Achieve Maximum Potential By Deepening Your Relationships With Peter King

That really resonates with me. And I got to tell you, my little monkey mind went off about 20 seconds ago into this arena of— I was listening, but not fully listening, fully present. My mind went to, I wonder how many times a day we're actually wrong. Like, have you ever considered how often it is that You, me, the collective we, how often we are wrong?

Yeah. Probably more than we'd care to admit.

At least I would raise my hand to that. Probably a lot more than I'm comfortable admitting.

Yes. Well, and it begs the question of like, what's right compared to— in what paradigm are you looking at what is right versus wrong? And I think on some level, because I'm a pretty spiritual guy, or at least I'm interested in that and I'm exploring consciousness and all that, From that perspective, this whole experience isn't true. This whole experience is delusional. So we could go down the rabbit hole in many different directions on that one, I'm sure.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my question, Peter, next is really, how important is humility in that equation for you?

To me, there is no growth without humility. Humility to me is paramount. To me, truth, the idea of truth is so much bigger than What, at least in my personal experience, than what I had ever thought it might be. So as I've discovered more truth, I've had to let go of what I thought was true before that. And you can really only do that through an act of humility. So to me, it's a paramount element of expanding our vessels to better understand deeper and deeper truths.

Right. Because I mean, if we're committed to truth, and I would think most people would say they're committed to truth, may not wake up in the morning and go, hey, I'm committed to truth today, or they may not sort of intentionally or consciously set that out as the goal for themselves in the day. But, you know, if asked, are you committed to truth or are you committed to lies? Are you committed to bullshit or are you committed to something real? I think, you know, pretty much every day everybody puts their feet on the floor, you know, starts the day and goes, yeah, I'm committed to something real today. I'm committed to something truthful today. As opposed to, you know, feet hit the floor and go, I'm committed to being a fraud. Like, that's what I want to be today. Yeah. The best fraud I can possibly, You know, I want to walk around with such a great facade and be a total pretense to the world, you know. But if we're committed to truth, consciously or unconsciously, truth leads us into some pretty dark, shadowy places, right? I mean, we're in the underworld in our own life experience if we're being truthful a lot of the time. Or is that—

is

that just my dark past, do you think?

No, no, no, no. I 100% agree with that. And I think You used the word darkness and shadow. And to me, I've done some study of Carl Jung and other psychologists and philosophers of that ilk. And they talk about shadow work. And it's something that we often tend to not want to shine the light in. We don't want to go there. And yet that tends to be, at least in my experience, that's where the deepest growth and the more truth has been found. And so looking at those uncomfortable things, being willing to challenge the beliefs that might be bigger than our own perceptions of what's true. To me, those can be scary places. It can feel like what's dark. And yet at the same time, oftentimes they create the— I'm getting a little bit esoteric here, but they tend to create the contrast. Maybe a better way to say it is when you think of love and happiness and joy, do you really know what that is if you haven't experienced the lack of that? So the lack of that helps to expand and deepen our understanding of what that love and joy might feel And I find that same symbiotic relationship with truth too, is what isn't true, or what are those uncomfortable truths help us embody and understand a deeper light of truth.

That makes sense to me. I was in Costa Rica just recently, within the last month, let's say, for a wonderful retreat. I go to this place called Rythmia and—

Oh, were you there with some other people that we know? I don't want to necessarily name names if they don't want to be.

Yeah, I know. Like a lot of people that do go to Rythmia, it's funny. Not always want to say it out loud. I think Joe Rogan had a guy on his show recently who I'm not going to mention his name. He's a comedian who was there the week before I was there. I'm really fortunate to be able to go there as a facilitator and as a participant. So it's the best of both worlds, really. And so last time I was there, time before this time, was like last February. And this comic was there, celebrity comic, and he was on Joe Rogan's show talking about it. But they never mentioned the name. And maybe that's 'cause they don't wanna blow up, you know, blow up the place, meaning, you know, like that too many people try to get there or whatever. But in any event, I'm happy to promote their good work. And I mean, they do really good work. Gerard Powell, who's created it, founded it, it's just a superstar, you know, as a— in terms of impact. Like he's, you know, you have a website, Impact Now. They have— they've had some serious impact on a lot of people. Mm-hmm. And so this last visit there, as I was, both leading a training and then also participating, I got kicked in the teeth royally, man. I mean, ayahuasca, for those of you that have never either heard it or don't know what the heck it is, it's plant medicine. It's not synthetic. It's— I'm not a, you know, big drug experimenter. I've done my share of things. I'm a middle way guy, so I trust myself to not get like too far gone with things. But this particular time there, the first night, it's like 4 journeys in the week. And the first journey is on a Monday night. I taught that afternoon. I go into ceremony that night and it was darkness from start to finish. It was just 6 hours of being in the underworld. And, you know, it's just no light, no light in the underworld. And again, not to be too coy about it, I was just pointed in the direction of who I've become. Like there's sort of 3 intentions or 3 questions that get asked throughout the week. And one of them is, show me, you know, this request that the medicine, the plant medicine show you who you've become. Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And in times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience but that of our teams. So right now we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. Yeah, you don't have to ask that. You don't have to inquire there, but it's, it's cool if you do, because I think when you ask a good question, or you ask pretty much any question, you're going to get an answer at some point. I got the answer like right out of the gate, and it was just tough to be shown truth that I am so good at evading or, or keeping it a safe distance, keeping it away from damaging my precious ego or damaging my self-esteem or whatever, you know, damaging my ability to have the audacity to speak and speak publicly, you know. Like, I think it's a really important thing that you can balance your— the confidence To do certain things in life and yet to have humility, to have the humility that's sort of in harmony with confidence. So I would love to just get, you know, generally any comments about that. And also, you've been to Rythmia yourself? Just curious.

