Hey, everyone. Welcome to my weekend special. I hope you enjoy the show. Hit that like button, and be sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel so you never miss my show. Whether it's Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday, here's our first guest.
Welcome back to the show. Today's topic is nature versus nurture. It's one of the things I get asked about most, whether it's developing business leaders and raising people in that environment or raising children. Ed, what matters? Nature or nurture? It's been a debate that's gone on for eons, and there's really two camps.
The first camp says that it's all nature. It's all evolution. It's all genetics. How somebody's gonna turn out is all their biology,
their talents, their skills, their success level, their happiness.
It's all nature. Right? The other camp says, no. It's not nature at all. It's nurture. It's the environment that somebody has raised in. So,
you know, one point of view, like a guy like John Locke, the philosopher, he was a real big guy on that the mind is a blank slate
and that we're born into an environment
and the experiences and memories that we have, the situations we find ourselves in, the thoughts that are programmed into us, that's what develops us. And, obviously, other people think, nope. That's not the case because two children can be raised in the exact same house, can't they? Say, an alcoholic home like I was raised in, one of them turns out to be, you know, very, very successful and happy, and another child has trouble with alcohol themselves or doesn't have a high level of success or has problems.
And so, really, if it's all environment,
why is it that two people can come out of an environment completely
different? Same time,
you can't really argue the fact that some of us are born with certain abilities, certain talents, certain predispositions.
And so here's what I'm gonna submit to you that I have stumbled onto in my life in raising children and raising business leaders and developing them. You ready?
Nurture
their nature.
The great parents,
the great business leaders nurture
the nature of this person. Meaning, let's just think about it from from a parenting standpoint.
Your child was probably born with certain talent, skills, and giftedness.
And as a parent, one of your primary jobs is to help them discover what those things are. I talk about this a lot. In fact, I'm writing a book right now that I think is gonna change the world,
um, called let me tell you about you. And it's got an awful lot to do with how I've developed my friendships, my children, business people,
and telling them about them. And what that really means is to look inside somebody, to observe them, and to be looking for what is their giftedness? What are their tendencies? What are their talents? What are their proclivities?
And to tell them about those things. And then once you've identified them, allow the environment you create to nurture
that nature.
Too often, we pick one camp or the other. And like most arguments in life, both are right, but almost nobody's ever taken on this philosophy. In fact, I'll bet this is the first time for most of you you've ever heard this before because I had never heard it before until I started developing it. I looked at my children. I thought, well, one of them is a certain way more than the other one, little bit, you know, if that's their intellectual level or their ability to process information or their problem solving, test taking skills. Right? The other one's maybe a little bit more intense and has a common sense that's just giftedness or their humor, their ability to build relationships with people, their athleticism,
whatever it might be.
As a leader, and we'll just use this in the parenting context, but this is true in business,
the great leaders have a unique ability to observe people and see their nature, see their unique talents and gifts. I believe everybody was born with two or three or four very unique talents and gifts special just to them. That's their nature.
They were born with and let's just be honest. You look at your own children or friends of yours or yourself. You know, maybe your maybe your talent is your gift is your ability to problem solve or think through solutions. Maybe it's your IQ. Maybe it's your humor. Maybe it's your physical beauty,
how you listen to people, your nurturing ability, your intensity, your passion,
your peace under duress, your equanimity.
There's so many different things. Your engineering skills for some of you. I can't even change a light bulb. Right? Your ability to communicate.
Right? Your ability to make people feel a certain emotion.
It could be whatever. Sewing.
It could be, you know, working on a car. It could be,
you know, building a company. It could be your vision. It could be your marketing ability, your energy,
whatever the talent is.
One of the keys in life is to figure out as early as you can what those two or three things are that god gave you. And by way, it's okay if you're even a little bit wrong in the beginning. And maybe you only pick one or two, and you've got some hidden ones that will be uncovered later.
But as a father,
as a friend,
I am constantly trying to look for the greatness in them. Now as a person of faith and as a Christian, what I'm really looking at for me, way I think it,
is I'm looking for the Christ in them. I'm looking for the gift that was sown into them before they were even born.
And for me, I love opening that up. I see I look at people like they're a gift,
and I wanna have my focus with them in the present.
So I think about a present and a gift, and then I think my job is to open up that gift and define inside of it what the talent and the gift is.
And so I do that very regularly. I'm gonna write about it in my book. I'm not covering all of it today. But if you became a friend of mine, pretty quickly in the game, I will begin to point out to you what some of those gifts you have are that I see. And sometimes it's a revelation to people, and sometimes it's a confirmation of something they've always believed or was embarrassed to believe about themselves or wasn't sure that it was true. As a father,
very early on, I started to look. What are their tendencies? What are their gifts? What are they good at? Right? What are their proclivities?
And then to point them out. You know, Bella Boo, you're so fast. Man, I can't believe how much faster that you run than everybody. And, man, socially, everybody likes you because you're so funny, because you're so brilliant and witty,
and you've got this ability to make other people feel good about themselves, and they feel connected to you. By the way, it's important to begin to nurture
that part of her nature. Maximus, you're so brilliant.
How you can almost have a photographic memory and you remember things and you ace every test, and you're so kind and gentle, and your work ethic is beyond belief, man. Like, your ability
everyone likes you. Everyone thinks you're kind. Nobody's got a bad word to say about you. Outwork everybody.
And to notice these talents because when you point out the Christ in somebody or we'll we'll just call for today's if you're secular or, you know, aren't a believer. If you just point out the giftedness in somebody,
you have connected yourself to them in a way that maybe one or two other people in their entire lifetime will.
Did you hear what I just said? When you tell a human being, I see this gift in you, and they know kind of intuitively it's true about them or they didn't know, and then they begin to evaluate it and prove it,
you have connected or yoked yourself to them in a way that almost no other human being ever will because you've touched something in them that is so deep, that's so innate, that's so true
that you build a bond and a connection with them,
an energy, a vibrational frequency,
a soul type connection
that really they'll never have with anybody else, maybe one or two other people.
And you'll be able to impact and affect them in a way that most people never will. So as a father,
my main job is to love them and to believe in them,
to encourage them, but also to see them and help them uncover what their gift is,
what their nature is,
and then to nurture it.
As a business leader, when I'm evaluating people, it's to find out, oh, it's your ability to problem solve. Oh my gosh. You're the one that's calm pressure.
Oh, you're the one who puts different pieces together of a puzzle like I've never seen before.
Right? Or it's your copywriting ability or your communication skills or your ability to deduce information that's complex into something simple. Oh, no. You're the person who galvanizes the team, whatever it is. And I'm looking for those things. And then what I'm gonna do is put them in an environment that nurtures that nature.
And now people begin to perform at a superhuman level, and you have a superhuman,
supernatural
bond with them.
And so I want you to begin to think about that in the relationships you have with your children, if you have children, or if you don't, your boyfriend or girlfriend,
your friends.
How good are you bet have you been at pointing out to them their giftedness and their greatness? You do it in a real way. You're not some cornball. Right? But over time, you go, have I told you lately literally how amazing you are at x, y, and z? Man, I think you should be using that more to help other people or to start a business or to do x or y. This is why so
many human beings
don't feel good about themselves,
and most of that is
nurture.
It was their environment.
Okay? Because let me just be real with you.
A lot of winning
is not just mental. It's environmental.
Okay? But yet there are people that transcend their environment. But what if you had both? What if you took somebody's nature and you created an environment around them that nurtured it? Now that we got the environment and the talent and the gift, they're almost unstoppable.
And so I want you to really begin to think about why is it that most people don't feel great about themselves?
Here's what I think. Conditioning,
patterns, the way people have treated them, their environment,
and they don't have a defense against it. The defense against that is to know you.
And to know oneself
is to know what your giftedness is, to know what your nature is, to know what your talents are.
And so when you don't know those things or you know them, but you're not utilizing them in your life, then the environment will crush you. And then you begin to lose hope and belief in yourself. In fact, if you're somebody today who's listening to the show or watching it and you've lost some hope and belief in yourself, forget all your external results. Those external results are the environment.
Right? So if you're just looking at the results, your environment is constantly reinforcing to you, you're not good enough. You're not that special. You're not gonna win. You're not gonna be happy. So screw all that. What I want you to do is to look inside you.
What are some of your talents and gifts? If you weren't being humble,
what are they? Is it your listening skills?
Maybe it's just your moral compass, your humor, how much you truly care about people, your intellect,
your physical touch.
Right? What you look like. Maybe it's none of those things. Maybe those aren't your gifts.
Maybe your gift is your persistence, your resiliency,
your generosity,
your faith.
K? I don't know what it is. But when you begin to look inside yourself and say, what are the things that I'm naturally good at? And maybe
often in life,
because somebody is very good at something and it becomes natural to them, meaning it is their nature, they take it for granted and don't think it's special.
Did you hear that? Because something is natural for you to do, you just don't think it's special, or you think everybody has that, but they don't.
And so that's why you need a leader with vision to say, I see
that gift, and then I'm gonna put you in an environment where I nurture it. Just pointing it out repetitively
is part of nurturing it.
Okay? So I stand
that we are supposed to be nurturing people's
nature.
So if you're sitting here today alone and you're not happy, go inside. What are some of my gifts? I'm gonna give myself credit for them. One of my great gifts that I've found in myself
is my intentions.
You know, I'm not the smartest person in the world.
I was not the fastest when I played baseball or the best hitter.
You know? I don't know that I can do everything for my friends or as a father. I've made tons of mistakes.
One of my gifts is I have I believe I have a very good intent,
and I stack that.
And because I had those intentions, I met a leader, Wayne Dyer, when I was young, and my dad did this too, and my mom.
That was a good boy.
That was a good person. That I had a good heart. That I deserved to be happy and to win and to help other people. One of those gifts is my intent.
Now for me, I think everybody has good intentions. That's no big deal. The truth is is at 52 years old, I can tell you for sure that's not true, and so can you. There's lots of people that don't have good intentions,
but I do,
and that's one of my great gifts. That may seem simple. See, we overlook the we think, well, the gift has to be that I can three sixty windmill dunk. Now that's a gift. Or I can run you like Usain Bolt,
whatever it might be. Right? Or, man, I have the IQ of an Elon Musk or the vision of a Steve Jobs,
right, or the beauty of a Beyonce or the singing ability.
Yeah. Those are apparent gifts,
but what are yours? And for most of us, those gifts remain invisible
because nobody shines a light on them for us.
But once that light shined,
all of a sudden, we become the Beyonce of our own lives. We become the LeBron of our own lives. We become the Musk of our own lives.
Our happiness,
our emotions, our productivity,
our achievements, the way we can contribute to other people becomes exponentially
different.
