29 - EP29 w/ Brute de Force: Putting Demons to Work, Wars of the Mind + Dictating Reality

Oh, that's that German shit, right?

Yeah, loaded with magnesium, silica, boron, bunch of good shit.

Oh man, I gotta try it. I've only, um I haven't seen it over in Australia, unfortunately. I think it's the premium stuff.

Supposed to be. I've been on it for about a week. Honestly, the morning erections have been completely different. I have noticed a difference.

That's the boron for ya.

Is that it?

Yeah. Yeah, no, boron actually makes your dick bigger in some circumstances.

Bro, it's been fucking crazy. Yeah, I mean, right, right away. Like, usually my body does not really tolerate subs too well, but this shit fucking works.

Well, it's its natural form, right? I've, I've always found that supplements always work the best when they're just an extract in its natural form rather than the specific thing like settled out by itself, because it's missing a lot of the cofactors or other things that your body uses to process that. So the natural boron is gonna be way better.

100%.

You don't really like supplements, do you, man?

I— you know, the thing is, I spend so much money a month on food, and I have for over a decade. I spend between $4,000 to $5,000 a month on food. So it's like, bro, what are you buying? Yeah, dude, I eat the most premium shit. I mean, my steaks are probably— I break Yeah, bro, local farmers. I have relationships with local pork guys, chickens. I mean, I get, I get, I just source my shit really fucking local, high quality everything.

And what better to spend your money on, honestly, bro?

The ROI is just fucking outrageous on food. It really is.

Yeah, I agree. So people want to say, oh, eating out is so— oh, eating well is so expensive. One, it's not if you do it right, but two you get what you pay for.

Dude, 100%. Even when I've been down on my luck in my early 20s and I really needed sustenance, I always found a way to find the highest quality food. And that's just always been the difference maker. I mean, fuck, man. Are we live right now?

Yeah, I'm recording. But we can just riff from here.

OK. Yeah, yeah, we're just shooting the shit. Yeah, yeah, man. I had a lot of angst when I was in my teenage years. I grew up on the worst diet you could possibly fathom. My parents were clueless. And actually, what got me obsessed— what got me obsessed with nutrition was, uh, trying to mediate, medicate my emotions. And once I fixed my nutrition, bro, my, my emotions have been even keel ever since. All my depression, all the emotional issues I had have gone away.

I think that's the case for most people because I think, you know, the rising levels of depression and anxiety are what happens when your body gets out of whack. And it's usually to do with the food you're having and the, my— the resulting gut microbiome that creates the serotonin, the dopamine in your stomach. Like, if you're not feeding that, then your brain literally doesn't have what it's required to feel good.

And then we punish our kids for— and then we punish our kids for acting out when they're eating fucking Goldfish crackers.

Yeah, and give them amphetamines to fucking study all day and sit in their desks. That shit pisses me off, man. Like, the amount of little kids that just want to explore, or, you know, boys that don't want to fucking sit and write for 8 hours a day, you know, a little bit, but most of the time, just get out and about, and then you're giving them prescription amphetamines so that they can fucking focus. Like, that's child abuse, straight up.

It is, dude. It's criminal.

Pharmaceutical industry on the whole needs a, uh, large restructuring, shall we say, to put it nicely.

That's putting it very nicely. So I'm ready when you— I'm ready when you are, brother. Yeah, yeah.

Um, well, Brute de Force, uh, welcome to the Soulcast. Um, your transcendence through intensity, uh, is the line that's on your profile, and that really sums it up for me. I know first time I saw you, you were clean and jerking some ridiculous amount, and I thought, whoa, okay, let's pay attention to what this guy's saying immediately. Um, but then just through your writing, I think you're a very tremendous writer, and the energy that I feel from all of the stuff you put out, uh, I think is, is what is most, um, you know, the lasting effect of your writing is really noticeable. And I think that's what people are tapping into at the moment. So welcome to the show.

Appreciate it, brother. I'm glad to be here.

Transcendence through intensity. Um, is that something that has innately been a part of you since you can remember? Or like you said, you, you're, you're growing up was not the most ideal environment. Is that something you learned along the way?

It's definitely something I learned along the way. I grew up in somewhat pitiful circumstances. I come from a very, very actually a wealthy family, but, um, very disjointed, very distant relatives, and always had a very rocky upbringing. I've always been someone who's liked to push boundaries and I've just been very exploratory. So yeah, I mean, I've definitely locked horns with, with a lot of my immediate family members, especially as a kid. And, um, you know, as soon as I was human— as soon as I was humanly able, I went off on my own and ventured into the world. Cords cut, had to burn the boats and go out and, uh, and figure out my destiny on my own because I was being groomed to work for the family business, which, um I just knew, knew early on in my heart was not the, uh, not the correct move.

Yeah. And so, so yeah, I mean, that process, um, I think that's what a lot of guys are missing now, and partially myself to a degree. It's just the environment we grow up in as dudes is so bubble-wrapped. If you really don't like how much of the, uh, the path that we're told to take is just kind of sitting in a room studying something or tapping away at a keyboard, and then doing more of that for a few years at college and then doing decades of that, uh, with office work. And you don't, you don't really learn anything when you're in those sterilized environments.

That's exactly right. It comes down to movement and momentum for me. It's like, if you're, if you're stuck, a lot of people are trapped between ascension and falling. And honestly, falling is better than being stuck stagnant. So if you're going downward, you're at least creating some sort of momentum. You're creating leverage. If you have nothing and you're poor and you're dirt broke and you have nowhere to go and you don't have a vision, the best thing you could do is go out and cause havoc and trouble in the world around you because when you disrupt your environment, you gain leverage from your mistakes. You're pushing the boundaries, you're pushing the envelope and you're actually changing the relationships and the landscape around you And sometimes all you need to do is kick up a bunch of dust, and that is the seminal change that you need to make the transformation. For me, I couldn't figure out who I was. I couldn't figure out where the fuck to go when I was living at my folks' house. It was just impossible. No matter how much I pondered, no matter how much I meditated, the inspiration, the genius in me never could come out when I was in that environment. I had to fully burn every ship go out into the street, couch surf, and figure out the world on my own two feet to really build an identity and figure out who the fuck I was.

Yeah.

And it takes many— it takes thousands of iterations sometimes. Sometimes you don't figure out who you are until version 100. And you have to burn all versions prior to that to really get your footing and figure out what your identity is. But the beauty of it is, is once you figure out your identity, Nobody can take it from you. You can have a gun waving in your face and nobody can change what your core beliefs are because you earned it. You've been through so many trials and tribulations that now when you've come out the other side, it's, it's crystallized. It cannot be stolen from you. Even in your last gasp on earth, nobody can remove that identity from you. And that's, I think, the, the huge fucking issue we see today is dudes do not have that fucking core. They have a lot of peripheral personality and peripheral flair, but they don't have that extremely powerful, strong, immutable core.

Well, it's about the bit of bullshit identification, because there's so much lacking of that. You have dudes putting on a football jersey every single weekend and that being his identity and that kind of stuff, and when you don't have any of that real knowing, you're— everything else taken away, it's just you in a shit situation. What are you really made of, you know? And that is the stuff that needs to be intentional these days because everything else, you're not going to find it just living the normal life. And like you said, you have to, you have to put yourself in situations, burn the boats, uh, and just being in new environments in general, I think, is, is so stimulating to the brain and it just gives you a new situation to problem solve in, and that automatically is going to add to your wisdom. It's automatically going to add to the knowledge that you have, which then, like you said, the next iteration of yourself— like, I feel like it's almost, uh, counterintuitive to say that like one version of you exists at any point in time because you're constantly in a state of flux. So this state of flux of whether you have to adapt to a new environment or learn something or socially carry yourself a little bit different, you know, to adapt or whatever, or you're just making mistakes and then learning and then not doing the same shit so that old version of you becomes irrelevant. It's, it's this changing flux, and you know deep down what parts of yourself are bullshit and what parts of yourself like are fucking lame or is just like a break in your willpower. Everyone knows that. You know, what they personally do that's like wrong.

