Championship Mindset
HOST
All right, so there's a couple, there's a couple approaches to winning in general. And one of the ones that I'm most interested in is this sort of
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champion mindset that you see.
HOST
I would say you see it highlighted mostly in prolific athletes. Guys like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant,
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they're
HOST
the, the path that they chose to get to where they were, which is obviously, you know, deep seated in this
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obsession to be the best at their craft.
HOST
What people don't understand is there's a
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lot of mysterious dark forces that are driving these sorts of behaviors.
HOST
Like if you look at the, the best athletes in the world, like even
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Jordan said this, and I always found this fascinating. These guys never saw their talent. They always framed it as sort of a curse.
HOST
If you go back and listen to
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old interviews of these guys, they always tell you that their, their obsession to
HOST
win they felt was a curse because to get to that level, to get to the level of being the best, there is a part of you that has to discard your dignity. Right? It's the opposite of anybody who's gotten to a high point of success.
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I find it very ironic and borderline
HOST
comical how they'll always tell you the same thing they'll always tell you. Oh, it was positive thinking that got me here. And even in my own life, as someone who's dealt with a tremendous amount of adversity, I've lost millions of dollars. I've gained millions of dollars throughout the years.
High stakes. Being a high stakes professional sports gambler, I know what it takes to fight back and win. And having that artificial chip on your shoulder, I don't think anything can catapult a man to the firmaments into the highest tipping point without having this sort of animosity and subliminal anger kind of
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buzzing in the background.
HOST
And it seems to me, what I think is extremely fascinating is positive thinking is to me, has always felt like a very weak cope. People that are in miserable situations that they don't like, that they feel powerless over always tend to fall back on positive thinking. Because if you're in a situation that you genuinely like, you don't need positive thinking. You now have permission to experiment with the more powerful energies like hate and spite.
And any who tries to tell me that these host of characteristics that you're born with, you're born with a, with a, with a panoply of emotions and they all need to be utilized in different facets. So the positive thinking camp, they're basically, it's almost anti human because what they're doing is they're denying that you have all of these, these underbelly, these, these darker forces of energies that you can actually play with. And I don't agree with that. I believe in the totality of the human animal and I believe in tapping
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in and using different forces as different instruments, depending on what scenarios require that.
HOST
And I think champions understand this and champions have driven themselves into a place. And here's the other interesting thing, as is that the positive thinking mentality is very superstitious. And as a man, I believe in removing as much superstition from life as possible. And I find that to actually be more ethically spiritual.
Because the positive thinking thing is all about putting into the universe, right? Like if I just put positive thoughts into the universe, the universe is somehow going to respond. I completely disagree with that because I've experimented with both. And I think that the more negative, like in order to accomplish something, you don't need to have a positive mindset.
You can be miserable the entire time. Because right action is far more important than right feeling.
CALLER 1
Right?
HOST
As long as you're making the right actions, you don't really have to particularly be enjoying the process. And I tweeted about this the other day. I think guys fall in love with the process and they forget that the process is, is geared and designed to help you win. And a lot of guys are just constantly stuck in the rigmarole of the process itself.
And the process becomes the victory. The victory. And those are two very different things. And so when you have, when you're, when you're slave driving yourself and you're whipping yourself emotionally and mentally to get into the gym or to hone your craft, which is obviously what guys like MJ did, right?
I mean, they were slave driving themselves. Themselves, they were, they were mentally abusing themselves to become the best. There just ain't no two ways about it. That process is extremely ugly and grotesque.
If you strip it down to its constituents, there's just no way around it. It's a very. If you take off the veil of what builds a champion, it's hideous. A lot of people don't want to look into that because it's extremely painful and that process is not sexy whatsoever.
So the negative mindset, the negative self talk, telling yourself not to be a constantly whipping yourself emotionally, mentally, that can take you probably further and higher than any other modality. And obviously there's a great cost to that, right? Like you could look at it as a Pyrrhic victory. A Pyrrhic victory is when the victory is so overwhelming, but the cost is also so great that it almost cancels out and it's almost not even a victory anymore.
And the negative, the that negative drive is removing superstition. It removes all superstition because the onus goes completely on you. It's no longer you working with the universe, it's you working with your own willpower. And in my own experience, my own willpower is the closest pipeline that I have ever experienced to God.
It feels like you are channeling the will of God. When you are in willpower. It's a, it's, it's a very divine feeling because you can actually see reality bending to your will. You can see yourself warping time and space with that conviction.
And so as a man, I personally believe that as a, as a holistic philosophy, I don't jive with who are superstitious. I don't jive on who are relying on the world to bring them the boons to their doorstep. I don't believe that at all. I think that's actually an extremely female oriented way of looking at the world.
I completely understand and I'm on board with women being very superstitious. The cosmos, the universe, I get that, I completely understand that. But, but as a man, I've always found the greatest success when I have removed as much superstition as possible. Like, you'll say things out loud and people will correct you and they'd be like, no, no, no, don't put that out into the universe.
I think that's completely asinine and complete. You can put whatever you want out into the universe as long as it's conscious. As long as it's conscious. And this is a huge, huge distinction.
And I want you to hear this because a lot of people are putting things out into the universe, their words, and they're coming from an unconscious place. So it's, it's borderline a Freudian slip. They're almost revealing what, what they subconsciously want to manifest these self fulfilling prophecies. But if you are conscious and you are aware of your direction, you can say whatever the you want to the universe.
There's a massive difference. So that it's not really a Freudian slip. Like I've had huge money on games and I've had women tell and I've, and I literally would say out loud,
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I'm like, I already know this one's done. I'm, I'm dead in the water. There's no chance this team's coming back.
HOST
And I'VE had people next to me be like, no, no, don't put that, that out into the universe. You're gonna, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna manifest that outcome. That's nonsense. That's absolute nonsense.
