How to Master Emotional Regulation + Live An Authentic Life (Josh Trent)

Josh Trent. Welcome to Meet Mafia podcast, man.

Thank you for having me.

I've got a good feeling about this one. You've got the energy of. You know what I'm talking about. When you just have a guest on. You're like, this is going to be a good podcast.

Oh, yeah, we. This has been a year in the works. We were saying we were going back and forth on Tech Shout Out Erin Smith for making this happen. She's the best. And I remember having our call. You and I had a solo call a few months ago. I was actually at Rome Ranch for the what Good Shall I Do Conference.

Yeah, love Rome Ranch.

Yes. And then I stepped out and we were just chopping it up. I was telling you a little bit about our story, how we started Meet Mafia was learning more about you, and I think this is going to be awesome because we were saying this nine and a half years that you've been doing your podcast. That's incredible, man. 2015 to now.

Yeah, it's crazy. It's always good when podcasters get together.

Yeah.

Especially when we're really just wanting to give some truth and some value and some honesty to people. I remember that call, too, because I thought, wow, this is a guy that's been through some things. Like, at the time, I was like, who's this young, handsome dude that's talking to me on the phone? And then I realized, like, you had a real story to you, which is cool.

Which we all have a good story, definitely. Yeah. I think we're talking a little bit about just some of the things that I encountered from an autoimmune perspective, and then that actually I knew who you were and I listened to some of your episodes and then. But then doing my own research on your story, I didn't realize that when you were 21, that's when this whole journey started for you. It wasn't just 2015 when you started the podcast. It was many years before then when you started to figure out more so about who you were as a man, as a person, and your weight loss journey. So, yeah, I think the. The Power of Shared Transformation is such a cool thread to play off of and connect over.

Well, the store. I mean, maybe a big seed was planted at 21, but really an even bigger seed was planted when I was in my mom's belly. Yeah. Because I'm so fascinated with this concept of emotional epigenetics and what we actually absorb from our parents and what they absorb from their parents. Someone that comes to mind is actually a really great, really Great author. His name is Mark Wolin. He wrote a book called It Didn't Start with youh. And he talked about essentially inherited trauma. And so I can see. And it's funny, I was even coming over here listening to Blinkist, because I like to do the short notes and get like the real value extraction from books instead of reading the whole book. And I was listening to this study about mice. And it's so interesting that you said 21, because when I was 21, I was in the weirdest possible place of pain and confusion and just really disillusion of the illusion that I think anybody could have ever been in. I was 280 pounds. I was not happy with my life. I had a bunch of things inside of me that I, first of all, didn't even know how to feel. And then secondly, even if I wanted to feel them, I didn't have the spaciousness or the emotional intelligence to feel them. So, yeah, dude, Molotov cocktail. I mean, when you want to grow, be careful, because when you ask the question to God, and when you really start understanding what growth is, God universe will bring you people and circumstances and experience that'll be so challenging, you may or may not have the courage at that time to face it. And that was exactly where I was at 21, for sure.

So when you were 21 and started peeling back that onion, what kind of things were you going through? Where were you at in life?

I mean, it's cool because I'm 44 now, so this is actually a fun moment for me just to sit here with y'.

All.

I mean, I think about my life over 20 years ago, and I was just a very lost soul, which I think most young 20 year olds are, especially as men. I grew up with a very strained relationship with my father. Lots of father wounds that I've worked through. And my mom was manic bipolar. So I don't know if you guys have any experience with that. Definitely people in your audience have had either a family member or a friend that struggled with emotional health, mental health. But when I'm raised in that kind of an environment, I never really had the psychological or the emotional tools to deal with emotions that I was feeling or even the food that I was eating. I was an athlete in high school. I played football. I was a long snapper and I was a center. So I was really big. I could bench press 225, like 30 times. I was an athlete. But when I left high school, all of my training, all of my inexperience and all of my immaturity started to be shown. And I remember I was working. I think I was bailing cardboard at Vons in El Cajon. Like, just super fat, super unhappy, depressed, no guidance, no figures that I could really trust or model my behavior from. And I just look back on that version of Josh with such deep compassion and such deep understanding of what he was dealing with then. And one of the big ways that he was coping back then was with pornography, with this radical addiction to pornography because it stemmed from being overweight, not being liked by women, being angry at women for not being liked, or not being loved or not being accepted. Kind of like the ultimate friend zone, to use that phrase. And so it set me on a journey of losing, I think 100 pounds. I lost. I went from 280 all the way down to like 185. I mean, it was crazy. I basically starved myself. And a lot of this, over what.

Time period was that?

I think it was like three months or six months. I mean, I would probably just eat like rice cakes throughout the day because I was experiencing so much pain. And this is what I find in people that listen to my podcast as well. And I know this is going to resonate with your audience too. It's like we're all looking for peace, but we think we're going to get there by doing something radical. We think we're going to find the peace or get the peace by having some massive breakthrough ayahuasca ceremony or Tony Robbins or some peak experience that's going to heal us. But I'm here to tell y', all, and I can speak to myself, float in a time machine and just talk to my 21 year old self. No, maturity comes quickly. Maturity is something that you earn over time. And so I was dealing with addiction, I was dealing with being overweight. I was dealing with a lack of emotional intelligence when I was 21. And yeah, it was a Molotov cocktail for growth.

Yeah, I appreciate you sharing the piece on pornography because you talk about something, this massive lever that's plaguing so many men in 2024, it's pornography. You think about the percentage of men that have watched porn for years before they've ever had like a sexual encounter with a woman before. I can't even imagine what that, what that data points to, but even for you. So you were, you were 21, but this is over 20 years ago. So even you were addicted to it back then, but it was probably not anywhere near as readily accessible as it is now, where you could Just like, go on your phone, right, and pull it up whenever you want, yet it was still something that plagued you. And it just always, for me, it's. Whenever I've struggled with addiction to it, there's just this constant dirtiness and shame that you just constantly carry around. And sometimes it's more profound than others, but it's always kind of sitting there. Is that something you resonated with as well?

You know, when you were talking, what I was visualizing was almost like a demon in the corner of the room doing push ups.

Literally.

Right?

Yes.

Addiction is really interesting because Gabor Martet describes it as addiction as the opposite of connection either to self or others. And so the hungry ghost that he also has as a great metaphor in his work is essentially, you could keep feeding something, but you're gonna have to keep feeding it more and more with more novelty, more intensity. And that was my journey with pornography. It's like just the regular stuff wouldn't cut it anymore. I had to keep upping the ante all the time. And it brought me to this place, really. When I started the podcast, I remember I was doing one of my early journaling pract. And this is like 35 years old. So I got introduced to porn when I was 13 years old, was, I think, when I found my first, like, nudie mag. You know, when you're 13 and you get a boner for the first time and you're like, what is this, like, sexy woman? And what are these feelings that I'm feeling? And, you know, it's no knock on my father either, right? Like, everyone does the best they can with the level of maturity and spiritual growth that they have. So I'm not here to, to put down my father in any way, but I have specific memories of coming home every other weekend when we would see him. My parents were divorced and I would find like, Playboys or hustlers on the table. And so that was my early entry point into the normalization of pornography, which is essentially the, the small and big ways that demonic energy start to enter the soul, start to enter the being. And so I just assumed it was normal. And then I would go trade VHS with my friends. And it's easy to make this normal because we live in a society that not only normalizes porn, it's celebrated, it's, it's portrayed. Look at Instagram, with all the girls with their tits and asses hanging out. I mean, it's monetized, it's. It's weaponized pornography. And over sexualization is probably I would say at least in the top five, if not in the top three of things that actually atrophy your soul, specifically for men. So then when I would, I needed more. I used to. I was 17 years old, driving my Ford Mustang in El Cajon, and I would go into the adult film store and they wouldn't check IDs, and I'd go, like, masturbate in the back of the booth and, like, watch pornography. So this is my entry point to sexuality, to intimacy, to the thing that our creator brought us in the world to do from a place of sacredness and wholeness. But I was degrading myself and I was putting myself in these places because I just needed an outlet to feel the stuff that I didn't know how to feel. My mom's manic bipolar. She doesn't know how to regulate. My dad's not there. We see him occasionally, intermittently. I didn't have any guidance from a father. So I got to this place where I was like, wow, I'm feeling all this anger, I'm feeling all this sadness. I'm feeling all this stuff that I don't know what to do with. Where do I put it? Football was a great outlet. But then when football went away, it was like, that's when the demon in the corner really started to come out. Because it allowed me to have that pseudo fake moment of peace in my own nervous system and in my soul where just for a moment after the orgasm, I would go, I don't have to feel this anymore. Yeah, I don't have to feel this anxiety anymore. It wasn't even about the sexual or the orgasm. It was more about the pseudo peace that I was thinking was real. And that's the kind of maturity that I think you can only start to learn what real intimacy is and real peace is by experiencing its direct opposite. And that was the journey that I went on from 13, honestly, all the way up until about 37 years old. I was three, four, five years into the podcast journey before I got smacked so hard in Ayahuasca Journey that I realized that porn would no longer be a part of my life. It took that long, y'. All.