Dude, 100 fucking percent. I mean, right and wrong is actually extremely easy. We all have the compass. We all know when we're fucking up. My whole goal has been, if I'm going to make decisions that I know are bad for me, you might as well have a great time doing it. What's interesting is a lot of people will intentionally make poor decisions and then they will be miserable the whole time they're doing it. And that's just never made any sense to me.

Yeah.

And I mean, dude, unfortunately, I truly, truly believe that in order to reach our final form, pain is the only teacher. Pain is the only way out. And if you blunt that and you constantly— or you're constantly shunting it or trying to stunt it, um, you can, you can find yourself in very dire situations. And this is, this is kind of my whole philosophy of Transcendence Through Intensity. It ties in perfectly because a Essentially what it is for me is money's never been enough. Money doesn't— money does not truly translate to power like people think it does. It translates to freedom. And I'm somebody who's craved power over and influence over my environment. And so in order to accomplish that, I could have taken fucking 100 easier roads to making money, but I've had to put myself through gut-wrenching, torturous situations. To truly become an amalgamation of the person that I've wanted to be. And then through that process, I'm developing pain tolerance, I'm developing willpower, and I'm developing dedication to a craft to where not only when I have large sums of money, I now also am hard to baffle, I'm hard to fool, I'm hard— I also have my own cunning abilities. So it's about being well-rounded, and I feel like the Renaissance man is, is very much a dying man. We're very specialized. We're very specialized, and insects specialize. I feel like humans are much more multivariant, and we're highly capable of specializing in many different aspects.

Yeah, I agree with that. It's, um, the whole like, stay in your lane or whatever. It's like, no, this whole highway is mine to roam it, you know? Um, like, 100% being good at one thing means you have the capacity to be good at another thing. Like, it's just a false limitation that you have to, you know, you have to study for years and years at this, um, and then only will you be able to speak about or learn about or work in this kind of regard. Like, you know, you don't have to study marketing to get good at marketing. You just have to try marketing strategies, see what works, see what doesn't, and read a bit. And then if you have the fucking, like, gumption to actually consciously research this stuff I honestly think you can jump to the top fucking 10% of people doing it because so many people are just bullshitters anyway and they don't know what they're doing. Like, you'll notice that in any profession is that 90% of people don't really have a clue or a grasp on what they're actually doing, even if they are fucking specializing.

No, bro, exactly. Just because some dude in a fishy sweater struts to the front of the chalkboard and does tensor equations of the third kind doesn't, doesn't, doesn't fucking mean he has a grasp of reality. The world is not made of— the world is not made of that shit. It's like, it's, it's all, it's all theater. It's all performance art. Almost every profession is some— to some degree is performance art. Yeah, that's all it is. It's street, it's street theater. So to go into things like you said, it's all about self-image. This is where people really like— self-imaging is the realest concept that I've personally ever seen on planet Earth. Jung talks a lot about it, but what it is is essentially if you model yourself as a loser, that's what you will be. It's all, it's all how you model yourself. And like you said, it's like if you're starting out in a venture, the best thing you could do is make yourself an authority figure from the, from the jump. From the jump, you can model yourself as an authority in whatever field you're in just by spewing information, and eventually you land with accuracy as long as you can kind of punch your way through an industry. And you just keep punching, eventually you'll land on your gold mine. I mean, a lot of this stuff is just very ruthless. It doesn't take a lot of thinking and overthinking. I mean, I personally think movement is the highest form of intelligence anyway, because they're not unconnected. There's no thinker on planet Earth who's not a better thinker in motion. It's just not possible.

Yeah. Do you, do you go for walks a lot? I've noticed that, um, it's just the basic movement, your brain just seems to work better.

Dude, I walk between 5 and 6 miles a day. It's the best, the best part of my fucking day. I've been doing this for so long. I love to walk.

Yeah, is that so? I would like to, um, if you have a general daily routine— I know you're always doing different things, so that, that can be, um, you know, go by the wayside a little bit in terms of routine— but what are Brute's non-negotiables? What do you have to do each day, and what does that structure usually look like?

When I wake up, I immediately fly out the door within 10 minutes. I am into the world, in the physical realm, checked in within 10 minutes. I am dressed, I'm out the door. I shower the night before, I'm ready to go. I do not lollygag or like to sit at home. I like to just enter. I treat the world like my living room.

Yeah.

Yeah, I treat the world like my living room. I mean, I like to go to coffee shops. COVID has completely decimated my typical routine, but Lately, um, I've got my motorcycle, so I take my motorcycle to a desolate area in nature. I get out, I do my morning walk. I'm off of coffee right now, unfortunately. I quit coffee 2 months ago because it was just wrecking my gut. Yeah, my gut health had deteriorated pretty quickly. I was a pretty, pretty lifetime coffee abuser. Yeah, but, um, so no beverage in the morning, just fasted, just roll out into nature with my bike and, uh Yeah, I just like to see the morning sun. Typically though, what I would do in a non-COVID situation is I would go to make the rounds at my spots. I have a few coffee shops on lockdown. I have steakhouses that are open for lunch that I like to go to. And so I'm just, I'm a very social creature. I like to, I like to show my face at the same spots every day. Very high leverage situations.

Yeah.

And I end up, I end up running and meeting, you know, very wild characters in, in those settings. Yeah, but then I come back. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, then I come back and I, I lift in the afternoon. Um, I Olympic lift every day. I actually train twice a day. Uh, I do my Olympic lifts in the morning— snatch and clean, push press— and then I do a PM squat session. I squat every day to maximum capacity. At night. So essentially what I'm, what I'm doing is I'm putting enough weight on the bar every day until I miss, and as soon as I miss, that's my daily max for that day. And, um, yeah, I've just, I've had phenomenal results with that. But for about 10 years now, I pretty much do whatever I want on a daily basis. Yeah, nobody tells me what to do, and I don't think I'll ever be in a situation where somebody does, so I'm Very blessed, man.

That's probably the most spiritually freeing thing you can do as a man, is truly like, even if those rules were keeping you safe in quotation marks, to throw caution to the wind in that sense and not have anyone tell you what to do. There's no better feeling than that.

No, it's unbelievable. I mean, I did a video about this the other day, but I remember The last time I ever worked for somebody was when I was 18 and I got fired from that job and it was— I got the best. And I think I literally slept for like 15 hours the night I got fired because I was finally— the burden of showing up to this job that I fucking hated. I hated my boss. I hated the whole situation.

What were you doing?

And I had been— I was doing telemarketing. Yeah, dude. And it was, it was just, it was, it was, it was a grind. It was soul-killing. The office space we were in was just sterile. Yeah, and, uh, I remember when it happened just feeling completely liberated. I remember having this conversation with myself like, fuck, now I have no excuses. Now that I'm kicked out of here, like, I actually go have to make my dreams come true. And, um, needless to say, it was a very rocky couple years going forward from that because I refused to ever get hired somewhere again. But I finally got my footing and got some momentum, and I've never looked back.

That's awesome, man. I think, um, it's that feeling of disgust.

Yeah, dude, seriously, like, these, these meaningful changes only come when you are horrified. When you look in the fucking mirror, not physically, but just when you fucked up so bad and you are so nauseated at your own behavior, then meaningful change can occur. And I think it's very important to let yourself get to that place. That's why I think people become depressed. People that become depressed are not letting themselves fall as hard as they need to, because when you're falling and you're crashing and burning, you have zero fucking capacity to be depressed or down because you're in motion. So I think what happens is people get trapped in between falling and rising, and that is the most painful. That is hell on earth. That is the most destructive place you can be here. If you're gonna go in a direction, start going somewhere, because down is a hell of a lot better than down to standing still.

