June 5, 2018 - The Joe Rogan Experience
01:46:59
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Four, three, two, one, boom. | ||
| So what, um, 100 mile man, or 100 man, what is it? | ||
| The 100 mile man. | ||
| What is that? | ||
| I ran a 100 mile race years ago. | ||
| You're like, I'm the fucking man. | ||
| Let me grab it if it's available. | ||
| That's cool that you got it, man, because that's a very popular thing now. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Did you run this before or after you did the book with David Goggins? | ||
| I ran it before. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think at the time when I did it, there were like 400 Americans that ran 100 miles or something. | ||
| Oh really? | ||
| It wasn't a lot, so that's why it was available. | ||
| Isn't it crazy how many people do it now? | ||
| Yeah, I think I was trying to figure out in my head how many do it a year and like how many races, 100 mile races there are there a month and then multiply it out. | ||
| So probably five or six thousand, I'm guessing. | ||
| Five or six thousand people have done it? | ||
| I think probably. | ||
| I think so. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Americans. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's a long way. | ||
| It's a long fucking way. | ||
| We were just about talking right before the podcast about how Miss America yanked off all... | ||
| They're no longer judged by their beauty. | ||
| And I posted this because I thought it was silly. | ||
| And there's just these fights online, man. | ||
| There's fucking fights in the comments and fights and... | ||
| People are tense. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| People need to go out and run those hundred miles, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| They loosen up fast. | ||
| I don't know what the fuck is going to miss America scrapping the swimsuit competition would no longer be judged on physical appearance It's literally a beauty contest. | ||
| That is what it is. | ||
| What are they replacing it with? | ||
| I mean, I gotta think it's like when Playboy decided to not have people nude Right that like and but here's the thing but no longer judging them on their physical appearance Well, what does that mean? | ||
| Like what does that mean? | ||
| We are no longer a pageant, Gretchen Carlson says. | ||
| We're a competition. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I give up. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I think this might hurt the ratings a little bit. | ||
| I think a little bit. | ||
| Or not. | ||
| Maybe people will get very excited about it. | ||
| Maybe it'll ramp up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's getting a lot of talk. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Maybe people will be pissed off and so they'll tune in. | ||
| It's just, I don't know. | ||
| Where do you stand on it? | ||
| I don't give a fuck. | ||
| It's so stupid. | ||
| Miss America. | ||
| I mean, this is what's really fascinating to me. | ||
| I was reading in the comments a lot of feminists were angry at me that I was mocking. | ||
| I saw a few of them. | ||
| I don't get it. | ||
| Like, why would you even want a who I'd most like to fuck contest? | ||
| Because that's what it is. | ||
| I mean, that's really what it is. | ||
| You're having these gals parade around in their bikini. | ||
| It's a beauty contest. | ||
| Do we have a Mr. America contest? | ||
| Like, is that just the president? | ||
| Is that what the Mr. America contest is? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| I mean, I was trying to ask you as someone who's deeply connected to competition and mindsets. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I'm not following it that closely. | ||
| But I am going to miss that part of the competition, to be honest with you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are you, though? | |
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's so many opportunities to see people naked today. | ||
| Yeah, but you know, as a kid watching this America pageant, I was like, you know, there weren't a lot of options. | ||
| Back then. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Kids today are broken. | ||
| Sports Illustrated and the pageant. | ||
| Swimsuit issue. | ||
| I wonder if they're going to continue the swimsuit issue. | ||
| Maybe they'll just see their faces and just have to assume they're in their swimsuit. | ||
| And then, you know, there'll be like a bubble, a thought bubble, and it'll be filled with an amazing quote that they say. | ||
| That'll be the new swimsuit issue. | ||
| Because we're just judging them on their minds. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And the content. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| The content. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The content. | |
| Speaking of content. | ||
| Living with monks. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| What is it called? | ||
| Living with the Monks. | ||
| Living with the Monks. | ||
| This is your new book. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Why did you decide to do that? | ||
| And how long did you do it for? | ||
| I did it for 15 days. | ||
| That's enough. | ||
| That's more than enough, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Where'd you go? | ||
| Go like this for an hour. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Your finger will fall off. | |
| What are you doing with your finger? | ||
| Up and down? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Just a repetition. | ||
| What did you have to do? | ||
| Well, I live with... | ||
| There were eight monks, four of which have been there for 50 years. | ||
| 50? | ||
| 50. On a monastery, 500 acres, kind of in the middle of nowhere. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| And I went for 15 days. | ||
| So I figured, you know, I'd invested so much of my life on the physical side and ran 100 miles and just always active and this and that. | ||
| And have really invested very little on my own inner work. | ||
| And I just felt like, man, I just felt overwhelmed a little bit. | ||
| And I said to my wife, you know, who are the masters? | ||
| And everything pointed to monks. | ||
| And I said, I want to go live on a monastery. | ||
| There's something romantic about that, right? | ||
| It's almost like the guy who goes off into the woods to write a book, like being with a monk and just being in a monastery with monks. | ||
| There's something very romantic about that, right? | ||
| That you've shed all your worldly belongings and you no longer care about the day-to-day nonsense that everybody is fixated on. | ||
| You just decide to just... | ||
| Yes. | ||
| All day. | ||
| You can do it, man. | ||
| I don't want to do it, man. | ||
| You should do it. | ||
| I don't want to do it. | ||
| I live the opposite of a monk's life. | ||
| My life is filled with bullshit. | ||
| I get it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Where'd you go? | |
| So I went to a monastery just south of Canada in the States. | ||
| What state is it? | ||
| It was in upstate New York. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Yeah, like on the Vermont border. | ||
| And it was, you know, no phone, total kind of separation from my family. | ||
| I have four kids, my wife, and just got to get to know myself a little bit. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Now, when you were up there, was there any time where you're like, what the fuck am I doing? | ||
| Like one minute into it. | ||
| When I first got up there, the main monk, like my go-to monk, Brother Christopher, took me to my room. | ||
| They call the rooms a cell, which is about the size of this table. | ||
| And I had a bed. | ||
| I walked in, there was a bed. | ||
| There was a little desk with a night lamp on it and nothing on the walls. | ||
| And he said, tomorrow, we're going to start prayer, reflection, and meditation at 7.15 a.m. | ||
| And I looked at my watch and it was 6 p.m. | ||
| And I asked him, well, what do we do between now and 7.15 a.m.? | ||
| And he looked at me dead in the eye and he said, you think? | ||
| And I said to myself, I'm fucked. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because I'm like... | |
| I don't really spend a lot of time in thought. | ||
| So I went and I said, okay, I'm going to meditate. | ||
| I'm here. | ||
| Let me start this journey with meditation. | ||
| I had taken a course in transcendental meditation. | ||
| I'm not a big meditation guy other than running. | ||
| So I set my timer for 20 minutes and I sat down in my chair and I started focusing on my mantra. | ||
| Immediately I'm bombarded with How is my wife? | ||
| How are the kids? | ||
| The Hawks? | ||
| The Atlanta Hawks. | ||
| I live in Atlanta. | ||
| Not your kind of Hawk. | ||
| Everything's coming at me. | ||
| And time is going by. | ||
| And I'm just getting bombarded with thought. | ||
| And I'm like, why is it my... | ||
| Timer buzzed like it's been I've been here forever so I was gonna look and reset my thing I'm like that would be cheating let me keep going and I'm going and all the times going by and finally I'm like fuck is going on with my timer you know so I open my eyes and I look to reset my timer it's three minutes and 27 seconds no and I said to my I really thought it was 20 minutes I thought it was like hours, man. | ||
| I mean like I never really sat in a room like with nothing going on and just closed my eyes alone and thought and time just stopped and I calculated how much time I have left like 15 days times 24 hours or 60 minutes and I said to myself like man I'm in trouble. | ||
| This isn't like like this isn't what I'm on Gilligan's Island. | ||
| This is a real like I can't get out of here and I had a really hard time with it. | ||
| What was the commitment? | ||
| The commitment was 15 days. | ||
| It was a personal commitment. | ||
| You did it up to you. | ||
| There was nothing in writing. | ||
| Did you have a way to escape? | ||
| I was thinking of escape plans. | ||
| On the monastery, and this is a little crazy, the way the monks keep the lights on is they breed German shepherds. | ||
| That's how they make money. | ||
| They breed German shepherds. | ||
| Oh, I've seen this. | ||
| They wrote a book. | ||
| Yeah, they wrote a book. | ||
| I have the book. | ||
| It's a book about raising puppies. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| The same guys? | ||
| Same guys. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| So they weren't Buddhists. | ||
| They were Russian Orthodox. | ||
| And they raise German shepherds. | ||
| So they live on this property, and there are these 11 German shepherds. | ||
| And at the end of the property, the only way off the property, were two mobile homes, unconnected to the monastery at the end of this road that leads up to the monastery. | ||
| And both of those homes had German shepherds as well that were a little territorial. | ||
| So there really was no way for me to escape. | ||
| I ran 120 miles up and down the driveway while I was there because I couldn't leave the property. | ||
| So you just timed yourself or paced yourself using an app or something like that? | ||
| No, I said like 2,000 steps equals a mile. | ||
| So you counted your steps? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| Oh, Jesus Christ, dude. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I counted it. | ||
| I marked it. | ||
| What did they think about you running back and forth like that? | ||
| I thought I was a fucking psychopath. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm like, you guys have been here for 50 years, man. | |
| I'm just trying to get some exercise. | ||
| What are the guys like that have been there for 50 years? | ||
| Quiet. | ||
| No, they were extremely... | ||
| Listen, they were doing what they wanted to do with their life. | ||
| So they were super happy. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, super present. | ||
| I mean, very present. | ||
| I mean, I live in a world of to-do lists, man. | ||
| They were very present, very happy, and really, really nice to me and everybody. | ||
| Did you talk to them? | ||
| They speak English? | ||
| What was the conversation like? | ||
| What do you say to a guy who's been in a monastery for 50 years, just staring at the walls? | ||
| Well, I could have talked to him about the pageant. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That would be an interesting conversation. | |
| He probably would have been super confused. | ||
| When I first got up there and they asked me a little bit about my background, I told them, you know, I was in the private jet business. | ||
| They didn't understand private jets really. | ||
| And then I said, I had a coconut water company. | ||
| They'd never heard of coconut water. | ||
| I told them I was involved with the Atlanta Hawks. | ||
| And one of the monks said, ah, I've been to an Expos game. | ||
| And I'm like, that's a different sport and they don't play, they don't exist anymore. | ||
| And it was just very like time warped at first. | ||
| It was really interesting. | ||
| Really interesting. | ||
| Jesus. | ||
| Now, what led these guys that are 50 years on the monastery, how old were they? | ||
| So some of the age range from, I think the youngest monk was probably 35 up until late 70s. | ||
| So late 70s were the guys that had been there for 50 years? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So they checked in when they were 20. Yeah, in their young 20s. | ||
| In the same spot. | ||
| They actually built this monastery by hand. | ||
| They bought 500 acres for very, you know, I think it was like $50,000 or something. | ||
| I mean, something crazy. | ||
| And then they built the monastery by hand. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And so it's been a passion of love and labor and they've been there since. | ||
| And so they vow celibacy the whole deal? | ||
| Celibacy, poverty. | ||
| Poverty and celibacy at 20. Yeah. | ||
| They take a vow for things of... | ||
| Celibacy, poverty. | ||
| They pledge all their personal belongings to the monastery. | ||
| So really their only possession is a driver's license. | ||
| Obedience and stability, meaning we're not leaving. | ||
| This is what we're going to do. | ||
| So, I mean, talk about discipline. | ||
| Just off the charts. | ||
| This is what we're going to do forever. | ||
| Forever. | ||
| And where do they get funding? | ||
| They're self-sufficient, so they breed German Shepherds, they sell them. | ||
| That's kind of one income stream. | ||
| And then they're masters, world masters of dog training. | ||
| So every two weeks, they have 10 dogs that come in, and I watch this. | ||
| I mean, literally, dogs come in like Spuds McKenzie and leave like they just left etiquette school. | ||
| Really? | ||
| It was... | ||
| Anytime you're in the presence of... | ||
| The people that are the best in the world at what they do, it's fucking fascinating. | ||
| And these guys were masters. | ||
| They are the masters of... | ||
| I'm sure there's a lot of people that are great, but in their space of dog training and breeding. | ||
| What was so special about the way they trained dogs? | ||
| Just the command. | ||
| Like, they had an energy that the dogs responded to. | ||