And so my recommendation, I guess, today is to say to you that in your friendships, with your children, with your parents, with your friends, whoever that might be, within your business,
and even this,
with strangers,
with people that you just meet,
or you wanna get better at meeting people,
look for their giftedness.
In my case, look for the Christ in them. Look for their talent and point it out and tell them that over and over again. Usually, with my very famous or well known friends, with that little group of people, when people say, how do you get so close to so and so?
Because what most people do is spend all their time telling them how amazing it is the environment is that they've created for their life, the money they've made, the jet they've got, the TV show they have, the concert they filled up,
the election they won,
and they are really focusing all the time on their nurture, like, kinda what they've developed.
I spend my time looking inside that person and saying, man, your real gift isn't that.
It's how genuine and kind you are, or it's how intense you are, or it's how relentless you are.
And I bond myself in a way that's very unique with them because I'm looking at that.
I'm looking at the internal,
not the external when I meet a human being.
Now by the way, once in a while, that external is one of their gifts. They're physically beautiful or unbelievably strong, whatever it might be. That might be. But for the vast majority of people, that gift is on the inside, not the outside.
We just as a culture only usually celebrate external gifts,
and that's who becomes famous
because they have an ability, maybe like I do, to speak. That's an external obvious thing, or someone can sing or run fast or they're strong or hit a ball further or putt well or in a cage, they can pin somebody.
We see the external gifts. The great leaders in life, the great parents in life see the internal gifts.
So my recommendation to you today is to become an advocate of both points of view, and I can tell you as someone who's built big businesses,
who's built a family, who's built a bunch of friendships, who's a little bit further down the road,
what our job is in life is to nurture the nature and the giftedness in other people. This will become a muscle you build. It won't be very easy at first, but when you just become intentional and aware of it, you begin to see human beings differently.
You'll immediately connect with them. You will connect with your Uber driver differently, instantly.
You will connect with a server in a restaurant. You'll connect with your doctor. You will connect with your friends. You will make new friends. You will develop and build people in your company in a way you've never done that before. You can actually remake your relationship with your significant other.
You can fix a relationship with someone that doesn't work. You can get closer to your mom or dad if it's been distant. And, man, can you become a world class parent if you begin to do this. Your whole way you look at people now is a gift, and you're in the present with that gift, and your job is to open it up and look inside and find their nature.
It could change your life.
So my recommendation to you today is to do exactly that. From a scientific perspective,
really what nature means is biological or genetic predispositions
that impact one's human traits, physical, emotional, or intellectual.
Nurture, by contrast, describes the influence of learning and other environmental factors in someone's life. I like to take advantage of both.
I believe we were put here on this earth to help other people, to build other people up,
to leverage the gifts and talents of one another, to do something great, to advance culture, to advance society.
We have flipped that on its back in this culture,
where now what we really do with one another is find out the things we don't like, find out their weaknesses, go for the jugular. Here's what's wrong with them. Here's what they think that's stupid. Here's their problem. And we actually now look for the gotcha. We look for the negative. We we literally have abandoned
finding the giftedness. What type of country, what type of world would we be if we all took advantage of each other's beautiful gifts that god gave us and leverage those and began to focus a whole lot less on the weaknesses because I've got news for you. As a human being, you were born with flaws.
I got news for you. So are the other people that you're in your life.
So if we're gonna focus on that, those are easy to find, and that is a terrible way to go through life. It's a terrible way to build a family. It's a terrible way to build a friendship. It's a terrible way to build a country. It's a terrible world to live in because that's not what we were born to do. We were born inherently with sins and flaws and mistakes and frailties,
but we are also born with three or four great things about us. And life is about taking those three or four things and leveraging them
to the benefit of other human beings. You wanna find a happy person? They may not have made a lot of money yet. They don't have to have made a lot of money yet. You find a happy person. They have found two or three gifts inside themselves, and then they have gone on a mission and a crusade and a cause to use those mission those gifts
in a mission to change other people's lives in some potential way and their own lives. Say it to you again, a happy, blissful person has figured out, oh,
these are one or two or three of my gifts. I'm gonna now figure out how to use these gifts in the service of other human beings in my business, in my personal life, in my charitable giving, whatever that might be in my family,
now I'm gonna show you a person who's got a great life. They may not even got all the way to the promised land yet, but what they have is hope, what they have is a future, what they have is a vision and a dream, what they have is a purpose.
Because now their environment
is nurturing
that nature. As you took advantage,
you are leveraging part of your giftedness doing what you do now. Right? And I think for a lot of people,
you know, that's part of the rub as well. It's like, what's my gift?
And and and understanding that you do have two or three gifts that are unique to you. So
talk about leveraging your giftedness. Where is it? And then maybe a little bit of a tip for somebody to figure out if they don't know what maybe their giftedness could potentially be. What you were just talking about, that heart power? Mhmm.
So the EKGs of the heart is like one of the most powerful frequencies in the world. Most people use more of their head than their heart. Well,
if you imagine a little kid just tapping on your knee going, mom, mom, mom, dad, dad, dad, mom, mom, and that kid
never being acknowledged,
What do y'all think would happen to the relationship
twenty years from now with no acknowledgment? There wouldn't be one because there would be no emotional closure.
So
the stuff you used to love to do as a kid
before
you got influenced by the outside world, I'm just talking about the stuff you used to love to do that brought you the most freedom
is connected to the truest essence of your heart. Yeah.
So I had a young lady, and I'll wrap this up quick. I had a young lady say, oh,
she's like, I don't know. I have the husband, I have the job, and and and and I have the money. I just feel like something is missing. I said, what'd you used to love to do when you were a kid? She said, I used to love instantly changed. I used to love to dance. I was like, how'd you how did it make you feel? It just made it's like time stopped. When was the last time you danced? Twenty years ago.
And
I literally said,
if you know what that relationship is like if you ignore your kid for twenty years now imagine your inner child Mhmm. And every time and every day that goes by, the thing that you used to love to do gets walked over and forgotten.
That's the inner child going, mom, mom,
mom, dad. So what's missing or potentially
is the alignment
of your spiritual self
and your physical self wanting to come back home.
And the what's missing part
is me telling her,
sign up for a dance class. Don't talk about don't think about business. And when you go there, set a powerful intention that I'm gonna take the little girl inside of me dancing.
Do it just once once a week. She does it once a week.
Libido comes back. Yep. The relationship with her husband starts thriving.
Her business,
she had quit that one, got another business. She was like, oh, my God. It's like, well, the universe becomes plastic according to the thoughts that you give the most power and
who she was being
was living from the inside out and not the outside in.
So that That's so good. That right there Mhmm. If the entire world
could remember at least one thing you did as a kid Mhmm. That brought you the most joy. If you don't remember, ask somebody when you were a little kid, what did I naturally graduate what
color, what toy, what this, what did I gravitate towards?
And just spend five minutes
once a week with it. Watch what happens in thirty days. Okay. I'm give you an example of how brilliant you are. Okay? So one of my was thinking recently about one of my, like, happiest friends.
Like, just loves what he does. Like, listen. There's there's lots of sources of happiness in life. In fact, you are the source of your happiness. But when you're in the process of doing something that's your giftedness, you tap into it at a deep level. When you're in the process of serving other people and we've done all the studies now. Actually, you get more dopamine in the process than the achievement. When you achieve something, actually, there's a dopamine crash.
It's the pursuit. It's the process. Right? It's the actual work. One of my happiest friends did exactly what you've described,
and I'll validate your work with this. He's actually a lawyer, And he's in his fifties.
And he's just this dude's just a stud. He's super happy. But here's the story.
He had been an entrepreneur
till he was 30 and made a lot of money and was miserable.
And he said, I just I've I've got to this achievement and I didn't get any happier. And and he said, you know what? I started to think about when I was a little guy,
like five, 10 years old, what did I really like to do? And he goes, you know what's funny? I like to argue.
I liked to argue. And he goes, and I was also the dude if there was a fight on the playground, I'd go protect the small kid because he's a big dude. And he goes, so I started thinking when I was a kid, what brought me the most joy? I love to argue, like, kind of debate with people and even as a young boy. We all have a child like that. Right? So some of you have a child like that. And I would protect people. He goes, I think I wanna be a lawyer. So
this dude at 30 years old
went back, went to law school, got his law degree, and now has a law practice, and in his thirties, found his giftedness in his go zone by tapping into his heart. Yeah. So this isn't all like this esoteric
concept stuff. This is real stuff. Absolutely. By the way, maybe that thing isn't what you're gonna do for a living. It's gonna be your hobby. For me, I loved to run when I was a kid. Yeah. And I've had some major injuries to my legs playing baseball. It's a it's a long story, but, like, I really can't run like I used to.
And so I recently I ironically,
into riding horses. And I'm like, what is it that I love so much about being with these horses is that I can run again, and they can run faster than me. So it brings me joy. These are all the pathways that when you listen to my show, you guys, and I put brilliant people in front of you, and we get into this thing that you and I are doing right now,
open your mind up and go around it. You know what mean? Like, think about all the the places that there's applications of what we're discussing here. Yeah. Because when you do, you'll understand the genius of his work. By the way, Garen has a book I didn't mention, called Change Your Mindset, Change Your Life, Lessons of Love, Leadership, and Transformation. Been out for a while.
It's I read it prepping for this. It's outstanding.
I feel like there's another book in you, by the way. Oh, no. It's coming. Okay. Good. Because I really believe that there's another one. It took me five years to write that book because it's called change your mindset, change your life. Every time I kept growing, I kept changing. And my boy Preston was like, Garren, if you don't put that book out right now Yep. So that was a younger version of me, and I've evolved so much since then. There's Well, by the way, one of thing they should know is you have this incredible book, and you, like, had a learning disability or something in school. Right? Yep. It's just so it's like whatever your excuse is, I wanna put somebody in front of you, everybody's probably gonna take it away, everybody. Yeah. Right? Like, you just take away people's excuses, you also feed their dreams. You feed their spirit. You say something in the book that I talk about all the time that think is right down this alley of the
pursuit of what really matters. Yeah. Do you finding happiness in your figureoutableness?
Yes. And that is this, that I really truly believe every human being was born with some special unique gifts.
They're different. That's what makes us special. It could be your humility, your humor, your beauty, your articulation,
your intellect,
your your nurturing ability, your ability to
your engineering
ability, your acting ability, your dance ability, your your ability to just be peaceful with people,
to change people's states. There's so many to teach. Right? To learn. There's all these unique gifts. We're all wired with two or three or four that are really special to us.