Me forecasting that out loud has zero impact on the outcome of that game. And a lot of people are operating in this superstitious, powerless place of waiting for the universe to act upon them rather than them acting upon the universe. And men are sculptors of worlds, right? Like that.
The male instinct is to tear down worlds and rebuild them in their own image. That's what men do, right? When, if you look at history, when men would go conquer and men would destroy civilizations, what's the first thing they would do when they conquered a new land? They would destroy the art.
They would destroy the statues, all the art, the, the amalgamation of the imagination of whatever culture was just conquered. The first thing they do is tear
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down the art and, and eviscerate it
HOST
from the historical analyse. And so that's like the opposite of superstition because that's force of will, that's sheer force of will. And you can apply this to any modality. So a lot of guys to circle back to the original point.
The only way you can really get even basic trivial tasks done. Like I know a lot of guys who literally have to abuse and torment themselves mentally, just get a good lift in at the gym or just to complete a business task. They have to absolutely lacerate themselves with these, with these mental razors and these mental whips in order to get themselves to, to be motivated. And I don't particularly know another way of doing it because I am very much of the camp that as a man, you, if you want an extraordinary results and you really want a body of work and a legacy, I don't think there's a way, there's a way around sacrificing your happiness.
Name one hero, just one who was happy. You ain't gonna find it. You ain't gonna find a happy hero. Because happiness is ultimately what you sacrifice on the altar to achieve results.
And like I said before, if you want to be the best at something, you borderline have to go into this sociopathic, objectified state of sacrificing your body and sacrificing your mind and your welfare
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in order to make that come true.
HOST
And what's more important for you, is it more important for you to be content and happy but nobody knows your name? Or is it more important for you to reverberate your greatness throughout society or even locally, even just throughout your own family. Are you a name that are going to be.
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Are we going to be saying, when
HOST
you're long and dead, are the war stories going to pass down to your kids and their kids and their kids? You have to ask, you have to wrestle, and you have to grapple with these questions. Because I think one of the greatest starting points for men in general, especially
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men that don't have power and are
HOST
invisible in society, is you do have to find a forum right away where you can compete that you know you're going to be the best at, even if it's on a very, very local, hyper, local environment just in your direct domain. Like I'll give you an example. In my 20s, I knew that any Olympic lifting gym that I walked into in my hood, even probably a hundred miles out in a circumference, I was the strongest motherfucker in any of those gyms.
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I just knew that.
HOST
So I could walk into any spot
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and I knew that I was pretty much going to be the best in those gyms.
HOST
And I think that's a very important mindset to have. Like, you have to, you have to know there's a forum you can compete in right now. Not tomorrow, not next week. Right now.
You need to have something in your head that you know that nobody can
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do what you can do.
HOST
Even if it's something very simple, like simple, cyclical, something that's not necessarily worthy of like extreme accolades. You need that starting point so that you can separate yourself from the pack
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and sort of carve out this identity for yourself.
HOST
And I mean, look at these guys. Look at guys like Jon Jones. Look at guys like, I mean, even MJ's legacy now, like, where do these guys go when their careers are over, when they were the best and they were heralded and they were at the helm for so long, you clearly see them slip into a state of probably sheer misery because that's the great cost of being the best. They can never measure up to that old image.
What's next? And it does lead to a lot of self destruction. But I think it's important to understand the story arc of a hero is that to accomplish great things, there also has to be that double impending risk that the downfall, the downfall always has to be as potentially high as you can rise. Like those two things are mutually exclusive.
So how far you can climb is proportional to how far, how far you can actually fall. And a lot of people miss this. Of course it's risky. Of course, if you're egotistical, and you want to be the best at something.
Of course, you're playing with fire. You're dancing on razor blades, but that comes with the territory. And I think it's important to just measure those sacrifices, because a lot of heroes, their lives do end in great tragedy. And maybe it's a tragedy that's not even public.
Maybe they're just sullen and indignant, and they. And on their deathbed, they feel like they were.
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They were empty inside an empty vessel.
HOST
These are. These are very, very real experiences that people have that nobody wants to talk about, because when it comes to success, everybody just wants to paint the little oil painting and the little pretty picture, but nobody wants to tickle the underbelly of the beast and figure out what's
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really driving these motivations, what's driving these
HOST
people to be absolutely, neurotically, pathologically obsessed with winning. It's coming from a very dark place. There just ain't no two ways about it. And so we talk about the integrated
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man integrating the anima and the animus, the feminine and the.
HOST
The masculine. And a lot of those dark, instinctual forces are feminine. They're feminine. That's why you see a lot.
If you'll notice this. If you look at a lot of UFC fighters that are extremely talented, you'll notice they almost have this, like, childlike sensitivity.
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Sensitivity to them.
HOST
They're. They're borderline. They have, like, a very feminine kind of sensitivity and a feminine quality to them. That's because they're fully integrated.
That's because they're fully integrated. And that. It's a. It's a.
I could do a whole
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spaces on that integration process because it's fascinating.
HOST
But a lot of guys miss this. Like, a lot of really hyper masculine
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men have a very, very deep feminine side.
HOST
You just see it all over the place. I forget that guy's name. There was a hockey player. There was a G, Played for the Dallas Stars.
He was like an enforcer. This dude was getting into brawls every fight.
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And then he had this paradoxical side
HOST
to him where he was into, like, extremely high fashion, like, borderline. But this dude was masculine as. And he was banging the hottest chicks,
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and he just loved high fashion.
HOST
So there, that dichotomy. You'll notice anybody who's. Who's extremely hyper masculine also has this
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paradoxically extreme feminine side.
HOST
It's impossible to have one without the other. It's impossible. And that's why I've always said that the interesting thing about being a Man
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is you end up combining talents that shouldn't make sense.
HOST
Like that's the game. That's the whole trick of life is you want to figure out what talents you can combine. That on the face of it, are just ludicrous. Like it's so absurd that these two things could coexist together.
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Right?
