Paralyzed. Suicidal. Then He Surrendered, And EVERYTHING Shifted | Marcus Aurelius Anderson

For me, being in a, a bed paralyzed from the neck down, I turned 40 years old in a bed and I was literally suicidal, but I couldn't act on it.

Today's guest, I'm telling you right now, he's amazing. He's an author, he's a CEO of Catalyst, international speaker, got a brand new upcoming book coming out, which I'm super excited about. Marcus Aurelius Anderson, welcome to the show, bro.

So once I did that and got through infantry school, went to 10th Mountain Light Infantry is where I was stationed. And about a year into training, I ruptured a disc in my neck that paralyzed me from the neck down. I woke up in the ICU. Broke, divorced, paralyzed, trying to figure out what I do with my life now, if this is what my life is. And that was the beginning, because now I'm in the United States. Now I have people who will take care of me, even though I wasn't really nice to be around. And then once I had that for a good 2 weeks of just completely 1,000% gratitude, I call it 360 gratitude, that's when I started getting a little bit of feeling back in my left hand, then my right, and then—

Hey guys, welcome back to One Part Lion, One Part Lamb, helping you rise, lead, and last day after day, week after week, month over month. We are here to serve you And pray that each and every episode does that. Our heart is to give you all the bite-sized nuggets you need that are actually applicable to your life, to your business, to your family, to your relationships in such a way that aligns with not just the person that you are now, but more importantly, the person that you're actually becoming. Today, I've got a special guest for you guys that has been through a tremendous amount of adversity. Some would say— I would say he's a walking, talking miracle. He's also a walking, talking inspiration. I have not seen one time where this gentleman doesn't want to be fully present when he is present and fully of service when he can be of service. I watched him even with one of our other guests that just left as we're filming today. And just how he's wired, I absolutely love. And here's the cool thing. I've discovered that when we step into this world of high-capacity leadership, whether you're building a career, a family, a calling, it doesn't matter what you're building, right? There becomes a moment in time where you have to be become very comfortable with being very uncomfortable and lean in hardcore. And at least in my experiences, many of those times were not chosen. I didn't choose them, they chose me. And but those transformations and those transitions end up becoming the very life lessons that allow us to be of service at scale. So today's guest is no different. Literally, he's a walking ball of light. I know you're going to learn a lot from him. Please make sure you got your notepads and your pen. Please make sure as you're watching and listening to today's episode that you have a chance to about 2 or 3 or 4 friends that will need this conversation. And what will happen is you'll hear something or see something during the conversation today that's going to jump out in your spirit, and it's going to make you say, I need— John needs to know this, or Sally needs to know that, or Bob needs to know this, or, you know, Jessica needs to know that. Like, you're going to see these types of people, they're going to pop in your mind, they're going to be super fleeting. And I want you to really just take a quick moment, pause the episode, jot their name down on your, you know, your iPhone or your Droid or whatever you're using. And, uh, as soon as we get done with the episode, share the link. That's all we ask, um, is to help us serve people at scale by simply being part of this journey that we're calling One Part Lion and One Part Lamb. So today's guest, I'm telling you right now, he's amazing. He's an author, he's a, he's a CEO of Catalyst, um, international speaker, got a brand new upcoming book coming out which I'm super excited about, uh, the creator of Acta Non Verba, if I say that correctly, um, and he's one of the coolest names on the planet, by the way. Marcus Aurelius Anderson, welcome to the show, bro.

Thank you, my friend. I've— I, I— we should have started the conversation and just recorded everything we did from the moment I met you. So I appreciate you for having me. This is a beautiful, beautiful property, great energy, and it matches very much who you are.

Thank you.

Doing so. Thank you.

Yeah, welcome to Safe Haven, bro. Yeah, it's amazing. No, I'm excited to talk to us, uh, talk, um, you know, it's— I always listen to my friends closely. Like, you know, I'm, I'm getting to the stage of life, uh, where, um, I have to be very cautious with who gets access to my time, who gets access to what we're building. That we were talking about this off air a little bit. There's, there's, I thank God there's being a shift in the, in this, this world of who you're learning from and who you're listening to. We're getting away from what I call the guru economy and back into guide economy. People that have been there, done that, got the t-shirt, can talk about it for days.

Yes.

And the best part is, is serving at scale. Like they genuinely wanna be of service. And when Josh connected us, man, I was like, all right, Josh, you vouched for him. I haven't met him yet. And then I went and looked at what you're doing and what you've been through and all the stuff. I'm like, holy cow, dude. Yes, this is an easy yes. Easy yes. Let's get him on the show. I think just because your personal story of adversity is large, I mean, it's miraculous in every way that I can measure it. I'd love people to understand kind of the the journey. I normally, I normally don't start shows like talking about like kind of what the person's been through, but I think it's so integral to what you're doing and why you care so much about serving people.

Yeah.

Um, I'd love people to know more about how you got to where you are, because the man that's sitting across from me literally walked into this house and at one time couldn't walk at all.

Yeah, absolutely. I— so I'll give a little bit of Please. A little bit of pretense, and then I'll go into that place. For so many of us, we forget about what's important. And then we forget about how honest we are about what we're doing, why we're doing it. Is this what somebody else wants from me? Is this what somebody else thinks is important? But as we go through life, we start to have these opportunities to relearn the stuff that we sort of forgot. So for me, I was in chiropractic school in Atlanta. And I was married at the time. And my great uncle, who was my biggest male role model, was in Vietnam. He was a long-range reconnaissance patrol. So he was doing some pretty heavy stuff.

Yeah.

I got divorced, and then he passed away 2 weeks later. So oftentimes God puts adversity in front of us.

You're smiling already. To save time.

Right there, right?

Yeah.

It's not just one, it's usually multiple. And it's there because why? He wants us to stop and look. Are you paying attention? Do I have your attention? And with that—

Do I have your intention?

Exactly. Where are you putting that attention now? Right? So the idea was for me to actually look and say, do I want to finish this doctorate? Or am I doing this for the wrong reasons? Well, because I was married, my intention was finish the doctorate, push myself as hard as I could. I was Sleeping like 4 hours a night, working on the weekends, bartending, doing security, just to try to not be in debt, thinking like an entrepreneur to open my practice. But once that left, I realized that's not what I wanted. And after going to my great uncle's funeral, I always thought of him as my uncle. But when I got there and they're doing this like 21-gun salute, full bird colonel eulogizing him, man after man going through and talking about his acts of valor, it reminded me of what was important, that warrior in me, that lion.

Mm-hmm.

And I had lost touch with that. So after that happened, I go talk to a recruiter. Now I'm 38 at that time. And I asked, how old do you need to be? He said 35. So I turned and he's like, well, explain to me, why do you want to run off and join the Army?

Yeah.

And I kind of told him my intention and what was actually driving me. Took a test, took the PT test. I did really well. He's like, I'll sign a waiver for you right now. I have a degree in human biology. He's like, let's send you to OCS. Let's do these different things. I said, no, no, no, no. I want to do what my great uncle did. And he says, well, the odds of you being able to do that as an officer are pretty much nonexistent.

Yeah.

I said, what if I went enlisted? And he laughs in my face, but that was the only path I'm going to have, right? So once I embraced that adversity and I jumped in, right, there's only one level of commitment total.

Yeah.

So once I did that, got through infantry school, went to 10th Mountain Light Infantry is where I was stationed. And about a year year into training, I ruptured a disc in my neck that paralyzed me from the neck down. And I woke up in the ICU, broke, divorced, paralyzed, trying to figure out what do I do with my life now if this is what my life is? And that was, I guess, my rock bottom, if you will. But it was also my opportunity to understand what real faith looks like, what real courage looks like.

Mm-hmm.

And how adversity can be a gift if we choose to shift our mentality around that.

Yeah. I can't even imagine, like, and I've been through some significant things, right? But I've never lost the use of the body that I trust. Never lost that before, right? Never had to face that. I mean, there's been moments of like poor health, right? I had a— I didn't rupture a disc, but I had a What do you call it?

Bulging disc.

Bulging disc, pinched nerve.

Yes.