How do people stop standing still then if they are stuck in the shitty job? They know that they're not working out as much as they should, just that gross position where you're not really pushing yourself, but you're also not in a worse enough position to really have that dagger feeling in your stomach that then motivates you to do shit.

It's a good question. It definitely has to come within. I notice a lot of people— it's very easy for guys like us to look at dudes that are 100 pounds overweight and be fucking disgusted, like, how the fuck could you let yourself get to that point? But the idea is that these people— that's not a reason for other people to make changes. How other people— if other people are disgusted by you, that's not a good reason to actually make the change. You have to be disgusted with yourself. It's none of your fucking business what other people think about you. And I think a lot of people are looking at others for feedback and permission to make these changes instead of it coming from within. And a lot of that comes from just the culture that we're in.

Yeah, but sometimes when I will write out a particular post or whatever, people will say, oh, I needed this. And that's good, and I'm happy to have delivered the message, but you have to also look at it like, why did I need this from an external source? If they were, you know, by nature of that statement, they have already been thinking the same thing. Or, or maybe it's just a situation that they can then give themselves permission to heal, permission to, um, pursue something, or, you know, permission to really change themselves when they kind of already knew it intuitively. And I think pretty much all the answers. Like, we inherently, if we like truly tap in with ourselves— and maybe some people don't have this connection as much, the intuition, which again could be related to health, could be related to your own issues kind of blocking off this knowledge— but your intuition is so powerful. And I think everything in your life changes for the better when you just— what does my gut say? What is my soul saying? And you follow that. That is when the best paths of life kind of open up. And that won't be— your intuition isn't going, go to the same place you've been going there 9 to 5 and sit in front of a fucking computer under fluorescent lighting and talk shit about shit you don't care. Like, that's never what your gut says, dude.

100 fucking percent. It's a very, very important point what you just said, because also what happens is dudes will follow their gut and they think because they're following their intuition that that means the path is now supposed to be easy. So they'll run into a wall or they'll run into resistance, and then they'll question their gut and say, fuck, my gut must be, must be wrong because why am I confronting all of these demons? And that's actually, that's actually the fucking proof you're on the right path. Yeah, that's the proof. So dudes will turn back and go back into overthinking and ignore their intuition when really you had to take a sledgehammer to the fucking wall, motherfucker, to get to the next level.

Yeah. You can't get anything without earning it, right?

No, man, it sounds cliché, but it really is true. And it's, it's, it's about who you become in the process. See, the whole point of getting these huge fucking goals and having these huge visions, you know, I'm going for the master's record in Olympic lifting. I'm 32 now. When I'm 35, I have it in my head that I will, in the, in the United States of America Nobody in history will have snatched as much weight over their head as I have. I'm gonna be number one. I'm gonna, I'm gonna win that fucking gold medal. 35 years old. The record, yeah, I want it. I want to say it's a— I want to say it's 150 kilos. Okay, which is 330 pounds. I'm right now, I can snatch on the daily about 290, so I'm about 40 pounds off. I'm a little lighter— I'm a little heavier than what I would need to be to break that record, but I have 3 years to train. Yeah, so, but the point, the point is this: having these lofty goals and having these absurd visions, it doesn't really particularly matter if you make them or not. It's about who you become in the process of chasing them. Yeah, that's what it's all about. It's about the transformation, it's about the evolution. And people are terrified to transform because you never know who you're going to be on the other side. Yeah, you have to A lot of it involves releasing characteristics about yourself that you actually hold near and dear and you love. Sometimes you have to get rid of all the things you love to be the person that you want to be. And that's the hardest thing for men to confront, because a lot of the things we like about ourselves are actually the most destructive.

Yeah, it's a couple things. It's like, so the people that are achieving the greatest things in this world they are, you know, let's say they're insanely genetically talented a lot of the time, but a lot of the time they're just the small subset of people that genuinely held that belief in their head that that's something they could do and achieve and thought about every single day. And when you think about something every day, you were directing energy towards it because our attention is, you know, a form of energy flow. So you are bringing that into reality every time you think about it each day. Now, if you're one of 10 people in the, in the world that has this particular belief of themselves, then your chances of achieving that are so high relatively to like the number of people that, you know, that's, that's the point of these high goals, uh, if you have them, is that the only, you know, the people that actually did great things— Alexander the Great, people probably said to him, you're not going to conquer that much land, that's a ridiculous goal. Guess what? He was one of the only people that thought he could do it, and that's what gave him the strength and, you know, directed the energy to be that person, bro.

Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I draw a lot of inspiration from a lot of different sources. There's, uh, there's some really, really high-caliber Olympic lifters that have done interviews after competing at the Olympics. Yeah, and these dudes, these dudes, they're wiring in their fucking brain. I fucking love these guys. I mean, this one dude from Russia, he, he wins the world, he clears everybody out, wins the fucking gold medal for the event, but he wanted to break the world record. And afterwards they were asking about his performance and he was fucking livid at himself. He was like, I didn't come here for a gold medal, I fucking came here to break a world record. And that's how you have to be. That's that mentality. I mean, this dude literally just won the world championships. In the world. He was the strongest man in his class in that particular expression of athleticism, and here he is completely fucking distraught and beside himself that he didn't break a world record. I love that fucking mentality.

That's why he got there.

It's exactly why he got there. He— dude, he shot for the fucking moon. He fell, big deal. He landed on top of a mountain.

He landed on a gold medal on the podium.

Landed on a fucking gold medal on the podium, dude, and was horrified at himself. That's how you have to be. That's why I truly, truly believe— I've been experimenting with this the last year. This is going to sound avant-garde. I haven't heard too many people ever really discuss this, but I'm kind of fleshing it out. I don't, I don't think self-love is a real thing. I don't. I think that, like you said earlier, hits the money on the head. We are all— we're changing so rapidly that our person— we're always in flux. There's no really targeted way to show yourself self-love. Self-love is actually reaching your genetic fucking potential. That's the best you could— that's, that's the way you show yourself self-love. Accomplishment in the physical world, leaving a mark, leaving a legacy, leaving a dent in the physical realm. Because all of these modern form of therapies They're not fucking action-related. Anybody can barricade themselves in a bunker and bombard themselves with talk therapy. But what I find is that all that does is creates a lot of people reliving the trauma over and over again. And so that's why I think this opposite approach of being like those killer mentalities is those guys are not stuck in their trauma. They're not stuck in the past. They're not stuck in what happened to them. They actually have amnesia. They forget about what happened the day before, and they maximize the moment that they have in front of them. And then that's, that's me. That is literally my life in a fucking nutshell. If I looked over my shoulder in my 20s for fucking 20 seconds, it would have been way too painful to carry on. The losses, the losses that I have endured, dude, are so outrageous. No human should ever subject themselves to the shit that I put myself through. But like I said, my life has been a grand experiment in human limitation. I think that's what connected me to you guys and Eric Weiss and DejaRue in the first place is all of us are obsessed with human performance and human limitation. And fuck, man, my life has been an absolute fucking rodeo trying to figure out how to go beyond what I'm supposed to be on paper, what my genetics are supposed to make me be.

