Built in the Pit: Chris Duffin on Resilience, Accountability, and the Discipline to Rise

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What's up, my good people? Welcome to the CJ Moneyway Show, powered by CJ Moneyway Entertainment and the Believe Network. Purpose is the blueprint and legacy is the mission. Today's conversation is about resilience, discipline, and what it really means to transform Activity into Purpose. My guest today, Chris Duffin, a world record-holding strength athlete, best-selling author, resilience mentor, and innovator leader, often known as the Mad Scientist of Strength. I don't know if you guys are watching this or listening to this, but I understand why they call him the Mad Scientist of Strength, because I'm not going to mess with this guy. Hey, so what's up, Chris, man? Welcome to the show.

Thanks, man.

Looking forward to some good conversation this morning.

Good morning. So, Chris, let me ask you, man, some people turn adversity into strength while others let it break them.

Well, I got to see a lot of that with the life that I lived growing up. It broke a lot of people. Like, I, you know, my backstory is I grew up homeless in the wilderness. So we're talking dealing with murders, drug trafficking, human trafficking. It was pretty rough. I wrote a best-selling book about the experiences, but. In the course of that, I saw people break all around me. And I think it's important to understand, I frame a lot of things like in the essence of going into the gym. And we have to understand that there is a different baseline level of resilience that everyone has. So there's certain people that can walk into the gym and they can handle a higher load than most. But the beautiful thing is, no matter what your baseline is, you can increase it. You can build your resilience. Anyone can go into the gym. And if you're moving, you've got a lower baseline than someone else, you can build that up. And that's the beautiful thing about it, is being able to then look at the opportunities to grow yourself, to look at those times in life and go, oh, this is woe is me, things are bad, this is the way life is, I'm the person with a bad back, I'm the person that I'm the person, like, you can create these stories or you can turn that inward and go, "Man, I'm going to be so freaking proud when I'm on the other side of this. When I get to say that I walked through this brutal time and I came out on the other side," like, just acknowledging that and then celebrating that fact. Like, if you look at any business book or if you're working in any entity, just like you'll hear these stories all the time around the glory days. They'll tell you if you're working in a company, they'll be like, yeah, you should have been here back in the day. And if you unwind and go back to when that was, it was the pit. It was like they couldn't wait to— everything's going to be better when we're out of this. But then later, like, I'm here, you talked about this, I'm in Portland, Oregon, the home of Nike, right? And go pick up Phil Knight's Shoe Dog book, and it romanticizes this period in the '70s and '80s when they were almost going under constantly. He was having to get loans from the bank. Like, it was just absolutely romanticized, and so do the people then. But it's also, if you were at that point, it was horrible. They couldn't wait. Everything was going to be better once they got to the other side of it. That's when it was going to be worth it. But it's actually those action book moments that write life. And if you can come out of that and not let it drive you down too far, like, you're stepped up. You can handle a little bit more the next time. And so every time you can use that now to go, hey, maybe I should be intentful and purposeful about the pits that I step into. Like, where am I lacking at life? Where are the things that I can develop that I'm afraid of? Like, I see that opportunity, I see that exciting thing, that place I want to go, but fear puts those blinders on. I'm worried about all that, and I just never take the step. And it's not about this mantra of burning the candle at both ends, taking on every challenge. It's like purposefully going, hey, what's the stuff I want to move into? I want to start my own business. If you can't have a hard conversation with someone, maybe you need to just start doing that with the people around you or your coworkers or someone. How are you going to manage an entity? Not just because you own it and you're the boss. You're going to suck if you haven't had the practice. Like, take those micro pits, these micro moments, and step into that hardship purposefully. So not every single thing. Use your bandwidth where you need, but you're going to build on that. And the more of those minor ones that you take, it's going to build you stronger for those big moments in life. But the caveat here is it's a never-ending process because you're going to get to that promised land at some point. I did whatever. You got there. Don't let ego come over. Don't redefine. Don't be like, I'm looking down on everybody else that hasn't got it. Like, guess what? You just moved the goalpost up. You've risen higher. It's farther to fall. Like, and we're all human and, and you can't relax. Like, you still have to intentionally choose, like, take some time, do the self-care, relax for a little bit. If you're training, again, I love these training analogies. Hey, you take a weekend off, or every now and again you go on vacation, you take a deload week for a week. Like, and you come back from that, you're stronger. But if I go to Cabo and I hang out for 6 months drinking daiquiris, you know, and gambling or whatever it is, guess what? I'm going to get soft. And you will get soft mentally and you'll get soft physically. That is nature. Like, if I break my arm and I put a cast on, what starts happening immediately? The muscle starts to atrophy. This is That is life. So there's actually, in exercise science, it's called the specific adaptation to imposed demand. But it is emotional, it's mental. And if you take that same cycle, it looks like a little square root symbol, right? So you've got this dip in front of you, got the small point on the square root, and then you got the big upper piece, and you're on the small part looking, going, I want to be up there, I want to do that thing, I want to be there, I want to go to school, change jobs, start a business, whatever it is., but you're over here and you got to take that step and you've got this. That's the precipice. And it's just about recognizing what is the right time to make those decisions. When is this mixture of excitement with anxiety and fear that are all these signals, this twisting in your gut that tells you, hey, that's the right thing to do despite it. You can think about when you're younger, talking to that hot number over at the way at the bar, and then maybe taking that step further and actually moving to a relationship. Like those are all those emotions. None of those was like came without, you know, some second guessing, some anxiety, some things mixing in you, like, but you took that step and we got to quit falling out of that practice because we get to a point where most people in their 30s just, they find comfort and they just stick with it. And they're just on that slow decline down. They're never taking that choice to go, I'm going to step in and that first step. So first one is the precipice recognizing the second step is is the plunge. You've decided at this point, you've made the decision, you've stepped into the unknown, and you're like, oh shit, what have I done? You got this whirlwind of emotions and self-doubt and all these things running around yourself. This is a time for reflection, to spend the time thinking about why you feel the way that you do or experiencing the emotions that you are, because you can learn more about yourself. And The value in that is just like understanding your value proposition, like who you really are, why you want to do the life that you want to live. And there's no better opportunity when you're like forced into the, you know, to ask those questions. And the common mantra, you know, in culture, life, media is no fear to turn it away, to just work through, shut down the emotions. And it's like, there's an opportunity like to do some learning here. Like, And I talked about that process in what I call the pit. I call this process the 6 Ps, by the way. It's literally the specific adaptation to impose demand cycle, like, laid out into your life. The precipice, the plunge, the pit, and then this pull, that long pull climb out of the pit where we've acknowledged, we celebrated, and then we leverage that to get our best performance. Right. And that pull is— there's no glory in it. It's all about discipline. No fanfare, no big accomplishments. It's just day after day now, just doing the work and building to get to that peak, that promised land, that place that you wanted to be. And when you get there, like I said, be aware. Don't make the bigger fall. Don't reframe yourself. You move that goal line a little bit higher, take some time at the plateau, just not too long.

