Living in the Age of Rage: Three Rules for Keeping Your Cool | Capability Amplifier EP#145

And I just find there's a lot of humans who are fragile today. They're not tough, you know, they're just not tough.

Right.

The other thing is there's a belief out there that I should. You know, and you've. This is another dimension of what you're saying is that I'm supposed to be 100% responsible for your feelings.

How about personal responsibility? You're responsible for how you interpret the world and how you decide to feel. And that is the decision. No one's a victim. So the psychological and the physical toughness is part of the rite of passage that is lacking.

I would make a guess that only about 20% of their children are going to be more successful than the parents are.

And the reason is they don't want to have to go. They have a philosophy. I don't want my children to have to go through what I did to be successful. And that disenables the child right away.

Well, guess what? There's a new book that Dan Sullivan just wrote. It's called Geometry for Staying Cool and Calm. But it's also about the tender society we live in, the victim mentality, and what's been contributing to that, and also a way out. I like to think of this as the first principles for being a great parent and having successful kids. And I got to say, Dan shares some of his biggest best nuggets, including a story about drinking and cowardice that just might change the way you think. So, Dan, what's your big takeaway and why should people listen to you and watch this episode?

Yeah, well, first of all, this was triggered by the fact that five years ago, I made the decision not to watch television anymore because it just seemed not giving me any usefulness. And so I'm approaching the end of five years, and I've noticed that the world has gotten a lot better for me. But I'm still on. You know, I still watch the Internet. I've got great. You know, I've got great news sites and everything else. And I get the news on my schedule according to the way I want it. And I've just noticed that things. There seems to be a division in the world between those who are tough and those who are fragile. And the fragile people are shouting. The tough people are just going on about their business.

And I call it the Age of Rage. So this is a geometry of mindsets that I'm going to talk about for staying cool and calm. All right?

So if you want to inoculate yourself from the age of Rage, this is the Episode for you, your friends, your family, and your kids. So stay tuned and check it out. All right, Dan, so tell me, what is geometry for Staying cool and calm? New book. What's it all about?

Yeah.

So I have a lot of interest besides entrepreneurism. I'm very, very interested in just how world works and how the world's going. And I've just been observing for the past, probably five years more than before, the level of upset and anxiety and overall drug addiction, legal and illegal drug addiction and.

Rage and outbursts and personal attacks and digital attacks. And I said, gee, it's really, really interesting. That's kind of an interesting world. And I haven't watched television. It'll be July.

Next month. I'll be five years without even an hour of television. And for me, the world's. Every year I go by without watching television, life, the world seems to get better. So I'm having an opposite effect from all the.

Upset people.

And I call it the Age of Rage.

And I said, you know.

This is.

Really, really interesting times. And I just turned 79. So I was born a couple weeks before the Normandy invasion in 1944, and, you know, big events were happening in the world, and the atom bomb about a year later, and, you know, all sorts of interesting things. But what I was noticing is where a lot of those were physical threats, these seem to be psychological threats. It seems that actually people are living, you know, if you do a comparison with previous types, people live with an amazing amount of comfort and convenience and actual safety. I mean, you got to be observant who. Where you're hanging out and who you're hanging out with. But generally speaking, these are kind of safe times. And.

I think people are geared actually for danger and trouble.

Part of our brain is. And in the absence of it, we still need it. So we create it inside our heads and project it on everybody else. And so that's what this book is about. And I use the word geometry because I'm a great Euclid fan. And Euclid was the Greek who lived in Egypt 320, 300 years ago, who came up with the finest math book probably in the history of the world. And what it was was all the known mathematical principles and techniques that existed in, you know, the Middle east, which was, you know, the central area in the western eastern hemisphere. We don't know much about China. We don't really know that much what was going on in Asia, but in the Mediterranean, this was a really hot thing. And I loved. I loved the way he organized the book, and he called it geometry. And it was how space is constructed and how you can use space, mainly build things. And.

So I really fell in love with it. I read the whole first book and it was 47 propositions, Mike. And you have proposition number one. And when you get to proposition two, you can understand proposition two until you understand. Until you understand proposition one. When you get to proposition 47, that's how many there are. You have to understand the previous 46 proposition. I said, you know, this is a really great way to build things. You know, it's a neat way to put things together. So I just began thinking there are some rules that I think need to be established.

And I came up with three of them. For being cool and calm in a world where everybody is going looney.