Um, locked up my right side, my right side of my body. This, this area up here where my, my armored lion tattoos and all things are, um, this area went atrophy for a better part of 2 or 3 months, right? Because I couldn't, I couldn't really use it. Um, I was using a form of snake venom as a nerve blocker, um, at the time while, you know, while I was going through a healing process. Because there was really— I had to do traction therapy and doing these types of things. That was the extent of what I could do. Um, and that was the closest I ever came. And, and I just— I'm speaking for myself, I'm not speaking for you, but I felt really useless in that season, right? I felt like— and I, you know, I didn't— and I was thinking about— and I was, I was so focused on what I was losing that I couldn't see what I was learning, right? I know you, you mentioned adversity is a gift. In my— in our world, we say alignment precedes acceleration, right? And in my, in my case, it was by definition a form of being completely disconnected from alignment. Like, I was not aligned. I didn't know who I was. Um, but it was also that experience that began to tell me who I was or show me with this. So when you're talking about God using these moments, like, really kind of get your intention and attention, you know, I think it's, it's, it's monumental. You know, in the work that you're doing now, I find that those moments, like, you know, not being able to move and not having the body that you trusted, I'm sure you went through a whole gamut of emotional things. I want to learn more about that because I feel like the emotion things is where most of us struggle, whether we're influencing it or it's influencing us. Right. And then there's the other side of things. You know, I, I want to see— I want to see how that shifted how you see pressure. Like, because you're— you have a very, uh, a very beautiful aura as you're walking around. Like, you're, you're, uh, I can tell that you radiate love, like, in the most beautiful capacity. And to me, love is the answer for pretty much every single human emotion, um, that is not serving us. We still need to feel those emotions at times so we can see what's under the covers and, like, work on it. Um, but I also think the greatest skill set we— in our 5 constraints— arrogance, ignorance, impatience, fear, and insecurity— the answer to all 5 of them is love. They have polar opposites, but it's love. Is there— am I looking through the lens of love or am I looking through the lens of fear? Right? So help me understand, because, you know, I'm sure that we got people watching, listening right now that are going through their own moment.

Yeah.

Right? And they're not talking about it. They're not sharing about it. Um, you know, and I kind of wanna hold space for them. And I feel like sometimes I feel like the best way to hold space is to say, well, this is how I felt.

That's it. There's— we were talking earlier about how the guru kind of mentality and all that stuff is phasing out because people understand that's not really— it's disingenuous. I don't know if the intention was that. I don't think it was. But I think that—

I think people started off with good intentions.

I think they did.

And got corrupted.

But I think that the people that are listening to us right now are much more educated, much more aware, much more aligned. But because of that, they're also aware of where their gaps are. And because of that, that helps us better, almost surgically help them. For me, being in a bed paralyzed from the neck down, I turned 40 years old in a bed like that, and I was literally suicidal, but I couldn't act on it. So you talked about the mentality, talk about feeling useless. I felt like a victim. And again, as an infantryman, right? What do you— your whole purpose is to be—

Is to use that body.

physical, right? And then I was also given a team right before we were about to deploy. So now it's not even about me being better. It's about taking care of my guys, getting this guy more squared away, making sure this guy's a better shot, making sure this guy has all the equipment that he needs. Because if that team, if there's a weak link, that's when people die. Now, I know that that's extreme, but if you're going to battle, that's the way you have to think.

Yeah.

But we can still bring that framework here. So this understanding of how can I help this person, my team? How do I help this CEO? How do I help my family? It helps me be very aware. One of where maybe I have some predetermined ideas that may or may not be correct.

Sure.

But that makes me detach and actually see things the way they're supposed to be. And for us, you were mentioning adversity. People— so when my first book came out, The Gift of Adversity, and my TEDx talk came out, The Gift of Adversity, on LinkedIn, I had some people that came at me sideways. How dare you say adversity is a gift? You've clearly never been through anything in your life. And that shows me how ill-informed they are, but it also told me how much pain they were in. Because those are people that are what? They're reacting because that's hitting that nerve.

Yeah.

Now, this was when I had more time, but a couple of them I actually reached out to, DM'd. I was like, what's going on? And then nothing. And then finally, hey, cancer diagnosis, my wife. Hey, lost my business. Hey, my wife cheated on me. And I was able to step back, pull that back. And here's the thing, we hardly ever see the gift of adversity in real time. We often have to go through it.

Sure.

We have to have that perspective. But once we've gone through it and we look back, we can see it. So almost like a hot stove, we want to get away from it immediately.

Yeah.

But once we're able to see that from a place of safety, a place of love, now I can actually say, oh, this is what made me the man that I am today. Just like with you, right?

Yeah.

You're not a stranger to adversity in the least. Being on that overpass, 8 lanes of traffic. Were you Christian at that point or were you still atheist?

I was within a— I was within for a few days of the litter box moment.

Okay.

So yeah, so I was, I was at, I was probably at my most— clearly I was at my most suicidal, but clearly there was also a whisper that was happening simultaneously. And that's the interesting thing about adversity, right? So I'll The author of adversity is lessons, right? So it's not— but oftentimes there's sides of you, layers of you that will use adversity for different things. One will teach you that you're a victim, that you're a failure, you're this, you're that. And I was like, no, this is how I'm shaping. This is what I call formation, right? But I had a very, very divine encounter just a few days later. Yeah. So.

And that's often what pushes us, right? We have to have, dare I even say, a crisis of faith, because we don't know what we believe until we're pushed to a point where we don't even know if we believe it.

Yeah.

We don't value something until it's been ripped away from us.

Yeah.

Whether that's physical capacity, family, relationships, money, all those things. So understanding that gives us the ability to say, listen, the people that I should listen to are the people that have been through the most, because The wisdom that they bring me is hard-earned.

Yeah.

We were talking, like I said earlier, there's so much ubiquity now with AI and everything. Information's like water. It's almost useless. Everybody's sort of level the playing field. But what I would challenge everybody to is, like I said earlier, you probably already have some information that you've learned, but you're not truly, deeply, Honestly applying it. And because of that, you are not truly, deeply, honestly getting the return that you need.

Yeah.

So I would tell everyone, stop trying to learn, start trying to master what skillset you already possess. Yeah.

Apply.

Yeah. Knowledge that is acquired that's not utilized is the equivalent of ignorance.

Yeah.

Stop trying to add on.

Yeah.

Figure out what you can master now and figure out what skillset you need in this moment.

Yeah. It's funny, we had this saying, battle cry, if you will. It's become a battle cry for the last year or so. And honestly, I can't see myself really changing it because it really is anchored in my soul. The phrase is, you can't scale dysfunction.

1,000%.

Okay, you can't scale it. And if it's inside, it's coming outside. If it's outside, it's probably coming inside. Like, it's, you know, so it's like being aware of these things. And I know you have Act the Nonverba. Act the Nonverba. I need you to unpack that for me because I, I feel like there's some synergies and similarities with our battle cries and what we stand for. I also find it really uniquely interesting That Marcus Aurelius is part of your name, especially given some of the content that you provide and the leadership you provide.

Yeah. So, acta non verba is Latin. It means actions, not words. So, if you want to know what somebody truly believes, don't listen to their words, observe their actions. And, that includes us. If I claim that I want this thing but my actions are on the other side and they're incongruent, I have to see the disconnect, then I have to be honest. Am I doing these actions because that's what I want?

Yeah.

Or am I intentionally avoiding this thing? And for most of us, adversity is the indication of what needs to be done.

It's an indicator. I like the fact it's an indicator.

It absolutely is.

Every emotion is neither good nor bad. It's a notch. It's a recognition tool.

Right. And that's where we have this ability. In my mind, if we can have this equanimity, this neutrality, that's where our best decisions and actions come from. If I'm emotive, right? If I'm angry, if I'm afraid, the decisions I make from those places are usually not good.

Yeah.

They're usually not the best.

Yeah.

But if I can be neutral and step back and say, if I can get back to neutrality, what's the best action here? And that action could be aggression. It could be compassion. It could be pragmatic empathy to others. And then even myself, how many leaders do we know that will give everybody the shirt off their back and forgive them But the very person that they should be doing that for is themselves.

Yeah, most.

