Speaker 1: When I feel something affecting my peace, that's when I
Speaker 1: kind of start making the adjustments. But it's always every
Speaker 1: day going to happen, and eventually you get good at
Speaker 1: like kind of swatten flies we'll call it. But you
Speaker 1: don't walk out there thinking there's no flies.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 2: ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 2: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 2: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 2: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 2: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 2: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 2: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 2: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direct,
Speaker 2: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2: Our guest on this episode is Anthony Trucks, a former
Speaker 2: NFL athlete, American Ninja Warrior on NBC, and international speaker,
Speaker 2: host of The Awe Shift and Shift Starter podcasts. Is
Speaker 2: an author and founder of Identity Shift Coaching. By teaching
Speaker 2: audiences how to turn roadblocks and obstacles into opportunities, Anthony
Speaker 2: inspires and teaches people to unlock their full potential and
Speaker 2: achieve success and happiness.
Speaker 3: Hi, Anthony, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hey, thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: It is a pleasure to have you on. We're going
Speaker 3: to be discussing your book, which is called Identity Shift Upgrade,
Speaker 3: how you operate to elevate your life and just your
Speaker 3: work in general. And I'm excited to get to that.
Speaker 3: But before where we do, we'll start like we always do,
Speaker 3: with the parable and the parable. There's a grandparent who's
Speaker 3: talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there
Speaker 3: are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 3: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 3: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 3: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 3: the grandchild stops. They think about it for a second.
Speaker 3: They look up at their grandparent and they say, well,
Speaker 3: which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 3: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: I am man. I think it's the human investment bias, right,
Speaker 1: it's whatever you put in will come out kind of thing.
Speaker 1: There's just one thought I used to have about like
Speaker 1: the subconscious and the emotions and the feelings. We live
Speaker 1: in a world we consume a lot, right. I love
Speaker 1: the idea of like what you fee is going to survive,
Speaker 1: and I think we have a lack of comprehension of
Speaker 1: what's being fed into our minds the social media, the TV,
Speaker 1: the radio, the news. But you can only grow from
Speaker 1: what the sea that was planted, is, right, So if
Speaker 1: you plant a seed of alemon, you're going to get
Speaker 1: a lemon tree. And so if you want to have
Speaker 1: something great, an amazing you know tree, I don't know
Speaker 1: whatever Sherry's on it, you can't seed weeds. So I
Speaker 1: think that what I hear in that is you have
Speaker 1: to make sure you're being very cognizant of what goes
Speaker 1: into your mind to make sure you have an amazing
Speaker 1: life come out of you. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean that is such an obvious point and yet
Speaker 3: one that so many of us overlook. We think either
Speaker 3: that these things are neutral that we're putting in or
Speaker 3: that they are not problematic. And again, everything I think
Speaker 3: is a matter of degree. True, it's not like for
Speaker 3: me anyway, I don't think I should be pumping only
Speaker 3: uplifting spiritual personal development content into my mind twenty four
Speaker 3: hours a day because it's just it gets to be
Speaker 3: too much. Right, There's a time and a place for
Speaker 3: me to watch some Netflix and two now, but it's
Speaker 3: for me, it's all a matter of degree. There's a
Speaker 3: time and a place to pay attention to the news,
Speaker 3: so I know what's going on in the world, but
Speaker 3: there's a very clear tipping point for me where that
Speaker 3: becomes very negative.
Speaker 1: I agree, one hundred percent agree. I think for me,
Speaker 1: I didn't even like to watch the news beyond it,
Speaker 1: I don't either. My best friend he'll put the news
Speaker 1: on in the background. And I started noticing this a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago. Whe would, in fact, like be
Speaker 1: in a room and go, why do I feel uncomfortable?
Speaker 1: Like i'd be at you know, you get a hotels
Speaker 1: to breakfast thing going on, and so I'm at breakfast
Speaker 1: and I'm like, why do I feel I started noticing
Speaker 1: I was even paying attention to the news, but it
Speaker 1: was just there. Yeah, and it's like seventeen people this
Speaker 1: happened to him, and then back in this country this happened.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh my, it just so Yeah, it can
Speaker 1: subconsciously just kind of float in there because you're still
Speaker 1: listening to the world, even just for purpose of survival.
Speaker 1: You're paying attention to noises, and little by little it
Speaker 1: comes in without you knowing it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I'm the same way. I mean, Ginny really likes to
Speaker 3: have the news on. I think it makes her feel
Speaker 3: connected to the world, and I'm like, to each of
Speaker 3: their own right, it's just I notice I react to it.
Speaker 3: I noticed that it's just relentless. Yeah, always say awful news.
Speaker 3: I said to her her recently. I was like, do
Speaker 3: you think that anchor guy goes home and just sob
Speaker 3: at night? Like I mean, because it's just an hour
Speaker 3: of like just heartrending stuff. And again, it's not about
Speaker 3: pretending that none of that stuff is happening. But I
Speaker 3: think it's worth knowing what we're more sensitive to. And
Speaker 3: I think I am more sensitive to that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: I am more sensitive to advertising, Like it doesn't make
Speaker 3: me go and buy things, but it plants seeds of
Speaker 3: unrest in me?
Speaker 1: Do I need that? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Thinking I want something or comparing myself. Am I as
Speaker 3: happy as the people in the Ozembic commercial?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: And so for me, I just kind of know what
Speaker 3: works well for me, you know, kind of what I
Speaker 3: need to feed.
Speaker 1: I think it's being in touch with yourself too, right.
Speaker 1: I think that probably a lot of people they stopped
Speaker 1: and thought about it. They can think to a moment
Speaker 1: of like, oh that did happen? They felt that. We
Speaker 1: just have connected the feeling to a conscious thought. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I didn't always. I'm not going to say I
Speaker 1: always had that because I just, you know, have the
Speaker 1: news on a big deal. But I started kind of,
Speaker 1: I would say, evolving in a way of psychologist. I
Speaker 1: saw myself as a man and a husband and a father,
Speaker 1: and as a coach and a leader in the world.
Speaker 1: I gotta protect that because what comes out of me
Speaker 1: affects people's lives, especially in a podcast like this, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's like I got to make sure I'm really
Speaker 1: aware of what I'm having come out, I mean, process
Speaker 1: all of it, and so I find that it actually
Speaker 1: what I'm having, Like I don't listen to a lot
Speaker 1: of the news at all. The radio in the morning,
Speaker 1: my kids will listen to like the the whatever radio station,
Speaker 1: even that stuff. I'm like, this is trash. I don't
Speaker 1: care what Kim Kardashian decided to do on her TV
Speaker 1: show yesterday, Like it's crazy that that's what our world
Speaker 1: thinks about. I'm very like you are cut off from
Speaker 1: the world. I get my news from couple sources that
Speaker 1: are usually readable, that are on platforms that are unbiased
Speaker 1: as I can get it. Just need the information. I
Speaker 1: don't need your processing of the information. And so if
Speaker 1: I can do that, then I stay up to date.
Speaker 1: I know what's going on, and I function properly in
Speaker 1: the world. But I'm in control of my energy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you made just a really important point
Speaker 3: there that I think is central to all the work
Speaker 3: that you do that I do in this personal growth
Speaker 3: spiritual space, which is that ability to connect what is
Speaker 3: going on around us to what we're actually feeling and
Speaker 3: making that more conscious, because it's amazing how much I
Speaker 3: can be affected and there can be this undercurrent happening
Speaker 3: in me that I'm not even conscious of or aware of,
Speaker 3: and so much for me is about being able to
Speaker 3: bring that what's happening in the unconscious. I mean different
Speaker 3: people would use different words for it, the pre conscious,
Speaker 3: you know, pre conscious often meaning that which is in
Speaker 3: consciousness and is available to consciousness but just not not
Speaker 3: there yet. But connecting that to kind of how I'm
Speaker 3: feeling and what's causing what and just being aware of
Speaker 3: that I find so helpful but so hard.
Speaker 1: Also, yeah, well it is because I think at the
Speaker 1: same time, is right when you get to know the voice,
Speaker 1: you change and the voice changes, and because the world's
Speaker 1: also evolved, and they say you can never step in
Speaker 1: the same river twice because a man's not the same
Speaker 1: and the river's not the same, but there could be
Speaker 1: an awareness to it. And then I think also life changes
Speaker 1: around and so what's important. Changes we're accessing, changes the
Speaker 1: vision we had, we get to and achieve it and
Speaker 1: go all we got to have a new vision. So yeah,
Speaker 1: one hundred percent agree with that. And also I've noticed
Speaker 1: that in my journey when I've actually felt like, oh,
Speaker 1: I get to know it, it's a short lived knowledge
Speaker 1: that I not that I you know, don't have any insights,
Speaker 1: but I'm like, because of what I accomplished, where I
Speaker 1: got you're introduced to new forks in the road you
Speaker 1: didn't realize existed. Instead of a reprocessing and reanalyzing, you
Speaker 1: look back and you go, cash, I thought I knew
Speaker 1: it all five years ago, and I was an idiot then,
Speaker 1: you know, And so it just progresses up the ladder.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one percent. And I think you talk about this
Speaker 3: a lot in your work about how there's not like
Speaker 3: this point where you get to a place and then
Speaker 3: you're like done. You did a thing on one of
Speaker 3: your shorter podcasts recently around like winning is just a beginning, right, Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: But it points to the same thing, which is that
Speaker 3: the work of awareness and the work of connecting what
Speaker 3: we're feeling and what we're thinking with what's going on
Speaker 3: around us, with our behavior, that process never ends. It
Speaker 3: is an ongoing process. It's one that is in a
Speaker 3: way fresh in every moment, even if it does seem
Speaker 3: like we're sort of in the same habitual thought patterns
Speaker 3: and loops. Who may be in them for a while.
Speaker 3: But the more we're conscious of what's happening, actually, the
Speaker 3: less time we spend stuck there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would agree for sure. I think we started
Speaker 1: learning the process to navigate it right, because I think
Speaker 1: there's a skill and understanding the process of navigation of
Speaker 1: it all. What is the book called. I think it's
Speaker 1: called The Power of Habit and talks about how the
Speaker 1: habit for some people, like if navigating situations and changes
Speaker 1: is unique. But this is one moment where they talk
Speaker 1: about these people who are they're in hospital beds, they
Speaker 1: just had hip surgery or something, and what they had
Speaker 1: to do is they had to figure out how to
Speaker 1: get to the front where people to go visit them.