So I've been thinking about something lately.

And just, just for everyone who's reading, so I put it in the show notes. What's the name of the book?

Geometry in quotation marks. Because it's not mathematical geometry. For staying cool and calm. For staying cool and calm.

No, the book, the map book that you're talking about, the old book.

Yeah.

It'S Principles of Geometry. You know, I think something along those lines. I don't remember it.

Oh, I always have our companion buddy Chatgpt running in the background. So I'm always doing some additional.

Yeah, tell them the 10 most important things about Euclidean Euclid, the mathematician Euclid, and yeah, Errol El Scour at all.

Okay, it's great. So I'll do that after I. I make this point. So our son Zach just came home from college for the summer. And one thing I was telling someone, so you and I, this is the first time we've had, We've had conversations similar to this before, but you hadn't put it in a concentrated form with the book. And I was just telling someone the other day that in the world we live in and have for quite some time, and I'm going to include my generation in this to a degree because I'm technically not a boomer and I'm kind of in between Gen X and boomer. So I'm, I'm. I've never had a. I've never had a feeling that I have a relationship or identity.

Association with any generation. I just felt like I was an in betweener and somewhere fell in the cracks. And most people that I know, that I associate with, who are my age feel about the same way. I just turned 57 this year, so.

And what I was saying is we have no rite of passage in our world today, or at least in the United States as far as I'm concerned. And there isn't and it is an easy life. There are no real threats except made up ones in our minds. You know, I'll be like, oh, what's someone saying about me on social media? Which isn't a real. Right. And I really thought, as horrible as this may sound, one of the best rites of passage for young people was there's always a war going on in the past. And there was either a chance you're going to war and you're going to grow up fast and it's life or death, or you'd go into the military and there was no mommy to rescue your feelings from. Right. And I think when you aren't faced with if the human psyche. So I'm going to go on record as saying if you don't.

Hit a sense of real life and death and real fear, there is no rite of passage. And like, and you and I have talked about versions of this growing up. You know, back in the day when you would come home and the whistle blew, at least where I grew up, that was the fire whistle. It's either a tornado or a real fire or it was time to come home and go to bed. It was 9pm There was the noon whistle and the 9pm whistle and then the curfew whistle. Yeah, right. And back then, I mean, I can remember one of my first painful experiences as a child. I was five years old and we didn't have any money, so I had an old junky fat tire, steel bike with no hand grips on it. And I'm riding up a dirt hill in the back backyard where they're building homes. So on one side is a pit I could fall in that's 20ft deep with like, oh.

Concrete blocks and.

Steel formers, whatever they're called, they're basically steel that you've put when you're pouring concrete. I forget the name of them right now. You know, if I'd fallen that I would have been impaled. And there's broken glass all over the place. And I'm riding up a hill and I wasn't going fast enough. Started backwards and this thing swung around and took a huge chunk of skin out of my belly and knocked the air out of me. And I'm laying on the ground going, you know, can't catch my breath and bleeding like crazy and there's no one there to scream to. And even if I would have screamed, you know, I'd Basically a neighborhood kid who's older than me would probably just come over and punch me. You know, it'd be like, that's kind of like. So there was a certain level of physical fear and trauma I endured that I'm sure is much less than 10 or 20 or 30 years before. But that was growing up. And you know, as I watch my son who's 20 years old, who comes back and he's got his whole share, like everyone in his generation of anxiety and anxiousness and stuff he's worried about. And it's like to me, I'm like, whatever. And I know to my dad it would have been like double whatever, you know, he was six years old, he fell backwards in a barn, landed on his head and got epilepsy. You know, that was like living on the farm days.

Completely. You know, he's like blind and half, half an eye. Because when he was younger, somehow someone threw a bottle or something I hit with a base with a baseball bat, thinking it was a ball, and the glass shards went in his eye. You know, it's like life on the farm. You know, someone got a tractor, rolled over on him one day. That's life on the farm. It's just kind of normal. That's why you have eight kids. You got some spares, different mentality.

Free labor too, right?

Yeah, exactly. Nothing better than good old fashioned slaves, which literally. My dad was a slave to a bad uncle who had like beaten, strapped the kids. You know, he was. He joined the army to run away from a little town in Iowa. And.

You know, that was the only way out, so from literal enslavement. Enslavement. And he had, you know, he had eight siblings. So.