HOST
Like an example. In my own life, I'm an extremely high stakes gambler, but I'm also a
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top 1% Olympic lifter.
HOST
Those two things make no sense. But when you start combining these combustible elements, you start to create a personality
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that stands out from everybody else.
HOST
So it's all about, it's all about paradox. Life is all about paradox because the juice is all in the contrast. The juice is all in the contrast. So I want to take some questions on this because I kind of want to bounce around some ideas about this, this, this champions mindset and what builds these winners.
Because again, I'm going to restate my thesis. I think that champions are bred purely on negative self talk and removing superstition. These guys aren't walking into sports venues.
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And, and, and it's, it's, it's, it's
HOST
very funny because I'll say this too. The people who work the hardest, the people who've worked the hardest to get to where they are ironically give the most credit to God. You'll notice this. You'll see an athlete that's an absolute monster.
That guy put in tens of thousands of hours of work to get to where he is, and then he'll win a Super bowl ring and he'll give all the glory to God. Why is that? I've always, I've always intuitively understood that, like I said earlier, channeling the will of God feels like willpower. So that guy willing himself to that great peak feels like the closest thing to divinity.
So let's bounce some questions back and forth. Let's kick this off. Abdullah, what up, man?
CALLER 5
Hey man, thanks for the space. I really appreciate it. So I just had to ask you like, high level, in your opinion, do you think this is like, like that whole like dark mindset in terms of like Michael Jordan and probably stuff you see among like, you know, Kobe Bryant, whatever, Mike Tyson, even people like Elon Musk, I'm sure as well like, you know, business titans, John D. Rockefeller, do you think this is something that's like largely innate?
Because like, that's something that I increasingly think is that it's like, you know, something you got to be born with essentially. And it's not really something you can cultivate as much. Like if you, if you aren't born this way, you aren't naturally going to like, you know, cultivate that mindset where you can become like a top point zero, you know, 10 standard deviations to the right of the mean. Because I just don't, I don't know if it's possible.
But yeah, I want your take on that. If it's like innate versus like, you know, how much of it can be developed.
HOST
I honestly don't think it's innate. I mean, I obviously think that I,
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I think that obviously nature is a lot more powerful than nurture in general,
HOST
but I don't think it's innate. I think that a lot of this was, there's, I think there was some
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sort of watershed traumatic event in these
HOST
dudes lives and they have this relentless,
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I want to call it like retribution. They want to avenge whatever happened to them in their childhood that they felt
HOST
a deficit and they go into these
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extreme over compensation patterns.
HOST
I fully believe any talent that you,
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that you see revealed by a man is an overcompensation by nature.
HOST
I think every talent, every, every skill that looks like wizardry is somebody who
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essentially overshadowed and eclipsed a striking deficit in their life. And they had to use that as a defense mechanism. I look at everything as a defense mechanism.
HOST
Like what is nature helping you craft? Why is nature helping you craft this
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aspect of your personality? And to me I just go back to survival.
HOST
Everything makes sense.
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When you look through the lens of evolutionary biology in my, in my eyes, I mean, that's how I look at the world. And that's why I'm able to ascertain why people do what they do with
HOST
a lot of times swift accuracy. Because I'm able to understand, okay, this
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is a defense mechanism.
HOST
This guy doesn't even maybe see why he's doing this.
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But I understand the undertones and the driving forces and behaviors underneath it.
HOST
Does that make sense?
CALLER 5
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. It's good to hear that you can cultivate this because I definitely think that's like, that's like, you know, something that I've experienced in my own life and that's something that I want to achieve. And like one statement that you said in this thing that really rung out to me was the whole thing about like, would you rather be content and no one know knows your name? Would you rather be miserable and like, you know, look, the whole world knows your name and I don't know about, I don't know, I mean, for Me, it's much, it's much more the latter.
And like, that's kind of, kind of what I want to find, you know what I mean? And I think, like, your Twitter has helped a lot with that. So thanks, man. You're the best.
HOST
Yeah, I appreciate it. And then the other thing too that
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I wanted to mention about that, because there's nuance to this, right? Like, I talk about how you can be miserable and still achieve extremely high
HOST
results, but what's interesting about that is
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there's actually enjoyment in that misery.
HOST
This thing is deeply layered. Like a lot of guys subtly get off.
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They get the rocks off and they actually get excitement experiencing misery, low grade levels of it.
HOST
So I think emotions are extremely complicated
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and they're not binary. Like, you can't just say that you're miserable. I mean, you're, you're in a, you're in a swamp of emotions at all times. So I think it's important not to just identify one thing.
There's a lot of layers to this, this. I mean, I have found some of
HOST
my greatest days, some of my days
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where I'm just bursting with creativity and I'm steamrolling. I don't feel so good.
HOST
I might have underlying depression. I might have. And that's what I think a lot
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of this is, man.
HOST
I think the whole depression is argument is, is false. I think that depression is lower level anger. I think depression is bootstrapped to anger. And I think that there's a lot of
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push and pull between these things and a lot of people are overcoming these emotions by responding, like I said, with these overcompensation patterns.
HOST
And what's funny is all of this
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births from some sort of injury, right? It all bursts from having like your
HOST
heart broken or there was some event
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in your life, maybe you were humiliated, maybe you were embarrassed.
HOST
There's always some watershed moment.
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You can, you can trace the thread
HOST
back into the maze and where guys then just become a demon in response
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to whatever pain they endured.
HOST
Like, there's dudes that are absolutely on a Judeo Christian crusade to become absolute psychopathic winners in life, maybe literally just because their crush in third grade snubbed
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them or turned a cold shoulder.
HOST
Like, there's dudes that go on to achieve redemption, ridiculous things based on the most minute infractions or transgressions that were committed against them. And it's, it's hard to discern, like, where this stuff begins. But I'm a thousand percent sure from just being around so many high level players that these All. All of these responses to win all
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come from some sort of psychic injury.
HOST
We're gonna keep it moving, man. I appreciate that. X. What are we talking about?