Speaker 1: For half the group, they said, hey, we're gonna let
Speaker 1: you go to the front, but we want you to
Speaker 1: think about in advance all the different stages you have
Speaker 1: to walk through to get to the front. And so
Speaker 1: they would think through it right. And then the person
Speaker 1: who didn't, you know, they just were setting the race.
Speaker 1: So someoney would show up and they'd be said, told them, hey,
Speaker 1: go to the front. Now. The people with no plan,
Speaker 1: like they left the room first obstacle, they sat down
Speaker 1: the room. The journey had a couple done, but they'd
Speaker 1: always face something that wasn't a nuance they'd expected before.
Speaker 1: But because they had the skill of planning for having
Speaker 1: done it before, they could plan in the real time
Speaker 1: to move forward. So the cool thing and they always
Speaker 1: got the front of the building, right. The cool thing
Speaker 1: is like, that's how I think we do and we
Speaker 1: have these plans, and you get good at the plan,
Speaker 1: the process and the navigation that you're talking about, and
Speaker 1: then you face something you go, I've done it before,
Speaker 1: and you do it in real time, and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you can move past the sticking point. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think the other thing embedded in what you just
Speaker 3: said there is the expectation of obstacle, right, just the
Speaker 3: recognition that it's inevitable. You know, when I used to
Speaker 3: do a lot of one on one coaching with people
Speaker 3: on habits, I would say, you know, there's going to
Speaker 3: come a time that you don't do this behavior. It
Speaker 3: is inevitable. It is not a question of if. It's
Speaker 3: a question of when. Sooner or later. Life's going to
Speaker 3: get in the way, or something's going to happen and
Speaker 3: you're going to get a little off track. So knowing that,
Speaker 3: let's think about what are we going to do when
Speaker 3: that happens. And I think it a sets the stage
Speaker 3: for the plan in that you're talking about, and it
Speaker 3: sets the stage for just knowing like that's part of life.
Speaker 3: And very often, particularly when a significant obstacle comes up
Speaker 3: that I did not see coming at all, there's almost
Speaker 3: a stunned period where I'm like, wait, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: like that's not supposed to happen, you know. And I
Speaker 3: think the more we recognize that obstacles are just a
Speaker 3: part of life, the more gracefully we can handle them.
Speaker 1: I finutely agree with that. I mean one thousand percent
Speaker 1: agree with it, because they say life is what happens
Speaker 1: between your plans, right. It's just there's a reason that
Speaker 1: cliche exists because it is and that's what makes life life.
Speaker 1: It was something I knew all the time it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be fun. I like the nuance of like seeing it
Speaker 1: have to navigate stuff because it does teach just skills,
Speaker 1: but you also get a pride for having accomplished it,
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. But yeah, I think that the
Speaker 1: we'll call it the nuances to life of it never
Speaker 1: being perfect. If you can embrace that that's the reality
Speaker 1: of it all, then yes, you handle them with more grace.
Speaker 1: I have a lot more patience, and you actually have
Speaker 1: a lot more peace, And for me, peace is the
Speaker 1: key I don't live in chaos. I even like when
Speaker 1: casts around we're talking about the news, I think the
Speaker 1: news is bringing chaos in my life. It literally is
Speaker 1: bringing chaos in the world, like telling you what's going on.
Speaker 1: And so when I feel something affecting my peace, that's
Speaker 1: when I kind of start making the adjustments. But it's
Speaker 1: always every day going to happen, and eventually you get
Speaker 1: good at kind of swatt and flies we'll call it.
Speaker 1: But you don't walk out there thinking there's no flies.
Speaker 1: I just know I'm good at swattin flies or protect
Speaker 1: my peace. A matter of fact, a buddy of mind,
Speaker 1: Trent shallon Is says protect your peace. So it's funny
Speaker 1: I said that, but I get where it comes from. Now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's the idea is you create that and then
Speaker 1: you protect it. But you don't go into the world
Speaker 1: thinking nothing's going to affect it. You go into the
Speaker 1: world going I can handle this. Jordan Peterson has this statement.
Speaker 1: He says it is better to be a warrior in
Speaker 1: a garden than a gardener in a war. It's a
Speaker 1: cool one, right, I Oh, it's that's awesome because essentially
Speaker 1: it's saying, like I got the ability to be peaceful,
Speaker 1: but I have the skills to protect it.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, And being a gardener in a war is
Speaker 3: no good.
Speaker 1: No fun, I would say.
Speaker 3: So let's back up a little bit and let people
Speaker 3: get to know you a little bit better, because you've
Speaker 3: got kind of a strong backstory, and I'm wondering if
Speaker 3: you could sort of just start with your childhood. Tell
Speaker 3: us a little bit about your childhood and you know,
Speaker 3: kind of up to maybe high school range.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So I have this tattoo on my arm
Speaker 1: and a painting on my wall, and it simply says,
Speaker 1: smooth seas never made skilled sailors. And I think it
Speaker 1: rings true for all of us, because we all have
Speaker 1: things we've gone through in life, and they do become
Speaker 1: the things that help us navigate the rough seas of life.
Speaker 1: So I was thrust into the seas early. I was
Speaker 1: given away three years old in the foster care and
Speaker 1: so I did endure a lot of heinous stuff from
Speaker 1: a lot of just crappy people really early on, things
Speaker 1: that I would wouldn't wish at my worst enemies, to
Speaker 1: be honest. And so by six years old, I was
Speaker 1: a pretty shut down emotionally kid wasn't very happy, didn't
Speaker 1: know that life could be joyous. I thought I was
Speaker 1: a punching bag. Quite literally, no one loved me. I
Speaker 1: didn't feel like got a place that made me feel comfortable.
Speaker 1: So I navigated this up and down world for eleven years.
Speaker 1: I was adopted at fourteen by very poor, all white family,
Speaker 1: and through those years, like the developmental years, when you
Speaker 1: actually get to the point of like what you understand,
Speaker 1: what love is and care and emotion, like that's when
Speaker 1: you're developing and turning into a man. So I didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of the foundation man was. I was
Speaker 1: literally robbed of a lot of it. And I had
Speaker 1: to grow up between like fourteen and twenty, like really quickly,
Speaker 1: and in not the best environments. My mom was diagnosed
Speaker 1: with MSS. My dad was working all the time to
Speaker 1: be able to pay the bills because she wasn't able to,
Speaker 1: and so I just I was pretty much off my own,
Speaker 1: getting in trouble doing dumb stuff, got arrested at one
Speaker 1: point for breaking the cars with some people, just you know,
Speaker 1: dumb kid things, while also trying to find a way
Speaker 1: to feel like I mattered. When you're giving away into
Speaker 1: foster care, the one thing that you know is like,
Speaker 1: you don't matter to your own mom and dad. My
Speaker 1: dad had left my mom before I was even born.
Speaker 1: My mom gave me away. So you start questioning, like
Speaker 1: if my own mom didn't want me, like what do
Speaker 1: I matter to this world? And so I was settling
Speaker 1: into some weird, funky spots. And it took a lot
Speaker 1: of love from my mom, unconditionally, my adoptive mom to
Speaker 1: have me not be a statistic because if you go
Speaker 1: to any prison in America, seventy five some of the
Speaker 1: inmates are former foster kids like me, half a homeless
Speaker 1: population to spend time in foster care. I think less
Speaker 1: than one percent of us graduate from college. And so
Speaker 1: the numbers attached to me as a human because of
Speaker 1: all the foster care stuff, you could imagine we're not
Speaker 1: very good. Yep. And so like my upbringing and reason,
Speaker 1: I work a lot in identity and it's because I
Speaker 1: had to battle that for years of my life and
Speaker 1: I didn't even really find and create my identity intel
Speaker 1: I was in my thirties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so you know, we know that a lot
Speaker 3: of like really early developmental things happen, you know, zero
Speaker 3: to five and does not sound like it was not
Speaker 3: a good time for you, right, because even before your
Speaker 3: mom gave you away, it must have been terrible for
Speaker 3: her to get to a point where she's going to
Speaker 3: do that. What has the process been like for you
Speaker 3: to actually internalize at a deeper level that you are
Speaker 3: not unlovable? Oh, that's the core message there, right, I'm
Speaker 3: not lovable?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Man, you know, two poken things in the morning.
Speaker 1: What's that look at you? Poking things in the.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if we're going too deep at any point, you know,
Speaker 3: it's just that thing. And it's the sort of thing
Speaker 3: at least for me. And I didn't go through the
Speaker 3: same things you did, but I certainly have what I
Speaker 3: would consider, you know, like some bonding trauma. It's like
Speaker 3: I can consciously know and achieve and be good and
Speaker 3: that helps, But there come these darker moments where that
Speaker 3: sort of just tends to want to take over.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, it's been there.
Speaker 3: Where that core gets really poked.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think there's a couple of spaces I've navigated
Speaker 1: emotionally consciously as well, and one of them is there's
Speaker 1: parts of that kind of guy that linger, and I
Speaker 1: understand them at a level now. To make them useful
Speaker 1: to me in the world. So I'll start by saying,
Speaker 1: I'm a very selfish human in a sense of I
Speaker 1: selfishly want thank you. I want to know I matter.
Speaker 1: That's myself. I desire to know that I matter. I
Speaker 1: desire to know that I've held you. I want to
Speaker 1: thank you. Now, what I've noticed that the selfishness that
Speaker 1: becomes beneficials in the world, to my wife, to my kids,
Speaker 1: to you, to the people listening to the people I coach,
Speaker 1: is I will only get the genuine thank you when
Speaker 1: I have given everything I can that's going to help
Speaker 1: you in your life. I share my message, I tell
Speaker 1: you the depth of my heart and soul. I give
Speaker 1: to my wife, I give to my kids so they
Speaker 1: can say thank you. Like that's what works. It's a
Speaker 1: good synergistic process. Now I didn't always do that. At first.
Speaker 1: My selfishness was I'm gonna take, take, take, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to give, give, give, and so like that's just
Speaker 1: I was trying to get what I wanted to make
Speaker 1: my life great because the world took for me. I'm
Speaker 1: going to give my retribution. That's not a good solution, right,
Speaker 1: You're not going to get what you want and for
Speaker 1: some time to be freely given to you. You don't
Speaker 1: lesually want it. The other part of it was that
Speaker 1: was driven from a sense of I want to say,
Speaker 1: like a sense of being angry. You know you're mad,
Speaker 1: and so you believe you deserve it, You're entitled to
Speaker 1: this because of what took place, and in order for
Speaker 1: me to get past the entitlement, I had to get
Speaker 1: to a point of heavy forgiveness. And the forgiveness is
Speaker 1: an interesting journey that most people don't want to go down.
