Christine Hassler, a former Hollywood agent turned life coach, reveals how childhood bullying and suppressed anger—treated with Prozac until 30—fueled her career-driven despair. After quitting at 26 amid losses, she pivoted to spiritual psychology, rewriting self-worth narratives through structured retreats like "Anger Burn," blending foam noodles, Metallica, and gluten-free diets for emotional release. Joe Rogan compares her journey to his own hyperactive brain, managed by three jobs and martial arts mastery, while both critique rigid systems—corporate roles, outdated education—that stifle creativity. Hassler’s gradual weaning from meds and small daily actions (checklists, accountability) contrast Rogan’s chaotic discipline, underscoring that real change demands incremental work, not quick fixes. [Automatically generated summary]
So here I am now, 24, 25, working at a big agency, representing clients.
I was the youngest female agent in the department, maybe even in...
I don't know.
I was really young, got promoted really, really super young.
And I was dating the head of a movie studio and I was living this amazing Hollywood life, like making a lot of money, going to the Oscars and Golden Globes, private jets, hanging out with celebrities.
Like I totally had it all.
But I still wasn't happy.
It was like I'd achieve one thing and then there had to be the next thing.
And then I'd achieve this and then there had to be the next thing.
You know, I'd get the guy.
I still wouldn't be happy.
I'd get the promotion still.
I was on that constant chase and nothing ever was like doing it.
So about two years I did this job.
I'm still on antidepressants.
I'm also taking anti-anxiety pills at the time and just like trying to like manage my life.
And I was one of those people that I could really look good from the outside.
I could seem like I had it all together.
And the inside was a totally different story.
It's kind of like a duck on water.
It looks smooth, but underneath it's like...
That was what I was like.
And a lot of people ask me about how to achieve all this and still suffer from depression.
And I was a very functional, depressed person.
A lot of people think if you're depressed, you just lay in bed all day.
And watch, you know, soap operas or something.
But that's not the, that doesn't, you know, summarize all depression.
Like there's different ways it shows up.
And so I was able to live my life, but I always felt like something was missing.
I always felt like I wasn't enough.
And I just had this heavy, heavy energy and nothing I could achieve was ever filling that gap.
So let me keep going.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, one day I was riding up in the elevator to work and I had basically a mini panic attack.
I just, I couldn't breathe.
I got off the elevator and I just couldn't catch my breath and was looking at, there was a lot of weird painting and art in our office and I was looking at the weird photos and the one outside of my desk was this woman in a negligee who was nine months pregnant in this huge yard sale with a UFO light shining down on her about to take her up.
And I'm looking at this painting and I'm like, I feel like that's me.
How did I get here?
And I just, I went back down the elevator, walked around Beverly Hills and then came back upstairs and I just wanted to quit.
All I wanted to do was quit.
I thought that was the answer.
It was just I could quit my job and reinvent myself and start over.
But I needed someone to give me permission.
And so I called my dad.
Because, you know, my dad has always been there for me.
And I'm like, Dad, I really want to quit this job.
Isn't it crazy that Hollywood has so many stories I mean not obviously not exactly like yours but so many stories of people who were rejected and who have decided they're gonna come here to prove something or to get the love that they need and what do they run into?
There's also a thing that happens when, like, the I Hate Christine Club thing, where the other girls are probably like, I don't want to be on the end of that, so I'm going to join in.
You get scared that they're gonna go after you next and you want to be on the mean team.
I think that's what's going on with Donald Trump.
I really do.
I think that's a lot of the reason why people are with him and for him.
He's so vindictive and mean and the way he goes after people.
I think you see a lot of people support him and sort of like cower to him.
Like, even that Megyn Kelly chick, who's a super brassy, badass ice princess, she did that interview with him after they had their little thing, when she sat down with him, and she was so, like, submissive.
It was weird.
I mean, maybe she was trying to keep her job, maybe Fox News were out of the riot act.
But I think that that, that is one of the reasons why people like are attracted to him because they don't want to be on his bad side.
I think people are terrified of him, you know, super billionaire, very famous, big, powerful guy.
I think there's a bunch of people that, like with this I Hate Christine club, if there was this one mean bitch that just wanted to go after you, there's probably a bunch of people that would want to side with her just because they're scared that she's going to turn on them and start going after them next.
Yeah, because that's the thing with Donald when I talk to people who support him.
I'm like, but you do you do you understand like he would have more money if he would have just like taken the money his father left him and invested it versus all the bankrupting he's done.
And I mean, he's there's just so much that doesn't make sense about him.
It doesn't represent what we think of the United States as.
We think of the United States as being this unbelievable place of creativity and innovation and the greatest superpower the world's ever known and this This really progressive force for good in the world.
I think we also needed to understand, because of the WikiLeaks revelations, how exactly politics is run, even with the people we think that are the good folks.
It's all fucking gross and dirty.
And all the stuff with the Clinton Foundation and all the stuff they did to Bernie Sanders and They conspired to keep that guy out.
I mean, he's a Democrat, too.
The whole thing was supposed to be about who is the person that best represents the people, what the people choose.
But no, the Democratic National Committee was fucking working to make sure that Bernie Sanders wasn't the guy.
And they were all conspiring with Hillary, and they're all pulling favors.
It's just like we were talking about before with producers and...
Networks.
It's the same shit.
It's just using your power and your influence and all the friends that you've made and all the years and all the favors and pulling it together.
But now we're being exposed to it in a way that we haven't really since Watergate.
Watergate gave us a little window, a tiny little window.
But the access to information was so minuscule back then.
We clung to those 15 minutes of whatever Watergate tapes, whatever it was, and we were like, look at this!
I'm not a crook!
He was doing what they were all doing.
He just got caught.
And we got a sense of it now.
But now, when you read these emails about how they really feel about each other and all the fucking grossness that goes on...
You're asking questions, and I think that's helpful.
I think what so many people are doing are just getting mad and just trash-talking America and the candidates, and that doesn't do any good for anybody.
If you want to ask questions and get involved and start to get curious, that's awesome.
That's how we change things.
But I think too much of this has just been so emotionally driven that people are just getting upset and not really going, huh, what can I do?
Yeah, it's like people who don't want you to think that they're a racist, so they go out of their way to discriminate against white people, other white people, when they're white.
I read this thing where this woman was saying, if you are a white person, and you are up for a job, and you are up against a person of color, do, period, not, period, take that job.
You don't deserve it.
Examine white privilege.
I was like, oh my god, what liberal arts college do you belong to?
I think technology is going to enable, just like no one anticipated, you know, if you can go back to the first days of cameras, if you went back to the 1800s and they first had a camera, no one would have ever thought that in the lifespan of just, I mean, what was the first camera, Jamie?
Like 1860?
Something like that?
Like Civil War era was like the first cameras?
No one would have ever thought that in two lifespans, which is essentially what it is from then to now, you would be able to send video to Australia instantaneously from something that slips into your pocket.
When Hillary Clinton was telling, like, Donald Trump said something, and she's like, Google it.
Google what he said.
It's not true.
And I was like, how hilarious is that?
