Why Most Jacked Guys Are Still Insecure - David Laid

the most important thing is realizing that fundamentally you're a slave to an egotistical construction with either one and the goal is to transcend that even though your egotistical construction that you're feeding is societally rewarded right so that's a trap that you could really really fall into so the key is you need to go a little lower than that we are both funds of Charlie who put and he says that when somebody asks you what do you do you have the opportunity to hook lots of different things in so if someone was to ask you why do you do what you do what's the single thread that ties together all of the things that you do what would you say though that's interesting I feel like there's been like an evolution like throughout that because just what I do I guess it's like change like over time because like now like broadly speaking like on the surface like I make like YouTube like Fitness oriented videos but I think that started when I was like 13 or 14 years old like I got into like weightlifting and then I took a lot of pictures of my progress made a transformation video then ended up going viral and then I just like started making a YouTube channel just with like my friends in the gym just making random videos of working out and then I guess I started being more interested in making cinematic ish like content and just making it more like I don't know sophisticated like higher quality like Etc like more autistic and yeah I guess I just enjoy making videos that I just enjoy making do you wish sometimes that you're entrance into the world of virality social media YouTube hadn't been so tightly defined based on the way that you look the gym or do you like integrate that as part of your history perfectly fine I'd say so I mean I'd say at an earlier point maybe like years and years and years ago it was to the point where there was like a like I guess a slight like toxicity component to it because the whole reason that I got into working out was because of like very like generic stereotypical insecurities as being like extremely skinny feeling all that and then as I started getting more and more progress in the gym and then that obviously gave me like a self-esteem boost I thought a lot better about myself and then I would like take pictures and then obviously when people take pictures oftentimes they just want to like maximize it to get you know the best lighting angles Etc and then I got to a point where maybe like a few years into working out where I had just a decent bit enough of muscle to get pictures that look like semi-decent right but not in those pictures like in real life like without like a pump or whatever I remember just like feeling like still like very like just like skinny and insecure and then it was like a problem because even say like my senior year in high school I remember I would just wear hoodies just all the time because if you're wearing like a big baggy hoodie you can't exactly tell like like the size of an individual even though at this stage you're probably one of the biggest guys in yeah I mean I wasn't like gargantious or anything the sort but I definitely I I look like a normal reasonable human being with like an acceptable amount of like muscle tone right but still in my head there was like this crazy just Distortion body dysmorphia and then eventually the way that transferred over to social media is it was like that thing just Amplified even more in terms of just needing to look as good as I possibly could like pictures recognizing you for it yeah so if like I take a picture with someone and then my physique didn't look like as good as like I thought it would like in my own pictures that I would take or just buy myself in like particular curated environments that would definitely wreak havoc on my well-being and that was definitely sub-optimal but as more and more time went by I feel like that General complex just naturally like dissolved there's been a bit more peace where were you at now with you know because you're still what you're 24 uh I just turned 25 right okay so you've been on the internet for longer than I have despite being 10 years younger than me right given the fact that you have had this long career from basically when was when did that first video go viral 17 18. what the age that I was I was about 17. yeah so you know a good chunk of time that you'd spent with an awful lot of eyes on you on the internet all of this has been based around the way that you look you know this is coming out the back end of the like aesthetic bro like Jim's era type thing how have you managed to dispense with or how much have you managed to get rid of that body dysmorphia that sense of your sense of self-worth being attached to the way that you look you're leanness your size I think the way that that dissolution happened to whatever degree it has happened was through just so many years on end or such a prolonged period of time of just feeling such internal like discomfort and dissonance and just oh yeah just an overall sense of like discomfort in my actual day-to-day life having to just like micromanage just my own like self-image of how I think I look yada yada this is that and then it just got to the point where that was just so unsatisfying to operate in that way that the more and more I would distance myself from that like organically as a byproduct of like achieving a certain like understanding of how that makes me feel then I would just notice it would just not feel that way anymore but even like throughout the years like at times I would have situations where I could just see my brain re-entering previous thought patterns that I did when I was like fully ensconced in that mindset but back when I was fully ensconced in that mindset that was literally my like reality as I was like having those thoughts and feelings but now that previous thought pattern still exists but it it exists within a broader understanding so that when it arises I could just recognize this arizal and then it'll just go away and then um just like I don't know at peace or I feel fine like there's like no like issues really so I don't know I didn't like necessarily Implement like just like a strategic like plan or like take any steps or like create I don't know like a mental hygienic discipline to do that it just it just sort of just organically just happened after just like contemplation and stuff talk to me about the introspection and the self work that you've done over the last few years because just to interject them I'm like you're you're a young guy right you're 25. I was like an adult infant at 25. and the way that you're talking about letting go releasing difficult challenges that come up is very mature especially for somebody that's had broadly the internet world at their feet for quite a long time and I'm fascinated to work out how you go from that a static bro thing to now a still a relatively young age taking value in different stuff what have been the practices the thought patterns the influences that have got you I'd say one of the main reasons that happened is just my natural disposition of being extremely introverted so for me I spent a lot of time by myself that's my recharge period yada yada like we all know like how like introversion works like basically so for me just just long periods of time just by myself just thinking about [ __ ] are you an only child no I have three brothers okay yeah just thinking just obviously listening to just lots of podcasts like lots of great thinkers just borrowing like thought patterns from other people and just building this larger like conception like in my head and then contrasting that with my own insights and things that I've just experience and yeah just just lots of just just lots of like thinking because I feel like that's how most things are like typically like resolved like there's an idea that I forget like there's lots of people that talk about some sure you've heard people talk about this too but if you if you wanna like for example like you're familiar with like Naval ravacon like him talking about like prescriptions or like if he's spoken to an individual like like Capital group oh yes no way correct has he actually yeah the no prescriptions prescriptions guy was it an audio only podcast correct yeah so I mean you get that whole idea like it basically I feel like so if an individual is like struggling with like any source of like body dysmorphia image issues like Etc one line of thought is like okay you're like I have an issue like I have a problem I have like anxiety I have the stress I have all these like things going on so one school thought I was like okay let me okay I have issues right I need to fix issues so let me like Implement like certain like things and regimes to like combat these problems which is like useful in moderation to a degree but I feel like for just a really really deep internal authentic transformation