Speaker 1: They're just like I like holding onto my anger right
Speaker 1: and they want to hold on to it. Well, you
Speaker 1: can only give out what you have inside. If you
Speaker 1: have anger inside, it comes out. If you have peace inside,
Speaker 1: he guess what comes out? So I go how do
Speaker 1: I get to peace? And I found the thing that
Speaker 1: was destroying my piece was this anger with my mom,
Speaker 1: with people, what wronged me? You know, all these things.
Speaker 1: I sat down one time for like a month and
Speaker 1: just thought through this, thought through it, and I finally
Speaker 1: found this pathway that I think makes emotional and logical
Speaker 1: sense for forgiveness for me. And the way that I
Speaker 1: looked at it was my mom decided that at one point,
Speaker 1: me and my three siblings. Year after year, she had
Speaker 1: four kids four years in a row. She goes, I
Speaker 1: don't want these kids anymore and give us away. I'm
Speaker 1: putting shopping carts and push down hills, forced to lick
Speaker 1: people's shoes, like really heinous stuff. Man, Yeah, And I go,
Speaker 1: why would she do this? Horrible wock? I hated her.
Speaker 1: I was so mad at her, right, And then I
Speaker 1: started like thinking through this process of forgiveness, and I go,
Speaker 1: I don't want to forgive it for that she doesn't
Speaker 1: even not even sorry for it. And then another level further,
Speaker 1: I go, what tools was she given? I looked at
Speaker 1: my grandparents. My grandparents are not crazy, amazing people, So
Speaker 1: I go, gosh, you know this person who gave me away,
Speaker 1: Like did she actually have the tools to do it
Speaker 1: right in the first place? Was she given them? Not
Speaker 1: that she wasn't exposed, but it was she given these tools?
Speaker 1: And I started realizing, like she wasn't given these tools,
Speaker 1: and I go, why would she give her kids away?
Speaker 1: And the thing was, I go, Well, she didn't know
Speaker 1: what that was going to happen to me. She thought
Speaker 1: that she was going to give us to an environment
Speaker 1: that would be better for us than her. And so
Speaker 1: oddly I started going, gosh, well, this person, while they
Speaker 1: didn't maliciously try to have this thing happen to me.
Speaker 1: If anything, it was a selfish thing because they wanted
Speaker 1: to be free to do their thing, but it was
Speaker 1: and the intent wasn't to have me be hurt. And
Speaker 1: or they weren't given the tools to navigate four kids
Speaker 1: in four years, right, And so if I removed myself
Speaker 1: from that being my mom as just a woman, I oh, gosh,
Speaker 1: that's got to be crazy. Of four years, four kids,
Speaker 1: no culp mechanisms, no tools. Maybe you actually thought that
Speaker 1: doing it would be good for me because it'd be
Speaker 1: better than you know. I'm not going to say this
Speaker 1: is the perfect answer, but I started having compassion for
Speaker 1: the person, and the compassion made me realize, like a
Speaker 1: lot of people in my life, my wife, it was
Speaker 1: a situation where she had an affair, marriage fill apart,
Speaker 1: ruined everything. We eventually remarried three years later after a
Speaker 1: lot of work on both of us, separately and simultaneously.
Speaker 1: But I started realizing, Man, she didn't step out to
Speaker 1: maliciously hurt me. The intent wasn't to make me be angry.
Speaker 1: The intent was to find something to fulfill a need
Speaker 1: that she was missing. Again, if anything, selfishness, would I
Speaker 1: have to feel like to go through that darkness to
Speaker 1: do that, to have to hide yourself and be like,
Speaker 1: it's a dark space that she was living in My
Speaker 1: mom as well, what's it I picture my mom now
Speaker 1: she's out in the world. She watches things. I don't
Speaker 1: know how she does. I always get a little weird,
Speaker 1: you know, butterfly effect things. But like, what's it got
Speaker 1: to be like knowing that your son played in the
Speaker 1: NFL and he speaks and travels, is an author. I'm like,
Speaker 1: and you can't talk to him. You know. It's like
Speaker 1: it's got to be a heavy weight to carry a
Speaker 1: burden that that's as heavy, And so I have a
Speaker 1: compassion for that heart. And so for me, what happened
Speaker 1: over the years is I started realizing that there wasn't
Speaker 1: this matter of me not being loved and not being like,
Speaker 1: not mattering. It's like that was a byproduct of this
Speaker 1: anger I had because of what took place. And then
Speaker 1: I go, Okay, great, well, if I can give a compassion,
Speaker 1: I can actually genuinely forgive these people and move forward
Speaker 1: with peace in my heart. Now I can reframe the
Speaker 1: way that I get to thank you. I'm not doing
Speaker 1: them for retribution. I'm doing them to serve, because that's
Speaker 1: what wasn't done for me. So I give I given
Speaker 1: a way that wasn't given to me. But now I'm
Speaker 1: getting what I wanted in the first place.
Speaker 3: Anyways, Yep, there's a lot in there. Did you find
Speaker 3: that part of that process also was to have compassion
Speaker 3: for that younger you?
Speaker 1: Yes, for sure. The good thing is I didn't do
Speaker 1: a lot of crazy things so where I had to, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the small child. I mean, I didn't beat
Speaker 1: him up. I didn't blame him too much. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: definitely some things where I go, Why was I so
Speaker 1: you know, talkative? Why did I get in trouble at time?
Speaker 1: Why'd you do this? Young aunt? And so? Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: definitely a journey there. But I wasn't as deep as
Speaker 1: the other one, we'll call it. But I realized for me,
Speaker 1: if anything, there was a point in time where when
Speaker 1: I was like fifteen years old, I'm gonna climb out
Speaker 1: of this man. And I did, and I fought, and
Speaker 1: so as much as the younger guy, I may be
Speaker 1: mad at most of the time. Most kids, it's that
Speaker 1: fourteen to sixteen window when they start emerging, they're a
Speaker 1: little more teenage and they can go they're not kids
Speaker 1: anymore under your parents, you know guidance. Yeah, that's when
Speaker 1: most kids go out and do dumb stuff. They're you know,
Speaker 1: teenagers just doing dumb kids stuff. Whereas for me, at fifteen,
Speaker 1: that's kind of when I locked in. I had one
Speaker 1: or two instances of doing dumb stuff, not a lot
Speaker 1: at all, but I locked in. So I'm proud actually
Speaker 1: of how that guy showed up at fifteen with a
Speaker 1: decision to be great at football and turns life into
Speaker 1: something as opposed to being pissed that he turned sixteen
Speaker 1: was driving around, you know, doing drugs and got an
Speaker 1: accident like you know, stuff like that. So there is
Speaker 1: a nu once to where I don't have to go
Speaker 1: so deep into we'll call it forgiving my younger self.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yep, I feel like I made it. Twenty three
Speaker 3: years of doing dumb shit, really dumb shit. I probably
Speaker 3: got another twenty five on top of it with which
Speaker 3: is the mildly dumb stuff. Based on what you just said,
Speaker 3: it sounds like you and your mother are still estranged.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know where she's at. Man. Okay, we
Speaker 1: did a TV show my wife and were going to
Speaker 1: one called Relative Race. It's like on some interesting chance,
Speaker 1: like BYU TV or something, and we were cast forward
Speaker 1: and I have to go find people. And they have
Speaker 1: skip tracers who find people. I mean they find everybody
Speaker 1: and if not, they find a death certificate, you know.
Speaker 1: And they could not find this woman, wow anywhere. They're like,
Speaker 1: no matter what we try, we cannot track her down there,
Speaker 1: Like this doesn't happen to us. So we'd love to
Speaker 1: have on the show, but we need her and we
Speaker 1: can't find her. Yeah. Now I have a cousin. He's
Speaker 1: a loopy, being kind of guy. I don't know where
Speaker 1: he's at in the world. But at some point he
Speaker 1: reached out, maybe a year and a half half afterwards,
Speaker 1: and this conversation open up and he said something about, like,
Speaker 1: you know, she still pays attention to you. You want
Speaker 1: to talk to her, I'm happy to connect you. So
Speaker 1: he somehow has communication. I don't talk to him too
Speaker 1: often because he's just he's a loopy guy. But I
Speaker 1: was like, Noah, man, I got no intention. I don't
Speaker 1: hate her. I wouldn't get in the phone and cuss
Speaker 1: her out or anything. But I only open doors to
Speaker 1: rooms I want to walk into. I don't have a
Speaker 1: desire to walk into that room.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we could all use the occasional nudge, a little
Speaker 2: wake up from the autopilot we fall into in our
Speaker 2: day to day routine. That's why we send brief text
Speaker 2: reminders to listeners of the show for free. The texts
Speaker 2: help you stay on track with what you're learning from
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Speaker 2: periodically prompt you to pause for a second and become
Speaker 2: more present and mindful, and encourage you to engage with
Speaker 2: the week's podcast topics in a bite sized, short and
Speaker 2: simple manner. We've heard from listeners that these texts help
Speaker 2: them take a moment to reconnect with what's important amidst
Speaker 2: the busyness of daily life. Someone said it feels like
Speaker 2: a little bit of wisdom is being whispered into my psyche,
Speaker 2: which I thought was cool. So if you'd like to
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Speaker 3: You tell a story about I think around that age
Speaker 3: of fifteen and overhearing someone in your school talking about
Speaker 3: foster children. That was sort of a galvanizing moment for you.
Speaker 1: Oh, for sure means a catalyst for sure set the
Speaker 1: stage for this situation. I had tried football for two years.
Speaker 1: Was horrible at the game. It was not good. When
Speaker 1: you try something you're not good at, you get one
Speaker 1: up two options. Option one is you make a really
Speaker 1: good excuse for why you don't do it again, and
Speaker 1: it's believable. Right option too, as you step into it
Speaker 1: against what makes logical sense, and you just do it.
Speaker 1: Most people don't choose that. Most go and we don't
Speaker 1: do it consciously. It's a subconscious thing. We know it
Speaker 1: feels uncomfortable, so we just oh, it wasn't the right
Speaker 1: time in the marketplace, or you know, I just didn't
Speaker 1: know I had this solution here. I couldn't find any help.