Wow, that's incredible.

I was gonna ask, when did you kind of realize that it was that being detrimental to you in that way and actually kind of serving you as the self sabotaging tool that really wasn't allowing you to, you know, have those breakthroughs? Well, we're just.

We're just going there, huh?

We just rip it open. Let's Go.

All right, so the band aid is off. There was this moment where it was 2005, and I had just launched the podcast and I was staying in my friend's spare room. I couldn't even afford money to pay him anything because I had just. In the span of six months, I got fired from a safe corporate job, which is bullshit, because we create our own safety, not outsourcing it to some corporation. I know that now. I didn't know that then. I broke up with a woman who I thought I was going to be with, and I put my mom in a mental home in, like, six months.

Wow.

So it was just three big uppercuts from life that put me in this place where I'll never forget this, man. I had my laptop on this rickety ass plastic stand in my friend's bedroom. Interviewing John Gray, like episode number 15 on my podcast at the time. And I went out to the. The porch, and it was at the Omni La Costa. And I don't know if you guys know the Omni, but it's like this beautiful space in. In Carlsbad in San Diego. And it was like midnight, and the fog was rolling in, and I just started bawling, crying, and I. There was this Spanish tile floor, this red Spanish tile floor. And I got down on my knees and I was just like, God, what do you want me to do? If this is what life is about, I don't want to live it. I don't want to do it. Not that I wasn't contemplating suicide, but I definitely was completely done being a cog in a wheel to someone else's dream. I wanted to live my own dream. And what came up for me, there was this awareness around my own health journey, this awareness around my own addiction, and this awareness that I was speaking as a podcaster, but I wasn't embodied in the things that I was speaking. I was faking it. I was faking it till I made it, which is something we hear a lot in personal development. And I just made a promise that night to God. I was like, God, if you just show me the way, just show me the way. Like, please show me the way. I promise you I'll go there, but I just need some direction here. I need a compass. I need something that points me in the right direction. And it was from that place that I really feel like my life began at 35. My spiritual journey, my understanding of addiction, my understanding of what it really means to be an embodied man that has something of value and goodness to bring to the world. But it wasn't until that moment. I mean, I feel like for the first 35 years, I was just fucking practicing. I was just practicing to be myself. You know, I had no real understanding of who Josh was or what Josh wanted or what Josh was worthy for or if Josh was loved or what self love was. It just wasn't a thing for me. And yeah, that set me on a really big journey of spiritual growth with lots and lots of heroes journeys, and lots of those journeys repeating.

Do you think what was different about that moment versus maybe some of those other similar moments that you had had in the past was maybe like. I'm trying to think of the right word to describe it, but maybe just true obedience to God, where you were just like. I'm like, I'm finally ready to make the change. Just. Just show me the direction I should be going, and I promise you I'll do whatever you tell me to do. Was it obedience? Do you think that was the difference? Or just desperation to finally change?

Yeah. Obedience doesn't resonate. It was more desperation.

Desperation.

It was desperation because what I was doing obviously wasn't working. And so I think the first path to healing or the first. First path to development of any kind is just an honoring of where you're really at, you know, like the real inventory of truth. This isn't working. I'm not happy with my health. I'm not happy with my finances. I'm not happy with my intimate relationships. I'm not happy being an addicted pornography person. I'm not happy with. I don't like the fruits of my labor. I don't enjoy my life. So taking an honest inventory there typically scares the shit out of most people so much that they just go the other way. And it's no judgment on anyone. Right. Cause I've done that before. But I think there was just this deep yearning in my soul for something else. I just wanted a different life. I wanted to live my life well. Ever since I was a little boy, I would always see adults fight about money and fight with each other. And I was like, taxes. What is this shit? What is all this stuff that adults are so angry about? And don't they realize it doesn't have to be that way? I remember when I was. One of the first memories I ever have as a child was remembering that thought, it doesn't have to be this way. Yet everyone believes that it does, and their behavior is a response to that. And so that was my question. From humility to God at that moment, God show Me, the way I'm humble enough to be broken so much that I'm open to your guidance. I mean, I was angry at God for so long. There were moments in my life where I can specifically remember saying things like this. You, God. Fuck you, God for not healing my mother. Fuck you, God for letting babies die. You, God for murderers. Fuck you, God for my father not being just so much anger. Right. And if you look at David Hawkins work in the emotional ladder and the frequency scale, I was just stuck in that lower level of frequency. I hadn't come to acceptance. I hadn't come to the courage to change. I hadn't come to willingness to do different things. I hadn't come to any kind of self love practices. I was very low on a vibrational scale. So all that said, it happened in the most perfect way that I could sit here with you guys at 44 and say, wow, what a fucking journey it's been. I'm so grateful for these hardships. I'm so grateful for these lessons. At the time, I wasn't. I was definitely not grateful when I'm bawling my eyes out to the clouds where I thought God was. I know now that God is everything and everyone and also no thing and everything at the same time. But that was really the culmination point of that. And by the way, there's been multiple journeys in that same vein since then. It's not like we just have one breakthrough in life and then that changes us forever. We can, that can be a reality. But I think if you're really committed to knowing God and knowing who the hell you are, knowing yourself, you're going to have multiple dark nights of the soul, multiple moments where you lose everything. You go through a health journey, you lose a relationship, you go through trauma. And it's how you respond to it. It's how I've responded to it that has allowed me to have the rich, beautiful life that I have now. Am I like this multi, multi millionaire? No. But that's not the degree of my success. The degree of my success is do my children want to spend time with me? Does my lady enjoy my company? Do my friends trust me? Do people in my audience and in my business want to hear from me because they love the trustworthy guidance that I provide? That's success. It's not just a financial number. And so it's been just this constant recapitulation and reorganization in my soul and in my heart of what's most important.

Yes.

And I think that's the guiding light for me, that back then I didn't know was leading me, but I can sit here now and say, yeah, that's what's leading me now and has always been leading me. It was this guidance from the Creator that brought me here to the world, the one that's dreaming all of our lives through us.

Could you map out your spiritual journey? Like, did you grow up in faith? Like, when did you. You were clearly communicating with God, even though you were mad at him? So, like, when did you kind of start having those questions and realizing that, you know, maybe this was more of, like, a spiritual side of you that needed to be healed?

It's a great question. I like the Meat Mafia podcast. Thank you. Yeah. Because y' all get to the meat of it.

Let's get to the bone.

The meat of it. Is this even in the vein of the word mafia? We are. I'll answer the question, but I'm going to go around the bus real quick, and I'll get right back to that question. The mafia that exists here in the world right now is a mafia of demonic intent or malevolent intent. And there is a war going on for our souls and our minds at all times. Now, to the degree that we participate in that war, whatever. I feed with my anger, my resentment, and my behaviors that are harmful to myself and others, that's what perpetuates the war. That's what demonic energy feeds on. So the only way that I can really, I guess, map out the spiritual journey as to what you're asking is with the awareness of that one fact as a starting place, that we are in a war for our souls. We're in a war for our hearts and our minds. And if we can just be honest about what's really around us, the kind of cosmic soup that we're all swimming in where we're all wanting to learn how to love ourselves and love other people and accept ourselves and be the best version of ourselves that we can possibly be. That was my starting place, and it really came from doing the podcast. The podcast used to be called Wellness Force, and It wasn't until 2022 that I changed the name to Wellness and Wisdom, because it was actually from a mushroom journey. And I'm going to credit Carrie Michelle, mother of my children, my love. She turned to me and she's like, what is this discontent you're feeling? And I said, I just don't resonate with this word force anymore. It doesn't feel good to me. Like, the etymology of the word force is like a taking And I don't want to take from people. I don't want to force my life. I want to live my life well. Which was that question that I asked myself when I was a little kid. And she's like, well, what are you really looking for? Isn't it wisdom? Why don't you just call it wellness wisdom? And just like, full body Christmas tree came on, the hair stood up on my neck, and I was like, yeah, it's wellness wisdom, but it's actually not one or the other. It's both. And so that's when the podcast became Wellness and Wisdom. Because the mapping of my spiritual journey came from being in my mother when she was going through traumatic stress, fighting with my father. They got divorced, and he left when I was, like, two months old. I was born into the world less than £5, so I was a preemie baby. I had to be an incubator for the first 30 days of my life. I came home on Mother's Day, which is kind of a cool thing. And then from there, it was having chronic sinusitis and dealing with gut dysbiosis and taking multiple decades of antibiotics and not having the structure of a father figure in the home to guide me and to teach me what is right and wrong. And again, this is not a knock on my father. Like, he didn't get that either, right? To go back to my emotional intelligence, emotional epigenetic point that I brought up in the beginning, but the mapping could be simplistically stated as I chose this situation for whatever reason, my soul chose this situation with a mother that was struggling, with a father that was struggling, and then to have multiple decades of struggling, to experience the depths of struggling myself, so that I could understand and know the people that I now am in service to that are going through similar yet uniquely different struggling, that's the mapping of my journey. And it continues because wherever you go, there you are. My grandmother told me that once, and it was, like, the most powerful wisdom I've ever heard. I think I was moving to Hawaii when I was going through my evolution, and I'm like, yeah, Grandma, I'm gonna move to Hawaii, and I'm gonna, like, get physical, and I'm gonna change my life. And she looked at me and she goes, well, wherever you go, there you are. And I didn't know what she meant at that time, but she planted a seed in my psyche that I can speak to you about now. And it is just because I change my environment, just because we change our environment, our city, that we Live in our friends. Yeah, that can help, but it's not the panacea. It's not the golden ticket of evolution or maturation just because you do something quick. And so it was moving to Hawaii. It was getting into personal training. I did personal training for 10 years, which was amazing. It was a great communication tool. It was a way for me to understand women because I didn't grow up with a sister, and I didn't really have a lot of relationships with women when I was a young man. And then just going through the next stage of having this dark night when I started the podcast, and many dark nights before then, which we probably don't even have time to go into, but there was many of them. Lots of anger and resentment towards my father, lots of unconscious things that I didn't know how to feel. But it wasn't until I started the podcast that I really got clear on what healing I needed and what healing I got to do publicly, because that's what great conversations really are. That's what great podcasting really is. It's when you're honest about your stuff publicly and you share exactly where you are, and there's no bullshit and there's no hiding. It's like, we all have problems. Stop hiding. Live your life liberated. That's something that my team and I on a retreat just got very clear on. As a company standpoint. We all have problems, guys. All of us have problems. But the more that we hide from them, the more that we feed them. We're only as liberated as our darkest secrets. So if I want to live a liberated life, if I want to be free, if I like everybody, the election just happened, right? And everybody's like, oh, my God. Everybody's feeling a lot. I'm not here to say you should or should not vote for anyone ever, but are you the president of you?