Yeah, well, you know, the central idea is.

Nisam Taleb, the writer Nisam Taleb.

Wrote a great book, Antifragility. And I just find there's a lot of humans who are fragile today. They're not tough, you know, they're just not tough.

Right.

The other thing is there's a belief out there that I should, you know, and you've. This is another dimension of what you're saying is that I'm supposed to be 100% responsible for your feelings. Right.

To that. So what I do, everywhere I go, I have an NSFW shirt, which is not safe for work. I wear that everywhere I go. And I'm like, I'm not here for anyone's feelings. We're here on a mission and our mission is to get stuff done. And we check in our. We, you know, again, these are words I can't say. But you know, back when we grew up, there was.

You are, you are saying them right now.

I'm about to say it right now. So I say, you know, this isn't a place for sissies and you know, we're mission focused and we check our egos in at the door and we are a unit and we think that way, we behave that way, and we're here to get stuff done.

And that is the best union you'll create. It's like when we are not hurt with one person's feelings, but we think like a unit. And I think that camaraderie and kinship is part of the positive side of tribalism versus the fascist side of tribalism, which is somehow it became society's responsibility for your feelings. And it's like that's the worst form of socialism imaginable. It's the worst form of communism and fascism imaginable.

Which is, how about personal responsibility? You're responsible for how you interpret the world and how you decide to feel. And that is the decision. No one's a victim.

And so the psychological and the physical toughness is part of the rite of passage that is lacking. So my question for you is, if you're king for a day, what would Dan Sullivan do to create.

Psychological and physical rites of passage? What's the gap, what's missing and how do we fix and repair this? How do we create a stronger, more unified.

Personally responsible.

Sound.

Youth or next generation? Like, what is missing? What's the gap and how do we create a fix knowing that we have the world we live in today? How do you make it exciting, enticing and inspire parents to be leaders for their kids? Inspire the kids to actually want this and desire it?

Yeah, well, you know, there's a number of answers, but right off the bat, I only know.

What the world is in relationship to relatively small number of people.

You know, I'm a real, you know, not believer, but I really take seriously the Dunbar's law, which emotionally we only, you know, at the furthest extent, we really can't emotionally relate to more than 150 people. And the top 10 uses up 80% of our emotions. The top two use up 50% of our emotions. So, you know, the thing I think is when you talk about the world, the world is an abstraction. Nobody knows what the world is. They've got stories about what they think the world is and there's theories about what the world is and how the world operates. But my sense is that.

The one Human being you have direct access to, Mike, is you.

I don't know what other people are feeling and I don't know how they're thinking about what they're feeling. So.

I don't really have much insight into how other people should do it. But I think that there's a couple of things that entrepreneurs do. There's two entrepreneurial decisions that entrepreneurs make, which I think are the beginning of that.

Maturity stage, becoming mature. And you'd like me to share those two decisions?

I would. And I was thinking to myself, how very Ayn Rand of you with that initial response.

And that's not an insult, by the way.

She didn't know more than 150 either, you know.

No, but what she did, I saw this not. It's an old interview on television and it was one of the original 60 Minutes guys.

Mike Wallace.

I think I had to have been Mike Wallace smoking there.

I think they're bossing Mike Wallace. Yeah.

So it showed up on my YouTube feed and it's fantastic. And you just listen to this precise mind that really, really understands human society, culture, psychology and what matters and how being selfish is not selfish, it's actually selfless. Because it all starts with personal responsibility and creating value and a meritocracy mindedness.

Yeah, well, you know, I've read all her stuff and you know, you're really not educated if you get past 20 and you haven't read Atlas Shrugged, you know, so. But whatever, I mean, she had her own take on the world, but her, you know, her world really wasn't that much bigger than your world or my world. It's just the insights that the world provides you with the two decisions that entrepreneurs make. Number one, I'll be responsible. I'll be entirely responsible for my own financial security. Okay. That's number one. Okay. And if you look at entrepreneurs, you know them, Mike, you were one at a very early age. I was very early age that they don't lead.

Normal lives after probably about age 7 or 8 years old, they start veering off and they start involving themselves in money making activities at a very early age because they want to pay for things, they want to buy.

Things and we want to buy our freedom. For me, that's what a big part.

Of it, that's the start of it.

Independence, that's the start of it.