I think you might be on the tail end of that experimentation, in a good way, in the— on the upper echelons. That's what makes your, you know, your story is so engaging. And so you have all this real actionable wisdom. Like, I had a tweet today, like, knowledge is heard Wisdom is earned. Like, people can tell you shit, but it won't actually stick in your head until you've, you know, gone through a situation in your life where that happened, or you learned a lesson, or you made the mistake. And then it's like, okay, I have visible, tangible evidence related to me on either something I didn't do that I should have done, or something I didn't do or didn't know. And now you know, it's like experimenting and adding to that pool of wisdom like you were saying. Um, the self-love as well. I think I'm, I'm of both sides of it. Like, I think what it's— maybe it's not even self-love, but it's lack of self-deprecation and getting rid of that. And like, yeah, we fucked up, everyone does. Um, stop wasting energy on beating yourself up about it because that doesn't help. Like, if you feel that, that pain, the discomfort about an event that's happened, that's natural, that's fine. Like, you know when you're operating in the right space and when you do things you shouldn't and all of that. But then just go on to the next day and improve. And when you improve, when you're fucking jacked, ripped, people look at you when you're walking around, you look good, you dress well— you think it's, it's hard to be self-loving in that situation? Like, you're the top dog, you've, you know, gotten first in something, or you pulled off a deal, you're walking around with your fucking dick swinging. Like, that is a surefire way to self-love. That's— I think you need to get the ball rolling with it. All right, enough. Like, I'm a human, I make mistakes. Let's go on to the next thing so that I can improve myself. And then when you have improved yourself in all different realms and you know you've earned that, it's like anxiety goes away each day. As long as you do the things you're meant to be doing, and you know inherently when you haven't. And that's what anxiety and depression is for most people. It's like, oh man, I'm in this situation, I didn't have the courage to say what I wanted to, I tolerated the disrespect from this person, um, I didn't work out again, like I'm weak. That is like the anxiety and anxious thoughts that pop up. If you solve all of that and you deal with that in your own shit and you're actively striving, then you know, you're like you go to sleep each night happy. You're like, okay, I, I did what I needed to do today, dude.

You fucking, you fucking nailed it. You nailed it. I, I, I, I want to clarify, I think where the concept of self-love doesn't exist comes from me is that I see a lot of guys, just based on the questions alone that I get in DMs and the group that I run right now. Yeah, um, a lot of guys have a very weak mission. And what happens is, is that people think they need to improve themselves to a very high degree before they can carry out a mission. The mission comes before your health and safety. That has always been my motto. So if I am involved in a project and other people are counting on me, I will burn myself and all of my resources to the ground to make damn fucking sure that I come through. In the end. I will torch every fucking thing in my path to make that mission come real. Why? Because the mission is more important than I am. And that's what fucking self-sacrifice is all about, and that's where all the results come from. So I think that, um, a lot— Nietzsche said it. I mean, Nietzsche said self-improvement is largely masturbation.

It's true.

I think what he's really trying to say is that we are who we are. I've never truly seen people be able to make core changes. You can make changes in your personality on the periphery, but it's very similar to swimming upstream. The minute you stop paddling, the stream's going to carry you back to baseline. Where I think people can make extraordinary changes and is in their perspective. Perspective, because when you change the way you look at things, everything changes.

Yeah.

And every motherfucker is capable of seeing things a different way, looking at the world through a different lens. And I have a feeling that you can relate to this. I mean, I see everything through the lens of evolutionary biology. Yeah, evolutionary biology, bro. Every fucking thing makes sense. There's no bizarre behavior. There's no bizarre behavior on planet Earth once you understand that shit. I mean, mass murders, it all makes sense when you fucking look at it in the context of evolutionary biology.

Yeah, well, that's why, you know, I think some of my writing has resonated with people, is I, I studied at uni, I had a major in anatomy and human biology, and we did, you know, a lot of study in this group behavior, epigenetics, genetics in general, uh, and, and how just, you know, the selfish gene, how that as a mechanism of wanting to pass off your genes plays out in society as humans. And a lot of the stuff that happens is like you know, you want to be more attractive to pass on your genetics in general. And so you have to operate in this society and in a way, and all these emotions that are kind of playing out so that you have motivation to pass on your genes. You, you know, we're being controlled in that sense. And like you're saying, a lot of it does make sense looking at it. Like anxiety— why do we get scared about you know, a risk. It's because to your caveman brain, the risk is, oh, if this, if this X doesn't work out, then I might be shelterless. And back then, you know, a shelterless night meant a saber-toothed tiger walking over you in the middle of the night and your genes would be ended. So we experience anxiety as a result of these biological mechanisms. And when you identify that, I think it takes away their power. It takes away the identification that people have with this shit, where they, they embody the anxiety and the fear and they go, oh no, I can't do that, it's too scary. It's like, well, you're okay, you're feeling the fear, you're feeling that tension. And tension is always a sign of, you know, a good sign. But tension means you are riding that wave of improvement. And if you're happy and just like chilling, you're probably not improving in that, in some regard, you know. The scarier things are always the things that are new to us. And so if you can recognize that your stupid brain— or not stupid, but like that limbic brain, the caveman brain— is trying to protect you, but it's not actually relevant in today's world. And if you can understand that and internalize that, you realize like none of this shit even matters to a degree, to the point that I'm like worrying about it so much. Like it's all bullshit, and getting stuck in your head, uh, is the result of that, of taking it seriously.

100%, man, we're on the same page on that shit. 100%. I, I don't see it any differently. I mean, I have tried through rigorous experimenting, I have genuinely made a solid effort at trying to rip the cables out of fear. I've literally tried to smash that mechanism in myself.

Yeah.

And every time I've been in a situation where I'm teetering on the edge, bottom of the 9th, got $100 grand on the line, bases loaded, that same fucking creepy feeling always comes up on me, no matter how much I've tried to block it. I bet you love it now. Yeah, dude, exactly. I've kind of flipped it on its head. It's to the point where it's actually a feeling of euphoria. Isolation and reverie.

It's just energy.

Yeah, I mean, so it's just energy, man. It's all an experimentation. And so I think that's the thing is, is that it never does go away because that shit is written in your bone. But the way you manage it, you get mastery over the way you deal with the emotion. That's, that's the fucking benefit of subjecting yourself to these very hardcore situations over time. Is you just become a behemoth at managing the actual emotions. It doesn't get under your skin as much as it used to, but it's still a raging bonfire. It's still a very powerful feeling. And I think that's why— look, like, it's to the point where the lessons that I have extracted from going to the depths of hell have been so beneficial and so powerful that I have to hold myself back now because I'm older, wiser, more mature, I have to hold myself back from going into intentionally destructive situations because I am so good. I'm like an escape artist. I'm so good at getting out of anything that you can take everything from me. You can take every motherfucking thing I have, and by the end of the week, I'll be back in the penthouse somehow, some way, because I just know how to fucking— I know how to fight. So I actually have to restrict myself because I'm like a bull in a china shop. I mean, I sense danger, I sense trouble, and I just want every part of it. And so I've really, as I've gotten older, I've definitely learned how to temper that and apply it more creatively. What's to, you know, fuck, man, that's a good question.

And, and maybe it's like, because there are different types of fears, right? Like business deals, maybe it's a little bit scary or nerve-wracking, but it's not true fear. Do you have true fears in that sense, or what makes the most—

I think the only true fear I've ever had is, is just losing my own mind, losing myself. But what's interesting is is I feel like a lot of these states, a lot of these powerful states that you talk about, that I talk about, are just temporary states that people are afraid to use because they're afraid that they're not going to rebound. Like, being crazy, right, is a very powerful— it can be a very powerful temporary state. Sometimes you do need to summon crazy to get something done, and then you can, and then you can your brain is elastic, you can return to a normal state.

Yeah.

And so I just feel like there's so much untapped potential in the human pantheon of emotion that guys are just unwilling to fucking go there and really, really play at the edges of what's possible and what you're capable of, who you can become when you're stretched to the fucking limit and all you have is your own sanity to depend on. I mean, that is— dude, I mean, mountains get moved, buildings get erected, empires get created from motherfuckers who are willing to go there mentally because it's no man's land. And what crazy really is, is crazy is just someone who went to those depths and never came back. They didn't bring their oxygen tanks when they went diving.

Do you think there's a— they got that way because they went too deep, or they were just innately disposed to that? Like, have you felt that pull to go off the deep end?