I don't need that. These people count on me. But if you keep doing that, you cannot— you talked about scaling, right? Lots of times, whether it be business or an empire, if we scale, we're also scaling what? The gap, the inefficiency, the danger. And that will outscale anything else that we build. And then again, back to those ideas of relationships. If I have dysfunction around money, I'm probably going to get the wrong person in sales, the wrong CTO, right? All these people. And now I create that over and over again. So I have to be willing to get to neutrality, step back. Where's the weakness and what do I do from there? And then for every person I've ever known, action is everything. How many people that say, we want to write a book? I'm like, then start. Well, I don't know where to begin. I don't either.

With a pad and a pen?

Yeah, with a pad and a pen. And then having—

My name is, today's date is.

This is it. And then we have to let go of the idea that's going to be perfect. perfect. Go through, wordsmith it multiple times and make peace with that. But until we do that, we can't do it. The same thing with the business plan. Same thing with talking to that cute person at the coffee shop, right? I can't wait. Most people think that they're being patient, but they're actually hesitating. And if you're not sure, first of all, if you're in a place right now and you're not taking action, you probably are hesitating.

Mm-hmm.

But But if you need something harder, I will say this. For most of us that are driven to try to create something to make impact, it's going to be harder for us to be patient than it is for us to be able to move forward. So that gives you the indication. If you're a person who's really trying to push and you feel yourself having to hold back, that is patience. If you're a person who's not very motivated and you find yourself comfortable, that's hesitation.

Yeah. Oh, that's so good. It has me thinking too that When I'm working with folks, a lot of times it's so interesting to me that a lot of times I go into an organization, I'm working with the founder, the CEO, sometimes the C-suite, depending on what the dynamic is.

Right.

Maybe it's one of our 2.5-day immersions where I'm literally on site at their business with them. I'd say 8 times out of 10, the things that we surface are a lot of things that they know that need to change. I mean, it's not like there are certain things that are like, okay, well, we surface the thing below that, right? Or 2 levels below that, that will drive this forward. But at the end of the day, it's like, some things are epiphanies, but some things aren't really epiphanies. It's like, oh, yeah, I need— well, why haven't you done that? So much so that it's become part of our, some of our curriculum for our broader education programs.

That's great.

Interestingly enough, it's like, I just want you to do one thing, which is grab a pad, grab a pen. I want you to write down the number one thing that you feel like is currently in your way from doing whatever you think it's supposed to do. And typically they write it down. Okay, great. I'm like, great. Now take an action right now to change it.

That's it.

It never, it never surprised. And I learned this by doing this, right? So it's, I'm, I'm not I'm not any better, any worse than any other leader on the planet. But I learned the fact that the very thing that I often needed to do was the very thing I resisted doing most. I would do everything but that thing. And I had to realize why. Why? And I think it came down to fear, right? Fear of not having control. And one of the things I've discovered is I say fear of not having control, but I've learned to apply effort but release control. Like, I can't control the outcome, and the harder I tried to control the outcome, the more elusive that outcome was.

Right.

Right. So take me back to being on the table, right? Going through this moment of extreme levels of, um, internal weight pressure, I would call it.

Yeah.

What began the shift? Because I know a shift like that does not Very seldom is it like over, right? And a lot of folks, when they're going through tough times, and it doesn't matter what it is, they're like, I want an immediate resolution right now. I'm like, bro, it doesn't— it just, it, it just doesn't work like that. At least I haven't experienced it like that.

No. And what they'll try to do is they'll try to put a band-aid on it, hoping that that's it.

Beach ball underwater, that, that's it.

And then what happens? It comes back up harder, right? So what I have found is that adversity will continually reappear Reappear until we face it. But every time it reappears, it has more gravity. So if we're dealing with some sort of adversity in our business, in our life, there are 2 ways to deal with it: correctly or again.

I like that.

And you're laughing because you know how true it is.

Oh, of course.

Yeah. But when it comes back again, again, it's harder. So I say, the greater the weight, the greater the wait. The greater the wait to face this form of adversity, the greater the weight of that adversity when we finally face it. So try to get in front of it now. Try to have the courage to do that.

Yeah.

Having said that, for me, it was not skillful. It was not beautiful. It was ugly. It was sloppy. I failed multiple times because in my mind, at 40 years old, I realized that in a lot of ways I felt like I'd wasted my life. What I had done was I had read a lot of books. I thought I was smart. I would pat myself on the back for being able to quote Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Lao Tzu, Sun Tzu, any of these people that are great leaders or strategists, right?

Wu Wei. Yeah.

But I wasn't applying. And I thought that if I knew it and I could regurgitate it, that was wisdom.

Dude, I have had clients that would not do The very advice they asked for, for upwards of 1 or 2 years, and they got to continually suffer through the process. They finally take the action, and all of a sudden, within 6 months, their revenue is way up, their families are more connected. It's, it's the one thing that— I don't care how successful or good at, um, coaching, advising, whatever you are, you cannot make someone take action.

All we can do is we can lead the horse to water, right? But if we're good coaches, we don't make them drink, we remind them that they're thirsty. And that's what makes them want to take that action. And once they're thirsty and they know that there's the source of water there, you better get out of the way because they will run you over to get to it. But again, that process comes from them.

So what— I don't mean to cut you off. I'm—

this is—

my brain's going all over the place. Uh, we could— you and I could talk for days, weeks, months, probably. Um, what do you think from your perspective Creates that resistance to physically take the action that needs to be taken, whether it's the hard conversation, whether it's the closing of a business unit. I mean, there's any number of things that could be for anyone, right? What— I mean, what have you seen, even with your own clients, people you've worked with, what are you seeing that seems to be the number one resistance?

It's one of two things. One, it's potentially the fear of success, okay? Because they understand that once they get to that level of something brand new, they're at this higher level, and now nothing's familiar. And then comes the second one is that idea of familiarity, right? We often confuse familiarity with preference. So even though this is the devil I know, that's better than this other one that I don't know, so to speak. But what happens is when they break through, they look back and they go, why did I wait so long?

Yep.

They also say, that wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was.

Yeah.

So most people think that they need more time. They don't. They need a deadline. And there is no greater deadline in this life than adversity. Because, you know, it's— as you and I speak now, it's on its way. But once I understand that that's just part of it—

Yeah.

You talk about lion and lamb, that's yin and yang. This world will have that somewhere. And once I understand that this is just part of it, and I don't make it out to be something bigger than what it is, I don't become a victim to it. And I just say, oh, this is part of it. I'm not surprised when I face adversity.

Yeah.

I'm surprised when I do not. Because if I'm on a path and I'm trying to be better, like you're talking about when people get stuck, if they use that as the indication that this is the direction I'm supposed to go, then that helps them. Now, I'm not trying to lionize this idea of adversity. I'm not trying to romanticize it. But I am saying that you have to be very honest. Now, there will be other parts, like with me, when I was paralyzed for 4 months, I did everything that I could. I went through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Kübler-Ross talks about this, right? So I was in denial for the first week until they took me from that. And then they put me back at my duty station. And then I was mad as hell at me. So the definition of depression is anger directed inwards.

Mm-hmm.

And I looked at all of the regrets that I had, all the time that I had wasted thinking that I would have more time, more potential, physicality, right? I was like you. I was always physical. I always was able to pick things up. Done martial arts my entire life, even now. But when that's ripped away from you and you have no idea who you are or what your identity is, that's when you figure out what's valuable, what's not. And adversity burns everything else away from you until you get down to the brass tacks of who you are. And lots of times, it's not pretty.

Yeah. Most times it's not pretty, if any.

But that's how we have to learn. Because if I can accept who I am, Mm-hmm. In this imperfect form.

Yeah.

Then that's the only way I can build anything sustainable.

It's really interesting. I've, you know, one of the, the phrase that keeps coming is, it's one of the, that's one of our, another one of our battle cries. Um, it's come up on a lot of episodes recently, so it tells me it's resonating. Um, is something that I now, when I used to, when I used to, when I used to approach, or let's say adversity is approaching me or whatever, right? Um, and sometimes it was health, sometimes it was relationships, sometimes it was business, sometimes it was financial, sometimes it was all of it.

Mm-hmm.