Hillary Clinton is telling people to Google Donald Trump.
Like, that's how beautiful access to information is today.
I think we are a couple decades, maybe a little bit more, away from a completely new paradigm, a completely new way of accessing information.
I think we're going to submit to something, whether it's a neural implant or some sort of augmented reality, and we're going to be able to read intention and thoughts.
There's not going to be any lying in a hundred years.
I mean, I just couldn't believe that in the first 20 minutes of the second debate, I had been out of the country for a month, which was so refreshing, and to come back and I watched it, and the first 20 minutes was just character slams.
It was nothing about the issues or anything, and I was just like, what's happening?
That doesn't make me happy like it doesn't make me feel like if he shits on her she shits on him and she she tears him down it doesn't make me feel like she's better I liked her in one of the debates because I didn't tune into it until the last like hour and he was saying a bunch of crazy shit and she would start laughing I was like that's how she should handle him yeah she should handle him like he's a child yeah like if she did that but she's fucking crazy too so another tangent Lots
So the way it happened is, all right, so I quit my job, which threw me into an even worse depression because that was my whole identity.
It was my success in being an agent.
And so then in a period of, I don't know, like six to eight months, a bunch of things happened.
I went into lots of debt because I tried to keep up with this lifestyle.
I was estranged from my family for a bit because I made a choice that they didn't really like.
And I got diagnosed with another autoimmune disorder on top of everything else.
And then I was engaged and thought, oh, I'm going to be a wife.
Like, that's my next role.
I'll be fine.
And then six months before my wedding, he dumped me cold turkey.
So in that, you know, I know people listening have been through worse, but in that, like, span at 26 years old, losing my career and money and family and health and love, it was kind of like, this sucks.
I really didn't know what to do.
And I had...
Honestly, a moment on my bathroom floor, which I don't know why I was on my bathroom floor, it was disgusting, but I was just laying there.
Kind of insight, I guess you could say, of how much I was relating to everything as a total victim, as like everything was happening to me.
And then it dawned on me, I'm the common denominator in like all of these situations.
So either I have just really bad luck or I have some influence over this.
And, again, like, it was just a teeny bit of an insight, but it was enough of a new perspective on my life that kind of got me off the bathroom floor and started to give me some kind of hope and started to make me realize I needed help and, like, the way I was doing my life wasn't going to work anymore.
And so I found—I thought I was having a quarter-life crisis.
And I found a book by that name and I read it and it was fine, but it wasn't going deep enough for me.
So I decided to write a book about like my experience and everything I was learning and how I like was getting myself off my bathroom floor, I guess.
And I was interviewing people for the book and they kept saying things to me like, can I set up a session with you?
And I'd say, why?
I got all the information.
And they said, well, aren't you a coach or a counselor or something?
And I'd say, no.
And they said, you should be.
You should be.
And I kept hearing this over and over and over again.
So I went to my coach and kind of my first teacher, who I met when I was 22, and I was still seen.
And she had a major impact on my life.
And I said, Mona, you know, everybody's telling me I should do this.
And I've been looking for my career for, you know, years.
And maybe this is what I'm supposed to do.
She's like, yeah.
Yep, that's what you're supposed to do.
And I go, I've been coming for five years.
Like, why didn't you tell me this?
And she said, you know, you had to figure it out.
You had to find it.
And so that's how it just started.
Like, people kept reflecting back to me, hey, you're good at this.
You should do this.
And I didn't really know how or what.
And so then I just became, I started studying it.
I apprenticed with her.
I got training.
I got a master's degree.
I wrote more books.
And it just sort of happened out of my own life and out of just Creating things that I thought would help people and people going, actually, this is really helping me and can I talk to you more?
Isn't that an interesting thing that it's oftentimes small choices that people make that dictate what happens to them in their life, but if you just decide that things are happening to you, you don't take any responsibility for any of the choices.
That's, to me, the biggest difference from people who are able to change their life and people who don't.
Is ownership.
Is realizing that, yes, things happen, but we're not victims.
And anything can happen, but the same exact thing can happen to you and I. And we can make different choices about what we make it mean and how we respond to it.
And we're going to create different results based on that.
So it's not what happens to people.
It's not just luck.
It's truly, what are you going to choose to believe about it?
And that's, to me, the key differentiator between Staying where you are and kind of regressing as you get older and just repeating your familiar patterns and more stubborn and all those things and you know just looking for those short-term bursts of happiness and like a trip or a bottle of wine or whatever versus like really getting clear about how you can change your life, what your purpose is, what brings you joy and like who you really are.
There's a thing about life coaching, too, or any but—I mean, just forget that word—but the idea that you're dispensing advice or giving out inspiration or, you know, writing things down that have affected and helped and enhanced you, people want to dismiss that stuff.
Like, oh, I don't need that.
Oh, that's nothing.
Right.
One of the best things about being a part of a community or being a part of a culture is that you get to look at all of the things that people have done that have benefited them and all of the positive choices that someone has made and you can learn and experience those without having to go through all their bullshit.
You know, and there's a lot of things that I've learned from people, whether I've read things that they've said or listened to speeches that they've given about mistakes that they've made where I've come across a similar moment in my life.
I'm like, I know what this is.
I know what that is.
I think it's one of the best tools that we have.
When it comes to improving and enhancing your own life, your own individual experience, is looking at all the different shit that other people have done.
And it's a weird one because people dismiss it so easily.
First of all, there's a certain amount of hubris and a certain amount of ego attached to it where they don't want to admit they have an issue.
Or they don't want to admit they need help, or they don't want to admit that they need to be inspired, or they need some sort of motivation.
There's also a lot of fuckery afoot when it comes to life coaches and motivational speakers.
And there's a lot of hosers, like we were talking about before the podcast about a couple of hosers we know.
There's hosers out there.
But it's like everything else.
There's bad car mechanics.
They'll put a used part in your car and fuck you over.
There's bad doctors.
There's bad everything.
Everything in this world has someone who's half-assing it.
And the problem with that whole, the idea of being a life coach or being a motivational speaker is that there's not really like, you don't have to get a PhD to do it.
You don't have to, you know, you don't have to like prove yourself.
Like Mike has opened up 15 different businesses, so he's going to show you how to do a business.
Like this guy's a successful businessman.
That makes sense.
But there's a lot of people out there that are doing life coaching that are fucking failures.
And maybe that's not the worst thing in the world to be a failure because you've learned from those failures and maybe your achievement or your contribution is expressing those failures and your revelations from those failures and that could help somebody else not make those same mistakes.
And devastations, anything devastating that happens to you in your life, while it's happening, you feel like, I don't know if I can take this.
But then you get through it and you have this sort of enhanced perspective.
We live in an amazing time where you can see, not that you should revel in other people's failures, but most of your failure is nothing in comparison to what's going on in Syria or a million different parts of the world that are just filled with fucking chaos.
Most people can't see that because you see your life and your life is all you know and your life is falling apart.
There was actually, I think it was Scientific America or something like that, that had an article recently saying you're not going to be happy all the time and you shouldn't be.