And I this this when I read this in the book, I went, I I I can't love this book more. Mhmm. And that is and it makes me emotional because I just think most humans who say, I don't know what I wanna figure out. The pathway to that is your giftedness. And you say in the book, the world needs your gift. Yeah. So talk about that because you say it so beautifully and it the way you do it, I think will open up people's eyes and hearts. Yeah. It's how I end the show and sometimes, Ed, people write to me, watch the show and they say, you know, I love everything you share but I always wait for this last sentence which the world needs that special gift that only you have. Mhmm. And I feel like it's yet another gift from my mom who really
I got that messaging over and over because I was kind of a unique child. When people would ask me when I was young, what do you wanna be when you grow up? Mhmm. There was a list of 15 things. Always. I never had one good answer. And, you know, as I became a young adult and even after college, I still never could answer in one way. I just felt always felt like a misfit.
But how A misfit who was a valedictorian at Sutton Hall. But I struggled.
Like Good. When you know, I worked on Wall Street. That was my first job out of school. After, like, six months, I was like, this sucks. I do not want this life. I can't imagine being here twenty four seven. So I quit that job. I worked in publishing. I tried so many different things and kept hitting walls because I didn't fit into a traditional box. And it wasn't until becoming an entrepreneur that I could wear a bunch of different hats Mhmm. And flex all of my different skills and gifts that I actually felt like I belonged, if that makes any kind of So
this notion that the world needs a special gift that only you have So good. I I feel like especially with so many things happening in the world right now. You know, statistics show that over three hundred million of us worldwide suffer from depression. Yep.
Um, if you look in any direction here in The United States,
suicide rates are at a thirty year high. Like,
a lot of us are in a lot of pain. And I think one of the pieces of that puzzle is people don't feel like they're needed. They don't feel like they have purpose or like they matter or how they're living their lives on a consistent basis. They're not contributing or growing. And any human being that's not contributing or growing is gonna go into some dark places. I certainly have in the past. You know what I mean? If I if I'm off kilter and I don't feel like I'm making a difference or I'm learning anything new, again, this is so, so typical. So for me, this message about encouraging people to identify
what it is that they are here to give and to contribute and to share, I think it is such a pathway to well-being. It is. It's a pathway to fulfillment from a financial perspective. It's a pathway to
make yourself not only, uh, financial financially solvent, but if if your ambitions align that way, to make yourself financially free Yes. In terms of contribution and what you wanna give the world. You know, oftentimes,
when I have this conversation with people, they'll say, but, Marie, everything's been done before.
Yeah. Everything's been said before by people who are more famous, more experienced. Oh my goodness. I see this person came out with x y or z. I watch Ed Show. That's exactly what I wanna do. I watch Marie show or that book. That's exactly what I wanted to say. Mhmm. And then I tell them this story.
So when Josh and I, my partner, we've been together for sixteen years. When we first got together, I was in my, uh, kind of mid twenties, around that 25, 26 year old mark. And I was bartending and waiting tables. My coaching business was really tiny. I was doing all the side gigs just to keep things going.
And he's an actor. Mhmm. And, uh, we were living together, and he would often go away to film a movie or a television show. And we're in New York City, and he would come back to our home, and our trash can would be filled with empty boxes of chef Boyardee
and craft macaroni and cheese and, like, all of this processed,
crap food because that's just what I was doing. Right? That's just I was, like, Bart, doing all the things. Just didn't have time. He's like, Marie, why don't we start taking some supplements? And, oh, let's start juicing, and we should get more vegetables in your diet. And I was so stubborn, Ed. I was such an ass. I was like, whatever, hippie man. Like, it's too expensive. I don't have the time. I don't have the energy. I'm working, like, four jobs. Just leave me alone. No. No. No. Pass the mac and cheese. Mhmm. Fast forward, like, three years. Mhmm. And I met this woman,
and, uh, her name is Kris Carr, and she is a cancer thriver.
She's written all of these New York Times bestselling books. Her and I became, like, really fast friends. K. And all she does is tout the benefits of, uh, a vegan diet and green juice. So I come home one day, and I'm like, Josh.
I love it. I met the most amazing woman. Here's all the supplements we should take. We should get this juicer. I should be juicing. Why haven't we done we should have been doing this And years Josh was like,
are you kidding me? I love it. I've been telling you the same thing. Yes. Why couldn't you hear it from me? And this is the point. Gosh. Sorry. Sometimes
it takes that one person Mhmm. To share a message or a product or a service or a gift in their unique voice in a particular time, in a particular way for it to land for another human. Oh my god. So people listening right now, if they have been holding themselves back
either through perfectionism
or through saying it's all been said or done before, no. That is not true. If you haven't put in your piece of the puzzle, it has not been said before. And then I say this. If you have an idea or a gift or a product or a service or something that you wanna create and you don't do everything possible to put it out there,
you are stealing from those who need you most. Oh, boy. That's so good. And I do mean stealing. Mhmm. Because, you know, when I think about it, if there's any clothing designer, any restaurateur who makes a dish that you love, you know, when I think about Oprah Winfrey, for example. Right? She could have said, you know what? Phil Donahue, he's got this whole talk show thing kind of covered. The world doesn't need another talk show host. Yes. And think about all the goodness, at least for me, she's a huge idol of mine. Absolutely. Incredible. That the world would have missed out on Yes. If she held herself back. Yes. You can think about it on a micro scale, like your favorite place that you go for guacamole or for pasta or whatever your thing is. You can look around, and they could have said, oh, there's enough Mexican restaurants. There's enough Italian restaurants. Why do I need to add to it? You would have missed out on all that joy. We can go down the line for anything
that you find value from. You're so good. I gotta I wanna I wanna jump in on this because it's so flipping true. Yes. First off, on your gift, everybody. Something to think about. Your gift will come through you giving something to other people. That's why it's a gift. You're gonna give it to somebody. So if you're struggling with what that gift is, think about what you could give to people. That's number one. Number two, oftentimes,
our giftedness that we don't maybe know we have is hidden in the people we admire most. So if you begin to look at who you admire, like one of my heroes growing up was Martin Luther King. What do I have in common with Martin Luther King? I'm not African American. I'm not a minister.
His oratory skills are superior to anybody I've ever seen before, but what I loved is he could inspire.
I loved that he seemed to care about people and that I saw something in him that I think I knew was in me. Now, maybe I'd manifest it in a completely different way, but if you begin to think about who you admire, ask yourself what you admire about them and it's probably because you've identified something in them that lies within you. Second the third thing on that I just wanna add that everybody because what you just said about that special voice.
People know that I've had lots of business mentors
and they know many of them are very well known, very famous people, but what most of you might not know is that my initial mentor, the person who believed in me the most was a man in my own company who was much less successful than I became. He was not successful. His name was he's become successful to this day, but his name was Steve Adams. And he was a struggling entrepreneur going through his four zero one k,
but he'd write me letters every month about how incredible I was going to be and how successful. This why I was in college. I wasn't even in his company yet. He changed my life by his belief in me when he was not yet successful. But he gave me the gift because this is a kind man. Yes. One of his gifts is his kindness and his generosity.
And he gave me his belief in his kindness and generosity. You would think, well, why'd that matter? He wasn't even successful
because it was the messenger I needed. You don't have to have it all together to help other people. So I just I love acknowledge what you've said because you're so right. Everybody needs to know that. Yeah. And another place to look if people are looking. Like, I love the thing what you admire in other people, something that you might aspire to be. That's a great clue. Mhmm. Another great clue, and I think we discount this, things that come naturally to us. Yeah. Right? And we assume
Mhmm. Make an assumption that everyone else has that gift too. It comes naturally to them. I I had this. So true. So many points in my life where I'm always the one who can come up with a reframe. I don't feel like I'm a Pollyanna. It's just my mind is wired to solve problems, and it's also wired to see things from different points of view. That's just how I'm built. And I'm like, doesn't everybody see things this way? No. I have a whole career out of it. Right. Exactly. So but it comes so naturally and so easily. And I think so often we humans discount that Yeah. Which comes easily to us, and we think that everyone has it. So that might be another pocket of investigation.
I can't even get over how amazing what you're saying is because that's true of even guests on my show. They'll have greatness in them. Yeah. They're And like, well, everybody has that. I'm like, no. The reason you're here,
right? And and this is true of every single human being and this is not we're not superior
humans in any way. A goofball
and I'm an average ordinary person. Happiness is finding out what your gift is and then living your life using that gift in the service of other people. That's I I I completely
want to acknowledge this. It's one of the most important things we've ever covered on the show before because it doesn't get talked about enough.
Also too, I wanna to build on that if we can. Sure. You know, the fact that for anyone listening or watching thinking that we have special skills or that we're, uh, this is another question. Wait. Are you always happy? Right. Are you always up? Are you always motivated? Do you ever have bad days? I have tons of shit tastic days. Like, do you know what I mean? Yes. I have I still
have tons of self doubt. You know, we were talking off camera. I just came off this book tour, has been amazing. But I had this idea about how I wanted to launch the book, and it terrified me. Yeah. So my idea was what if a Beyonce concert and a TED Talk had a baby and then threw a block party? So Like, can I do this? And when I said that out loud, first of all, everything in me lit up. Mhmm. And then everything in me was terrified. So
much self doubt. And I actually documented it. We did a video about the behind the scenes. Awesome video. Thank you. But I wanted to show people Mhmm. How much fear
and anxiety and self doubt I have even after a twenty year career. Mhmm. Does that and so Mhmm. You know, I just I wanna just highlight and underscore that bit that anyone you admire,
they absolutely have bad days. First of all, they poop and fart just like everyone else. Exactly. But it's highly likely Yeah. That they struggle with depression Yep. And anxiety and not feeling good enough. 1000000%.
And and the reason that it's so important to know is one, will help you too. It's your it it I'm not gonna let you have that excuse. Yeah. It's a convenient excuse to think somebody's different or special or a Martian or superhuman
and they're not, exactly. Usually when I interview somebody,
know, they've accomplished something in their sport and we talk about that or they've accomplished something in business and we talk about that. The complexity of what you've done. Yeah. I wonder and it's probably even a good thing that you don't always just step back and go wow, right? But the complexity of and how many times you've remade yourself.
Yeah. Because that lesson at 24, that lesson at 16, I think there was another lesson when you're preparing yourself, we're gonna talk about later for finding someone like Brianna, that whole thing.
See, I had this really weird thing happen. I'll tell you, when Max was six years old, was at this car wash.
And this really nice guy I'd see there all the time on Saturday, old guy. Turns out he's about my age now, but at the time he was old And to just out of niceness, says to me, goes, hey, enjoy the six year old because when he turns seven, the six year old's gone forever. Yeah. And when he turns seven
or when he turns eight, the seven year old's gone forever. You got little kids, you know, man. They just keep becoming these different versions of Yeah.