CALLER 3
X.
HOST
You're live, man. You gotta unmute it. Drew, what's up, man?
CALLER 5
Hey, Brew.
CALLER 2
I appreciate the space. Once again, man. This topic, I've had damn near chills the whole time because it hits really home to me. So I just wanted to kind of talk about my experience quick with this and hear your thoughts on it.
So for me, I'm going into my last year of college basketball right now. I'm 5 10, about a buck 50, soaking wet, undersized point guard. So for me to even make it to Division 2 college, I've really had a. Endure a lot of this stuff that you were kind of just talking about, about having to have broken relationships, just people not really understanding me and all that crap.
And something I wanted to talk about with me going into my last year, something I've noticed, it kind of goes back to the positive thinking you first started talking about. There was times in my playing years, in my early freshman sophomore year, where I put so much. I don't want to say pressure, but I feel like I cared so much about the outcome and how I played and how I performed. And one day I had a switch where I was like, okay, the outcome.
I'm just gonna do my best every play. This guy, he can't guard me, whatever. And it seemed like I started to perform better when I wouldn't really care about the outcome as much, even though I still care. But in that moment, I was just so much more into the moment and, like, ripping the ball harder on the jab step or whatever.
I don't know. Just kind of want to hear your thoughts about. When I would take a step back, my performance kind of increased.
HOST
Yeah, man. If you look at the. If you look at the pinnacle of the.
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Of the male mind and how far you can actually push this organ, right? Like, the brain is unbelievably powerful.
HOST
Everything is in the mind. It's the only battleground that guys should be concerned with. It's not your body.
CALLER 1
Yeah, of course they're interlinked. Of course a strong body is going to help a strong mind. We all get that. But the mind is the battleground of everything.
And you can see this in high performers. I mean, look at guys like Kobe, man. They preferred to be in environments that were extremely cantankerous. They.
They preferred to be derided by the audience. They preferred for people to root against them. Because they use that as a chip on their shoulder to perform better. I mean, Kobe was at his best when he was in a building of 40, 000 screaming for him to die, wishing death upon him.
I mean, that dude was like, that dude almost became a villain.
HOST
And a lot of dudes have to
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assume that villain identity in order to respond.
HOST
They're looking for, for a reason to respond. And so the fact that I could witness with my own two eyes a
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man be absolutely swarmed in negative energy, right?
HOST
I mean, those guys are in hostile environments with people just absolutely flogging them publicly and they don't give a. Their minds are like a steel trap, man. Like, nothing's gonna penetrate that self belief
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and that, that will of God that I'm talking about. And these guys are performing at an even better level when they're in negative energy.
HOST
That's why you just look at fucking
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life experience to figure this stuff out. I don't need a scientist to tell me positive thinking is going to fucking flood you with the right neurochemicals to succeed. That's bullshit. I can just go to a fucking Laker game and I can see how these guys are operating when people are fucking cussing them out and shit.
Like, there's dudes that are performing at
HOST
extremely high levels despite having the most
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hater, spiteful, ridiculous, negative energy around them.
HOST
How is that possible? If, if positive energy is the thing
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that makes the universe go around and makes everything harmonious, why do I consistently see people operating at a higher level when they're swarmed in negative energy? Like, my eyes aren't lying to me. I witness this.
HOST
So like, you start looking at the stuff on the face of it and
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it just, it's like Occam's razor. It's like really easy to use these logical razors to just wipe away these, these sort of fake New age modes of success.
HOST
And again, dude, like, I'm not lambasting,
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I'm not vilifying positive thinking. I obviously know there's value in that for certain occasions.
HOST
I'm just stating that I think it's much more suited to employees. I think the New Age movement is destructive on so many levels. I mean, I think it's just a
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lot of people that are trying to reframe a reality that they actually despise by putting this gloss over it.
HOST
They're constantly painting a prettier picture than
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what's really going on.
HOST
And that's the opposite of being a man. That's the opposite of the masculine imperative. The masculine Imperative is about the confrontation
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and clashing with truth.
HOST
You should want the highest doses of
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the most painful reality of your situation
HOST
as quickly as possible. That's what you should want. You don't. You don't want the sugar coating, you don't want the gloss.
You don't want to pretend that a
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bad situation is good.
HOST
And that's what positive thinking does. You're taking a very shitty condition and you're trying to create some mental reframe
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to make yourself feel better about it,
HOST
but the situation is still shitty. So I think that's where it gets extremely destructive, is because you can trick yourself into thinking that the worst situations are good, and then you have no reason to change.
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And that's where I find that it's
HOST
extremely repulsive and it has a very
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deleterious effect on the. On the mind.
HOST
I mean, I've always looked at injecting
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myself in negative environments as like dead lips for my mind. Like, I don't mind being around negative energy. I don't mind being around people that are in a bad mood because I
HOST
look at it as we're wrestling.
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It's a game of tug of war.
HOST
Like, if somebody's in a bad mood
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and they're going to put that energy
HOST
on me, I know that I need
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to bring my best game to combat that.
HOST
So why the fuck would I cower
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and shirk from that fight?
HOST
When I'm being given an opportunity, I'm basically be. I'm being given repetitions in the gym to strengthen my mind.
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So I always push back against that. I'm not gonna let a negative, like,
HOST
penetrate my bubble, but I'm also not
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going to cower from it.
HOST
I'll confront it because that's ultimately just going to give me a greater mind. So I think that's the kind of.
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The approach that I have towards this man is just using a lot of these pain points as, as, as to put a chip on your shoulder.
HOST
There's nothing wrong with going through life
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with a chip on your shoulder.
HOST
I mean, let's, let's just call a spade a spade.
CALLER 1
I mean, that's what most people are doing. Most people are driven and motivated by pain. Most people are driven to avenge and get one over and get their, their comeuppance on.
HOST
On people and things that have wronged them. There's nothing wrong with that. I think that's a very valid response.