you can't do that by following just certain like oh let me just write down like in my like gratitude Journal like 15 minutes a day like every single day like let me just like have this like Mantra like meditation kind of pattern maybe that works in some people to some degree but in a certain kind of way there's a type of like insincerity that goes with that because you become obsessed with doing the doing the the surface level generic action to get out of your state of distress as opposed to just sitting and being in the distress without any agenda and just just being there and in that state just naturally you somehow just wiggle out of or dissolve or just TR transcend like the issue per se or you don't even transcend it you could just understand it on a deeper level and this is that deeper understanding that gives like health I suppose if that makes any sense it does well I think that an interesting question might be how many of the strategies that you use to deal with the things that you don't like about yourself or about your life are not helping you to deal with them but are helping you to escape from them so yeah so I just remember so I remember so when I was like young when I was like 13 14-ish like 12 or whatever I was like very insecure I was like skinny whatever right so like I saw like you know muscular people that I look up seems like oh look I want that right so then I followed a bunch of people I gained like a lot of inspiration and I did like what I needed to do to like build my physique and then I think I was around the age of like 18 19 20 like sometime around that time and then I think that's when Jordan Peterson like first started popping off and um I was like listening to a lot of his content and I was like whoa there's something about this like resonates so much I remember like feeling just that I we just like have like certain just interesting ideas or like things going on in my brain but they couldn't like come out just right then when I would listen to Someone Like Jordan Peterson speak I had a very specific admiration for the his ability to so precisely with perfect congruence of what's Happening internally what he's saying externally to be at a one-to-one ratio with Just Like Music orchestral grade Precision with like his like delivery just almost like you regardless of what he was like saying it's like destruction not the concept of a speech that I just had like an admiration for in addition to the things that are obviously said as well so then that I feel like launched my brain into wanting to just like develop in those like General regions like categories and stuff so I would just listen to like so many other people the Sam Harris's um Alan Watts Etc like all these like different people so then I remember like reaching a point of like I was like 20 21-ish and then I had a general feeling of just like the whole body dysmorphic yada all this like stuff was just like catching up to me all these like generic whatever like all these problems that me and like so many people deal with and then I went down to the prescription path right and the prescription path would have been like I started going into yoga all the time and then I had this like huge ego complex like showing up on time like doing all like my poses like extreme extremely well because I'm like if I'm like doing this right and then I also like I'll like sit down like I'll meditate in the morning for 30 minutes whatever I was like so obsessed and excited to do that because obviously you know the thought pattern is doing these things will like alleviate me and like get me out of like my problems or whatever so then I feel like it's a very common thing for like so many people to do and then they become obsessed with doing that I became obsessed with doing that and then I felt like huge bursts of dopamine throughout that right because I'm like oh checkbox like yo the session finish like this thing finished like this like food like eating right and I would just feel like so excited but it was almost like a short-term just pleasure seeking fixation on like doing that and that it actually didn't like really like solve anything underneath you've still got the the existing problem okay so you've got in the first instance an issue with body dysmorphia or dissatisfaction with the way that you look you fix that by finding people that you like the way that they look and modeling what they do then you find people that you admire the way that they think and you compare the way that you think to the way that they think you then start to model off of the way that they think what are the similarities between or what is it that you were looking for do you think in both camps of people like what is it that ziz and Jordan Peterson have got in common that seduced you it's a great line what are the things that ziz and Jordan Peterson Ivan Carmen I say that it's to you to you entertainment of something that I for whatever reason deemed to me deemed to be admirable and non-negotiably necessary for me to have and in this is obvious case it's you know muscles uh Jordan Peterson brain Etc but so it's just their accomplishment of something yeah and I feel like you could almost tie that into I don't know if you could tie that into the general concept of like masculinity but yeah I'd say to me it's just something that they like achieved that I for whatever reason just wanted to have what sounds to me like if you want to roll masculinity into this you're trying from first principles to come up with like what is a modern renaissance man you know how do we have the body the brains the humility the benevolence the altruism the Insight the self-awareness you know the the power but not the Tyranny the money but not the greed you know how do we hold all of these things together one of the challenges that I've been talking about a lot on the show at the moment is finding a firm place for men to stand in the modern world and this isn't just good for men right because if you have good benevolent strong men they make pretty good partners usually on average like they're good for the women as well and they're good for the community and they're good for the society and they're good for the civilization and the GDP and the economics and all the rest of the stuff given the fact that you have spent a lot of time chronically online for the last 10 years what's your conception of male role models at the moment the challenge of masculinity why do you think it is that a lot of young men are feeling lost uh and requiring more and more of these role models I think there's many different like interpretations like one school of thought or Camp is like oh there's there's been a disruption of the nuclear family unit and there's like some conspiratorial reasons for that some non-conspiratorial reasons because you can go under the hypothesis that to you know have a more or less successful upbringing you want the standard nuclear family unit mom and dad and then with that being like fragmented fractured then that creates all sorts of problems so if that is the case then the the quote unquote child boy like in this instance isn't getting a certain type of isn't getting like a healthy proper dose of masculine energy like within like the household under the assumption that the household is fragmented for whatever reasons then that need still needs to be satiated and because it's not being satiated at home due to the easy access of the internet then that role models will be found like online so like in built in like intrinsic like in like The Human Condition is like that like need for that like kind of energy and if it's not being like given at home it's going to be needs to be supplemented elsewhere in all this case online and depending on the maybe maturity level of the individual or just how the individual is wired that like certain people gravitate towards these types of online figures other rules like rotate in this I mean not rotate resonate or connect with other people that they find on the internet and I think that the reason that people like Z's like Jordan Peterson and all like that are um influential and have like resonance is because they're arguably supplementing that need that a lot of people aren't getting in the stereotypically standard Classic Home nuclear family-esque kind of way yes I think yes I also think that even if you do have a nuclear family the rules and procedures that the generation before ours had you know if your dad grew up and never had the internet until you were born how is he going to be able to fold in understanding the way that social media Works understanding the way that online dating works the crazy crazy changes that we've seen with regards to men's roles the metoo movement all of this stuff I think that even the best meaning father in the world from the previous generation might struggle to have the language to be able to communicate with a kid that is growing up yeah no for sure