Right.

That, at the end of the day, is the human development cycle. And that's how you get stronger. It's being intentful. Recognizing where you're at within that cycle and then being intentful with each of the steps. And you are in these in both a microcycle and macro, larger cycles at the same time. So that framework can really help people if they then use that as a tool.

Chris, man, you said something that was interesting, man, especially in the beginning part. You said that you was in the wilderness and then you kept making the analogy as far as the pit. And so sometimes you go in there intentionally. And so as I was thinking about what you said, man, the wilderness and the pit, a lot of times, man, it's not that we going in intentionally, it's that we are purposely set there, you know what I'm saying? For the resilient mindset, for the, you know, I think about Joseph who was thrown in the pit and went to prison and things of that nature, you know what I'm saying? And then every step of the way, it was things that was developing in him was able to guide him into the point where God had already ordained him or chose him to be. And so I ask you this, man, you know, being in the wilderness, the wilderness mindset that you were saying, what made you— what was your determining factor where you said, you know what, regardless of what's happening to people or the things going on around me, I'm not going to be stuck in this wilderness, although I'm seeing what I'm seeing, but I'm seeing something bigger than what's actually in front of me?

So there's a lot of lessons that I learned in that process. I mean, for example, you know, when we're talking about the pit, when we're talking about fear, like when I was 6 years old, we are living in this, you know, meadow up in the mountains by this stream. And there's— it's in Northern California, there's rattlesnakes all over. Or sorry, I was 6. I had a 3-year-old younger brother, a 1-year-old younger sister, and another sister on the way at the time. And I was responsible for taking care of my siblings during the day, and so I was taught how to capture and handle live rattlesnakes because I had to. We had to live in that environment. We didn't have a home. I mean—