CALLER 1
I think that's a healthy response.
CALLER 2
Yes, I was completely spot on. I think one of the first times I saw Kobe play, he was going through his, like all those allegations with the rape trials and everything. And I remember the first game I saw him play, he showed up at halftime because he was late because he was out of trial and the announcers were just all bashing him about how he's going through this case. And then the goes out and drops 40 points in the second half like he just doesn't care.
HOST
it's fascinating, man. And then you look at the other prototype, right? You look at a guy like Tom Brady. Tom Brady is extremely interesting to me for a different reason than he's interesting for everybody else.
I find Tom Brady to be interesting because he's, he was a multi, multi
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time champion and he didn't.
HOST
He doesn't strike me as the type of guy who was using. Utilizing these darker chip on his shoulder forces. I mean, he just doesn't. He.
He strikes me as someone who was
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tapping into different energy to get to
HOST
where he is, which I find fascinating. And I don't quite have my finger on the pulse of what that exactly is, but that guy just seemed to
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have a more holistic, wholesome approach to winning than I've ever seen. And I think that's where he's kind
HOST
of an anomaly is I think a lot of guys would struggle to replicate that sort of wholesome.
CALLER 1
I mean, he strikes me as a guy who's like using new age wisdom to catapult himself. That doesn't work for me. I've tried it.
HOST
I've tried it and it just doesn't work for me. But that's where I think he's extremely
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scintillating as a, as a, as an elite figure.
HOST
But yeah, man, I appreciate that.
CALLER 2
Oh yeah, man. Thanks again. Appreciate everything as always.
HOST
Sam, what's good, man?
CALLER 3
Good brother. Yeah, I just want to clarify. I mean, you got to do bang out push ups when you're talking brute, holy man working from home. You got me motivated.
To your point just there about Brady and Kobe. It's on our way. Your thoughts are, man, about like holistic excellence. And it's almost like, not to use a gay ass video game analogy, but if it resonates to anybody, you know, so be it.
It's almost like in Street Fighter, right? You got Brady, who's like a Ryu type character who's just like you said his game is. The whole aim of his game is excellent. A holistic thread of excellence.
And sometimes I feel like the way you describe characters, you describe a psychology and the sort of darkness within it and almost like looking for the Just looking for a fight. It's almost like an akuma type, like a much darker. But a warrior versus a soldier. Kobe seems like a warrior.
Brady seems like a soldier. Just dutiful. Dutiful in his marriage, dutiful with his kids, dutiful with. With the media.
Right. Just deep set on his. On his own personal duties versus the warrior within type of a Kobe Bryant. And that's.
It's like the warrior within type or that thread between a warrior soldier line that you kind of talk about.
CALLER 7
That.
CALLER 3
That's just my. My two cents, man. Appreciate you. Love you guys.
HOST
Yeah, I appreciate that.
CALLER 1
Exactly. Dude, Brady's piggybacking on his virtues like he's piggybacking on. On virtue and. And morality and ethics, like a code of ethics that's unbreakable.
That's certainly a path to win. There's no doubt about it.
HOST
I mean, it's also the medium.
CALLER 1
The medium is the message. Right?
HOST
So football is an interesting game because,
CALLER 1
I mean, I don't know that Tom Brady could have been a champion in a solo sport like that.
HOST
That mindset, I. I don't know that
CALLER 1
it can really push you to the end limits of human potential in any kind of solo endeavor, but obviously, when there's a team, I think the people rally behind that. That's why Kobe was kind of alienated. You see a lot of these guys, like, they were very.
CALLER 10
Almost.
HOST
They didn't. They were. They would sit by themselves on the.
CALLER 1
On the team planes, and they just.
HOST
It was them against the world. It was. It was Kobe against the world.
CALLER 1
Every night he stepped foot on the court, and. And. And Brady's not like that. It was co.
HOST
It was Brady with the world. So I definitely think that it's dichotomous.
CALLER 1
I think there's two ways to win. I think it's important to kind of figure out what your natural node of expression is.
HOST
I just have had such an easier
CALLER 1
time tapping and embracing the darker forces of my nature. I mean, that's just always gotten me out of every jam that I've ever been in. And there's a code of ethics and
HOST
there's honor in that as well. Right.
CALLER 1
Because I'm sticking to.
HOST
I'm sticking to my guns and I'm
CALLER 1
sticking to my moral codes as well, along that path. And I think that's.
HOST
That.
CALLER 1
That congruency is extremely important.
HOST
I appreciate your point, man. Philosopher king. What's up, man?
CALLER 10
Hey, bro. Appreciate you from India. I just had a question. You know, I'm into business, so I'VE always approached my life in business and career as a sport.
I always feel like, you know, as you said, in business, you know, it's not that, you know, directly aggressive, but you have competition. You have sort of the same landscape. I would love for you to, like, tie it back to do business or something more commercial, you know, in the sense that, as you said, we have all just discussed sportsman right now. How do you see this, this darkness and this, this mindset of, Of a champion sort of translate into sports, into business, from sports.
CALLER 1
I mean, it's the same.
HOST
It's the exact same thing, dude. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's the same endeavor. I mean, that's why, like, absent, absent of any sort of modern wars and,
CALLER 1
and we don't really have those same gauntlets and rites of passage that men of the past had. I mean, you see a lot of guys equate business to war. I mean, look at the terminology people are using on Twitter. Look at the terminology people use when they're conducting business.
HOST
It does, it does have kind of
CALLER 1
a warlike quality to it.
HOST
Because, you know, ultimately what you're doing
CALLER 1
in business is you're winning resources, right? So a lot of the faculties that you're applying in business certainly spring. Spring forth from that same male impulse for war. I get it.
HOST
I don't think that's a larp. I've seen people say, like, oh, dude,
CALLER 1
you're just starting an E. Comm. Business. You know, you're not going into battle.