I have not. I was invited to go on that specific trip. I know Robert Glover was down there and some other folks that we know. And so I'd gotten that invitation and I was very close to going and it just wasn't in the cards for me this particular time. I have not done an ayahuasca event just yet, but it is on my radar. I'm fascinated by that whole idea. And it's, for me personally, compared to my upbringing, it's very, very outside, off the reservation, if you will, from my religious conservative upbringing. And yet at the same time, everybody that I've talked to that have experienced it, and the more that I understand about it, I was first shown about it or whatever when I was in the Tony Robbins Platinum Group and we went down to Brazil and we were on the Amazon and There was a group of people that did it, and I decided that I wasn't ready for it just yet. But anyway, I'm fascinated by the idea of our minds and of our, as I better understand, brain chemistry and, and neuronic connections and beliefs and how we form these connections in our brain. And well, what happens— you were talking about truth a minute ago— what happens when you have these beliefs that are not true? I'm not loved, or I'm not worthy. And those are the deepest untruths in our egoic human experience. What happens when those connections are so well-grooved in our head? And is it possible that an ayahuasca-type thing could flush that out? It's like defragging the computer, so to speak, and reorganizing thought and bringing it back to coherence. I've been doing a lot of work with Joe Dispenza in the last year and gone the meditation route, which is, I think, as I understand it, almost a similar endgame, if you will, by heightening consciousness, tapping into higher frequency, better understanding our true natures. I'm just absolutely fascinated by that whole world. It's something that I've, as I mentioned, only been into for about a year, but I have not done specifically an ayahuasca one yet. I've experienced some pretty metaphysical things in the meditation space in the last year or so.

You don't need— just my own personal take on this is that you don't need to do it in order to get there. I've been able to get to a certain place through— I guess, you, you know, for me, meditation is the practice of being present. Somebody shared that with me years ago, and it's super simple. And I, I'm a simplistic— I'm a simpleton.

Mm-hmm.

So something simple I, I can, I can wrap myself around and use. And so, yeah, just being present. And I have a presence— getting present and presence process in the morning that I use, which is like meditative And that can take me right to the end game, the endpoint of a journey quickly. Breathwork is magical. And so for anybody that's never done breathwork or been facilitated in breathwork, I think breathwork is also just, wow. I mean, you can go very, very deep in breathwork. And I also do recommend that folks interested explore things like ayahuasca in the right environment. Yeah. Because there is a— we're really good at hiding from ourselves. Like, I'm saying we now, of course. I am really good at hiding from myself, and I know that I'm no different than anybody, no different than you, Peter, or anybody else. So I just feel like that's probably true of human, you know, the human condition.

Agreed.

And the thing about that too is you don't know when you're hiding. That's how good you are at hiding. You don't know.

Yes.

But when you're in an environment where you've been— are being facilitated through in expert ways with shaman and people that have been doing this indigenously for thousands of years, you know, and now it's been passed down, this legacy knowledge and education is passed down to another leader in that space. You know, there's just so much to be gained from it. And humility, I mean, that's the thing is that first night of that journey of that week, I just got knocked to my knees. And I think I was there the week before our mutual friend George Brian was gonna be also facilitating, I think, next week. And yeah, I mean, it was just like, so I got knocked to my hands and knees and I needed it. I had been knowing a couple of weeks before I was heading out there that just, I could feel stuff all tensed up in my neck and my body was just feeling really, yeah, just really stiff, you know? Like we can't get too stiff, right? Because at some point we're so stiff. You know, we're done. So you're being a truth seeker, I think it's just fascinating because it's like constant vigilance, right, to be a truth seeker? It's not an easy— you don't get sort of a day at the beach, you know?

No. In fact, I tried to hang it up at one point when I was in my marriage and things were not going well. And on paper, everything was good. I had a beautiful wife, 2 loving great kids, a Nice home, great income. And I remember thinking to myself, why can I not be happy? Why is this not fulfilling for me? And I literally was like, all right, it seems like from my perspective, most people seem to live a fairly happy life working 9 to 5. Now, they don't necessarily absolutely love it, but they have their moments, they have their weekends, they have their breaks, and they seem to be okay with that. And I'm like, I'm going to have to just do that because that's where I'm at at the moment. It took me, I think it was, it was like literally a 2-week intention. I had a longer intention, but within 2 weeks I got to the point where I was like, I can't turn this off. I don't know how to not do this. There's a calling within me. There's, there's something about me where I'm— I just seek deeper knowledge, deeper truth. And so I couldn't turn it off.

At that point of conflict for you and your spouse, I mean—

Certainly it was what sort of bubbled up the uncomfortable truths of our relationship, and truthfully, in a way that was absolutely serving us that we didn't necessarily see at the time. And on that quick note, I just mentioned to you that we had a wonderful holiday season, and a big part of that was my ex joining my family for our vacation. And it took a long time, and it was a long time coming, but I had this thought the other day. Is your marriage Strong enough to survive divorce?

Oh, that's an interesting question.

Right? And the reason why that came to me was because my wife, my ex— see, there I go. My ex-wife and I have a better relationship now. We communicate better. We are still connected, obviously, through our children. But even just in a spiritual sense, we have an undeniable spiritual relationship that we didn't know we had when we first started dating all the way back in high school. But now that we're adults and have been through some stuff, it's like I'd never felt not married to her even when we were separated, just because we had that connection on so many different levels— emotionally and financially and spiritually. And, and so anyway, I, I don't know how we started with this, but I don't— we're here now.

Well, I'm fascinated about the communication piece, among other things, because your work in the world is about relationships. So,

I

mean, not every relationship is meant to be the till death do us part kind, right? I mean, and that's just the reality of— and not a terrible reality is what I'm hearing you say, right?

100%. If you set that intention, you know, there has been times where we've both wanted to, you know, strangle each other, etc. But there is a deeper intention to ultimately turn the page. Every day is a new day. Put the past behind us when it's appropriate, when it's effective. There's times where we need to revisit the past in order to have healing, but The communication piece is massive, and it is something that led me into relationships. That and my mother's passing. And about a year after she passed, my father came out of the closet and told us he was gay. And at the time, I just had my son. And so I was having, you know, just really profound, deep reflection on, well, what does it mean to be a man? What is it to be a good father? What did I not have? Talk about the shadow and uncomfortable things. It was like I wanted to go into that space of what I didn't receive growing up so that I could be very clear with what it was so that I can make sure that I bequeath it to my son and give him that experience. So all of this stuff to me converges with this journey that we're on, the truth that is that we're seeking, the ego that we're shedding to better understand our truer natures, if you believe like I do that we're spiritual entities. Yeah. So it's— the communication piece is massive.