| I mean, like, I would walk in, the dogs would go crazy. | ||
| They'd sniff my nuts, they'd jump, like, they'd go nuts. | ||
| These guys would walk in and, like, they could just sense... | ||
| That they were in control. | ||
| That they were in control. | ||
| And, like, the eye contact... | ||
| Everything, the way that they talk, their tone, their hand mannerisms, they just have mastered this and they have a deep connection with the dogs. | ||
| Dogs are weird in that way. | ||
| Like I have a one-year-old golden retriever and he has different rules for different people and he knows who he can get away with, what with. | ||
| My wife's mom has zero shot at controlling this dog. | ||
| He's like, no, no, no. | ||
| I'm the boss. | ||
| I think I'm going to jump up on you and kiss you. | ||
| No, I'm going to just run around and put my paws on you when you sit in the chair. | ||
| And we're like, Marshall, come on, man. | ||
| What the fuck? | ||
| What is this? | ||
| You don't do this. | ||
| And it doesn't matter. | ||
| When she's here, he just decides, nah, new set of rules with this lady. | ||
| She doesn't seem to know what the fuck to do with me. | ||
| But I had a trainer that I worked with him for in the beginning when I first got him. | ||
| And when Ryan, the trainer, comes over, he just sits down. | ||
| He's super chill. | ||
| He listens. | ||
| He's like, oh, this guy knows what the fuck to do. | ||
| He knows how to control me. | ||
| It's very interesting. | ||
| He's even different with me than he is with my friends. | ||
| My friends will come over. | ||
| He's like, let me try you out, motherfucker. | ||
| Put my paws on you. | ||
| See what's up. | ||
| And I wish he would be, like, across the board with everybody, but he's just... | ||
| It's all love, so it's not bad. | ||
| You know, he's just a lovey dog. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But it's just, like, paws on you and shit, you know? | ||
| And I'm not really a dog person. | ||
| I like dogs. | ||
| Do you have one? | ||
| No? | ||
| No. | ||
| But we don't really connect. | ||
| You don't connect with the dogs? | ||
| I mean, I'm not, like, instant love when they see me the way that they are with other people, you know? | ||
| But the monks were teaching me various lessons, almost like karate kid style, through the dogs. | ||
| So the first day I got there, every day I was signed a different role. | ||
| I would shadow one of the monks. | ||
| And there were eight, and they had different responsibilities around the monastery. | ||
| The first day I was in the training center with one of the monks that was training the dog. | ||
| And my job was to be the distractor. | ||
| So Rainbow, this dog, would walk around and I would fucking go at him and jump and run and like try to, you know, whatever, get him to break his goal of going. | ||
| They were kind of simulating a park scene or a city scene and making this dog not get distracted. | ||
| So I would go nuts with a pork chop and this and throw whatever. | ||
| The dog would just go unwavering from point A to point B. And the monk said to me at the end, he's like, it's just like life, man. | ||
| He's like, if you have a goal, Just like Rainbow's goal is to get from A to B, you can't be distracted in your goal. | ||
| And I was like, that makes sense. | ||
| Some karate kid stuff. | ||
| Wax on. | ||
| Yeah, like wax on. | ||
| But all these different lessons started to emerge. | ||
| It was pretty interesting. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| It's interesting, too, that they're doing it with German Shepherds, which are really, really smart dogs. | ||
| What's a dumb dog? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What's generally thought of as a dumb dog? | |
| I'm trying to think. | ||
| I'm trying to think. | ||
| What would generally be thought of as a dumb dog? | ||
| There's no, like... | ||
| Prejudices for dogs, right? | ||
| Is there? | ||
| This is like one breed where you're like, this is a dumb fucking breed. | ||
| I don't think of... | ||
| If you say a dumb dog, there's dumb individual dogs, but I don't ever think of like, oh, that... | ||
| There's some dogs that are like spastic, right? | ||
| Like Jack Russell Terriers are kind of spastic, but that's because they were raised to kill rats, and they just have a high kill drive, and they're super hyper. | ||
| But like, I can't think of a dog that's supposed to be stupid. | ||
| But German Shepherds are generally supposed to be smart. | ||
| This list says English Bulldogs, but I don't know if that's necessarily true. | ||
| I think they're just lazy, man. | ||
| Really? | ||
| My dog, Brutus, is half English Bulldog and half Shibu Inu. | ||
| He just has bad joints and he's just lazy. | ||
| He's just, I don't think he's stupid. | ||
| He's kind of a dick. | ||
| He's a dick to other dogs, but I just think that's because he's in pain a lot. | ||
| These dogs were super smart. | ||
| They're so smart, man. | ||
| Those dogs look at you and they're sizing you up, checking you out, seeing what the fuck you're up to, making sure you're cool. | ||
| But there's this feeling like they know they could kill you. | ||
| They're looking at you like, I could kill you, but I'm just checking you out. | ||
| I had that feeling that they could kill me too. | ||
| Yeah, it's a real feeling. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, they can. | ||
| And I was scared they were sensing that. | ||
| I was trying to downplay my fear. | ||
| Yeah, my friend who trains them, It has a dog that's like he does police work and it's like a serious fucking dog and he'll attack like a thing if you're holding like a stick like on command and he jumps and one of the things he does he bites the stick and then two paws go right into your nuts and I don't think it's on purpose but damn it's an effective strategy like it's like bite and then nut stomp all in one maneuver right But those dogs are a | ||
| dog that's sort of bred and designed for protection work and police work and stuff. | ||
| They are, and they train their dogs as pets, so they didn't do any kind of, you know, police work or anything like that. | ||
| So the eleven German Shepherds that were on the property were super well behaved, I mean like ridiculously well behaved. | ||
| So when they train them, are they just training them to make sure that they're obedient, you know, they just listen, watch the house, bark at strangers, that kind of shit? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Hand signals, obedient, you know, not jumping, but really that, you know, they know who's in control. | ||
| So did these guys do that before they started running the monastery, or was it something that they decided to do while they had the monastery? | ||
| No. | ||
| So they fell into it. | ||
| They didn't go up there. | ||
| None of them had any experience in dog training. | ||
| That wasn't the intent. | ||
| They just said, we've got to keep the lights on here. | ||
| And they had a dog as a pet. | ||
| And fell in love with the dog and ultimately when the dog passed away, the dog got killed, they wanted another dog and they went to a breeder and they got two dogs and they realized that once they bred an amazing puppy, their first litter that and train these dogs that there was demand and they just scaled it like any other business you know and they learned along the way trial and error just like any entrepreneur | ||
| I mean these guys were like first of all they were monks and they're they're super spiritual they're religious they were Russian Orthodox they weren't they're not Buddhist and but they're amazing entrepreneurs I mean like they ran this thing super efficiently But the point would only be to make enough money to keep the lights on. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| So as an entrepreneur, it's almost like they're limited in their ambition. | ||
| I think excess, you know, it's not like if they have excess money and revenue, it's not going to material things, but it's for the life and the extension of the monastery. | ||
| So they would save it and put it away for taxes or what have you. | ||
| Yeah, or they have, you know, they're in the hands of God. | ||
| They don't have a lot of litters or they don't have a lot of puppies or they have no income. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| That's fascinating. | ||
| Now, these guys, what do they do for recreation? | ||
| They pray. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jesus. | |
| They think. | ||
| They read. | ||
| What do they read? | ||
| And they have like an amazing collection of books. | ||
| Fiction? | ||
| Everything. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Super well read. | ||
| So they do have some entertainment in terms of like fiction. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And, you know, periods of it—and I went up there with no expectation. | ||
| The only—like, I'd heard of monks. | ||
| I've seen monks in movies and read articles and blogs, but I never—I didn't know much about it, about the culture, certainly about Russian Orthodox and the different factions and this and that. | ||
| So I went up there with eyes wide open. | ||
| But I went up there really just to detach and get away from feeling overloaded and feeling distracted. | ||
| And man, I'm a father of four and I have a business and my wife has an entrepreneur, etc. | ||
| And I just wanted to see like, you know, this has kind of been my journey. | ||
| I learned best by diving into the unknown, just like I did with David and just as I've done in businesses and other things. | ||
| It's just like I learned best by going into the unknown. | ||
| So I didn't do a lot of research around them or how they made money or this or that. | ||
| I just kind of showed up. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| That's a crazy undertaking. | ||
| But I guess if you knew you only had 15 days, at least you have some light at the end of the rainbow. | ||
| When that 15th day came... | ||
| And did you get in a car and drive away from that place? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How fucking good did you feel? | ||
| Did you check your phone? | ||
| Did you check your text messages? | ||
| Felt really good. | ||
| See what's going on on Twitter? | ||
| On day four and five, I was already kind of making excuses. | ||
| I was rationalizing in my head that seven days would be enough. | ||
| So, like, in my head, I was going home day seven. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Well, I mean, I was like, no one's going to know the difference or care if I went 15 days or seven days. | ||
| Is that like if you're at mile 50 and you're like, that's enough? | ||
| It is. | ||
| Same kind of thing? | ||
| Same kind of thing until you wake up the next day and you're like, I dropped out. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And you feel like, you know. | ||
| So, anyway, I decided, like, you know, I'm going to stick this out. | ||
| And then when I left, it was a good feeling. | ||
| And the feeling was proud. | ||
| I felt proud of myself for sticking through it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Isn't that funny? | |
| These guys have been there for 50 years. | ||
| 50 years, man. | ||
| And you're like, I did it in two weeks, man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It felt good. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| I bet it did. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It also felt good to go into a bed. | |
| Well, the 50 years when you're describing that, that seems so insane to me that I can't even relate. | ||
| But when you're talking about your 15 days, I'm like, man, you poor bastard. | ||
| Like, I feel bad for you. | ||
| The guy, the 50 years, he might as well be living in another dimension, as far as I'm concerned. | ||
| The guy, I mean, went in there in his 20s? | ||
| That is just, so nothing. | ||
| No sex, no family. | ||
| No neighborhood. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nope. | |
| No fucking hobbies. | ||
| No drive to work. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| Fuck! | ||
| And you know their their impression of it is like we made this decision. | ||
| So it's not we didn't sacrifice it like we decided this is the life we want to live. | ||
| But when he made this decision it was 19 what? | ||
| 1965 or some shit? | ||
| Black and white TVs. | ||
| Oh my god, that's a crazy decision. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| To decide back then like I I see what's coming and I've had enough. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I've had enough. | ||
| These daily newspapers, it's just too much information. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, exactly. | |
| That's a crazy time to check out. | ||
| So they don't know what the fuck's going on in the world? | ||
| Did you quiz them on shit? | ||
| I didn't really quiz them. | ||
| I mean, every Sunday night, there's one TV in one back room, and they watch the news. | ||
| So they get a sense of just, like, you know, kind of where we are, state of the union. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If we're at war. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| If there's a nuclear meltdown. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| One hour? | ||
| Yeah, they watch about an hour on Sunday night. | ||
| One night a week and that's how they tune in. | ||
| Who do they trust? | ||
| I was going crazy. | ||
| I was immediately like, my head went to like, I'm sure we're being attacked right now and I'm stuck at the monastery. | ||
| I'm sure the airlines aren't flying and I'm stuck here for another 30 days. | ||
| My mind went to a place where I was thinking just the worst of everything. | ||
| What news do they trust? | ||
| I think they trust it all. | ||
| But like, which channel do they go to? | ||
| Oh, they would just watch like, you know, the local ABC, the local network. | ||
| So whatever's local in upstate New York. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| There weren't Netflix options. | ||
| Do they have internet? | ||
| I had no access to the internet. | ||
| I think they have access. | ||
| Probably for their job. | ||
| Yeah, but I had no access. | ||
| For the dog training? | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| It was wild. | ||
| But why is that so romantic to people? | ||
| Because it is. | ||
| It's very romantic. | ||
| There's something about this idea of checking out. | ||
| I had a buddy who did it. | ||
| For all I know, he still does it. | ||
| I lost touch with him 25 plus years ago. | ||
| But he was a Taekwondo guy. | ||
| And he started to meditate... | ||
| Because he was always very nervous about sparring and very nervous about competition. | ||
| So he was trying to figure out what was going on. | ||
| So he said, let me just take some meditation classes. | ||
| He took some meditation classes and really enjoyed it. | ||
| Got really, really into it. | ||
| And then one day decided to give up all the worldly possessions and all of the trappings of civilization and move into the monastery. | ||
| And I remember we met him for lunch one day. | ||
| He'd also become a vegetarian, so he only ate vegetables. | ||
| And we were all just hanging around, and he seemed oddly at peace. | ||