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At night, we had beams lashed up in the trees, and that's where we would sleep is, you know, in basically a tree fort. And, you know, 6 years old, holding a rattlesnake in my hand, right? And it's wrapped around my arm and just that slithery skin. You're looking into its eyes and that snake, it just, its whole intent, its purpose in life right now is to strike and kill you. And you've got fear coursing through your body.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I knew the steps I've been taught how to, like, I, there was a reason I was holding it. I caught it in a specific manner. I was able to pick it up in a specific manner. I was holding it right behind its jaws where I had control of it. I knew how to kill the snake without the venom penetrating the meat because we were going to eat the thing tonight. And it's a lot of small lessons like that because the lesson there, I mentioned the no fear thing. Like, if I said, I'm just going to disregard fear, I'd be dead. Like, you have to respect the fear. But at the same time, if I let the fear overpower me, I would be dead. It would shut me down from being able to concentrate on the steps and the actions and the process that I needed to. I find that that affects so many people in the world today. We have this fear of what are we going to lose? All these others. I know I'm diverging from your question a bit. I'll get back to it. But those fear blinders shut people down. They're not able to realize their full potential, those peaks and that growth and the places that they could be if they follow those cycles because they're constantly worried about what's going to— I'm going to lose my job and then I'm going to lose my house and my wife's going to— like all these, whatever it is. Like it's clamping down their ability to really realize what they're capable of, what they really want to do, and how they want to live in life. And so those lessons are really valuable. But the thing that set me on that path was when taking some of those unique lessons that I had in that, but also the things that I was responsible for. So I ended up, as I said, taking care of my sisters. I had 3 younger sisters and a younger brother. I had to be there and be present to get them out of that life. So I made the choice. I was a state-level athlete. I was valedictorian. I got full-ride scholarships to college. And then when I was in college, I ended up taking out— getting custody of my 3 younger siblings, and I started raising them while I was working full-time doing that to help get them out of that environment. That is because I'd seen so many people destroyed. Like you said, Life is hard. It comes at you. You said so many things like get pushed on people. And that's if you don't purposely develop and choose to walk the path of resilience, you're going to find some comfort and you're going to go, but you're going to go on this slow decline. And then all of a sudden, guess what? Life comes at you. Life's going to come at you hard and something's going to happen and you're going to be— you just— you're going to have been in Cabo for 6 months relaxing and you're soft and you're weak and you just shut down. And we see this happen with people. All the time. Maybe they were really powerful individuals younger in life, but they let that happen and then something happens later and they just lock up. Maybe a family member dies or something happens and they just, they can't respond. They can't process. They can't make the steps that need to be had because that's the thing. Like, life comes at you. Life is hard and we need to develop resilience and be active in that process. It's not just physical strength that's important. It's powerful to have emotional, mental, spiritual strength. Like, you need to have those pillars in your life.

Yeah, yeah. You know, you remind me of something that I'm working on right now, especially my speaking platform with my mentor, resilient mindset. You know, the mindset of a Panther, that's something that I'm working on right now. It has to be a mindset. You know, you have to— this is what you have to think, because like you said, if you're not really focus on, you know what I'm saying? Like, okay, it comes, it appears for the moment, and then persecution comes in and things come about because we gonna be in that pit, you know. I know it's a story in, uh, Chris Bell, it talks about he was in slippery pit, a snowy pit, and it was slippery and he had to fight the lion in the slippery pit. Now that's a scary situation, even more scary probably than you with that big old Great Dane right now. But I see why you can handle a Great Dane because at 6 years old you had this snake want to slit your throat, but you will still— that, you know, say that's just the fear part, you know. Then in life, you know, say, because there's levels to it. Like as you said with the CDs, it's levels to different things. And the first level is getting over fear. Once you get over the fear, then you can get the transformation. When you get over the transformation, now I can fight my giants, you know. A lot of people think they fighting giants, but they ain't got past the first part yet, you know what I'm saying. They fighting on the wrong level. All I'm saying, man. And so let me, let me ask you a question, uh, Chris, man. What does real resilience look like outside of social media motivational posts?

Yeah. Real resilience is— I see so often people want to post these motivational memes on social media, or they have them on their wall. And it's like you try to get yourself ramped up about something like that, and it gets you impassioned for a while. Maybe it's a few days, maybe it's a few weeks, maybe it's a few months. Deep-seated motivation comes from purpose. It comes from values. It comes from understanding those things. Like, if you're going to put in the deep hard work that needs to be done, enact real change in this world or in your life, this isn't something that happens because you got yourself motivated and you hit a training plan for 6 months to lose some weight. Like, it's Like, for me, like, ending that generational trauma that affected my family— and I got awards, all this stuff on the wall behind me— like, that means nothing compared to that. But that took decades of hard work without fanfare and just putting one foot in front of the next. And if you're gonna be in something for a long period of time, you got to be able to do it without the motivational poster, without the rah-rah, without the fanfare. And that comes from knowing your purpose and your values. So that's why I said you got to use those opportunities when they present themselves to turn into and meditate into those emotions that scare you, that you want to turn away from. Maybe it's depression, maybe it's shame, whatever it is. But those are opportunities and windows to give you a better understanding of who you are and what you want to do. And that's the most powerful piece of motivation that you can have in the world. Is living in alignment with your values.