It is. And maybe the most important communication— I mean, it's just convenient to say this, I suppose, but, you know, it's the communication with ourselves. And it's back to that same kind of thing, you know. Can you speak? Can you receive the truth from yourself? Can you seek it to begin with? And can you, can you deal with it? You know, can you accept it? Because, you know, going back to that week of mine, that truth was devastating that night, just to be Just to be confronted, you know, like, and I won't be, you know, too cheeky about it. The truth I got was that I'd been behaving like an asshole, you know, like I just— Mm-hmm. And so then it was even the idea that I could, and this is all under the influence of this beautiful medicine, you know, Mother Aya, as it's sometimes referred to, Aya. And, you know, to be able to say, I'm an asshole. And I'm not saying, you know, that that's a good thing at all. To be an asshole, but to say to yourself, you know, so if that's it, I mean, if, you know, we can rationalize everything. I could say, well, I've just been an asshole here and there, you know, and that doesn't make me an asshole. I just act like an asshole sometimes. What's the difference? I mean, strip it away and go, so, okay, you know, it leads to more questions. So if I am an asshole, does that mean I'm unlovable? Does that mean I can't be forgiven? Does that mean I can't love myself? Does that mean I can't improve and get better? Does that mean I have to be an asshole tomorrow or in the next minute simply because I was one yesterday or a minute ago? I mean, it's just remarkable how much this— the truth, you know, like the biblical or what's been interpreted, you know, that it's— it can free you, can give you great freedom. I'll save that, you know, for a little bit later, maybe in the discussion of where it went from there. But any I mean, what made you be a truth seeker? Was there some catalytic thing that said, hey, this is my path in life to seek truth?

No, for me, I think I was born with it. I think we're all born with certain gifts and/or callings or pursuits. And that for me, just when I started to consciously on a more mature level, understand that and see that it was different than others. And I had that same question like, well, when did I start doing this? And it was kind of one of those things where I just always, I'd always done that. So I think it was just something I was gifted with, if you consider that a gift.

Sure. So in relationships, for example, and again, I think it's funny, I tell this story of— I wrote a book called Pivot some years ago. In the book, it starts with a story of me having a moment in the emergency room, electrodes taped to my— stuck on my chest and my heart beating like it was outside my chest, fingers Tingling, sweating profusely. I think I'm having a heart attack, and I'm really deeply afraid of dying and of dying in that moment in particular because I had, you know, I have 4 small kids. And my wife is standing there next to me as I'm lying on this gurney. I'm so weak, and I feel just so sh— so filled with shame that I'm putting her through this, and I'm gonna leave her, you know, like I'm gonna make her a widow. With all this, just all this stuff to deal with. And I didn't have a heart attack, you know, my heart was fine. Doctor said, you're having a panic attack. And that's what it was, had an anxiety attack. And that was the moment for me when I left the hospital, when the doctor said, hey, you're getting the— this is a pretty good gift you get today. Because like, you're gonna walk out of here. There are guys who come in your age, you know, late 30s, with presenting in, you know, these symptoms, they don't always leave. So I did walk out. I did realize I was— had been given a bit of a reprieve. And I looked up at the sky with my wife's, you know, holding my wife's hand, and I said, thank you, God. You know, I, I don't know if I'd ever said thank you, God, before in my life, but I did that day. And that was a moment for me that put me on a, a kind of like, I gotta find something. I gotta get some truth And then Scott Peck, M. Scott Peck, Dr. Peck, wrote a book called The Road Less Traveled, which is a phenomenal book. That was sort of the opening for me in that arena. But even when I left the hospital that day and I didn't know what to do, there was sort of like a bit of a crack in the door. It was a little bit of light. It was dark because I was confused. I didn't know why my life had gotten me— I got no where I was, even though, yeah, married to my college sweetheart, I had 4 healthy kids, my business is great, I'm a lawyer and I'm making tons of money. But it was dark. It was just sheer darkness for me, especially in the morning. I don't know if you've ever had trouble waking up or that early part of the day. That was really miserable for me. Just put my feet on the floor and would feel like instant dread, you know? You ever— has that ever been a—

Yes, yes. It's that little window where you're just coming online in the morning from the unconscious to the conscious state. And it's— yeah, I've absolutely had those moments of impending doom. Just, yep, something not good is going to happen in the world, in your life, some, you know, and it's sort of, you know,

low-level or not so low-level anxiety, right?

Yeah.

So in the path, you know, or in this distance after that event, I didn't know what to do. I was having trouble not only waking up, but falling asleep. Maybe people can relate to that too. So I was taking Ambien to get to sleep. And if I woke up in the middle of the night, I would have trouble getting back to sleep. And it was one particular night I did. I woke up and had trouble getting back to sleep. And I sat down, I turned on TV and was watching this old movie, Jerry Maguire. And I normally, that Jerry Maguire movie leads me to something that I did that I won't talk about right now that literally changed the trajectory of my life. But the thing I don't normally think about is that in that movie, there's this wonderful line. There's all these Hollywood lines, you know, show me the money, right? Cuba Gooding says that to Jerry or to Tom Cruise. And then Renée Zellweger at some point says, you know, you had me at hello, right? Another great Hollywood line. And Tom Cruise says something like, you complete me. And I remember saying to my wife, Randi, one day, I go, hey, baby, do I complete you? You know, Peter, what do you think she said? Just take a wild guess.

Oh my gosh. From a woman's perspective, hell yeah, I'm all of you. Yeah. You know, if I'd asked anybody that I dated, it's, yeah, you're nothing without me.

I know, right? That's so, that's so funny. She looks at me and she goes, are you out of your mind? You know, like, you don't complete me. And we had done really some relationship training Workshops and things for a bunch of years. And we would sort of, you know, tell that story on stage because it was an interesting moment, you know, to explore whether or not anybody can complete us. Like, in an intimate relationship, whether it's, you know, marital or not— there's a lot of people don't even get married these days— it's— but you're with somebody and, and you're committed at some level. You go, you know, isn't another person's job to complete you? I wanted to get your take on that because you are an expert in this field of relationships. And, you know, whether that's relative to communication or some other thing, I mean, I'm just going to throw that potato in your lap and ask, yeah, what do you think of it?