So instead of painting yourself as a victim, you paint yourself as someone who's present in the moment and just, okay, I don't want to do this anymore.
And we don't, a lot of times we don't have the tools.
And that's where things like life coaching and personal development come in handy.
So we can go and get those tools instead of using our old coping mechanisms by like being strong or overing, overworking, over drinking, over, you know, jumping into a relationship, like whatever it may be.
We don't really learn how to deal with disappointment, failure, anger, shame, any of those things.
And so we're kind of left to these quick fix devices that, and I think that's a big reason addiction is such a problem, is because we don't really learn how to How to manage emotion and how to manage disappointment.
And so we go for that thing that makes us feel better in the moment.
But the problem is we have to keep upping the ante.
At first, that one glass of wine does the trick, but then you need two, then you need three, then you need vodka, then you need whatever it may be.
And so, I mean, why I'm so passionate about what I do is, first of all, I never thought I could be happy.
Like, I really didn't.
I thought that this, you know, I was going to be depressed and I just was going to constantly be looking for something to fix me.
I never really truly thought this life that I'm living now was possible.
Again, externally things look fine, but internally I'm talking about a totally different kind of experience.
And it's only because of those really awful moments, I call them expectation hangovers, that I was kind of desperate enough to let go of my normal coping mechanisms and my trying to control everything.
It was like the ultimate in surrender, truly, of going, okay, I don't know.
I need to find a different way to deal with this.
And that's really what has led me down the path that I am today.
So, you know, I think that life coaching and the personal transformation industry and all that, like you said, there's a lot of, what do you call them?
I never have any regression or dips, but I was super intentional about getting off of it.
I didn't just stop, especially after 20 years.
It took me a while.
It took a lot of the emotional work that I was doing with my coach, Mona, because so much of depression is suppression.
When all that stuff was happening, I think I was pretty angry about it, but I had no outlet for that, especially as a girl.
Like, boys, again, can go out and get stuff out.
But a lot of times, and this is why I think so many women get irritable and bitchy and all those kind of things, is because women, we don't have, like, that outlet for anger.
And so we internalize a lot of that.
Like, we can do sadness, but anger a lot of times gets suppressed.
And so a lot of, like, me getting off my medicine and not feeling depressed was not being suppressed.
It's like a safe place for women to get their anger out.
And it's not just catharsis.
There's a whole kind of process I put them through.
So they kind of reconnect maybe earlier life experiences where they didn't feel protected or they felt unsafe or they felt abused or whatever that is.
Because again, this all comes from my own life experience and working with, gosh, thousands of people at this point.
I see over and over again people that are depressed, shut down, have a lot of anxiety, not happy with their life, have...
Some unprocessed thing from their past that just needs to move.
And when I create this space for people to start to move that energy, it's like underneath there is creativity and passion and peace and freedom from anxiety and all that kind of stuff.
So when people have that space to unleash that and to let the energy move through them, because I think there's a difference between emotion and feeling.
So feelings to me are physiological responses to thoughts.
So if I sit here and think about the future that I'm scared about, I'm going to feel anxiety.
If I have like, oh my gosh, what if someone breaks into my house tonight?
I'm going to feel fear.
I can feel regret because of a thought or guilt.
But emotion, like energy in motion.
If someone hurts one of your kids, you're going to experience anger.
It's a natural response.
Someone close to us dies or we have a heartbreak, it's natural to feel the emotion of sadness.
And I think that there's a lot of kind of misleading information about like, oh, we create all our feelings with our thoughts and we can just like affirm our way out of things and think our way out of things.
And to some degree, that's true.
Changing our thinking does a lot.
But with some core emotions like anger, shame, sadness, I think we've got to feel them.
And I think that that's what people are really scared of is actually kind of opening that box, opening that can of worms and going back and actually feeling those feelings.
But the thing is, they're in there.
And so if you don't get them up and out in a healthy way, then...
I think that's what creates a lot of suppression, a lot of depression, perhaps maybe even disease, things like that, because they just get stored in our body somewhere.
Like, you know, I... They bring to mind things that they've maybe, like I said, were angry about, things from their childhood.
It's not just like I throw them in a room with loud music and say, go after it.
There's a lot of processes I put them through to get them to this point.
But anyway, so we're doing this one time in this house and there's like, you know, 20 women, loud music yelling and the cops show up.
And the guy's like, what do you like?
What's going on here?
And I step out.
I step out and I explain.
I said, you know, a lot of times this is a women's, you know, workshop.
And a lot of times, you know, we hold back our emotions and, you know, we end up getting irritable.
And this is just a healthy way for, you know, people to heal and work on their emotions.
And the cop looks at me and he's like, can I have your card I want to send my wife?
No kidding.
That's what the cop said to me.
So there's, I've gotten lots of calls from husbands and boyfriends and even kids and like, thank you.
Because there's something about, it's like pulling off our armor.
Honestly.
And there's something about doing like the deeper work and kind of going to those scary places that takes a layer off of us.
I think, I mean, it's, it's similar to plant medicine in a lot of ways of like going to those places where, that are kind of like, where you come out the other side and you have a deeper understanding of, of yourself.
Um, So by doing something completely ridiculous and crazy and just letting loose and all the madness involved with it, it's almost like a reset for you.
Yeah, and it's not, again, like, it's facilitated.
It's not this crazy, you know, people going, you know, screaming.
It's not Fight Club.
It's not, because there's a difference between catharsis and, like, actual processing stuff.
But it's just, and again, I think we don't really understand emotion to a certain level, and we think that big emotion is crazy.
And it's not necessarily.
I think what is crazy is What makes people crazy is suppressing it their whole life and trying to manage it through their mind or through doing things or through whatever else versus actually like being willing to look at those parts of ourself.
Because we're, you know, we're humans.
We have a mind.
We have emotions.
We have actions.
We have, you know, our spiritual self, whatever you want to call that, like something that's connected to something bigger than us.
And I think we need a holistic approach to really change.
So I had, you know, my coach at the time, who was really helpful, who's more than, again, my coach is such like a, I don't even know what to call her, she was...
I had always been to therapists and psychiatrists.
And so, nothing against therapists and psychiatrists.
They do good work.
But I had kind of like reached my limit with it.
And so I go to this woman's house and she's like totally stuck in 1985. Like her decor, her fashion, everything.
And I sit down and I sit across from her and she didn't even see me in her normal office.
I think she knew she needed to like totally get me out of my comfort zone.
So she put me in her son's bedroom with like these race car bunk beds.
And I'm sitting there on this race car bunk bed going, where am I? Like, how did I get here?
And she walks in, she sits in front of me, and it was the first time in my life, and I felt loved by my parents, but this was the first time in my life I felt really seen.
Like, it was almost uncomfortable.
Like, this woman could almost see through me.
She could see me.
She could really see me.
And I felt zero judgment from her.
Like, zero.
And although it was scary a little bit because I felt very vulnerable, there was something so reassuring about it because she was the first practitioner I had seen that didn't see me as broken.
She really just saw me.