So we take total responsibility for your financial security. And the other one things is that you'll never expect opportunity until you first create value for someone else. I think if you get those two down pretty early.

I think the rest of your life, ups and downs and everything else will be.

In the direction of constant growth. And I think you'll get tough. I think you'll get tough. I think you'll develop really good emotional muscles, psychological muscles. You'll get smarter intellectually. You'll be much more practically smart than other people are. So.

Those are the two. So I mean, you're asking, how do you start that system? I'd start the system. I think that's what Chad. Chad Willardson and Scott Donald are really doing with their gravy stack.

Yeah, I like everything about that business idea except the name. Told them that right from the.

Well, Apple, Apple Computer, you know, Google. Google, you know, what the. What is this? I mean, Mark Zuckerberg had a good one with Facebook. I could understand Facebook. And then he creates meta and meta. What. What's meta? You know.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I like meta. That means a lot of stuff.

Well, I don't want to.

I don't really want to have stacks of gravy in my pockets, pants, bed, or elsewhere. I like gravy. I don't think about it anyway. It's okay. It's just a name.

Yeah, names, names developed. I mean, there's a lot of cash flowing. The name sounds better and better, you know, Anyway.

Yes. Yeah.

Nothing separates a bad idea from a good idea like a big check.

Correct, sir? Yes. Oh, that's.

I'm actually with a client this week, and he has come up with a really, really great way of producing.

Traffic, intent based traffic, meaning he intercepts Google intent based search data before it gets clicked on, and then can associate it with real people. So in other words, you can see the intent associated with real people. And it means you can filter out and say, I only want to see information about people searching for a particular thing who have a net worth of, let's say, $2 million, an income of $500,000 or more, who live in the United States or In these specific zip codes, own iPhones and have these apps on them, for example, and then you can retarget just them so it eliminates the fraud and what we jokingly call the Cambodian crack baby complex, which is if you tell, you know, Facebook and Google you want certain people, you're still getting a bunch of garbage from Afghanistan, India and. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah is.

Right. So.

Jokes there, but yes, yeah, but.

The, the central issue.

That I think our conversation from the beginning really revolves around, are you responsible for yourself or not?

I mean, do you. Do you take ownership of your specific life or do you not take ownership? You know.

Get more clients, grow your business with better marketing and messaging, make more money and get a better life with more freedom of time, money, relationship and impact. Learn more about our three day, One on One, Done with youh Reinvention workshop. Visit connecttomike.com to book a conversation with me right now. All right, back to the episode. I'm going to tell you a little story that's, I think, relevant, and I want to see how you decode it, which is.

Both Vivian and I grew up where my stress and pressure, as you know, a small little farm community, fields all around me. And my dad came from a poor environment. My mother, as I would say, was the product of a philandering alcoholic fireman who worked at a beer. At a beer place at night, you know, so no good came out of that. And, you know, I'm the oldest of four, no additional resources to speak of. And if I wanted something, I had to make money. And I, you know, started making money as long age 5, 6, 7, you know, I had a paper route, did all the things. I was working full time by the time I was 16. And I hated that little town. It was like anything I could do to get out. So my eye was escape from this place and move to Sunnyvale, California, and go work for Steve Jobs in Wozniak. That was my dream and I eventually learned to code. So lots of failures along the way, but that was that little to me. It was its own little trauma. Even though I had parents who loved me, I grew up in a nice little place and I didn't understand how nice I had it until I was away from it for a little while. To us, fishing meant going out and getting food, but it was also my bond with my dad. And we did it a lot. And we had a giant garden. Now, I hated doing the gardening because it felt like slave labor to me, but I didn't realize how unbelievable it was to learn how to grow food and just naturally, you know, it's like I had a shovel in my hand since I was probably 2 years old. Yeah, and.

You have good gut bacteria because you ate 10 pounds. Ate 10 pounds of dirt before you were 10.

Exactly.

Break a biome, totally.

George Carlin would say, we swam in the, in the, in the, whatever. The. Whatever river when it's filled with pollution and raw sewage.

So. And then, you know, my wife, Vivian, she grew up in a slum in New York. Completely different life. The daughter of Holocaust survivors and she was horribly abused by her father. So we both had our own traumas and on one hand you'd say, I'd never want any of that on someone. And thank God that's what happened to me. And then our son was raised where, you know, we're first generation money. We worked our ass off. We're older parents. We literally gave him everything possible, sent him to the best schools and he's going to college. And we saved even when we didn't have it, so he'd never have any debt. And he, like many of his friends and he's a great kid, we love him, etc. Etc. But you know, getting his ass out of bed by noon is hard and.