I mean, I've definitely had periods in my life where I was off the deep end, but I had to for survival purposes. And once I got back to baseline, I've always normalized very quickly. A lot of that, dude, I chalk up to diet. And I'm sure you'll probably agree with me on this. I think a lot of psychosis, I think a lot of neurotic behaviors are from motherfuckers eating seed oils. Their brains are just completely fucked. They have— yeah, bro, they have metals in their brains and fucking— yeah, just all sorts of crazy shit from nutrition. But I feel like nutrition is the cornerstone because if your nutrition is extraordinarily high quality, it mediates your emotions naturally and you're able to rebound to that baseline state much easier. I mean, if I was on a fucking Slurpee diet, dude, I would have accomplished— I would have accomplished 5% of what I've accomplished in my life. The diet has been the crux of everything because it's just given me that even keel fallback. Yeah, that we all desperately need when we're playing— when we're playing life on hardcore mode.

Like, I don't think people realize, and I just— I I have a theory that like if you just were able to kidnap someone that didn't treat their body right, force them to exercise for, for 2 weeks, force them to sleep properly, force them to eat properly, cut out the bullshit, and then they felt how much better they feel and what, what it is like to have a functioning body, surely that would just, you know, click something in their head and then they wouldn't, you know, they wouldn't go back to the old ways because they realized like, wow, okay, I actually feel like a sucks as a human being now.

Dude, I used to believe that, but I truly think that there are motherfuckers out there who are so enraptured in being a victim that it's their only currency they have. They don't want to improve because improvement eventually leads you to taking personal responsibility for your life. And a lot of people love being a plaything to the world. They just love being fucking punched around by the world and Dude, I mean, fuck, a lot of these young guys are waiting for someone to fucking kick their teeth in so they can make a move. They're waiting for a catastrophe. That's why my whole philosophy and method is if you're in that state of stagnation, you need to drop the floor out from underneath you. You need to be able to do it yourself before somebody else does because it's bound to happen. Yeah, so I'm all about just getting to the lowest common denominator as fast as possible. Take the floor out from underneath you and you will learn very quickly what your weaknesses and what your strengths are. And then you just do an honest appraisal. I think rigorous self-honesty is probably the most important virtue out today. If you can really fucking sit with yourself and be well calibrated and your opinion of yourself is very close to what the reality is, your chances of making it very far are pretty much unlimited.

Do you mean in terms of like, you know, not lying to yourself that you did enough work or, you know, you made this choice today? Because I feel the same thing 100%. Like, you know, when you've done well and if you can honestly— without emotion is the key thing as well. Like, some, some people don't want to go into that because it rises emotions for them that are uncomfortable. But an emotion is just an emotion. You can detach from it if you, you know, you practice at it a little bit. You, you learn that skill, which I think it is a skill. Well, it is a skill that anyone can learn. It's like feeling an emotion, detaching from it, just recognizing it as emotion and deciding not to feel that. And that's, you know, I'm sure you'll, you'll, um, want to talk about this a bit, but there's that side of it. But then there's also the positive use of emotion to fire Use your loss.

Exactly, exactly. Um, I lost my train of thought, but that last thing you said about emotion being a catalyst, it's, it's true.

You don't want to be so stoic that you're boring, or like you just kind of walk around like a robot, because some of those positive emotions, or some of those emotions, are useful and can be transmuted in a way.

Yeah, exactly. They can be transmuted and used as fuel. I view every emotional state as extraordinary fuel and ammunition. Yeah, I think depression— if someone's depressed, that's actually a very valuable state because that's a huge swarm of energy that is not being tapped and not being used. If you actually can identify that you're depressed, that's actually energy that you can rebound and redirect. All of it is. If you feel anything at all, you're fucking blessed, because what it means is you can redirect. It's when you're apathetic and you feel nothing at all, that's when you are in the most dangerous part of your, uh, that's when you're in the most dangerous part of your transformation. But depression is a fucking blessing, bro. I feel like depression for people is a massive indicator then major fucking overhauls need to be made. Yeah, major changes need to be made.

Yeah, it's, um, you want to make someone love you or hate you, uh, in the same kind of way. Like, it's, it's all one. Not that you should go around, you know, telling people to hate you, but the idea is to be your authentic self. Um, and I'm curious on your take on this, actually. Your, your, your authentic self, which I think develops after you have had some kind of life experience, you know, you know what you stand for, what you don't to a degree. There's always identifying with stuff that doesn't matter, which you have to be aware of, but it's kind of a balance between that and also, yeah, I think you need role models and mentors in a way to see what's possible in yourself. Do you have any, uh, role models or mentors? I know you mentioned the powerlifting guys, or have you been kind of your own through this trans— more transformative experimental process, um, your own role model in a way?

No, it's a great question. Um, I've actually— there's one single dude in my life, um, who I ran with for a long time in my early 20s Dude, uh, met him randomly at a Whole Foods. He got out of prison, did 11 years in the pen, got out of prison, real hardcore history, very temperamental, sociopathic personality. But I just connected with this dude. He had this raw kind of ferocious energy. And at that time in my life, I've really never had any male role models or even male figures in my life that I've respected or looked up to. And this guy just radiated this extremely authentic masculine energy. And at that point in my life I needed some guidance, needed some wisdom and some lessons from a dude who'd been through it all. And man, that fucking 2 years, I ran with that dude for 2 years. I saw him almost every day. My growth, my acceleration of who I became in that period of time was fucking astronomical. I mean, this dude was ruthless. A very, very sinister personality. And like I said, we would butt heads and it would almost get to the point where he'd pull a gun on me. But I really learned, bro, I really learned from being in the thick of it and hanging out with a guy who is extremely fucking territorial, has mental issues. But just from hanging around him and learning how to deal with difficult personalities is so fucking crucial because what I realized at the time, even though he wasn't a top of the food chain guy financially, it dawned on me that at the top of the financial world, it's those same types that are running the show. It's jackals, it's wolves. And if you want to be able to hang in the top 1% and do deals with those kind of power players then it's in your best interest to learn how to deal with very, very, very difficult personalities. And I think a lot of people view that as negative. Fuck this guy's negative energy. But for me, it was actually a source of inspiration because I looked at it as like I'm going to the gym mentally, psychologically. I'm doing deadlifts when I hang out with this guy because he's so erratic. His energy is so chaotic. That I have to learn to adapt and adjust and survive in environments with him. And I mean, we did everything together. We traveled, we hopped on planes, we picked up tons of women, we made a ton of money together. I mean, we ended up getting involved in a lot of hardcore scenarios. But bro, just learning how to navigate that complexity is so valuable. That's why a lot of these kids that come from good families— and like I said, I come from a very wealthy family. Um, but I was not exposed to these— I guess you could call them lesser elements, but they're very powerful catalysts for finding parts of yourself that you didn't know existed. And so I, I encourage people— yeah, go ahead.

Do you think you had an innate want to reject that side of the family? I know you mentioned you were, you know, being raised for the business. Was it your upbringing that maybe initially had you with this rejection to authority in that sense?

For sure. I mean, my, my parents divorced when I was very young, which was basically my first experience of heartbreak.

Yeah.

Up until then, it was a very Disneyland-esque world where, you know, there was no— there was no darkness in the world when you're a kid. But for me, it happened early, and I was, I was mature enough to understand what was really going on and I feel like once you have your heart broken that first time, there's one of two things that happens. You either summon this other side of yourself to cope and deal with the world, or a lot of guys implode internally. And I never imploded internally. I took that reality check that the world is not all fucking roses.

Yeah.

And, um, I feel like I grew up really fast from that experience. For whatever reason, it had a larger impact on me than it did my brother. I have a brother who's 2 years younger than me, and it just didn't affect him the way it affected me. Yeah, but, um, but bro, I really do believe that if a man keeps his heart slightly broken— and it doesn't have to be from a woman, it could be from not achieving a goal, it could be so many things that if a man just keeps himself in that state of being somewhat heartbroken, he can achieve anything.