I think that's absolutely incorrect. I think it is. I think it absolutely is a simulation of war. I think it's, it's playing upon all of those same desires.
You know what I mean? There's, there's, there's brotherhood, there's exhortation of glory. There's like, there's a lot of, there's a lot of emotional states that are, that are being involved when you're, when you're trying to win resources and you're trying to build a legacy for yourself.
HOST
So I get the warlike quality of
CALLER 1
it as, as obviously sports are. Right. I mean, sportsmen are just warriors. That's what they are.
I mean, they're warriors. And it's, there's some, there's some pageantry there, There's a, there's a game that's constructed to sort of soften what it really is under the surface. But I mean, LeBron James, even though that guy's a.
HOST
Like a lot of these guys have that, that still, that warrior philosophy that
CALLER 1
I have to respect.
HOST
So yeah, man, I mean, business is war. There's no doubt about it.
CALLER 1
I mean, those, that.
HOST
Those are synonymous things.
CALLER 3
Got it.
CALLER 7
Thanks, man.
CALLER 3
Appreciate that.
HOST
Yeah. Here, from Grifters University. Hey, what's up, Rude?
CALLER 9
How you doing, man?
HOST
What's up, brother? Nothing much, dude.
CALLER 9
It's a serendipitous subject you brought up because I've been hanging out with the champion. My cousin, he plays for the Bucks, right. So I grew up with him, right. And so his name is Pat Connaughton, right.
So what I've noticed about him is he's obsessively competitive and also like he's not afraid to be a freak. Like, be, be a freakishly hard working guy, be a freakishly obsessive guy as it pertains to competition. So those are some things that, you know, I've noticed personally. You know what I mean?
Like knowing a champion.
HOST
Yeah, man.
CALLER 1
Yeah.
HOST
Actually, I'm glad you said that because
CALLER 1
it segues into exactly what I wanted to say earlier, and I forgot to say it was if you really want to see the aptitude and you really want to see a man's true potential, look at the way he does things recreationally. Like, the way that I see someone do things recreationally tells me far more about the reality of their nature than when they do things seriously. Because when people do things seriously, it's very polished and there's usually some masks
HOST
that are being worn.
CALLER 1
But like just a fun, like pickup game of basketball, that's, that's, you know, where the score doesn't matter. Like when I see a playing pickup ball and he's playing lazy defense or he's not really into it, I always know immediately that's a loser in life, that's a loser. Because winners are competitive 24 7. It's a way of life.
Like if they're playing a recreational game, they're gonna come at you. You're their enemy while you're playing. Like, even if you're playing against your best friend, I view that as I'm trying to take your head off. We can shake hands when the games are over, but during the game, as
HOST
long as we're competing against each other,
CALLER 1
I don't know who you are.
HOST
And I think that mentality, it's.
CALLER 1
You can't compartmentalize it. Like, you either have that instinct, that killer instinct, or you don't. So like whenever I see someone playing like a fun board game or just like goofing off or around, how serious and how competitive they take that recreational game tells me a lot more about their true personality and characteristics than when they do it for, for serious sport. And I've always found that interesting because
HOST
it's a, it's a heuristic that's almost inescapable.
CALLER 2
Big facts.
CALLER 9
Great talk.
HOST
Yep. Appreciate it, man. Marco, what's up, man?
CALLER 6
Yo, Brute, what's up, bro?
CALLER 10
Can you hear me?
HOST
Cool, man.
CALLER 6
Appreciate, Appreciate you coming up here and sharing. So as you were speaking, I noticed that I'm definitely driven by negative emotion. At least my, my darkness is way stronger than any light I can convince myself to be pulled from. What do you recommend?
Like, do you recommend to seek out the darkness if it, if it erodes during a period of time? Right now I'm like, I don't, I'm deeply compelled.
HOST
Competitive.
CALLER 6
I have like the killer inside of me, the competitive nature, and I love exercising it. But right now they're like my sense of darkness or whatever negative emotion that, you know, has gotten me through cycles isn't as strong. Do you, would you purpose, like, do you purposely go out and seek it and find convincing reasons to develop it again or just something that just arises, like the flow of life?
CALLER 1
No, no, no. It's flow of life. That's, that you're talking about self flagellation.
HOST
And this is, this is where it's
CALLER 1
a very slippery slope for guys. Because what you're talking about, and this
HOST
is what most people do, is most people are using self abuse and self punishment. Like, literally do like these extreme hardcore
CALLER 1
diets you see people on.
HOST
It's a, it's a, it's a borderline form of self abuse. Like, these people are so, they're such
CALLER 1
a control freaks over every aspect of
HOST
their life that they feel like if
CALLER 1
they eat a Cheeto, they're gonna die.
HOST
Literally.
CALLER 1
Like, these guys are trying to master so much control over every department of their life that it becomes extremely damaging to who they are.
HOST
And I, I, I don't think that
CALLER 1
you should seek out the darkness. I think the darkness seeks you. I think it's in reverse.
HOST
I think that you have to be
CALLER 1
open to experimenting with the emotions that
HOST
you're given
CALLER 1
because that's the most humane thing you can do, right? I mean, if, if you're born with these instincts and these emotions and they then in my opinion, they cannot be bad. They can all be utilized. And so I just, I refuse to ignore and not play with the energies
HOST
that I'm given that you're given. That's a huge distinction because the. The moment. The moment is going to dictate what you're given, right?
CALLER 7
Whatever.
CALLER 1
Whatever scenario you're in is going to dictate that.
HOST
So, no, I don't think it should be intentionally sought because this is where people intentionally cut themselves and fall into depression and fall into these, these. These bad habits where they're intentionally destroying themselves just so they can feel something. I don't think that's constructive at all.
CALLER 6
Got it.
CALLER 8
Cool, bro.
CALLER 6
Appreciate that, man. Thanks for. Thanks for it.
CALLER 1
Rafael Laverde.
HOST
What's up, man?
CALLER 1
Raphael, you're on, dude.