Right, right. I would resist and resist and resist and resist and resist and resist and resist and resist and resist and resist. And then literally in the last, I'd say, 2 years— I was 48 when this first happened— I was like, I remember thinking this out loud, like, for the love of God, you know, this is a pattern. What are you doing? Right. So then I would say, So then I began this process now, and then I say, you know what, I'm going to throw myself into this work. This is a— I recognize that this is a pattern. I got 40 years of history proving the pattern out. I got lots of examples. It's clearly there. I'm going to hire help. I'm going to become more aware, and I'm not going to do anything other than take care of myself, like health and food and whatever, and living capacity, and then focus on this problem.

Yes.

Right? This pattern, I wouldn't call it a problem. I call it pattern, right? Because the pattern came from somewhere, of course, and the pattern early on was somewhere that used to keep me safe as a child, right? Or young adult.

Absolutely right.

So you go into that, and so now my theology is because I did this during this, and the the thing the last time that I went through something significant, on average it takes about 18 to 36 months to. Revert, come out the other side of it.

Correct.

Start getting the benefit of the transformation. I call it transcendence. Um, in this case, it took, it took it right, right at 6 months. And the core difference, the only difference, the only difference was I didn't resist the forge. I walked in willingly.

You have to. And that's, that's what happened to me. I was in that place of anger, denial, bargaining, depression. And lots of times we go from Denial to anger, back to denial. So we had these microcycles because it's familiar, because we don't want to acknowledge that the potential of this truth is there. But for me, I raged against it. I did everything. Nothing worked. I tried to use mantras. I tried to do all these things, the bargaining with God. Hey, if you let me out of this, I'll do this. And we both know what that conversation turns out to be, right?

Yeah.

I finally got to a place where I realized, you know what? Whatever capacity I have to heal is being compromised because of all this energy that I'm wasting. And once I was in that place, I just surrendered.

Surrendered.

Surrendered, capitulated. And I let go of any option of recovery, period. And I said, if this is what you want from me, I'm here. And whatever this looks like, because at 40 years old, You realize that there are another 40 years you could live.

At least.

So there are fates worse than death, people, right? So I'm telling you that if you're at 40 and you realize you could live without being independent for the next 40 years on this mortal coil, it makes you realize what's important and what's not. And once you find that, now you can begin to lean into it. And for me, so I use this Zen concept, right? I took myself out of the equation because it's not about me. So I take myself out of the equation, and they pushed our deployment back multiple times. I'd just been given a team. So pardon me, my nose is—

You're fine. Good.

If we'd have been in Afghanistan, outside the wire, in a combat zone, that means if I was injured then, because I believe it would've happened no matter where I was, that means that I would've endangered my team, other teams, a helicopter, everything. And I remember saying to myself out loud, wow, I'm lucky. Not that I'm lucky, but I'm grateful that nobody else was put in harm's way. And that's what real gratitude is, in my opinion. When I can be grateful that something happened for you, even if it doesn't help me in the least, or for anybody else, that's what real gratitude is. And it's a verb. We have to execute against it. We have to use an act of nonverbal mentality.

Mm-hmm.

And once we were in that place, I was like, wow, that became the cornerstone. Then I became grateful for the room that I may never enter and be able to leave.

Yeah.

Or the room that I— the bed that I was in.

Yeah.

And that was the beginning because now I'm in the United States. Now I have people that will take care of me, even though I wasn't really nice to be around. And then once I had that for a good 2 weeks of just completely 1,000% gratitude, I call it 360 gratitude. That's when I started getting a little bit of feeling back in my left hand, then my right. And then I got hubris. As a soldier, you have this chip on your shoulder. You had to think that you're bulletproof.

Well, they almost teach you that.

They do. Because if I am afraid—

Because they need you to run towards gunfire.

That's it. And if I'm afraid and I ask my guys to do something, they're going to watch me, right? I dictate the pace. So I got that back. I was like, see, they told me I I died on the table a couple of times and I'm paralyzed. I can just walk this off. But once that happened, slowly I regressed. And then when I got back to that place again, I went through it all again because I didn't learn the lesson. And then finally it was like, okay, I'm going to surrender. And then finally, after a year and a half of physical and occupational therapy, I was able to be medically retired. And then at 42, it's like, wow, I had the second chance. Now what? And that was the greater adversity in many ways, because I was going to go into chiropractic school, finish my degree, but I still have numbness in my hands and my feet from my injury. So trying to adjust you right now probably wouldn't be great. And the school is like, you can finish your doctorate, but you can't practice. So if God puts you on a path and you feel lost on that path, understand it's part of the path.

Hmm. That's good right there.

That's the truth, right? Because maybe I have to redirect. Miyamoto Musashi says there are many paths to the top of the mountain. So make sure that we are going in the right direction, first of all, especially young people now, right? They're getting out of high school, college, or people that are retired or become redundant. They may not know what they need to do next. You don't have to have a clear path, but you need a direction. And sometimes that direction is to go away from the directions that were not serving you in the first place.

Yeah, that reminds me of a biblical scripture that says, be a light unto my path. All right, so keep in mind, right, so back in olden times, if you want to call it that, right, 2,500 years ago, uh, when you walked at dark, you had some form of candle, like a candlelight. They have a little, right, oil lamp, correct? Uh, or, or an oil torch, right?

Yes.

And, um, even with the brightest versions of either of those, you could only see maybe 2 to 5 steps in front of you. Right. Which means the other 50 steps, 85 steps, 100 steps, 300 steps past that are still in darkness, still in the unknown, right? Still in the un— um, not— what's the word I'm looking for? Not just unknown, unexamined. Like, it's un— on a lot of things, right?

Right. It's uncharted.

Yeah, uncharted. Like, you, you know, and at least from a biblical perspective, it's like Just trust. Just trust. And when I went through my last difficult season, um, I think one commonality that I'm seeing in both of our versions of these different stories, um, is this moment where at some point in time you just have to surrender and trust.

Yeah.

Surrender. This is what it is. Um, and no matter how this works out, somehow, some way, this is going to work out in my favor.

We have to have that mentality. And like you said, you're describing walking by faith and not by sight.

Mm-hmm.

And if I have this idea that things always work out for me, or I can figure it out, this is also the power of resilience, the necessity of resilience. And I don't just mean physical, right? I mean emotional, spiritual, financial. If I am financially resilient, I can help somebody that is less resilient. If I'm physically resilient, I can protect others that cannot protect themselves. If I'm emotionally resilient, I don't get baited by other people that are not stable, whatever the case may be. Same thing in business, right? If I understand that, okay, this is a risk, right? Any kind of investment is. But if I understand that I'm resilient enough to absorb whatever that is, now I don't— if I'm putting my entire net worth into something, that's probably not a good bet, right? That's going to put me in the wrong place, and I'm probably making the wrong decisions from the wrong intentions.

And 9 times out of 10, that doesn't work in your favor.

That's exactly it. And we know that from the beginning.

I call that gambling, by the way.

That's exactly what it is, right?

All in.

But that's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to invest. We're trying to front load. We understand what we're trying to do. But if we have that intention as we go through, that protects us from this feeling of being a victim. Or if it does go sideways, I let it go and I move on to the next thing. I pivot. For most of us as leaders, we have to ask ourselves, what's the appropriate skill necessary to the appropriate degree at the appropriate time. So maybe it's patience, maybe it's aggression, maybe it's reinforcement, maybe it's courage.

The right thing at the right time in the right way.

That's it. And so if we don't know what that skill is, or if we don't possess that skill, we have to acquire it. Then we have to find the correct timing, because all the skill in the world means nothing if I don't have the correct timing. Even the correct decision is wrong if I wait too long. Back to hesitation and procrastination.

And second, hesitations is not in the Bible.

That's exactly it.

Yeah.

And then the idea of to what degree.

Yeah.

Lots of times it needs to be at 100%. And I want to also talk about balance or the lack thereof. Very few times are we balanced in life. But if I'm on the lake and I'm on a— say if I'm on a surfboard, right? It's not so much balance as my capacity to adapt skillfully with the correct skill.

Yeah.

And instead of fighting the tide, I have to blend with it. I accept it immediately and I adapt.

Yeah.

So if I'm trying to defend somebody, my family or somebody else that can't defend themselves, I don't care about balance in that moment.

Yeah.