I remember saying back to the guy without trying to be disrespectful. I said back to him, said, so when did that stop for you?
Yeah. And he just stared at me kind of blankly. And he goes,
I don't know. And I said, you should figure that out. And what I respect about you
is that you have not settled. The 18 year old version wasn't the same at 24. The 24 year old man doesn't
even resemble the 43 year old or the 44 year old or the 24 year old. Right? Just it shifts all the time. I respect that about you. So that happens, and then you go on from there. We can't document your whole life Well, let me say let me say this to that too. Right? Because I think I've heard you say before about how you're you're in pursuit of the vision of of, you know, something to the effect of you're pursuing the vision of the man Yeah. That you ex you expect yourself to become. Right? Correct. Something to that effect. And I I I
would say when I finally shifted to that that
at in that pursuit of that individual,
I also knew that that individual was slowly changing
with the experience that I was having pursuing it, right? Yeah. And it's not that it's this you're pursuing something that's not attainable, it's with experience and knowledge and understanding of yourself because you're on the journey just to master you Yes. That the more you begin to master you, the more that ideal version of you begins to evolve too. So you're in this sort of relentless pursuit that's clear,
that I think at some point it becomes fully optimized.
The fully optimized version of yourself is who you will catch up with, like, that won't forever be elusive.
And Oh my gosh. That's Right. And and I think
as because we're so similar in that sort of idea,
it's the moment I realized that, no. This growth is actually one of your key attributes.
Like embrace it and enjoy
what you're able to achieve, but know that that's not part of your makeup. Like the relentless pursuit is actually your makeup. Oh my gosh, brother. And that changed,
it allows
me to not
very difficult to look back and reflect because I mean, I just enjoy the pursuit so much. You know what I mean? Me too. I've had the I've had you I heard you say about this too. You make me feel really good because although we're a little bit different personality wise, you're probably the most similar person to me that I've met maybe ever. And just that
it's even hard to describe, but we're both just so obsessed with this pursuit of growth and change and experiences
in life. And one of the things I struggle with is my memory.
Yeah. And and I and I know you do So do I. That's right. I know. Like The gift and the curse. It's a gift and the curse. I think I think maybe one of the gifts of it is I don't remember all my failures to just hold me back and I keep telling all these old stories. Yeah. But I really do have a hard time remembering things. In fact, when I get interviewed, the great gift for me when I'm interviewed is it forces some recall of memories I didn't have before. You have that too. Right? What do you think that is? 100%. I don't I don't know, but just talking it out, thinking about it Yeah. Right, with somebody else that experiences it, I think it's more gift than curse. Now, it it comes back to haunt you when you're trying to, like, remember the details like,
on certain things, and it and it jams you up a where it jams me up at this state is I'm taking in and learning so much at a high level, and then it pushes out stuff that I could really use again when I wanna Yeah. Use it for another situation if you will, especially in business.
But I also
it's also made me super conscious
of stuff that I really want to know, that I want to remember and never forget that I tell myself that as I get there. Right? Meaning when a major moment happens, you have the And the engagement, getting wedding, children,
like a moment with children. I'll I when I really even just recently taking the helicopter
to Catalina
to celebrate
my
three year anniversary, like,
kept telling myself as we're flying over the city and look at the ocean, like, don't, like, just feel this. Like like,
remember this. Look at this. Remember this. So it's like, I have to practice that and those lock in. Right? Yeah. That's why,
you guys, if I started to try to list for you the amount of moments that he can't remember, but also that have been amazing in his life, some of you you just would literally it is what he said earlier. It's many, many, many, many, many, many, many lives. Right? And so
I wanna touch on some of them where there's lessons, but I just I'm gonna spend most of my time in your brain and in your heart. So but you go all the way from
let's be honest. You go from
Rob and Big. You got ridiculousness.
Right? You got
all of the moments that happened on all of these shows too. Right? Fantasy Factory, like, all of these different things. It's just it's it's bananas. And so
And keep in mind, Fantasy Factory was basically a moment generator.
You know what I mean? From being attacked by a shark to jockeying a horse for a race to like flipping a car for a Super Bowl commercial, breaking a world record, jumping a car backwards, like Yeah. Getting towed into a giant wave and almost dying, like all these crazy
crazy crazy highlight reel that no human being on the planet Earth has. Correct. Right? Is Did you just hear what he said, by the way? Just just slow that down for a second. Okay? A mauled by a tiger,
bit attacked by a shark. You kissed a bear on the lips, I think. I kissed a bear. Right? And then It's an easier one. What so let me just stay on it just for a second because, like, those are once in a lifetime moments you've had over and over and over again. Right? So Yeah. Stay on that just meanwhile,
kicking ass in business,
meanwhile, founding a skateboarding it's just it's it's like you make me feel small, which is awesome. Right? So And keep in mind too Yeah.
They are fully intertwined.
What do you mean? Like, how is them I'm negotiating a deal a five year, like, multi million dollar mega deal with Nike right before, like, I gotta hang up the phone and break a world record for jumping a car ramp to ramp 90 feet backwards. Right? For a giant Chevy integration deal, that Chevy's going to do a deal for
being a part of our league while launching
a complete new company. It's like you're taking phone calls in between this sort of chaos and sort of all aspects of your life. That was that was a six or seven year run of doing all this insanity while doing all of your business and normal stuff inside it. So that's maxing out these different areas. The pun is intended. Right? But, like so there are people out here who use the
complexity of their lives as an excuse not to succeed in any one of them. Right? So, oh god. I'm a dad, and I've got my business, and I got my, you know, soccer league or whatever it is. How did you do that? So if you were to say, here's one of the reasons how I can compartmentalize
and win in different areas, what would be one of the keys? Just
sheer drive
and relentless
pursuit
of success.
The problem with that was,
is here you are,
someone
that can do anything,
you
you end up
you have the ability to do anything, so you end up doing everything,
then you end up kinda standing for nothing.
Right? So you end up meaning
so much to so many different people. You you're not even sure what you stand for, like, are are is your passion business? Do you wanna do stunts? Are you a TV guy? Like, do you wanna be the commissioner of your league? Do you like skateboard? Like, what is like I had to
stop
and
realize that because my hope was if I just kept doing all this stuff, one of them would show me the way. Right?
So and as someone that's so driven
and whose gift is execution, the moment you decide to do something, you're gonna do it. I'm gonna do a cartoon and a toy line like, okay, I got a cartoon on Nickelodeon and a toy line in Walmart. I got attacked by a shark to launch it. I'm gonna do a new television show. I got this, I've read an article with Vinny DiBona. I'm gonna do this clip video show. It's gonna be the biggest thing ever. Like like,
you end up doing all of these things and you basically,
uh, behind
that there's
20 of them that aren't working that you're putting that same energy of running into the wall with. Right? And and furthermore,
it's not leading anywhere since you're hoping one will determine what your future is. Right? And I stopped and
and
yes, I I would look at myself as this highly conditioned stress athlete where you could you could put yourself under the deepest pressure and
and,
you know, take on 50 or 60 things at a time and operate smooth and happy.
And
but it wasn't until I
looked deep within myself and decided what type of life do you actually want. It's easier to do when you're sort of in the midst of failure
Totally. Externally, but you did it in the midst of success. Totally. And so this is what it does. Right?
It
when I finally
transition
to the the
the next level
The new version. Fully
designed version, right, which I'm on my way, right, to say I'm exactly two and one half years into,
then I'll speak about it and it'll be what I'm known for and what we talk about, right? Because since I'm in the middle of transitioning
in it, when you look at at my body of work, it is like so all over the place, you don't even it's so hard to like land on what it is because the stunt aspect is is really interesting, you know what I mean? And being a professional athlete and then like, oh, you jump up and and now now you're doing all these businesses. We're partners together in this super innovative amazing brand like Yeah. Like, oh, but then no, you're still
shooting nine episodes of television a week. You know what I mean? And like, you're still,
you know, entering your
twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth season on on
ridiculousness,
putting you at ten years and twenty five seasons and 500 episodes of television on MTV.
Like,
it's
hard to put down what does he really What would he be known for when really
you would know me primarily for MTV if you know business or you've had a conversation, then you're like, Okay, this guy's But tuned
my goal
is to be known for the life that I created, the life that I lived the
way that I systematized it and built it
that ultimately people could replicate in their own lives in the future. Yeah. The example's gonna be bananas. I I actually admire the diversity of your success.
It makes It's been a lot of fun. I mean, it's like Brother, come on. And I'll tell you another moment too, man. When I After I got attacked by that shark. Yeah. Because I'm like, this is so dumb.
Like, this isn't even this isn't even gonna be good. Like, why am I doing this? That's every stunt. Every stunt. It's like, this isn't even that this is so dumb. And afterwards,
no one in the world. No one in the world. Alright. But I remember swimming up off of
the looking down on the on that boat and stopping as I was swimming up and there's like 50 sharks swimming around telling myself, just look and and soak this into your mind because you will never be back here again. Know? And and I have that
to go along with the great photo of that, like, shark on my arm. You know what I mean? Alright. Welcome back to the show, everybody. Today's gonna be awesome. I get a chance to share time with
someone who's had a deep impact on my life. You know, I feel so close to this man, yet we've only been in person together once. It's this it's the most interesting relationship and connection
I've had in many, many years with somebody. I love his work,
and I have a lot to learn today myself. I I told him before we started. This is for everybody else today, but I have some of my own questions as well.
He's got a new book out called the wealth money can't buy.
And he I guess I'd call him a thought leader, a humanitarian.
I'd also call him just kind, brilliant, and someone that I admire because
he's he has started to live life on his own terms, and that takes a lot of courage
when you're as successful as he is. And so Robin Sharma,
welcome back, brother. It's so good to have you. My brother, Ed, uh, you are such a kind soul yourself,
and I honor you for inspiring the lives of millions of people.
And your humility is is so special, and I wanna acknowledge you for that as well. It's it's amazing
to see you.
It's amazing to see you, and he's in the he's in the midst of a tour right now. He's very, very busy. So I have so many things I wanna ask you about because
it's the the book itself about the wealth that money can't buy. The reason it's so profound is about everything we see in our culture now
is about the wealth money can buy.
And that's become our idol for the most part in our culture. And I wanna talk about that and pick that apart first. But first thing I wanna cover is I think in order to understand what you want in life, you have to understand why you are the way you are.
And so one of the things you list in the book is the Penham principle. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.
And if I am, why don't we start today with you explaining to us about us? Because I think that's what this does.
Well, you know, Ed, we fall into a human track, and we think we see the world as it is, but we see the world as we are.