times are changing so fast things are changing so quickly that you know the previous like rule set or whatever although it may have like certain fundamental pillars or parameters that will be universally applicable for any timeline whatsoever when things change as they inevitably do like things approaches need to be just like micromanaged and nuancedly like tweaked and then no one knows exactly to what degree that needs to be done like it's so easy to overshoot or undershoot and because the rules like haven't been made yet we're essentially figuring out like on the fly like what's like happening correct I also think that it's more than uh perhaps just a micro tweak I think that the last 30 to 40 years has been a bit of a left turn as soon as you introduce the internet one interesting thing that I was considering on the plane ride over here for the guys that didn't come up uh living on ziz and that Aesthetics bro era a lot of that was about pulling girls at festivals it was sort of quite chauvinistic it was uh harmless and funny and self-deprecating but there was still a lot of that like sort of gym flirtation energy in that how do you think in 2023 given the politics that we have at the moment given the hypersensitivity around approaching girls in the gym given the Advent of me too how do you think if you deposited ziz in 2023 that kind of content would be received now do you think that he would survive without cancellation someone like ziz I think that he would survive without cancellation probably because I think like extremist people like that that I mean they Garner like a certain like audience like the more Niche or extreme you could be like you'll cultivate an audience and obviously like a lot of people also dislike you as well and that'll like add to your benefit in terms of like social media like expansion so I mean there's like plenty of people that many people deem to be detestable but they're still extremely prevalent on the internet so no I mean I think all things considered I don't think this would be like canceled per se today because I mean there's so many other people that are like taking on like the ziz-esque manly energy and just like passing you know taking the torch that he you know passed on that are still living in those General like kinds of ways so I think that I think he would probably flourish just fine objectively speaking talking about this I'm fascinated about this trajectory right that that you've gone on specifically um what changes if you were able to create what you think the world of men that are around about your age need right now in terms of influences and influences what do you wish that you could see more of in terms of the sort of content that's out there in terms of the kind of messaging the kind of values the sort of things that men should be aspiring toward and the things that they should stop aspiring toward as well what would you try and prescribe I think generally speaking like a reduction in materialism would probably be a good thing and I think the additional emphasis on just developing like a confidence like any domain whatsoever whether it's like Pottery you know exercising working out like whatever it is so it would be I think it'd be better to shine more of a light on people's genuine like ability and attainments and skill level in whatever their idiosyncratic or generic just Pursuit and Endeavor is and just have uh appreciation for that in and of itself without any with a significantly less emphasis on the periphery of the tangible material assets of that that type of success could like yield so homozy on an episode that I did with him a couple of weeks ago said far more people are kept poor and stupid by their ego than get rich off it yeah and you know he made this great point that if you are somebody that considers yourself to be a high performer uh that is pushing and always trying to grow and you're able to retain your ego it's because you're in the wrong room and his point was even though he's now worth 100 Mil he's got this acquisition.com he's doing these massive deals he is permanently in rooms where he is both the stupidest and poorest person in the room how can you allow an ego to proliferate and grow when you're permanently the lowest wrong of the ladder and his argument was basically that ego comes from people artificially Walling off the size of the pond that they get into to allow themselves to always be the biggest fish but also I feel like it comes down to their deepest most fundamental motivation because for example you could take someone like Alex he desperately is a wired to do something and wants to do something just like work build his Empire business whatever that's like his sort of thing so he just he simply needs to do that to be satiated happy and like satisfied right so that's just what he's on and in order to be able to do that as effectively as he possibly can manage that would necessitate and require a very high level of like self-awareness and obviously self-awareness is the antithesis the ego so that's just simply what he what he wants to do and then you could take someone else that is like the small Pawn like ego situation their primary most fundamental desire isn't doing something for its own sake or any you know deeper reason like that it's simply towards the the growth and maintenance of the ego right and that's just simple that's just what their motivation is like they're simply they're more interested in like having a certain self-image of themselves and doing everything to convince other people of that image and commit some cells of that image because to them that's more important than other things so it's just a a a different hierarchy of like priorities right so like yeah the lower level development psyche is going to want to favor just egotistical-ish types of things how do you square this circle with the person that's listening to this and going hang on you're David [ __ ] laid like you're Mr Instagram ziz era like how have you made that change how have you made that transition from being somebody who outwardly it seemed like it was and you mentioned yourself it was to satiate your feelings of insufficiency to now get to a place where I mean how many videos have you posted on YouTube in the last year probably less than 12 how many Instagram posts have you done in the last year less than 20. it's been out of decline but my point being that from where I can see and I didn't get to hear you on podcasts before I think that your trajectory in terms of how you're sounding to me in terms of the things that you're thinking about is [ __ ] phenomenal I would have happily taken the sabbatical from social media if what it's resulted in is you being like this but how do you get to that point there are guys on the internet that are watching the ego lifter the materialist Ferrari driver the Richard Mill red louboutin's bottom table at Club live in Miami what is it that can drag those people out of that or what would you say to those like young guys if you could why should they be bothered about this thing which seems hard and difficult and nuanced and no one gives a [ __ ] about except for their own sense of existential self-worth I think I think a lot of those people that like operate like that like they have like a vague understanding that like maybe the way in which they're operating from a lot of other people's points of view is like seen as like negative egotistical immature like Etc so they have like that like General like awareness and they're maybe aware that they just to satisfy you know Society at a whole you know expectations of them they would maybe like cease or halt or like slow down on some of that behavior or like you know Elk Road or Etc but they're like aware of that but they just they just they just don't want to do it because going back to what I was saying before that's just simply like they're just more interested in doing that that's that's like where the current level of like their development is so in the same way like to me the own the way that I outgrew whatever like I grew like whatever time like it came from just like just organic like introspection so going back to kind of what I was like saying in the beginning like you just simply you need to just examine you need you just need to just like like look at what you're doing and just like look at how you're living and look at how you're operating and just like like dissect it as much as you can and be as on like be honest with yourself obviously and like look at it and I feel like if you're genuinely sincerely doing that right you're more than likely to realize how that pattern that style of like living is just disadvantageous for your absolute best interest and through coming to that realization you just organically stop doing that you don't have to see the difference yeah you don't have to discipline yourself to stop doing like oh I really want to do it but I want to go to this but I can't