I don't care about my net worth. I don't care what's going on in politics. I don't care about social media. I care about being as violent as I can for the next 20 seconds to end this threat. Once that's neutralized, now I can get back to neutrality. I can regulate and I can be in this place. But if I'm not in one of those areas and I'm focused so much on balance, it will force me to hesitate, and that reactionary gap will make me lose.

Interesting enough, I am— when I think if I use the balance beam analogy in my mind, I got, you know, get the fulcrum in the middle and you got the 2 ends that are, that are alternating, right? Um, earlier in my life it used to be, well, I'll say like, I'll use my, my vernacular, like a lion on one corner, lamb on the other, right?

Sure.

Lion typically is heavier than a lamb. Absolutely. Pounds, pound per pound. Um, so if I want to be more lamb, um, then I would move the lamb closer, which caused the lion to even tip further, right?

Sure.

If I wanted to be more lamb, I would tip, move the lion a little closer, and maybe it, it teeter-totters, but it never really balances. However, right, when I began to do the process of integration, I began to move the lion and the lamb simultaneously more towards the fulcrum.

There it is.

Right now, now they're unified. It's, uh, to your point earlier, yin and yang. It's, it's— notice that yin and yang is not a defined stripe down the middle. It has a flow to it.

Absolutely.

The wu wei is all about flow.

Absolutely. Yeah, it's all in that. And that's what we understand if, if we have— and again, I faced adversity and I kept using this mentality. And this is important. Lots of times we face adversity and we're not actually giving it our best effort. We're not leaving it all on the field.

We like to tell ourselves we are.

Right. And that's kind of God's way of saying, listen, you're giving 80% here.

Yeah.

But that last 20% is where you need to go. So we have to drain the tank. Now, if we have genuinely done that, like I did for 4 months, and it's not working, now I have to go to the other side. I have to go to the lamb side, to the yang side, to this idea of capitulation. Because here's the thing, God doesn't have anything else aligned yet. So I have to wait on his timing. But when I do, all of a sudden, like you said, alignment dominoes, whatever it is, now I can just push forward as opposed to taking all my energy. It's going all these different directions. It's not making any impact at all, and I burn myself out.

Hey there, I hope you're enjoying the episode. Look, I love making great content for you, but more importantly, we like creating great resources. So before we get you back in the episode, I want to make you aware of the Aligned Leader Index, which you can find at stephenscoggins.com/leadership. This is a one-of-a-kind tool that I wish I had when I was actually building and scaling my own organizations. Why? Because a lot of times the bottlenecks that we think are actually in our way are not really the bottlenecks that are actually in our way. And what the cool thing about this specific thing is, it's going to let you know what the number one constraint is internally, the number one driver that's actually in your way or being disrupted, where chaos and dysfunction are showing up. And number 3, probably most important, where your leadership blind spot likely is. So if you're tired of your business actually running you and you want to take operational control over your organization, make sure you take complete advantage of the Align Leader Index. It takes 5 to 7 minutes and it'll give you instant clarification on the thing that's holding you back right now. Let's get back to the show. You know, it's really interesting too, when I think about that. Um, every time that I surrendered the outcome that I wanted or that I was striving for or pursuing or whatever, every time that I finally released it, The thing that showed up to replace what I thought I wanted was 10 times better than what I thought I wanted.

Yeah.

You know, and it had me thinking a little bit about, about that because I feel like so much of what keeps us off balance or just not integrated or is— it has a lot to do with you're trying to control an uncontrollable force.

Yeah.

So the harder you— the harder you try to control it, it's almost like there's a rope in your hand, right? And there's a heavy weight on the other end, and it's pulling— it's literally pulling the flesh off your hand. And you think that, well, what I need to do is just grip tighter, right?

Yes.

And then it just pulls more flesh off your hands. I know I'm using some pretty— there's some imagery here. Supposed to be. But what's really interesting is I've discovered, at least for me, that when I just let go, That weight was never mine. You know, one of the things we teach here is like helping people understand what is yours to carry and what is yours not. You know, I learned a philosophy. I was probably a decade ago, and I used to chart it out. A good friend of mine taught it to me, and it says responsibility at the top: full, partial, none. Full, partial, none. And I remember the first time we did this exercise, I was like, "Well, he goes, I just want to list everything that's fully your responsibility." Right. I want you to list everything that's your partial responsibility. I want you to look at everything that's not your responsibility. And it was really weighted, like long bar here, mediocre bar here, hardly anything over here.

Yes.

And we started going through the exercise. He's like, well, is this really yours to carry? Well, I don't think so. Well, do you have responsibility in the outcome of this? A little. Oh, so it's partially your responsibility. Okay. Or further down the list, a lot of these, um, these are not your responsibility. This is them. You're, you're, you need to allow them to carry this because you're actually preventing the lesson, which is why it's so painful, that God is trying to make them learn.

Right.

You're trying to be in a role that you're not supposed to be in. Yeah.

I see that so many times, right? As CEOs, especially if they built it up from the ground up, because they know how to wear all the hats. And again, you'll see them, they'll hire this person, they'll give them a great salary, they'll have a great Yeah. Onboarding process.

Constantly disrupt them.

And that's it. Yeah. And what are they doing? They're robbing them of that. Like, why am I better at this than them? Because I've got more reps. Let them do it. They want to do it. Let them run with it. And back to your idea too. Ed Mylett taught me this 10 years ago.

Yeah.

This idea is the visionary, right? Our vision has to be so big that everyone in our organization can fit their vision within it. But the beauty of this is, if we think, well, I don't have a big enough vision, that's okay. Allow it to expand. And here's what else happens. Now, when you have these people, now that you've grown this business or this team or this group, when their vision gets into that, it will naturally expand. And now through no additional perception of effort on our part, it becomes this growing, living, breathing thing. And now everybody's a part of it. And like you said, that becomes much greater than any vision of getting to $50 or $100 or $200 million to be. We're like, not only are we exceeding that, but we're exceeding the people that we were in the process of reaching that destination.

Now, so much of, of putting this into practice comes down to being aware, aware of what's going on. So I now start— I used to start outside in. I used to be aware, okay, my circumstances are this right now. I go, I feel this in my body. I'm hearing this in my mind. I feel like I should take such and such of action. How will that shift or influence or otherwise maneuver the circumstances that I'm facing? So I guess what I'm getting at, one of the things I hear you talk about all the time is the kind of your, the vagal tone versus the heart rate variability.

Absolutely.

And how to use that to present yourself, in our words, would be emotional regulation before action is taken. Right? Right. So walk me through, um, what you do with your clients and the people you work with to get to baseline. Because again, one of the things I'm adamant about this new version of this show— we've been doing the show, we were almost at 300 and some episodes, 370 episodes now. The show's had been branded multiple times: Unstoppable, Build, now One Part Lion, One Part Lamb. And it's a trajectory. Like, it's—

we literally—

it was all about, okay, you can Become unstoppable, just not giving up. Okay. It's all resilience, right? Right. And then it was like, build. Oh no. Now we, now we have to, we have to think before we act. And now it's all about integration, right? Being fully integrated in the moment. Because I realized that moments that cost me millions of dollars of stupidity, relationships that could have lasted a lot longer than they did, friendships, romantic, so on and so forth. All of them came out of dysregulation.

Right.

All of, all of it. I can't think of one time where I got emotionally dysregulated and whatever action I took didn't create 10 or more new problems.

Right.

So I, I want to react and solve one problem, and I have created— and I end up creating 10. And then I wonder why I'm overwhelmed, I'm burned out, and why I can't get my shit together.

That's it. And then we have the audacity to be surprised when adversity comes.

Exactly.

More and more. It's like, how dare this happen?

Yeah.

So I'll give you—

you're fishing with the wrong lure, man.

So I'll give one simple thing, and then I'll also talk about this, like you said, the ability to be aware of what's going on. I've got people— so people talk about different breathing, box breathing, things like that, but most of the people that I know don't have the luxury of 5 minutes of a box breathing exercise. So I give them parachute breaths, and that is this. So the parachute breath is like a long exaggerated sigh. Quick inhale through the nose, big exhale. We do that 3 times. That's about 30 seconds. And if you're in a place where you're safe enough to close your eyes, imagine you're kind of floating softly. So I've seen people on Zoom calls, they can turn off their camera, mute themselves, and do this because it helps them what? Detach?