Yes.

Are you the governance of you? Because we can never actually be liberated or free if we outsource our power, if we hold dark secrets, if we're not doing the spiritual work. It's been this constant culmination to your question of what is the map? Gosh, sometimes I don't even know how I got here. Dude, I can't give you the perfect map, but I can say that it came from just this really honest place of what is the answer to the question that's burning in my heart. And that answer came multiple times in my life. And it was just be honest and just keep going. Just be honest with yourself, with others, and just keep going. Don't quit.

Yes.

That's the thing that stops most people is they're so dishonest with themselves about where they actually are in their spiritual, personal, emotional development that they fake it for so long. And it's like, eventually your arm's gonna fall off if you just hold that mask up forever. Something has to give, right? Disease, cancer, something will come in and just knock you on your ass. So that's the map. I don't know if I answered that perfectly.

No, that's great.

But there isn't a perfect map. Yeah, there ain't no perfect map for maturity and development.

Yeah. It's different for everyone.

There's so much wisdom and truth in that answer. And I'm thinking about you saying, we're so focused on the election and this construct of you being the president of your. Of yourself, and I think you even just said, don't. As simple as don't quit. And to contrast that to what you said earlier, we're looking for the, you know, the Ayahuasca ceremony in South America or the Tony Robbins conference or like the ever improving and changing magic bullet. I even find myself being gravitated towards that.

Me too. I still find it. Yeah. Shiny thing.

Shiny thing. But you're saying that you hold. Like we hold them. It's almost like God has given us the master key, but it's kind of on us to turn it. And that's why I love that dark night of the soul analogy, because I've had my own similar versions of that, where afterwards, it actually just feels good to look yourself in the mirror or take a piece of paper and just objectively write out, Here are the different ways that I'm. That I'm messed up or up or whatever you want to say. Like, even in the summer, I was like, I'm addicted to nicotine. I'm addicted to kratom. I'm probably 15 pounds heavier than where I want to be. I feel like I'm lying to people. It just felt so good to put all that on a piece of paper.

Yeah.

Because you have this construct of, well, I host this podcast or I have the supplement company, and I. And I'm shaming myself. But it just felt good to acknowledge the ways that I was falling short. And then once I acknowledge that, then I was actually able to take steps in the right direction. So I think there is a lot of beauty and just. At least just start admitting it to yourself before other people.

Yeah. And also I love that. Yes. And because I actually, right before this, I just did an Instagram Live. So, like, all this content is fresh in my head. What you're saying is so real and so inherently true to all of us that everyone knows when they're lugging like a Radio flyer wagon with 50 pounds of concrete behind them. It's pretty tiring. And so that's what secrets are, right? Secrets are a lack of integrity and honesty with yourself or others. That's essentially what a secret is. Now, not all secrets can be bad. Sometimes a secret, like withholding information can be a good thing. But I would say on the most part, or a blanket statement of secrets, is that when I hold secrets and I'm lying to myself, or I'm lying to my business partners, or I'm lying to my woman, that's really where we meet ourselves, is an intimate relationship. There's nowhere to hide. Your, your intimate partner is going to call out and shine a mirror on all the ways that you are lying to yourself or others. And so eventually this concrete wagon gets so taxing that something breaks, right? You have an injury, you have something that goes on in life where you just, you're so humble that you just have to look at it. And to your point, what you said, admitting to oneself, yeah, that's super important. And I would say there's a caveat where you also must be aware that that's where the shame dragon likes to come in. And the shame dragon likes to come in and say, well, not only should you feel bad about what you're feeling, but you should feel bad about feeling bad about. And that's where people can get really stuck in self deprecation and loops where there's an excuse for when the truth comes around again, to not share it. And that's really important to feel is like, yes, there is power in truth. There's power in admitting truly where you are. And also have the awareness to say, thank you, shame dragon, like, I got you. Thank you for coming in and actually testing my resolve to make sure that my admittance to the truth is real and is honest. And also I don't need to bathe myself in the pain body and go into this shame spiral that will then perpetuate me not sharing next time. That's a big piece of emotional intelligence that I think us as men struggle with, right? Because we don't want to be seen as weak. What man wants to cry publicly? What man wants to admit that he's addicted publicly? What man wants to share his deepest, darkest shit publicly? I mean, maybe not us, because we're, we're podcasting about all these things all the time. But. But there's so much power in that. If we can hold the world of. Of sharing our truth and also the intelligence to block any kind of intrusive, dark, disempowering energy from coming in and giving us excuses or justification to not share again. Because it felt so revealing and so challenging to share the first time. Well, the little dark voice might come up and say, well, you're not gonna share again, are you, dude? You ain't gonna share more stuff, are you? You already shared enough. No, the antidote to everything is sharing. That's the antidote to all the dark stuff is actually just to share whatever's real for you. That's it. I mean, I know it sounds simple. Just cause it's simple does not mean it's easy. I might be presenting simplistic concepts, but it's because I've gone through the minutia of sifting and sorting all the bullshit that my own ego was feeding to me the whole time as to why I shouldn't share.

Yes.

Was it that realization that sharing more of this. Is that what led you to start Wellness Force? Because from my vantage point, a lot of the healing that you've experienced has come on the back of you finding your purpose, which seems to be the podcast. So I'm curious, like, what led you to that moment?

Gosh, I don't know. You know, it's a great question. I don't know if it was like a singular moment. I think that healing comes in stages, and healing is like this amalgamate of process where we get little snippets of wisdom. Like, for me, it was from my grandma. I also shared some really unique wisdom from my grandpa. We have these teachers that God dreams through other people, through us, and to us, and I don't think we can actually accept them as truth until we become mature enough to listen to it. So I don't know if it was like, one moment. I mean, even recently in my life, just in the concept of sharing, y'. All. I just bought land and a home, and I went through the most stress that anybody could ever go through. Managing contractors sucks. Contractors are really hard, in my experience. And I realized that I was taking it out on my woman and my family. I was being very emotionally unregulated, and it totally wasn't fair to them completely. And my lady had mirrored it back to me multiple times, like, hey, you're showing up in a way that's not loving, and you're showing up in a way that's not conducive to us having a sacred union. And I was like believing my own ego. Like, no, she doesn't understand. Like, contractors are hard. Like, she doesn't get it. But that was me actually closing off wisdom that was being brought to me from God through my woman. So this is what I'm saying is like, it's not like one thing. Yes. There can be these peak experiences, like ayahuasca journeys or even fitness. Right. Like, I ran a marathon once, and I remember I had profound spiritual awareness after running the marathon. I did the mark divine 20x on my 37th birthday, which is like a seal training overnight where you do Murph soaking wet.

It's like the. Was it Kokoro?

I didn't do Kokoro. Kokoro is like this 50 hour crucible.

It's like Hell Week, actually. Hell Week.

It's actually what they put the seals through, which is super wild.

But 20x seems like it's insane.

20X is like a starting place. It's still really hard because this is why I teach in my model. And I have to give grace to my mentor and friend Paul Check who you guys just interviewed. And he has this quadrant, right, which is mental, physical, emotional, spiritual. And I added on the fifth point, which is financial, because I believe that for my own life and for everyone that I teach, that the lens we get to look through is a pentagon. It's those five aspects of self that I've talked about. And so I think we can get there to answer your question through any one of these sides of the five. If you're having physical struggles, that's a catalyst for growth. If you're having mental health struggles, that's a radical catalyst for growth. If you're broke, nothing will grow you. More like being fucking broke, that'll grow you, right?