And she was the one that in so many ways helped me over the years get off the medication by teaching me how to release my emotions, by helping me understand that bad feelings aren't necessarily bad.
I also got very clear about my diet.
I got off gluten because a lot of times gluten can impact brain chemistry.
I stopped drinking.
I wasn't ever a big drinker, but I stopped drinking for about two years because alcohol is a depressant.
I'd always been into exercise and fitness and eating healthy and everything like that.
And then I also started meditating and finding some kind of connection to a higher power.
I didn't really have a name for it at the time, but something...
Where I didn't feel like I was so alone.
Because that was kind of one of the scary things about depression.
You feel alone a lot of the time.
And so it was a combination of all of those things that over time and the belief that I could.
I really had to change my belief that I could get off of them.
So for people that are considering it, don't just stop.
Like it's dangerous just to stop because that can really mess with your brain chemistry.
Find somebody who knows something about this and can put you on a plan, can help you.
I'm not a doctor.
I'm not here to give medical advice, so consult a doctor.
But for me, it was number one, the belief that I could, and number two, finding the people that could really support me, and number three, making the lifestyle changes that I needed to make to support it and being willing to go to that dark scary place that I was afraid to go to.
Well, I think when, you know, for me, when I would go to one of these doctors or therapists, I mean, they'd see that I was on medication since I was 10. And they kind of relate to me in that way.
Maybe I needed someone who believed in it more than I Do you think that also the people that deal with people every day, whether you're a psychologist or a psychiatrist or whatever, that you're so inundated with people and their fucking problems that after a while you just become overwhelmed and it's very difficult to see people and have a fresh reset every time you see someone like, this is a new person, her name's Christine, hey Christine, what's going on with you?
I think it's therapists, psychiatrists, they have hard jobs.
Imagine your whole day is person after person talking about what's wrong with their life.
That can be very draining.
Even when I first started as a life coach and I saw person after person after person, I really had to learn not to take that on and not to let it drain me.
So again, I have a lot of respect for...
My mom's a therapist, so I have a lot of respect for therapists and psychiatrists who are very helpful to me.
I just think for me, in my life journey and what I wanted, I just...
I didn't want to spend the rest of my life medicated.
I did consult a psychiatrist and they gave me like a weaning plan.
So yeah, whatever.
Different people, like it's not a standard thing.
Like different psychiatrists will tell you different things.
So it depends on what dosage you're on, how long you've been on it, which medication you're on, what the side effects for it are, those kind of things.
Like it just felt like a fog and a heaviness had lifted.
And I also felt like...
I had deeper access to my creativity, my intuition, And all those things were present, but there was just sort of like some white noise there.
And I also like, for me, depression manifested as being incredibly self-critical, like super self-critical, like this very, very, very loud inner critic.
And so that started to lift too.
But again, I was doing all kinds of other work at the same time.
I was studying with my life coach.
I was getting a master's degree in spiritual psychology.
So it's a place called the University of Santa Monica, and I didn't know anything about this place, but I had been a life coach, and I thought, okay, if I'm helping people with their life, I've got to know how to help them deal with their past.
Like, I can't just...
Work on present and future without like having some skills for dealing with your past.
And so I was researching schools.
I thought if I could get a master's degree in psychology that would help me and that would be good for my career and all those things to have like some credentials.
So I researched and I find this school and I didn't really know anything about it.
I'm like this is great and the spiritual part didn't have anything to do with any religion or anything like that.
It was more of the premise of you know That traditional psychology is kind of a little bit more about like labels and spiritual psychology is more people have the inner resources they need to heal.
And I didn't, again, didn't know much about it.
Show up at this school with my laptop thinking I'm going to like take notes and there's going to be lectures.
But there were no deaths.
It was a highly experiential school.
It's, like I said, a two-year program.
And in that, I really learned how to change my belief systems, heal stuff from my past, connect to a part of me.
Because we all have like our basic self, like our conscious part.
But I believe we also have something deeper.
We can call it our intuition.
We can call it our gut feeling.
We can call it our authentic self.
But there's some kind of inner wisdom that I think all of us have access to.
And this program really helped me get more access to that part of me so that I could start listening to that more than my old conditioning, my old belief systems, my old fears.
Because when we're born, we're kind of this blank slate.
And then stuff happens and we form these stories about our lives and who we are and how we get love and how we get validation and how we get acceptance and How life works and who we are and our identity.
And it's kind of just a story.
And we can change that story, but it takes work going back and deconstructing that story and letting go of some old beliefs that maybe we've hung on to to create a different one.
So that's what so much of my journey has been about is kind of looking at what's the story I've created about my life and how can I change it?
Because the story that I had was I'm depressed.
I have to be achieving all the time.
Being hard on myself is how I motivate myself, so on and so forth.
There was a girl, I've told this story before, but she was so nice.
She's friends with my friend Kelly.
Kelly Kirsten.
You know Kelly Kirsten?
Comedian.
Funny girl.
Anyway, she was at the Comedy Store one night, and she was talking to Kelly, and I was talking to her, and she started going on about her future, all the things that she was going to do.
She was going to be married within a year.
She was going to have the career that she wants.
She was going to do this and that and that and this.
And I was so confused.
And she was like, I found the secret.
Do you know about the secret?
I go, oh, the power of positive thinking, that kind of thing.
What they're trying to achieve is they're trying to, like, you take a photo of your dream house, you pin it on your wall, you take a photo of a Ferrari, you pin that on your wall.
You're going to get those things.
The problem is when you watch those videos, when they say, you know, I had this photo of my home on the wall.
I had the Ferrari that I wanted.
I had my dream wife.
Now I have those things.
I made those things happen with intention and with thought.
Do you know how many fucking people have a photo of a beautiful house on their wall and a Ferrari and they got no fucking house and they got no Ferrari and they never will?
Like you're taking it from a biased pool of successful people who will tell you that this happened to them.
But there are literally millions of people who think positive and nothing ever happens to them.
So this girl...
Who um...
It's a very nice person.
She came to one of my shows like a year later.
And we're hanging out outside.
And I go, how's everything?
What are you doing?
She's like, well, it's really a drag.
You know, because I was convinced that by this time I would have all these things.
But, you know, my dad, he's still, you know, fuck up and this and that.
And I've got this problem, that problem.
And I just don't understand it.
I don't understand it.
I believe that I was so sure.
And we had this like...
It was really interesting because she was like two different people.
Like I'd met her twice, right?
So I meet her this one time and she's just aglow with this delusion that now she's got it.
And she thought also that talking about it all the time was part of how you affirm it.
So she was saying, you know, I'm going to be married in a year.
I'm going to do this.
I'm following the secret.
She kept saying it.
And then a year later, she was just, I don't get it.
It didn't work.
And so we had this sort of heart-to-heart about it.
I haven't talked to her again, and I don't know what the hell happened to her.
The law of attraction can be misleading because it's...
You know, change takes more than I put a picture up and I do some positive affirmations.
If, like, down deep you don't feel like you're worthy or you're not going to be able to attract those things.
You've got to, like, kind of go back and deal with core issues and core belief systems in order to shift things in your life.