Mhmm. So Joseph Campbell had this idea of the stained glass window.
We all look through
our experiences and our programming
through a perceptual filter.
And so right now, we can see the poly crisis and the wars and the challenges and the
cost of living crisis.
Yet we can also see beauty, and we can see wonder.
We can see opportunity.
We can see the chance for service.
So the Penham principle, first the first form of follow-up in the book,
these are the five forces that make us us, that make you you, make me me. Number one, Pete, Penham, our parents.
When we were little kids, our parents taught us how the world worked.
And so that early programming
stays with us through our lifetime unless we rewire it. Our parents could have said money doesn't grow on trees. Be reasonable.
Don't trust
whatever.
And we pick up all these programs. So the p stands for parents.
Second e, the e in penum,
our ecosystem or our environment.
We become our environment.
You look at the information we allow into our minds, the information diet. It steadily transforms us, upgrades us, or degrades us. The end is our nation.
If you're from a war torn nation, that's going to affect the perceptual filter through which you see the world.
The a, our associations.
We become our conversations.
Everyone we have met in our lives have left some form of an imprint subconsciously,
either positively or negatively within us. Everyone.
So our associations,
all it takes is one conversation
with someone whose life we wanna be living to help us enter a secret universe of possibility we never knew was there.
A
secret universe of possibility. That's so good. All it takes is one idea to to reframe the way we see the world. That's the power of reading, the power of listening to a podcast, the power of a mentor, the power of a mastermind, the power of stripping out the energy vampires and dream stealers from our life. And then the m in the penum principle,
the five forces that shaped us, the is media.
Look at the inflow look at the subtle messaging and the not so subtle messaging
we are receiving from influencers,
from the media, from advertisers
constantly
in a torrent.
And whether we want to admit it or not, it shapes the way we see the world and shapes the way we feel and shapes the way we show up.
Gosh. It's so true. One of the things I like about the way that Robin writes
and it makes it difficult to interview him because there's so many good points,
but he writes very small chapters.
And so when you read his work, you're like, that's the question I wanna ask him. That's the question. There's so many of them. And he gets right to the point. It's very strategic.
I love your writing style, and I love your thinking style. And so I kinda wanna build on a progression, but because of the way that I read the book,
we're gonna skip around, guys. We're gonna kinda just bring you value,
but not in any real order or sequence. And so but once we understand why we are the way we are, there's some simple things you say in there that I think bear repeating and and and some expansion.
So one thing you say is you say, small steps make giant gains.
And I think what most people think in life is like, gotta make some major move to change things.
But you make the point in the book that, hey. A small step can make a huge difference.
Sure. What you do daily,
the tiny things are so much more powerful than the big things you might do annually.
So I've had a brain tattoo that I've used for years, and it's small daily, seemingly insignificant
improvements when done consistently
over time
lead to stunning
results.
Now we can go more granular on that. Your day are your life in miniature, and that was one of my intentions today. Like, just give a fire hose of value to Ed's global community.
Your days are your life in miniature,
so don't worry about the weeks or the quarters or the years. Focus on this day.
And if you can get those micro wins and also create perfect moments
and also make some steady progress towards your personal Mount Everest,
you had a great day. But here's the larger point. The days become weeks. The weeks become months. The months become years. So your days are your life in miniature is a very key point. And what I would add to that is if you look at a great company,
they were built not by revolution.
It wasn't one strategic
objective
that made Apple.
It was built by evolution.
Yeah. Those little optimizations,
those
opportunities
to be a merchant of Wow,
those little innovations,
the little details,
and the same with the human life. How do you build a great human life? Consistency
is the mother of mastery.
Little wins, tiny triumphs done consistently over time
all lead you to to a life you'll be super proud of at the end. And I think
last thing I'd say about that is that's the power of connecting to your mortality. I think as human beings,
we are the great postponeers.
We will
create these wonderful
days consistently.
We will install great habits.
We will dream bigger dreams so we become possibilitarians
when the kids get older,
when we have more time,
when there's an ideal
period for that. And yet,
you know, connecting to the shortness of life and your mortality,
and if you can do that as part of your morning ritual, and I have some tools to share as we move through our time together that will help your viewers and listeners do that. But just keeping your death and the shortness of life front and center is not
negative. I think it's hugely inspirational because then you live to the point. Welcome back to the show, everybody. Excited to talk to this gentleman today because his work's fascinated me for a long time. The reason his work has fascinated me for so long,
I went through this string for a while where so many, what I call, high performing successful friends of mine would say, have you read Atomic Habits? You read Atomic Habits? I'm talking about athletes, business people, entertainers. And I'm like, the heck is Atomic Habits?
And I finally find out there's this guy, James Clear.
Turns out he's written this book. Like, 5,000,000
people have bought it. And I'm like, well, why have 5,000,000 people read this book on habits? Because, you know, you're supposed to have them. And then I read it. I'm like, ah, it's not one of these, like, have a habit book. It's like how your brain works, how to create habits, how to eliminate bad ones, and physically why in your brain you can do these things and why it's so necessary.
So I've wanted James on for a long time. We finally put it together.
I'm so grateful to share him with all of you today. So James Clear, welcome to the show, brother. Hey. Thanks for having me on. Great to talk to you. Yeah. And I don't wanna just talk habits today. I'm gonna talk about some of your productivity hacks as well. Sure. Your work, Rose, is
I I think I'd call it groundbreaking because I don't think anybody's really approached habits the way that you have.
But let's let's back up a little bit just for a second because I I think it's important for people to understand this concept you teach that, you know, everyone's always talking about taking massive action.
You take massive action towards what you want. You're like, yeah. You should do that, but
your concept of getting 1% better
is much more
believable for most people. And so just address that for a second. Why why 1% better every day, and how does a habit do that? Sure. So
first of all, I think there's no reason that you can't be really ambitious. Right? Like, I consider myself to be a very ambitious person. I think it's just that you're oscillating or switching between these two modes. You know? Like, when you're in planning mode, when you're in strategy mode, sure, you can be very ambitious
and be very
aggressive and,
you know, stretching yourself and reaching.
But when it comes time to take action and execute,
you have to scale it down to something that you can achieve that day. You know, like the in in one sense, the biggest unit of time you could ever do something is about a single day because then you gotta go to sleep, you know, and then you have to wake up again and do it the next day. So unless you're playing you know, at some point, there's a limit. You can only stay up for forty eight hours or seventy two hours, like, know, and then you break. So
that's the largest possible unit that you could ever do a single thing in. And I think more realistically, most of the time, the truth is, you know, you got about an hour. Maybe you got two hours to work on this, and then you gotta go move on to something else. So we don't have big chunks of chunks of time available to us. We need to scale things down into
pieces that we can actually work on and execute. So way that I think about it is when making plans, think big. When making progress, think small.
And getting 1% better each day is a way to encourage that.
The story that I like to tell, and this is something that I kinda kick atomic habits off with, it's the story of the British cycling team. And, uh, you know, for many years, British cycling was very mediocre. They had never won a Tour de France, which is the premier race in cycling.
They had won a single gold medal over, like, a hundred year span, and they brought this new performance coach in named Dave Brailsford,
and he had this concept that he called the aggregation of marginal gains, the aggregation of marginal gains.
And the way that he described it was the 1% improvement in nearly everything that we do related to cycling. So they started looking at a bunch of things you would expect a cycling team to focus on. Like,
they put slightly lighter tires on the bike or they designed, an ergonomic seat for the riders. They had the riders wear a little feedback sensor, little chip to see how each individual responded to training, then they would adjust the practice schedule.
But then they started doing, like, these little 1% changes, these small improvements that nobody else was really thinking about. Like, they hired a surgeon to come in and teach the riders how to wash their hands to reduce the risk of catching a cold or getting the flu.
They have this big trailer, like a semi trailer that carries a lot of bikes in it to major events, and they painted the inside of that truck trailer white so that they could spot little bits of dirt and dust that might get in the gears and degrade the performance of the bikes.
They have two different types of fabrics. They've got, like, indoor racing suits and outdoor racing suits.
And, uh, they tested those fabrics in a wind Tunnel, and they found out that the indoor fabric was lighter and more aerodynamic.
So they asked all of their riders to wear that fabric. They even had all their, uh, different riders test, you know, like a bunch of like, maybe a dozen different types of pillows,
and then they see which one led to the best night's sleep for each person. And then once they figured that out, they brought that on the road with them to hotels for the Tour de France and so on. And,
you know, Brailsford said something like, if we can actually do this, right, if we actually make all these 1% improvements related to cycling,
then I think we can win a Tour de France within five years.
He ended up being wrong. Uh, they won the Tour de France in three years, and then they repeated again the fourth year with a different rider. And then after one year break, they won three more in a row. So after having never won for, like, a hundred and ten years, you know, they win five of the next six.
And I like to use that story as an introduction to this idea of getting a little bit better, making these 1% improvements
for a couple reasons. The first is it shows you that excellence
a lot of the time, maybe we could even say most of the time,
is not actually about radical change. It's about a commitment to accruing small improvements day in and day out.
Secondly,
and I think this is also crucial,
it encourages you to focus on trajectory
rather than position.
Right? There's a lot of discussion about position in life. How much money is in the bank account? What is the number on the scale? What is the current stock price? What are the quarterly earnings? It's all this measurement around our current position.
But what getting 1% better each day encourages is to focus on your trajectory instead. Am I getting better? Is it the arrow pointed up and to the right, or have we flatlined? Am I getting 1% better or 1% worse?
Because if you're on a good trajectory,
all you need is time. Right? If you have good habits, time becomes your ally. You just need to let time work for you. But if you have bad habits, time becomes your enemy. And every day that clicks by, you kind of dig the hole a little bit deeper. And so it's very much at the core. It's about encouraging you to focus on trajectory rather than position.
How did you get the 37.78
times better? Like, where'd that ratio number come from? Yeah. Yeah. It's just it's just math. Right? So if you get 1% better each day for a year, so 1.01
to the three hundred and sixty fifth power, then he gets 37 times better by the end of the year. If you get 1% worse, point nine nine to the three hundred and sixty fifth power,
then you drive yourself almost all the way down to zero. Zero. Now, you know, look. Real life is not exactly like a mathematical equation. Right? Your habits are not exactly like this this formula,
but I do think that it highlights
an important concept, which is the
difference between making a choice that's 1% better or 1% worse on any given day
is relatively insignificant.
Like, it's very easy to dismiss. And this is, I think, one of the things that makes it underappreciated
or underestimated.
You know? Like, what is the difference between
eating a burger and fries for lunch today or eating a salad or, you know, going to the gym for thirty minutes or not?