Mm-hmm.

Breathe.

Without disassociating.

Without disassociation. They come back to it because nobody's going to talk to you. Nobody's going to say, where are you at? If you've been off the thing for 20 seconds. If we're on a phone call, we can pause. I can step away from this person on the worksite, whatever it is. And that's the triage.

Okay.

But are you familiar with the hungry judge concept?

I am.

So it's being aware of our own body dynamic. So if I'm sleep-deprived, low blood sugar, had too much caffeine, hungry, chances are the decisions I make in that place are not going to be good. And chances are the data that I'm receiving is going to be skewed.

Yeah.

So they talked about this with judges, and they found that people that were actually getting sentenced early in the day, when the judge first was after breakfast, from 8:30 to about 11, they were getting more lenient sentences than when he was close to lunch, when he was physically and cognitively fatigued and when his blood sugar was dropping. And all of a sudden that leniency would go away. But if you got after lunch, again, he's rested, he's had the break, he's got food, and now he's topped off. And that's the idea. So many times we are already hungry judges and we're not aware of it.

Yeah.

And then if we take in consideration that, what else does that do? That sets us up for other biases. So if I'm a hungry judge and I had this predisposition, like you're saying, I'm feeling like this, and a person comes in and says something completely neutral to me, I may take it the wrong way. I may see it as something that is adversarial when it is not. If I can step back and breathe, let that thing go. Also, we think about the people that we bring around us and our team and our family. Lots of times we jump to conclusions.

Mm-hmm.

If somebody goes around us, Hey, they didn't ask me this. They're doing this thing. My assumption is—

With malice intent.

Exactly. But I can have just the opposite effect. I can actually think, man, I should assume that they're doing something that I don't know. If I'm the CEO, I shouldn't be aware of everything.

Well, and the other person could be saying, I don't really want to bother the CEO with this.

That's it. He doesn't need it on his plate. They're trying to do the right thing. So if I have that intentionality bias that they are trying to do the right thing and they are trying to help me and they are trying to help us win, That's what I should be doing as a predisposition, as the other side of saying, why didn't they ask me? And then what do I do? I go into that micromanagement role. Now I put my nose— how many times, I'm sure you've done this, and people you work with, there's a CEO that steps away.

Mm-hmm.

Because he's trying to give his people room. And then he comes into an L10, or he looks at like the dashboard or KPIs, and now he's going to be the one that figures it out. And so he jumps into it and he spends a lot of time and leadership capital. Getting to the exact place that they already are. And they already have a plan that they're trying to execute on. So now he's lost all that trust, all that time, all that—

9 times out of 10, it's a grenade in something that's being built.

Yeah, that's it.

Been there, done that.

And now they feel— and now what do they have to do? They have to what? Defend it with their ego. And so now this becomes this unhappy marriage. Now they're creating all of this animosity. It's culture, right? Either I dictate the culture or the culture creates its own dynamic.

Yeah.

And if I am not being intentional about what that is, I'm usually not going the right direction.

Yeah. It has me thinking too. Um, one of the things that I, I did organically by accident after being in business for a long time, um, was I began having about 3 to 4 15-minute bursts where I would step away and just go outside.

Perfect.

Just go outside. Right. Um, it may not be in the middle of a Zoom call or, I mean, I was definitely on the combat field. I mean, obviously a combat field, you can't say, hey guys, Y'all stop shooting for just a minute.

I gotta breathe.

I'm gonna go breathe. When I come back, we can start shooting each other. Does that work? Is that good for everybody? You know what, I think we should all do that. Hey, who's got the guitar?

Let's do all this.

Let's do this together, right? Um, you know, kind of thing. But, um, in, in the business world, right, um, I've learned the, the importance of— and it's something that was super undervalued for me. Like, I asked a guest recently, I said, what's the number one, uh, regulation technique, or on most under, under, uh, unrated regulation technique you have? And for me, the answer is taking space or holding space, right? For me, right? And when you build a company nearly 9 figures in annual revenue and you got hundreds of team members across multiple states, at least for me, I mean, I always took that as responsibility because I know at least mathematically for every team member I had, there was 2.5, which I assume is a newborn, average team members.

Yes. Right.

So if I had 400 team members across multiple states, I was stewarding 1,600 people or 12,000— 1,200 people. Right, right. Of the responsibility of that. So that was a weight that I chose to carry, but maybe or may not should have per se in that same way. Um, but one of the things that I discovered was, um, I was prone to act out of dysregulation if I had just had a fight with my former spouse.

There it is.

If I had not had any sleep the night before, if I had not been eating. And probably the one that was probably the most elusive was if it triggered a response that I was aware of, aware in which I was unsafe prior in my life.

There it is.

Right. It could be. And it was sometimes it'd be the simpleness of the tone of a voice to the smell in the room.

Absolutely.

It's wild how we learn from— learn through our 5 senses. And what each of those 5 senses either gives us security or lack of safety. And it's really— I kind of— so I kind of look at it. So, you know, I say that to say that I had to become uniquely real— I had to uniquely realize that I was actually the bottleneck. Okay. And I had to then figure out, hey, okay, well, I'm actually the bottleneck in this season. How do I look at this without guilt? without shame, without condemnation, without thinking like I'm the worst piece of crap on the planet, right? Like, because when I would make a mistake, I would treat myself very poorly for making a mistake, as if I should have known better for something I'd never learned before.

There it is.

You see what I'm saying? So it's like, how do you— how do you, in your world, in the work that you're doing, how are you helping founders and high-capacity leaders? Because we both work with similar people, right? Um, in different capacities. How are you helping them see that they are the bottleneck so they don't feel guilt and shame, but instead feel the potential of transcendence.

Absolutely. So back to what you were saying about people beating themselves up. Why was— I should have done this earlier. Well, did you have the skills that you have now? Did you have the capacity to recognize what the problem was? If not, then you can't beat yourself up because you didn't even know. So that's just experience. That's just knowledge. That's wisdom. Back to what you were talking about earlier about this idea of the breathing too. When we're in a sympathetic, like, that's fight or flight, right? Now, everything is going. And again, when we're sleep-deprived, when we're afraid, when we have low blood sugar, that happens all the time. When you do the parachute breaths, just do 3 of those, that takes you from sympathetic to parasympathetic, right? Where you're more relaxed, the rest and digest. And now, you can see things from the truly detached perspective.

Mm-hmm.

So, like you said, this idea of the bottleneck, if I step back and almost like if I'm watching a sport that I don't know anything about, If I'm just watching, I don't have skin in the game or a dog in the fight. I can observe, this team's a lot faster, this team's a lot better.

Yeah.

So I have no expectation. But if I'm in it, I can't really see it.

Yeah.

So I have to be able to detach and ask myself, what's the real problem here? Is that me?

Yeah.

If it's not me, where is it?

Yeah.

And then how am I going to address that?

Yeah.

And again, this comes back to leadership languages, right? We hire different people, and sometimes those people like to speak the way we do. So those people want directness. But I also have to be wise enough to understand, even though this person normally likes directness, if I'm raising my voice and they're not responding, I have to have another gear.

Yeah.

I have to have another skill, and I have to recognize that. In the military, the knife hand and yelling was the answer. But if that doesn't work, all I can do is yell and use more knife hand louder. That's not going to do the thing we needed to do. So once I recognize that, and now I can see, Where do I need to go? How do I shift? Again, lots of times that tells me there's a bottleneck in me somewhere. And that gives me the ability to let go and look at what's really going on. How am I at fault in this? 'Cause most of the time it is me. I love Jocko's work, and he talks about leadership being like, most problems in business are leadership problems. But to me, most leadership problems are interpersonal relationships.

1,000%.

Right? So that's what it is. So you can understand leadership all day and talk about the 4 Laws of Combat and the 5 Mindsets of Victory. That's great. But again, back to what we did at the beginning. If you're not doing that deeply, intently, you're just kind of checking the box. And how many people do we see that don't have that foundation? And what are they looking for? EOS, this new system, this system up here. I'm trying to—

That's why we exist. That's exactly why we exist. Because the reality is, is the leader is looking for external solutions for internal problems. I always say that your business is always the embodiment of your internal world.