I mean, if it was as easy as putting pictures up on our wall...
Everybody would have, you know, Lamborghinis and hot wives and husbands.
But it takes more than that.
It takes being willing to, like, do some work and take some responsibility rather than just thinking the universe is Santa Claus and just was going to pop something into your life.
I've had lots of training as a life coach, but my own life experiences have been the thing that's really given me the most credentials, I guess you could say.
I've been able to create a life and a career and friendships and connection that, you know, I thought I no longer live that story of I hate Christine Club, I have great friends, great women friends, like all of that, you know, and that's, I'm no like different or more special than anybody.
The number one thing where I start with people is having them really look at their relationship with themselves.
Because when they come, they're like, oh, I'm fucked up or I need help.
They're relating to themselves as if something's wrong with them and they're being really hard on themselves and they've kind of lost hope and lost belief in themselves.
So the first thing is just like acceptance.
Accepting where you are.
Because I haven't liked everything that's happened to me, but one of the main ways I've been able to move through it is because I stopped fighting it.
Isn't that like in martial arts?
If a punch comes at you, you're not supposed to resist it.
Well, a lot of times it's going back to a time in your life where you did take a chance or you did do something that was a stretch in some way.
Like, everybody has times in their life where they've done something they weren't completely sure they could do, even if it's just a little thing.
And everybody has that reference point they can go back to.
But a lot of this show, like, honestly, a lot of it is taking a leap of faith.
And I... I've taken a lot of those and I've wanted to know the answer and I've wanted to know like 100% that this would be guaranteed.
Like if I take this leap of faith everything will work out and they haven't always been 100% guarantees.
But it was in taking that leap and taking that chance and having a little faith that things started showing up and things started shifting and that's what started to create the evidence.
And it's a tricky thing because I think people want evidence before they make change, but you have to start making these little changes to start having the evidence show up.
Like anything that's difficult that you do, it gives you the confidence that you can overcome adversity.
Whether it's a martial art thing or something along those lines or marathon running or anything, when you do something like that, these incremental changes happen where you push yourself through things, especially if you can achieve a goal.
If you could set out to do something, you achieve that goal, like, I'm going to run a marathon by the end of this year.
I don't know why I keep saying marathon, but you know what I'm saying.
Thermacell is a device that a lot of people take when they go camping, things along those lines.
It looks almost like a radio, and it has these little pads, and you slide these pads into this heating element, and this very fine mist comes out of this heating element.
You can put it on the ground near you, and the bugs won't come within an 18-foot circle.
Use it when you're hunting and you're in the woods because if you're in the woods, especially in Alaska or Alberta, I don't know if you've ever been to Alaska in the summer.
But bugs don't want to have anything to do with it.
Mosquitoes don't want to have anything to do with it.
Without thermocels, like, hanging out in the woods, like, sitting in a spot, it's almost unbearable, unless you have mosquito netting, and you don't want to wear, like, all that mosquito bug spray stuff.
Your skin is an organ.
You know, all that stuff that you're putting on your skin, it is just not good for you.
He was telling me that there's certain odors that human beings have, and those odors enable people to understand whether or not they're genetically compatible with each other.
There used to be, when we were kids, I used to always hear about couples taking blood tests to make sure that they could have babies together.
But not compatible, obviously, personality-wise and all the other things that come into play.
But Chris Ryan was saying that women can smell a man's clothes.
You could literally smell their clothes and they would know whether or not they would be attracted to that person based on the smell that a person's getting.
Not like, oh my god, this guy stinks.
But literally, your body knows what's repulsive and what's not repulsive in terms of genetics based on someone's odor that they give off on their clothes.
But what it didn't work is when they put women on the pill.
Yeah, I would think that getting a bunch of people that are trying to get their life together and then having them all together, male and female, you run into these weird issues where they're trying to hook up.
You can get really distracted and you can get, like, if there's some kind of attraction, you can forget what you're there for and get obsessed with someone and it can kind of throw off a thing.
And there's something to...
About, you know, women coming together with women and men coming together with men that I think is important.
And I think kind of back to that tribal conversation we need.
A lot of women, including myself, have like beef with other women, you know, and they don't like being around just a bunch of other women.
Well, I used to because I was scared of other women because I had all that stuff happen.
I didn't really trust it.
And so when you get a group of women together, a lot of times there is that comparison and judgment, and I can't trust, and da-da-da-da.
And so it's important for women, I think, to gather together and kind of do work separately from when there's men there because there's something that is very healing just in that.
And then there's a level of vulnerability that's possible when there aren't men there.
Not to say that you can't be vulnerable with men there, but it's just a different dynamic.
And I think the same goes for men.
Like I know men who do men's groups and men's work and there's great value in that.
And that's important.
And I think one of the problems I see a lot in intimate relationships is that in a heterosexual relationship is that you expect this one person to be your everything.
And you're not, you don't have a tribe and you don't have a community.
You don't have friends of the opposite sex and the same sex that are fulfilling kind of these needs.
That we all have.
We just project like this, my one person has to be my everything, my soulmate.
And so, you know, having your community, whatever it may be, and having different friends, I think is super, super important to having a healthy relationship.
I tweeted this morning, but it's one of those articles where you read it and you go, oh, that completely makes sense.
A researcher argues that peers are much more important than parents, that psychologists underestimate the power of genetics, and that we have a lot to learn from Asian classrooms.
Probably too long of an article to really get into it.
But we'd have to read it.
But peers in general, I think choosing like-minded folks and choosing people that are on a good path, it helps support you and it supports them and you feed off of each other.
That was a big aha for me when my fiance broke up with me.
Because I very much wanted to be the victim in that.
But I had to look at, gosh, what did I... What did I do?
Because everybody's like, oh, he's such a jerk.
But I really had to look at how was I showing up in that relationship that was impacting his decision?
Because he wasn't a bad guy.
Like he wasn't just a jerk who decided, you know, I'm going to break up with this girl.
Like there were ways I was showing up that were that.
Like made him make the decision that he makes.
So I think in any of those situations, friendship or relationship, you know, you don't want to go too far the other extreme and be like, oh my gosh, I'm a loser and think it's all your fault.
But it's important to look at, geez, what's my part in this?
I think that's a really good question because, I mean, how many people do you know that are in bad relationships continue talking about it but aren't doing anything about it?
Somebody said, you know, you get the love you think you deserve.
And it may be easy for us looking outside going, oh my gosh, it's so easy.
You should just leave this relationship.
But a lot of times the person doesn't think they can do better, or maybe this is playing out some dynamic they had with their parent, or you sort of need to understand why you're in it before you can actually make the choice to get out of it.
What do you do when someone comes to you with unrealistic expectations or they don't want to see themselves like, you know, you tell them what they need to do or what they should consider and they argue with you about it.
And I mean part of it I think is a little delusional because I think a lot of men are way more vulnerable than they really think they are.
But also there's just a different thing going through life I mean, there's that expression, the fair sex, but being a female, being a woman, means you're physically different.
And it's something that, you know, I as a woman, like I'm always aware of it.