like no you just won't have that desire and that's the best place to be at because why do you want to like it's just where you got to arrive you know so there's my favorite ever blog post of all time is by a guy called kailash and Rhoda and it's called what do you want to want and he talks about the difference between once and what we want to want so once our societal programming their paths at least resistance that the way that you've dealt with past trauma they are all of those things what you want to want involves you going in and reprogramming your desires you want to end up at a place where what you want is what you want to want and he uses this example of the fact that if you don't go in and program your desires the best thing that you can hope for is to be a rich successful or famous slave a slave to the impulses of your body the confused biochemical signals that you get the desires of the people around you and when I read that and this is you know five years ago now I thought what do I want to want in life genuinely what do I want to want like I have the opportunity laws of thermodynamics and like a little bit of Economics restricting I can want anything this is what we're talking about here we're talking about digging away at all of the layers of ego and predisposition and expectation that you've built up and getting yourself to something that's firmer getting yourself to something which is what you want to want foreign yeah I mean I I think there's a lot of validity in that because basically like what you're saying is like you a person wants certain things and then maybe he realizes some degree like these just kind of this maybe maybe isn't my best interest like silly like little hypothesis lurking in the back of the mind okay so if I'm an autonomous being I could I could more or less curate or decide what I want to want so if that's a possibility let's just look broadly speaking what are some of the things that would maybe be in more of a best interest for me to one and then you decide those things and you fixate in that pattern I mean fixate in that direction and even if you you could argue that that's still prescription-esque to some degree but then you could also say that doing that is better than just continuing wanting those like sub-optimal things so if that if that's what gets you moving in that direction then it's absolutely yeah and direction is more important than speed right like you can be going as fast as possible in the wrong direction and it actually takes you further away from the destination this is something that a lot of people I call it the uh monopods which is mid-20s toward late 20s these a lot of guys it seems like you had yours earlier realized that a lot of the values that they hold a lot of the things that previously they took a sense of self-worth from that the world told them that they should value they don't make them feel fulfilled anymore and they go oh [ __ ] like I I got toward the top of this mountain and I realized that it was the wrong Mountain that I climbed and actually I was supposed to be on that one over there and it's difficult because in order to get to that one you need to go back down this one that you've already climbed you need to dispense with the stuff that you've that you've got rid of this is what I think introversion is such a cheat code because like I feel like you're less at the mercy of other people's designs because even like for me I noticed that if I'm the more frequently and the more for a sustained period of time I'm involved in certain just patterns of behavior oftentimes socially or just just what I do in general you just become locked in those patterns and it becomes more difficult you have more of like a narrow perspective so you know the brain's Malibu it just gets programmed in that way and you're just kind of operating that way so for me a lot of like the best insights that I've gotten are like times when I like completely just like fully detached and just enter this weird like meditative just like Flow State of just being just so just alone yeah so it's just I feel like yeah I mean almost a prescriptive thing that you could say is to just stop I mean that's what they say like psychedelics do I think I heard someone on Joe Rogan talk about he had like a nice analogy it's like the brain is like like a hill covered in snow and then when skis go down the snow that's a thought Behavior pattern Etc and the more you have it the more deeper that Groove gets and then the psychedelics they just like wipe the snow correct so detaching from society detaching and you know reclusing yourself for a period of time it's like a micro form of like a psychedelic snow flattening kind of thing because you're removing the external inputs as best you can removing the inputs stopping the behavior patterns just allowing yourself to see things differently and have different patterns for the people who are thinking about monk mode um there's a really great blog post by illimitable man if you just search illimitable man monk mode 13 years old now I think but it's really really great there's the three eyes isolation introspection some of the [ __ ] there's a third one anyway that I really really enjoyed that blog post and that was good to me one thing that I do find and this is me almost directly like telling it to Hamza my friend monk monk can be taken to an extreme and you can do you can obsess over isolated self-development too much yeah the way that I the way that I would look at that is like monk mode could become a detrimental extreme when monk mode becomes hyper prescriptionized because I feel like the way it becomes an extreme is like you're like okay I want to self-improve myself just monk mode right so they need to become obsessed with rpe 10 just maxing out like monk mode so there the true fundamental motivation isn't understanding things the true fundamental motivation is to feel good about yourself from maxing out monk mode for the egotistical grad because yeah I mean like just how we talked about how you say young individuals like materialistic programmed by Society like wrong values and stuff the reason that they're doing that is because that satisfies their ego that's been programmed and programmed into them right someone going all out monk mode right upsellably abstaining from all of that right there there they have the exact same ego but the subtle difference is that they could feel a sense of just like moral superiority right because like I'm better than you because of all of that but in reality they have the same ego it's just transmuted into something else this is a very important point that I want everybody to take home which is you can justify any kind of activity as being the thing that is going to give you a sense of dopaminergic I achieved the next thing just because you have switched one type of obsession for another type of obsession does not necessarily mean that that obsession is more holistic You could argue given the choice between being obsessed with the gym and being obsessed with taking heroin that the gym is objectively a better Obsession to have but if you're going to get really down to zero what we're talking about is how can we sit with the discomfort of not being enough how can we sit with the discomfort of not having an obsession at all what does that feel like and this is like almost a psychedelic point right to get rid of to get rid of the desire to need those things overall um you know I feel like that that's a very good point the idea that like yeah like doing heroin or whatever or like versus like working out in the gym like it's a similar kind of egotistical Pursuit but due to like I mean obviously the working out it's like the healthier thing and the externality of one is very different exactly so that's what I'm getting at is the the externality could be like drastically different for example like you could be addicted to heroin or you could be addicted to just like rampant entrepreneurial just Financial just right Hedonism and that and then again due to how Society is it's celebrated but like you said it is the most important thing is realizing that fundamentally you're a Slave to an egotistical construction with either one and the goal is to transcend that even though your egotistical construction that you're feeding is societally rewarded right so that's a trap that you could really really fall into so the key is you need to go a little lower than that yep I agree it's a very difficult thing to do to let go of something which is not destructive reinforced praised gives you accolades and really importantly like you said gives you the moral High ground it's like look at me look at how awakened I am this is a term that you might I might not be familiar with called spiritual bypass so have you heard of this before yeah so um people that go to being South America take a ton of Ayahuasca come back and proselytize extol the virtues of this amazing Peak