I like that, man. So let me ask you this, Chris, man, because you said something to the point where, you know, I'm writing something to the first one chosen. And when you're the first one chosen or the first one called to step out and do something, ain't no script for that, you know what I'm saying? You like out there and you got to figure it out on your own. It ain't— it wasn't nobody before you —can show you how to do this, you know what I'm saying? So what you saying that, you know, you went to college and you was able to just— and things of that nature. So I guess my one question for you right now is, to do that and to change the trajectory of their lives, man, how appreciative are they to this day about the steps that you took to bring them out of what they were doing also? Very.

Uh, it's a unique relationship that we have, like I'm a brother, but, you know, a father figure as well at the same time. And I've always been there as that. So yeah, I think it's appreciated. Same time, you can never hand that. It's a difficult path, you know, in that sense, like helping them get there as well as being a parent. Like, you can't just hand things to people at the same time as well. Like, you've got to be a guide on that path for them to find those same things. Like, if you push every obstacle out of the way, they're never going to learn that resilience, that muscle of that they can fail and come back around. And if they're willing to work hard enough or be creative and just continue to work, to have the confidence in themselves to just keep driving. And that is, I think, a big miss that we see a lot in the world right now with some of the parenting that has happened over the last, you know, 10, 20 years. And it's created a very soft subset of population, right? Because, and it's not their fault, like they never had the opportunity to build the confidence in themselves and being able to actually do something themselves to overcome something instead of like, hey, you know, I'm going to make sure my kid has no problems. Anytime something happens, I'm going to step in and take care of this. Like it's a delicate balance. I don't think anybody has that answer. How to do that correctly, and we can all just kind of manage it and try to forge that path. But I think that there has certainly got to be a balance of like allowing for failure. Like, that's the only way I think to truly grow in that manner. I think I got off track a little bit, but it's an important—

No, no, no, I love it. Hey, that's what the CJ Moneyway Johnson Show is about, man. This ain't no scripted, you know what I'm saying, thing. This is about life, man. These are life lessons, and you know, And as we know, that in divine time, whatever the conversation is, man, that's what's meant to be talked about at that time, because that's where the spirit is leading, maybe. As you say that, you know, my thing is, as far as the parenting too, and we can go back to probably 30 years ago, you know what I'm saying? Things like Grandma and Granddaddy back in the day, you know, saying Mom and Daddy, the way that structure and things was, man, you know, like you said, we ain't got softness within our children, especially young men nowadays. And you know, one thing that I say is this, man, at some point you got to take it out the mouth, man. You can't continue keeping that thing in their mouth like it's a pacifier. And like you say, they would never learn when they bump their head how to get out of that situation. You know, the Bible, it say that, you know, if you make your bed— we old enough to know— you make your bed, you lie in it. You know what I'm saying? You're gonna lie in that bed that you make no matter how rough and tough it get. But Mama won't always come to the rescue and put that and put it in their mouth as everything gonna be all right when they become adults, man. They still looking for that same treatment, you know. And so you have no resilience in because you've always depended on somebody else, you know what I'm saying, get you out of or do for you what you refuse to do for yourself. Sometimes just gotta take that, you gotta take it out of the mouth and just let them knock the bump their head a few times. That's just my assessment. Don't get mad at me, moms.