| And it was so confusing to me, because at the time, I was, like, probably 20. And I just didn't know what the fuck was going on in the world. | ||
| He was maybe 10 years older than me. | ||
| And this guy had just decided, I've had enough. | ||
| Which is weird to me, though. | ||
| He made me nervous. | ||
| Like, you know? | ||
| Like, he made me nervous that, like... | ||
| He was on to something. | ||
| It made me nervous that he was wiser than me. | ||
| It highlighted how fucked up I am, especially at 20. Life is so chaotic. | ||
| You have no idea what the future holds for you, if it's going to be success or failure, if you're going to slip on every fucking banana peel you run across. | ||
| But he seemed to have it figured out. | ||
| Sitting there eating vegetables, all calm and shit. | ||
| Where is he now? | ||
| I have no idea. | ||
| I lost touch with him. | ||
| I lost touch with him, you know, probably like 30 years ago. | ||
| When I was 20, those guys freaked me out too. | ||
| They must have freaked you out just when you did this book. | ||
| I freaked them out. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I was an alien. | ||
| I mean, I came in there high energy, you know, rah-rah. | ||
| Were you the only guys that ever done that? | ||
| Probably. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| At this particular place, I think, for an extended period of time like that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Why'd they let you do it? | ||
| Well, I'd written a book prior, Living with a Seal, and they knew I was coming up there to write a book. | ||
| And I guess they liked the first book. | ||
| Well, I'm sure it'll be good for the dog business, too. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| So they read your book? | ||
| They read my book. | ||
| Were you allowed to read books while you were there? | ||
| I was allowed to. | ||
| I brought... | ||
| I'm not like a big reader, so I figured two books would carry me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
For 15 days? | |
| For 15 days, but I read both in the first two days. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So then I was like... | ||
| Did you check whatever they have? | ||
| Oh, look, Mary Poppins. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I can read this stupid shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I said I'm good just thinking. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So was there any point at day 13 when you're like, I actually kind of like this? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I think around day seven, once I realized, like, you know, I got the excuses out of my head that I'm staying. | ||
| I'm not leaving. | ||
| I'm in this. | ||
| This is what I'm doing. | ||
| And I settled into it. | ||
| I got tremendously energized because, like, at the monastery, you don't make any decisions. | ||
| You eat when they tell you to eat. | ||
| You eat what they tell you to eat. | ||
| You go to service when the church bell rings. | ||
| You go. | ||
| I wore one outfit. | ||
| I showered once. | ||
| So all the decisions were taken away from you. | ||
| But when all the decisions are taken away from you, it frees up so much energy. | ||
| So I was getting like super clear and I was like, I like this. | ||
| This is like no one can get to me. | ||
| I'm not getting bombarded. | ||
| No one can schedule appointments with me. | ||
| This isn't so bad. | ||
| Have you ever done the sensory deprivation tank? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-mm. | |
| There's the thing about the sensory deprivation, you know what it is, right? | ||
| The thing that's most interesting about it is that in the absence of input, your brain is freer and you can make decisions better and think about things better because there's no input coming in. | ||
| You don't think about it, but as we're sitting here... | ||
| Just touching this table is input. | ||
| You and I look at each other across the lights. | ||
| All this is input. | ||
| And in that tank, there's no input. | ||
| And in the absence of input, it frees up more resources for your brain. | ||
| So, in a sense, what these monks you're saying are doing by having everything on a schedule, you don't have to think about anything, and there's nothing coming in. | ||
| There's no Twitter, Facebook, all that jazz. | ||
| You have more resources. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And you feel better. | ||
| That's exactly right. | ||
| And I experienced that. | ||
| I think the average American makes like 35,000 to 50,000 decisions a day. | ||
| And there's a real thing called decision fatigue. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And when you eliminate all... | ||
| I remember when I came home. | ||
| I came home and the day I got home, my wife is like, sweetie, I'm going to take the kids to school and I'm going to take the blue car. | ||
| I was like, cool. | ||
| Take the blue car. | ||
| And she came back a minute later. | ||
| She's like, you know what? | ||
| I think I'm going to take the other car because I want to park and the blue car is too big. | ||
| And I was like, all right, cool. | ||
| Take the other car. | ||
| And then she came back in. | ||
| She goes, you know what? | ||
| I'm going to take the blue car. | ||
| I'm like, Sarah, you're using so much energy already. | ||
| It's 7.45 a.m. | ||
| on what car to drive. | ||
| And I realized that happens all the time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's exhausting, man. | |
| I'm sorry, go ahead. | ||
| No, no. | ||
| I'm just saying, I didn't have any of that. | ||
| So it freed up all this energy. | ||
| I was making massive life lists, what I want to do. | ||
| I became very aware of my relationship with time. | ||
| I mean, when we think of relationships, we think of our relationships with our mom or our dad or our kids or this and that. | ||
| But no one thinks of a relationship with time. | ||
| When I'm turning 50, the average American lives to be 78 years old. | ||
| So if I'm average, I hope I'm not, that means I got 28 years of life left. | ||
| If you reverse engineer that, if you reverse engineer it, like I just climbed Mount Washington. | ||
| There were no 70 year olds climbing Mount Washington. | ||
| The actual years that you have left to be active and do the shit that we want to do, They shrink significantly as a percentage as you get older. | ||
| So once you get aware of your relationship with time, everything shifts. | ||
| I had a fundamental shift when I came home as it relates to my relationship with time and who I want to spend it with and what I want to do. | ||
| And I want to put more on my plate of the stuff that I love to do with the people I love to do it with. | ||
| And I started getting a lot of clarity around that when I wasn't getting bombarded With everything else. | ||
| Like, I don't spend any time alone. | ||
| The only time I spend alone is if I go for a run. | ||
| Everything else is I'm getting influenced by everybody else and everything else. | ||
| So I'm losing my main superpower, my instinct, which I've survived. | ||
| I got a 980 on my SAT, man. | ||
| I survive on instinct and gut. | ||
| And I was losing that because I was so distracted. | ||
| So once I started to get that alone time, you don't have to go to a monastery to do it. | ||
| You just got to, you know, carving out a little bit of time for myself every day. | ||
| I just started to think a lot clearer on like, you know, how do I want to live reverse engineer the rest of my life? | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Do you think this is something you would do on a regular basis? | ||
| No, but it's something that I have and I feel like, like I said, going into the unknown, it gives you an edge. | ||
| You come out of it a little bit different than you go in. | ||
| It doesn't have to be a monastery. | ||
| It could be a race. | ||
| It could be a business experience. | ||
| It could be whatever. | ||
| Right, but just doing something different. | ||
| Doing it different because, you know, so yeah, I feel like it's, I don't think I would do it again, but I don't think I have to. | ||
| Because I already have... | ||
| I can tap into that when I need it. | ||
| Do you think that'll wear off, though? | ||
| Because a lot of times, inspiration for people, it's fleeting. | ||
| The takeaways won't wear off. | ||
| Like, I'm already back on my phone. | ||
| I'm back in modern day life. | ||
| I'm all fucked up again. | ||
| But... | ||
| The main things, like my relationship with time and certain things of, you know, who I want to spend it with and what I want to do and continuing to build what I call my life resume. | ||
| Doing these things that build up my, not my business resume, but my life resume. | ||
| That's things that I know I want to do more of and that will never go away. | ||
| So, you know, there's things that came out of it that will last forever. | ||
| Like what kind of adjustments did you make when you came back? | ||
| Started saying no. | ||
| I reverse engineered my life. | ||
| So let me give you an example. | ||
| My parents are 88. I have a good relationship with my parents. | ||
| My parents are 88. They live in Florida. | ||
| Let's say my parents live to be 92. I hope they live longer. | ||
| But let's say they live five years. | ||
| I don't have five years left with my parents. | ||
| I see my parents twice a year. | ||
| That means I have 10 visits with my parents. | ||
| So when I started to look at shit like that, I made significant changes. | ||
| Like, okay, I'm gonna get on a plane and see my parents. | ||
| And when I'm in those moments, My feet are on the ground. | ||
| That's where I am. | ||
| Because I only have a limited amount of time with them. | ||
| You understand? | ||
| It's not five years. | ||
| People are like, oh, I got five more. | ||
| No, you don't. | ||
| How many times do you see them, man? | ||
| You see them two times a year. | ||
| You got 10 visits. | ||
| So I just started looking at stuff like that and became really aware when I'm in moments that are big moments to take it in and take note of it. | ||
| So it has an impact on me and I appreciate it. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Did you shift anything else in your life as far as what you do with your time during the days? | ||
| I did. | ||
| So I started putting parameters around simple things like my phone. | ||
| So I was the guy at the movie theater. | ||
| I'd be checking. | ||
| Bing! | ||
| I'd look under my shirt so the light doesn't light up and know what you know. | ||
| Well, I'm glad at least you did that. | ||
| At least you're courteous. | ||
| Yeah, that's true. | ||
| But I put parameters. | ||
| I'm not keeping my phone at... | ||
| At nighttime and seeing anything come in at 5 in the morning. | ||
| Nothing at the dinner table with my kids. | ||
| So basic, obvious things like that. | ||
| But as far as my time, I made two really big changes. | ||
| One changes, and I've kind of always been doing this, so I wouldn't necessarily say it was a change, but I take three hours a day for myself. | ||
| Religiously, every day. | ||
| This is new just since the monastery. | ||
| It's kind of like... | ||
| It's unwavering since the monastery. | ||
| It's kind of been in my life and out of my life, but I just made a pie chart of time. | ||
| It's 24 hours in a day. | ||
| We all have the same pie chart. | ||
| It starts the same. | ||
| And I said, alright, I sleep seven hours. | ||
| I mean, sometimes I'm out of balance if I'm Doing something big. | ||
| But right now, six or seven hours. | ||
| I take three for myself and it's cumulative. | ||
| So like, I'll take, could be, I'm gonna go for an hour run. | ||
| I'm gonna sit in the sauna for 20 minutes. | ||
| I'm gonna do fucking nothing. | ||
| But when I'm in my time, I'm not mad that I'm not with my kids or my wife or I'm not mad that I'm not at my office. | ||
| Like, that's my time. | ||
| And when I'm with my kids, I'm not mad that I'm not at work or whatever. | ||
| Because I don't want to resent everything. | ||
| My wife or my boss or anybody for taking away the shit that I love to do. | ||
| Like if they said, you can't run. | ||
| You can't go in the sauna. | ||
| I'd be really pissed off. | ||
| I'd be pissed at my wife. | ||
| I'd be pissed at everybody. | ||
| So I take three hours for myself. | ||
| The average American works 40 hours a week. | ||
| That's eight hours a day. | ||
| You still have six hours left in the day. | ||
| Now, of course, you have to eat. | ||
| You have to commute. | ||
| You got family and this and that. | ||
| But my point is, even take 24 hours is a long day. | ||
| I learned that running. | ||
| You can get a lot of shit done if you keep moving for 24 hours. | ||
| Even if you take three hours for yourself, if you get rid of the stuff that doesn't move the needle in the buckets that are most important to you, you can get a lot done. | ||
| So I take three hours for myself. | ||
| And I'm not mad about it. | ||
| I'm not guilty about it at all. | ||
| I feel like I'm way out of balance. | ||
| And then the second thing actually... | ||
| It didn't come from the monastery, but it was kind of an offshoot of the monastery. | ||
| I was mentioning to you that I climbed Mount Washington. | ||
| Mount Washington, in the winter, is one of the ten most dangerous mountains, I think, to climb. | ||
| Certainly in the States, there's the highest death rate. | ||
| Because the winds go up to about anywhere from, on any given day, 50 to 100 miles an hour. | ||
| Minus 35 degrees. | ||
| No visibility. | ||
| It's fucking... | ||
| It's just... | ||
| 100 miles an hour? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What the fuck is that like? | ||
| I mean, I didn't experience 100, but I experienced super high wins. | ||
| Like, what did you experience? | ||
| 50? | ||
| I think even more. | ||
| 50, 60, yeah. | ||
| What is it like? | ||
| Well, I went twice. | ||
| The first time I went to do it, I didn't make it to the summit because it was too dangerous. | ||
| I actually timed out. | ||
| I didn't have enough time to get back to make it. | ||
| In altitude? | ||
| No, just in... | ||
| The amount of darkness? | ||
| Yeah, darkness. | ||
| It would have just gotten too tough to get back down. | ||
| I was with five friends. | ||
| No tour guide. | ||
| I mean, did everything wrong. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I actually came home after that attempt, which was a year ago, and I was talking to my wife about it, and I posted it on Facebook, so everybody was blasting, did you make it? | ||
| You know, Mount Washington's only about five miles to the top, 4.6 miles, just the elements and the weather that make it so hard. | ||
| And I said to my wife, I failed. | ||
| You know, like, I didn't make it. | ||
| I feel like an ass. | ||
| I'm so disappointed. | ||
| You know, I want to go back. | ||
| And she said, well, get a tour guide. | ||
| Break in your boots. | ||
| Properly train for this and go back next winter and check it off your list. | ||
| And I was like, next winter? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm going back on Saturday. | |
| Next winter. | ||
| Who knows if I'm going to be healthy enough next winter? | ||
| So I went back next Saturday with the same guys and we did it. | ||
| And then recently, this year, I took my son, who's eight. | ||