Well, to preface my answer, I'm standing on the shoulders of giants that I have learned some of this stuff from, but then I went and applied it to my own relationships and also reflected and better understood it myself. So I'll preface it with that. David Deida has a great model for this where he talks about the 3 phases. And I'm going to twist it a little bit to fit my own needs here, but there's like 3 phases of the journey of relationships. You have that incomplete stage where you consciously or unconsciously are seeking out that love and validation approval from somebody else. That was one of the mistakes that my ex-wife and I made when we first came together is We were essentially 2 incomplete people seeking the love and validation from something outside of us, i.e., each other. The next phase is wholeness, which when I first heard that, I was like, wait, wholeness is the second stage? But anyway, the second stage is wholeness, and wholeness is when you really start to create boundaries and have a sense of self. Without those boundaries, you don't know what's outside or what's inside your sense of self. And as I went through my personal development journey, I started to better understand my own values, my own personality, my own strengths and weaknesses, and where I began and where I stopped. And so creating those boundaries helped me create a greater sense of wholeness within myself, at least that intention. The third phase is really beyond wholeness, where I believe when you come— when two whole people come together, they can create something that which An individual person cannot. And you see this and you feel it. More importantly, you feel it when you're around a couple who, who bring that to— they elevate each other in ways that the other person cannot. I'll share one other quick thing that was— that's been really beautiful for me to learn. It's very humbling and something that I think women innately have within them, that feminine energy that helps uplift the masculine. But on a practical level, I was taught in my personal development journey, I was told one time that you can have one or the other. You have 2 options. You can either have a closed-in heart, a boxed-in heart that's safe, and your heart is safe and in that protective box, but it's confined. Or you can have an open heart that's bleeding and full of life, but because it's open, it's vulnerable, and therefore it's going to get bruised. And I have found in my relationships with women That some of them, not all of them, but some of them who sought to elevate, that there really was a third option, which was when you're with a partner that is humble and that seeks to love, and they can put a box around your heart, or they can seek to put a box around it to help protect you. And to have somebody else do that is incredibly humbling and also very deeply loving. So when I think of communication, when I think of incompleteness and wholeness, I do think that there is this masculine-feminine design where we're supposed to— obviously, we're supposed to come together biologically, but spiritually, I believe that those energies do constitute wholeness. Now, I don't think you have to be in a partnership to have that. I do think that we— and I would guess that you would agree with this too— that we all have feminine and masculine within us. So, there is a wholeness within us that does not require something outside of us to complete that wholeness. But, I do think in this human journey, with the illusion of separateness, with the illusion of incompleteness, that a man and a woman can bring together more of that spiritual union that I think a feminine woman who is mature, who has done the personal development work, who is in touch with her spiritual nature, I think her expression of femininity will out-express any man who is in touch even with his feminine and vice versa. And so, I think we are clear channels of that masculine and feminine energy on a practical level in this human experience. Those 2 coming together, I think, creates a wholeness or a beyond wholeness like David Deida was talking about that is beautiful and enriches each other, but then also enriches their offspring and then the community around that. It's something that I think our world is sorely needing. It's something I'm very passionate about because it seems like we don't have a clear sense of what that ideal relationship ought to look like.

Yeah, I think it is confusing. And I know you do a lot of work with men and boys as well, and how to understand, better understand and relate to the feminine. I'd love to hear more about that. I'm particularly curious just because I think the landscape has shifted. I'm in my, you know, I've had kids and all that. I'm not kind of getting, making a start in the world. And I've been with the same woman for 30-plus years, but the landscape is very different now, I think, for young Men, boys turning into men, and young men, I would say, you know, that are in their— even in their 20s, and having, you know, to figure out or navigate. That's a statement, but it's also a question. Do you think it is different? Has it changed? And how do you work with those, you know, young men these days?

It's undoubtedly different. I'm sure you've heard the saying, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create bad times, bad times create strong men. Well, we're in that good times have created weak men phase, and we're starting to tip over, I believe, into the weak men create bad times phase. So it's helpful to understand that landscape so that we know what we're at, where we're at, and what's needed and where we need to step up, et cetera, as men.

Say more about that. Yeah, I don't want to digress you too far, but that's a really powerful statement, Peter. I mean, so—