Yeah.

If you're disconnected from God, if you have no spiritual practice whatsoever, you are in a ripe situation for growth. Because the universe, God will test you to have reconnection with God because you've created a story that's divided you from God that is bringing you more pain. And so all of these sides of the Pentagon, they all bring you unique challenges. Another one would be emotional, right. If you don't have the tools or practices like breath work or cold therapy or fitness or movement, if you don't have those practices baked in, your emotional body can't flow. I remember on the podcast once, Dr. Tim Brown, he was the sports physiotherapist and chiropractor for The World Surf League. Really amazing guy. Just super intelligent, super tapped in. And he said, you know, Josh, the body is either a river or a dam. So when it comes to emotions or physical movement, you're either stuck energetically or you're flowing. And so from an emotional standpoint, if you don't know how to process emotions, you've never done any emotional intelligence practices ever, then that's a great place to start, because your evolution and your growth can come from any of these sides. So what I'm saying is, like, gosh, guys, start wherever you are. You know, you don't have to have this perfect Cal Newport or Near Ayal or some kind of, like, structured program to grow yourself. Just pick one. Just, like, be honest with yourself and say, all right, out of these five areas in my life, what's the one that's causing me the most pain? Like, what actually feels the worst to me, and start right there. Wherever your deepest pain is is the perfect place for you to start your growth. That's it. Just start right there. Now what's going to happen is the ego is going to come in. Do, do, do. It's going to creep in. It's going to say, oh, you don't want to start there. That's too hard. Cle Instead, go. Go date a girl instead. Go swipe on Tinder instead. And the world is built upon all these egoic psychological structures. Many of the buildings that are built in downtown Austin were built by men who wanted to prove they were good enough to their fathers. So they built a fucking bridge or a building. But after they built the bridge or the building, they didn't feel complete. Wealthy people deal with this a lot, actually. Actually, I'm sorry, Rich people deal with this a lot. Wealthy people do the work to hold their wealth. Rich people, they get a bunch of wealth. Billionaires. I've even interviewed people on my show where I could just tell off camera that they weren't happy, but yet they've written a book and they've done all these things. It's because they're missing one of those five things. And typically, I would say overarchingly, it's because people don't have a connection to something outside themselves. They don't. They're missing that spiritual portion of the Pentagon. They don't have a relationship with God. They haven't, from a humble place, asked God for guidance. It's just not part of their repertoire. It's just not something that they're open to. So I would say that's, like, probably One of the most important things to look at when we even talk about this concept of growth. Right.

Yeah. As you're speaking, it's making me think of something. The last few weeks, I've been spending more time thinking about is just the correlation between very ambitious men and their likelihood of being depressive or depressed in nature. I saw a piece of content on Twitter where it was, I think Abraham Lincoln struggled with depression, Teddy Roosevelt struggled with depression. Winston Churchill, you know, even Jordan Peters. The Jordan Petersons of the world.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. And so I'm just curious how you think about that, because I. I think there probably is this tendency of really ambitious, driven men to deal with maybe some of these mood swings or. I know. I think Teddy Roosevelt's quote was like, black care doesn't fall upon the rider who rides fast enough. So that's why he. That's where the strenuous life came from is. I think his perspective was, well, if I keep filling my 24 hours with amazing stuff of cold plunging in the rivers and riding horses and lifting weights.

And boxes, was he doing cold plunges in the river?

Yes.

Sweet.

Yeah. Which is really cool. One of, like, the original guys that was. Was doing that.

Nice.

And maybe he realized that, hey, there's this amazing state change from cold plunging, but if I throw more stuff on the plate, I can maybe avoid. Avoid some of these depressive tendencies that I've had. And I'm just. I'm thinking through that more because I think even with myself, what we're doing with Meat Mafia Noble, I think we'd both say it was. It's the most challenging and rewarding thing that we've ever done. And I think just trying to build something from scratch, it strips away at so many of your layers and your ego and things that you kind of define yourself through. And so, I don't know, I'm just kind of working through some of that emotion. And, yeah, it's a little bit of a stream of consciousness, but I'm just curious how you think about that.

Yeah. Well, I'm not here to coach you, but can I offer a viewpoint?

I would love that.

Okay. Yes. So it's your child. You both are not fathers. Are you in relationships?

Yes.

Okay. At some point, do you want to be fathers?

100.

Yeah. So can you see how this is perfect, that God is bringing you this experience to birth a product which is essentially training you to be great fathers? Could that be possibly true?

Yes.

Okay. So with that said, if that was true, that every single challenge that you're experiencing that we experience as men or as women is setting you up for the next challenge. Then could it also be true that you're in the absolute perfect place to be bloody, to be confused, to be in the not knowing, to be forced to honor the mystery of God because God is so mysterious and we can't intellectualize the wisdom of God, and if we do, we disconnect ourselves further from God by intellectualizing it. Could it also be true that the learnings and the blessings that you're receiving right now from going through entrepreneurship and going through the maturity process of how to hold this fucking bolus of responsibility is actually the perfect thing that the higher version of you in five years will look back upon and go, wow, I am so grateful for that challenge. I'm so. I mean, it almost makes me want to cry just talking about it right now. Can we just be grateful for these challenges?

Yes.

And even in the moment of feeling them, I'm not saying you have to spiritually bypass and be like, well, because this is something that happens a lot. There's a lot of spiritual bypassing in this world. People are in the middle of the lesson, and they're just about to get poked so much that they bleed gratitude, and they'll stop their growth process by admitting to the world, I know exactly why this hardship is happening. It's because I'm gonna share it with the world. It's like, you haven't learned the lesson yet. You haven't actually gotten the wisdom of your pain yet. Sit in the pain for longer and get the wisdom that the pain is trying to teach you. And then when you're honest and when you've really gone through it, then take a breath and then share that wisdom with the world, because that's the good stuff. That's the good stuff that people are yearning for. And I can feel the yearning in you when you even ask that question.

Yes.

The challenge that you may be holding, is it a responsibility challenge? Like, how do I hold it all? Or, how do I do it all? Or.

Yeah, I think there's something like that. I think there's something that changed, like, right when I turned 30 and really started thinking about the next step of getting married and being a father and realizing, like, hey, there's actually still this part of my ego that really resonated with the security and the consistent income of the corporate job in this fear of, like, as I'm making these next steps, like, how will I be able to provide as a father?

Ooh, that question right there. So that's the unconscious question that I and us, as men, struggle with the most. How am I going to do it all?

Yeah.

I mean, you just brought me back to, like, this incredible memory. I got my ass kicked in an ayahuasca ceremony so profoundly, so violently that in 2019, I had a psychic break. I went. It was my 12th ayahuasca journey, which now my time with ayahuasca is complete. Thank you. Ayahuasca. No need to go back anymore. It gave me such severe ocd, and it took me so beyond the edge of that I actually developed a psychopathy, and I had an entity, like a demonic entity that had attached to me. Thank God I knew Paul, because in 2019, I called him and I just said, look, I'm dealing with this. After this ceremony, I'm having these thoughts that aren't real, but they continue to loop. I don't know what's going on here. And I went to the heaven house and he showed me how to clear it. He showed me how to meet the entity, which, by the way, entities don't live in people that don't have space for them to live. So entities actually are just a byproduct of us, and they attach to give us a learning through pain. Some people don't come back, though. So I'm not an advocate for all plant medicines by any means. Right. I don't think you need to go find God in an ayahuasca ceremony, period, Full stop. But I remember I asked that same question to Paul. I said, well, how am I going to do it all? How am I going to have the family I want? How am I going to have the business I want? How am I going to grow my podcast? How am I going to just be Josh? And he looked right at me and he grabbed me by the shoulder and he said, well, who's doing it anyway? And at the time, I had no idea what he was talking about. And I realized who was doing it anyway was me. I was the one fabricating the story by disconnecting from God, that was further perpetuating my own stress and by me even asking the question, how am I going to do it all? Instead of turning to the entity, turning to God, turning to the parts of myself that were calling to be worked on, and saying, well, how can I grow? How can I meet myself? How can I heal myself? How can I do the deepest, most powerful, beautiful work on myself? Because when I'm asking those questions, I'm not even entertaining the darkness of how am I going to do it all. And it's not to shame you or I that have had these questions. I think all people have had this question, but probably specifically us as men, because there's a, there's a sacred, very ancient promise inside of all of us as men where we want to provide, right? We want to provide, we want to give to our women, we want to give to our children. I fucking love providing. I just love it, dude. It's like my favorite thing. I love paying my team. I love making money. I love it because it's an energy exchange. It's something that I can feel proud about. I can put my name and my being behind it. And it took probably a couple years, you guys, for me to actually let Paul's wisdom sink in. What he was saying was, it's all God, it's all God. Who's doing it anyway? God is doing it because I am made from God. God is dreaming God's self through me. So God is wanting to have this unique experience through my own confusion where I ask the question, how am I going to do it all? God wants me to suffer and struggle a little bit. Because the only way that I can even answer that question, paradoxically, is by not even worrying about it, by not even feeding it. Because whatever I feed grows. Wherever my attention is placed, it grows. So instead of me answering the question, how am I going to do it all? Which is a very intellectual question, how am I going to do it all? Well, I got this spreadsheet and I got my P and L and I have these affiliates and I, you know, I'll do it that way. But there's, there's a lack of trust in that. That's exterior motivation, right? In psychology, they call it intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation. That's an extrinsic model of me being safe. That's an extrinsic model. My question is the wrong question is what I'm saying and your question is the wrong question. Not because I'm shaming you or blaming you. It's a fucking great question. It's a really great question, but really the question is pointing you. It's a cover question. The COVID question of how am I gonna do it all? Or when I'm with a woman, is my dick big enough? Am I sexy enough? Do I have enough muscle? Am I good looking enough? Am I worthy? These are all cover questions for the deeper questions that are really wanting to be answered and fulfilled. And the COVID question is always pointing us and redirecting us to the more meaningful Question, and that is God, what is it that I most need to learn, and how can I be most humble to learn it? That's a prayer that I said for two years when I was going through healing ocd after the psychic break, I would close my eyes, I would sit in, like, the sauna space, or I would just sit somewhere and I would just ask God, God, what is it that I most need to learn and how can I be most humble to learn it? And, I mean, my hands are shaking right now because it's just like, it's so meaningful to me, that question, that prayer, because it's humble, it's authentic, it's honest. That's how we learn to do it all, is by being humble enough to ask our Creator, the One which has created us and is still creating through us, what work gets to be done on self, what work gets to be done on soul? What truth is wanting to be excavated and uncovered so that that question of how do I do it all? Isn't even a thing? It's not even present in my vernacular, because I know that that question is essentially just a cover question that's guiding me to the deeper question of what is it that I most need to learn and how can I be most humble to learn it? And God, universe, whatever nomenclature y' all want to use, it's going to bring you these unique experiences of challenge that'll force you to answer these questions of honesty within yourself. And it's through that process that that question will just answer itself. How am I going to do it all?