| Not to the top, but we're like, we're going to go camp out. | ||
| I want you to experience this. | ||
| Got him a minus 40 sleeping bag and all this stuff. | ||
| And we went out there with my friend who's a police officer in Suffolk County. | ||
| He brought his daughter. | ||
| And we're sitting out there sleeping outside and fucking freezing. | ||
| Fucking freezing. | ||
| And I'm all bundled up. | ||
| And I turn to him and I'm like, Kevin, how often do you do shit like this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, he's a police officer. | |
| He's the happiest guy. | ||
| Rockstar shape. | ||
| And he goes, I call it the Kevin rule. | ||
| He goes, every year, I go on one trip a year with my college roommates. | ||
| I've been doing this since I'm 21. And then once every two months, I take a weekend and I do something. | ||
| I go camping, I run a marathon, I go hiking, I go to whatever, with my family or friends. | ||
| And I said to myself, if I can't, going back to your question about time, if I can't take a weekend, Every eight weeks, once every two months, if I can't carve out a day or two to take some kind of adventure to put on my life resume or to collect a moment for me, then my life is out of balance. | ||
| I call it the Kevin rule. | ||
| And I said, if I live 30 more years, if I live to 80, And I do that, you know, for 30 years. | ||
| That's 150 or 100, basically 150 more fucking amazing memories that I'm going to create. | ||
| And that became another one of these time-related, monastery-related, urgency moments. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Rules. | |
| So I just, again, it just became a real big clarity around like, man, I want to live with urgency and I want to do as much shit as I can and put as much on my plate of the stuff I love to do with the people I love in my life and have it on my resume. | ||
| And that's how I want to live my life forward. | ||
| That's very inspiring. | ||
| So when you decided to cut out or carve out three hours a day for yourself, what was the first shit that you eliminated? | ||
| Literally just saying no to requests for my time. | ||
| Like what kind of shit? | ||
| Hey, Jess, can you think you can meet me for lunch? | ||
| I want to talk to you about a business idea that I have in the beverage space. | ||
| I know that you had your coconut water. | ||
| I want to talk to you about that. | ||
| No. | ||
| I'm going for a run. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, no, I don't want any money. | ||
| I don't want any money. | ||
| I just want to talk to you for 15 minutes. | ||
| A friend of mine... | ||
| No. | ||
| You think on Friday night you can come down for 15 and see this... | ||
| No. | ||
| Because it's cumulative. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's not one... | ||
| I mean, listen, I made my... | ||
| It's not one person ever. | ||
| No. | ||
| No. | ||
| It's going to be one person every day or so with some new request. | ||
| So that was the first shift. | ||
| And the second thing is for the... | ||
| And I put myself first. | ||
| And a lot of times I don't, but in certain times I do. | ||
| And I realized that I was, this is kind of, might be a little bit more specific, but I realized I love football. | ||
| I watch a lot of football, man. | ||
| I realized that I was watching two games, the college game on Saturday, fantasy football Sunday, I'm locked in, Sunday night game, Monday night, Thursday night, and I realized that if, at this point, if I live to be 85, 80, whatever, That would be 36,000 hours of football. | ||
| 36,000 hours of football that I'd be watching. | ||
| I'd throw in some of the fights, throw in some of the other stuff. | ||
| It's like I just took the plug out and I freed up these 36,000 hours. | ||
| My wife said, what do you mean you're going to go live in the monastery? | ||
| I'm like, it's 15 days, sweetie. | ||
| I just freed up 36,000 hours. | ||
| You get the benefit of that. | ||
| I'm going for 15 days. | ||
| So I freed up the time by eliminating stuff that fucking didn't move the needle. | ||
| So you stopped watching football? | ||
| Totally. | ||
| I still watch it, but I became very aware of it. | ||
| And I still watch it, but I check in. | ||
| I'm not sitting around on Sunday. | ||
| Nothing wrong with it. | ||
| It's just it wasn't moving the needle in my family, my finances, or my wellness. | ||
| But what about recreation time? | ||
| Like, does recreation time, is that valuable? | ||
| Like, enjoying things? | ||
| Like, sitting back and watching a good movie, enjoying it? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And I do. | ||
| I do, but I'm not, you know... | ||
| I'm asking for myself as much as I'm asking for you. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think, look, you gotta be happy and do the things you like to do. | ||
| But, you know, again, for me, I look at it very simply. | ||
| I got three or four buckets. | ||
| I got my family, my wellness, my finances, and causes that are important to me. | ||
| And if it's not moving the needle in those four buckets, it's really just a distraction. | ||
| Honestly. | ||
| Now, that doesn't mean I'm not going to go to a movie. | ||
| That's family. | ||
| That's part of my wellness. | ||
| Relaxing is part of my wellness. | ||
| You want to go... | ||
| But, you know, those are kind of – everything else kind of gets a no. | ||
| Like going to lunch to look at someone else's idea in a category I don't really know much about because they want to maybe get to me or they want my wife. | ||
| No. | ||
| No. | ||
| Just no. | ||
| No. | ||
| I should make a T-shirt. | ||
| I've said – listen. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| When I was starting out as an entrepreneur, when I was 20 years old, you know, and I was cleaning kiddie pools and in the music business, I was doing all this stuff, I'd laugh at a lot of jokes that weren't funny. | ||
| I know what you mean. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| To get deals, to get stuff, I'd laugh, and I'm sick of laughing at jokes that aren't funny. | ||
| That's actually very funny. | ||
| Like, you saying that is very funny. | ||
| It's a smart thing to do. | ||
| But in the beginning, it's very hard, right? | ||
| Because you're trying to get momentum. | ||
| You're trying to establish relationships. | ||
| You want people to like you. | ||
| You don't want to deadface a stupid joke. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| And then have people go, fuck that Jesse guy. | ||
| That guy's a dick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not doing anything with him. | |
| So you laugh. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Hmm. | ||
| So do you organize your time very specifically now? | ||
| And did you do that in the past? | ||
| I do now. | ||
| I did it in the past. | ||
| Because, you know, in the past, I'm going to do anything. | ||
| I say yes to action things without really thinking them through very often. | ||
| Now, what I do is I have a third grade, a three-year-old system. | ||
| I have two notebooks. | ||
| I'm kind of old school. | ||
| I don't really operate well keeping stuff in phones. | ||
| I just take everything that comes into my head and I dump it out of my head to free up space in my head. | ||
| So I have one journal that has everything I need to do. | ||
| And I just do that to get it out of my head. | ||
| So I don't have to remember that I have to get my son's friend's 8-year-old birthday present for Saturday. | ||
| I just write it down. | ||
| It doesn't mean it goes away, but it's out of my head. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And then I have my daily, from that list, I pick the most important things that have to get done. | ||
| And then the night before, I write them down or the beginning of the week. | ||
| I just knock them out, man. | ||
| And how long ago was it that you went to this monastery and did this 15 days? | ||
| A year ago. | ||
| One year ago. | ||
| And has this enthusiasm or this feeling waned at all? | ||
| No. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| That's really interesting. | ||
| Do you think you conveyed that in the book? | ||
| I do. | ||
| I mean, I feel like I've been living my life like this even before the monastery. | ||
| It just reinforced a lot of things. | ||
| I think combined with the fact that for some reason, you know, I'm turning 50, it's fucking with me in a way that I didn't think it would. | ||
| And I don't know how you, how old are you? | ||
| 50. Yeah, so I don't know if it's had the same impact on you, but like, you know, there's not a day that goes by where I don't say to myself, man, in 30 years you're turning 80. That's a way to look at it. | ||
| You want to live with urgency. | ||
| My enemy is the clock. | ||
| I feel like my enemy is the clock. | ||
| There's a lot of stuff I want to do in my life, and my enemy is the clock. | ||
| Do you feel like you live in the moment enough? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| You do? | ||
| I do. | ||
| Because that would be the worry, right? | ||
| Like, if you're constantly worrying about, damn, 20 years, I'm going to be 70. 30 years, I'm going to be 80. If you keep doing that, like, there are people that look ahead too much and don't just... | ||
| I've talked to people that are 20. Like, fuck, I can't believe I'm 20. I'm like, listen, motherfucker, you just turned 20, dude. | ||
| Relax. | ||
| You're like, just 20. You're a baby. | ||
| Nah, man, I'm going to be fucking 30 in 10 years. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like... | |
| You shut the fuck up. | ||
| You're 20 now. | ||
| I use it as a motivator. | ||
| And I remember when I was starting out, I was 21 years old. | ||
| This is a crazy story. | ||
| I just got dropped from a record label. | ||
| I was signed to a record label called Delicious Vinyl. | ||
| What did you do? | ||
| I had a rap record on Delicious. | ||
| You were a rapper? | ||
| I was a rapper. | ||
| Signed to Delicious with Tone Loke and Young MC. Oh, get the fuck out of here! | ||
| So, my album doesn't get picked, I don't get picked up for a second album, and I moved to New York City. | ||
| I have two things on my resume. | ||
| Kiddie pool attendant, because I was a kiddie pool attendant, and rapper. | ||
| So, I'm staying on my friend's couch, living on his couch, with his roommate, and he tells me on Monday, I gotta get out of the apartment. | ||
| So, instead of going to look For a new apartment over the weekend, I go to my friend's bachelor party on the Jersey Shore. | ||
| I'm at the bachelor party. | ||
| I'm getting a drink at the bar and I see this girl. | ||
| I start chatting with her. | ||
| She asks me where I live. | ||
| I told her, actually, as of Monday, I have nowhere to go. | ||
| She takes out a napkin. | ||
| She writes her address on the napkin. | ||
| I'm 21 years old. | ||
| And she says, if it's an emergency on Monday and you're stuck, you can come live with me. | ||
| Monday comes. | ||
| I get kicked out of my friend's apartment. | ||
| I have nowhere to go. | ||
| I'm like, this is an emergency. | ||
| I take out the napkin and I live with this girl and her roommate for six months. | ||
| It turns out that her father is a big entrepreneur, business model. | ||
| He owns a piece of the Yankees, just like monster mogul. | ||
| I write this song for the New York Knicks called Go New York Go, and it becomes a big success. | ||
| You remember that song? | ||
| No. | ||
| Okay, that's okay. | ||
| I'm not a sports fan. | ||
| Oh, that's fine. | ||
| It becomes a big hit. | ||
| And I just realized that there's an opportunity to write theme songs for all these professional sports teams, but I don't have a penny to go in the studio to do the demos to shop them to the team. | ||
| So I need money. | ||
| So I go to this music guy and he says, I'll give you $10,000 to go and do these songs for 10% of everything you make for the rest of your life. | ||
| He wants to buy me like a stock. | ||
| For the rest of your life. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm 21. For the rest of your life, everything you do. | |
| I will invest in you. | ||
| You own an airplane business. | ||
| He owns 10%. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Forever. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You have to kill him then. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah, you have to kill that guy. | ||
| But I need a 10 grand. | ||
| So I say, I'll take it. | ||
| So before I take it, I go to this girl's father for advice, this business mogul that I'm living with. | ||
| And I sit down. | ||
| I go to this guy's apartment. | ||
| Again, I'm 21. In his apartment, he's got a swimming pool, artwork, like fancy fuck. | ||
| Swimming pool? | ||
| He's macked out, man. | ||
| It's like I've never seen anything like this. | ||
| He does a swimming pool? | ||
| In Manhattan? | ||
| In Manhattan. | ||
| I'm just setting the stage of this conversation. | ||
| And I go in and I tell him the story about the 10 grand. | ||
| And he says to me, I will trade, this is exactly what he said to me, I will trade everything that I have. | ||
| For you to get out of my daughter's life. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| I'll trade everything I have for the one thing that you have. | ||
| And I'm like, man, I'm fucking broke. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What are you talking, me? | |
| I go, what's that? | ||
| And he said, youth. | ||
| Because he had already gone through the journey, even though he had everything. | ||
| He already had gone through the process. | ||
| He wasn't that 20-year-old that you're talking about that whatever. | ||
| He had gone through it. | ||
| He had it all. | ||
| He missed the process, the journey of being... | ||
| You coming up at 20 and not knowing... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Here you are, but those were the years, man. | |
| The first fight, the first this. | ||
| That's what makes you... | ||
| And that stuck with me, man. | ||
| At 21 years old, it stuck with me. | ||
| And realize that, like, man, I got to enjoy the process. | ||
| And it's really never rubbed off on me. | ||
| From me. | ||
| Well, why didn't that guy, how old was this guy at the time? | ||
| The old rich dude? | ||
| He was, let's see, he must have been in his 60s. | ||
| Why didn't he just do shit? | ||
| Do a bunch of shit. | ||
| He did. | ||
| Instead of lounging around his fucking swimming pool in his house. | ||
| He did, he did. | ||
| He had an amazing... | ||
| Wishing he was 20. He had an amazing life. | ||
| He had an amazing life. | ||
| So what did you wind up doing? | ||
| The second part of that conversation, he said, will you make this work on your own? | ||
| I said, I think I can. | ||
| He said, I didn't ask you if you can. | ||
| He said, will you make it work? | ||
| I said, I will. | ||
| He said, then go tell the guy to fuck off. | ||
| And go make it work. | ||
| And I did. | ||
| So how'd you get it funded then? | ||
| I somehow got... | ||
| I went to the Dallas Mavericks after the Knicks and told them that... | ||
| I convinced them to give me a $2,500... | ||
| The Knicks paid me... | ||
| It was just a crazy part of my life. | ||
| But they gave me $2,500 to do the demo. | ||
| And then they bought the song for like $20,000. | ||