Speaker 1: I didn't have the finances right. We make excuses that
Speaker 1: people will buy into so we can go to sleep
Speaker 1: at night and feel good. But the little voice in
Speaker 1: our head knows. Now, fifteen years old, I had this
Speaker 1: moment where I was doing football and I go. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't got the cleats these kids have because we're poor.
Speaker 1: My mom is sick. I'm a foster kid. Foster kids
Speaker 1: don't get anything good for our lives. I don't even
Speaker 1: know any great foster kids, literally knew none. I don't
Speaker 1: even know other foster kids besides my siblings. And so
Speaker 1: you're just like, that's the life of foster kid. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm supposed to do in life, you know, that's
Speaker 1: my mark. And so I'm in this classroom and I
Speaker 1: had had, you know, two years of playing football and
Speaker 1: realized I wasn't good and that was my excuse. My
Speaker 1: mom had been diagnosed at MS, and so I was
Speaker 1: just coming to class checked out, like I literally like
Speaker 1: sleeping in class. And as these two girls in class,
Speaker 1: I do not know their names. I don't know who
Speaker 1: they are. I couldn't go back. I know the classroom though,
Speaker 1: and I know the teacher, mister Howell. We share the
Speaker 1: same birthday. And in the back right corner, I'm sitting
Speaker 1: there and there's two girls on this love seat. The
Speaker 1: one girl says to the other girl, a simple statement
Speaker 1: that was an amazing gift to me. She says. The
Speaker 1: reason I'm so bad because I'm in foster care. And
Speaker 1: it faced value it's not that big of a deal. However,
Speaker 1: for me, I got to hear out loud the excuse
Speaker 1: that I was giving myself inside for why I wasn't
Speaker 1: doing well, and oh man, it felt weird. I was like,
Speaker 1: gosh it, and I'm seriously remember fifteen, going, is that
Speaker 1: the reason I'm going to be like a bad guy
Speaker 1: or a criminal or whatever? It is because of this
Speaker 1: thing that happened to me that I had no control over.
Speaker 1: Like it sounded stupid. The reason I'm bad is because
Speaker 1: I was in foster care. Like, that's not a good
Speaker 1: enough reason in my head. So I remember it sat
Speaker 1: on me all day long, and I kid you not,
Speaker 1: this genuine situation transpired. I go home. When I get
Speaker 1: to my house that day, I'm sitting in a room.
Speaker 1: It's my bedroom. I have like this mirror that, if
Speaker 1: you can call it, it's like at the top of
Speaker 1: my room, and I'm sitting there going this is like
Speaker 1: a weird little kind of situation that I look myself
Speaker 1: in the pupils and it just gets to this point
Speaker 1: of culmination. I go, Anthony, You're going to be great
Speaker 1: that was it, Anthony, You're going to be great. I
Speaker 1: didn't even know what great was gonna be. I didn't know.
Speaker 1: I I just told myself this a couple of times.
Speaker 1: I can still picture the room right and it was
Speaker 1: very weird. But that moment was like this really interesting
Speaker 1: turning point for me, because overnight I decided I want
Speaker 1: to be great at football. I'm gonna find out what
Speaker 1: it takes. I started watching, like what is great football
Speaker 1: players doing. It was just a moment where I just
Speaker 1: snapped out of it, and then from that point on
Speaker 1: I turned into a completely different human. It was the effort.
Speaker 1: It was the energy, not so much that I turned
Speaker 1: into by built into a different human. The reps to
Speaker 1: the efforts, to the hard stuff I did. And the
Speaker 1: more I did it, the better I got, and the
Speaker 1: better I got. And then all of a sudden, it
Speaker 1: wasn't this magical thing that all of a sudden I'm great,
Speaker 1: But over time it became this thing where I now
Speaker 1: created this different Identitay, that wasn't the one of the
Speaker 1: foster kid. It was the guy who was a great athlete,
Speaker 1: who was faster, It was stronger. I had this mentality
Speaker 1: and it's what I call a dark work mentality because
Speaker 1: what I did in that wind do I call dark work, unseen,
Speaker 1: un sexy, ridiculed, misunderstood. But it was this work to
Speaker 1: be a great football player. So when I got on
Speaker 1: that football field, I had this mentality of I've done
Speaker 1: too much work in the dark to lose in the light.
Speaker 1: It's my football, it's my tackle, it's my touchdown. And
Speaker 1: that was the thing that was a catalyst, will call
Speaker 1: it to a greater football career, stepping into more, being better,
Speaker 1: you know, just all these different climb ups, But it
Speaker 1: all started there, and it started with me making a
Speaker 1: decision going, I don't want to be what I in
Speaker 1: my head see myself to be. I want to be better,
Speaker 1: and in order to be better, I have to do
Speaker 1: better things. Period, out of character, not normal, But I
Speaker 1: did those things, and when I did them, I became
Speaker 1: that person.
Speaker 3: It's a remarkable story in a lot of ways, and
Speaker 3: I have a few questions sort of to pull out
Speaker 3: from them.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: The first is you talk about saying that when people
Speaker 3: try something and they're not good at it, they come
Speaker 3: up with subconscious reasons to quit doing it right or
Speaker 3: they step into it and You've talked on your short
Speaker 3: form podcast a little bit about your son being in
Speaker 3: a moment kind of like this, where you know he's
Speaker 3: not really fully leaning into the things he needs to
Speaker 3: do to be a great football player. And my question is,
Speaker 3: I think you're absolutely right. There are times that we
Speaker 3: want to do something and we're not good at it,
Speaker 3: and so we talk ourselves out of it. There's also
Speaker 3: the case where not everything that we try is the
Speaker 3: right thing for us, true, And I'm just curious how
Speaker 3: you think about trying to delineate those things, because I
Speaker 3: find that to be a real thing of discernment, right,
Speaker 3: because we do want to apply ourselves in areas that
Speaker 3: we're likely to succeed, right. I mean, for me to
Speaker 3: apply myself to being an NBA basketball player would be
Speaker 3: a foolhardy endeavor. Right now, I probably could apply my
Speaker 3: if I loved the game of basketball, to being a
Speaker 3: really good basketball player. But knowing, particularly given that that
Speaker 3: process of giving up is almost subconscious, right, we talk
Speaker 3: ourselves out of it. I'm thinking of an example completely different,
Speaker 3: but my dad passed in February, and we never had
Speaker 3: a very close relationship. He was just kind of an
Speaker 3: island under himself, and it was very difficult to have
Speaker 3: any meaningful conversation. But I remember multiple times where I'd
Speaker 3: be like, all right, we're gonna play golf this weekend
Speaker 3: and I'm going to like go deeper with him and
Speaker 3: I'm going to connect and I'm gonna and I would
Speaker 3: get there and it would vanish and I would be like,
Speaker 3: I don't even want to. The reality was I just
Speaker 3: didn't think it was possible. So my defenses came in
Speaker 3: and said, I don't even want it, right. So that's
Speaker 3: that subconscious process you're talking about where because we're not
Speaker 3: good at it, we don't think we can succeed, we
Speaker 3: just suddenly talk ourselves out of it without even knowing it.
Speaker 3: But that discernment, how do you think about that?
Speaker 1: That? Those are two different pieces, right, because one is
Speaker 1: the one's an interesting dynamic of the dad because I
Speaker 1: did the same thing. Like there's moments where I'm doing something,
Speaker 1: I'm watching my kid and I go, gosh, I want
Speaker 1: to celebrate. I can't wait to celebrate with them, and
Speaker 1: then I get off the field and I don't do
Speaker 1: that thing. I give them a high five, good job,
Speaker 1: but in my head, I want to pick them up
Speaker 1: and spin them around, you know, like a you know,
Speaker 1: and so like, yeah, it may be weird for them, right,
Speaker 1: but I don't do the action. I go want to
Speaker 1: do the action, you know, So I can gather that
Speaker 1: one for sure. And I think there is something to
Speaker 1: the desire of not having rejection as too while make
Speaker 1: a statement or failure will call it as to why
Speaker 1: I won't do that thing. So if we feel will
Speaker 1: be rejected or feel we're fail we will protect. I
Speaker 1: think there's an ego part of us we have to
Speaker 1: protect or we do protect, and the ego doesn't want
Speaker 1: to feel the shame the embarrassment, so it'll avoid actions
Speaker 1: that give us the feeling of shame or embarrassments. That's
Speaker 1: one piece of it. Then on the other side, you're
Speaker 1: talking about which I gathered it this way. It's like
Speaker 1: working towards something or choosing to work towards something and
Speaker 1: going like when is it too much? When should I
Speaker 1: leave this relationship? When should I stop and sell this business,
Speaker 1: or's get out of the business. When should I quit
Speaker 1: this job? Right? And so we start to contemplate, and
Speaker 1: we give ourselves decisions and we talk to ourselves that
Speaker 1: singer would say it's the untethered soul, right, And so
Speaker 1: we go back and forth these dynamics in our head.
Speaker 1: And what I've noticed is whenever I've had situations where
Speaker 1: I've had to go, this isn't the right thing, it's
Speaker 1: because I didn't set the destination. Typically somebody else did.
Speaker 1: So I saw something I compared myself somewhere somebody said
Speaker 1: I should, and that was the reason I set that destination.
Speaker 1: And then I'm going towards it. And I'm really only
Speaker 1: gonna be happy when I get it right. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna be happy when I arrived at that place because
Speaker 1: they said it's going to be great when you get there,
Speaker 1: and you get there and you go, oh, this is it,
Speaker 1: you know, Like I got to the top of the
Speaker 1: sport in the world football, I got to the NFL.
Speaker 1: Wasn't an All Star, wasn't you know, wasn't this guy.
Speaker 1: Was just a guy played three years and got hurt
Speaker 1: my third year and was a battle. Wasn't a name
Speaker 1: you even no period. But when I got there, it
Speaker 1: gave me this realization of like, ah, this whole fame thing.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like you watch the guys that are famous,
Speaker 1: they don't look happy, bro, They're not all joyous. There
Speaker 1: are some obviously they're happy. They don't get me wrong
Speaker 1: with it' school. But I would see more of like
Speaker 1: a stress and an anxiety to stay and be there
Speaker 1: and do the thing right. And I'm not saying you
Speaker 1: shouldn't want that. There are some guys that handle it amazingly,
Speaker 1: and they do phenomenal. It's beautiful to watch them handle that, right.