Not always, but a lot of the time, you know, because I know that, like you said, I could get beaten up like it's between me and a man, he's probably gonna win.
I mean, I'm pretty strong, but not that strong.
And I think what's also beautiful about women and just the feminine in general is that vulnerability.
But because like it sometimes doesn't feel safe, I think that's why a lot of women like kind of have a protective armor and are guarded and sometimes more in their like masculine energy in the world is because on some level we feel like we have to.
We have to like protect ourselves.
And whereas that vulnerability really is the thing that makes us women in so many ways.
And I think we confuse vulnerability with weakness.
Because vulnerability to me is being open, being available, being soft, but not weak.
Weakness to me is more about kind of going into the victim me and going into the poor pitiful me and the feeling sorry for and on all of those kinds of things.
I think there's beautiful power in vulnerability.
But when we're talking about just physical strength, yeah, I mean, for the most part, men have the advantage on that one.
And I mean, especially in terms of, you know, the traditional way of looking at things, you know, masculine men are attracted to feminine women and feminine women are attracted to masculine men and we both need each other.
But a lot of times, especially when you're dealing with damaged folks, Mm-hmm.
Where someone's bullying you.
And you get it in this relationship then.
Instead of someone appreciating you for the difference in the softness versus the hard, the yin and the yang.
Now you have someone who's exploiting that.
And you see it with women too.
You see it with aggressive women and weak men.
That is, to me, one of the saddest things I ever see.
You know, I see women emasculate men quite often, you know?
Not maybe on like a huge scale to the degree you're talking about, but just like the little comments, like I'll be out with a couple and the woman will say something and it's kind of emasculating.
But if the roles are reversed and the guy said something like that to the woman, I don't know if it would go over.
Well, a lot of men feel emasculated by society in general, just by the roles that they play in the office and just the physical act of going through life, this civilized world, and also constantly needing people's affirmation, needing people's acceptance.
And you sort of become what people want you to be, even if that's not what you want.
You get in these relationships, and you see it all the time, where guys sort of accept a little bit, and then they accept more, and then they don't want to mess up.
I have a bunch of friends that have really domineering, overbearing wives or girlfriends, and it's weird.
It's very strange when you have someone in your life that's essentially like a parole officer.
Someone in your life that gets to tell you what to do.
And you're not allowed to do certain things.
You're not allowed to watch certain things or like certain things.
And they control you and they own you.
I think a lot of these people that are doing that, much like the girl who bullied you or anybody who does that to someone, they do it out of fear, they do it out of insecurity, and they also do it out of this bizarre instinct because they can.
I used to date this girl.
She wasn't a bad person, but she used to like to fight.
And I do not.
I do not like that kind of conflict.
I don't like interrelationship conflict.
I don't like it.
I don't fight.
I don't argue.
I'd just rather leave.
I'm into discussing things, but when people start yelling and get crazy, I'm like, fuck this.
I grew up around domestic violence, too.
I grew up with...
So I saw it when I was a kid.
I'm not interested.
And so we broke up, but we stayed friends.
And then years later, we went out to coffee.
I'm like, how's everything?
What's going on?
Oh, I'm living with this guy.
It's not going good.
I'm like, why?
She's like...
She's telling me how she yells at this guy and she can't help it.
She's like, I can't help it.
I just fucking yell at him.
And he doesn't do anything.
He just takes it.
And she's like, when he takes it, I just want to fucking smash him.
She's like, I just can't.
She goes, I don't want to yell at him, but I can't help doing it.
And then when he's gone, I'm like, why the fuck did I do that?
And she had this...
Weird, almost like a natural impulse to dominate this guy.
Like, have you ever seen two dogs where one dog has the upper hand on the dog and he'll go near the dog and the other dog...
And that's just their world!
It's just their world.
The other dog never gets a chance.
And sometimes it's not even a size-based thing.
They might be the exact same size dog.
Just one dog just decides it's the bitch, and the other one's the dominator, and that's just how it goes.
Well, she was in this position with this guy where she just had this compelling desire to fucking yell at him.
And I go, well, what are you yelling at him for?
She's like, anything.
Everything.
She goes, I just fucking, I want him to tell me to shut the fuck up.
Like, we don't keep doing it over and over and over again unless there's something we're attached to getting.
Like, you know, when we're like, oh man, this is stupid, we get out of there.
But when we find ourselves in situations where it's like it's happening over and over and over again and we continue to get frustrated, but we're not leaving.
There's something we're attached to trying to get from our behavior.
So there was something she wanted in that.
There was something in it for her.
Otherwise, she would have been out of there a lot sooner.
It's also, I think, for some people, choosing things that you do for a living that are healthy for you.
I think there's a lot of people that get involved in careers that require too much of their time.
You don't really want to do it, but you get caught up in it, whether it's being a lawyer or being a doctor or being something that has a prestigious title, where you feel like there's something great.
But really, in the back of your mind, there's something else that you probably would be way happy doing.
Even if I had all the money in the world, I'd still speak.
I'd still do my podcast.
I'd still do retreats.
I love it.
I love the human experience.
I love being there for that moment where someone has a major insight where they connect dots and it's like, whoa, a massive perspective shift and all of a sudden they start to kind of move a different direction.
It's...
I can't imagine doing anything else.
I mean, if I could sing, if I had any kind of music ability, I think it'd be awesome to be a rock star, like, just to have that rush.
But literally, I have no musical ability whatsoever other than, like, listening to it.
Now, how often is it when you talk to people, when you're trying to coach them and help them, and you realize, like, man, you've got to do something else?
Like, is that a factor?
Because I would think that...
The thing about careers is not only is it eight hours of your time, but it also kind of defines you.
So every day you're defined by whatever you do.
And oftentimes, like we were talking about, like men in these workplace environments, they're sort of like they're boxed into this predetermined pattern of behavior that's expected from them.
You know, they have shoes with tassels on them and ties.
And they have to talk like, you know, business talk.
And you lose a lot of your individuality inside those patterns because office life and, you know, human resources demand certain things of you.
Like there's a certain, your personality, like when you're in an office environment, anytime you're in the corporate world, your personality is stuffed into this form.
I go do a lot of corporate speaking and I have a lot of people come up to me afterwards and they're just like, oh my gosh.
Because I talk about how we lose ourselves in these roles and how a lot of times our adult life becomes sort of just this...
Checklist, follow Truman Show, one thing after the other, just follow this structure that was set out for us that we never checked in and said, do I want this?
Do I even want this?
So to answer your question, yes, a lot of times when people come or I'm working with people, it is looking at, is this career right for you?
Is this relationship right for you?
What have you created in your life that just doesn't fit where you are, but you're in it because you're scared to make the change?
And also, you know, some people really can be happy in corporate America.
I firmly really believe that the vast majority of people that are living the American dream, living that life, doing that 9 to 5, the vast majority of them are fucking horrifically miserable.
Okay, I don't have to quit my job tomorrow, but what are some things in my life I can start doing that make me feel alive again?
Like, is it a hobby?
Is it like training for a marathon?