That's 1,000%.

Right? And I have— I'm saying that from experience. I'm not saying it because it sounds cool and cliché. I'm like, every dumb decision I ever made came out of this dysregulation piece, or somehow being fight, flight, freeze, fawn, like being trapped in some weird scenario of, um, distraction, dissociation, like, and, and it just If I could just— one battle cry on the planet: you can't scale dysfunction. And that is closely followed by your business or your nonprofit or your church or whatever is going to be followed by the embodiment of your internal world.

Yeah.

If you are fearful, you're going to put fear in your organization. If you're acting out of pride and arrogance, you're going to put that in your organization. Or to go back to the founder being the bottleneck, Most people are terrified to tell their founder they're the bottleneck. Your team sees it all day long. I, I always said it this way, and you know that we judge ourselves by our intentions, but people judge us by our actions.

Yeah.

Just understanding that one thing as a founder, CEO, high capacity, just understanding one, that one thing, right, is like, where, where are my actions not matching my intentions, right? And I, and I share that because I want to go one more. I got— I wanted to get your feedback on this. Because sometimes it's a hard season. Sometimes it's entirely the wrong direction. How are you helping high-capacity leaders seeing wrong direction, right, from just a high-pressure moment or high-pressure season?

Yeah, we were talking off air. I was asking you about what do you want more of? And lots of times you ask them what they want more of and they're going to say money. That's, that's great. We want that. But then we ask them, what would having more of that do for you? And then we say, how will you know when you have it? So with an easy metric like money, we can say we get to a certain point, but what do they really want? There's a number in their mind that would give them security, or would give them the capacity to serve their people.

Whatever that number is, it's the wrong number.

Right. And then what do they do? They just keep moving the goalposts. Or like you're saying, if I have a business and I have, you were saying 40 or 400 employees, right?

Yeah.

And if I think in my mind, okay, I have to have $1 million worth of business per employee, that means I need to get to $400 million just to kind of get where I need to go in addition to whatever else is going on. And then we have what's going on in the market, all the other stuff. So it's like that can put a lot of pressure. But that's the understanding of realizing, am I, am I chasing the wrong metric? Is this really what I want? And again, that comes back to that honesty. Once you start looking and saying, listen, I want to build a $400 million company, as well as make my relationship with my kids better, continue to date my wife for the rest of my life, feel fulfilled, feel physically good, not become a type 2 diabetic or not have a heart attack in the process. Now that makes them understand that again, that neutrality, that dynamic, that being able to skillfully adapt as opposed to saying, well, yeah, I'm gonna get to $400 million. And then it's like, now they're divorced. Now their kids are strangers. And now you've literally lost everything you actually cared for. That's it. They get to the top of this mountain and now they're like, it's not even—

It's funny you mentioned that because I was literally at the top of a mountain in a house in Lehi, Utah when I had that realization myself. Now, my kids and stuff, I was still connected, but I was fresh out of a relationship that I was building that I didn't expect to end, or at least in that season. Hindsight being 20/20, I can see a lot more tea leaves that would have given me indicators, but I was ignoring them or projecting over top of them or something like that. Anyway, But it's interesting because in these seasons, you really do get confronted with what really matters. I think part of authenticity is feeling like you don't have to prove anything to anybody. And so many of the high-capacity leaders feel like they have something to prove. There's this chip on their shoulder, and I am this person, have been this person, that you feel like once they see this, then they will see me. And here's what I've discovered about that. That's complete BS. The truth is, is once you see yourself, others will see you.

That's 1,000%. There's 3 questions that I talk about in my first book, and I ask at my TEDx talk, and I say, for just a moment, put yourself in the place of where I was when you were paralyzed. So if you woke up tomorrow paralyzed from the neck down, what do you wish you would've accomplished with your life? Because the amount of money you have doesn't matter, the house you have, the car, the clothes, When you're paralyzed, none of it matters.

Yeah.

So if that's the case, what does matter?

Yeah.

And the irony is we think that we can work on this area of success monetarily, then we'll work on this other stuff.

Yeah. It has to be reversed. It has to— guys, listen to me right now. It has to be reversed. Has to be reversed.

Here's the other part. I get to a certain part monetarily and I want to be up here, but because this is so low, This takes so long and it's a grind. But as I elevate this, uh-huh, vicariously, every other capacity— physicality, spirituality, edification, intention, money— all of it takes care of itself. But well, I see.

So here's the other thing too, on that same point. We use money as the example again. We think if we just earn more, we don't realize that you have to have new knowledge in order to earn more and/or keep more.

Right.

So I was talking to somebody recently, like, I've, I've been somewhat successful, and despite my best efforts to screw it all up, um, many times, um, but been somewhat successful by most people's standards. Okay. And, um, for the longest time, I thought that that was going to fulfill me and all the things, right? I remember having this conversation one time with my, my CPA, and I was like, kind of explain what I wanted to kind of do and what I kind of wanted to architect and build next and whatever. And that was a shaping future. But one of the things we were talking about, we were looking at it, was, uh, I need to learn. All right, so let's assume for a second I'm a 9-figure earner, right? Means I have a 9-figure net worth. I do not have a 9-figure net worth.

Sure.

Right?

I'm—

I've done okay, but I'm not 9 figures just yet. Okay. Um, but I've got a friend or 2 of mine that 10-figure net worth individuals or really stinking close. Okay. And I, I began watching and they're— and they did it. And from all intent, from outside looking in, it looks like they did it the right way. We have a loving family. They take good care of themselves. They take good care of their teams. They're building a great business, all the things, right? Which is the perfect ambiance of all of it. They seem very well-rounded. Family's good. Like their faith is good. The business is good. Their team is good. They're making a market impact. And it dawned on me, it's like, well, the reason I'm not at that level is because I don't possess the knowledge yet how to go from here to here. I'm learning it, but I have to open myself. You know, we talk about arrogance as being one of the number one constraints, one thing that closes off your throat, right?

Right.

Or the water hose. Like, there's a lot of different things squeezing it, right? So you can't get full flow. Well, in the— by humbling yourself And saying, I don't know what I don't know. And I also know that whatever I do know is probably keeping me in the way of what I need to know.

Right.

It had me thinking about this really interesting question that I feel like you're uniquely gifted to answer. It's like, because I know what it means for me, but what did weakness teach you that strength didn't?

Weakness shows you what you really are. Strength is an illusion. Safety is an illusion built from strength. So once adversity shows up and we realize, I cannot go past it, I can't defeat it, it forces me to see what I really am. And lots of times, those are the things that I need the most work on.

Yeah.

And that's why, again, being able to ask for help.

Yeah.

You talked about This idea of the way that we talk to ourself in our internal narrative, right? What we have to be aware of as leaders, as men, as fathers, as husbands, is the way that I talk to myself eventually will bleed over onto the people that I claim to love the most. Because when I'm angry, when I'm tired, when I'm a hungry judge, and I snap out and I say to them the stuff that I say to myself, I will stain them forever and they will never remove that blemish.

Mm-hmm.

So if you will not talk to yourself a little bit more intelligently, a little bit more lovingly, or a little bit at least more detached, then do it for your family. Do it for your team that you claim that you love. Because if you don't, that will spill over and you cannot unring the bell once that's occurred.

Yeah, that's so good. Well, I know the book's coming out soon. By the time this episode drops, the new book will be out. I'm super excited about it. Clearly, we've been talking all about it.

We have.

And this is why, this is why I, I feel very compelled to empower the audience to pick a copy up.

So thank you.

Um, mainly because it's going to be a highlighter book. Like, this is not— this is meaty, meaty material, right? Um, it's material that you should— like, in my, in my world, when I, when I come across something this meaty, and just knowing how you're wired, um, I feel like you, you'd probably need to read a chapter, consume it, digest it, take away from it, maybe give it a few days, sit with it, note with Highlighter with it, and then go to the next chapter, right? Where can I actually get the book?

Absolutely. Now, they can go to amazon.com, find it there, barnesandnoble.com. They can go to my website, Marcus Aurelius Anderson, join the inner circle to get more information. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn. Yeah, the podcast is Octave Non Verba. And to your point about the book, what I found was what I tried to do is I wrote the book in small Almost like one-page kind of chapters. So now you're able to get this nugget. And if all you read is that one page in the morning, and now you have that kind of in your quiver.