| And that funded the rest of the business that I ultimately sold to a public company. | ||
| Wow, that's crazy. | ||
| And you almost gave away 10% of your whole life. | ||
| That guy who wanted 10% is a piece of shit. | ||
| What a motherfucker. | ||
| Like, that's a... | ||
| It's just business. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just business. | |
| And I had no one to go to. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know. | |
| He's taking advantage of a 21-year-old kid who's just got some dreams and needs some cash, and 10 grand to him is probably nothing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I called my father. | ||
| My father owned the plumbing supply house in Mineola, Long Island, during this time in my thing. | ||
| And my father said, you know, I love him to death. | ||
| But he's like, you know, do what you think is best. | ||
| He just didn't... | ||
| I didn't know what to turn to. | ||
| I didn't know what to turn to. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Don't give up 10% of your life. | ||
| Ever. | ||
| That's just crazy. | ||
| Someone asked for that. | ||
| But you hear things like... | ||
| I mean, this is similar to what they do in the music business. | ||
| Like how the music business treats artists. | ||
| They essentially sign you to these contracts... | ||
| And then take a piece of everything. | ||
| They take a piece of if you do a movie, they take a piece of your live performances, your merchandise sales, everything. | ||
| They just say, look, we'll help you out a little bit, but we want you. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, at least you're in a contract, though. | ||
| But there's some creepy contracts that they used to do in the old days of Hollywood that were similar to that, right? | ||
| They just take a PCF forever. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When I signed my music deal, I didn't care. | ||
| I was like, you can take whatever you want, man. | ||
| Get me on MTV. Right, of course. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Take it all. | |
| Well, that's the whole idea. | ||
| The reason why these exploitation contracts work is because in the beginning you're just so desperate and what you have is what they don't have. | ||
| You have talent, right? | ||
| What you have is you're creative. | ||
| You're young and full of energy and you've got something exciting that people want to look at. | ||
| And so what they do is they go, oh, look, we've got a way through the door, but we want 75% of the profits. | ||
| We want a little bit of this. | ||
| And you don't get any money back until we recoup our money that we spent on... | ||
| Executives and parking and car leases and they calculate all that shit. | ||
| How much the fucking building costs, how much electricity, all that stuff. | ||
| You've seen those, I'm sure. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Those contracts. | ||
| They're fucking scary. | ||
| I've signed them. | ||
| I've signed them in my own way. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But, you know, it's part of the process and no leverage. | ||
| No leverage. | ||
| That's the thing. | ||
| They've got the leverage. | ||
| And now they don't have the leverage, but they still figure out a way to pull it off. | ||
| It's really weird, because who the fuck is buying albums now? | ||
| No one. | ||
| No one. | ||
| But yet these record companies are still figuring out how to cling on to you like a lamprey and suck blood out. | ||
| They're still staying alive and their fat fingers driving their fat Mercedes Benz. | ||
| They know how to do it. | ||
| They just figure out a way to grab people that are just, just getting popping, you know, and just signing, and then figured out a way to get in with these fucking streaming companies. | ||
| Have you paid attention to any of that shit? | ||
| A little bit, yeah. | ||
| That's the darkest. | ||
| It's even darker than the music distribution. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because the artists get, like, no money. | ||
| 0.00001. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Steven Tyler was talking about it with me. | ||
| It's just... | ||
| He was explaining it and there's a... | ||
| It's the company's actually... | ||
| Or the organization's actually called MMA. What is something... | ||
| What did it stand for? | ||
| Musicians for... | ||
| Some sort of an act. | ||
| Where they're, you know, trying to stop these streaming companies... | ||
| From ripping off these artists. | ||
| Music modernization act. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's dark. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But it's along the same lines. | ||
| It's like people figuring out a way to just take something from somebody. | ||
| Because you need it. | ||
| You know, you're broke. | ||
| You're desperate. | ||
| You signed a contract. | ||
| Oh, you gotta buy a contract. | ||
| And then music that was invented... | ||
| How did they put Led Zeppelin on a streaming service? | ||
| There was no streaming. | ||
| There should be a whole new contract, right? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's true with audiobooks, too. | ||
| Even books now, all these old publications, they never envisioned that there would be e-books and audiobooks and all these different distribution... | ||
| I would imagine that audiobooks probably mirror the sales of regular books now. | ||
| I mean, at least in my circle, I know so many people who just use audiobooks and they hardly ever read. | ||
| And what they've essentially done is taken that commuter time that was just dead air and filled it up with books. | ||
| When I did the Seale book, I couldn't believe how many people hit me about the audio. | ||
| Because I did my own audiobook and I just couldn't... | ||
| What year was that? | ||
| It came out two years ago. | ||
| And it just never dawned on me that people even listened to audiobooks. | ||
| It made me angry that I did the read so quickly. | ||
| I was like, I should have invested a little bit more time and gotten a coach or something. | ||
| I just read it. | ||
| What percentage of your books were audio versus paper? | ||
| It's a good question. | ||
| I'm gonna guess about 30%. | ||
| 30% audio. | ||
| Maybe 30-40%. | ||
| So it's closing in. | ||
| Closing in on 50-50. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Because, you know, people can now speed it up a little bit so they can get through it quicker. | ||
| It's so weird. | ||
| People do that with podcasts. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So they're listening to us right now like we're on speed. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Now, when you're done with this book, and you get back from this monk thing, and you realize that this has made some sort of a fundamental shift in the way you live your life, and you put this book out, is there a real sense that people who read this book are going to get that from you? | ||
| Are you aware that you're probably going to change the way a lot of people live their lives? | ||
| I hope so. | ||
| I don't know if they'll change their lives, but I hope that it helps them look through things through a different lens and make their own decisions. | ||
| One of the takeaways from the book isn't so much specific around the monastery. | ||
| It's around this notion of building your life resume. | ||
| You know, and just stepping into the unknown. | ||
| Because for me, that's where I learned the best. | ||
| I mean, I could get a traditional coach or go to seminars or experts, but I just don't learn. | ||
| I learn by going into the unknown. | ||
| And I hope it just motivates people to have a little bit more urgency and do stuff like that. | ||
| You don't have to go to a monastery. | ||
| But, you know, there's an old Japanese ritual, you might be familiar with it, I don't know, called the Misogi. | ||
| And the thought around the Misogi is, it was introduced to me by Kyle Korver, who played at the Hawks, for the Atlanta Hawks. | ||
| And the notion around the Misogi is, you do something so hard one time a year that it has an impact the other 364 days of the year on you. | ||
| That you go so far beyond... | ||
| For me, that was my 100-mile run. | ||
| I mean, I can look back since 2008. I've had moments like that every year. | ||
| And I believe in that. | ||
| I believe in that. | ||
| And I don't know why I just brought that up, but it's true. | ||
| And so it's just kind of one of the themes around this urgency and creating memories, etc. | ||
| Yeah, I think there's things like that sort of highlight that urgency that if you just live your life like at the same steady static pace Maybe sometimes you don't feel it as much. | ||
| I'm sure after you did your 100-mile run, when it was over, it probably felt so good to relax. | ||
| Well, first of all, for me, the pressure around completing the run. | ||
| When I did the run, I raised millions of dollars for charity. | ||
| And everyone in my world knew I was doing it. | ||
| I gave myself 90 days to train for it. | ||
| What's normal? | ||
| I would say like for the people in the shape that I was in going into, probably a year, eight months, six months. | ||
| I mean, I gave myself 90 days. | ||
| I started in August and the race was 90 days later. | ||
| And everyone in my world was donating money. | ||
| Or involved or knew about it. | ||
| So if I didn't finish it, so much can go wrong in a 100 mile run. | ||
| You know, like something goes wrong in a marathon at mile 19, you got it out. | ||
| You got seven more miles left. | ||
| You know, something goes wrong at mile 19, you have 81 miles left. | ||
| You can't gut, most people can't gut that out. | ||
| I don't think I could. | ||
| I felt so relieved when it was done because I was just like, man, I did it. | ||
| And no one can take it away from me. | ||
| What was the longest you had ran before that? | ||
| I ran two fifties. | ||
| Two fifties? | ||
| Two fifty milers. | ||
| I mean, I never did miles, I did time. | ||
| So I did two ten-hour, about ten-hour runs twice. | ||
| And fifty miles in those ten hours? | ||
| Probably around there. | ||
| Somewhere around there? | ||
| But you knew that you were at the halfway mark, roughly, and you could push through the rest. | ||
| I knew that if I could get to 50 miles in 10 hours, I could basically, even injured, walk the rest in the allocated time. | ||
| Now, after that was over, and after you did do that 100 miles, how much of a shift did that make in the way you thought about time and effort? | ||
| Totally changed my life. | ||
| Completely, completely talking about this Misogi. | ||
| It completely changed my life. | ||
| That was in 2006, I think, that I did the run. | ||
| And it's completely changed my life. | ||
| Because when I started running, my goal was to run two miles. | ||
| If I could run two miles in 18 minutes, nine minute pace, I considered myself a runner. | ||
| And I worked towards that goal. | ||
| Like, out of college. | ||
| I was like, just got out of college. | ||
| I'm like, I'm gonna try to run two miles, you know? | ||
| Like, it took me a little to get there in nine-minute pace. | ||
| And fast forward, I ran this. | ||
| Nothing in my body changed. | ||
| This is the same legs God gave me, same lugs God gave me. | ||
| I'm not very strong. | ||
| Nothing's changed. | ||
| But I took that two-mile body And ran 100 miles. | ||
| And I bet almost a lot of people that are listening to this could run two miles with a gun to their head. | ||
| They could run two miles if they had to. | ||
| And the only thing that changed was the way I perceived what I thought I could do in this run. | ||
| And I realized after the race that, holy shit, I did 50x what my initial goal was. | ||
| Like, I was under-indexing 50x in this category of my life. | ||
| What are the areas of my life, Jesse? | ||
| What other areas of your life, man, are you under-indexing in? | ||
| Like, okay, if your sales quota at Marquee Jet, my company, was 20 jet cards, is that because I knew I could get it and it was comfortable? | ||
| Or should I be like, man, put me on the board for 40, fellas, this month. | ||
| Let me see what the fuck I can do. | ||
| I was living in this, like, comfort. | ||
| I was going through life like this. | ||
| Routine. | ||
| And routines are great, but routines can also be a rut. | ||
| You can't get better in a routine. | ||
| And if you get so... | ||
| When you're in a routine, time goes fast. | ||
| When you're out of your routine, time goes slow. | ||
| So I was so comfortable in my routine. | ||
| I was like, man, fuck it. | ||
| I don't want to go through life like this. | ||
| I want to go through life like this, you know? | ||
| And I was just... | ||
| The people who are listening, you're going up. | ||
| I'm going up. | ||
| Most people are listening. | ||
| Yeah, I'm sorry. | ||
| So I'm just going... | ||
| People do this all the time. | ||
| I'm just locked in. | ||
| I don't even know where... | ||
| People are listening? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I'm locked into you. | ||
| I was going flat, you know? | ||
| I was just doing the same shit. | ||
| And you want a nice 45 degree upward angle. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So this run showed me, man, I was under-indexing so much what I thought I was capable of. | ||
| And it made me think, like, what else am I capable of? | ||
| What about recovery? | ||
| Like, what was it like when you were done? | ||
| Well, at mile 94, I realized I had six toenails in my shoe. | ||
| So that was an uncomfortable feeling. | ||
| So you felt them rattling around? | ||
| Felt them rattling around. | ||
| And when I took my shoes off, my feet were so fucked up. | ||
| Is it because your feet swell while you're running? | ||
| And if you have a size 10, you're supposed to swap out to a size 11 later? | ||
| Is that how it works? | ||
| Yeah, I swapped. | ||
| I wanted to size up. | ||
| But I had blisters. | ||
| I had bad blisters. | ||
| My blisters were really bad. | ||
| Were they bad before you ran? | ||
| No. | ||
| I got them as I was going, and it literally looked like I had swallowed red grapes, and they went to the bottom of each of my toe. | ||
| I mean, it was just... | ||
| So, I was in a wheelchair for four days after the race. | ||
| Four days? | ||
| Just because of the bottom, the blisters, and, you know... | ||
| So, for me, just like a regular guy... | ||
| It was a very powerful moment for me, you know? | ||
| And it was worth it. | ||
| It was all well, well, well worth it. | ||
| Once I was done and I realized, like, I'm okay. | ||
| I'm not in shock. | ||
| I'm not dehydrated. | ||
| I'm just in super pain. | ||
| That was a great moment. | ||
| And I have a regret from that race. | ||
| Like, one of the biggest regrets in my life. | ||
| Like, I don't like the way I finished the race. | ||
| I ran 99 miles. | ||
| The last mile took me 48 minutes and literally had to grab my brother's shoulders. | ||
| If I could do it all over, I wanted to really finish that like a champion. | ||
| And I was just very disappointed. | ||
| I'm very happy about it. | ||
| But I also have one of my biggest regrets from the race. | ||
| It's just that, you know, I got to that moment and I just didn't finish it the way I wanted to finish it. | ||
| What was wrong? | ||
| Oh, man, my fucking joints. | ||