HOST
You gotta un.
CALLER 1
Unmute it.
HOST
Yo.
CALLER 8
So I have a quick question. I don't know how to frame this other than. And to like, expose myself a little. And I busted my ass.
I had very much your same attitude. And then when I finally, like, gain a semblance of success, I went into kind of like, like a rest mode. And I've been in that rest mode for like a year.
HOST
But I hate.
CALLER 8
But deep down I'm like, this is good. I needed it psychologically. But now I'm like, I want this to be like a habit. Now maybe you can help me get
HOST
out of that funk. Yeah, man. These push pull cycles are extremely pivotal
CALLER 1
for life in general.
HOST
I've been.
CALLER 1
I've been even analyzing it in my own life. I'll give you an example. I'm usually in. In tip top shape year round just because I found that being, you know, being in my strongest form physically helps me survive.
Sort of like mental, just kind of like mental malaises that I can go through. I have a lot more stress tolerance when my body's physically healthy.
HOST
But I will say there is something to be said for going maybe months
CALLER 1
at a time or even weeks of stripping down yourself so that you can. Because here's the thing, man, and this is what you're talking about, okay? A lot of people want to start from where they are now. And very few people are willing to walk back to the bottom of the mountain and restart with more wisdom, because
HOST
that's the best part of life. The best part of life is replaying
CALLER 1
the game when you now have more wisdom and tools under your belt.
HOST
So you. Sometimes you don't. Sometimes you.
CALLER 1
You don't want to just begin where you are now.
HOST
Sometimes you want to go back to
CALLER 1
the beginning and replay the whole game with all these new strengths and assets that you have.
HOST
And so even in my own life,
CALLER 1
like the last couple months, my training regimen has been absolutely a disaster. Like, I haven't been lifting near as much.
HOST
I've been completely off kilter.
CALLER 1
And I.
HOST
It dawned on me that it was
CALLER 1
actually part of a healthy, normal life cycle, like stripping down my muscle and I'm not as strong as I was a couple months ago. It's been a very spiritual, Zen thing. It's allowed me to kind of expand and play in these corners, corners of my mind that I was not allowing myself to play in by being so, like, militant about my regimen. So you're talking about just a normal cycle, but you.
You definitely have to keep a grip on it. I mean, you can't let the spiral out of control. Like, I can get back on the saddle anytime and go hard again. I know that because I have that switch.
HOST
And so it's just important to kind of know what your switches are.
CALLER 1
But yeah, man, I mean, like I
HOST
just said, I mean, sometimes you got
CALLER 1
to go back and redo the whole thing. Thing with the new wisdom that you have.
HOST
And if you're constantly trying to start
CALLER 1
with where you are now, you're just going to run into roadblocks.
CALLER 8
What do you mean, start with what you have now?
CALLER 7
Like,
CALLER 1
a lot of guys are afraid to go back and really maybe understand.
HOST
Like.
CALLER 1
Like in your case, it strikes me with what you just said. The undertone of it is that you probably were doing something or succeeding at something that you maybe really didn't even really care about. Deep down, you just wanted to do it for the sake of the success. You're saying that you did it, but it's probably not genuinely in alignment with what you really want.
And so the intellect is terrible as an instrument to figure out what you want.
HOST
So if you go deeper into your
CALLER 1
intuition, you're probably going to discover, okay, I didn't even really want to achieve that. So then you have to go back to the. To the battleground again, into the mud and restart and, and climb up again and then find a different path. It's all about finding the right path, man.
Like, a lot of people are. Are attacking goals and they're going after things that they genuinely don't even want. And when they get them, they're going to be very disappointed because they think that maybe society wants them to have those accolades or they're protecting some sort of image. They're maintaining an identity that's not really them.
And so it's really important to kind of understand, like, are you actually going after what you want? And this is across the board, man. It's. You got guys in relationships with women they've known for Years, they don't even want to be with this person, but now they're so balls deep in the situation that they have to continually play this role.
And they're just basically like an actor on a stage, and they're just upkeeping all of this nonsense and to play a part that they didn't even know that they got into.
HOST
So it's just important to really, really
CALLER 1
dig deep and understand, like, are you actually achieving what you want? Not from what the society's perspective is, but is it what you want?
HOST
Because what you want leaves you extremely vulnerable. You can get hurt badly because you're vulnerable.
CALLER 1
When you're going after what you want, you're wearing your heart on your sleeve.
HOST
There's no other way to do it because the rejection of not getting what
CALLER 1
you really want is very painful. So a lot of guys don't want to subject themselves to the risk of that. So they're achieving.
HOST
Like you said, they'll fucking unleash an
CALLER 1
onslaught against a goal and they'll achieve it. And then they're just like, this is empty. This isn't even what I really wanted.
HOST
So that's kind of what I'm seeing
CALLER 1
with you is I. I have a very strong feeling that you actually achieved something that you didn't want and you just kind of wanted to prove to yourself that you could do it. Those are two different things.
CALLER 8
Yeah, maybe I'm like, really thinking about things now. Thank you.
HOST
Yeah, brother.
CALLER 1
And again, that's. There's irony there because you can't. This is not something that you can intellectualize. You gotta go.
You gotta go into your heart to figure that out.
HOST
Thanks, man.
CALLER 1
I'm gonna take the next one. Juicy G. What's up, bro?
CALLER 7
What's up, man? Just to touch on that, like, you could probably use the Yin and Yang symbol to kind of figure out where your drives are at. So you could have darkness, you know, trying to stunt on that hated on you your whole life. That could be something from your darkness.
Or maybe you were poor as a kid and, you know, you want to become mega rich. Or we could pull out the white side of the yin and Yang symbol. You know, I want to put on for my family, I want to put on for my kids. I want to make sure my kids have a dream life.