Laws are negotiated. You know, it's a generation and this isn't uncommon. And there's so you can be so hard and at the same time it's like, shoot, where do you draw the line? And just throw them out on the street? And the world is definitely more complicated now. It was different when you were younger. It's different when I was younger. And you can't just throw a kid on the street because, you know, bad things happen, different kinds of bad things.

And boy, I know I sound like a privileged white man and I'm not complaining, but I talk to a lot of parents with a lot of kids and this is not an uncommon story, including plenty of people from coach. And you know, you never know what you're going to get. Every kid's going to be a little bit different. You just got a different makeup. But. And the good news is he's coming. He's come a long way. Like he's.

Turning 21 on one hand. It's like, geez, you know, it takes so long. But like, he's using AI, he's creating, he's working on movies, he's interested in music, he's figured out how to express himself. He's a great speaker, he's articulate, huge, very high eq. I'm not worried about them, but you know, we've had our bumps and grinds like anything. And I think I often say boys brains, you know, your frontal lobe develops somewhere between 25 and never.

But getting back to the question, you know, you've known me a long time and you've probably got some observations, knowing what you know now. You've had the great fortune of observing generations of kids from your clients for 40 some years in coach. What have been the winningest strategies that you've seen coach members as parents make? And what are some of the most failing strategies when you look at their kids or know about their children.

Yeah, I think the most successful ones in terms of.

The satisfaction that the parents have, you know, that they're actually satisfied is they gave a lot of direction from the standpoint of values. They gave a lot of direction from the standpoint of.

Kind of first principles, you know, like, you know.

That if, if you, if you want something.

Work for it and earn it, you know, which I think is a good first principle. And you know, and the, the other thing is there's some very early economic principles and I think that Chad Willardson and Scott Donald really focus on this. You learn the value of money and you learn value that you're happier with money if you earn it than if it's given to you and you utilize money differently, if it's your money than it's your parents money. And that.

You try to get independent.

In a lot of different areas of your life much faster than your peers, you know, and so, you know, I mean the question related to I'm 50 years coaching next year. So next, next. 8-15-74. So it'll be 50 years.

And I would say that from my experience, the way that our clients.

Raise their children, I would make a guess that only about 20% of their children are going to be more successful than the parents are.

And the reason is they don't want to have to go. They have a philosophy. I don't want my children to have to go through what I did to be successful. And that disenables the child right away.

Yes, yes, that is.

Why not? Why don't you make them go through as tough a life as you? I mean, aren't you who you are because you went through tough stuff. So.

Yeah.

What's your thing?

I'm going to have a very, I'll tell you really honestly one of the biggest reasons why that is the real honest answer is it's super inconvenient and hard because I know for me, speaking for myself purely selfishly when I look at it and I didn't even, I couldn't have articulated what I'm I'm going to tell you now is if I would have made my kid go through what I would have gone through.

I would have had to have done it intentionally. It would have really inconvenienced my life. It would have been a lot harder on Vivian and me. And.

Now what I'm again, the truth is we had a live in nanny because we could afford it and I was able to give my best focused attention to my kid all at once, because I wasn't doing what I considered shit work. You know, it's like.

I swore after mowing a half acre lawn that was wet and soggy and filled with water and all kinds of crap nails from construction and junk like that, when it was 110 degrees outside with 90% humidity, you know, a push lawnmower that constantly had problems. It was like, I would never mow another lawn or shovel another driveway ever, because it sucks, okay? So I've had people doing that because I could afford it. And my mindset was, now I've got more quality time with my kid. And I was unintentionally and very intentionally making it easy. And I wanted to take advantage of the fruits of my labor. So the truth is, I didn't make it harder because it would have been a lot harder on me. And I'm done with that. That was the story. I already earned my stripes. Now what we created as a result of that is someone with a prince mindset. It didn't have to do the work right.

And it was easier. That's the honest answer. And it's again, not uncommon in.

The circles I'm in, the neighborhoods I'm in. And.

You know, what we did is unintentionally instilled a value system just as much as intentionally.

What do you say to that?

Yeah, well, you can't recreate the.

Conditions of tough that you went through, okay? But to a certain extent, you had the freedom to go through those tough times. And, you know, and.