Well, on any given day, not a whole lot. You know? Your body looks the same in the mirror at the end of the night. Scale hasn't really changed. It's only two or five or ten years later that you turn around and you're like, oh, you know, those daily choices really do add up. And I think you see this pattern again and again throughout life. Like, take knowledge,
for example.
The person who always reads for an extra ten minutes each day. Well, look, reading for ten minutes a day does not make you a genius. Right? It's very easy to dismiss. But the person who always does that over five or ten or twenty years, yeah, really meaningful difference in wisdom and insight.
Productivity is the same way. You know, like the person who gets one extra task done each day.
Doing one extra thing does not make you an all star. But again, over a ten or twenty or thirty year career, that can be a really meaningful difference in output. So this pattern shows up again and again. What starts out small and relatively easy to dismiss
compounds or turns into something much more significant over time. The biggest word, bro. I don't think most people take into account you and I are both college baseball players, good ones, but neither one of us were, you know, surefire first round draft pick Major League players. And I think most people don't take into account in their life the compound effect.
I don't think they understand it in money. I don't think they understand it in their bodies
Mhmm. Both positive and negative. I don't think they understand their identity or in just and in habits. The compound effect in life of allowing small things to stack up over time has a multiplier effect.
And one of the things that I feel like in your work and by the way, your work is I'm at work. We're a few minutes in here, and I'm like, this is so good.
And the reason is is, one, I believe most people believe they can get 1% better every day. I don't think most people believe that they can completely transform everything in one big leap.
I think there's a multiplier, though. Do you agree that between doing the right things 1% or just better habitually every single day, Not only are you actually making deposits of doing things correctly or better, but there's a part of your identity that starts to change over time about how you view yourself that I am that guy who doesn't eat the hamburger and fries when he can choose to eat the other one. And you stack those choices and behaviors up over time, and you start sort of believing maybe you deserve something that you didn't deserve prior. Isn't there a factor of that, don't you think, as well? This is a a huge part of kind of my philosophy in book, this idea of what I call identity based habits. But, essentially, the concept is and this I think this is the real reason that habits matter. The the surface level reason that habits matter is they help you be more productive. They help you make more money. They help you lose weight and get fit. And look, habits can do all those things, and that's great. But I think the deeper reason that they matter is that every action you take is like a vote for the type of person you wish to become.
And so when you perform these small habits, when you take these little actions, you're casting votes for a certain aspect of your story or a certain element of your identity.
In a sense, every time you perform a habit, that's how you, like, embody that aspect of your identity. So, you know, when you make your bed in the morning, morning, you embody the identity of someone who's clean and organized. Or if you write one sentence, you embody the identity of someone who is a writer. And this is why it can be valuable, you know, even to, like, do one push up. It's like, no, that does not transform your body, but it does cast a vote for I'm the type of person who doesn't miss workouts.
And eventually,
as you build up evidence of that story, as you start to cast more votes for that identity,
you have, like, actual proof to believe this. Right? This is I think this is a little bit different than you'll often hear something like fake it till you make it.
And I don't necessarily have anything wrong with fake it till you make it. It's asking you to believe something positive about yourself,
but it's asking you to believe something positive
without having evidence for it. And we have a word for beliefs that don't have evidence. We call that delusion. Right? Like at some point, your brain doesn't like this mismatch between
what you say you are and what you're actually doing. And so my argument is to let the behaviour lead the way. To start by meditating for one minute or doing one push up or writing one sentence and letting that be undeniable proof that in that moment you were a meditator or an athlete or a writer or whatever it is. And, ultimately,
I think this is the real value that habits provide, which is they reinforce your desired identity.
Boy, this is so good, brother. So good. I don't know why I'm just meeting you now because our
our overall belief system about change is is so very, very similar.
And,
you know, I wanna we're gonna talk about how to actually begin to establish habits. But before we do that,
I wanna talk about the concept of establishing one because you said something about the one push up. Reading or listening to something you're talking about about the guy who would go to the gym for just five minutes and work out and leave.
And you said something about this casting the vote for who you wanna be or who you're going to be. That was powerful. Right? But you're saying before a habit can be and I don't wanna quote you incorrectly, but I want you to elaborate on it. Because this is profound to me. I mean, it's obvious, but if you if you don't step back and get away from it and look at it, you just really don't realize the truth of it. Before a habit can be improved,
it has to actually be established.
Mhmm. And I think what happens is you tell me what you think.
Beginning of the year, I'm gonna lose 50 pounds. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna eat five minutes. It's I'm gonna I'm gonna starve myself to 500 calories. So it's not a 1% improvement, or I wanna get up earlier. I'm gonna get up two hours earlier starting tomorrow instead of get up fifteen minutes earlier.
Right?
Get up get up a minute earlier.
So talk about it from a just the the concept for one to just they can take control of their life right now
by just the establishment
of a habit.
Right or or right?
Yeah. Definitely right. I
so one of the concepts I talk about in the book is this one of the strategies is this idea of what I call the two minute rule where I encourage people to build a habit that takes two minutes or less to do. So you take whatever you're trying to do, read 30 books a year, becomes read one page, or do yoga four days a week, becomes take out my yoga mat.
And sometimes when I mention that idea, people resist it a little bit because they're like, okay, buddy. You know, I know the real goal isn't just to take my yoga mat out. I know I'm actually trying to do the workout. So if this is some kind of mental trick, then, like, why would I fall for it, basically? Well,
I tell the story of of this guy, Mitch, that you mentioned. This guy who I met I talk about him in Atomic Habits. He went to the gym. He's lost over a 100 pounds, kept it off for more than a decade.
And when he first started going to the gym, he wouldn't stay for five longer than five minutes. He had this little rule. He had to leave after five minutes. So he'd get in the car, drive to the gym, get out, do half an exercise,
get back in the car, drive home.
And it sounds ridiculous. Right? It sounds silly. You're like, obviously, he's not gonna get the guy the results that he wants. But if you take a step back, you realize that he was mastering the art of showing up. Right? He was becoming the type of person that went to the gym four days a week even if it was only for five minutes.
And this gets us to that deeper truth about habits that you just mentioned, this idea that a habit must be established before it can be improved. It has to become the standard in your life before you can optimize it and scale it up into something more. And, you know, I don't know why we do this. Like, we get very all or nothing about our habits. We're like, we're so focused on finding the perfect business idea or the best workout program or the ideal diet plan
that we spend all our time theorizing and researching and looking for a better way.
And
instead, if we could just master the art of showing up, even if in the beginning it was less than what you had hoped to do, you're establishing a foothold. You're building some small progress that you can advance off of.
And it reminds me of Ed Latimore has that great quote where he says, the heaviest weight at the gym is the front door.
And, man, there are a lot of things in life that are like that. You know? Like, the the hardest part is getting started. The hardest part is establishing the routine even if it's a lower level baseline than what you ultimately hope to achieve. But the reality is if you can't become the type of person who masters the art of showing up, even if it's just for five minutes,
then it doesn't matter how good the plan is. It doesn't matter how great your theory is. And so I think the two minute rule pushes back on that perfectionist tendency a little bit and just encourages you to master the art of showing up. So good. I'm right. Just finished writing a book called One More.
And I get asked that sometimes too. And one of the things that I I wasn't thinking about it from this perspective when I wrote it, but you become the kind of person that says, look. I'm gonna do it's my bench press. I'm gonna do 10.
You do one more. You do 11. I even say, if you're riding the riding the treadmill for forty five minutes, you can build that habit of, okay. I'm going one more minute. I do 46. What's the difference in that minute? Well, you stack up that minute over a year, there's a difference, but also your identity begins to changes.
And I'm not telling you go from forty five minutes to three hours on a treadmill.
So the actually, as I was doing this, I wasn't thinking of it from this perspective.
But now that I'm thinking about it, it actually our work is sort of converging, you know, almost in the exact same space.
I'm kind of obsessed with death.
Right? And Oh, yeah. And I know you are too. Like, I you said you used to fear it more than you do, but, I
I am obsessed with it. When I say obsessed with it, like, I think about it a lot, but it actually gives me a lot of peace. So I was with my dad when he took his last breath. It was literally right there with my dad.
And it, like, dawned on me
when he did it. And after he passed away, my mom and my sis we had to wait for the hearse to come. It was, an hour and a half. My mom and dad don't my my sister and my mom my sisters, they don't wanna be in the room with
So I'm in there with my dad alone.
Just me and my dad. Right? And, like I'm sorry. I just can only imagine me going, hey. You faking it? You all you I literally
would it sound I'm gonna be real with you. Like, your their body twitches and stuff. I'm like, a couple times, like, he's back. Right? And even when he was passing,
like, their heart rate will go to nothing and it's gone, and you're like, they think he's gone, and then it comes back. So there there is a little element of that. It's Fuck. It's a really deep thing, and it's like I'm glad I know that now. Yeah. You should know that in advance. Everybody should know that in advance. Anyway, at some point, that stopped.
And we were there,
and it dawned on me, like,
you know, you start running memories of your dad, of your life. Mhmm. Right? Like, this is the most important man in my life of my entire life is my dad. You're the most important in Georgia and Ilas. Right? Like, there's no other man that'll ever be that important. Their husband will be, but there's something with a dad.
And so I'm just thinking of memories of my dad and, you know, different things. And then as you look around the room, like pictures of our family, there's some of my dad's awards are there.
And it just dawned on me, like, at some point, I realized, actually, my dad's not here. Like, his body's there, but my dad's gone. Whatever you wanna call it, in my case, it's a soul. I know we're being serious here. I'm being serious. Their spirit, their life force, whatever. In my belief, in my faith, it's his soul. He's gone.
So I'm like, it just dawned on me, man. Like, my dad is in his body,
and then
what what could my what who was my dad? My dad's not his body, so he's this energy, this life force.
And he when my dad died,
in the room he was in was his body. He wasn't that. Was all of his awards.
He wasn't any of his accumulations. We were in his actual house.
He didn't get to take his house with him. His car was in the driveway. He didn't get to take his car with him. When my dad died, he had worries and fears and anxieties and problems. He didn't take those with him.
So you can't take any of that crap with you. Like, physically, my dad was gone. So he's not his house. He's on his cars. He's on his awards. He's not his worries. He's not his fears. He's done any of those things.
What did he leave?
What did he leave? My dad left two things.
My dad left us.
He left us. He left his family. He left the lessons we learned, the memories we had, all that other stuff, and then he left all the other people that he helped. My dad helped, like, several thousand people go get sober and blah blah blah. In your case,
just remember this. Like, you can't take all this shit with you anyway, but you get to leave all the people you made laugh,
all the lives you changed. And I'm being very serious with you. Millions and millions of people you brought joy to, maybe it's just for a freaking hour of their life. They're like, man, that night with Bert, I saw I was there that night at Red Rocks.