To me, we're in cycles. We are energy. This is something I'm now leaning into my Joe Dispenza experience. Everything is energy, literally on a physical level, if you get down to small enough, if you break apart an atom, if you deconstruct an atom, there's nothing there. It's just space. It's just a little vortex of energy. What's emblematic of energy, if not cycles, waves? We see that in relationships. We feel it. We see it in economics. We see it— our whole world is waves and cycles and all these things. Part of that cycle that we're in is what I just described. There's actually a very fascinating cycle called the Teitler Cycle. There's a gentleman by the name of Alexander Teutler, who in the 1800s discovered that democracies and empires followed this very predictable set of cycles that sort of maps on top of the good men cycle that I was just talking about, where you start off with liberty and freedom, and it moves into essentially— I'm kind of giving you the paraphrased model, but goes into abundance. And from that abundance, it goes into apathy, and then apathy goes into corruption, and corruption goes into bondage, and bondage goes into liberty again, and you have that, you start the cycle. I think to understand our place in that is helpful because number one, as things tend to get a little bit more volatile or turbulent, that it's helpful to know that we are in a cycle and that this will play out. There will be a spring that's coming. That's another cycle, winter, fall, spring, summer. And I think as men, how we fit into that in raising new young men is to understand The masculine cycle, the masculine journey, which tends to be linear, starts off in the Page stage and moves into the Knight stage, which is sort of that teen to early 20s. That's the stage of a man's life where he's really seeking to find out what he's made of. It's typically a selfish stage. The Hawaiian culture, I love what they've done. They call it the 3 Fs, where a young man, his 3 Fs are focused. I'm sure you can think of a couple of them, but one of them is food, fighting, and Fucking. It's very self-serving. But then as he matures, he goes from that knight stage into the prince stage where that energy tends to— once he kind of finds out who he is, we talked about wholeness before, you find a sense of who you are, you have that sense of wholeness. This is what I'm bringing to the table. That energy tends to— it gets boring almost if you're constantly just serving your own needs. It's like, I want to uplift others. I want to help. I want to serve. And so that energy sort of shifts outward. It's typically when a man starts to have children, A wife and children. And so in that prince stage, he's now looking to give, and the 3 Fs then turn into feed, family, and fend, i.e., defend, which is more serving his tribe, his community. And then from that prince stage, Alison Armstrong, who was the one that taught me this, talked about this stage prior to becoming a king, which is the tunnel stage. And a man oftentimes will reach a point It sounds like you might've hit this with some of what you've shared today, but where a man tends to go into the tunnel, which is a very bleak, dark, very trying period in a man's life. It's typically when, as he's been building his kingdom, the rug gets pulled out from underneath him, whether it's his wife cheated on him or business partner stole from him, or there's a health scare or something that really rocks him to his core. And I have put a little bit of a different light on that where— because I've worked with men in that stage and I want them to just slow Breathwork is huge in this period, but it really to me is a spiritual— it's a sacred time in a man's life where he's burning off all the impurities spiritually, but also in his actual life of essentially just answering the question, what's not necessary? It's a minimalization process to streamline and to strip down, get rid of all the bullshit, get rid of all the stupid stuff you have in your head about ego and all, and just get down to really raw, real, who am I? What is this purpose in my life all about? And how do I give? And how do I build a kingdom to ultimately bless and leave a legacy of love and contribution in the world? So that roadmap, I think, is very helpful for men to just know where they are in that stage. I can get into archetypes too, because I help men with that as well, but that's something that's really helpful For me, it's been helpful for me to better understand my son, other men, and then also with communication as well.

So just going back to the ayahuasca story for a second, you know, the thing that became really, really important to me in that experience, because it was difficult, and on the one hand I'd done, you know, many journeys before, I know, I know how loving and kind it all is, meaning, you know, even in the worst of it, you know, if you're throwing up or you're, you're crapping, you know, or Whatever you're screaming, you're crying, I mean, there's a lot that's going on in a very, very safe environment, at least in the place that I've experienced this. You know, it's the knowledge I bring to it is that I'm being loved the whole way through. I mean, it's nothing but love that's carrying me through it. But at a certain point, what became real, and it's actually the through line of the book that I've got that's, you know, sitting up on the screen, but, you know, this new book, Change Proof, is a book about change and everything. Oddly enough, everything's changing. So it's like the one constant we have in our lives is that everything's constantly changing, ironically. But acceptance. So there's this truth, let's say. And again, truth is, it's not an absolute. I don't call it truth with a capital T, but to just look at things without the lens or the ego or anything else that sort of just clouds Seeing things for, for what, you know, what's there to be seen. And in that instant, or part of that night, I was going, yeah, man, you've been— God, you've just like been short with people, you know? You haven't been compassionate. You haven't been, you know, listening well. So, you know, you're an asshole. It's like, that's where they can, you know, get to the conclusion of that. But acceptance without judgment is ultimately what it means, or what helped me To move beyond or move through that darkness and into the light, there's a— to not be in judgment is a fundamentally profound thing. Like you talk about the missing, what's what you can do without, what could be missing from your life. What could be missing is judgment. So when you eradicate judgment, or that you're able to accept things without judgment, it's, it's love. It feels like love.

Mm-hmm.

It presents as love, and that's complete lightness, you know, complete light. So I wanna come back to this question of young men. Just curious if you have an opinion about whether young men are feeling more judged than they were in the past. See, I didn't grow up feeling, you know, as a young man, judged by society.

Mm-hmm.

I, I wasn't feeling like a— I wasn't thinking of myself as potentially something that's not, you know, that should feel shame or guilt or— Mm-hmm. is wrong necessarily for being just for being kind of thing. And so I know this is a very controversial kind of topic, and, you know, I'm just curious what your thoughts are on it. You know, I've lived in a house of women for a lot of years. I have 3 daughters and a wife I adore, and a son. So I do have a son, and I do— and he's in a committed relationship, which is wonderful. I just wonder for, you know, guys that are out there starting and making their way in the world right now. You know, you know, what kind of advice do you give them? I won't even put an opinion on it because I don't work— I don't work with those young men the way you do. So—

Yeah, it's a blessing and also a challenge and a struggle to be a man right now. The struggle, of course, is the word that I hear often isn't necessarily judged, but it's unappreciated. Men feel expendable. They feel like the cause of all the shit that in the world, it's our fault. There's very loud voices right now, and in many cases, understandably so, of why we've fucked things up. But there's also a political element in a lot of that I push back on because a lot of it is over the top and unfair and very destructive and actually counterproductive to what we're, I think, all wanting to create in the world, which is more safety, more love, More kindness, more strength, acceptance.

Without judgment.

Exactly. So for the men who are seeking to find their way right now, to me, the blessing is that in a way you sort of have a blank canvas because you've already been condemned. You've already created all this shit by the societal view. So it's like, what are you going to create now? There is no high standard that you have to step into. I've heard some comedic perspectives on this where it's like, oh, the bar is so low. It's easy. All you have to do is— who was it? I forget the comedian's name, but he He's like, he went out on a date and the gal said, don't you want to have sex with me? He's like, not if you don't want to. I'm not going to force you to have sex. And she's like, wow, you're a really great man. And he's like, really? Is that the standard? That's the bar that I have to pass? Right. I think in that regard, men have an obligation to create the container of love, the container, and defend it. A lot of men are so impotent in their energy and in their Intention.

Wow, the pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilient leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. Well, that's the weakness, right? Isn't that— that's where I wanted to come to, because you described the stage or the phase that we're in as a pretty, you know, that's a difficult one. Like, we're going— we're in a stage where men are weak, you said, right? So, yep, you know, we're not— maybe we're not doing sociology work here. Maybe it's more philosophy than anything else, or just You know, what your gut tells you.