Yeah.

Who the fuck knows? Who knows how we're going to do it all? Right? The guys that are in production in our room with us, your business with Noble and your podcast, wellness and wisdom, your unique gifts and dreams that you're bringing out into the world. Who the hell knows how we're going to do it all? How is not important. What's most important is what work do I get to do on myself that's going to make that question not even important anymore?

Yes.

That's really the answer that I think we're all seeking.

Yeah. And it's. As you're speaking, I'm just thinking that, almost just reminding myself or us to just trust the fact that, you know, we're made in the image of God and he's given us such incredibly durable hardware and software, like we can literally withstand almost anything.

Yeah.

Which is. Which is so powerful.

Except for soy. Except for soy or canola or seed oils. Can we please talk about that at some point? We will. The whole 30 debacle. And seed oils, for Christ's sake. Because that's the bottom of the Pentagon. Right? The physical.

Yes, absolutely.

Sidebar. My bad.

And that. No, that's. And that's probably the best advocate. The best reason to eat healthy. I remember. I think Evan Britton said that on our podcast. Is you. The re. The most compelling reason to eat healthy is that bottom base layer of the pyramid to develop an antenna to God and the connection you'll feel.

I mean, these lights are plugged into the walls, right?

Yeah.

What happens if that conduit is dirty and you and it can't give or receive electricity? The light doesn't shine.

Totally.

We're the same way. I just find it so fascinating that people can't just feel the simplistic truth of that.

Yeah.

That you could just eat Cheetos and seed oils and crap and think that you're going to have some type of a great life. It's actually not possible. Right. People love to talk about George Burns, how he smoked cigarettes for, like, 100 years, and he lived till 100. Of course there's going to be outliers, right?

Yeah.

Some people just have a unique karmic path.

Dude, Trump's great ally.

Yeah. What do you think about Trump's.

Trump's diet fried chicken. He's a horse.

He's a war horse.

Yeah. But see, what's interesting about Trump is he has this powerful belief. He's done so much work on his mind. And I'm not here to say Trump is a great person. Right. There's lots of things about Trump that I don't resonate with. There are some things about Trump that I resonate with, but if you look at the way he speaks, it was the greatest thing ever. I'm the greatest thing ever. And the things we've done are the greatest thing ever. He believes it, and it might be hubris, but he believes the things that he's saying. And it's actually a great spiritual teaching that I think he's providing in his own unique, kind of fumbling, egoic way that the words that we speak are spells. When we're talking to each other on podcasts, when we're connecting with each other, we're casting spells on each other. Right. My body is mainly water. My voice box is resonating at a frequency. I'm imbuing y' all with frequency. You're imbuing me with frequency. Everything in this world is frequency. This chair is not whole. It's vibrating. This mic Everything around us is always moving, yet we think it's still. And so I don't know about Trump's diet per se. Definitely not the healthiest from what I've seen, like, KFC on the airplane and McDonald's and all that. But that also is a byproduct of his own shadow. Right. So Trump is showing us light and good lessons that we can live in our life, but he's also showing us publicly his own shadow. Right. And I think if we have any maturity, we can see that, too.

Yeah.

Can we get into some of your daily practices? Like, what are the things that keep you humming at as peak performance as you can possibly get? What does that look like?

Well, I'm a father, so the concept of peak performance is different.

Managing performance.

Well, I mean. And thank you for these great questions. I really just appreciate the depth, the meat of what we're talking about.

Appreciate your honesty.

Yeah. Thank you for being transparent.

And I really hope y' all feel this, because, like, I'm not here to bullshit. I'm here to just be as much Josh as I can be. Yeah. What keeps me in optimal performance is emotional regulation. It's actually, I just had a team retreat. I flew in my whole team from across the world, and I got more healing on the retreat than they did. I thought I was gonna be of service to them.

That's awesome.

And I was shown my own dream. And to answer your question, yes, there's some really amazing tactical things that I'll share that are really meaningful and pivotal to my life. But before we drink the update or the tonic or before we hydrate, it's like, why are we doing all this stuff in the first place? What is the belief I have about myself? What is the thought that that belief creates? What is the feeling that that thought creates? And feelings are a guidepost to emotion. And then what does that combination of emotion and thought trigger me to behave in? Btfa? Belief, Thought, feeling, action. It's a simple concept that everybody can understand. You have a belief, it creates a thought, it creates feeling and emotion, and then it creates action or behavior. It's actually quite simple. I learned this from Charles Duhigg in Near Ielt. They're behavioral psychologists, really smart men.

The behavior of habit. Charles. Charles Duhigg. Yeah.

Or.

Sorry. Yeah, Yeah.

I think. Power of habit. The power of habit. Yeah. And also a really good behavior psychologist is BJ Fogg. I think he's from Stanford.

I know who that is.

But just really simple ways to understand why we do what we do. So then one would ask oneself, okay, once I've done an emotional inventory, an honest inventory of my BTFA loop, right. The way that I behave and why and what feelings are connected to it and basically the fruit of my labor, then at that place you can be honest with yourself about what tactical things, what nutrition, what hydration, what fitness practices, what physical practices, personal practices can be stuck in there. But if that's bypassed and there's no awareness of your BTFA loop, then it doesn't really matter if you shine a joov light on your balls or if you're doing 15 minutes of cold plunge at 32 degrees and breaking ice with a hammer. Like none of that shit matters if you don't do the inventory first. Like that's the most important thing. So I do the inventory as much as I possibly can. That's my biggest hack, if you will, for biohacking or physicality or just self. And then from there I'm becoming even more strong about contrast therapy, even more strong about cold and hot specifically. I just got a new sauna from Sun Home Saunas. Shout out. Cause it's like almost zero emf. It's bulb technology.

That's amazing.

A lot of the saunas have high EMF. And so I'll do 15 minutes, 20 minutes at like 170 in the sun home, then I'll go right to the cold plunge and I'll do cold plunge for three and I'll cycle that twice, maybe three times if I have time. Sometimes that's all that I get, even if I wake up really early because the children are awake. And when the children are awake, they deserve full presence and attention. We also have hired a nanny, so that's really helpful. We have a calendar, I have a work calendar, a family calendar. I mean there's structure, right. So what I really love is bringing that masculine structure. And what I learned from my lady is feminine flow. And that it doesn't always have to be so fucking structured.

Yeah, right.

But I think it's really good for me from a physical standpoint to just, if I can just do one thing a day, it would be walking and hot and cold therapy. Just do that and you're in like a higher percentile of most people. But this is again, this whole ego trap that I've mentioned before is people want to skip the basics.

Yes.