Yeah, it's, it's using that psychological scar almost and not letting it affect you. Like you said, you're not, you're not looking over your shoulder at the past, but you do have that ability to access that part of your psyche where you remember, oh, that, that's what that felt like. That's not fun. Um, how do I not— how do I avoid that in the future?

Dude, it's unbelievably powerful. It's unbelievably powerful, and it circles back perfectly because it goes back to this whole thing of this modern self-help movement of everyone wants to be permanently fixed. Everyone wants to heal all of their wounds, all of their traumas before they can go out and do anything. And I believe that what that is, it's a product of a world that it's emasculating. It's completely emasculating to be a man who's not wounded. It just is. It's part of— I mean, you take, you take hits, you take shots when you put yourself out there. Yeah, bro, it's very, it's very crucial for any identity to be able to absorb those hits. I mean, you don't have to sit around for 3 years healing before you can attack your goals. You can start today. You don't You can start right now.

Yeah.

And, and the funny thing is, is you actually do— the irony is you actually heal and you ameliorate your condition by achieving what you set out to do in the first place, by actually accomplishing the goal that you're spending 3 years trying to fix your psyche before you start. By actually achieving it, you have completed the cycle. Yeah, and you have, you have restored your own faith 100%.

Tell me, how do you make your demons work for you? I know that's a concept you extol a decent amount. I think my approach is more, you know, transmute the demons into angels and then, you know, go with that. But you make your demons work for you. How do you do that?

You know, I, I sort of look at everything in a very— I speak in a language in my daily affairs that's very warlike. Everything to me, everything in my way, I view as an obstacle. And so I have this very just aggressive innate sort of just view outlook on how I view things that are resistance. So when I go into the gym, for example, for an example, I think part of what's made me a talented lifter is that I'm able to tap into these extremely powerful emotional states where I feel that inner burn, that inner fire, and I'm able to unleash it because there's no fucking way I'm snatching 300 pounds on my own. Right? I mean, I am— yeah, I have demons. I have demons working with me, and I, I've talked to other very high-level people in their craft that have had similar experiences. You, you, you're utilizing— it's not just flesh and bone, it's just there's a spiritual component to it, to the demons. I don't, I don't look at them as like If you slay your demons, right? And this is what I'm talking about, about healing. If you, if you kill off your demons, you lose a ton of leverage. Your demons just want to be put to work. They want to fucking work. So if you give them tasks to do— lifting fucking weights, um, whatever it is, building a business— and this is not a metaphysical concept. I mean, I'm literally saying all of the anger, all of the rage, all of the heartbreak that you've ever had, that's all readily accessible to you right now as fuel to go make something happen. And I'm just able, like a fucking light switch, when I get into the gym, it's a very theatrical experience. It's very climactic. I love building up to that one rep max. It feels like war to me. It genuinely, genuinely feels like war. And it is, because if I drop that weight over my head I'm fucking dead. There's nowhere for 300 pounds to go once it's over your head. I mean, you have to execute with extreme aggression and you have to pull with every fiber in your being. And so I think the sport of weightlifting just is sort of a personification of my mentality on life in general.

Do you feel good lifting every day like that, or do you have like the occasional rest day?

I don't have occasional rest days. I'm actually always in a state of fatigue. I'm glad you asked me that. I've been— I'm in a— I'm in a permanent state of fatigue to the point where now my body has adapted that I have— I'm able to express maximum strength while in a fatigue state, if that makes sense. Because I've just— I've trained my organism for so long. I've been doing this for over a decade. I've never had a serious injury. I've never— see, I have this philosophy that people get hurt when they take days off because the muscle recovers faster than the joints and tendons. And what happens is guys take a day off, the muscle starts to recover, and then they go in the next day and train hard. The muscle contracts really hard against the joint and the tendons, and that's how you get the injury. But when everything is fatigued in equilibrium the muscles, the joints are tendons, they're constantly in a state of fatigue. The muscles don't contract hard enough to damage anything. And so I think that's where I've ironically gotten a lot of my longevity. And this isn't my concept, right? This is like a very ancient Bulgarian style. I mean, those guys trained every fucking day and they were the best lifters for generations on the world stage. So, um, I've just— I've always looked at what the best did and I've tried to just emulate that.

Do you think if you went on a 2-week holiday in the islands and then the clean and jerk, you would go up or down?

Man, that's a great question. You know, I think it would probably make it go down just because the mental component wouldn't be there.

Yeah, uh, I'd be interested to see if we send you to a wellness retreat for like a week, got deep tissue massage done and rolled you out and gave you, you know, a lot of sleep if you would just come in and fucking rip the world record.

Dude, that's a fascinating— that's a fascinating—

another experiment, right?

Yeah, I may, I may, I may have to fucking do that, bro. 2 weeks complete checkout.

Yeah, and, and you could, you know, write about it so you're not completely— your brain's mushy. I find, um, 2 weeks, uh, 2 days of like chilling the whole day, and then I'm, I'm antsy and I need to do something, some work again.

Yeah, dude, 2 days of no movement, fuck. Yeah, yeah, 100%.

You feel spiritually wrong as well, like, all right, let's do it. 100%.

But I mean, my whole lifestyle is geared, like, designed around this sort of trajectory. I mean, I, I don't sit in chairs. I actually removed all the chairs in my home. It's not possible to sit in a chair. And I— bro, bro, I sit— I sit in a— of course I do, right? Yeah, shocker. Do you have a bed? Yeah, I have a bed that sits very low to the ground, Japanese style. Yeah. And actually, bro, the last— ironically, the last 2 months I've actually been sleeping on my hardwood floor. As an experiment.

Yeah, I've heard of that.

What have you thought, dude? It's been, it's been fucking phenomenal. I've had outrageous— I've had outrageously good results. What I've noticed is my tissues seem to respond. It seems to be very beneficial to the tissues because what I have this theory that, um, the surfaces we sit on are way too soft, and what happens is, is your tissues end up creating passive stability for you by when you sit in a couch or you sit in a mattress. Your tissue creates that passive stability that your, that your body needs to stabilize the system. And what happens is, is that we wake up and that tissue gets really fucking balled up and really tense. But when you sleep against a hard surface, it actually smooths out your tissue. So I've noticed when I've been waking up in the morning, I don't need any sort of mobility or any sort of stretch, stretch routine. I can go right into it because my tissue quality is a lot healthier from being pressed against the hard surface.

Yeah, that's interesting.

That's just anecdotally what I've experienced.

Yeah. How much do you sleep on the regular?

Dude, sleep is so fucking crucial for me. Uh, fuck, I mean, I really don't go less than 8. Yeah, the last, the last 2 months I've— that I've been doing this experiment, I've been doing about 6 on average. Yeah, and I've been feeling phenomenal, um, because I think it's a cycle thing, right? Like, I think it's like— it's funny, it's like, well, we'll fucking eat a perfect diet, we'll train hard, we'll be in peak tip-top condition, we get 8 hours of sleep at night, and then it's like, for what? Why are we— why do we have all this, this abundance of health if we're not going to spend it? You have to spend it. You have to spend it and utilize it at some point. And I'm kind of in that state right now. I'm, I'm utilizing my health and, um, you know, creating.

Yeah, it's like, um, like you say, you've had the high nutritional content with your good food, and that's what's formed the foundation of you being able to do all this crazy shit. Like, it's likely that if you were up on a fucking Twinkie diet, you wouldn't have been able to do this. That's why, that's why I always say, like, If you want to self-improve, get your health to the maximum and then go from there. Like, it's positive movement forward, you know. You get in a better thinking state to consider the rest of the moves you have to make, uh, and then you just feel like a normal person. You stop watching fucking Netflix at 2 AM and then go into bed, that kind of shit, which is elementary. But if you are stuck in that state of bullshit, they're the first steps.