experience that they've had don't do any of the integration don't do any of the self work go back to being the same maybe not even a piece of [ __ ] but just go back to being the same person that they were before and then go and do it again right that's spiritual Bypass or a better I prefer spiritual tourism that you can go and like visit it like a holiday home and come back and forget about all of the things that you learned the goal is to integrate each of these different points here so one thing that was very formative for me and I'm interested to find out about your experience as well I had a pretty serious back injury about four years ago got into CrossFit uh was way stronger than my body could deal with and managed to slip two discs I found Stu McGill number one back pain specialist on the planet I know that you have worked with him too how difficult was it for you as somebody who had a lot of his self-worth wrapped up in the way that he looked to have that taken away from you by first off a back injury and secondly by what I'm guessing if you've followed what Stu told you to do was an unbelievably slow painful very humbling process of slow Rehabilitation so just get tied real nicely so so with me due to having all the body dysmorphia insecurity just like needing to work out to feel like the validation self-love self-worth Etc right that other extremes that that pushed me into is just like how like intense like I would exercise right I would just you know horrible form lift as much as I could just pain tolerance like push through all of that right and deadlift Sumo as well so here's the thing so from one point of view it's like wow that's so admirable like you just work so hard you're so disciplined You're So Dedicated that's just so amazing good for you but if you you know look behind the curtain a little bit that's not this that's not that altruistic and pure of like an energy source right it's a toxic energy source and that toxic energy sources and the insecurity and then basically that led me to just severe injuries of my spine because horrible form lifting heavy weight blah blah so with that right it's almost like my back injury is a personification of being fueled by a toxic fuel source right and then the thing is like someone could have told me back in the days oh like you know you shouldn't be like lifting this heavy you shouldn't be doing this you should have been more careful right and that's me being like aware that maybe I shouldn't be doing that in the same way as someone that's like living a very hedonistic young immature egotistic lifestyle is also vaguely aware that maybe shouldn't be doing that I had that same awareness too but even though I knew that it just didn't matter because my my goal was like so egotistical at the end of the day which is why the back situation like needed to happen to me like it well yes in a certain kind of way but I feel like it was inevitable to happen because I mean one school of thought is like for people to make like a proper Jurassic change like they need to hit like a form of like rock bottom right I was having this thought the other day maybe it's like hurted someone I don't remember but it's like swimming along the lines of like wisdom is often if not exclusively attained after like like a rock bottom-ish type of situation but then ideally you'd want that wisdom like beforehand but paradoxy can only be gained after like a rock bottom like kind of thing so it's like this weird Tango inverted Loop thing but yes I mean like for me that kind of definitely aided in a lot of the um just introspection or like growth or whatever just like having like that back situation happen because it forced me to just like slow down like like I was in such debilitating pain that like not only could I not deadlift or squat like the weight that I wanted to I couldn't deadlift squatter all I couldn't work out sometimes how I wanted to I'd just be laying in bed with just chronic debilitating pain and to get out of that really wasn't that difficult at all I mean it was but when I say not that difficult Alma and it's just like stop doing stupid things that hurt you and like rest but how my brain was wired at the time that's not an option like I just need to go go go go go go go go go go go go go so it hit a point where so you can almost argue that it wasn't this just altruistic transformation it literally hit a point where the back pain was so debilitating that I would rather kill my previous ego and start from scratch then I would maintain that ego and tolerate the back pain because before it wasn't back pain was here ego was here still more worth it but when when those scales like tip just the right amount it was an organic shift because I literally just had no other choice so I literally constrained by your body yeah so like I had to start from Ground Zero and I mean yeah that's changed like not being so extremist all out in the gym like being very like patient disciplined careful with like how to go about something as simple as like training where in the past like oh I feel good tonight Max just all the time and so I feel like that new mindset now that I got from dealing with my back injuries has definitely permeated out like into other areas but I think it arguably needed to happen to Checkmate me into a form of like introspection so me too me too man uh it came at the right time I had spent all of my 20s being a commercial Man model uh walking around with my knight with my top off and nightclubs uh getting photographed by Dean and um or a lot of my self-worth was wrapped up in that you know even though I wasn't doing the online thing to the degree that you were I still was like the guy that was in shape I was always the like one of the biggest one of the leanest amongst my friends and that gets taken away from you and you think oh [ __ ] who am I now okay who am I now when all of the things all of the places that I took my self-worth from are gone well [ __ ] like what what's left because this isn't going to be here forever I had uh thought of a quote the other day which was um your looks are a depreciating asset your mind is an appreciating asset invest yourself worth appropriately like everybody no matter whether you think that your sexual market value as a guy is going to Peak at 45 like there is going to come a time where you get over the top of that hill and it's going to start descending like even [ __ ] David Gandhi right is gonna start descending at some point you have the opportunity to invest in something which is Evergreen which is going to compound which is going to benefit the rest of the world and that's not to say the people that are in shape can't benefit the rest of the world it's good to be motivational so on and so forth but especially for women I think there was this story about Paulina parikova who is a supermodel in the 90s 80s and 90s and she's now 56 and her husband had died and there was a famous story that came out about her about a year and a half ago and she was lamenting the fact that as a 56 year old she walks into parties and none of the guys look at her anymore because they're all distracted by the 23 year olds that are in the room and she was saying you know a lot of my self-worth I feel really terrible and so on and so forth and it made me sad it made me sad because I was looking at somebody who was still taking their fundamental sense of self-worth from the way that they looked with I think two or three kids um and it just it doesn't feel graceful do you know what I mean like it doesn't feel like somebody has has allowed themselves to to get Harmony and Grace and transcend and include the things that they had before and also there's obviously a massive amount of like hubris and hypocrisy here because when you were 22 you didn't care about the 56 year old that was in the room that all of the guys looking at you were ignoring to look at it's like look this is the Ark of life everybody knows that it's coming everybody knows that your looks are going to fade that you're going to become sick or ill or destitute that you're going to run out of money that the people around you are going to die and all that you're going to be left with is the power of your thoughts right how much resilience do you have that you can rely on so that when the hard thing happens you have somewhere for him to stand and if the firmest place that you have to stand is I am single digit body fat you were in for a hard [ __ ] time yeah um any you know external metric or just anything that you like latch onto you know whether it be your body fat percentage or your youthful looks that diminish with age that you just get outside your bank account like forms a status like Etc just yeah if you become I mean it's like a Buddha saying like you just become like attached to stuff it's just a problem it's just not good but there is an enjoyment in you know having like like a huge bank account or enjoying your looks