And go to like, well, I'm going to get the device I put on my head and I'm going to do like this six hour morning routine. And it's like, God bless You, if you can do that, you know, you don't have kids, you don't fucking understand. There's no way you're doing a huge morning routine with children. But I really love that. And I've been focusing a lot on free motion. So I have a dual stack free motion in my gym. Bodyweight pull ups, bodyweight push ups, stretching, mobility. I don't really do heavy lifting at all anymore, maybe occasionally, but I'm also just in my own health journey right now with hormones and with optimization where I don't feel like lifting heavy is good for me right now. So. But that goes back to my self awareness. Right? Like, do I need to lift heavy right now? Well, if my body tells me, then I will. But right now my body is just wanting movement, it's just wanting fluidity, it's wanting hot, cold, vascular therapy. It's wanting like the hormesis from being hot and freezing. I also have a pool at my house, which is really cool. Doing like doing the sauna and then going in a pool when it's cold is pretty amazing.

Incredible.

Swimming underwater is pretty amazing too. But that's my routine per se are those practices. And honestly I think if people just do those three things, the walking, the hot and the cold, you'll be inspired to do other things healthy just from doing those three things.

Well, I love how you unpacked all that because the first part of it is really doing that audit on yourself, really coming to terms with the things that you're wrestling with. Maybe some weight that you're carrying, not physical weight, like fat or anything like that, but just emotional weight.

And then I like how you put that. They're the same, dude. Yeah, yeah, they're the same.

One and the same. But also, you know, walking is an amazing therapeutic in terms of just getting those thoughts out of your head and just kind of getting in that flow state. And then contrast therapy, also a great way to get within, like within your body and just get in that breath. So I love that practice and the simplicity of it. Like on top of that, if you just eat right, you're probably feeling great.

Yeah, I mean, gosh, put some meat in your body, like really, like I, I get that there's a subset of the population that may thrive for a while eating a vegetarian diet. I'm not here to say that's good or bad, it just is what it is. Actually, to quote our friend Paul, he did a vegetarian diet for a year because he wanted to feel what it was like. He wanted to have that experience so I've personally known a lot of vegetarians. One guy, my buddy Ronnie Landis, he was a vegetarian for 10 years and one day his body was screaming at him so loudly that he was just like, like, I'm gonna eat steak for a month. And he just, and then his, his face looked different. I mean, everything about him looked different because he was just eating high quality meat.

There's a glow. There's a glow.

There's a glow.

We've had get. We've had plant. Former plant based guests on that said that they were getting hit with dreams of like, we had one girl that was getting dreams of cooking eggs topped in Kerrygold butter. And then she, she stopped like a decade of plant based diet with that exact meal.

There you go.

Yeah, I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to. No. It's like you do get hit with your body or your subconscious, your conscious hits you with these signs of what it actually wants, just craving those nutrients that it's not getting.

Well, think about it. So you guys have heard of this book, the Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk, about trauma. And the body has a language. So if your body's speaking to you and it's asking you for something and from a more moral lens, you tell it. No, eventually it's going to hit you so hard that you have to listen. Right. Like, I'm sure even with your colitis journey, you had the body screaming at you in some way and you had to pay attention.

Shedding blood 30 times a day. I'll do that. Yeah.

Yeah, that'll get your attention. Yes.

But had I listened to it in the beginning when there was like a little bit of blood in the stool or whatever. Yeah. I could have probably reversed everything. But to your point, it's like I wasn't listening to the scoreboard that I was being shown, which is why I got so sick.

Yeah. And it's not like I've, I've tried to blunt that voice as well. So I'm not here to shame anyone that's not listening. Right. I want to be mindful of that. But on the flip side, gosh, you don't have to suffer so much. You can learn from someone like you that's been through a health journey and share what you learned. So you did it. Right. This actually goes back to my other point. I know I'm jumping around a little.

Bit, but it makes sense.

Remember earlier I was saying that a lot of times we'll ask a cover question because there's something deeper or will behave in a certain way when it comes to food that, you know, we're a carnivore tribe member, we're a vegan member, we're a CrossFit member, we're a fruitarian member because we have this ideology that's from a moral standpoint that may not resonate many times with what our physical body actually needs. But the mind has taken over because, well, this is my identity. I have to put chalk on my hands and do kipling pull ups. Even if my shoulder capsule explodes. I have to go eat raw celery every day because that's what the medical medium told me will heal my foot. Like, there's just so much crazy shit out there in the health world. And a lot of times from what I've found, it's really just slowing down when you eat. And if you slow down enough, you'll look in the fridge and you'll just resonate with something. But we get so habitual that it's like, well, I have to get this much protein or I have to get this much thing. If you slow down enough, things will start to become more clear. It's like, you know, you've seen this meme on social where you know, when the glass has a bunch of dirt in it, you can't see through it. But as soon as you just let the water stand still, all the sediment goes to the bottom and you can finally see what's in the cup. It was the same way with food. There are certain seasons of life that we must follow with food. And none of us should be eating like shit. Tons of watermelon and grapes and strawberries and honey and all this stuff during the winter because that's not when it's grown, right. These are like summertime, spring things. And so if you look at the wisdom of horticulture and of biology and people that study nutritional therapy, like a really great movement is the Price Pottinger Foundation Wise Traditions. Great podcast as well. Look at nutrition and physical degeneration from Dr. Price. Like, there's so many clues that have been left by our forefathers and our foremothers that if we just follow the wisdom that they've laid out for us, we won't suffer as much. But I think where we get caught up is just this intellect, intellectualization of what I should be eating or how I should be showing up. Because I want to be in my tribe and I want to be accepted with my tribe that we actually completely dishonor the wisdom of the body. And in no way is this being more fucking shouted out right now than with the whole 30 bullshit where they just came out with this adage. Melissa Urban says, oh, well, seed oils of any kind or any source are okay. And to me, I'm just like, I knew right away it was a financial thing, of course. Couldn't you guys feel that?

Yes.

How could anyone that for a decade has believed in the actual. Probably hundreds of thousands of papers, peer reviewed papers about the acids that are in seed oils, how seed oils are prepared, how crazy those are for the body, how nowhere in nature could you get a gallon of seed oil. It's just not possible. You could never ingest that. And you'd have to eat a field of corn, you know, to get that much seed oil.

You literally use bleach in the process of making seed oils. How is that whole?

I've even heard like propane and hexane and like really harsh chemicals that create seed oils. Yet you have now Melissa Urban, who. And I'll give her grace. I'm not here to shit on Melissa Urban. She did a lot of good for people in the world. And I'm sure in her heart she is coming from a good place. But to me, I can just feel the essence of big food all over it. Yes. Because there's no way in anyone's right mind that they could say for a decade plus that seed oils are harmful and then overnight say, well, now seed oils are acceptable. And it's science. I love it when people say that. It's science. As if that's a God.

Yeah, capital S. Science.

It's science. Which was the same bullshit that we all experienced during the pandemic.

Right.

Well, you should wear a mask and you should get jabbed. It's science. Now, the same people have obviously admitted that their science was bullshit. So should we have trusted you then or should we trust you now? And should we trust you then about seed oils or should we trust you now? Essentially what she's done is she's made herself and the whole 30 movement less trustable. Completely less trustable.

Yeah, yeah. It's going to be that branded thing on every processed food product that gets made over the next ten years that identifies. It's a moniker of health similar to organic. And people are just like, unfortunately just gonna fall for it because it's a sign that, you know, it's Whole 30 approved and people see that as a badge of health. But on the back end of that, she totally just sold out to processed foods.

You know what was even more crazy is if you went to her ig the day it came out, she actually. And this is how you know when someone is tacitly approving their own judgment. She posted like a yacht. And I think it said seed oil. I don't know what it said on it, but she was basically going along with the hate and saying, oh, yeah, yeah, I did do this for the money. Look at my new yacht. And all she actually had to do was just come on to alive and say, hey, this is honestly what my heart wants to do with this company. This is the science that I found. This is where I'm at, you guys. But she didn't do that.

No.

And that tells me that there is some type of unconscious malevolence at play when someone goes along with the joke or goes along with the hate to hopefully make it go away instead of just being honest and meeting it exactly where it is.

Yes.

That's how you know something is foul play. And I did the research. I went on the Costco website. Because, you know, ironically, at the same time, There's a new Whole30 frozen food line coming out at Costco. And one of the ingredients is olive oil. Now, it's not organic. We know that olive oils are cut with many other oils at times. We don't know the sourcing of these olive oils. I would not be surprised if in six months to a year that the whole 30 meals in Costco have canola oil, have safflower oil, have all these oils. I would not be surprised at all. Because if she would have come out with that in the beginning, people would have obviously seen the truth. They'd be like, well, yeah, you're coming out with seed oils for whole 30 because there's seed oils in your fucking product. She has to wait a little bit. Whole 30 has to wait a little bit. So in 20, 25 or 26, I would not be surprised if seed oil starts showing up in the whole 30 products in Costco, which, if you trace it back, follow the money. That's the whole reason why all of a sudden the science is telling us that seed oils are healthy. I just, for the life of me cannot imagine what is going on in her soul. What is going on in the soul of the executives at a company like that for them to flip their stance on something that, by the way, the research that she's claiming was funded by the companies that make the seed oils.

Yeah, right.