Yeah, absolutely. And we all have the opportunity of like deciding specifically who we're going to be in this world and stepping into that person, becoming that person. And unfortunately, I think this leads to a lot of people looking for excuses and creating— I hate the word— this victim mentality, but that's accurate. Making the choice to go, I am this way and this is the person I am because of those things. Yeah, those happen to you, but those are all things that you could also choose to grow stronger from. And I don't want to, you know, speak, you know, loosely about someone's trauma or things that they've experienced. Like, shit's hard sometimes in life, and there's brutal things that happen, but you still have a choice of where to go and what to do next and deciding who you're going to be. And the only way, the only way that you have to grow is to be able to take whatever accountability that you can in this world for where you're at or how things haven't worked out your way and go, what did I have a choice on? Like, hey, I got screwed by this horrible workplace and let go, and now I don't have a job and I don't have unemployment or whatever. Well, what signals could you have seen in that process? How could you have managed that better? Like, take accountability for those pieces. Because if you don't, there's literally no way for you to grow or become better. Like, I had an unethical businessman come in and do a hostile acquisition of this globally recognized brand that I had. Billionaire legal in-house counsel. They pulled some maneuvering, did some stuff. Guess what? I could blame that all day long on them, but I have to take the choices that I did in that and look at going, You know, I brought that person in, I did this, I did that, I wasn't smart enough in these areas. Like, I have to take that accountability and go, I failed. Even if I could put it— I could easily paint this story all over the place to myself, and usually it's the story to yourself about how I was wrong, this environment. Or I can go, how can I grow and be stronger? And I said, I'm going to come out of this, take those fear blinders off. You know, I gave myself one day to mourn, and then the next day was like, all right, I'm excited, I'm excited about where I'm going next and the freedom that I now have, right? Because that was constraints, like being in an environment, having a board, you know, having investors, all this stuff around what I could and couldn't do. So I'm like, that's like, look for the positives, looks for the things that change. And that's the value of taking those fears— to tying this back to some of my conversation earlier— the value in taking the fear blinders off. Sometimes we're constrained by the life that we have created and the fear of losing that, losing all the things around us that we've built. And that fear is what's holding us from seeing that creative potential and how better aligned we could be in life. And doing that practice of, like, what if I did lose whatever? Whatever you're afraid of that's getting you second-guessment, do the same thing. Meditate into it, right? Pray into it. What you're going to do is spend the time and go, that happened. Instead of going, what if this and this and this and all that stuff? It did happen. What would I do if I started from absolutely nothing right now today? What would I do if I started from nothing? Pretend that point and that's going to open up your ideas because you spend a week just imagining, creating this plan of where do I go if I had to start from scratch, whatever it is in the world, everything stripped away. And now you get to roll back to reality after a week and go, oh, I got a home, I got a partner that loves me, I've got like, I got all these other things to leverage. And what I found in that process is I've got a lot of capacity. I'm a strong person. I've got a lot of knowledge. I've got a network that I've built. I've got like all these things.

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The reality of like where you're at now And you'll see so many opportunities just roll out in front of you with doing that practice.

This episode is brought to you by CJ Moneyway Media, where podcast ideas become platforms. Through the Moneyway Lab Masterclass, CJ shares real lessons from the lab for creators building their voices brick by brick. From powerful guest conversations, storytelling that inspires growth, CJ Moneyway Media is about one thing: building legacy through stories. Learn more at CJMoneyway.com.

Music style, music style.

I like it, man. But I think the most important thing that you said in this whole conversation is the accountability part. You have to be accountable for you, as you were saying about the person that may have lost their job. You know, I got shiested at work. Well, check this out. Maybe you got shiested at work because you was coming to work late every day. When you got there, you wasn't doing nothing, you know, whatever, whatever. You wasn't doing what was asked. So your actions and your accountability is what led these actions to being fired. But you want to blame everybody else for, oh, they didn't like me. Well, no, they didn't like your performance because you wasn't doing that, and then you was always late and you wasn't dependable. Those are the things that we overlook in life, man. Take accountability for your actions, and once you do that, life can start opening up, man, and you can start seeing things more clearly. Because as Chris said, You know, life got a way of humbling you a little bit, you know what I'm saying? And then it got a way of having you to appreciate the things that I have opposed to things I don't have. If you don't believe me, go read the Book of Job, man. It'll let you know everything you need to know about a man losing everything at one time. Yeah. So, so, Chris, man, let me ask you this, man. We've talked about it. You stumbled upon me earlier about your siblings. Living in the wilderness in the Pacific Midwest. Let me ask you this. How did those early experiences shape your mindset that drives you today?