| Like, my hips and my knees were just, like, swollen. | ||
| Just so much pain. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was just so... | |
| At 75, I felt I just kind of was running and then all of a sudden I was on the ground because I just buckled. | ||
| It was my joints, not my muscles. | ||
| Like I said, if you roll your thumb around for 24 hours, your thumb's going to fall off. | ||
| It's just that motion and pounding. | ||
| And I didn't know what I was doing. | ||
| I was wearing cotton. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was like, I did everything wrong. | |
| But I did it. | ||
| And when you did get done with that in the wheelchair for four days, how long did it take before your body felt normal, like your joints normalized and your hips and your knees? | ||
| Took about a little over two weeks. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you're just hobbling around for two weeks thinking about it. | ||
| I'm still impacted by it. | ||
| Really? | ||
| How so? | ||
| I had a huge cyst from all the stress on my foot. | ||
| You're making a ham-sized. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're holding your hands like a watermelon. | |
| How big was it? | ||
| Big enough I couldn't wear shoes. | ||
| What? | ||
| I had to wear sneakers. | ||
| I'll show you a picture when we're done. | ||
| Did you get it removed? | ||
| I got it drained twice, and then I went to an almost fruitarian diet and went away. | ||
| Fruitarian? | ||
| Just all fruit? | ||
| Why did that do it? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Did you try fruits with vegetables or fruits with anything else? | ||
| For 27 years, I've only had fruit till 12 o'clock noon. | ||
| That's all I eat in the morning. | ||
| But I extended that out further and it went away on its own. | ||
| From fruit? | ||
| I don't know if that's the reason. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Maybe it just went away. | |
| But I made some significant changes in my diet. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So what led you to be the fruitarian idea? | ||
| I read a book called Fit for Life right before my first marathon. | ||
| I was 21 or 22 years old, like looking for an edge. | ||
| And in the book, it challenges the reader. | ||
| One of the principles of the book is to only eat fruit until noon. | ||
| We can talk about it, but it challenges the reader to try it for 10 days and then day 11 go back to your regular breakfast and see how you feel. | ||
| So I did. | ||
| I can invest 10 days to try this. | ||
| And on day 11, I went back to oatmeal and toast or whatever. | ||
| And I was like, oh my god, man. | ||
| I felt so sluggish and bloated. | ||
| And I was like, I never went back. | ||
| And that's unwavering. | ||
| I'm unwavering on that. | ||
| I run a marathon. | ||
| It never changes. | ||
| Fruit till noon. | ||
| And so, that's why. | ||
| Now, what do these people eat in the monastery? | ||
| So they have a very light breakfast that suited me well. | ||
| They have fruit in the morning. | ||
| And then their lunch, they call it dinner. | ||
| That's their big meal. | ||
| So the afternoon meal is like dinner. | ||
| And then at night, it was super light, like soup and salad or whatever. | ||
| So it was really like almost one meal a day. | ||
| Are they vegetarian? | ||
| Some were, but others weren't. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| Not all of them were, which was interesting. | ||
| Did you expect them to be? | ||
| I did. | ||
| I lost a lot of weight there. | ||
| I lost like 17 pounds. | ||
| Really? | ||
| In two weeks? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Why so? | ||
| Do you think it's lack of sugar? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No carbs, lack of sugar. | ||
| So they don't eat any bread? | ||
| They did. | ||
| I didn't. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| I wanted to put a little asterisk next to my thing. | ||
| I went in there saying to myself, I wanted to come back clean, so I really tried not to have any grains. | ||
| And I did have some grains, but not a lot. | ||
| And I walked a lot. | ||
| I walked 120 miles over the time I was there, up and down the driveway. | ||
| So I lost a lot of weight. | ||
| I gained it all back, but at the time, yeah. | ||
| Now, these people that live this life, do they have something they're working towards? | ||
| Do they have an idea that they're working towards? | ||
| I mean, when you press them on it and ask them, like, why are you here? | ||
| Do you ever plan on leaving? | ||
| Do you ever see yourself going somewhere else? | ||
| That's a really good question. | ||
| I asked them all those questions. | ||
| So, no, they felt like that was their calling. | ||
| Their calling? | ||
| They were doing what they were supposed to be doing. | ||
| And... | ||
| That they were committed to that lifestyle. | ||
| So, no, there was no thought of going back. | ||
| There have been monks that have left the monastery. | ||
| It just wasn't the right lifestyle for them. | ||
| But the monks that were there, when I was there, 50 years, they were committed and they're not going anywhere. | ||
| That's what's confusing to me. | ||
| I understand that they're enjoying and I understand that they like that life, but that it's a calling. | ||
| Like the calling to do nothing. | ||
| Or just think? | ||
| Maybe it's just... | ||
| Sacrifice. | ||
| Serve God. | ||
| Live a life of purity. | ||
| This is not... | ||
| I couldn't do it, but I think that's kind of the mindset around it. | ||
| And step away from... | ||
| The regular life that they were living. | ||
| What's interesting is that they weren't born into the monastery. | ||
| Right. | ||
| A lot of these guys made this decision in their 20s, 30s. | ||
| What were their jobs before they did it? | ||
| All over the board. | ||
| All over the board. | ||
| Literally. | ||
| One of the monks was a lifeguard as a teenager. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| I mean, just all over the board. | ||
| So, but regular jobs, just always felt connected to God and connected to this higher living a life just, you know, under these terms. | ||
| Well, what's fascinating to me is that you're saying that they're so happy. | ||
| Because if you get around, I mean, how many people are in this monastery? | ||
| Eight. | ||
| And they're all male? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Eight men. | ||
| If you get eight random men in their, you know, what's the youngest age of the guys? | ||
| 35. 35 up to 70s. | ||
| You get eight random 35 to 70s and ask how many of them are happy. | ||
| Actually truly happy. | ||
| Maybe two, right? | ||
| How many people do you think are happy? | ||
| Well, they just did a study. | ||
| There's a famous Harris study on happiness in this country. | ||
| I think 67% of people are unhappy. | ||
| That is fucked. | ||
| I did this, Joe. | ||
| This is a good test. | ||
| Maybe you'll want to do this. | ||
| I did this when I was speaking at an event for 500 Wall Street people recently, and it was fascinating. | ||
| I'll take you through it. | ||
| You can tell me if you're comfortable with it. | ||
| But if you take all the areas of your life and put them in a blender... | ||
| Okay? | ||
| So take where you live, your relationships, your finances, your health, everything. | ||
| Everything. | ||
| Put it in one fucking big blender and blend it up. | ||
| And on a scale of one to ten, with a ten being the Dalai Lama of happiness, and a one being a guy that's at zero, being someone that's at rock bottom, what's your happiness number? | ||
| Me? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm pretty fucking happy. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I wouldn't do it that way. | ||
| I definitely wouldn't give it a number. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Because I feel like you're making something – you're turning like a constant state of thinking and expression and consideration. | ||
| You're turning it into a number. | ||
| And I just – I don't like that idea. | ||
| I don't like that idea. | ||
| Because I think it's a management issue. | ||
| I think a lot of what happiness is is a management issue. | ||
| And decisions that you're making right now, like you could be in a shit state of mind right now, but you could make some decisions to adjust that, and over the next couple hours, you'll get to a much better place. | ||
| And these constant management decisions, they waver in and out of your life on a daily basis. | ||
| Like this idea that you could have a good mindset, then all of a sudden you'll be happy. | ||
| That's horseshit. | ||
| It's like the tide. | ||
| It comes in and it comes out. | ||
| There's going to be days where you're just not feeling so good physically. | ||
| And that's going to affect the way your happiness level is. | ||
| It's never static. | ||
| It's never exactly the same. | ||
| True. | ||
| But if you looked at it overall at 30,000 feet and you had to give yourself a grade. | ||
| Happy as fuck is what I would say. | ||
| I'm pretty happy. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So I'll take that. | ||
| I'll take that. | ||
| Most people in that room raised their... | ||
| I said, if anyone is seven and... | ||
| For anyone listening that wants to do it, raise your hand if you're seven or below. | ||
| I don't want to put anyone on the spot. | ||
| And the majority of the room stood up. | ||
| Being a seven and thinking seven's a pretty happy number. | ||
| But a seven... | ||
| If my son comes home with a 70 on a test... | ||
| It's a C-. | ||
| And all I'm saying is, what's interesting about the test, though, if you do actually go through the process, for those that go through and get a number in their head or whatever, or do want to give themselves a grade, your brain automatically goes to a 10 and then subtracts the two or three things pop in that bring your happiness down. | ||
| It's a great way to identify What's making you unhappy? | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| You start at a 10, you're like, oh fuck, my relationship, this or that. | ||
| Usually it triggers an automatic, this is what's fucked up in my life response. | ||
| It helps you identify. | ||
| But it's interesting, we have benchmarks. | ||
| In so many things in our life. | ||
| You have an IQ test. | ||
| You have tax brackets to measure your wealth or financial statements. | ||
| You have IQ tests, like I said. | ||
| You can get on a scale to measure your weight. | ||
| But you're right. | ||
| Happiness is one of those things. | ||
| It's like, how do you benchmark it? | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It kind of fluctuates. | ||
| It's like hunger. | ||
| It's something that goes in and out. | ||
| It's always there. | ||
| But happy as fuck is a good answer. | ||
| Yeah, but this is something I've cultivated for a long time and avoided things that make me unhappy and figured out what those things are and been very rigid about eliminating them from my life. | ||
| And one of the big ones is eliminating interactions with people that are negative. | ||
| That is gigantic. | ||
| Because I've realized that I'm not really as independent as I used to like to think I was. | ||
| I used to like to think that my thought process was independent and that I don't give a fuck what anybody thinks. | ||
| That's nonsense. | ||
| People say that because they absolutely care what people think and it bothers them. | ||
| So they say, I don't give a fuck. | ||
| But that I don't give a fuck stuff is almost entirely nonsense. | ||
| You do care. | ||
| And you care in both ways. | ||
| You care if people are critical of you. | ||
| You care if people are positive of you. | ||
| But you also care if people are living positive lives. | ||
| And they're motivating you. | ||
| That's a big one. | ||
| People are fuel. | ||
| And other people... | ||
| It's one of the reasons why I like talking to people. | ||
| One of the reasons why I like to do podcasts. | ||
| Because I get a lot out of just talking to you about your time in the monastery. | ||
| Or your push to get to that hundred miles. | ||
| You get... | ||
| Energy out of people like that. | ||
| And you think about this energy and you think about this inspiration when you're doing other things. | ||
| And it also sets in your mind that when you meet these exceptional people that move you, what are the qualities that they have? | ||
| What are the characteristics that they possess? | ||
| And those things become significant and important to you. | ||
| Whereas if you live around a bunch of people that are complaining and bitching about everything, and they see the negative in everything, and they're always whining, those people are the opposite of that. | ||
| They're the opposite of inspiration, and they're mud. | ||
| It's like you're up to your ankles in mud. | ||
| You try to trudge through life. | ||
| It's difficult. | ||
| You're not light. | ||
| It's not pushing you. | ||
| There's not a wind at your back. | ||
| The wind's in your face, and it's rough. | ||
| Over time, I've learned that these people, you're not going to fix them. | ||
| I used to want to fix them when I was young. | ||
| I used to want to go, hey, man, I see what you're doing. | ||
| Like, dude, don't do that anymore. | ||
| Listen, just do this and stop doing that and start doing this. | ||
| And if you just work towards this, you could be successful. | ||
| And then a week later, the guy's doing the same shit. | ||
| You're like, okay, I'm wasting a significant amount of my energy on someone who doesn't want to waste any of their energy on themselves. | ||
| Managing the community and the tribe that you're in, making sure that you're a good member of that tribe, that you're doing your part. | ||
| There's a lot of cynicism in these days about inspiration and about motivation because there's a lot of fake shit. | ||
| You can go on Instagram and you see a million of these Inspirational quote pages and they're run by people that are probably depressed You know you see a lot of people that are you know talking about how to get ahead in life But they're not really doing anything themselves. | ||
| So there's a lot of cynicism involved in that but There's also sincerity in it and you can get if you just look at it with a pure heart and a pure mind you can get a lot of energy out of that and When you're around happy, inspirational people that are successful, it makes you feel better and you get inspired. | ||
| And if you act on that inspiration, your life will be more fulfilled. | ||
| And it's not just inspirational in terms of financial success, but in terms of doing difficult things, whether it's running 100 miles, it doesn't pay you a goddamn thing other than the wealth of the knowledge that you can push yourself to such an extreme. | ||
| Or anything else, whether it's someone who becomes really good at playing chess, or someone who's really good at martial arts, or whatever it is. | ||
| There's a great feeling in overcoming these difficult things, because life is never this just constant state of, I'm at a 9 all day, and when I'm with my wife, I hit 10. Yay! | ||
| And I stay like that. | ||
| That's not real. | ||
| What's real is... | ||