So it's science. Well, who's doing the science? And what is the financial gain of that science? Because science always exists on both sides of any argument. So who's to say that one science is right and one science is wrong? How do we make that decision? We make that decision for ourselves, not because we're told it's science.

Yeah. And the thing is too, is that science is kind of irrelevant. The whole 30 is this incredibly restrictive version of Paleo. Right. Where it's like there's a list of approved food groups because you're supposed to be monitoring the way that our ancestors were eating. So regardless of what the science says around vegetable oil, seed oils weren't a thing.

Right.

Thousand years ago, how could you ever get that much?

You'd have to go. You'd have to hunt for a year and press it in some old school stone press to even get, like, a cup of seed oil.

Definitely.

I found this amazing social media account the other day where this guy in his kitchen made like. It was basically like two drops of some sort of cedar canola oil. But it's like the process of doing it was insane. And he just did it in his kitchen. Yeah, it was wild.

Yeah. I just think we're at this point now where 2024 and 2025 is the year of a year. Years of the Psyop. 2024 was for sure. Which started in 2020 with the whole planet bullshit. Yes. 2025 will be the year of the ultimate psyop coming to light. Psyop and taxation, Psyop and food, Psyop and pharma. Psyop and media. All the different ivory tower structures are going to be cracked so hard in 2025, especially now with the leadership that's in the White House. And I don't think that just because someone's president, it's going to directly impact our lives. I think that we actually govern ourselves. But I do think that presidential elections sway public opinion. For people that are less aware or less conscious, it is important for them to have a leader with conservative values that bring family back together, that bring honor back into the system. And again, I'm not here to, like, be pro Trump. I am here to be pro conservative and pro health and pro family and pro wisdom. Right. Again, I'm not fighting against anything. I'm not even fighting against anything at all. I'm claiming something. Instead of fighting against something, I'm claiming something. I'm honoring something. Because whatever I fight, I feed. So I constantly am being aware of my language in that regard.

Yeah. So we're recording this November 6th, the day after the election. It feels wild.

Morning.

It feels different. Than other elections.

Oh, it feels. I mean, he crushed. Crushed. Absolutely crushed. You look at the map, it was just like red.

Yeah, yeah.

Even states that have never voted red voted red. What does that tell you about the. The consciousness that's peeking through right now?

Yeah.

And, and the disillusionment of the media and I think the massive amounts of gaslighting that have been happening over the last several years. Like, you know, I remember just like leading up to election, just seeing things come up. I'm like, I just feel so, like the people in my life, I just feel like I'm having different conversations than what I'm seeing. That's like getting pressed on me in the media. So I just feel like the game is kind of up for the. This legacy media system system. And I think there's a lot of hope for kind of this, this whole, like, counterculture movement that's just like, we want the truth, we want the truth to be restored. We want trust in our govern government, government bodies. And ultimately, at the end of the day, like, we want each other to be healthy. And I feel like we've gotten so far away from that. And even with just like the last administration's view on health, I'm like, I just. I just fundamentally disagree with the people that are putting in place to talk about health, the bureaucratic nature in which they're trying to construct health. I'm like, health is this. It's like, let's like break bread, have great meals, have community, work out together. It's not, you know, when's your next vaccine schedule? And all this stuff that's like getting pressed on people. It's. It's really something that's like, derived from God and a connection to God. And so I feel like we're now shifting. Like there is now this like, shift that.

I feel it too.

I hope people who didn't vote for the incumbent or sorry for the new administration, I hope that they can start to see the new vision and are welcomed into it because I think good things are going to come.

Yeah. Again, in this same vein of not fighting against anything in the next year specifically, there will be a ton of people on the left, which I think is even funny. These terms left and right, they're all just stupid. They're all just so divisive. It's like we're humans, we all breathe air, we all poop, we all move. I think what's going to happen is the same kind of tried and true war is going to come where it's like the left Will say, well, he stole the election and this is bad and he's a rapist and blah. And it's just like. That's so distracting from what's most important. Yes.

Yeah.

Like, what's most important is actually starting with children super young and having them move like they did when John F. Kennedy was president. When John F. Kennedy was president. Have you ever seen the clips, it's unbelievable, of kids working out in schools when JFK was president?

It's so epic.

There were kids in, like, middle school doing pegboard.

Yeah, all of them were doing the pegboard.

All of them were doing pegboard. Like dips on the bars. And now we have kids that are playing Fortnite, dyeing their hair blue with Cheeto dust on their T shirt.

Yeah.

It's just such a different world. And so I think what's happening is a reckoning. There's a mass reckoning that's going to happen where the ultimate joy that I would see would be reinstituting the physical education program in schools. Can you imagine if PE wasn't something that you just had to suit up for, if it was actually fun?

Yes.

If physical education was like 90 minutes in schools. But see, if you start moving the chess pieces there, then it's going to fuck up the other side of the board that the chess pieces with the most money behind them are playing. And so when you start moving chess pieces by instituting better food and better movement in schools, what's going to happen is there's going to be eventual downfall with less money for pharma and big food. And when there's less money to grab for pharma and big food, here comes the lobbyists in Washington. Well, we actually don't need 90 minutes. And if you look at the research from our science group. Trust the science. We show that 20 minutes of activity is fine, and we'll lecture kids about whole grains for 15 minutes. You see what I'm saying?

Yes.

It's just once you start moving one of the chess pieces, all the other chess pieces have to move. And in order for us to play a brand new fucking game, everybody's got to see the board. We've got to show everybody the whole game board here, which, you know, thankfully, y' all are doing on this podcast. Right. Like, we've got to see the whole game for what it really is. It's a fucking game. It's a money grab. Our government does not have our best interests in mind. These oligopolies. These companies do not have our best interests in Mind. They have their interest in mind, which is finance. That's purely it. And that may be like a conspiracy theory to some people, but if you actually just took the time without even picking a side and just floated 30,000ft above what's really happening, you would see it in a second. You would see the whole game board.

Yes.

You'd be like, well, obviously this is wrong. Right. In the same way where I knew right away during pandemic that putting six masks on myself in a car alone was stupid. There's just certain things that we accept as objective truth that are real and that aren't real. But what happens is you get this demonic energy that starts to make truth false. It's like the devil likes to hide behind actually being God. And so. Well, no, it's actually okay for a child to cut their genitals off because they feel that way. No, you're actually a bigot and you're harmful to children if you stand in the way of a 12 year old cutting his penis off. It's your problem, not theirs. They're the righteous one. You feel me on this? It's like we're in such the devil's playground that unless we have some kind of modus operandi, to see the whole game and actually to play the game without judgment, which is something that I'm working on. How do I play this whole game without judgment? How do I play this whole game about not being fucking boiling rageful at pharma and food and even skin care and all these industries that have built mega billion dollar businesses on fooling people. Yeah. On hoodwinking people and doing great marketing so that they poison people at a super young age and feed them Fruit Loops and feed them all this shit and then they grow up and feed their children the same food. Yeah. Because trust the science. So I'm not here to say what people should do and should not do. All I'm saying is that I've dealt with weight issues in my life. I was raised on welfare, which means Velveeta. I remember actually cutting Velveeta cheese as a child, eating mass cereal like cream of tuna on toast. Like not good nutrition. Right. And that's all that my mom could provide because we were poor. So now that we know once, you know, do something beautiful with it, you know, do something amazing with your knowledge. Don't just let. Don't just listen to our podcast and be like, oh, yeah, that's someone else's problem. It's like, no, that's actually all of our problem. Together. If we're a tribe and we're a global community, which we are, then all the ways in which we're disconnected from the things that are most meaningful to us, then we're just giving, tasked at approval to teach our children to do the same. And that's not the world I want to live in. That's not the fucking game I want to play. Yes, I want to play a totally different game.

Yes.

Completely different.

And that's why I would imagine last night was probably so encouraging for someone like you that's been doing, I mean, you've been doing the podcast for, for just about a decade. So you've been going, you've been going against the grain for longer than that, but publicly, you've been speaking about a lot of these topics for 10 plus years. And I think even with us doing our show for two years, there was always this, this feeling of if we could just get the right information out there, how much better these people would feel. But there was this fear of, like, but what if the country, what if the, the mass populace of the US just doesn't see it and we're just going to continue to swing into this almost like ghoulish future? And then yesterday was kind of that sign of, okay, I think that this stuff is more mainstream than we realize and there's enough critical mass behind it. We're right. As of today, in 2024, there still might be a ton of re education that needs to be done around seed oils, but at least we're going to be able to lay the pieces to get to where we ultimately want to be, which is what I think you're saying. So, like, that encouragement is. It just felt that. I think that was a thing of. I'm sure you felt this, like, oh, yeah, maybe what I'm doing really is making a difference at a mass scale.

I was walking this morning with my children and my lady and we were walking the neighborhood and every person we would pass would just give us a nod. Yeah, because they felt it too. And one woman we actually stopped and had a conversation with, and she's like, I've been voting since 1972 and this one feels the best. And I was like, wow, I feel that too. Not because the messenger is amazing. I don't think he's the greatest messenger, but I think the message is amazing. Yes, the message is the most important. Just because I listen to Metallica doesn't mean I need to love James Hetfield as a person. I just like the music. So don't Shoot the messenger. That's an old adage I think I've heard many times. Don't shoot the messenger. It's about the message. The message is about having healthy boundaries around our country, like having actual borders, because anything without borders will essentially have so much atrophy that it just decays.