I think the powerful thing for me was realizing that I could figure out a way around anything. Like having to be in an environment where it's like, hey, water's pouring in my tent, I can't sleep. Like there was so much experiences around shaping my environment and struggle and failure all over at the same time and just like you come back and you work another way. And I realized that no matter what you want to do, you can figure it out. Like, because I was forced into so much forming that environment. And like I said, maybe I failed 15 times. It didn't matter. But that gave me an inordinate amount of confidence in what I wanted. Anything that I failed at, I knew or know that I could overcome that.. It's not being smarter, being stronger, whatever. It's just that mental fortitude to try again and again and again and again. And it's not the same way. It's trying different ways. It's being creative. It's not being the hardest worker in the room. It's being more creative, being like— it may be any number of things that others aren't willing to do to come back around. And so I came from nothing. Absolutely nothing. We made, I think my entire family of 6 lived on less than $5,000 a year. You know, when we're talking like to take a shower, I'd have to take a gallon jug, fill it in the stream and set it on a rock all day so it'd warm up and pour it over yourselves. You know, kids making fun of me in school because I smell bad because during the winter it was like heating the pot on the stove and I got to step out back in the snow and try to bathed myself. Like, we moved all the time. I must have changed schools 20 times. I spent time in state care, you know, our family was preyed upon and we were literally sold into a human trafficking ring. And just a lot of bad shit that I experienced. And but I had that confidence and I put it to work. So I've accomplished a lot in my life. And if I listed off all the accolades, it would sound like I'm sitting up here on an ego fest. The only reason I share that and share my story in my book is to empower others. At the end of the day, the biggest thing holding people back from accomplishing the life that they want is themselves. You can fly to whatever heights you want if you're able to remove those shackles that you put on yourself. And so that's the first half of my book. It's called The Eagle and the Dragon. It was a bestseller in philosophy and stoicism and other stuff, like 8 categories when I wrote it like 8 years ago. But it doesn't sell a whole lot these days. But But the first half of the book is the eagle, and that was like the first 20-plus years of my life. It's about realizing your capability. And the second is the dragon, is the Ouroboros. So I've got a giant eagle— I had two, one on my back and front— that are covering all of it, and they're shackled trying to fly, and it ties all the way down to my own ankle. And I had that tattoo done at 20. And then I had another one done of an Ouroboros that wraps my whole upper body. It's big dragon eating its own tail, wraps all the way around, covers. So basically I'm tattooed everywhere except for what you can see right now with two tattoos. And the dragon eating its own tail, it's rebirth. But for me, it's the purposeful reinvention of oneself. It is deciding specifically who you want to be in this world and becoming that person. And That is what I learned, I think, in that life, the confidence that I can do that. I can step into whatever that is, whatever that role is, and realize it.

I love it, man. You know, I'm a big Tupac fan and he had a song back in the day, say, "The Rose That Grew From the Concrete." So I'm telling people, go out there and go get the eagle and the dragon, man, because what Chris is saying, from what I'm hearing, he's saying that If I make it out of the situation and circumstances that life had dealt me, you definitely can make it. I'm pretty sure at 6 years old, a lot of us didn't have a snake wrapped around our arm, have to provide for our younger siblings in the situations they was in. So I like encouragement, man. I like what you putting on the table. Really appreciate you putting your heart on the line, man. So, Chris, man, let me ask you. You're known as a world record holding strength athlete. What does strength training teach you about discipline and leadership?

It's interesting because I work with high performers, and sometimes you end up with these high performers in the business world that can't execute in the gym, and then vice versa. You end up with these guys that are in the gym that achieve great results, but they can't put shit together in life. And it's the same skills if you just look at it at the end of the day. The ability to go, hey, this is where I want to be, and create a plan. Like, all right, this is what I'm gonna do. This is what I'm gonna do for my training. This is what I'm gonna do for my diet. And then just sticking to that plan and having— knowing what you're going to look at as metrics to go, how do I refine this? You know, and, and just following that and being consistent with it. At the end of the day, it's going to come down— like, everybody wants to think about it is the perfect plan. They're trying to find this the perfect workout plan, the secret science that nobody has, you know, it just comes down to adherence. You can have a crap program, you can have something that doesn't make sense from the science, but if you believe it and you work hard at it and you're consistent and you just keep with it, you're gonna get results. And just sticking with that with time, and a lot of people don't truly know what hard is. There's a— in training, there's this thing called the rate of perceived effort, RPE. You get a lot of people going into the gym, and one of the first things is like just learning to teach people what hard is. They're like, man, that's heavy, I pushed hard. And it's like, we almost got to the edge of hard. Like, you have— it comes back to that same conversation. You have so much more capacity and potential than you think that you have.. And so, you have to push those edges of what your capability is. So, imagine I talked about the 6 Ps cycle, the square root. Like, training is one of those cycles. And what you're going to do is you want to go up to that edge. So, imagine you're pushing yourself to the absolute edge of what your limits are. What you want to do is be able to walk up to the edge of that cliff and kind of peer over from time to time. And we don't want to jump. We don't want to go past our capability and break ourselves.. But that edge is always kind of moving and we want to go next week, hey, let's go check in and see where it's at today. Let's go push that and see where we're at, our mental capacity, our physical capacity, and just truly seeing where you're at. And nobody else is really going to know. This is where a lot of people perform. They'll look like they're doing it and pretend because their trainer's there or their wife or they're making a video for social media. Nobody knows. Whether you've approached that edge of that cliff. And that is a self-discovery exercise. Do you have it in you to truly see what you are made of today and to consistently come back and do the same thing? Mm-hmm. And so just learning what truly hard work is and being consistent with that over time. When I chased that, I worked with a lot of people that I lifted heavy for. God, I started at 11. I did my big records at 39 and 44. So lifted for a long time. And along that, I can't tell you how many training partners, and that's how I got into the health business. I literally started opening gyms so that I could have people there to support me and have, know that, hey, I'm just, if I find somebody that's going to be a training partner, no matter what level they are, no matter what's going on, they're going to fall by the wayside at some point. And there's so many people that will come and they tell you they're dreamers. They will love to be dreamers. We're taught this in school, just dream big, dream big, dream big. It's like, create a vision. Like, a vision is like all the fucking hard work— excuse my language— but like along the way that's going to be able to get you there. And it's all the years of like feeling like you're not moving, step backwards because you hurt yourself, just the grind of like, I don't want to go. And you've got like, that's the reality of it. And you know, that needs to be painted into your vision. When we just look at this pretty, I want to be president, I want to be an astronaut, I want to be whatever, and don't take on the reality of all the things in there and you don't get the big wins. You don't get the big pats on the back and you get— it's like you feel like you're not moving and you got to just be like, that's the life that I'm choosing to live. And I'm over and over and over again. And is it a priority? Is it aligned with the values in the way that you want to live? I can't say that these are good choices. I've always been there for my family, like I said, but there's so many things that come into life and interfere with people's plans. But from training in the world achieving, that was a long path. A long time to accomplish that. And my first wife's like, that's going to change when we get married. I trained 3 days a week. It's like, well, when you have kids, it's just this constant, like, that's going to change. And it's like, these are the core things in life that I'm going to have. But it also means giving up. There's so many things. Like, if you think about high performers and you go, they've got a well-rounded life. They must be amazing to be an Elon Musk or a Bill Gates or blah, blah, blah. They're probably not happy people. They're probably very unbalanced. They're very like anybody that's like that. If you want your kids to have a life that is balanced and enjoyable, don't wish upon them to be an Olympic gold medalist or to be an NBA star. I mean, have you watched the Michael Jordan documentary? I mean, that is what a high-performance individual is. It is inherently unbalanced life, but you've got to have priorities and there's lots of things that are just going to go, that's not going to fit as well. And you've got to be willing to align and make those sacrifices. So not all this is great, but that's the reality of it. I like that too.