Like, stuff like that. You know, you can pull the drives and the yin and Yang symbol is different for everybody because everybody's got their own light and dark, you know, but you can look at that and just kind of pull out, you know, what Can I use to drive me to reach my greatest form of success? And I just want to touch on what Raphael was kind of talking about there.
CALLER 1
100%.
CALLER 7
Thank you.
CALLER 1
Yo, james st. Patrick.
HOST
What's up, man? James, you gotta unmute it. Can you hear me? Yeah.
What's up, bro?
CALLER 4
So I heard you comment about LeBron James, and I kind of got to double down on that because. Because when you compare him to Kobe and Michael Jordan, LeBron James kind of just comes off as a player that wants to please all his teams. But Kobe and Michael Jordan, they get in their dark side. Like, they're kind of like borderline sociopaths when they play basketball.
So I'm just like, how do you compare LeBron compared to these guys? Because LeBron is soft, you know? And I would have to say, like, the greatest athletes would be, like, Floyd Mayweather, Kobe, because they know how to get into that darkness. And I just want to throw that
HOST
in because a lot of people just
CALLER 4
don't see that about, like, LeBron James, because LeBron James is a person that could do anything, but people still see him soft, you know,
CALLER 1
- I've always had that same perspective on him.
HOST
He's.
CALLER 1
Even when he first came into the league, I never really. I never really enjoyed his. His mindset. Like, I never actually really enjoyed watching
HOST
him play, because I think once you fall into the.
CALLER 1
Like, his whole stick, man is like. It's way beyond basketball. Like, that guy has been so hyper politicized. He's had so many.
He's had so many hands.
HOST
He's.
CALLER 1
He's basically under the guise of a lot of puppeteers, man. And that will absolutely rape that instinct. Like, a guy like Kobe. Like, you couldn't tell Kobe what to say at a press conference, but you can tell.
HOST
You can tell a guy like Kobe,
CALLER 1
LeBron James, who's been commodified as a. As a. As literally like an organ. He's like an organ of these larger power blocks.
Like, that dude is completely saying talking points that are under the.
HOST
He's not even.
CALLER 1
He's not even speaking from his. His own point of view.
HOST
And so of course, that's gonna bleed
CALLER 1
out into his mindset on the court.
HOST
Yeah.
CALLER 1
You know what I mean? Like, that.
HOST
Yeah, It's. It's his whole stick dude is, like,
CALLER 1
way beyond basketball because.
HOST
And so his movie.
CALLER 1
His motivations are coming from a different
CALLER 4
place, because the issue with them is, like, he just cares too much about pleasing people. And I think every, like. Well, he does the most points. And this and this.
But he's not a winner. He knows how to make points, but he's not a winner. Like, basketball is about winning, not. Not how much fucking points you stack in this.
And this, like with Colby and Jordan, they're rational. They have. They can get rational to win. LeBron James can't.
He just can't. It's not in him.
CALLER 1
CALLER 4
But that's all I wanted to say, though. Peace.
HOST
Yeah, man. Yep. Marira, what's up, man? What's up, brother?
CALLER 11
So I just wanted to pop in and ask you on the. On the journey to becoming a champion in whatever field it may be, but
CALLER 1
can you hear me?
HOST
Yeah.
CALLER 11
On the journey to becoming a champion or whatever it may be, be it martial arts or be it entrepreneurship or anything like that, how important do you think in today's society that having a mentor at the beginning, as you learn something new is. Or do you think that it's more important to figure it out on your own and learn the hard lessons on your own? What do you think about that?
CALLER 1
It's way more important to learn the
HOST
hard lessons on your own. I mean, this is like.
CALLER 1
This is like the core of my philosophies. I mean, I get a lot of guys that will ask me these sort of automaton, like, questions about how to get out of a specific situation. Like, I get guys that will come and want me to troubleshoot with them about a specific scenario they're in, and I never deal with it anymore because
HOST
I can always walk through somebody.
CALLER 1
Like, I can walk somebody through the mechanical steps of getting the upper hand in a particular situation. Like, if a guy's struggling with a chick, like, I can tell him exactly how to behave, exactly how to act to get the upper hand in one particular moment. But as far as the lifespan of that, the shelf life is going to expire very rapidly. That motherfucker is going to be stranded in certain spots, and he's not going to have me as the deus ex machina to fucking bail and out of the story.
HOST
So I don't. I refuse to walk people through the
CALLER 1
mechanical steps of winning certain situations because I think people need to be bludgeoned by the situation itself in order to kind of dig deep and figure it out with their own instincts, 100%. And that goes with business. That goes with anything. Dudes, like, you just have to dip your toes into the fire and gun it and be autodidactic and learn this on your own.
I mean, yeah, coaching is valuable, but I think coaching is extremely valuable. Actually at the end and not the beginning. I think a lot of people disagree with me on that, but in my own life, it's been true. You got to get 98 of the way there yourself.
And then if you want that final 2% boost, yeah, go get coaching. But I don't.
HOST
I have found a lot of people
CALLER 1
that have taken coaching or trying to figure out advice or figure out the perfect method before they even begin. I've seen that kind of homogenize them, and it turns them into sort of this like, milk, toast, vanilla.
HOST
Because what a coach will do, and
CALLER 1
this is not the coach's fault, but what a coach will. It's very difficult for a coach to kind of help you express your natural flaws and talents. Like, whatever your edge is, a coach is going to somewhat homogenize you. And I think it's.
It's important to kind of figure out where your own edges are first and then get coaching to make sure that a coach can't eviscerate that from you.
HOST
Does that make sense? That's why it's important just to go
CALLER 1
in and just go guns blazing, because then you kind of can ascertain where your strengths and weaknesses are. And then if you need to seek outside help, it's a lot more valuable. But in reverse, you're gonna get coached probably away from your natural strengths and weaknesses, because nobody knows you better than you know you. So I would put that kind of at the end game, not the beginning.
HOST
That's always working. Yeah, of course. I appreciate that.
CALLER 1
I'm gonna end it here. I appreciate you all.