Right.

I'm not condoning the abuse of anyone with different color skin or racism. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, like, that's just one aspect of the hopefulness that I feel. The other aspect is RFK Jr being on the Cabinet, literally. He's going to dismantle the pharma input into Congress and into the White House. I mean, they're in for a fucking war, you guys.

Yeah.

With RFK at the helm. Do you know how much, how much momentum is behind him with the assassination of his family member and how much pain that whole family has felt and how much pain he's gone through and the research he's done and the bolus of motivation he has to fucking dismantle pharma. I don't think people understand what's about to happen. Like, it's absolutely incredible that Trump is there and that he is there, regardless of how you feel about these people as people. I'm talking about the message that they're bringing, the change that they're bringing. That's fucking inspiring. It's so inspiring to know that M a h a Make America healthy again. It's a slogan. What an amazing slogan. It's not fight against cancer, it's not fight against seed oils, it's not fighting against anything. It's about making America healthy. Right. A returning to chopping wood, carrying water, moving just being a human. We've complicated the fuck out of this thing, and it's because we've been manipulated and hoodwinked by pharma, by food, by all these mega oligopolies that have come in and lobbied Congress to sway public opinion. And so do I think that Trump being president is a panacea? No, I don't. Do I think that some really beautiful change is coming? Yeah, I do. I can feel it. I mean, it's fucking inspiring.

It's so inspiring.

Kind of like the. The Avengers came together too, like the unity that happened. And I honestly, I was gonna say this before. Before you said rfk. I think what RFK did was the first domino that fell that allowed all these other. It invited in Elon, it invited in Tulsi, it invited in Vivek, all these people who have these different strengths behind who Trump is, who I think is more like of a visionary rhetoric, like, he's good at casting the vision. And then these other guys are just like executors, specialists, people who can come in and just bring their strengths. Like, I think. I think the unity behind it is incredible. I don't think we've seen anything like it in a long time.

No, I mean, where else? Because he was a Democrat for a long time.

Yes.

Right. And so his whole life. Where else have you seen this ever happen? I don't know. I'm not a political expert at all. At all. Like, I typically don't ever even follow politics, but the pain and the anguish that I felt from having my health freedom stripped away in 2020 is so intense that it made me pay attention to politics because I got to this point where I was like, wow, I can't even get on an airplane without wearing a diaper on my face. That doesn't do anything that the research has proven doesn't do anything. Huh. There's something else at play here. And if anybody didn't have those thoughts or followed the rabbit hole of those thoughts, it's like, bless you. You know, I'm sorry that. I'm sorry that you were so scared of going down that rabbit hole that you chose not to even enter, but I think we're in this reclamation now of health. Is it going to fix everything? Is there so much work to do that maybe only our children's children's children will feel? I think the world that we're all wanting and looking for may not happen in our lifetimes. It may not.

Yeah, it may not.

It might happen in my son's. It might happen in my grandson's, maybe. But, gosh, it only happens through beautiful messages that are collectively true, that are objectively true. And sometimes the messenger is outlandish and boisterous and kind of an asshole. You know, I just. Because a movement is being led by someone that you don't agree with, like, can you connect with the message instead? What's the message that's being portrayed? Because a lot of people, they'll just ad hominem leaders, they'll just attack their. I've had people attack me. Like, what the fuck do you know about health? You're not a doctor, you're not this, you're not that. And it's like, well, I've been through my own journey, and here's my results. And it's been this many hours of study and 10 years of. Of podcasting and this many interviews, like, what have you brought to the table?

Yes.

And it's just crickets. Yeah. There's nothing to say it's fucking crickets.

Yeah.

Because they're just keyboard warriors with the Cheeto dust on their lap.

Definitely.

And, like. Yeah. So I'm excited. I feel very hopeful about the world ahead. I feel like 2025 will be the ultimate fucking psyop. Being exposed with Puff Daddy and with sexual predators and with trafficking and with food and with pharma. Like, evil can't perpetuate in perpetuity. It just can't. Right. Like, look at the sodium and potassium pump in the body. There has to be a balance. Look at the sarcomere and the actin myosin tears. You can only create so much lactic acid. Lactic acid in too much would kill you. So the body and nature and civilization has natural checks and balance systems that keep us moving forward. Sometimes we go sideways, but they keep us moving forward. And so I really feel like we're about to move forward. Like a quantum fucking leap forward.

Yes.

That's what it feels like to me.

Like a massive light's about to be shining. All these things that have just been kept in the shadows for years that.

We'Ve all been feeling.

We've all felt it.

We've all been feeling them, but, like, maybe we didn't want to lose a job or be ostracized from a tribe, or we were just experiencing fear about speaking our truth. Yes. Well, I say fuck that. Speak your truth. Speak your truth and lose whatever you have to lose, because then whatever you're gaining is built on a foundation of sand anyways. If you're not speaking your truth. And who wants to live a life like that? You want your son and your daughter to see their father live like that? To build a castle on sand?

Yeah.

It's just not. That's another game I don't want to play. I'm just, like, not interested in that game, you know, I truly believe life is a game. I do. And there are some times where I forget that. I forget that life is a game, and I get wrapped up in my own shit and I lose my emotional regulation or, you know, I go into story about how this isn't happening for me, it's happening against me. And then when I have conversations like this or when I am in community with people that love me and people that trust me or I do a lot of men's work, and I hold a men's group here in Austin. And so this Art of giving and receiving feedback as men is so important. And the way that we give and receive feedback is just by foundationally having a space of honesty in which we do that. And I think, I know I can feel in 2025 there is going to be more honesty. But before we get there, we're going to have to unpack all the murky, mucky lies that we've all believed to be true. And it's fucking liberating, dude. Liberation is not this sexy process. Liberation is where you actually develop the courage and the capacity and the awareness to say no to anything or anyone that doesn't align with your soul. And that can be really fucking confronting. Like, I mean, I just had something recently about that emotional regulation I share with you guys about managing the contractors and being stressed out and taking it on my family. Like. Like that's not okay.

No.

Where does that program come from? And so then I go into my own. I eat my own dog food. Okay, let me do my own emotional inventory. Where does that come from? Oh, okay, now I understand where that comes from. Now can I practice being regulated in each moment with breath? Work with cold therapy, with honesty? Like, it's not an easy game. It's not an easy game to play the honest game. It's actually much harder. The honesty game is fucking hard. But it's worth it.

It might. It's the only game once you realize it exists.

Right. It's so worth it. It's really the only game. The rest of the other games are just bullshit. It's the only true game out there.

Yeah.

The honesty game. But it's really revealing and really challenging. Yeah. In so many ways. Like.

Yeah, well, it feels like the US is about to play the honesty game in 2025. So we'll see.

Yeah. But look the hell out, because once we start playing that game, a lot of the things that even all of us in this room or all of us listening and watching this podcast, we have to be open to looking at what we've believed as not being true as well. Yeah, right. What are the things that I. I just said that to my lady this morning. I was like, in five years, what will I believe that's completely different than what I believe now? Because of honesty. Because of looking at it through the lens of honesty. And she was like, yeah, because five years ago, dude, I was like a card carrying Democrat in California. Like when Trump. I remember when Trump got elected, I was like, no, how could this be? And then when I really started to look at actually what's going on based on my health freedom being ripped away. And I was so upset about that. Then I started to really see the fucking man behind the curtain. The dude on the mask or the dude on the microphone behind the curtain is actually the shadow of us. It's the part of us that doesn't want to be honest. It's the part of us that wants to control. It's the part of us that just wants to, like, be in self righteousness. And that's also another game. I don't want to play. All these games I don't want to play. Right. The game that I want to play is that I'm emotionally regulated and I express myself with authenticity and that brings me abundance that I get to share with the people that I love. That's the game that I want to play. That's the game that came through at the team retreat recently, and that's the game that I'm committed to playing. Will that game change in the future? Maybe. I think it'll be similar, but it might just have different words. Yeah.

Well, I don't want to pat myself on the back, but at the beginning of this podcast, I said it was going to be an awesome podcast. I think this is a pretty epic. This was a pretty epic podcast.

Yeah.

Dude, we really appreciate you coming on and just, honestly, just being honest, sincere totally came through. And just, yeah. Love what you're all. All about and what you're up to, man. Really appreciate it.

Thank you, guys. Yeah, it was fun. It's supposed to be fun, right?

Yeah.

If it's not fun, what are we doing?

Honest questions, honest answers, man.

Yeah. Like, sometimes I'll interview people and I can tell, like, they're not being honest and I feel uncomfortable and I'm like, so what's. What's real? Tell me the truth. Yeah.

Yeah.

What are you really trying to say?

Yes.

You know, and that's what. That's what people want.

Yes.

So that's how we learn. That's how we actually learn and do something good with it.