Brother, I could not fucking agree with that message more. That is a powerful message, and that is the— that is the fucking crux of it. Health is everything.

I'm glad you said that. I'm sure a lot of people think you don't sleep at all. Like, yeah, you're probably right.

I mean, I mean, fuck yeah. I mean, I'm There were times in the past where I was basically a bat at night hanging upside down waiting for the sun to rise. But yeah, man, sleep is fun. Sleep is crucial. Sleep is for sure crucial. It's one that I've definitely tinkered with over the years, um, but man, I'm fascinated lately with fatigue and exhaustion and just kind of understanding those mechanisms better because I feel that a lot of people, uh, dude, it's the easiest emotion to tap into is exhaustion, right? Like, if you strip a man's goals away from him and you take a man's vision away, all he's left with is, is just sheer exhaustion. Sheer exhaustion. Because man is a naturally very tired beast, right? We're a tired creature. By nature. And the way that you actually— it's ironic— the way you gain inspiration, the way you gain energy is by doing more. When you accomplish more— because you'll notice, dude, that people who always are fucking sleepy, always tired, are always the laziest motherfuckers who don't do anything. And the dudes who are fucking taking on commitments, taking on responsibilities, building multiple businesses, going through crazy divorces, getting sued those dudes are always wired. I think there's that old quote, I think Benjamin Franklin said it, I could be wrong. He said, if you want to get something done, ask a busy person.

Hmm. Do you think it's a great— a bit of a confounding variable, just to play devil's advocate here, that the people who innately feel the energy or have that energy are the ones able to do all that shit, and the people that maybe they they don't have that natural energy, never are able to tap into that same world?

Man, that's a fucking tough question, that chicken or the egg. Yeah, you know, I, I, I truly believe just through my own experience that a lot of hormonal issues and listlessness and catatonia can actually be medit— be self-attenuated through action.

Yeah.

And I know, and I think it can, it can be counterintuitive because people are like, well, how do I take action if I feel like I'm in this state? I genuinely believe— I did this tweet a while ago— is like, the reason people's fucking vision is deteriorating, the reason their hearing sucks, the reason our senses are switched off is because why would your body have to— if you're living like prey, why would your body need to fine-tune those mechanisms? Why do— why would you need testosterone if you're getting kicked around in a cage all day? Yeah, why would— why would your body make it?

True. I remember reading that tweet of yours, it was— it's so fucking good. Like, it's the whole— if you're in jail or war, you look at photos of guys before and after they've gone to a heavily masculine environment where they need to, you know, literal life-saving situations, or they have to protect themselves. They're going to get more jacked, they're going to get more of those predator eyes, and they're going to have, you know, high cortisol but high testosterone as well, likely, just to be able to survive in that. And it's that epigenetic expression of your environment, which most people's environment is fucking soy. So you epigenetically become soy as well. It's not hard.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, there's no way around that. I mean, dude, all the answers are embedded in history, right? And it's like, this is where I get my theory about training is like, do you think the motherfuckers who built all the roads we drive on, who built civilization, did they fucking take days off? No, they didn't. Yeah, that's the extreme side of the coin, but at the same time, I mean, what about dudes that were at war for years?

Yeah, they're— I mean, they'll be on all the time, otherwise they fucking died, right?

They're switched on for fucking years. For years they're running on 2 hours sleep. I've seen some of those dudes when they come back from war. Yeah, their eyes might be glazed over, but some of those motherfuckers look dynamic and healthy as fuck.

Yeah, yeah. I guess as well, it's like if you're a warrior person innately then you're going to thrive more in those situations. Um, again, is it genetics? Is it some other— you know, do you believe in astrology, man?

I don't particularly, but the patterns are definitely interesting and they're definitely worth recognizing. Let's put it this way: when a chick starts telling me about my stars, it's, it's worth a listen for sure, if it's coming from a very beautiful yoga chick.

Or something like that.

Exactly, brother.

Exactly. Consider—

always consider the source.

Uh, that ties into one of our audience questions that we had. Um, he just wanted to get your thoughts on the balance between swooping or relationships, uh, girls in general. Uh, how do you— how do they fit into your life with your mission, your businesses, and, uh, your health? I— you know, he said health in the question, but that's, you know, kind of a separate issue. How do you balance or or what role do girls play in your life at the moment?

So I have a very as-needed approach to everything. Basically, I don't, I don't ever obsess or think about what my repertoire is with, with any of these things. I will go sometimes weeks without talking to a chick, and then one morning I will wake up and want one, and I'll go out and get it. Yeah, so it's just It's just very much a sort of a creative, natural process for me. It's not something that's— that I manufacture, or I feel like I have to meet a quota to feel a certain way. It's just— it just— I, I just feed off of my own raw desire. Sometimes I don't want anything to do with women. Yeah, because women can— women can very much be— women can fucking be extremely distracting, but at the same time I can go the other extreme and I can spend a full 30 days with the chick without leaving her sight. Yeah, so I just, I fluctuate. It just depends completely how I feel and I just use that as my barometer. But, um, I think that's good.

But yeah, I think, um, again, like almost asking these questions is try it. Try, you know, talking to girls more, talking to girls less. If you're a young guy trying to fix your life, I would argue let's lean on the lesser side. One, just because, you know, if you meet a girl that's genuinely interesting and all that, then for sure hang out with her, see what lessons you can learn, get into some mischief together. But don't force it either, because it's not the end of the world if you're not getting with girls for the moment. Um, it's a part of life that can be experienced as and when it comes along naturally into your life. And also think that that kind of stuff happens in the, the better scenarios when you're not pursuing it.

Dude, that's a very, very, very fucking great point. I'm glad you said it because I was gonna say, you have to— the best relationships I've ever had all come from just those organic situations where I'm just out and about and I just, I bump into a chick serendipitously. I think a lot of guys have it in their head they have to meet a quota they have to fucking put up a certain amount of numbers, they have to have a certain amount of approaches a day. I think that can actually be extremely destructive. I think it has to come from an authentic place of desire.

Yeah.

And sometimes, sometimes in your life when you're full throttle and you're making money and you're building yourself and you're seeing high success, sometimes you want nothing to do with chicks.

Yeah.

And that's okay. But I feel like a lot of guys get down on themselves for going through periods— what do they call it, dry periods? Yeah, that's fucking— that's fucking lame, dude. Being solo is a very fucking crucial— dude, it's a crucial part of being a man. Yeah, crucial.

Yeah, if you can't handle being alone, like, I'd argue that it's a, you know, it's a fundamental thing that you can't have a good relationship without that, without being by yourself too. Like, the best relationships are person A who can be by themselves, person B who can be by themselves. Meet each other and have a shared, uh, value system of some kind to— and can enjoy time together. But they can also be by themselves. And if you're dependent on other people for things or external validation, again, you need, you know, some image of yourself, like getting with girls, in order to— because you identify with that. Otherwise you think, oh, that, you know, I'm losing myself, you know, people can judge me or whatever. That is all just ego attachment and if you can separate that from yourself as the object of experience, then it loses its power over you. I think that's a lot of things that I'd like to hear your thoughts on about as well, is do you feel that you have an ego as such? Obviously everyone does, that you have, you know, that's how you interface with the outside world, uh, to, to some degree. But do you find that your ego Uh, it's something too that's motivated you or fueled you. How do you play with that energy and, and maybe your thoughts on, um, detaching from it?

Yeah, it's been— I mean, it's been instrumental for sure. Um, I mean, you need an ego so you know whose mouth to feed at the dinner table, right? Like, the, the ego is a, is a reflection of self, so you know who you are. Um, I truly believe that you, you can't, you can't actualize a talent unless your ego can take hold of it. I think the ego is very important. I'm not one of these ego death guys by any stretch. Yeah, but I'm very, I'm very open to interpretation. I can totally understand the Eastern and the Buddhist methods, but for me, um, really redlining and really actually nurturing and basically utilizing the ego in its full expression has been probably more powerful for me than anything else. Yeah, it's how you can overcome extremely low probabilities. I mean, statistically, from my background where I've come from, I shouldn't be here. But I do believe that my ego has allowed me to roar through things that would ordinarily suppress or take down someone who did not have that activated. What are your thoughts on ego? I'm curious.