to a very very high degree don't don't get me wrong like you need external accolades right like I'm not saying that we can like dispense with say it's a primal hair hierarchy or whatever yeah yeah but it just I guess I guess it will put it like yeah like that stuff is necessarily useful to like certain like healthy degrees but obviously not sufficient necessary but not sufficient necessary but not sufficient and it's just yeah I mean it's like a spectrum of like the more you like rely on those kind of things for like the like well-being and like happiness it's just you just you just run into problems and it just and like like you were saying like you want to be in a state where when all is like said and done and it's just you that you have like something like firmer to stand on so yeah what are your thoughts about the modern world of dating especially for young guys do you think about this much there's a lot of advice out there for young dudes with regards to dating especially to do with gym videos approaching girls in the gym and the lack thereof and the challenges of guys approaching and so on and so forth what's your conception on this I mean I guess modern dating like the internet is obviously played like a massive role like the whole dating apps that being a situation um I mean I think obviously speaking things like the internet have like drastically reduced like genuine like human-like discourse where like in the past a lot more conversations where like in person that were like real because like when like two people are saying communicating over text it's such a narrow dialogue when you're like with someone in person there's like all these just energetic components intangible micro facial expressions like all of that and that's preferable slash arguably needed to have like a maximally rich and satisfying insatiating like Human Experience overall with people like in any relationship friendship s kind of context so I think just like the simple idea of that that being reduced due to the introduction of the internet although the internet obviously has a lot of benefits you can meet people around the world different areas Etc there is like that like obvious downside and with that being said there would be like an isolation component as well to you know socializing with real people less and then living in your own head and then communicating and just meeting and talking to people on like dating apps and stuff it and then you could just start downloading and integrating certain just like toxic ideologies on male female intersexual dynamics that could have some tidbits of truth but without contrasting it and integrating it with your own like real experience because you have none because you're just isolated and extracting ideologies online that that could be just a massive detriment to your dating life dude I've been harping on about this for so long I did an interview for uh a new the redone sub stack of what used to be ideas sleep furiously and they've changed the name and I can't remember what it is and they did it we did a little interview and they talked about um why is it that men seem to be struggling with the advice that they get online and remember for the girls that are listening you need the advice that men get online to be good because you are the one that's going to have to put up with these [ __ ] men right so my point was if you're chronically online and most of your experiences around male to female interactions have been mediated through the internet what are the kinds of stories that are the ones that go the most viral online they're the most egregious they're the one where some terrible catastrophe happens and the guy comes home and loses his house and his left foot and she she takes his like all of his hairline in the divorce and that's the story that's going to go viral yeah and you can almost parallel this with prescriptions because if you don't have real you know sufficient amount whatever that means of a real experience with real people and you're just you know getting ideologies online or just hearing worst case catastrophic scenarios Etc a lot of like um theoretical Frameworks that could be laid forward kid in isolation in the abstract makes so much sense and the math could like run out and like it works out especially when extreme scenarios like added upon that and then when it comes to dating advice just like like what you should say to approach and this is that like the more prescriptions like you add on it just becomes just like such a disaster and but then people can think oh but how do I do this whole thing if I don't have any like prescriptions or like know what to say or how to go about it right but the thing is paradoxically so if you like lay that like to the waist side right and then you're like around like people like speaking to people girls Etc whatever it may be a certain organic chemistry arises if you would like Let It arise but the more weird prescriptions and layers like you add on top of that you're just like [ __ ] the whole thing up and it just becomes off so paradoxically leaving that to the waistline your body and your instincts will take over and they'll just like know what to do right but so that's almost another way putting it the Advent and introduction of the internet dating apps Etc has suppressed the natural organic Instinct in favor of just weird toxic arguably toxic like programming with you know how to go about things and that just crates just in a GMO inorganic disaster yeah so this prescriptions thing I think we just need to drill this home for the people that maybe aren't familiar with kapil's work the point is if you don't have any real world experience the only place that you're going to get any tactics from are things that have been told to you that you've never actually come up with in the real world but if you were to spend let's say that you could live for eternity and have an unlimited number of interactions if what the prescriptions are are accurate you would inevitably arrive at them in any case if I gave you a million years to work out and you didn't know it the the most effective way to get a bar from the floor overhead in one single movement you would eventually Arise at something close to a snatch because it is simply reality and Theory coming up together Constantine kissing the guy that does trigonometry quoted this unbelievable line the other day that said in theory theory and practice are the same in practice they're different just a thought that I was having as you were saying that is so you could like pair this whole prescription idea like from the dating back to like like working out for instance like you have someone that's never worked out before right but they'll sit and they'll learn like all like the theory and the this and that Etc and like what their personal ideal regimen would be and then come up with that and then if they try to execute it if they even bother to do so like sometimes it will like fall through because just their bodies are different like how their lifestyles are set up so yeah even prescriptions could be like detrimental in something even a simple in the realm of Fitness because if you just like start like doing it right if you want to go all out and be like the best of all time then obviously you're gonna need to follow like certain things but the problem I have with the problem I have generally with kapils and I I had this problem when I spoke to Kapil on the show the issue I have with Kapil is no prescriptions point is that unlimited degrees of freedom allow people to find things through experience however you need guidelines and guardrails why are we talking about this crisis of masculinity where guys are lost and alone it's because everything has been been blown open if everything is masculinity then nothing is masculinity right and you go okay from first principles please work out how you are supposed to show up in the world and you go dude that's really really hard and you what you want me to do that for diet and my role in society and the way that I should make money and the way I should interact with my friends and the way that I should get a girlfriend and the way that I should become a father like it's [ __ ] exhausting the best way that I found for this and this is where I diverge from kapil's work the best way that I've found from this is that in the beginning of anything you need instruction because you have no experience to rely on you don't want to become dogmatic about the instruction but you do need to take it so you explore at the start and then you exploit over time do lots of different things find out what works for you and then over time once you have learned the rules you can break the rules but breaking the rules before you learn the rules is just not playing the game yeah no I agree with that I did such a poor job of expressing what I wanted to with that um parallel with prescriptions with working out but yeah I mean