end of your sentence, all of a sudden you're empowered to go, "Ah, I can do anything, man. I can literally do anything." And if you take that attitude into a job interview, if you take that attitude into a business, "I can do anything." Everyone's going to hire you. Like, [ __ ] Those are the people I want to hire, man. If you're somebody who says, "I can do anything." I want to hire you. Like, "Mhm, I'm not really sure." No, thanks. Not for me. Right? And then all of a sudden doors start to open up. And you know, you know as a business owner, there's so few people who take on that attitude. Like, if you if if I give you a problem and you're coming to a job interview, like, "I'm not really sure how to do this." See you later. Or like, "I don't know how to do it, but man, I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to do it with a big smile on my face. I'm going to do it better than everybody else. That's the attitude, right?" So, get ultra tactical for me. How do you go from where you were, not without the genetics, to be the bodybuilder? Like, what are people listening right now? They want to make that that of change. They want to radically alter their physique. you realize that it's never the skills and tactics. It's always this. You know, cuz I can give people the best workout and the best nutrition plan in the world and so many people still seem to fall short. So, I've started reverting back to these, you know, one of my six pillars is it's mindset. It's the mental mastery game. So, what does that look like, right? It's it's one, stopping the story you're telling yourself. And when when you do that and you just take action. So, I create a list of daily action items, right? So, I have an action plan. So, I'll talk to you on the phone and I'll be like, "Hey, man, what are the things that you know, are holding you back?" you won't even have to tell me. I'll pull it out of your words and I'll be like, "Okay, well, here's the things I need you to do every day. Are you willing to do that?" And for most people it's starting with small victories, right? It's starting with Okay, man, I need you to wake up every morning and no matter where are you are in the world, I need you to go outside, I need you to walk at least 20 minutes, ideally 60 minutes. Can you do that? Yes. Okay, I need you to breathe. Can you do that? 5 minutes a day. Can you do that? Yes. Okay, let's start there, right? And maybe we do a small a couple small eliminations from your nutrition plan. Can you start there? And then like after a few days they're like, "Hey, man, I feel good about this. What's next?" And then we start building on those habit stacking, right? We start building on those small victories. And I don't say those those two habits um you know, haphazardly. Like those are the two that I think everyone should start with. So, like people people come to me for like, you know, I want to build a bunch of muscle. Okay, here's your first month. Walk and breathe. And they're like, "What?" Like, "Yeah, if you can't do those things one, consistently, how do you expect to pass and succeed at a workout program? Two, the parasympathetic influence, right? So, walking and breathing. One, walking is is correlated with improved motivation, increased dopamine, increased neuroplasticity, all these things that are going to help your brain grow and improve your psychological state. And breathing, as I said earlier, it was like it's the gateway into this parasympathetic state. So, the calming down your stress, the the ability to recover. If you can't do those things for 30 days, how do you expect to succeed over two, five, and 10 years? You can't. So, it's it's always, you know, human beings tend to complicate things, right? So, I want people to start looking at the simplest common denominator and I'm the I'm the biggest fan and when I was a kid fight you know, even as a professional bodybuilder someone told me to walk I'd laugh. Like, walking's for old people. I take my kids on walks now because this bilateral stimulation has been correlated with connecting the hemispheres in the brain, allowing your brain to work more clearly, allowing your brain to improve dopamine secretion, improve neuroplasticity. So, there's so many benefits to that walk at the you know, the zero hour as soon as you wake up. Shoes on out the door. It doesn't have to be hard. It just has to be done and progressive, right? That's like if you know, at some point you want to get to the point where some you're walking like somebody's chasing you. But, it's all or run if you want to run. But, again it becomes a it becomes a mindful practice. It becomes like, can I turn this thing into something that's meditative? So, anyone sitting at home with with a conversation around why they can't start there. No matter what the goal is. Like, even if your goal is say, I want to build an awesome business. Good. Walk. Cuz if you can't do that, you're never going to meditate. You're never going to journal. You're never going to do the financial things you need to do. The simplest thing, man, if you don't pay attention to your health, everything else is going to falter. Yeah, for sure. What are some basic things that you have people do to their diet? You said maybe eliminate a couple things. So, depending how how hardcore people are how far down the line they are. Like, I usually eat like a very small number of foods. I just eat more of them. Um and I think this idea of variety is um relevant, but only within a small subcategory