Speaker 1: I would love to be in their shoes, we'll call it.
Speaker 1: But then you started having just a different way of
Speaker 1: understanding what the fame and the money and all the
Speaker 1: notoriety does, and it's like, well do I want that?
Speaker 1: And also how do you treat people when you have that?
Speaker 1: Like in the world I live now of the speaker,
Speaker 1: the coach, the author. I love that I'm able to
Speaker 1: enter this world having been in a different world and
Speaker 1: seeing what it's like to really be known, right, because
Speaker 1: there's some people I see get known and they or
Speaker 1: they do a lot. They're doing the most I call it.
Speaker 1: You know, they got to have like their entourage with them.
Speaker 1: It's like, dude, you just talk on a stage. Man.
Speaker 1: The only people that know you're the ones that are
Speaker 1: inside of this group of people that you know, you're
Speaker 1: not the guy, you're not the girl, but it's it's good.
Speaker 1: But it's your moment to it's your super Bowl, and
Speaker 1: I'm not knocking that, but I get the mentality around that.
Speaker 1: I get what they're fighting for. And then what I've
Speaker 1: realized is the ones who are the most peaceful in
Speaker 1: the NFL when I saw him are the ones at
Speaker 1: an amazing family, the people that can go home to
Speaker 1: and they can quiet, they can hang out, They're just
Speaker 1: go out and take the dog for a walk. Can
Speaker 1: you go take the trash to the sidewalk? You know
Speaker 1: those kind of people. There's a balance of like, that's
Speaker 1: all good out there, but the game will end, the
Speaker 1: clock will take zero, you'll come home from practice and
Speaker 1: the majority of your life will be lived in a
Speaker 1: different space. Is there peace there? That's one piece of
Speaker 1: it I look at, And so there's one way where
Speaker 1: I go like, if that's what you're fighting for, be
Speaker 1: aware of what that really looks with the Jim Carrey says,
Speaker 1: I hope I wish everyone could be rich and famous.
Speaker 1: They can understand it's not what you think it is. Right,
Speaker 1: There's that part of it now's another part of it
Speaker 1: where I think there is the necessary need for discernment
Speaker 1: to go, am I doing this properly? There are things
Speaker 1: that we also do choose, it's my choice. I want
Speaker 1: to do this thing. And then what I'm doing is
Speaker 1: I'm setting a destination. And I think the problem is
Speaker 1: is people fall in love with the destination, not the
Speaker 1: day they set. This is what I'm going to get
Speaker 1: and I want this, and they wake up every day
Speaker 1: I'm happy for not being there. And so what I
Speaker 1: do in life is I go where do I want
Speaker 1: to go? Cool? That's going to depict the actions I take.
Speaker 1: But my intention is to have a really cool day. Now,
Speaker 1: if I can make a day that has steps that
Speaker 1: lead me there, I'm in a beautiful place because I'll
Speaker 1: eventually get there. If I just work and I love
Speaker 1: to work and I love the things I'm doing, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get to that place. There are gonna be days
Speaker 1: that sucks sometimes part of the journey, right, But then
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm enjoying the process. And at some point
Speaker 1: in time, because I'm not married to the outcome, I
Speaker 1: can make it as certain choice and go, is this
Speaker 1: really gonna get me there? I just want to help people. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I'm telling myself this has to be the way I
Speaker 1: help people. But what if that's not the way I
Speaker 1: help people? What if I could do it this way.
Speaker 1: So I'm open to making a change because I'm gonna
Speaker 1: keep doing things in my day, but I love my day,
Speaker 1: and I'll just change the destination. And then I'm not
Speaker 1: feeling guilty or bad because I told someone I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do this and I change to this and they go, see,
Speaker 1: you're incongruent. I don't promise the outcome of what my
Speaker 1: life's gonna be. I just say I'm gonna live every
Speaker 1: day amazing. I'm gonna serve people. I'm gonna show up
Speaker 1: and be transparent and honest and open. I'm gonna love
Speaker 1: my wife and love my kids. I'm goa have plans
Speaker 1: to go in this direction to make them impact in
Speaker 1: the world. And I do have goals. I set things
Speaker 1: I want to work towards, but I can move the target.
Speaker 1: And so because of the way that I'm choosing to
Speaker 1: live in the here and the now and the way
Speaker 1: I choose to live here, I love my days and
Speaker 1: because I love the days they're heading in a good direction.
Speaker 1: Little by little, I can do the things that get
Speaker 1: me to a point where I end up somewhere amazing.
Speaker 1: But I also realize this, at some point the clock
Speaker 1: tips zero, the game will end. There'll be something I accomplish,
Speaker 1: And if I love the preparation, if I love the
Speaker 1: journey there, it's fine. But I'm gonna have to come
Speaker 1: home with my wife and my kids. And I love
Speaker 1: come home my wife and my kids, because I does
Speaker 1: stuff every single day to make this amazing. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of the way I look at what my choice is,
Speaker 1: what I go towards, how I move, and so for me,
Speaker 1: it's more of this. I want to spend my days
Speaker 1: doing things that are phenomenal, and I enjoy them with
Speaker 1: great people like yourself, knowing they're heading in a good direction.
Speaker 1: But I'm okay to change the destination if need be.
Speaker 3: I love all that because one of the things I've
Speaker 3: thought a lot about and weaves its way into many
Speaker 3: many of these conversations, is how do you be a
Speaker 3: person that has ambition and wants to grow and wants
Speaker 3: to change and wants to accomplish things and be a
Speaker 3: person who can enjoy where you actually are right, because
Speaker 3: those things, if we're not careful, can be very much
Speaker 3: at odds with each other. Right, you can be in
Speaker 3: that destination mindset all the time. It's always got to
Speaker 3: be more and more and more different, different, different, And
Speaker 3: you've got the ambition piece figured out, but you don't
Speaker 3: have the day to day contentment piece. Right when you're
Speaker 3: in that mindset, whatever destination you hit, you'll be like, well,
Speaker 3: that's nice, and then you just set your eyes on
Speaker 3: the next one, which is not a bad thing, not always.
Speaker 3: But your point is that you said this in a
Speaker 3: recent episode. The question comes if winning is just a beginning?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: When I win, I then just set another goal and
Speaker 3: keep going. Right, If winning is just a beginning, when
Speaker 3: do you smell the roses? And you are like, I
Speaker 3: think you smell them all along the way, all the way,
Speaker 3: you know, And I think that's a really important point.
Speaker 3: And it gets to trying to love the process, trying
Speaker 3: to love where you are, what you're doing, and not
Speaker 3: being so fixed on what is going to happen. And
Speaker 3: that takes a fair amount of at least in my case,
Speaker 3: a fair amount of working, particularly with my fears. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because right, fear comes up and goes, well, if I
Speaker 3: don't get that, what's going to happen, you know, and
Speaker 3: that tends to take away the piece, right, it tends
Speaker 3: to take away.
Speaker 1: The peace except for sure for me the times I've
Speaker 1: ever thought through that process, which I have before is
Speaker 1: the fear of the judgement or letting people down. And
Speaker 1: when I look at it all, so I go, well,
Speaker 1: I just have to ask myself, like Pop always say,
Speaker 1: if you gave your all and lost, like you didn't lose,
Speaker 1: like you had a loss on the board, but like
Speaker 1: if you gave everything you had and you know, you
Speaker 1: give everything you had and it didn't come in your favor,
Speaker 1: like that just was the way that Chips felt, you
Speaker 1: don't have to feel so bad. Well, if you lose
Speaker 1: that game and you know you kept some underneath and
Speaker 1: you reserve some of the tank, you have reason to
Speaker 1: feel bad or is regret there? And so yeah, I
Speaker 1: get the idea of of kind of navigating that whole
Speaker 1: you know, flow of like the energy what I'm giving.
Speaker 1: But if I don't accomplish it, it's usually I've usually
Speaker 1: give my all to it. Right, some of the fears
Speaker 1: that I will have in that is going to be
Speaker 1: based on whether or not I made to prompt somebody
Speaker 1: or said I was going to do it and I
Speaker 1: didn't do it, or I didn't follow through, I don't
Speaker 1: get that done, or I didn't communicate why I chose
Speaker 1: a different direction. And then when I remove the whole
Speaker 1: thought of that and the judgment of other people, the
Speaker 1: end of the day, I just want to be happy
Speaker 1: and make me and the people that matter to me happy,
Speaker 1: and the world we're always basing our self worth off
Speaker 1: of how many people like us or view us or
Speaker 1: follow us, right, that's kind of the norm nowadays. I
Speaker 1: don't have that built into me. I genuinely care about
Speaker 1: the people who care about me, my wife, my kids,
Speaker 1: and so the only time I will have a feeling
Speaker 1: like that is like if I let them down or
Speaker 1: something goes off there. Now, there are promises of the world,
Speaker 1: but I think one of the things that I also
Speaker 1: outside of fear. It's like also framing for me when
Speaker 1: we talk about doing the hard things and the fear
Speaker 1: of it. I try to frame my day in a
Speaker 1: way that makes it enjoyable by going, hey, there's things
Speaker 1: I do not want to do right. I don't feel
Speaker 1: like filming thirty five videos if I got to film
Speaker 1: some crazy amount for a course, right. Maybe there's days
Speaker 1: I don't feel like traveling out and talking to these people.
Speaker 1: There's days I wake up on speech that they're going
Speaker 1: to pay me twenty five thousand to be there, and
Speaker 1: I go, I really don't want to do this. I've
Speaker 1: had that moment. Not often. It's thankful, but there's days
Speaker 1: I go, I'm just tired or been traveling a lot,
Speaker 1: or my wife and I are, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: a little mech And then I have to frame this
Speaker 1: is my go to. I don't fear messing up on stage.
Speaker 1: I don't fear not following through in something it's not
Speaker 1: what I do. I try to frame it again, because
Speaker 1: my framing is usually at this moment on me, how
Speaker 1: do I feel? What am I looking at? What's going
Speaker 1: on with Anthony? And then when I go, dude, that's
Speaker 1: not serving anybody, and that's kind of selfish at other people,
Speaker 1: I go, gosh, I what I feel like if I
Speaker 1: was in the audience watching me and you knew I
Speaker 1: wasn't into it, I'd be a horrible feeling for that
Speaker 1: person have to watch me. I go, I don't have
Speaker 1: the luxury of not giving my all to the speech
Speaker 1: because I could hurt somebody's life out there or at
Speaker 1: least not given what they deserve. Right Or if I
Speaker 1: show up in this day and I you know, my
Speaker 1: wife and I are something going on about me, it's
Speaker 1: about the kids, or about what she needs. My wife
Speaker 1: will ask me to do things that I don't want
Speaker 1: to do all the time because that's how life works.