obviously if you're getting like into fitness like you you're gonna follow like something like vague program in general I think the idea that I was like trying to get at is you're better off like taking a random workout program whatever it may be just going out doing it seeing how you respond to it just seeing how much you like working out in general maybe you don't want to be a heavyweight bodybuilder maybe you just want to work out a few times we can get in shape and that'll like satisfy you but you won't know that unless you actually try so that's all fine what I was getting at is not doing anything just having like all like the theory like what works out and then it's just not being like a practical like execution in your actual life it was more something like that but I agree with the Nuance like obviously like you can't derive absolutely everything and just know how to just be like work out from first principles obviously like when you're a kid like you need to be taught language you need to be able to talk your shoes those are prescriptions from a certain point of view yeah so yeah that was where I got caught that was where I got caught with Kapil stuff so I did a newsletter that I wanted to read to you uh from the other week and I think that this is this is very very interesting it's something I've been thinking about a lot this is from David Goggins it's so easy to be great because most of the world is weak if you are even remotely a Savage you will run these people over it's all out there for the taking right now that's Dana White everyone rails against the victim mentality that seems to be sweeping certain areas of the world I get it you don't want your town or country or species to go to hell because everyone has forgotten how to take some discomfort or deal with challenges in life but on another hand this rampant fragility is your competitive Advantage the bar has never been set lower a bit of consistency a bit of intentionality a bit of resilience and a gram of talent will make you into an absolute killer I also understand that you probably want to raise other people up along with you having a greatness stand on the shoulders of the world's fragility may seem exploitative and I love the idea of not just improving yourself but changing those around you for the better but there's a limit your efforts are multiplied by 10 times when building with the right people and by 0.01 times when building with the wrong people if someone refuses to alter their habits or update their worldview or improve their life despite being given all of the tools and encouragement they need by you then they can stay where they are it is not your job to drown Yourself by trying to keep others afloat who don't want to change humans don't mind hardship in fact they thrive on it what they mind is not feeling necessary modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary that's Sebastian younger it's easy to be a Savage when everyone else is a [ __ ] but sometimes it's hard to find a sidekick what do you think about that what does that mean that last word sometimes with the sidekick that if you're with the right people your efforts are multiplied by 10 times and if they're with the wrong people then they're restricted basically yeah I mean I can go back to like the simple saying like you're like the average of like the five people that you surround yourself with and you gain exponential momentum in the direction that you're going with so if you're with a sub-optimal set of people with values that aren't in your best interest you're going to be accelerated in an accelerated fashion going in the wrong direction what about this balance between fragility of the modern world being a competitive advantage well I think with a lot of those people like the gogs and the few that you said like that it's a very like stereotypically Uber masculine kind of like mindset which is like fine right but I feel like sometimes that can be taken to an absolute like ridiculous like extreme but the right amount of that is like like a good thing like what are you aiming for what's an integrated version of that to you I like the idea of having an indestructible mindset being able to overcome like obstacles and adversities and having that like just like that just focus intensity but I think that sometimes you can get just exclusively like fixated on that like for example with David Goggins he went through just like extremely like traumatic stuff like I've like heard him on so many podcasts and like I've like like audiobook like a good amount of like his book so I know like the backstory the dad Etc is really just like horrible stuff and for him I just all the experience and everything that he's gone through just in order for him to be able to like Thrive and come out of that he needed to adopt a certain kind of just like just indestructible god-like mindset which he did achieve the coping mechanism yeah exactly that's exactly it it's a coping mechanism in the same way that you could look at um me working hard on the gym when I was younger oh that's like so admirable but reality that the fuel wasn't like the most like positive thing so this you could make a semi-ish kind of like parallel to the David goggin situation because of what he went through he simply he needed to adapt that way it was a necessary coping mechanism and his situation was so extreme and he talked about it just so well like poetically which is so much like passion and intensity that a lot of people when they read that they resonate with it like tremendously especially if they're like lacking that if they're lacking just like the discipline and that kind of stuff hearing someone like David Goggins give you the theoretical framework of being able to overcome stuff combined with his own painfully visceral experience of it it'll just give you Goosebumps hearing and if you have a depletion or lack of that in like your own character you're going to naturally gravitate to like someone like him and he'll kill you yeah exactly you're going to get the benefit in the same way that people would be inspired by me working out when I was younger and that would benefit them even though the fuel source pushing me wasn't like the most cleanest form of gasoline so although mindsets like that are extremely extremely useful and Powerful in like certain circumstances but I feel like because I mean I feel like for like a David goggin situation like like at a certain point like he might even go like deeper when it comes to just his just like character Arc just like his like development is like a human being I just had the parallel for example is like someone like Mike Tyson like when he was like super young just like indestructive like super villain like and as he's like gotten older like a lot of his like temperament has just like simply transformed like he was so aggressive and just intense like when he was like younger because I don't know his full situation but maybe it's a form of coping mechanism maybe it was just in his DNA to be like that but he would just like that then over time he just mellowed out in a certain kind of way and that's not better or worse of mailing out that's just like the arc that he's going through but then you could say like if David Goggins I'm not David if uh Mike Tyson was that exact same way that he was when he was younger into his old age where he is right now you'd almost look at that and be like there's like like there's still like fixation in a previous behavioral pattern that's no longer included well I think the point here is that kind of almost like a resentment that very visceral powerful um scarcity mindset is an unbelievably potent fuel but it's really [ __ ] toxic yeah I mean I wouldn't it can be toxic in certain instances I don't say I don't think it's like purely like toxic like in I say toxic to you it's toxic to the inside like yes it's very very good like being driven by a sense of insufficiency can cause people to do unbelievable things right it almost all of the high performers that I know are not driven by what it looks like from the outside and what it should be proselytized it's this beautiful balance of you know fulfilling the the logo speaking forward and manifesting your essence it's not that running away from something which makes them feel insufficient there is a voice inside the head that is a disparaging parent it's a bullet school it's a teacher that didn't believe in them it's an abandoned sibling something inside of them is saying you are not enough the only way that you can make yourself enough is to perform out there in the world and if you perform well enough maybe finally the world will accept you and you will be worthy of love that is an energy that [ __ ] every single high performer on the planet except for like three people can resonate with because running away from something that you fear is an unbelievably potent Fuel and running towards something that you want