Um, well, it's that kind of— your points kind of pertain to the belief that you can achieve it, and if you don't have an ego and you detach from the ego all the time, then you don't have a strong sense of the you. Um, it— I think, I think it depends. If you're a slave to the ego and you're always stuck in negative thinking because because of it, then of course it's going to be a bad situation, and you're going to be spending mental energy on garbage and, you know, arguing with people online because you think your, um, your point of view has been attacked, and taking everything personally. Like, all of that is wasted time and energy. So I think you have to have the disattachment from the ego in that sense. But if you don't have a clear sense of yourself, then you can't interface properly with the world, and you can't again achieve anything if you don't inherently believe okay, you know, there is something to me. I, I can do this shit because I'm, I'm made of the best stuff. And if you don't believe that, then you have to fix that. Again, improving yourself naturally improves that side of the ego. Uh, but like I said, you can't— you do think Napoleon had a small ego? You know, like, that shit doesn't happen unless you have that driving force. And who knows, maybe he was, you know, tortured, uh, by that relationship to us to a certain degree. It just depends on how you can navigate that balance and that tension. And if you let it bite into you and burn you out, then okay, maybe let's not attach the ego. If you can ride it and believe in yourself because the ego, then it's a good thing. It's, it's all these mental tricks that are like shifting things to become tools and weapons to be used rather than being a circumstance of them.

Exactly, exactly. One of the interesting movements that I see now online is this exactly what we're talking about. Um, I've noticed this trend on Twitter specifically, but you'll notice— I've noticed that there's a lot of, there's a lot of embellishment going on on Twitter. Guys will make grand proclamations and declarations about their numbers, about what they've accomplished, right? But I actually think it's a good— well, I actually think it's actually somewhat of a positive thing. I'll tell you why. What I see a lot of guys doing I see guys speaking things into existence that aren't necessarily real, and then they're actually taking an earnest attempt to make it real. I can, I can at least fucking respect that. I can respect a motherfucker who's at least willing to state outrageous goals, outrageous visions, and then that guy's willing to die on the cross to make it happen. I respect that.

Yeah, no, that's a good point. My point was more, I guess, like just keep it— because there's a, there's a balance, right? Keep it to yourself rather than being like, this is what I'm going to do, and telling everyone, because you can kind of take away from the motivation a little bit. But also, I see the point of, you know, you're putting your foot into the arena by doing that and saying, I'm gonna do this, guys. If it doesn't happen, you have that shaming motivation, like you said, and then you will achieve more if you have a fucking stadium of eyes on you than if you're just in your room, um, by yourself with no one to really prove anything to. And that kind of relates to what I recommend people do, um, or a little mental tool is realize that all of your ancestors are watching you right now through their genetic memories, and you are also forming, you know, spirits of your potential offspring are also watching you on that that metaphysical level. So if you feel like you don't have any, you know, anyone to prove anything to, which you don't do, you know, in that sense. But if you want to have people invested in you, everyone that's ever lived so that you could live is part of you. And so if you have that mindset to view yourself as well, whether that's just by yourself, I think it's the same thing as like you're saying, these guys putting out goals, because then it usually happens as well. Like when you saying the universe like, all right, fuck me, if I don't do this then I'm gonna look like an idiot. And then, you know, that happens a lot more than it would if you just kept to yourself.

Exactly, exactly. It can be used in a very positive manner as well. It's like you can take on a large commitment that you might not be capable of, but then you can also summon a side of yourself you never knew existed just by taking on the commitment. That's a form of That's a form of putting it out there. Yeah, I mean, that's been fucking— that's been an X factor for sure for me, is being able to take on commitments that I didn't think I was capable of. So then I have to summon a new beast in order to handle it.

True. Have you done psychedelics?

No, I've been— fuck, man, I've been pressured to do that more than anything else in my life.

Really?

Nope, haven't disturbed the pond with psychedelics yet. I'm open to it. I would— if I did it, I would probably do bufo, the toad.

Uh, the— is that the 2-MeO-DMT that it breaks down into?

I believe so, yeah.

Yeah.

MAO inhibited or something?

Yeah.

I don't know, man. I don't know if I'm a good candidate for psychedelics. I believe strongly that all of those drugs have— there's certain candidacy that goes into it. I mean, I trip out naturally. I mean, I trip out naturally.

Also just on the emotions and the energy, or—

yeah, I mean, I'm always feeding off of my own energy and my own desires, so I just I mean, I don't know though. I know a lot of warriors have healed themselves with this shit. I just, for whatever reason, I haven't been compelled to do it. I like— here's the thing, I look at it as my psychology, my mind is like I'm driving on a highway. Why would I want to shake the wheel? Like, I mean, it's certainly a valid question to present to yourself. I just don't feel a need to start rattling the rail. I like that smooth stability of being sober. I mean, I've never been drunk.

Really?

I've— yeah, I'm 32, I've never been drunk. I've never even been high. I've never tried weed. But as you can tell, I have these other vices. So I mean, it all comes full circle.

Yeah, well, that's very impressive. And you know, probably is a lot of the reason why you're such, you know, mentally powerful position, because a lot of people don't handle it well. I mean, you could have taken your first drink at 18 and then gone a different path. Like, I'm sure that happens to some people where they start to numb the pain rather than using it as fuel.

Definitely. I've always just sort of had this curiosity with reality. I've always wanted to get the highest dose of reality I could find without disturbing or without altering the state that I was in. I'm a very confrontational person. And I like to confront myself and I like to confront the world. And I just feel like I'm a step slower, especially with the industry I'm in. I mean, the gambling industry, I can't afford to fucking slur my words or stumble over, you know, being drunk or high because sharpness is a fucking premium. I have to be completely razor sharp at all times. So that's definitely been a deterrent.

So is that your main source of income?

Like, no, no, not now. I mean, I'm— I've been out of it for a while. I dabble here and there. I hit a huge score on my last run, so I've just been kind of coasting off of that. But yeah, um, but yeah, I built this group on Twitter. I'm sure you've seen it. So I'm just working with a bunch of dudes right now and just kind of enjoying my time and kind of giving back to the community.

Yeah, awesome.

It's been a blast. Had a great time filming that whole thing.

Yeah. Uh, yeah, what was it called? If you just want to mention it for people at home.

Oh, Tour de Force. Yeah, it's in my bio. It's a video series that I, that I created for young dudes, uh, mental, mental shifts, mental paradigms. It's a whole very comprehensive, uh, thing.

Yeah, I recommend anyone check it out. It looks really good. And if the little clips on, uh, on Bruce's Twitter bio or Twitter on the timeline, you know, a little kind of preview of that shit, then it's got to be gold.

Yeah, man. And me and—

me and—

I'm sure you've seen Freak Twitter. Oh yeah, Twitter is the— Freak Twitter— Freak Twitter is the funnest Twitter right now, man.

Shout out to Freaks!

The Freaks! We're planning a, uh, we're planning a very special weekend, um, hopefully by summer. A very exclusive sort of weekend retreat event. It's going to be pretty fun. So definitely got some projects in the works, man. Just very, very optimistic and excited for the future.

Yeah, me too, brother. And I wish you the utmost success with everything because I know that, um, It's all coming to you, and you're doing good work. But I, I want to thank you so much for joining me, uh, on the Soulcast. We'll have this up on Twitter probably this evening. Um, and yeah, thanks for joining me, and I appreciate all your wisdom and your time out of your day.

It was a blast, bro. Thank you.

All right, peace, brother.

Take care.