Speaker 1: And now as opposed to battling and being angry at
Speaker 1: her and I want to do this, I will actively
Speaker 1: try and find something in the task that is joyful.
Speaker 1: I just do and it's an active framing for me.
Speaker 1: Same thing and work. If I don't want to film
Speaker 1: those videos, I go I don't want to film as
Speaker 1: a go but my team needs them. I love that
Speaker 1: my team has work to do, that they have a job,
Speaker 1: and if I don't do my job, they don't have
Speaker 1: a job. And also someone's gonna see these They're gonna
Speaker 1: be there in the middle of the night, you know,
Speaker 1: some other country possibly having a really bad day, and
Speaker 1: the feed says a base on what they've been searching for,
Speaker 1: this is the right video for them, and they're going
Speaker 1: to see it. If I'm not alive in that video.
Speaker 1: If I'm not given in that video, they're going to
Speaker 1: be robbed of a moment they could actually change your
Speaker 1: life with. So, while I don't want to do it,
Speaker 1: ain't about Anthony right now. It's about where am I
Speaker 1: showing up to give. And so in those moments when
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I want to give the energy
Speaker 1: you're like, it's hard to fall in love with today,
Speaker 1: I would say, I just reframe. And the more I
Speaker 1: can reframe in the moment, once the morning becomes now
Speaker 1: my set point to reframe and I have to battle
Speaker 1: my mind as much. So over the years, I've got
Speaker 1: better at like immediately framing it in a certain way
Speaker 1: to where I start my day and I go, hey,
Speaker 1: I can't wait. I got mister Zimmrov the PODCASM, I'll
Speaker 1: get to hang out this God, I got this thing
Speaker 1: going on. My days will be stacked, typically from like
Speaker 1: eight am until two to forty five pm, stacked of stuff,
Speaker 1: and my best friend goes, Dude, your schedule makes me
Speaker 1: want to throw up. There's just so much stuff you do.
Speaker 1: And my wife goes, why do you do it to yourself?
Speaker 1: Make yourself work all day? And I go, You guys
Speaker 1: don't get it. I enjoy my work. It's like fun
Speaker 1: to me. They go, how could be fun to be
Speaker 1: doing that? I go, because I frame it that way.
Speaker 1: I look at the things, and I choose the things
Speaker 1: I want to say yes to, and when I do
Speaker 1: say yes to it, I say yes to it again,
Speaker 1: even if I wake up and don't want to. But
Speaker 1: I frame it in a way of going, wouldn't it
Speaker 1: suck for Eric to get in this podcast? And you
Speaker 1: could tell it I want to be here? Like what
Speaker 1: kind of feeling would that be? And the person that
Speaker 1: listens to this to feel that energy? Also, I frame
Speaker 1: it outside of me. The fear disappears, and now the
Speaker 1: service comes in. And when you give, usually when you're giving,
Speaker 1: you feel pretty good.
Speaker 3: That's such a fundamental point around this center and everything
Speaker 3: around how we feel and what we want. You know,
Speaker 3: I got sober in twelve step programs. And there was
Speaker 3: a line in the AA Big Book that basically said,
Speaker 3: you know, selfishness, self centeredness that we think is the
Speaker 3: root of our problem. And it talked about living in
Speaker 3: bondage to ourselves, and that is a phrase that resonates
Speaker 3: so deeply with me because I know that when all
Speaker 3: I'm thinking about is me and what I want, it
Speaker 3: is like being enslaved to myself. It's an awful feeling.
Speaker 3: It doesn't feel good, and it's the most natural and
Speaker 3: easy thing in the world to do. It doesn't turn
Speaker 3: out well for me. It's not a life well lived.
Speaker 3: And so there is sort of that reframing process. Are
Speaker 3: there times where you reframe and you're still like, I
Speaker 3: fucking don't feel like doing this. Oh yeah, of course,
Speaker 3: oh okay, yeah, and then you just do it right because.
Speaker 1: You know you do. It's it's the discipline. I'm not
Speaker 1: magical in like some special human in a sense of
Speaker 1: like that doesn't happened to me. I just go, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, Hey, buck up because in football, we're
Speaker 1: at the game. You don't get to have that, which
Speaker 1: means suck it up and lean in. You need to
Speaker 1: be great for twenty minutes, great for thirty minutes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And usually I want I need to be great for fifteen.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna tell you why fifteen When I get
Speaker 1: into a time and I don't want to be in
Speaker 1: that time frame. Right. What essentially we are doing is
Speaker 1: we're thinking about the feeling of the future, but we're
Speaker 1: not realizing it's really just a present feeling. So I go, gosh,
Speaker 1: I got an hour of this. If you start the
Speaker 1: hour and your head is already doing that, you're gonna
Speaker 1: drag thro the hour. You're gonna look at the clock
Speaker 1: every five minutes. It's gonna look like you're gonna think
Speaker 1: it's five. It's two minutes. You know, it's like, when
Speaker 1: is this gonna be over? And I go, let me
Speaker 1: just for fifteen minutes. Just I want to be great.
Speaker 1: I want to have fun, like have fun, have fun,
Speaker 1: have fun. So I tell myself that and I hop
Speaker 1: in and so I'm just for the first fifteen, which
Speaker 1: I don't check the clock at it's fifteen. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to feel good about it, and I try to do
Speaker 1: the things to be great, to muster from myself whatever
Speaker 1: I have to unconsciously bring joy to it. Funny enough
Speaker 1: that happens in fifteen turns into fifteen minutes. You melt
Speaker 1: away into whatever the energy was you started with. And
Speaker 1: so I intentionally tell myself a fifteen minutes a great,
Speaker 1: and just be fifteen minutes a great. Let's go, and
Speaker 1: I may have to do it a couple of times
Speaker 1: that day, because some days suck, you know, I've my
Speaker 1: wife or the kids are acting up and doing some
Speaker 1: great stuff with mawhare. I'm just something happened at work,
Speaker 1: and I got to navigate this stupid headache, you know,
Speaker 1: bad email I got, and I got to tell myself this,
Speaker 1: and I muster it up and I lean in to
Speaker 1: be a pro, and usually it settles itself out because
Speaker 1: what also happens is your brain is holding on to
Speaker 1: that thing that you're stressing off of, and you're trying
Speaker 1: to with this new thing in there, but you haven't
Speaker 1: let go of this stressful thought. So while that takes
Speaker 1: place and it's holding space, this other one can't fit.
Speaker 1: There's just tension there. So when I tell myself fifty
Speaker 1: minutes a great, what I'm actually doing is I'm not saying,
Speaker 1: don't think about this thing, Anthony, and try to put
Speaker 1: this in and gosh, I don't want you, I don't
Speaker 1: want to do this right. I try to put all
Speaker 1: my focus on this thing here, and what happens is
Speaker 1: that one falls out of my mind. Yep, And now
Speaker 1: I don't have the tension. Now it's just I'm enjoying this.
Speaker 1: Now the hour concludes, that leaves my mind. All this
Speaker 1: jumps back in pretty quick. It's like, oh that thing's
Speaker 1: it right, But at least I killed this hour because
Speaker 1: I refocus. It's like when you have kids and you
Speaker 1: tell them, hey, stop playing video games. All they're thinking
Speaker 1: about is not playing video games. But they're still thinking
Speaker 1: about video games as opposed to going a go outside
Speaker 1: and shoot a hundred basketballs. I want you to try
Speaker 1: to get, you know, fifty percent of your shots to
Speaker 1: go in. Well, they go out there, they shoot it.
Speaker 1: They're having funds when I get one hundred shots and
Speaker 1: get fifty in and Dad, I got forty four, I
Speaker 1: got forty five, I got fifty, I got sixty Dad, Right, yep,
Speaker 1: they're no longer thinking about the video games. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not even their head. They're having fun now doing something else.
Speaker 1: And so that simple psychological trigger done for yourself elicits
Speaker 1: the same result.
Speaker 3: That makes so much sense. I say on this show
Speaker 3: a lot. Sometimes you can't think your way into right action.
Speaker 3: You have to act your way into right thinking.
Speaker 1: Right like, you just have to do the thing.
Speaker 3: And very often once you get doing the thing, the
Speaker 3: motivation and the desire to do it comes.
Speaker 2: Along with it. You know.
Speaker 1: There's so many times I have to do that me too.
Speaker 3: Man, I just tend to be a person with sort
Speaker 3: of a lower mood system. It just seems to be
Speaker 3: the way I'm wired up. But I've learned to work
Speaker 3: with it, you know, I've learned to work with it
Speaker 3: in a way that says, you know, okay, you don't
Speaker 3: feel like it just gets started, and good things kind
Speaker 3: of come from that getting started, you know, along the
Speaker 3: same line you say, somewhere at this point in my life,
Speaker 3: my identity is not tied to what I create. It's
Speaker 3: tied to my efforts to create. And I really love
Speaker 3: that idea of like you're tying what you feel good
Speaker 3: or bad about to what is completely in your control.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it, because all you can do, man, literally,
Speaker 1: all you can control is how you respond on things.
Speaker 1: But people know this. This is not new information. It's
Speaker 1: not some novel idea. It's just not always practiced. We
Speaker 1: talk about it, we don't practice it. But yeah, who
Speaker 1: I am is tied to what I choose to do
Speaker 1: and how I choose to control. It's not tied to
Speaker 1: the thing that you say about me. It's not tied
Speaker 1: to the outcome of whatever took place. Like when people
Speaker 1: ask who I am, I really even liked it. For
Speaker 1: a lot of years, I didn't even like telling him
Speaker 1: I played in the NFL. I guess it was a
Speaker 1: part of it. But I'm not that thing I did
Speaker 1: because that thing, it will consume me. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like this. In my book, I talk about the tree,
Speaker 1: and most people assume that we are the fruit of
Speaker 1: the tree. I'm the fruit, and this is why I
Speaker 1: am right. The career, the job, the relationship, and if
Speaker 1: that thing falls off, and you know, the fruit hits
Speaker 1: the ground because that thing fall apart or I lost
Speaker 1: the job, lost the career, lost the guy, I lost
Speaker 1: the girl. I believe it's who I am. Rotten. I
Speaker 1: feel like that piece of fruit. I'd rot up and
Speaker 1: I die. And that's how I felt with football at first,
Speaker 1: in fact, and so when you feel like that, you
Speaker 1: just that's what's in you, and what comes out of
Speaker 1: you is rottenness. And then I realized, like, wait, we've
Speaker 1: never been the fruit. We've always been the tree. We've
Speaker 1: always been the thing that created those things in life.