of foods. So, I'll list out the foods that I often eat. I eat wild meat. So, like red meat, you know, fish. Don't eat a lot of chicken and turkey even though people think that's better. Um I I eat, you know, any type of wild meat that I can find. I eat green organic green vegetables. I eat a lot of berries, um olive oil, avocado, coconut oil, coffee, and chocolate. Intentionally. Chocolate? That was not the one I expected. Okay. chocolate. Like without sugar added entirely? Yeah. So, I'm I'm a big fan of adding polyphenols into the diet for brain health and and longevity and nervous system. So, a lot of those foods are in there for polyphenols, olive oil included. Many benefits to olive oil. But, those are my foods and I'll just eat varying amounts. And occasionally, I'll add in sweet potatoes. Like so, it's pretty much a ketogenic diet, but if I if you like I'm training hard or if I want to have a sweet potato because I feel like having a sweet potato, I will. Right? And things I eliminate are grains and dairy and corn and soy. I eliminate all that stuff. It's just inflammatory, right? I don't think it's necessary. So, that's the simplest way to do it is is people always looking for the new miraculous diet they want to follow. Is it keto? Is it vegan? Is it carnivore? Is it God, whatever. I think it depends, man. Like where are you in the season of life? So, in summertime, it's a different season than winter. In in stressful times, it's a different than when you're in abundance, you know, man. Like everything needs to change according to your physiology. So, in in my nutrition training, I teach people strategies. I teach them like, you know, how to actually think their way through. Like, hey, this is where I'm in life. A lot of that has to do with how hard am I training right now? What is my goal right now? What's the season of life right now? Is it sunny outside? Cuz that's a very different thing than if it's not, right? So, your body's going to respond very very differently, man. So, those are those are some of the kind of strategies and tactics. What are some high-level things like seasonality? That's one. So, what do you do different in the summer versus the winter? Well, so vitamin D has a huge impact on your body's ability to use carbohydrate. So, if you're getting a lot of sunshine, you can increase your carbohydrate significantly. So, that's a big one. So, in the wintertime, maybe it makes more sense evolutionarily to have more meat and more fat cuz you may have had access to animals, but you may not have had access to bananas and pineapples. Um so, thinking your way through that and you can significantly decrease your protein intake and your fat intake in the summertime, right? So, it's a cyclical approach. That's, you know, the simplest thing you can do. And then, you know, subsequent to that, where's your stress? If your stress is elevated, most people on a ketogenic diet, that actually can add to your stress, right? So, if carbohydrates are actually a great way to modulate stress in the body. So, as cortisol goes up, if we bring insulin or carbohydrate up, typically cortisol comes down. Your body can use carbohydrate and insulin to actually modulate cortisol. So, if we have a high amount of stress, maybe it's a good way to help us bring stress down. You know, and I I'll use that strategically to sleep. So, if someone has a racing mind at night and they can't calm themselves down, there's a few things you can do to start calming down your nervous system. Carbohydrate being one of them. Anything that's a GABA agonist being another one. So, GABA is a neurotransmitter in the brain that can help to calm down that racing mind. So, some supplement examples would be GABA is an example, glutamate glutamine or glycine or or taurine is a good example. So, those are good supplements to help people calm people down to to kind of bring into that more parasympathetic state before bed. Hm. You said you don't eat a lot of chicken and turkey. Why not? Well, the quality of it in America is very poor, right? They're typically eating soy and corn. So, they're going to be high in more omega-6 fats. Even so, most people are like, "Oh, chicken and turkey are better." I'm like, "Eh." You know, fish, great. Great great fat ratios. And then wild meats going to have because they're fed on grass or wild things, they're going to have a better ratio of fats. Give me an example of some wild meats. Um venison, elk. I do eat grass-fed beef. I eat not a lot of it anymore. Bison. Um things that I know where they're coming from. And uh if I find some antelope or if I find some moose or kangaroo or something like like that. Um and that's just cuz it's different and it's got a better fat profile. And I know it's eating food that's good. Like I don't want to eat an animal that's eating food that's crappy, man. And corn and soy are not good for us. And do you think about calories? Are you counting macros? Like what's the deal? people, not, right? Like I'm like, "Hey, here's your list of foods. Eat as much as you want." And if they need a guidance, then yeah, of course. Like cal- you can't refute that calories matter at some point. But for most people, if you just eliminate all the crappy foods, they're probably going to eat less because they're going to feel better. They're going to be, you know, actually nourishing their body and not just be hungry all the time. So, if you're eating empty calories, you're going to be hungry all the time. Your insulin levels are going