Well, I think also, like, weak— oftentimes we think of weak, physically weak, impotence in their energy, etc. But weakness is also bullying. Weakness is also, you know, puffing your chest and, and being a bulldozer.

Pretending.

Um, yeah. And so there's a lot of quote-unquote weak men that are very, very physically, emotionally strong, but they're bullies essentially. They're tyrants. And that's also a shadow of true masculinity, which to me is a weakness. So we're dealing with a lot of that weakness right now where you have a lot of corruption. As I'm sure you know, there's a lot of pedophilia right now in very high elements of government and corporate big America, et cetera. And in the world, it's really tragic. And men need to hear that calling. Good men with good hearts need to hear that calling to step up and create a container of love and defend that within it— women, children, other men, other people who are unable to defend themselves. And we need to raise that standard and create that element of masculine safety and that masculine strength again. And women play a huge part in this because, as I'm sure you know, a lot of men are very driven by the love and affection of women. Right now, there's a lot of women who I believe have fallen into this societal lie that there is no difference between men and women, and/or that men are the root of all problems. It's seeped into our lexicon. It's seeped into our culture. You see it in music. You see it in movies. You see it in language. I work with women too. A lot of times, beautiful, attractive, very capable, successful women, you'll hear in their words, a disdain for men. Now, not outrightly, not necessarily even consciously, but oftentimes I'll just stop and I'll ask them, what is it that a man brings to the— because a lot of them have relationship issues. So I'll say to them, the complaint is often, I intimidate men too much, and where are the good men? And so on some levels, if you're an attractive, successful, ambitious woman, the nature of that is there's going to be fewer people in that pool, fewer men in that pool to select from. However, a lot of times they don't understand that they're actually repelling the good men that they are seeking in an unconscious way because of that. And so the question that I ask them is, what can a man bring to the table that you love that no woman could do so? And a lot of times they have a very hard time answering that question because they've— and this to me is that societal sort of pot that we're in right now— is everybody's very clear on how men have screwed things up. We're all very clear on which ways men have messed up relationships or race or economics or whatever. But all right. Okay, cool. Well, then what's the vision? What are we working towards? How should men behave? What can a man bring to the table that a woman can't? And that's something that I encourage people to really think about and really reflect on. But in my opinion, there's an element of truth and strength and protection that men bring to the table that On average, most women can't bring as much to the table. Now, that's not a knock at all on women, and we need to have the humility and the emotional maturity to hear that, to receive that, and say, cool. Because the very same question is true too. What do women bring to the table that men cannot?

Absolutely.

Most men I know can write books on that. Men love women. Might be frustrated by them, and they might be pissed off or whatever, but men love Women. We love feminine energy. We love affection and, and the nurturing and, and energy that they bring to our lives often. So obviously I'm painting in very broad strokes here. There's plenty of men that don't, or they're assholes, uh, much worse ways than I'm sure you, you feel like you've been an asshole. But the bullying energy, you know, the abusive types. So,

man, there's, there's so many places we can go with that. I appreciate you going there. I mean, the follow-up questions for me would be just You know, I'm gonna— I'll say something, but I don't know that we're gonna have the moment now to do this. I was reading in the paper about a week ago about protests that are happening, a group of men in South Korea that are— have taken up arms, not physically, but verbally and socially, through social media and through protests and things. They've taken up arms against the feminists, or what they, you know, call feminism in their country, in South Korea, because they feel like they're being marginalized and they're being punished for the same things sins of their fathers and their grandfathers. And, you know, you've got all these generations of men that treated women like shit. And culturally speaking, uh, almost— not almost— that ingrained in culture was a degradation, a marginalization, and an outright oppression of women. And so that's, you know, the pendulum has swung in many ways quite a bit. I don't know that it's gone to another extreme, but I think just young men who are not responsible for that, who don't bear the scarlet letter for their fathers or their grandfathers, are standing up and saying, this is not right. This is hypocrisy. This is double standards, and stuff like that. That's a whole long conversation, I think, all by itself. But as long as I brought it up, any thoughts to share?

There's definitely— if you understand politics, if you understand history, there's a very clear political agenda right now to demonize men. And so I think some healthy pushback on that is healthy. But if you're finding that you're doing it to the people in your lives, the women in your lives, et cetera, in an unproductive way, I think that's counterproductive. So to understand that there's a political piece to this, I think is key. On the other hand, Part of the reason why that's taken such root is because there has been abuses. There has been— a lot of women don't feel safe, and they don't feel— and they've been hurt. They've been raped. They've been absolutely violated. And so as men, we should hear and feel that collective calling to step the fuck up and start to create safety, create the— And so part of that is going to be We're going to have to take it in the nuts a little bit, but we're going to— in that, you have to love yourself in the process. You have to create those own boundaries. This is something I had to do in my relationships and say, okay, I hear you. I feel that I'll receive some of that so I can. But at some point that becomes imbalanced as well. And so we have to push back lovingly, clearly communicate that where those boundaries are to help women and other people fit into that loving protective container. And it's not going to happen overnight. This is probably a generational thing, but it is the duty and obligation that we have before us right now.

It is one of the most important conversations I think that we can be having actually. So I'm glad we even touched on it as superficially as we did, but I think it's really important. One more thing that I want to ask you about here, and that is that we started with truth. This podcast is called Change Proof. I'd love for you to give me a sense of Just how you build a bridge between truth and being change-proof.

A bridge between— those are a little bit subjective. So can you detail that out a little bit more, what you mean?

So the concept of change-proof, you and I, maybe we spoke about this before we hit the record button, the way that we deal with the kind of changes we're talking about. Like, so for example, here's this change in how women are, are being heard, how they are using their voice, how men feel or are being treated in response to that shift, to that change. So that's, you know, there's this constant change, but there's some really profound changes that are happening right now. You're a truth seeker, as you said at the beginning. I wrote a book called Change Proof. So I want to see how it is that if there's a bridge we build between, or a connection even, you know, the bridge is just a way to connect 2 points, let's say, but connecting truth and this concept of being able to, well, accept change without judgment, because that's how I define being change-proof. It's unconditional love and acceptance of something without it being subject to judgment.