Speaker 1: And so if I go back to tending to the
Speaker 1: thing that creates the things great things get created, And
Speaker 1: so I'm vastly more identifying myself with the person who's
Speaker 1: taking care of the tree, the efforts, the actions what
Speaker 1: I do. Am I in the right soil and environment?
Speaker 1: Am I around the right people? Am I cutting the
Speaker 1: news out right? Am I pruning branches that don't belong?
Speaker 1: Am I getting rid of parts of my life that
Speaker 1: are pulling other ones away or taking attention from those ones? Right?
Speaker 1: Maybe it's cutting a business off, or stopping some action,
Speaker 1: or getting rid of a friend that doesn't fit in
Speaker 1: where my future is going to go?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: Am I making sure I'm taking care of the body
Speaker 1: of the tree? My health? That could I be here
Speaker 1: longevity wise? These little things, when I'm doing them, that's
Speaker 1: who I am. That's what I'm doing every day. I
Speaker 1: am not the NFL. I am not a ninja warrior.
Speaker 1: I'm not the speaker. I'm not the coach. Maybe that day,
Speaker 1: if I'm on stage for an hour, that better be
Speaker 1: who I am, right, But the expression of who I
Speaker 1: am on a daily basis is the actions I'm taking.
Speaker 1: When my clock goes often and I say I'm a
Speaker 1: good dad a good dad isn't like a single thing.
Speaker 1: It's the moments that you put into the day of
Speaker 1: being a good dad. Like I do a morning routine
Speaker 1: my son every morning, did it this morning. That's what
Speaker 1: a good dad is. It's not this pinnacle trophy. It's
Speaker 1: the daily right And so for me, it's what am
Speaker 1: I doing? And if I'm doing the things or in
Speaker 1: line with that, I'm great. And that's all I choose
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you say somewhere every single day you're being someone
Speaker 3: and that someone is also becoming someone. It's a continuous,
Speaker 3: simultaneous cycle that has always been and will always be
Speaker 3: present within you. It shows up in your big and
Speaker 3: consistent actions on a daily basis. So who are you
Speaker 3: being and becoming right now?
Speaker 1: Anthony? I am being a good dad, a good husband,
Speaker 1: a good business owner. Like I'm in like really in
Speaker 1: the Background'm seeing these little things tick up from my
Speaker 1: team going through things of We have a bunch of
Speaker 1: people we serve that are speakers that want to be
Speaker 1: on stage serving people, and I have a really good
Speaker 1: system I teach them with and I also work with
Speaker 1: the Amazons of the world. Right, So my being every
Speaker 1: day is am I making sure I communicate at a
Speaker 1: pace that they need. Am I serving where I'm supposed
Speaker 1: to it? Am I being gracious when people need it
Speaker 1: from me? And as you do that, you become the
Speaker 1: things you do because you are what you do. And
Speaker 1: so for me, the cool thing is not the best
Speaker 1: thing sometimes also is you can be somebody different today
Speaker 1: and become somebody different tomorrow. Right If I decide to
Speaker 1: have that one single choice or decision that's kind of
Speaker 1: off kilter, it's not in line with being gracious, genuine, godly,
Speaker 1: then I'm falling away. You never arrive at a place,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, you're always being every day. You have actions,
Speaker 1: you have habits, you things you do and they will
Speaker 1: become in a good direction or become in a bad direction.
Speaker 1: And so my goal is every day to make sure
Speaker 1: I'm doing things that are in line with the person
Speaker 1: from yesterday. I'm assuming that yesterday was a good man
Speaker 1: and he was doing the right things. And for me,
Speaker 1: I'm stacking days like that. But I do things that
Speaker 1: are right. And a lot of my works that whole
Speaker 1: idea of dark work, you know, work in the dark,
Speaker 1: secret win the light. But it's also the biblical aspect
Speaker 1: of what you do in the dark will also come
Speaker 1: to the light. I think that is the embodiment of
Speaker 1: the statement who you are being is who you become,
Speaker 1: meaning what you do in the dark will come to
Speaker 1: the light. There are no conversations, there's no things like
Speaker 1: no one could walk into my house or my life
Speaker 1: anywhere and go, oh, you think you're great, but I
Speaker 1: know this about you. I lived my life so clean
Speaker 1: and so down then, because I never want that moment
Speaker 1: to happen. I never want that moment to happen for
Speaker 1: my children at any point in time. I never want
Speaker 1: to have that moment happen when I step in front
Speaker 1: of my God later on in life. And so my
Speaker 1: active being is always in line with who I choose
Speaker 1: to become in the future, which is a good dad,
Speaker 1: a good husband, a good teacher, coach speak or whatever
Speaker 1: it might be. But those are daily things I do.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing. In the beginning, like when I
Speaker 1: was leaving, you know, it's in that window of my
Speaker 1: dark times post I talked about it, but post NFL,
Speaker 1: that wasn't the guy I was. I was not the
Speaker 1: best human. I wasn't a good father, I wasn't a
Speaker 1: good husband, I wasn't a great business owner, but that
Speaker 1: kind of understanding those moments and me desiring to be
Speaker 1: someone whoknew I started doing different things being better to
Speaker 1: become better, and so now it's staying in that same flow.
Speaker 1: And it was hard at first, just as you know
Speaker 1: you navigated a diction, like it's hard at first, right,
Speaker 1: and it there's days where it's harder than others, even
Speaker 1: way beyond it. But after a while you're get into
Speaker 1: such a good flow and you love the person you become,
Speaker 1: and you have this genuine joy for you and you'll
Speaker 1: want to let yourself down that it's hard not to
Speaker 1: do those things. It's hard and beginning that eventually it's
Speaker 1: hard not to do it, and it becomes what I
Speaker 1: call effortless effort, like you're giving the effort, right, but
Speaker 1: it just feels the effortless borderline, and people go, how
Speaker 1: are you So? I'm not. I didn't wake up today
Speaker 1: like that. I've just been building into that over time,
Speaker 1: the same way you can. It's hard at first, eventually
Speaker 1: it's hard not to do. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love that idea of effortless effort. I'm doing this
Speaker 3: project on a great spiritual book called the Dowdy Ching,
Speaker 3: and so much of that book is focused on that
Speaker 3: very idea that the effortless effort, you know, which sounds
Speaker 3: like a paradox, but there is a way in which
Speaker 3: it is possible, you know. And some of this, I
Speaker 3: think is what you're getting at with identity, right, is
Speaker 3: that at a certain point your actions are going to
Speaker 3: flow out of your identity. Right, If your identity, as
Speaker 3: you've said, is to be all these different things, then
Speaker 3: more effortlessly those positive things emerge out of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really is, because we already in this current moment,
Speaker 1: are operating from an identity that feels effortless. You may
Speaker 1: not think it, but you are. Essentially the identity is
Speaker 1: who you are when you're not thinking about who you are.
Speaker 1: T I frame it. It's your instinctual, natural daily flow.
Speaker 1: We have habits, we have action enough. For some people,
Speaker 1: they're pretty low level, you know, they drag together bed
Speaker 1: and they they kind of put themselves around like there's
Speaker 1: drag butt everywhere, right, But for them it's it's borderline
Speaker 1: emotionally effortless. They just do that and the outcome kind
Speaker 1: of sucks. And for some people, you go, how do
Speaker 1: you get done? And in a single day what it
Speaker 1: takes me a week to do. And an interesting thing
Speaker 1: is emotionally and effort wise, it feels the same for
Speaker 1: both people, but one person has such a high output.
Speaker 1: And I go, what's just like lifting weights. If I
Speaker 1: go into the weight room and I can't lift one
Speaker 1: hundred pounds because I'm too weak and I can't lift
Speaker 1: it right, well, over time, if I keep going to
Speaker 1: the weight room, I get stronger. I get stronger, I
Speaker 1: get stronger, and one day one hundred pounds I'm warming
Speaker 1: up with. Now, if you didn't go to the weight
Speaker 1: room and you tried one hundred pounds, couldn't lift it,
Speaker 1: and you look at you go, this person's you're great.
Speaker 1: How'd you do it? You must have been born like this. No,
Speaker 1: I just stayed in the weight room. You left the
Speaker 1: weight room. I stayed here and I built up to
Speaker 1: one hundred toere now, yes that's my warm up weight.
Speaker 1: And so all you're looking as this person going like
Speaker 1: it feels the same for me to move one hundred pounds,
Speaker 1: that's for you to move five pounds. I just kept
Speaker 1: building my strength, yep, yep.
Speaker 3: And I think that's such a key learning and insight,
Speaker 3: which is because we often will suddenly compare ourselves with
Speaker 3: somebody who is way ahead of us and assume that
Speaker 3: they're there because there's something very different about who they are,
Speaker 3: and in a way there is in that they've grown
Speaker 3: an identity over time. But it's this fixed versus growth mindset. Right,
Speaker 3: I can't lift one hundred pounds, so I'm weak and
Speaker 3: I'll never be able to lift one hundred pounds versus well,
Speaker 3: if I actually want to lift one hundred pounds, there's
Speaker 3: a path there, Right, I'm going to have to figure
Speaker 3: out the intelligent path for me. And you know, if
Speaker 3: I want to get stronger, it's not going to be
Speaker 3: the same path that Anthony's going to take because you
Speaker 3: and I have very different body types. I mean all
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff. But there's always a road forward there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a cool thing. There always is a road
Speaker 1: forward that This is a matter are you willing to
Speaker 1: take it? Yeah? That I think becomes the age old
Speaker 1: thing that people need to uncover is if you want
Speaker 1: something more, you have to become somebody more. And becoming
Speaker 1: someone more it is an interesting journey. It is difficult,
Speaker 1: it is hard, but it's so rewarding when you do it,
Speaker 1: because the cool thing is you never go back, and
Speaker 1: it in fact feels just as easy to live that life,
Speaker 1: if not easier than it does to live your current
Speaker 1: life of mediocrity. Yeah, but you have to go through
Speaker 1: a phase of the hardships and the difficulty. But most
Speaker 1: aren't willing to do it.