Is it what is going to start making me feel like, you know, I'm creative and I matter and I'm more than just this role as husband, wife, mother, father, corporate, executive, whatever it is.
So I think that's a good place to start is something small you can do to make you feel alive again because anybody has access to that.
You don't have to leave your job To start creating some things in your life that can start to shift things.
And then, like we were talking about, then it's like the gradual change, you know?
Because I don't think it's possible for most people just to quit their job tomorrow.
From the time I got out of high school, I never had a full-time job.
I had a bunch of part-time jobs.
I did some full-time jobs where construction companies and stuff, but it didn't last.
I would do them for like a month or a couple of weeks, and I was like, fuck this.
Like, whatever it is about...
And it was all...
It was the main source...
Of all my problems in high school, all my problems in high school is I was not willing to do things I didn't want to do.
So I would barely get by through high school.
I would take tests, you know, that would register intelligence or measure intelligence.
That'd be great.
Everything's fine.
But I would take actual tests based on what I was supposed to be studying, and I fucking barely paid attention.
I mean, I squoze through high school with like a C average in most things.
I barely got by.
And even when I was going to college, I was only going to college, I went to Boston University, or UMass, rather, in Boston.
And the only reason why I went is because I didn't want anybody to think I was a loser.
So I was taking classes at UMass, and I was teaching Taekwondo at Boston University, which was like a really good school.
I was looking at all these people that were preparing for life, and to me it was like, you're gonna go get eaten by alligators or something.
I was like, what are you gonna do?
You're gonna go get a job?
You're gonna be working nine to five?
For whatever fucked up thing that was wrong in my head, I would way rather get up in the morning and deliver newspapers for three hours a day, or drive limos at night.
I had a really unstable childhood.
So in my mind, anything that you were locked down to was death.
It was prison.
Whatever malfunction of my brain, I figured out a way to make it work for me.
I'll get obsessed with playing pool and then I think I'm gonna be the world champion.
I'm gonna practice 12 hours a day for the rest of my life.
I mean, I'm a sick person.
Whatever happened to me when I was young, whatever weirdness involved, I figured out a way to manage it.
But it can get away from me.
It's gotten away from me before.
I play video games like 8-10 hours a day.
It can get away.
I have to manage whatever craziness that makes me focus on things.
I see it in my kids, especially my middle daughter.
She gets obsessed with things.
And I'm like, wow, this is crazy.
This is like a genetic thing.
It's like watching a little female me in a lot of ways.
She read all eight Harry Potter books in a matter of a couple of months.
She just gets into stuff.
And then you've got to go, hey, shut the light out.
You've got to go to bed.
One more chapter.
Come on, you've got to stop.
But it's not like she's seeing it in me and she's mirroring it.
Because...
It's our own little weirdness.
Obviously, she's got a healthier environment than I grew up in, so it's not a matter of not ever wanting to be connected to anything permanent because nothing is permanent.
That was part of, I think, the lessons from my childhood.
No one's here to help you.
Don't get locked in any fucking job.
Get ready to move at any time.
And embracing moving.
To this day, I'll be like, I've got to get the fuck out of L.A. Everything's here.
I have to do everything here.
The comedy store is here.
My family's here.
My kids go to school here.
All my friends live here.
But I'm like, fuck this.
I'm going to the mountains.
I gotta get out of here.
I have this nomad shit in me that I'm constantly trying to manage.
As much as people like to take credit for a certain amount of success, I can tell you all the different things that I did that led to me being successful at things, but almost it's like the function of a mental issue.
A lot of it is a function of learning how to manage a brain that doesn't work like everybody else's brain.
But that's so, I think, common for a lot of successful people, especially.
And the difference is you're aware of how it works and you've learned how to manage it.
But that obsessive thing, in so many ways, it has gotten you a certain degree of success.
And all of those things...
Survival skills, compensatory strategies, whatever they are, they have their positives, they have ways that they really help us, but then they have the ways that kind of torture us in a lot of ways.
And I think growth is really about understanding what are the ways that this isn't doing me any good, and how can I be mindful of it?
And also, like, you know, how do I know now that, like, that now is not then?
Like, how do I, you know, stop being activated by old experiences in my past And just have peace for where I am now and take those gifts from the obsession that's made you successful but not have the parts that kind of torture you at the same time.
I'd get anxiety if I had to talk, and I'd get anxiety if I had to talk to a bank teller.
Like, if I had to wait in line to go to the bank teller, I'd start freaking out, like, on my way to the bank teller.
And, like, if you talk to, like, people who knew me from high school, and they'll go, uh, did you ever think that Joe was going to be a comedian?
They'd be like, no.
Like, no fucking way!
That guy wasn't funny.
Like, they didn't...
I figured out a way to be more relaxed socially, and it wasn't an easy process at all.
It took forever.
To the point where now...
I'm extremely relaxed socially.
Now I can talk to anybody.
One of the things I love about doing podcasts, I like just having conversations with people.
I want to know.
You're another organism.
You're another person.
I want to know what's going on in your head.
I don't understand...
I want to try to see what connections you've made, what definitions you've fallen on, how you've defined this world, how you've categorized things and how you're managing it, how you're maneuvering through it.
I'm fascinated by that.
I'm fascinated by the thoughts that people carry around inside their heads.
And what are the puzzle pieces that have led to where you are?
And I love that you're sharing this because I think a lot of people can see you and see your success and everything that you have and think you're always like this and that it's just been easy because this is, you know, you're always like this.
But to know you had that background and you had the social anxiety and this is like such a stretch.
I think it's really inspiring because it gives people—it's like, oh, you can't—you can no longer argue that, you know, you're just born a certain way and, like, that's just the way you are.
Like, you're proof that you actually can change and you can get over things and you can create things that, you know, you probably didn't think were possible when you were 10 or however old you were when you were going through all that stuff.
But if you're at the base of Tibet, if that's where you live, or the base of the Himalayas, it's way easier.
To climb that thing.
You know, it's still not easy, but it's easier.
And I think there's a lot of people that start, you know, in the metaphoric Santa Monica with their life.
They're really far away from their goal.
It doesn't mean it's not possible, but it means there's a bunch of steps, whether they're conscious or unconscious, that you're going to have to make in order to get to a position.
And I still remember fucking freaking out going to a bank teller.
It used to happen all the time.
I just didn't want to talk to people.
I was just in my own head, and I was super insecure, and I just could barely get through shit.
Martial arts was the first thing that I ever did where I was good at it, where I didn't feel like a loser.
I was pretty good at art.
Like drawing and painting stuff?
And I wanted to be a comic book illustrator, and that was a big focus of my life when I was younger.
And I definitely took some sort of identity in the fact that I was good at that.
I liked the fact that people would say I was good at it.
It made me feel good.
But it was different than martial arts.
Because with martial arts, it was the first thing that I did where I felt like I could really be exceptional.
Like I could be really good.
First of all, I was gifted physically and then also this crazy brain of mine if I could point it to something like I would work out at 3 o'clock in the morning because I knew nobody else would I knew they weren't there so I had keys to the gym so because I was teaching so I would go there I'd wake up and I would drive down to the gym and And I'd open it up in the middle of the night and put in a workout because I knew that no one else was doing that.