There's a great book by the name of Good to Great by Jim Collins. And it's a fascinating book where he tracks all these companies and he compares how 2 companies in any given era, how they both had access to the same market, essentially the same amount of resources, good management teams, et cetera. But for one reason, one company just took off and went to the stratosphere and then sustained that greatness while the comparative company may have achieved some level of greatness, but then fell off the tracks for some reason. In that whole process, what he and his team did was they, through a process of— they removed everything to see what was left, and they found that the companies that achieved greatness and sustained greatness came down to 2 elements, that they had a sense of their core values, but they were also always willing to stimulate progress. And to me, being change-proof in truth is there's an anchoring of truth in the core values of who you are as an individual, who you are as a family, who you are as a country, as a world, as a human. There are senses of core values that are timeless and will never change. But in our modern society with technology and population and geopolitical connections, et cetera, there's, as you said, constant change. So how do we stimulate that progress? To me, it's this element of taking all that's new, new technologies, new perspectives, new all of that, and then feeding it through a funnel of, well, does it meet our core values? Simon Sinek does a lot of really great work in this space too, helping individuals and companies have a sense of why, what is their purpose? And that to me is a grounding foundation of stability, of certainty that you can feed your whole life through to make sure that there is that constant while also not being so timid, so stiff, so fixed that you break because things are changing so fast. I think of it as like, and I always do this, I hope this makes sense, but I think of it as like a sapling tree, very anchored, strong in its anchoring, but very flexible at the same time. As a kid, when we used to play out in the woods, it's very easy to break a dead branch because it's stiff and brittle. It's fixed. But you try to break a live branch and sometimes you can sit there and twist on that thing forever because it doesn't doesn't freaking break. That flexibility— and to me, this is the masculine and feminine, right? That ability to flex and to be and to change, to me, is a very feminine flow energy. You're with the current where it goes, but at the same time, you have that lighthouse energy, the masculine bedrock of truth, that which we're always seeking. And so, you know,

I love

that. I'm full of metaphors. I can talk—

No, buddy. I love how you're also giving a lot of resources to people, you know, to think about people and works like Jim Collins' Good to Great or other works. Just because I've asked the question on topic of Change Proof, the bridge that I would build, just looking at this concept of truth and my work with organizations is always focused on the topic of how those organizations are operationalizing the resilience of individuals so that strong individuals or resilient individuals create resilient organizations. And those organizations are what you just described. I mean, a sapling or the willow tree that bends in the wind and doesn't break, has that flexibility but has strength as well. That's what resilience ultimately looks like, that we are able to not just survive storms, but be stronger in the process. We're always in a constant stage of growth. I mean, that's what the future— the future is always going to teach us something. There's wisdom from the future, and it always teaches the same thing. that we are, we are good in the present. We are growing in the present. That's, that's what it will teach us every single time we listen to it. We just, you know, so caught up in, in, you know, fears mostly of what might happen. So yeah, for, for, for companies in particular to look at the changes that are happening and then be able to pause, ask, and choose a path And that's the model, is to pause, to ask, and to choose a path that is more resilient for the individuals and the organization itself, I think is really key. And truth, this idea of truth, I think fits in that ask category, to pause and then to ask. You ask questions not with the intention of being told lies. You ask questions with the intention of being told the truth.

Mm-hmm.

And to ask Tough questions may lead to some tough answers. That's the truth. Will at times. But those answers themselves are— they are— it's like nutrients in the soil, to keep to your metaphor. I was like, that's the water, that's the rain, it's the sun, it's the nutrients in the soil that help things grow and be both flexible and strong. Peter, I have just so loved the conversation. We'll stop here, but I'm so looking forward to our conversation on your podcast. Would you say the name of your podcast so folks can tune in and check that out too?

Sure. Thank you. It's Wired for Impact. Wired for Impact. You can find it on Apple, Spotify, just about anywhere you can find a podcast. And I'm very much looking forward to that too. In fact, I had to bite my tongue a few times because I'm— the podcaster in me is like, oh, I gotta ask all these questions, but I don't want to. I'm like, I'll save it for mine. Let him ask the questions here.

So yeah. And you can find out more too about Peter and his show and his podcast at ImpactNow.com, is that right?

Correct.

Way cool, way cool. Well, folks, if you love this episode, we'd love to hear from you. And if you have feedback otherwise, we'd love to hear that too. It's like feedback is oxygen for us. So share it with a friend, subscribe, tell other people, comment. We'll answer back. I promise it'll be me, by the way, just in case you're wondering. And if you also would love to find out more about your own resilience at this moment in time, Given all the changes that are happening and the types of truths, not, you know, lovely, wonderful, beautiful truths, as well as challenging truths that we're dealing with, some of which Peter and I got to talk about today. You can take a resilience assessment for— with no strings attached. It's entirely a gift. You can go to resiliencerank.com, resiliencerank.com, and you can take that resilience assessment. Not only get some answers immediately with respect to your mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual resilience, but also get a resource kit. Again, that's just entirely our gift to you all. And I'll also have some, some follow-up thoughts, so stay tuned after Peter and I say goodbye. I'm gonna circle back and just, uh, ruminate on some of the wonderful insights that Peter King shared with us today. Peter, it's been a blessing and a pleasure to have you on the

Thank you so much, Adam. It's been an honor. Thank you.