Right? That one night with you, they remember that the rest of their life. You get to leave that here. You get to leave Isla. You get to leave Georgia. You get to leave Leanne.
Like, those are the things that matter. And the reason that that's so powerful for me is when I walk out and there's 30,000 people, I'm not on the anxiety that I normally have. Yeah. Because I'm gonna be gone anyway. I don't get to take the but I get to take away all the difference I make for those human beings when I speak. So I really value you, bro. Like Thank you. I really value you. But I don't know if that helps you or not, but, like, for me, it's like some of this stuff we get caught up in all the time, like, it's you can't take any of this stuff with you. No. Does that make sense? I'm just watching your face Yeah. Yeah. No. I'm I'm it it it leaves an impact because you think
you think of all the
all the things you've put out, like, think of Jimmy Buffett. Mhmm. And I still get his joy. Yes. Like, he left it, and I love Jimmy Buffett. Or or Jerry Garcia. Mhmm. I still get their joy. Like, I still get to listen to off the Do you know what a blessing it is that you have what you have? I kind of do. That sounds really crazy, but I kind of I have in the moment on stage thought,
this is really cool.
Uh, you get to take people out of their memory, out of their out of their thoughts for a second,
and you get to get them to be present and laugh. And if and I've said this before. If if I can leave anything,
I would my my legacy, I would love for it. Uh, I'll get emotional. I
get emotional thinking about this. Maybe
just a couple times if people when I'm gone,
people just go like,
man, it'd be so much cooler if Burt was here. Like, god, we'd have so much fun. Like, wouldn't it be great if Burt was here and he just walked in with a bottle of champagne and and a crazy story? Or, like, I just, like
Mhmm.
I mean, I don't need to cure anything, but, like,
just for people to go, like,
come in. I wish he was here. That was that would be so fun. Like, just and I don't need it to be the world. Just like Yeah. Like a solid 100 people to
just be like, man, can you imagine if Bert was here? Like, that that energy,
I think it's what it it that energy is what defines me. It's what I've always wanted and searched for as a kid
is
I I wanted
I wanted people, like, miss me. And, like, I noticed that, like,
at a certain point, like, if I left the room,
no one cared.
And if I wasn't there, no one was like, where's Bert? I feel like I'm I feel like I'm just
building
to hopefully get it to the place where people go like, god, man.
You know, can I wouldn't it be cool
if Bert was here? I I know my daughters will say that, but that's
it. Just like on a Sunday morning when when someone opens a bottle of champagne and goes like, fuck. Bert
would have brought a joint.
Bro, you've said three or four things today, like, in the history of the show or, like, my favorite things ever said.
Oh. And the reason there's a bunch of people crying with you, one, they want that too, and some people are sitting there going, I wonder if anybody would miss And you were born to do something great with your life, everybody. Doesn't mean you're gonna be in millions of people, but someone ought to miss you. There ought to be a difference you've made. And if right now, if this was the last day of your life, the final chapter, you go, I don't know who would miss me. That's an indicator you need to make some changes, an indicator you need to pursue your dreams.
That was like, bro, like,
had no idea where we were gonna go today, and I'm so grateful that we went where we went. So glad I'm so happy you asked me to do this. Bro, like, honestly, like, come back every couple years, and let's just sit down and figure out where you're at. Plus, I wanna and please take care of yourself. Like, we would miss you. Like, we don't want you to leave sooner than you need to leave here. If I asked you this question, because I think a lot of people hear feedback
as criticism.
So when people That's a fucking powerful statement. Yeah. Do you How do hear it? When you hear that from people, you've got this number you had a movie that killed it. You got your your this dude fills up anywhere he wants right now, and he can do it multiple days. Bert does. You're making a ton of money.
Podcaster crushing.
You know, your your life is really, really good right now. There's probably a party that's like, hey. If this is you know, do you know who you're dealing with here? Like, I'm pretty functional. So do you hear
feedback even from dudes who love you as criticism? Because most people, that's how they hear it. Yeah.
Yeah. And what stinks is that when I was at my my lowest, and my lowest was these past probably seven months starting in January. I did a European tour, then I did an arena tour in The States, and then I promoted the special.
I then went to an Australian tour,
uh, in arenas, and then I did, uh, another arena tour, promoted my movie. I did my fully loaded tour, was six weeks, I think, this year,
then did the cruise and build the cruise was right before that, but I was at my lowest, and and everyone noticed. And I will say that I got emails from I got texts from everyone. One of them was Tom's agent. I just apologized to him the other night. He texted me,
I'm worried about you, whatever, this and that. And I was like, whatever.
Ran into him at dinner in New York with Tom. And I said to him, hey, man. You're not my boy. You're not my wife. Go fuck yourself. If you if you wanna be in my life, sit down and have a drink with me, but I don't even wanna hear a word out of your fucking mouth. You don't spend time with me. You don't know what my life's like. I don't wanna hear a fucking word. I said that to Steve Byrne. I said that to Tom. I said that to Joe. I said that to I said that to fucking everybody. Because at the time, what I was like
it it when someone's concerned about you, you don't hear it that way. You don't hear Mhmm. You you hear them saying I'm better than you in some way, or I I got my shit together. You need to get your shit together. I don't know what you hear, but I did not hear it well. And
and it wasn't until I realized, oh, they're just it was my daughters who said they were worried about me. My daughters, when they went on tour with us, were fully loaded.
We we had it was extremely
stressful.
I had a a stalker trying to kill me. It was, like, really bad. Yeah. It was really bad. And and and and all and and by the way, I got all this is just
it's bubbling over. It really is. And and and
my both my daughters at the end of Fully Loaded, granted Fully Loaded is with the 32 best comics in the world. Every week, it's the New 10 comics. It's my best friends,
funniest people in the world,
and we're cracking beers at at at this at breakfast.
We're eating mushrooms. We're smoking weed. We're drinking at the show. We get on a tour bus. We party at night. You're going It's fucking fun as fucking shit. Mhmm. I'm two seventy five, but I'm not three hundred pounds. So, like and I'm benching two twenty five ten times. I'm strong as shit. I feel good. I don't feel like shit. I feel like shit probably, if we're gonna be very honest.
And my daughters both said, like,
like, at the gorge, I killed, like, four beers at the end of the show. Last show, I killed four beers, and one of them was an IPA. Mhmm. And I snapped.
I was like, who the fuck gave me an IPA, like, to kill? It was my daughter, Georgia. Oh god. She was sorry. I don't drink. I don't know what a Bud Light looks like. Bless her heart. Yeah. And then and
and we're all sitting, and we got home, and Ayla said,
you're you're drinking a lot. And I was like, really? And and my sister's like, you look like I wanna put a needle in you and just watch you deflate. You look bad. Georgia said, you're red all the time. Like, your face is just red. Now my face is normally red because I have a horrible I was out in the sun in Florida as a kid, but
and that's when I kinda took
like, I assessed
where I was, and I was like, I was never meant to be two seventy five. I was never meant drinking now is to getting me getting me through the day. And it's and when when I say that, I wasn't like an early morning, I need drinks kinda guy. Mhmm. But it was just always there. And we'd be like,
fuck it. Mhmm. Let's have let's have a
let's just do a double Tito's and soda just to start, and everyone's fun. And
and when my daughters and my wife said it, I was like, alright. And then I was just like, I'll do a cleanse, drop 15 pounds, start all over. And then at the end, I was I went to my cardiologist, and I was I was trained for it. I, like, didn't drink, took a going in, get my blood pressure down. My cardiologist is like, yo. What's going on? He's like, you're the fattest you've ever been, and your blood pressure is one twenty over over 80. I don't believe this. Right.
And, uh, and that's when I think I started
I started this journey of, like, going if I wanna continue my lifestyle, which I do, then I need to be in control of my lifestyle. And and I I ran into a guy I was in in Austin,
and I ran into a guy who was like,
you're not as fat as the Internet says. And I was like, He's like, oh, there's a Reddit thread about, like, an over under on when you die. And and by the way,
that death thing is very real. Mhmm. You don't it's not gonna show up. There's not gonna be, like, huge things that show up before you die. That's right. Just one day, you have a heart attack. Yep. One day, you are pushing it too hard. Yep. And and Do have a fear of that?
Not as much not drinking. Okay. Not as much not drinking. So the decision for you long term is just gonna be this. Can you moderate
moderate it, and can you regulate it? And that's what you're gonna have to decide. Alright. Welcome back to the show, everybody. My guest today is somebody whose work I have been a fan of for years, and I have wanted to meet him. One One of the great things about this show is I've met most of the people whose work has made the biggest impact on my life. And I gotta tell you, this man's at the top of my list.
His work hits you right between the eyes, and I would categorize it as brilliant. I just think the way he phrases things and comes right at you with truth
is very unique, and it's he's also been on the list of most requested guests for quite a while.
The book that first impacted me was un f yourself. I'll give you the clean version.
And the book that he has out right now is grow up becoming the parent your kids deserve. And as I read this book, it wasn't just really about being a parent. It was actually really about being a human being, which makes you a better parent.
So that if you're not a parent and you're listening to this, trust me, every minute of this will apply to you. And if you are a parent, there'll just be an added bonus because this man's work will impact how you're raising your children. Gary, John Bishop, welcome to the show, brother. Ed, it's been great to be with you. Thank you, brother. It's good to have you too. So I wanna get I read your stuff, and, like, I'm like, I gotta read that again. Crap. It's like, it hits you. Right? And I wanna start out kind of because this leads to the parenting thing. Even though I I think the vast majority of it just applies to being human and not just being a parent, being a functional
person.
You said you live your adult life either as a reflection of your childhood
or in reaction to it. Just think that's really a great place to start. What do you mean when you say that? I know what it means for me. But are we all sort of acting out of some place from our childhood every single day even to this day?
Yeah. I mean, if you if you were to look in any area of your life that doesn't work,
there is some echo from your childhood playing out there.
And it's not always obvious,
uh, because, you know, your childhood is isn't necessarily
what you remember. It's a lot of what you forget.
And so you're shaped by it in ways
that are when you start to dig into it, become really surprising it. And I think that's I think that's the fascinating part of it, at least for me.
How'd that play out for you? I mean, I know you talked about this situation in the book. It struck me. I think you were four years old,
and the fact that you remember this is compelling to me. But I think your parents were fighting. You're trying to get them to stop.
And once you take it from there, I think this is just a good example of that.