Yeah.

Now, if you look throughout the day—

Actionable.

It's— and now you can have— because here's what it is. Now you can actually build that skill set for that 24-hour process. Read the next page the next day. Oh, now I'm aware of this. Now I can see this. Now I look out for this. And now instead of just skimming, Yeah. How many people read a book a week? They're skimming a book a week. I would rather them take something and do it deeply like we're talking about.

Yeah. Our new book's the same way.

Yeah. Yeah. Make it part of who they are. And once they've done that, now they have that skill set and it will, it will help them in any arena that they enter. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And other people as well.

Yeah. Active nonverbal.

Roger that.

Loving it. Loving it. Well, look, we've only got a few minutes left, believe it or not. We've— it's funny how fast an hour goes.

Has it been an hour?

It's really stinking close. And I always try to get the, the guest in and out on time. But, um, we started doing this thing called the rapid-fire round.

Roger.

Um, and it's, uh, 9 to 10 little statements. Love to get just first thing that pops in your mind. It's not uncommon for me to ask for a little more insight once, once I get the response, because I, again, I'm a— my, my team continues to tell me I talk in fortune cookie. So, and this is where I get fortune cookies. All right. I get fortune cookies from learning from other people that are doing big, beautiful things in the world, uh, like yourself. Um, excited to have you as a new friend.

Absolutely.

Yeah, this has been amazing so far. But, uh, all right, here we go.

Okay.

I already think I already know the answers. The answer to this one, just because of the book title, Everything You Stand For: actions or words?

Oh, actions all day.

We spent the entire show figuring out why. All right, this is, this is a good one. What's the best advice you ignored?

Best advice I ignored was to actually execute on the knowledge that I was acquiring, as opposed to thinking that Acquiring knowledge was knowledge. No, the object of wisdom is action, not acquisition of wisdom that you don't execute on.

That's so good. So good. One book that is not yours.

The Tao Te Ching.

Ooh, I love that book.

Now, the Bible, obviously, but the Tao Te Ching was my gateway philosophy to understand Stoicism. And it is written just like I said before, it's one page. So I was 12 years old, I was trying to read meditation.

Wayne Dyer. I used to love Wayne Dyer. He referenced the Tao Te Ching all the time.

Absolutely.

I've been through it myself.

And I picked that book up. I ran to chapter 9 is what it opened to.

Mm-hmm. Oh, that's cool.

And it says, continue to sharpen your blade and it will go blunt. Care about the opinions of others and you will forever be their prisoner. Now, I was 12 when I read that. And even at 12, I was like, okay, this is significant. I can understand this.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's funny you mentioned that because I am— my faith is obviously anchored in Yeshua, Jesus. But I have studied all kinds of other religions and spiritual beliefs and spiritual wisdom. Um, and the Tao Te Ching has, um, I, I can't think of anything in it, um, or Wayne Dyer's work for that matter, um, who based a lot of his material on the Tao Te Ching, right? Um, anything that conflicts with or otherwise hinders someone who has a Christian belief system.

They all overlap beautifully.

Yeah, well, the Tao Te Ching is a lot about being the lamb. It's a lot of lamb material.

Absolutely.

Um, but lamb, lamb with responsibility and maturity. Right. Surrender is a huge theme. And that's the one thing the American culture is very, very weak on is surrender. And it's because we're lied to from the day we're born. Says you must do to be.

Mm-hmm.

You must do to be. And a big epiphany I had in some of the journal sessions I do— I have a process my audience knows about called What I Hear You Say Is, right? So that's me listening.

Yes.

And one of the first ones that came— well, that's not the first ones after the first, because of the first 6 months were very specific. I was getting very specific nuggets. Um, but shortly thereafter, I had this one where it said, um, he says, uh, my children get it wrong. They feel like they have to do to be. That's not, that's not how my economy works. My economy works by listening. So listening then precedes being. Being should then precede doing, and then doing will precede becoming.

Absolutely.

And that is the life cycle that it comes up with. So that made me think of that. So, all right, discipline or desire?

I think if you have the correct desire, you will facilitate discipline around that.

That actually surprised me, given your martial arts background. I thought for sure it was going to be kata and like discipline, but no, that makes perfect sense.

Because again, if that's—

yeah, it's the discipline is the behavior, right? Where desire is the motivator.

Absolutely.

I dig it. All right. The hardest yes you ever gave?

Was just giving up entirely. The yes of, if I'm supposed to be paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of my life, then I'm going to accept this. And how can I move forward?

The one time you should have said no when you said yes. Hmm.

Ironically, it was pushing my body to the point of breaking. My mind was strong enough to break my body. But at the same time, if that hadn't happened, I wouldn't be here talking to you.

Very true. Very true.

I love it.

All right. A Marcus Aurelius line you actually live by. And then there's, by the way, on his YouTube channel, which you guys should go check it out, he's got a whole playlist on just Marcus Aurelius material, which you're gonna love.

Absolutely. There's a million in there. But the one that I think is important is, soon you will have forgotten the world, and soon the world will have forgotten you. So if we're trying to do something for the right reasons, understand that it will be fleeting. But if we're doing it correctly, yeah, we shouldn't worry about that.

Well, I just had a little quote that popped up. Again, I talk unfortunately. And here's what just popped in. Okay. Gurus must be seen, Guides must impact.

1,000%. Yeah. In the martial arts, I'm a sensei or a guru and all these different things, but in my mind, I'm that coach. I'm the person that's the Sherpa, the Sherpa that walks with you, the catalyst.

Yeah.

And that's what we have to do, right? Because otherwise we're just on a mountain talking down to people. You and I have walked it. We've lived it. We've bled it. We're here. That's why we're doing it.

And this is— I guess this will be an important bite from— sound bite for everybody. But one of the things that I have discovered is success is no relator to some— someone of, um, not worth, but someone you should listen to.

1,000%. Right.

Money is not— money is not an indicator of value.

Not in the least. And usually we can, we can sense it. We can.

We can now. It's getting clearer and clearer.

Right. And we can hear it in the words. We can see it in the actions.

Yeah. I love it, dude. All right. One last one. Okay, one word for your 20-year-old self.

I'm going to go on a tangent.

Okay, please.

So it doesn't matter what I would have told my 20-year-old self, because I was my 20-year-old self. Because I can give him the wisdom of the 54-year-old guy.

He's going to listen. I know I wouldn't have.

Right.

I was— I'm still pretty stubborn.

But if I would give him an action, I would tell him, You know, stop wait. Stop screaming about it.

Yeah.

Do it. Don't sing it. Bring it. Actions, not words.

Love it. Marcus Rillis Anderson, dude. Thank you so much for being on the show, bro.

Thank you, brother.

This is amazing. We have to do this again.

Don't you threaten me with a good time. That's great.

All right, guys. That's gonna do it for this episode of One Part Lion, One Part Lamb. You know, we start off the episode, you know, obviously with with with one of my favorite moments, and then as we got into the episode, I started telling you kind of where we were headed today. I mentioned that I. Really hope you share this with somebody that you know that needs it. There's no way you didn't have some names and images pop up in your head today. There's no way that didn't happen. But in the off chance that it didn't, go ahead and do us a favor. Like, share, and review, just as a favor to us. We really appreciate it. If you're on the listening podcast, so Apple, Spotify, and so on and so forth, we value and highly appreciate 5-star ratings as well as comments that are empowering and great for other people to discover the show. The reason these are really good, because if you enjoy this show, these are really easy ways to just let us know you enjoyed the show and share it with those people at large. So we appreciate that. In the meantime, go ahead and pick up the new book, right? I'll check it out. The Nonverbal. Make sure you grab it. I love the fact it's a daily digest. Again, sit with it, highlighter, pen, the whole deal, and take time. If you haven't already done so, go ahead and Farkas, go ahead and follow. Marcus Aurelius Anderson. You'll be glad you did. He's fast becoming a good friend. And until then, if you want more podcast episodes, do me a favor, click right here and you will see it straight away. If you want more training directly me to you, go ahead and do me a favor, click right here. Until then, I'll see you in the next one. God bless. Peace.