Well, that was a great, wonderful conversation. At least I was so just fascinated with listening to Peter's thoughts and his philosophies on so many topics. Clearly, this is a guy who's done a lot of personal development work, work on himself, has read and can connect the dots between the things he's read, the experiences he's had, the work he's done with people like Dr. Joe Dispenza and others, so that ...that we can better understand his position on things. And through that conversation, or through his sharing those insights, I think I just feel like I'm more clear now about this construct and what truth is really, you know, its place in so many things right now. I, you know, we started the conversation by him saying he's a truth seeker, and I thought, well, geez, that's a tough road, man. Yeah. to be a truth seeker, because the truth is not always rosy. And not everybody, you know, asks about the truth or inquires that deeply, because sometimes what we are shown or what we will see means that there's more work to do. There's— we've got to go back to the drawing board. We have to be humble in the face of that truth so that we can build from something that is, is substantial. You know, so often in old Biblical analogies and stories, we hear about the sands of the desert, and that description of the sands, the blowing of the sands, was a way to talk in many ways about our souls, the development of our souls, and how if we're not building a life on something stable like a rock, then we're sort of— we can be blown about like the wind or like the sand in the wind. And that creates A lot of pain because we can feel lost. I think we go through phases and stages in our lives when we do feel lost. We feel like we are like just little grains of sand being blown around in this wind that is, you know, can feel cruel even at times. But when we're committed to truth, as Peter King was talking about, I think something is really— something different happens. And I was sharing the story about me on a journey recently in Costa Rica, on an ayahuasca journey, where My intention in the first journey, the first of 4 that are scheduled for a week-long retreat, I was asking for the truth. I was asking to get it like right between the eyes. You know, we got to be careful, or maybe don't be careful asking for things because everything that we get is just what we need, I feel. I mean, I'm net positive on everything and I want to stay that way, that everything that we are experiencing I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof Podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to the podcast, the podcast to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy. And I believe we're meant to experience everything that we are experiencing because it enables us to serve. It enables us to develop, to grow. That's all this is just about, our growth. In the end, we grow. We grow or we die. So, you know, we're growing. That's the mode we're in. And if you want to grow more, you want to grow faster, you want to grow Stronger, bigger, deeper, I think truth is the way in. So I was just so happy that Peter started there as a truth seeker. And so the opportunity to see things when you ask for the truth, to see things and then to accept those things that you see without judgment, it gives you this opportunity to then move forward from that place better because you now are not blind about whatever it is that you've been asking to see the truth of. And so even in my own journey, you know, the first night I was asked for truth about myself and who I'd seen I'd become, and it was difficult because there were things— there was work to do. There was like, back to the drawing board here, back to compassion, back to listening. Back to thinking better, more right thinking versus wrong thinking, things like that. And more humility to come back to a place where ego is not driving the vehicle, at least not all the time and not without supervision. So, and I got just to close the loop, I suppose, on my time recently in Costa Rica, The next night was this complete lightness, complete feeling as though my heart was healing and that my soul was being restored to me. And by that, I mean that a part of me that separated or felt separated early on in my life, just because we all experience things that we can't make sense of when we're kids. I was bullied as a kid and couldn't make sense of that. And I had I watched my parents sometimes arguing and I had no control over that. But I thought maybe, I suppose at that age, I blamed— I just meant it meant that there was something wrong with me or what have you. I mean, it's difficult to sort of know exactly what it means to not live in fear when the bulk of our lives we've lived in fear in some way. And I lived in fear a lot of my life, a lot of childhood fear of things that I don't understand, things that are in the unknown, things that are uncertain. So part of my adult journey in the last 10 years has really been to embrace the uncertain, to embrace the unknown, to look for the truth in things and in myself. And even when I find things that are ugly or things that don't make sense, I know that there's the process of exploring without judgment those things that I don't don't understand or that I can't see or that are uncertain produce this light, this ability to grow toward the light. And that's what the book Change Proof is really about. And that has been my journey, literally and figuratively. And it's an ongoing journey because that's the thing about it. It requires— every day is a brand new day. Every day is a new opportunity to be vigilant about how it is that we look at the world, the truth that we seek, the changes that are around us, and how it is that we either embrace those changes without judgment, or we reject them, or we rail against them, or we ignore them. And we know that in personal matters and in our business matters, that those that bury their heads in the sand, you know, are left at a loss. And I'd say that those that resist change or have fear of change, when change is the ever-present constant of the universe, of our business lives, our personal lives, every aspect of Mother Nature, change is the constant. If we resist change in any way, we're at a loss. We're not working with everything that we have at our disposal, that every resource that we've got. But when we are open, completely open, to change without judgment, that we can embrace it, even that change that we don't understand, that we are able to leverage the power of what we don't understand, of our obstacles, of our blind spots, of the unknowns and the uncertainties in our world. When we actually look at those things differently, those things change the way they look. The truth for me is that it is our greatest freedom to see things as we do. It's a freedom that no one can ever take from us. It's a freedom we have regardless of where we live or what regime of government we live under, or whether we're advantaged financially or otherwise, or we're disadvantaged. The greatest freedom, the freedom that we're born with, that nothing can take from us is this capacity to make meaning of what is happening in our lives and what is happening around us. That's fundamentally what I call, or have been saying recently, is a Nelson Mandela mindset. To honor Nelson Mandela, here's a guy for years and years, for more than 20 years, 27, 28 years, was imprisoned in a cell. And despite physical imprisonment, no one could imprison his mind. No one could imprison the thought or the way that he was able to see the future, which ultimately not only meant emancipation, physical emancipation, but his being able to emancipate an entire country from apartheid. And that doesn't happen without a catalyst. And the catalyst to me was what was happening between the ears of that wonderful— and that man that transformed our world. So we have that freedom as well. We're not often imprisoned, hopefully. And if we are, again, it's no different. There's this fundamental capacity that we have think our way through the world. And truth, as Peter King helped us to explore today, truth is, is one of those areas that when we're able to embrace truth, we're change-proof. We're not looking to see truth as good or bad. We're not judging it in any way, shape, or form. And so, you know, we're change-proof then. And I love this conversation with Peter to explore that, to get into it. And of course, you know, how far could we get into it? Just a little bit, really. But hopefully it was just enough to whet your appetite for more and hope that you are inspired to get your own copy of Change Proof. See, uh, explore, read, and let us know what you think of the insights that we share in the book. Wonderful stories, incredible interviews, a lot of collective wisdom, and then some thoughts of my own. As well. And so with that, love this conversation with Peter King. If you did, please let us know. Please share it with someone. If you didn't, please let us know. Let us know that as well so we can continue to embrace the truth and then work with it. So thank you and have a wonderful rest of your day, your evening, wherever we find you in the world. Ciao and much love.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insight To build resilience and become change-proof. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcast. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof teams, visit adammarkel.com/becomechangeproof.