I'm just wondering here.

That it's what your mindset is about, the tough things that your kid is going through that's related to his circumstance. You know, it's a different world. I mean, totally, totally different world. You know, and my feeling is we have generations because it reflects that the world is different than from when you were that age. There's all sorts of things happening in the world. And that's why I think making judgments about people who live before us is crap. You know, I think it's just crap. They were dealing with conditions that have been solved for you, you know, so you're making all sorts of judgments. But they were faced with challenges and difficulties that you can't even comprehend because you can hire somebody to handle all.

That.

And everything else. And.

My life and my work does not reflect the conditions that I grew up in.

But I fully lived in the conditions that I grew up in, and I was reacting them.

You know, I'll give you a mindset that my mother, a couple of Them that my mother installed in me. And I mean, my mother was more of a verbal teacher than my father was. My father was a. He was a working teacher. He was just a great worker, you know, just.

Mine too.

Yeah. And my mother. So I grew up on a farm, and we had 60 acres of farmland and we had 15 acres of woods. And I could go into the woods if one of my siblings, older siblings was with me. But I couldn't do it myself until I was six years old. And my mother says, now, you can go in the woods now and the dog will be with you. So, you know, and the dog would. Because I was the only human that the dog could go with, you know, that would.

Be a good companion. So I went and I climbed trees and I swung on vines and I hunted for my knees from branches and, you know, got wet and, you know, and did all sorts of things. And then I came running back up. It was about.

From the house. It was a good half mile. It was good half mile to the woods. And I came right back up. I said, mom, Mom, I want to tell you what I did down in the woods. And she said, nope, nope. Don't want to know what you do down in the woods. Do not want to. Do not want to know about what you do in the woods. The dog's with you. If there's trouble, the dog will come back and bark and we'll find you. Do not want to know what you're doing down the woods. But there's. There's a profound philosophy involved in that response, and that is that since she's not worrying about me, I better worry about myself.

Wow.

Bear, I wouldn't. That is profoundly interesting and really interesting.

You know, I just. It didn't even dawn on me to talk about the stuff. And there were three younger kids, so I didn't have a chance. You're the youngest, though, right?

No, I'm fifth out of seven. So I've got.

Okay, all right.

I got four. I got four.

Seven on you. I never heard of that.

I have a really weird. Yeah. And both my parents are fifth children.

I'm a fifth and all fourth to my parents. So it was, you know, it was easy pass relationship with my parents, you know, and they didn't. They didn't pay any particular attention to me, but I spent an enormous amount of time with them, you know, just observing them, doing adult things, you know, they. Nobody was. I mean, you didn't really make fuss about kids. Nobody made. People were busy, people were working hard. They never came I played sports. They never came to the games. Yep, same here.

Yep. Come home at 9. That was the, that was the instruction, when the whistle blows, come home.

Now here's the thing that I can't make a general.

I can't make a general statement about what that did to kids back there because my. About 10 years ago I was at a family event and the six of us, we have one brother who died.

Quite a long time ago, but we were at a round table and it was just the six of us and we got into family history and growing up and it was a non stop about.

30 minutes where they were bitching about why they still are angry about why our parents didn't give them any direction. And I said.

But that was the plus. Yeah.

That was the bonus prize is that they didn't give you any direction. But I got tremendous wisdom direction, I got tremendous moral direction, I got great ethical direction, but not what I should do with my life. They didn't, they didn't suggest at all what. Yeah, I should do with my life.

Mm. That's. That I think I would sum up is sort of like the DNA encoding, right. Which is sometimes you get a victim kid and sometimes you get that self sufficient, perfectly fine. And you know, it's like Viktor Frankl. Right. Who can walk out of Auschwitz. Out of. Right, yeah.

Walk out of that with a game plan that he's been working on. Yeah.

Forgiveness. And I'll be like, yep. Well.

It'S that classic. One of my favorite Tony Robbins quotes is we're meaning making machines and someone can make the meaning of a pea under their mattress the worst thing in the world and let them scar it. It scars them for life. Just like there's certain soldiers can put it in a box, walk away and go to bed and sleep just fine. Right. And other ones are going to be haunted for life and no amount of therapy is going to get them through it. And.

What'S the story you're telling yourself over and over and over again? The hero that what a hero dies one death and a coward dies a thousand. Or something like that.