| Like, you saying that you went to this monastery and felt all this angst about meditating and being alone and not having your phone and not having the input, but then when it comes out of it, then you have this reward. | ||
| So you push through this, and you had these uncomfortable feelings, and you came out of those uncomfortable feelings with this newfound appreciation for time and this respect for... | ||
| Your own existence in your own space and carving out three hours for yourself a day. | ||
| That's where it all comes from. | ||
| It all comes from life lessons and the lessons are learned through struggle. | ||
| And I think that there's a lot of people out there that think somehow or another you're going to get to some place where you're living in silk sheets and you're getting your toes done while someone's dropping grapes into your mouth. | ||
| I don't want that. | ||
| I've never wanted that. | ||
| That guy's not gonna be happy. | ||
| He's gonna be bored an hour into the grapes. | ||
| He's gonna get those fucking grapes away from me. | ||
| Stop painting my toes. | ||
| What am I doing in this bed? | ||
| I got to do something. | ||
| I'm not stimulated. | ||
| The human organism, the animal that we are, needs constant stimulation because it evolved trying to find food and escape enemies. | ||
| And find shelter, escape nature, escape the elements, try to survive. | ||
| And this is the great joy that you have in taking care of your children, that you can protect your children from the elements and the enemies and feed them. | ||
| And it's also the great sadness that you see in losers. | ||
| When I see a loser, I see some guy who's 43 years old, lives in his parents' basement, and he fucking hates the world. | ||
| I'm like, that was a baby. | ||
| Man, this is a baby that somebody just gave shitty nutrients to, whether it's nutrients in the forms of food or in the form of... | ||
| Thoughts and ideas and examples and this kid developed these horrible self-defeating patterns of behavior that have led them to this point where they're this middle-aged person with no future and no idea of how to get out of this rut and probably never will escape it and might just wind up sucking on a gun. | ||
| This is the world that we live in today, and I think part of that world is because we have been fed this line of horseshit that you're supposed to seek comfort, and I don't think you are. | ||
| I think you're supposed to seek lessons, and you're supposed to seek difficult tasks and accomplishments, and through those things, and through doing things, Things that are hard to do, even if it's just a fucking 90-minute hot yoga class. | ||
| I do a 90-minute yoga class, man. | ||
| Those last 20 minutes, I do not want to be there, man. | ||
| And I definitely don't want to give 100%. | ||
| And I can cheat. | ||
| I can kind of half-ass it. | ||
| But if I don't... | ||
| And I get through it. | ||
| When that time is up and the lady says namaste and everybody gets up, I'm like, fuck, man. | ||
| I made it. | ||
| You know, I lost 15 pounds. | ||
| My fucking yoga mat is drenched to the point where I could literally wring it out and fill a jug up with water. | ||
| But... | ||
| Through that struggle, I will now have a better day. | ||
| And I better fucking do it again tomorrow. | ||
| Or do something else. | ||
| Because if I just think, well, tomorrow I'm just gonna coast and eat Twinkies and watch TV. Oh, hello, sadness, my old friend. | ||
| Hello, depression. | ||
| Because when you're not doing anything, you feel like shit. | ||
| And that's just a part of being a human being. | ||
| And we can pretend that we're something other than what we really are. | ||
| And we can pretend, nah, me, man, I'm just cool, just chilling, doing nothing. | ||
| Bullshit! | ||
| You're a fucking human. | ||
| You're a human being. | ||
| You evolved from the fucking hundreds of thousands of years of hunters and gatherers and people that were struggling. | ||
| Those human reward systems are carved deeply into your DNA. And if you don't respect that, if you don't respect the mechanism of happiness and fulfillment and what you really need to do in order to feel satisfied in life... | ||
| Camaraderie, love, family, friendship, struggle, testing yourself, learning, all those things are imperative. | ||
| They're all a giant part of being a person. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| That was amazing. | ||
| And I'm thinking in my head, am I checking those boxes as you're talking? | ||
| And am I living my life like that? | ||
| And yeah, I agree with you. | ||
| Sounds like you are. | ||
| I am. | ||
| And we all waver, right? | ||
| We all have days in and days out. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| But to be reinforced. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| And I feel like, you know, as I'm listening to you talk about that, I'm literally going through like the last 10 years of my life, you know, and when I lived with David, when I went on The Modest, all these things, they're all about getting an edge and doing what you, you know, and it is, I think it's like part of being human. | ||
| And that stuff makes me feel the most alive too, you know, like... | ||
| That just makes me feel alive. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, and also like little improvements over things. | ||
| That's why doing difficult things is good, whether it's running. | ||
| So like if you're running and you run, you could run two miles and then one day you get it up to three. | ||
| It's like, fuck, I remember when I struggled with two. | ||
| Now I can do four. | ||
| Little improvements. | ||
| You know, and you really see that in yoga class in particular for me because I'm not good at it. | ||
| You know, so when I do a yoga class and I can hold a pose until the next, you know, you're holding these poses for a minute. | ||
| If you could stand on one foot grabbing your other foot lifting it above your head and keep your arm out straight and you're balancing your foots on fire and your core is engaged but if you can get to the point where they say stop You feel like, wow, I didn't used to be able to do that. | ||
| I used to be able to hold it for 10 seconds and then I would fall down. | ||
| And then I'd have to start all over again and start from scratch. | ||
| There's little improvements where you feel yourself getting a little better at something, whether it's jujitsu or anything else. | ||
| Little improvements, I think, are what life is all about. | ||
| And I think also they're a tool to feed the mind. | ||
| Because I really believe the mind needs these little lessons. | ||
| The mind needs these little... | ||
| These little tasks. | ||
| And if your brain doesn't get that, I think it atrophies and it gets depressed. | ||
| I think that's half of what a lot of people's sadness is. | ||
| Is this lack of stimulation and reward. | ||
| Lack of these peaks and valleys. | ||
| And again, this bullshit idea that we're constantly fed that you should be comfortable. | ||
| It's so true. | ||
| I mean, when Goggins lived with me, his rule was we had to do something every day that sucked. | ||
| That was his rule. | ||
| He's the master at that. | ||
| Yeah, tell me about it. | ||
| What did he make you do? | ||
| Every day sucked. | ||
| He didn't tell me that we were going to do that five times a day. | ||
| No, I mean, I remember one day... | ||
| Well, the first thing we did was he came and he... | ||
| He wanted to see how many pull-ups I could do so he could map out the month. | ||
| He lived with me for a month. | ||
| And I went to the pull-up bar and I got like maybe eight pull-ups, which is an exaggeration. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I probably got like four pull-ups. | |
| A lot of people are listening, so I'll say eight. | ||
| And then he said, all right, wait 30 seconds. | ||
| Go and do it again. | ||
| And I went up on the pull-up bar and I did maybe like three or four. | ||
| He said, all right, wait 30 seconds. | ||
| I want you to do it again. | ||
| And I got up on the pull-up bar and I did maybe like one kipping, you know, getting my damn chin over the bar, barely. | ||
| And I dropped down. | ||
| I was all jacked up. | ||
| And I said, all right, well, what's next? | ||
| He said, well, what's next is we're not leaving here until you do 100 more. | ||
| We're not leaving the gym until you do 100 more. | ||
| That day? | ||
| Now. | ||
| Like right now. | ||
| Right now. | ||
| So you had done seven. | ||
| Probably seven or ten, and I was like, man, Goggins, that's impossible. | ||
| And he said, you know, I already know what your biggest problem is. | ||
| And he's like, the limitations you're putting on yourself are self-imposed. | ||
| Get the fuck back on the bar. | ||
| And, you know, roger that, man. | ||
| And I got up on the bar, and over the course of an hour or two, I did them. | ||
| And that started our journey of like, you're about to go in a place where you've never been, motherfucker. | ||
| I remember one day I was sitting on the couch in Connecticut where I was living at the time, and on the ticker on the TV, the emergency broadcast system came up. | ||
| Stay inside. | ||
| Freezing rain. | ||
| Icy conditions. | ||
| High winds. | ||
| Stay inside. | ||
| It was like beeping, stay inside. | ||
| And Goggins was like, this is amazing, man. | ||
| Let's go for a run. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I'm like, they're telling us the exact opposite, man. | |
| They're broadcasting to the whole community to stay inside. | ||
| So we go for a 10-mile run in the blizzard and we come home and I lived on a lake and kids are playing hockey on the lake. | ||
| So we go down and he takes his hand and he moves all the snow off the ice. | ||
| It gets a boulder. | ||
| And he breaks the ice, a little hole in the ice with the boulder and then he takes his hand and he makes the hole a little bit bigger and then he jumps in. | ||
| And then he points at me and he takes his finger and he signals for me to jump in. | ||
| I'm not going in the fucking freezing cold water because my mother told me as a kid in Long Island, don't go anywhere near the frozen water. | ||
| If you fall in, you have like a minute, you know? | ||
| He's bathing in it. | ||
| So, of course, I go in and he looks at me. | ||
| He's like, man, you got about two to four minutes. | ||
| You're going to get hypothermia. | ||
| We just went on a run. | ||
| We got to get you out of the lake. | ||
| And I go to get out. | ||
| He goes, you can't get out. | ||
| He goes, if your skin touches the ice, it's going to stick to the ice like the kid in Christmas Story, his tongue that sticks to the pole, you know? | ||
| So he puts my shoes back on my hands and picks my ass up and I put my socks on or whatever. | ||
| And I bear crawl out of the ice and I run up and I see my wife looking out the window as I'm running into the house. | ||
| And we come in and she says to Goggins, you know, like, what's the medical benefit of jumping in a frozen lake? | ||
| And he said to her, there's no medical benefit. | ||
| She's like, this is what your husband signed up for. | ||
| You know, he's like, I want to see how far he's willing to go to get to his goals. | ||
| And I was like, fuck, this is going to be some 30 days, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jesus. | |
| Wow. | ||
| What was the toughest thing he made you do? | ||
| It was just the consistency of it. | ||
| You know, it was just like... | ||
| It was just like, he went everywhere I went. | ||
| He shadowed me for 30 days. | ||
| He went to every business meeting. | ||
| We flew together. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He lived with my wife and I. Did you think, like, what the fuck did I sign up for? | |
| This is back in 2010. So this is, you know, yes, I did. | ||
| And the book came out two years ago? | ||
| Yeah, I waited five years. | ||
| I didn't expect it to ever be a book. | ||
| It was just like, you know, at all. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There was no book. | |
| Being discussed. | ||
| I kept a little blog about it, you know? | ||
| So why'd you do it? | ||
| I just felt like there was so much in it. | ||
| There's so many lessons. | ||
| And it was funny. | ||
| Fish out of water. | ||
| Like, he's coming into our house. | ||
| My wife owns Spanx. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, like, the whole dynamic of this shit was crazy. | |
| And I just felt there were a lot of lessons that could be learned through it. | ||
| And, you know, I took a shot at it. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| Yeah, he's a maniac. | ||
| When he did the podcast, I got here, he showed up super early. | ||
| And when I got here, he was already with his shirt off doing chin-ups. | ||
| I was like, I walked into the back where the gym is, and he's in there. | ||
| I'm like, look at this motherfucker. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Amazing. | |
| Yeah, he's a savage. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| He's legit. | ||
| But these are all the lessons, you know, as you're talking about, you know, and you don't know where the nuggets come from. | ||
| You put yourself in a position for the nuggets to appear. | ||
| And they don't have to be radical positions like I'm going to go get Goggins or I'm going to go live with them. | ||
| They don't have to be radical. | ||
| But you put yourself out there like you were saying and you live a life where those lessons find you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And seek them. | ||
| You seek them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, Goggins' story is so fascinating because he wasn't that guy. | ||
| He was fat and out of shape and unmotivated and lazy and, you know, talked openly about the first time he ran. | ||
| Like, he quit. | ||
| He was supposed to, you know, he ran about three quarters of a mile, I think he said, and quit. | ||
| And he was exhausted and just drinking milkshakes and all fucked up. | ||
| And somehow or another decided he's not going to be that guy anymore and went 180 degrees. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And became this intensely motivated Ironman. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I was at the race. | ||
| I saw him at the race where he broke all the bones in his feet, you know? | ||
| I saw him. | ||
| I participated in that race. | ||
| It's the first time I saw him. | ||
| That's how I met him. | ||
| In 2007. He broke all the bones in his feet? | ||
| Yeah, he was running a hundred. | ||
| I was running this race. | ||
| It was a 24-hour race as a relay team. | ||
| I was with four friends. | ||
| And the format of the race is, you run a mile, I run a mile. | ||
| Whatever team runs the most amount of miles wins the race. | ||
| He had no teammates. | ||
| That sounds like him. | ||
| I'm like, where's the rest of the team? | ||
| That sounds like him. | ||
| And he weighed a lot at the time. | ||
| And I watched him. | ||
| Weighed a lot. | ||
| Was he bodybuilding at the time? | ||
| He was just big. | ||
| He probably weighed 260, 270 pounds, maybe more. | ||
| When he was deadlifting and all that stuff? | ||
| Yeah, maybe even more. | ||
| So was this the one where he ran 24 hours all around the road just to show that he could run 100 miles? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And he wound up shitting himself? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah, he told me about that. | ||