He said consistency. You got to be consistent even when you not getting the pats on the back. Nobody's watching. Nobody's cheering you on. That's that resilient mindset that he was talking about earlier too. Are you going to keep moving forward when it don't seem like the results are there? Get there. That's the resilient mindset that we gotta have, because you may not see the results, but you keep on working towards what you working towards, then it's the— it's always the rainbow at the other side of the mountain. And so let me ask you this, man, and I'm not gonna chop up your company name, man. I'm just gonna say you've built the Strength Company. I'll let you fill in the blank on the— how you pronounce that?

Kabuki was the equipment company, and they designed the best biomechanically sound barbells and equipment in the world. I worked with every single Major League Baseball team out there. I worked with about 80% of the NBA teams. I worked with the NBA directly, like during the shutdown when they were building the main center for them all to train with. Worked with about 70% of the NFL. That was the company that was acquired, so I'm no longer involved with that company. I founded a shoe company because a lot of what I do in biomechanics is around proper foot and ankle strength and treating that like the rest of the body and making sure that we've got a strong and stable base. And so, that is called Bearfoot, B-E-A-R. You can see the shirt I'm wearing with a big bear prop front, but you can think about a young kid running around the wilderness without shoes on. That's kind of the impetus for the brand. So, it's a little bit more like working collaresque like a lot of the minimalist shoes out there. So, it's a minimalist shoe that allows your foot to expand and work the way that you want, but it's one that's not really for hippies and runners. It's really meant for more of people that do things. So, it's all leather, suede, or canvas materials. And yeah, it doesn't work like birth control like those other ones. And then, I've got a supplement company, Build Fast Formula, and then I do my coaching. So this is my primary. So I now just an advisor to those other companies. My main work is helping people achieve a better quality of life. So looking at both their physical training, their cellular health. So we're running blood panels and optimizing everything that they're doing to enhance longevity, deal with significant issues, and then providing mentorship around tackling life business, all of that. That's called the Enhanced Executive. So it is all about optimizing your mind and your body to achieve the best that you can to support yourself in your business and your life.

I like it. So y'all heard what Chris said, man. He said 100% baseball teams when he was in this company is what he had, and 80% basketball. Well, I got an interesting tale to take here. When me and Chris was backstage, He's 80% basketball. He's from Portland, Oregon, but he did not mess with those losers over there, the Portland Trail Blazers. Out of all the basketball teams he helped with, high performers— he didn't go help Scottie Pippen them, he didn't go help Rasheed Wallace them, Terry Porter, Clyde Drexler. That's why they never won nothing, man. I don't blame you. I don't like helping losers either. David Leonard, man, don't take it personal. My man Scooter Henderson is out of there. And so, uh, Chris, man, I appreciate you coming on the show, man, dropping these nuggets, man, and being heartfelt with your story. I only got one more question for you, man, but before we go there, man, tell us where can we find you, where can we find your program, what can we find, all things Chris Duffin.