Well, I'm just reading I'm an addict to spy novel.

This is.

Second World War. It's in Austria just before the Germans invade. And this guy has been asked because he does business in Germany just to run his trips. If he gets envelope, just to bring the envelope back to Vienna and it'll be picked up. And so the guy is.

Ambivalent. He goes, two weeks. And the guy says, I'll give you two weeks. To make up your mind whether you're going to do this or not. You have some real advantages to us because you're accepted, nobody checks you out. And, you know, technically, it would be very easy for you to do this, but. And the guy is worrying, and he says. And.

Then. So the. You know, the person who's in the spy network who's talking to him about this says, well, are you in or are you out? And he says, well, what if I say I'm out? And he says, then you're already a heavy drinker. You'll be drinking more. And he says, there's no drinking like the drinking that you do in your life when you know you're a coward.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, that's a good one.

I said, that's a quotable quote.

Oh, my God.

There's no drinking like the drinking you do when you know you're a coward.

Yeah. What. What's the pain you want to wash away that you can't live with every day?

Yeah.

That's a song, man. That is a song.

So.

This all got triggered because I showed you a title of my new book.

Yeah.

But I'm going to give a teaser because I think we might move.

Yeah, we got to do that. Let's do the teaser.

I'm going to tell you what the teaser is. I've got three rules for staying cool and calm regardless of what's going on in the world. And the three rules. The three rules are, everything's made up. Number one.

Yep.

Number two is nobody's in charge.

And number three, Life's not fair.

And so if you triangulate, you try do a triangle with these three, all of a sudden you begin to realize that it's totally up to you. Yep. And.

There'S nobody to complain to. And because these three rules apply to everybody. And anyway, so those are. It's kind of a geometry. You know, the triangle is the strongest.

Structure in the world because each the two angles support the third angle and two sides support the third side. So I said, yeah, maybe we need mindset geometry here.

It's great. Everything's made up. Nobody's in charge. Life's not fair. And there it's. Man, those are golden yummies.

And.

The coward.

There's no drinking. There's no drinking like the drinking you do when you know you're a coward.

Oh.

God, that is a quotable quote. That is so yummy and sad.

Well, coward just means that for me, it's not, you know, I was in the army, you know, during Vietnam and everything else. But coward is just. You don't own who you are in the situation. You're always trying to find a way not to own who you actually are. You want to be somebody else or you're angry because you're not who you are isn't as good as somebody else and everything else. You're just not owning who you are.

Yes. And I went with that.

That's the ultimate cowardice.

Yeah. I would be curious what percentage of addicts are addicts for that very reason versus a DNA encoded need to.

Do that. Right. And so that is a thinker, that is a gift. So. Well, here's what I'm going to do.

Let us wrap up this episode.

Well, we have to begin it too. We didn't.

Yes, we definitely have to begin it. So let's wrap it up first and then we'll do our intro. So.

I'll just do the standard spiel which is simply.

Number one, go get Dan's new book.

Yeah, just go to strategiccoach.com and punch in knowledge products and geometry and you know, I'll get to you. It'll be up, it'll be up on Amazon.

We'll put the link in the show notes. That's the other thing we'll do. Yeah, yeah, that'll make it easy.

Picture in the show notes and they. Yeah.

And you know.

You can get dan's books@strategiccoach.com so that's number one. Number two, share this with anyone you know who may have some kids who or could benefit from this kind of conversation. And.

Number three.

Leave a good comment because we love good comments and feedback and you can always go to capabilityamplifier.com Anything else you want to leave, Mr. Dan Sullivan?

No, I think it was a wonderful full sighted discussion that we had, Mike. And you know, and we've known each other for a long time and, and there's a reason why we're still knowing each other for a long time.

It's fun to collaborate.

The whole universe is held together by radio waves, you know, and if you're on another station, you know.

I think it's the difference between AM and fm. You know, it's not just. It's a different station, it's a different frequency. And you know, I really enjoy that. And one of the joys of my life is that the number of people on this frequency are increasing in my life.

It's the best thing ever. The best thing ever. And that is another episode in itself. So we're going to do a frequency doubler episode about doubling your frequency and attracting more of that in your life. I think there's some real wisdom in that one. How's that sound?

Yep. Yeah.

All right. Well, we're going to wrap this one up. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. We'll see you in the next episode of Capability Amplifier. So long.