comparatively is less so but if you use the fuel that pushes you away from something that you fear for too long you will end up having malignant coping strategies and it will burn everything that's inside of you as well [ __ ] powerful but it's going to make that engine run at a very high rate it's powerful and you'll need to use that fuel for a certain period of time when it's needed but then it's important or ideal for your best interest to want to just like transcend and like go forward correct another quote so this will be everyone will have seen this by now because the whole Mosley episode will be out but it wasn't out before this and what he was talking about as you said was um some of the challenges and the setbacks that people have and how that could give them the justification for maybe not being where they could be and he said this really great quote which was if you have suffered from sexism your entire life if you have suffered from racism your entire life you would be absolutely justified in not being at the place where somebody who didn't have those disadvantages is however the advantage that you do have is that unlike me or you or homozy you can be a role model to those people who did have those problems because I can guarantee you that there is someone who had it worse and did it better and he said that and I was like holy [ __ ] that is so good because for me somebody that went through challenges as a kid uh who had a bit of a chip on his shoulder about not being in uh not feeling like I was supported and having to do a lot of this work myself like I had to [ __ ] pick myself up by my bootstraps first principles okay what do I want to Value how do I want to do this let's build a thing on my own twice and getting rid of that like getting rid of that chip that was on my shoulder without using it as the bitter like I'm doing this to prove the [ __ ] bullies wrong I'm doing this to prove the people that didn't believe me wrong I'm doing this to prove the place that I came from that didn't have the big enough Vision to help me wrong the way that that became was made alchemized to feel more holistic was that I thought okay well there's other people that are going to be feeling this too those are the people that are going to go through these challenges not only can I beat the setbacks that I feel like I had but I can also help other people from get past to get past them too and I can be like look here's the pitfalls here's how you expedite success not only did this thing not get me but it's not going to get you either and that's the best way I think to transcend challenges and traumas that you've had in your past not only do you beat it but you help everybody else to beat it as well you know I completely agree it's like the tipping scale up you could either have it lean in the in the toxic resentful like direction or you could optimize and leverage it in like a greater scale benevolent positive like way that's definitely the way to go what do you want to how do you want to serve the world no like you've got creative director at gymshark whatever you are your new job role you have a massive amount of reach you have as far as I can tell the raw materials to be able to go and do pretty much anything you want along with a [ __ ] ton of time how do you want to serve the world now I'm not entirely and enticely I'm not entirely precisely sure I'm still working on that exact agenda and like figuring out like the most optimal way to do that but like the ideas came on my head is like for example when they talk about with like when you're like raising like children like when you're like apparently like the kids like hear nothing that you say and like see everything that you do it's almost like the person like that you are he's like what sub communicates at the highest level like to people basically if if you're if you're a certain kind of if you live or exists in the right kind of way like whatever that means like as a parent to your kid then the kid gets like it has like a healthy development as opposed to doing everything incorrectly but saying like all the right things so for me even though I don't know like precisely what I'm gonna do like in a tangible fashion to just like help Society of the world at scale as I'm figuring that out like the thing that I'm putting emphasis and priority on is just like like living in congruence or just feeling just like optimize and just like aligned with like with just how I am as a person like how do I operate on just like a daily basis even like with the most like subtlest little things what's that highest sense of self what what are the things that you value the most when you're operating at your highest level what do you genuinely take pride in um well like lately for a good amount of time now it's just been I guess forms of like like artistic expression like in a sense whether it be like something as like simple as like making like a YouTube video that's like like cinematic or well-made like in a certain area or just coloring and like editing just like videos I don't know just like just like simple things like that I don't know like lately I'm finding a very high degree of just like intrinsic my bad intrinsic satiation with doing I guess just artistic things in a way and like and what about personally like what is it that you when you show up for yourself like what are you most proud of so I'll give you some of mine so it's when I tell the truth like when I tell the truth is the most important thing yeah and I mean for me like when you initially said that that was like one of the first things that came to mind but but yeah no I mean that's like like that's like a huge one too and like all like micro like little situation because it's so easy to just like like kind of like like exactly and you could like feel and like sense all of those so yeah what else you need to tell the truth what else do you need to do come on to be the person that you want to be what else do you need to do I don't have a precise answer at the moment but I feel like with the Baseline of just like honesty and all like the micro and macro situations like that like covers like a good amount of it and like spawns out into other things but I feel like it's pretty all-encompassing one I think that's the foundation yeah I think you're right but you know for me for instance like vulnerability learning to be increasingly vulnerable which again everything is a form of truth right me saying that I show up and be um like compassionate to my friends that's a form of truthfulness right it's like trying to be your best self going forward being vulnerable um for me leaning into difficult things for instance like one of the problems of having uh increasing increasing number of resources and like material success or whatever is that success can make you soft and it can make you lazy and it can make you rely on other people uh which is something that I've managed to avoid but I've managed to avoid it mostly through a combination of neuroticism and like Obsession not through the you know transcended no prescription I do not just I simply don't want it it's like being fixed by something which is also still a relatively toxic fuel um I'm impressed by you man I think that you're a very impressive individual I think that the trajectory that you've been on from where you were to where you are is fantastic I'm really really glad that you've got the background that you have and the reason that I've like tried to drill so much into the psychological side of what we've spoken about today is that from the outside the many million followers on Instagram the you know 50 60 million play video of the body transformation it gives people not only a preconception about the person that you are but it makes them presume that you would be locked into a particular type of uh life path the same way as I know like YouTube releases a new album and all of their old fans hate it they go well look guess what we like it this is the direction that we're going in now right and this is the getting to the top of the mountain and looking across and going I think I'm on the wrong [ __ ] Mountain [ __ ] I have to go down I need to transcend and include uh I'm really really glad that you're doing what you're doing I'm really glad that you're on the trajectory that you're on yeah I'm excited to see where it goes it's an adventure where should people go if they want to keep up to date with the stuff that you do um just um my YouTube channel mainly just search David laid and yeah that's basically it like my Instagram same thing David laid and uh if you guys want to have like a very natural and healthy and optimized pre-workout you could also buy my pre-workout at euphoriafree.com and yeah that's where you can find me David I appreciate you thank you for today my pleasure what's happening people thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks and don't forget to subscribe peace thank you