Speaker 3: Is there something you can point to that makes people
Speaker 3: more likely to be able to do that, to choose
Speaker 3: to upgrade their identity, to upgrade their life versus the
Speaker 3: people who don't choose that, Because on some level, everybody
Speaker 3: has some degree of wanting to self actualize and be
Speaker 3: better and right, So that's there. But some people are
Speaker 3: much more able to make it happen than other people.
Speaker 3: And I'm always curious. It's the same question I ask
Speaker 3: myself all the time, like why do some people get
Speaker 3: sober and others don't. I don't know that there's a
Speaker 3: really good one answer, right, But I'm curious if there's
Speaker 3: any things you've seen or things that make people more
Speaker 3: likely or give people a better chance.
Speaker 1: I think there's like a wonder between like faith and fear.
Speaker 1: So some people will fear something so much they want
Speaker 1: to run away from it right. It's the run away
Speaker 1: from pain, run towards a pleasure kind of thing. And
Speaker 1: this is interesting story I heard for a moment. It
Speaker 1: was golfing. I can't think of her name, which tell
Speaker 1: me a story about this guy goes up to a farmer.
Speaker 1: The farmer he's always kind of get directions to the farmer,
Speaker 1: and the farmer's on this you know little thing.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 1: Guy needs to get to the gas station. He has
Speaker 1: a dog next to him, and he walks up to him, Hey, sir,
Speaker 1: how do I get to the corner store?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: He kind of hears this noise and doesn't know where
Speaker 1: it comes from. And a farmer goes, so you're gonna
Speaker 1: go down this road right here making let Oh. The
Speaker 1: guy goes, hold on, do you hear that noise? He goes, yeah,
Speaker 1: what what noise? It was that kind of like moaning thing,
Speaker 1: goes that's the dog goes, well, why is the dog
Speaker 1: making the noise? All he's sitting on a nail, So
Speaker 1: why doesn't he move? He goes it don't hurt him
Speaker 1: bad enough. And so a lot of people are living
Speaker 1: in a life where they just won't move. They'll complain,
Speaker 1: they'll moan and groan, but it doesn't hurt them bad enough.
Speaker 1: And so I think one of the things is like
Speaker 1: when the fear or the pain gets enough, we move.
Speaker 1: For most people, they'll finally move. And that's what I
Speaker 1: think is a catalyst. For me. It was I was
Speaker 1: at foster kid and I go, I don't want to
Speaker 1: experience this because most people go and how'd you believe
Speaker 1: that you're going to become an NFL athlete? Like, oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't believe that? Are you kidding me? As a
Speaker 1: foster kid. Here's what I did believe. I had a belief.
Speaker 1: I believed if nothing changed the place I was going,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to end up. That was the belief
Speaker 1: was that was the genuine fifteen years old I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to go at as trains heading. That
Speaker 1: was a belief. The other side of it, as you
Speaker 1: start looking at the guys like the Michael Phelps and
Speaker 1: Kobe Bryant's and these people that are like they will
Speaker 1: just subject themselves to years of torture, and you go,
Speaker 1: how do you do that? Faith? Faith is believing in
Speaker 1: the unseen, and when you believe in the unseen, that
Speaker 1: that depth, you'll sacrifice for it. That's why people will
Speaker 1: as athletes or as business owners, they'll create something. Everybody goes,
Speaker 1: you're crazy. What do you want to go to the moon?
Speaker 1: You want to go to space? Elon, what are you
Speaker 1: talking about? He had this faith was possible that you
Speaker 1: couldn't see what he could see, and the belief drives
Speaker 1: your actions in ways that the regular world would say
Speaker 1: you're a crazy person, and then so lo and behold
Speaker 1: they make it right. So I think there's a part
Speaker 1: where what drives you. There's going to be a fear
Speaker 1: or a pain that you finally becomes enough and you
Speaker 1: get out of that you want to run away from it,
Speaker 1: or it's a faith that is a belief beyond what
Speaker 1: people can see, that you will subject yourself to craziness
Speaker 1: to accomplish.
Speaker 3: That makes sense. It's sort of the being pushed or
Speaker 3: being pulled kind of idea. Right, You're being pushed by
Speaker 3: your pain or you're being pulled by a vision. It's
Speaker 3: two ways, and my experience is a blend of those
Speaker 3: energies is kind of necessary, you know. It's like I
Speaker 3: don't seem to get by on just one of them,
Speaker 3: although the further I get, the better my life gets.
Speaker 3: The more I have to rely on the being pulled
Speaker 3: right because the pushing doesn't work as well because things
Speaker 3: are pretty good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get it. That's the other hard part too,
Speaker 1: is you go, well, is it worth to sacrifice when
Speaker 1: things are pretty good? And then my brain goes to
Speaker 1: is it going to be this good in the future? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I go the future, Anthony. I've always noticed he
Speaker 1: arise at a situation that is an opportunity and either
Speaker 1: has what he needs for or he doesn't. And then
Speaker 1: I go back to the fall in love with the day.
Speaker 1: Can I keep lifting the same weight or do I
Speaker 1: need to continuously trying to get stronger because you can
Speaker 1: maintain the same strength. At some point, I may be
Speaker 1: asked to go run a race or do something, and
Speaker 1: if I haven't been preparing for that strength wise, and
Speaker 1: I'm not able to compete properly. Yep. Like I get
Speaker 1: asked to go play flag football every once in a while.
Speaker 1: I'm forty this year and these guys are you on
Speaker 1: twenty five years? Hey, Choce, you want to come play
Speaker 1: flag football? And I go, gosh. There were times they'd
Speaker 1: ask I'd be like, I can't. I haven't been training
Speaker 1: for it. I've not been lifting and running at all.
Speaker 1: Whereas I got a call two days ago he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: can you come out here and you know, September seventeenth
Speaker 1: and come come run with the guys. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I've been lifting and preparing for it. Did I
Speaker 1: know I was preparing for that? No, But I've been
Speaker 1: getting it in. I'm ready for that moment when it comes.
Speaker 1: Life's the same way. There'll be an opportunity that comes,
Speaker 1: and if I have the financials, or if I have
Speaker 1: the time, or I have the note to Riet, or
Speaker 1: I have the team and infrastructure, I can take advantage
Speaker 1: of it. But it's only because I've been consistently building
Speaker 1: for that I get normalized to growing my strength over time,
Speaker 1: if we call it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a meditation teacher that I've had who says,
Speaker 3: practice when you can for the times you can't, meaning like,
Speaker 3: build this muscle of relating to your experience in a
Speaker 3: particular way while it's easier, because the day will come
Speaker 3: where you're forced to relate to something very very difficult,
Speaker 3: and you know, if you haven't been preparing, you're not
Speaker 3: going to have what you need at that moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. This is that what I'm saying, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you won't have what you need when you need yep, yep.
Speaker 3: So all right, final question, what is a fear you're
Speaker 3: currently trying to overcome right now?
Speaker 1: A fear I'm trying to overcome? Oh I got one.
Speaker 1: I'm in a situation of scaling a business. The way
Speaker 1: I look at scaling means you're doing pretty well. Things
Speaker 1: are good at the system level. They are, but then
Speaker 1: the scale means you take on more responsibility, more goes out.
Speaker 1: The opportunity is high, but the financial risk with is
Speaker 1: a team risk with there's more moving parts you have
Speaker 1: to keep in place to reach that level. So we
Speaker 1: have like this speaking coaching business that we're like, we
Speaker 1: can scale. We can add more revenue or sorry, add
Speaker 1: more ad spend to generate more calls. It'll add more revenue,
Speaker 1: but that means more coaches. That means more teaching. That
Speaker 1: means more people who experience this thing in a good
Speaker 1: or bad way. I can have one hundred new people join,
Speaker 1: but if one hundred people join and a hundred hate it,
Speaker 1: that's not a good join, right, So how to make
Speaker 1: you all have an amazing experience? And so there's a
Speaker 1: fear going I want to do, I want to add spend.
Speaker 1: Can I keep this level of income and feel good
Speaker 1: about it? And I go, yeah, I would, But why
Speaker 1: am I staying there? Is it because I'm comfortable? Is
Speaker 1: it because it's And I realize it's because there's a
Speaker 1: fear of going further and you know, putting more money
Speaker 1: out maybe it doesn't work out, or people getting bothered
Speaker 1: or you know, not having a great experience, or me
Speaker 1: looking bad or hurting people's lives because they invested a
Speaker 1: level and we don't deliver. And I go, that's not
Speaker 1: a reason not to scale, It's a reason to scale
Speaker 1: because it allows me to go. I'm being faced with
Speaker 1: an opportunity, opportunity to improve myself, to improve my team.
Speaker 1: And here's what most people don't see that I try
Speaker 1: to see. There's a level beyond that level. There's one
Speaker 1: beyond that that I can't see that's going to be
Speaker 1: so amazing and so beautiful. But if I don't get
Speaker 1: to this next level and push into it, I'll never
Speaker 1: even know that one exists. It'll pass me by. And
Speaker 1: so that's the one I'm afraid of missing out on.
Speaker 1: So I go, we got to scale. So when I
Speaker 1: say these things are my team's setting messages back and
Speaker 1: forth in the background, that's an immediate discussion, like do
Speaker 1: we double the ad spend, which means double the calls,
Speaker 1: double the team for sales conversations and and onboarding and
Speaker 1: I got to bring more people in. There's a big
Speaker 1: conversation there, and I go, let's do it. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be hard. We know it's going to be hard,
Speaker 1: but like you said, we go in with the obviously
Speaker 1: understanding it's inevitably going to be difficult. It'll force me
Speaker 1: to grow, which I'm looking forward to. It won't be beautiful,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to love the day. I'm gonna enjoy
Speaker 1: the process. I'm nto the steps. I'm gonna enjoy all
Speaker 1: of it, even if it's not fun now, because I
Speaker 1: know it'll deliver something greater later beautiful.
Speaker 3: Well, Anthony, thanks so much for coming on. I've really
Speaker 3: enjoyed this conversation. I enjoy your work. We'll have links
Speaker 3: in the show notes to where people can find your work,
Speaker 3: your podcast, your book, all that good stuff. So thank
Speaker 3: you so much for coming on.
Speaker 1: Pleasure, thanks for having me.
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