Well, I think, you know, like, if if you ask your average person,
tell me every moment of your life, they can't tell you. But they'll tell you some interest and bets.
But, you know, for years and years, I you know, I used to I used to kinda grind away at me, like, why why do people remember that part and not all those other parts? And it wasn't until I started to get more deeper into my own development
that I that I started to see them like little milestones or incidents.
And
and so that that incident as a four year old was fascinating
to me. Like, I remember
the feeling.
I remember that experience, and in the book I describe it.
And the feeling for me in that moment was I had no power. I had no I couldn't change it. I was so I was overcome with this and you gotta get for the little four year old, this is like wild, right? But my experience in that moment was like I'm I'm weak. I can't I can't do it. I couldn't stop them from arguing or flighting.
And that
that that moment isn't just a moment for a child. It's like a it's like a sea change
and their experience for themselves. I'd never experienced myself that way before. It was new.
And
and then so those little things just sink into the background and they become what you call ontological decisions. They become decisions that you've made now that you're gonna have to now handle because they they sink into the background and basically become
your truth,
if you like. And that was certainly one of mine.
That notion of your truth. That's why, by the way, we said, whether you have children or not, this is about being a functioning human to me.
I I've never read someone's work, I don't think, Gary, where
the way you said it, I wanna write down and remember it. Like, I I find myself wanting to quote you more than most people,
and here's something you said about that very thing on the past. This will rock a lot of you. And by the way, I agree with you after I read the book. You said,
the past wins one way or the other.
And then you went on to say at another point, you say, you are not shaped by the past itself.
You're shaped by what you said about it.
Meaning, to some extent,
this past thing is a little bit of an illusion to some extent. Am I right about that? Because I totally,
completely,
in my fifties now, realized the profound truth in that.
Right. So,
like like, this is why this is why this book had to be written. Mhmm. Like, I I couldn't put my head on the pillow for another night with getting
this book out there. Mhmm. Because I keep hearing all this stuff about generational chains and, you know, parents are, I'm gonna break a generational chain. And I'm like, you are the generational chain. Everything
that falls out of your mouth, you are the generational
chain.
And if you wanna break anything, it starts with you. And so I wanted to people to see what what we're trying to break
with generational chains, if you like, is circumstances.
So we're looking back at old circumstances gone. Those circumstances are not gonna happen again. Mhmm. What we fail to see
is the mechanism that runs underneath those circumstances from that generation to this generation to the next generation. So you don't you're not working on the chain, you're working on the oil. You know? You're Wow. You're making no effort at the chain.
The chain itself continues because,
like, if you go back to that example I used in the book when I was four years old,
my parents had no sense
that that's what was going on in my head.
Mhmm. And I had no sense at four years old that I was making a life changing decision because you
don't you don't we don't relate to ourselves at four that way. I'm playing with toys, and I'm having a good time, and I'm, you know, doing all the things that a four year old would do. But in that moment, that experience,
boom. It hit me like a wall. And so
as parents, this is what I wanted people to get from this book. Like you said, whether you're a parent or not, you have to know that there's
that that you had experiences in your childhood
that you attached to various incidents,
and you live like it's about the incidents and it's not. It's about the experience that came out of it. It's the ontologic decision. It's whatever you decided,
whatever you changed in that moment
that that compounded and lives on with you as an adult.
Mhmm. So so, you know, we've got our eye on all the all the wrong things and I wanted people to start to see you, like, you have to look at your life, your childhood, your parents' life, their childhood. And if you have children,
maybe you'll get a little insight onto what's actually going on with them no matter how hard you think you might be trying to guide them another way.
I told you everybody. I'm telling you. His work hits you. He by the way, the way he writes too, he doesn't let you escape you. Every time you try to escape you, this guy's pulling you back to you, and I love that. It's like there's just no BS to this. And so I wanna stay right on this incident, this incident when you were four in this absolute
truth that you're talking about. I always say it's not the events of our life that define us. It's the meaning we attach to the event. And one of the difficult things when we're a child is we don't have the emotional makeup or experiences
to attach we're not really choosing our meaning when when we're capable. We're choosing the meaning when we're incapable.
And so do you then recommend somebody question their past? I know that you do, but I'm gonna let you answer it. Do they question the past, And then are you having them evaluate an incident and then try to attach a new meaning to it so that they they behave differently in the current moment because they attach a different meaning to an event?
Well well, what I'd like people to see is that
your
mechanism
for
for adding
to a situation
exists to this day. K? So it still exists. What's a mechanism mean to you? What do you mean by mechanism?
So it's like your automatic wiring. Got it. Your default is Heidegger, the German philosopher, he would have called it your default ways of being. Okay. The ways that you are by default.
And, you know, you people don't wake up in the morning and decide to be themselves. They wake up and that self
is there. Yes. Right? And it's and it's a set self. It's not a it's not a malleable self. It's like this this me that I am.
Now now when if you if you hang around little ones long enough, especially like that age group like two, three, four, there's no real
self there. It's just like this big expression.
Right? There's no there's no set way, but anybody who's a parent will tell you they literally watch their children become set.
Right? They literally watch them, like, the age of seven, age of 12, age of 14, age and then suddenly they're just like that way and they're always that way. They were always and and they're always that way as a compensation
to whatever they felt they had to overcome.
That's
why it's so testing, by the way, because,
you know, like, people can get through really
really turbulent times in their childhood
and come out with a whole different thing Mhmm. Than somebody who went through a very similar experience. They come out with a whole different thing. Why? Because they don't come out of the experience.
What they come out with
is whatever they told themselves about it. Wow. So
And it becomes so tightly intertwined
that whatever I told myself about it and the incident,
there's no distinction between those two for me as a human being. They're the same thing.
Right? So again, for instance, that moment,
I'm four years old, I'm watching my parents argue,
it's about me.
I'm not observing that like this is about them. I'm observing that like this is about me. Like, I I can't some some self
determination
in that moment.
What I want people to understand is if they look back in their own childhood,
what do you think those were just random moments and nothing came out of it? No. You're the living embodiment of what you decided in those moments. And by the way, when you make that kind of decision, that's why those memories are so fresh, so clear. That rest of your life is about those little memories getting reactivated,
those same emotions coming up and getting applied to situations.
As I like to say, you know, people live their lives in little vignettes of fighting the same battle over and over and over, and then they die.
Gary, you're, um,
you're on to
such profound work here. As a friend, as a brother, I wanna I wanna encourage you to continue to dig deeper into this and that there's other book. I'm serious. I I've done some work in this myself and started to write about it,
and you're
this is new,
and this is profound. And
we'll talk about those three stages in a second.
But it's why, by the way, a child can have the same exact two parents? One child takes different meanings from the situations they were raised in, and and they have two totally different lives. I'm I'm raised by an alcoholic father,
and, uh, it ends up that all four of us turned out pretty darn okay.
But, usually, you'll see one of the children goes on to be a high performer, the other one ends up being an alcoholic themselves. Same exact environment, same situations,
different meanings were attached.
And then Right. That that notion that you just said, brother, about that you're fighting the same battle over and over again with different circumstances, but the same battle. Listen to what he says in the book. I tell you guys, I don't ever quote books and interviews, Gary. I don't do this. But I want you to hear what he said here.
Every day of your life I wrote this down for me, bro, not for the interview. This is stuff for me, but I'm gonna have it in the interview. Every day of your life, you find evidence for and then confirm in your crevices of your mind, quote, you.
You talk like you, walk like you, think like you, and react like you. Every single day,
you are justifying you. And one of the main ways you do it by is by reaching back into your memories to satiate that beast.
Therefore, the past isn't just the past
as evidence for you being the character that you've become to this day. The past wins one way or the other.
Brother, are you serious? That is so good. I just want you to elaborate on that a little bit.
Well well, you know, look. When I say people are being in self indulgent,
right, it sounds kinda narcissistic,
which is another word that I just can't stand. But anyway Mhmm. But it sounds like it's just, you know, like self indulgent. What I mean is we indulge
self.
That is we get up every day and we respond
to what it wants.
Right? So we respond
to its upsets,
and we respond
to its desires, and we respond to its, quote, unquote, needs.
So it's like it's it's I really invite people to get like who you are is more like a venue for something to show up.
And what shows up every day are the same noises
and you just go along with it. You finally see that you're the venue in which all of this is happening.
And and with with a little bit of like a shift, like just a little shift in the way you think,
you
could get a little bit more observant
of that self, actually see what it wants to do and understand it in those terms. And I look at it more like
like it's just something I gotta be responsible
for rather than something I'm fighting against. Like, either it's gonna talk or I'm gonna talk.
And,
you know, I've heard all the shit that it wants to say. You know?
Bored by it now. You know? Stay on that. I, uh, man, bro. I I gotta tell you, it's one one of these conversations I'll remember a long time. I often say and if you don't mean it this way, correct me and say it your way. I often say just the awareness of the pattern of me being me,
it loses a lot of its power over me when I'm just in awareness. Oh, I'm doing that thing again. I'm doing me again. I'm doing that thing I do. And what you said is then that former you, the way you just said that,
is not the voice that I can now choose the new voice. Is that what you mean by just being stepping back and getting above yourself a little bit and going, oh, I'm doing that thing I do again. I'm being me again. That awareness allows you to then make a conscious choice as to how to behave or change rather than to keep responding unconsciously.
Right. So so awareness isn't a stage that you arrive at. Right? Awareness is a constantly unfolding
phenomenon.
Like, as you're as you're going through a day
Mhmm. You get aware of one default response and shift in that moment. You I mean, I really believe it's not believe this. I really want people to get this. In that moment,
that shift that you make, you have literally changed the trajectory of your life in a moment. Right? Now
because your life would have kept going along that path and you just were like, nope, we're not doing that. Right? So
imagine being someone who manages having to catch yourself a handful of times a day,
just catching yourself about to go in a direction that you know you typically do,
and you're like, you know what? Not today. I'm not doing that. No. When I wrote my first book,
that was a nine month, ten month process of catching myself 30 times a day because
the self that I am had no interest in writing that book Mhmm. And had zero interest in you reading it because, you know, I'd be open to scrutiny and judgment and ridicule and la la la la la. Mhmm. So the kind of self that I had become
was gonna make that a long process
that eventually I would give up on and just say it's not worthwhile,
and I would tell myself some nonsense. Like, I'm gonna go in another direction. I see something else I think would be more powerful than writing a book.
And and all I did in that process was just catch,
catch, catch, catch. Nope. Not today, I'm gonna write. Nope. Not today, I'm gonna write. And and
and and I wouldn't call it necessarily a struggle, but it was definitely like,
it was the first time I feel as if I'd really exercised that muscle
in producing something
that went beyond
buy wiring.