I knew they weren't there.
And I felt like it gave me an edge, but also I felt like I was getting ahead of them.
You know, like it was some sort of a crazy race.
So for between the age of 15 and 21, I was just completely obsessed with fighting.
And that's all I did.
I just, I didn't, I didn't know.
I probably barely knew who was president.
I didn't know a goddamn thing about the world.
I wasn't reading shit unless it was like some samurai book on philosophy and combat.
Like that was all I was obsessed with.
And that's when I also got into Anthony Robbins, somewhere around that too.
But I was interested in things that would give me an edge, personal development stuff that would give me an edge.
And then through doing martial arts, and then also through teaching.
I think that was a big one, was teaching classes And then teaching at BU was big, too, because when I was teaching at Boston University, I was teaching an actual class.
At that time, I had won the US Open, I had won a bunch of different tournaments, and I was doing really well as a fighter, as a martial arts competitor.
So they had a Taekwondo program at BU, and I was teaching it.
And I'd have to address the whole class, but I would address the whole class as something that I was really good at.
Like, I knew I could demonstrate to them some movements and stuff like that.
I'd show some things.
I'd ask someone to hold something and I'd kick it or something like that, and they'd be like, holy shit!
And then they would listen.
Like, I was confident in what I was saying there.
And it was like the only time in my life that I could remember being confident And telling people something.
It's like, I would describe how you do it, this is how you do it, and I'll show you how to do it here.
But this is how it needs to be done, and this is why, and this is what happens when you do it, and this is what's involved in the mechanisms of your body.
And so that gave me the first...
That was like the first feeling that I got where there was...
I knew that there was like a light at the end of the tunnel.
And there's also an expression that I love to use that martial arts are a vehicle for developing your human potential because it's so difficult and it's so terrifying.
And then the idea of competing and the physical consequences are so devastating if you get hit that you can't half-ass it.
You can't slack off.
You have to really pursue this thing with An insanity, like an incredible intensity.
And then through that, you realize, oh, I could do that.
And then from doing that, you kind of realize, well, what if I apply that to writing a book or doing that or learning how to do something else?
But one of the things he and I were talking about, he gave me this number about, what did he say, like 7% of people or something like that do things that are creative with their life?
My kids, they're both always, my young kids, they're both always painting or drawing or doing something.
My older kid does music.
So there's so much creativity that they feel drawn to it.
And all that stuff is something that every kid does.
Every kid draws shit.
Every kid plays with clay.
Every kid makes stuff with Legos.
You all put things together with your mind.
But somewhere along the line, We're stuffed into this structure that doesn't serve us.
And we feel like we have to do it because we've been shuffled through school and into college, and then we're in debt, and then we have to take opportunities, and these opportunities is a good opportunity.
And when they do do something creative, they don't judge it and go, oh, is it good?
They just enjoy the process.
And that starts to phase out as we get older and we get obsessed with other people thinking, is it good enough?
And is this safe?
And will this please my parents?
And like, will I be able to make money this way?
And we just get so disconnected from that childlike creativity and wonderment and curiosity and kind of no fear and faith in ourselves that we just get stuck in this kind of checklist.
I think there's another thing that we need to consider, and this is really important to people that are like, well, this is bullshit dreamer talk.
Listen to this, because this is real.
That corporate world's only been around for less than 100 years.
This is a new thing in modern life, and modern life is new in terms of the length of time human beings have been alive.
This is a new thing and it doesn't serve us.
And maybe with technological innovation and robots and automation and all the different shit that's coming down the line, maybe there'll be less and less opportunities for you to work a slave job and you'll have to do something creative.
It'll be more and more compelling.
But this world that we've structured that doesn't serve us is incredibly recent.
Yeah, I also think another thing that's bullshit is the amount of time that's required to make a living just to survive.
I mean, how many people are barely being able to feed themselves and house themselves and they're giving up their entire day and their entire week?
And you get, if you're lucky, you get that Saturday, Sunday off.
But most of the time on Saturday and Sunday, if you have an office job, you have some shit that you brought home with you that you have to sort through.
And I wonder what's going to happen with automation and with, you know, they're talking about A tremendous amount of jobs that are being done right now by people that are going to be done by robots.
Every two years, I throw away my act, and I write a new one.
I do a special, like my Netflix special, I abandon all those jokes, and I have to write a whole new one.
And it's fucking terrifying.
It's the worst.
But, I keep doing it, and every time I do it, it gets better.
If I keep doing it, and I keep focusing on it, and all that terror and fear of taking that chance, It makes makes me get better at it and that's a pretty minor thing because it's not like that much financial concern and I'll be okay But for someone to take a chance Financially and take a chance their future and they don't really know what what the future holds It's not like they have all these things to fall back on That's when you fucking dig in exactly that's when you make things happen.
Yeah, like and if you don't you just you just you You just stay soft and lazy.
What's one thing you can do to start shifting your life?
Is it, like I said, finding that hobby?
Is it having a conversation with your boss?
Is it going after that creative endeavor?
Just start.
That's the other thing.
People think...
They have to know all the steps.
It's like, I want to get to the second floor, I'm at the bottom of a staircase, and I think I just have to jump to get there.
No, you go step by step by step, just like you'd walk up a staircase.
So you don't have to know it all at once.
It's just taking that first step, and then that leads to another, and that leads to another.
And like you said, it's those scary moments where you find your grit, and you find your potential, and you find out how you respond to adversity, and you find your true gifts, and you can only do that in uncertainty and when you're uncomfortable.
But that is one that has been incredibly beneficial to me is writing things down and making a list and forcing myself to check all the shit off that's on that list.
Yeah, and doing the things you don't always feel like doing.
And also being accountable to people.
Like having somebody that's like calling you and being like, did you do it?
Did you do it?
Did you show up for yourself?
Because it takes momentum.
Making these kind of changes, you have to build momentum.
And if you have that checklist and you're doing that one thing every day, and maybe the first thing you're going to do is commit to making a list every day.
That's a great step.
Once you start showing up for yourself every day and doing that and checking things off the list, you start to build self-trust.
You start to have more integrity with yourself.
You start to build momentum.
And then it's easy to take the next step and do the next thing.
But without that momentum and without that commitment, I think people just expect their life to change like this.
And we've talked about this a lot.
It just doesn't.
But those little steps, they start to make you feel better too.
Because you start to feel like, oh my gosh, I'm not doing the same thing over and over.
Because that really is insanity.
Wasn't Einstein who said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result?
I mean, so many people eat or smoke or whatever for comfort or to self-soothe themselves.
And so they can make a New Year's resolution and lose the weight.
And then if they haven't found another way to cope with life when things get hard or...
Someone upsets them or whatever, they're going to turn to that old coping device because they haven't dealt with the issue underneath what made them overeat or drink or smoke in the first place.
And it's also when you're filled with angst and all these things are fucked up in your life, there's something about those old patterns that give you a big hug.