| I saw it. | ||
| I didn't know he broke all the bones in his feet though. | ||
| He broke some bones, yeah. | ||
| He didn't even tell me about that. | ||
| And then he ran a marathon a month later. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's a fucking animal. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, he really is. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And he was telling me also that he did that. | ||
| Explain that to your wife when you say he's coming to live with you. | ||
| You don't know my wife. | ||
| That's isn't happening. | ||
| She's kicking us both out. | ||
| I just said it really fast. | ||
| I told Sarah, because I flew out to meet Goggins after the race. | ||
| I cold-called them, and my wife asked me how the meeting went. | ||
| And in the meeting, I realized I kind of wanted to get the secret sauce. | ||
| Like, what the fuck? | ||
| Try it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Was that the idea? | ||
| By being around such an intensely motivated guy that you would get the rub? | ||
| Get the rub, and I'd fallen into a routine I couldn't get out of. | ||
| I was like, just get me out of my routine, man. | ||
| And I want to learn from you and that kind of thing. | ||
| And my wife asked me how the lunch meeting went, and I told her that he's coming to live with us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
She was like, what? | |
| So you had this lunch meeting with him, and were you going to propose this before the meeting? | ||
| What happened was I went to the meeting and... | ||
| With no real agenda, other than, like, I want to meet this guy, man. | ||
| You know, it's 2007. I want to meet him. | ||
| 2008, something around there. | ||
| It was 10 years ago. | ||
| And I was just so, like, drawn to him, you know? | ||
| And I actually went home and then asked him to come, you know, live with me. | ||
| And he said yes. | ||
| And then I told my wife after. | ||
| Like, this guy's coming in two days. | ||
| Now, why did he say yes? | ||
| I mean, isn't he busy? | ||
| Did you offer him money? | ||
| No. | ||
| He was still in the military at the time. | ||
| I don't know exactly what triggered. | ||
| I remember asking him to come and I remember him saying to me, if you're crazy enough to ask a guy like me to come live with you, motherfucker, I'm crazy enough to come. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Three days later, he shows up with one bag. | |
| Knowing him, that is exactly what it would sound like if he said it with those crazy eyes. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| Sweetie, this is David. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Did you give him an objective? | ||
| Did you say why you wanted him to come or what you were trying to get out of it? | ||
| At that time in my life, I had just left, if I have my timeline right, I think I just left this private jet car company. | ||
| I had Marquee Jet. | ||
| I was just starting out in this Zico, this coconut water business, and I was in a routine. | ||
| I was in a rut. | ||
| I was just doing the same stuff, man. | ||
| I was so comfortable. | ||
| And I was just like, just come shake it up, man. | ||
| You can travel with me. | ||
| I got some meetings coming up. | ||
| We'll live together. | ||
| There was no book. | ||
| There was no anything. | ||
| The book happened years later. | ||
| And he said he would do it. | ||
| That's crazy that he just agreed. | ||
| I loved it, by the way. | ||
| It was one of the best months of my life. | ||
| I loved being around him. | ||
| He's an amazing guy. | ||
| I loved... | ||
| We were watching games. | ||
| We were working out. | ||
| I was going out midnight, three in the morning. | ||
| We were running in the blizzards. | ||
| Three in the morning? | ||
| One day, he was like, we're going to run four miles every four hours for 48 hours. | ||
| Joe, I was like, I got to work. | ||
| He's like, no, you don't. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, you don't. | |
| You can work in 48 hours. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So I would wake up at midnight. | ||
| We started at midnight. | ||
| We would run. | ||
| Let's say it took us 40 minutes. | ||
| And then we would come back. | ||
| We'd have, you know, what? | ||
| Three hours and 20 minutes of rest. | ||
| And then at 4 a.m. | ||
| we'd go again. | ||
| Four miles. | ||
| Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. | ||
| 48 hours. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
|
unidentified
|
One time, I have fucking a million stories. | |
| I mean, we went in the sauna and he's like, all right, we're going to stay in the sauna for, I'm a sauna guy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I thought I was a sauna guy, by the way. | |
| I thought I was. | ||
| And actually, this was the steam. | ||
| And he's like, we're going to stay in here for 30 minutes, 8 ounces of water. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| We jack it up. | ||
| It's fucking cooking in there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I walk in, I'm like, holy fuck, it's so hot in here. | |
| He sits down, he's whistling Dixie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're like sitting in the corner doing his shit. | |
| I'm like, you know, eight minutes in and my water's gone. | ||
| I've already drank my eight ounces of water. | ||
| And about 19 minutes in, I'm like, Goggins, I gotta get out. | ||
| He's like, you can't get out. | ||
| I'm like, no, I'm gonna pass out. | ||
| I gotta get out. | ||
| He's like, you can't get out. | ||
| I'm like, no, no, no. | ||
| I didn't even wait for him to say no again because I'm about to pass out. | ||
| I can feel myself about to pass out. | ||
| I open up the door. | ||
| All the smoke from the steam room goes flying out of the door. | ||
| I sit right in the chair. | ||
| He comes storming out. | ||
| And he looks at me. | ||
| He's like, oh, fuck. | ||
| You don't look good. | ||
| I go, no, I'm gonna pass out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He goes, we gotta abort. | |
| Abort the mission like we're not doing the rest of the 30 minutes like I got a pass. | ||
| That was the only pass I got. | ||
| Because you almost died in the sauna or the steam room. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was fucked up. | |
| Steam room is different because it's moisture. | ||
| And you're taking it in. | ||
| I was taking in like the eucalyptus. | ||
| You're getting cooked. | ||
| Cooked. | ||
| Yeah, I mean you're really getting cooked. | ||
| It's not like with sauna you're getting like kind of dry roasted. | ||
| The moisture is different. | ||
| You can't get as hot in a steam room as you can in a sauna. | ||
| Correct. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So this is a series of these. | ||
| Getting poached. | ||
| Throughout the... | ||
| God. | ||
| No, he would just make these up, like come up with these ideas? | ||
| It was just constant, man. | ||
| I mean, we would go to work. | ||
| We'd be sitting at work, and I'd have like a 30-minute break, and he'd be like, burpee test. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm like, what? | |
| I'm at work. | ||
| He'd be like, I want to see how many burpees you can do in 10 minutes. | ||
| I'd be like, burpee test? | ||
| And I was like, in the middle of work, I would like get down, take off my, you know, whatever I was wearing. | ||
| I'd get like my boxers or whatever, like just to get, and I would do as many burpees as I could in 10 minutes and be soaking wet and I'd walk into my next meeting. | ||
| And everybody knew he was, you know, like he was, that was part of the thing. | ||
| So you explained to all these people? | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Closed every deal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I close every deal, man. | |
| Because you're so amped up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Plus, he was there. | |
| Who's going to say no? | ||
| People were fascinated. | ||
| I'd walk in, and they'd be like, at the end of the meeting, I'm like, do you want to talk? | ||
| He's like, whatever the fuck you guys are in, we're in. | ||
| We're in. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| That sounds so much better than living with a monk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was. | |
| That sounds so much better. | ||
| I miss him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you keep in touch? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I haven't spoken to him in a while, but... | ||
| Yeah, I've known him since 2007 now. | ||
| It's been 10 years. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, I would think that that would be hard, but exciting. | ||
| Whereas the monk thing seems like the drone of it all would just get to you. | ||
| Yeah, and I couldn't go back to my room and my surroundings in the monk thing. | ||
| I was in their world. | ||
| Forever? | ||
| Forever. | ||
| And they live in the same way that you did? | ||
| They have a little cell as well? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I actually didn't see their rooms, but yeah, from what I understand, even smaller than what I was in. | ||
| Smaller? | ||
| Smaller than this table? | ||
| My room was about the size of this table. | ||
| So theirs was smaller? | ||
| From what I understand, yeah. | ||
| How is that even possible? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Bed. | |
| There's no... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just a little bed. | |
| Just go into a space with a bed. | ||
| Blackout. | ||
| Wake up. | ||
| Start all over again. | ||
| Drone. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Drone. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| No, I think the four miles every 40 minutes or whatever the fuck it is, or four miles every four hours, that sounds way better. | ||
| That sounds crazy. | ||
| I did at the time, but yeah. | ||
| How'd you end it? | ||
| How did he end the 30 days? | ||
| He left me a note on a post-it. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| That's it? | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Jesus. | ||
| That's intense. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks. | |
| Yeah, thanks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| My goodbyes are like long hugs. | ||
| Yeah, right. | ||
| Changing, exchanging shit, planning. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| That would be an incredible service. | ||
| If he wanted to do that, just go to billionaires and just say, you have to do what I tell you to do for a month. | ||
| I bet a lot of people would do that. | ||
| I'm sure. | ||
| Just charge some fucking stupid amount of money and have him live with you for a month. | ||
| You know, it's hard. | ||
| Anybody, personality-wise, over time, having roommates, it's hard. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So he's with you 24-7. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it's hard. | ||
| Did he ever wake you up? | ||
| Every day. | ||
| Every day he woke you up? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Come in and tap me on the shoulder. | ||
| Time to get up. | ||
| Let's do this. | ||
| With my wife right next to me. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| It wasn't time to do this. | ||
| It was, get up, motherfucker. | ||
| That's what he would say? | ||
| Well, at least he was courteous. | ||
| He whispered it so it didn't wake your wife up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Was your wife like, what in the fuck are you doing? | ||
| She loved him. | ||
| But was she to you like, what in the fuck are you doing? | ||
| She said you're out of your fucking mind. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| She said you're crazy. | ||
| But 30 days later, you must have been in sick shape. | ||
| Ridiculous shape. | ||
| No. | ||
| Ridiculous. | ||
| When he left, I didn't do anything for six weeks. | ||
| I didn't do anything for six weeks because I couldn't keep the intensity up. | ||
| I couldn't do it. | ||
| I've run 100 miles. | ||
| I've done endurance paddle races. | ||
| I've done all this shit. | ||
| I couldn't do it. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| I was just like, why? | ||
| You know? | ||
| It was wild. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| I look back on that stuff, man. | ||
| It's just like... | ||
| I just feel so lucky to have had the opportunity. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like I said, you're around that. | ||
| You're around the best dog trainers. | ||
| You're around, you know, and I get to live with it because my wife's an amazing entrepreneur. | ||
| I get to live with greatness, you know, and just you go around these things and it's just these people. | ||
| It's just the stuff that you can learn if you allow yourself. | ||
| You know, to listen. | ||
| I'm not a great listener. | ||
| I'm learning to be a good listener. | ||
| Because even like you were giving that little monologue and you were going through it, I was like, yes! | ||
| Man, that shit is resonating with me on a high level. | ||
| You put yourself in this position and then you have to be able to extract it and apply it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, and exactly what I was saying is what you got out of Goggins. | ||
| You were around greatness. | ||
| You were around a man who just does not accept mediocrity and does not accept a shitty effort. | ||
| He wants everything your body can do. | ||
| And through doing that, you just get something more out of your mind. | ||
| You get something more out of your life. | ||
| Those hard days, the relaxation is earned. | ||
| You appreciate it. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Relaxation without any effort is just bullshit. | ||
| You feel proud of yourself, too. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think it's so important to do things that make you feel proud of yourself. | ||
| Right. | ||
| When I left the monastery, you asked me, how did you feel when you got in the car? | ||
| And the exact feeling was proud. | ||
| That you did it? | ||
| That I did it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| I was proud of myself. | ||
| I stuck with it. | ||
| I did it. | ||
| Did you have a little bit of, fuck that place too? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I'm like, can I Uber Eats when I get home? | ||
| Stop at the first Five Guys burger you see. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| Exactly. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| Well, listen, dude. | ||
| I really appreciate you coming in here, man. | ||
| I really enjoyed talking to you. | ||
| Likewise, man. | ||
| Fucking awesome stories. | ||
| And so the two books are available right now. | ||
| Anybody can buy them. | ||
| Is there an audiobook of both? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Audiobooks available and Audible and Apple Books and all that jazz. | ||
| Living with the Seal and Living with the Monks. | ||
| Thanks a lot, brother. | ||
| Really appreciate it, man. | ||
| Appreciate you, man. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Really enjoyed it. | ||
| Yeah, man. |
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