to be all over the place. You're going to be hungry. So, if we just give them good foods like good meats, good fats, good vegetables, I think they'll just feel better and the likelihood of having to count calories goes down significantly. If someone's doing a contest or someone wants to get in shape, of course, like we're going to we're going to figure out a way to manage calories, right? Um but for average people, man, just like limit the number of food choices and obviously within within wild meats, there's a ton of variety. Within green vegetables, there's a ton of variety. Within berries, there's a ton of variety, right? Even with olive oil, there's different regions of the world you can get olive oil, right? So, there's variety within those things. Um and so, there's variety within that, but it's still just kind of a different subcategory. Now, one thing I wanted to ask you, you've talked a lot about that cardio may not be the best way to burn fat. What is the best way to burn fat? Well, so I I think aerobic fitness is a foundation of everyone's health. And if you have a base level of aerobic health, then doing intelligent weight training where we where we strategically manipulate the density of the workout. So, a workout has more space between sets, it's going to have less density. If it has less space between sets or less a shorter rest period, it has a more greater density, right? So, that's going to be more metabolically taxing to the body, asking the body to burn more calories during training. So, that's going to be a great way to burn fat or high-intensity cardio where we're doing something that's really, really max effort with short bouts of rest. So, an example being like a three-to-one ratio. So, if I'm doing a a 20-second high-intensity interval, I'm going to have about a 60-second rest period. That's a great place for people to start. And And if you're not in very good health, take a longer rest period. But But before you do any of that, create a foundational uh aerobic fitness, right? Without that, like this this general uh ability to do aerobic exercise like aerobic activity, your body's not going to digest food well. You're not going to recover well from workouts. Your brain's not going to work well. Like all those things are just uh side effects of poor uh aerobic health. If you don't have them, you'll have poor recovery and etc. All right. So, I know that you have a lot of programs and stuff around exercise specifically. Where can people go to find out more about you, your programs? Yeah. So, I've got a podcast that's been doing really well. And so, uh it's called Muscle Intelligence. It's called the Muscle Intelligence podcast, which may not be the most accurately named, right? So, it may be more more um like something like what you're doing is is like I'm trying to find amazing people doing amazing things. So, when people hear Muscle Intelligence, they're like, "Oh, it's just about building muscle." It's not. It's about so much more. It's getting into like all the things that I talk about, right? Um benpakulski.com is currently under construction. Uh muscleintelligence.com is about to launch. My most recent program is hypertrophy mastery.com. So, hypertrophy being muscle building, mastery. And And it's not even necessarily just for muscle building. It's for anyone who wants to learn how to train for your body. So, I really get into um individualization. So, like, you doing a bench press, me doing a bench press, not the same thing, right? So, uh just walking through everybody part in like a course format where we give tons of um great execution tips and and great uh you know, how to approach the workout, how to approach setting up a uh setting up your own workout, like what order you should do, things like that. Nice. Yeah. All right. If you were going to have people make one change to their diet or fitness or whatever that would have the biggest impact on their health, what would you have them change? Well, coming back to the stuff we talked about at the beginning, it it's learning how to become present. So, sometimes it's just like stopping for a second and feeling. It's maybe just paying attention to the sounds, the sights, the way your body feels, and your breath. Uh and just do that. And like, rather than blocking things out, like, take a second to feel the tension in your body. Take a second to feel the breath. Take a second to hear the sounds in the room. And And it's become present. And I think the ability to do that, if you start with those micro increments over time, eventually they become longer. And eventually, hopefully, it becomes your whole life where you can become present, become thoughtful, become um you know, very very present in your ability to articulate yourself. So um that, you know, that starts everything cuz if you want to make a change in your life, it has to start with being present because 95% of our activity after 35 is unconscious. So how do we become present enough to make a change? Because it's so challenging. Nothing's hard, it's challenging to become present enough to change and that's what people lack. I love that. Brother, thank you so much for being on the show. Guys, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends, be legendary. Take care. Thank you guys so much for watching and being a part of this community. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. You're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset, cultivating grit, and unlocking your full potential.