Yeah, I'm pretty easy to find. So if you type in Chris Duffin, it's like muffin but with a D, D-U-F-F-I-N. So, you can go to chrisduffin.com and find everything about me, coaching, links to the companies, or on social media platforms, you can just type in Chris Duffin or I'm typically under the handle Mad Scientist Duffin. Right now, I'm usually just doing YouTube videos. I've got a school community where I drop a ton of articles and videos. It's completely free for folks. So, I've got— if you want to learn how to move, if you want to learn about optimizing your biology, I've got 1,800 videos in my movement library, 300 hours of lectures on nutrition, everything else that you would want to know and everything there. Again, you can find that chrisduffen.com. Go there, it'll redirect you to the Enhanced Executive, but I'm trying to make it all easy for you because you just type in Chris Duffin, most anywhere you're going to get there. So, yeah, that's how you find me, Mad Scientist Duffin.

I like it. I mean, it's just like me, I want to go on a podcast, do an interview, they say, CJ, what can we find you? I said, @CJMoneyway Johnson. I ain't hard to find. You know, so I'll do all the, like, Facebook, like, oh, no, @CJMoneyway Johnson, everything will pop up. Exactly.

It's keep it easy. We got Google indexes out there.

Google, it made an index profile of people like Chris, man. Maybe not Maybe I ain't on the level that Chris did, because I probably would have helped each other, the Portland Trail Blazers, if it was me.

But, uh, anyway, maybe it's the reason they didn't win is because they didn't use my equipment.

So yeah, maybe that was the reason Jordan hit 6 3-pointers on them in the first half in the championship back in the '90s. Maybe that's the reason, you know, against my Lakers, against Kobe and Shaq, uh, in Game 7 at that one year, man. I think they really needed you there, Chris. So let me ask you this. For someone listening today who feels overwhelmed by adversity, what is the first step towards rebuilding strength and purpose?

If you're feeling overwhelmed by adversity, 3-step process that I started, I didn't fully lay out earlier, but again, I use a lot of body analogies. So it's the ACL, like your ACL in the knee. All right. Step 1 is just acknowledge, acknowledging that you're in the pit at this point in life. That is empowering. Just being able to say, this is not life. This is a moment in life, and this is where I'm at. This is a phase and a cycle. Just acknowledging it. Acknowledging allows you to do that second step, which is to celebrate. This is the story. When I get on the other side, I'm going to be so proud of myself that I'm going to be telling my grandkids about. I'm going to be writing in the action book piece on my life. This is the Phil Knight founder book of Nike, like, this is the storybook, the hardship that makes it. It's going to be the memories that you have on your deathbed going, that's the shit. I was good. I overcame this. Like, it's one of those moments. So being able to celebrate that, because we want to minimize the time. We don't want to spend a lot of time there. This process helps shrink that down. Acknowledge, celebrate. Now leverage, because you go, you know what? I care about this. The reason it's hard for me right now is I care., and I'm celebrating it. And all that together is going to combine to allow me to leverage this to bring about my best possible performance. And that's what you're going to go execute on, is that leverage, your best self coming forward to get you out of that pit and get you into— well, unfortunately, I would say fortunately, but the piece of the, the new, the long, slow steps, that climb, the pull, as you're working towards that peak where it comes down to that vision or that discipline, that consistency piece that we talked about. But that's where you're building the skills, you're building the strength for these future phases in life.

And don't get discouraged if you're in that pit and you get almost out of there and then you fall back down, because those type of situations happen as well. That's the resilient mindset. So acknowledge, celebrate, and leverage your position. Chris, man, this has been an incredible conversation. Your story reminds us that strength isn't just built in the gym, it's built through adversity, discipline, and the decision to keep moving forward even when life throws the hardest challenges your way. Hey, my man Chris, not hard to find. You can check him out at chrisduffin.com. You can check out his program, the Enhanced Executive, and Don't forget the book The Eagle and the Dragon.

Hey, you can also buy it when I read it. I know podcasters love audiobooks, so yeah, easy to find. Yeah, easy to find.

And follow him on LinkedIn, Chris Duffin. Hey, this your boy CJ Moneyway. You have been listening to the CJ Moneyway Show. Until the next time, we out of here. You've been listening to the CJ Moneyway Show with real stories.

Real lessons, yeah, and real perspective come together. Remember, move with patience, move with purpose. That is the mindset of a Panther. Until next time, keep building your legacy brick by brick by brick by brick. Music style.