Khalil Rafati | From Homeless To Limitless: One Man's Spiritual Journey @WellnessAndWisdom

You get taught that you are something, but the truth is, it's not true. It's. It's just a story. It could be a story that people told to you, and then you start telling that story to yourself, and then you get to this place where you truly believe that that's it. That's not it. It's bullshit. At any moment, and unfortunately, which what you and I have discovered, at any moment, you can be in so much pain that you can literally change in an instant. And you can, you can turn and you can pivot and you can go in another direction.

I'm super grateful for you, Khalil. Thank you for being at my house and being on the show. Yeah, I, I, I feel like I know you on a deep level. This book that you wrote right here, I Forgot to Die. You guys are gonna check this one out also. This one, Remembering to Live, which is actually reminds me of a book I have over there, and it was written by a very powerful man, and it's called Be Here Now. I don't know if you're familiar with that.

Ram Dass.

Ram Dass. So I love these books, but the one that really touched my heart was I Forgot to Die. Because so many people in this world, and I don't know the figures, nor is that important, it's a lot of people, and they are dealing with really, a separation from self, which is addiction. I've heard Gabor Matei explain it like, okay, well, if you're addicted, that means that you are the opposite of connection. Yeah. Because connection to self, connection to others, that's what God intended. That's what life is all about. You have a tremendous story, and I'm super honored to be able to unpack it with you. I know you've done a lot of interviews. You've been in the media for quite some time now, but this will be a different discussion that really hits people for the practical, but also the emotional. And sharing your story, man. So if people don't know you, just give us the 32nd of Khalil. Don't go too deep yet.

Okay?

But, but who are you? What do you do? How do you serve in the world at this Moment, here in 2022, Khalil.

Rafati, founder of Sunlife Organics, also founder of Riviera Recovery and Malibu Beach Yoga. And as you mentioned, the book, But I make smoothies. I'm just, you know, I'm an old guy that makes smoothies. And I seem to have one of Cinderella stories that really resonates well with People.

But Disney would probably not publish your story.

Disney would definitely not publish my story. No. It's dark. It's very, very dark.

But from that darkness, which I know in your brand, something you talked about in the book, that just hit me. I've heard it a thousand times. But when you said it, it was potent and it was. The reason you put a lotus for your company is because a lotus grows from the mud. And that's exactly a mirror of your story. Um, if people aren't familiar with the, the power of maybe the Japanese metaphor, the Japanese icon of the lotus, share with us that to begin, you know, how did you come across that? Were you sitting around one day and it came to you like the, the vision of having that be your logo? Let's unpack from there. You know, your story.

Okay. I love that.

How'd that come to you? The lotus from the mud?

It's very, it's a, it's, it's very strange. And no one ever asks me that, so I'm, I'm glad that you.

This is going to be a different conversation.

It is, yeah. Because, you know, people typically want to go like, wow, man, so you were smoking crack and living under a bridge and now you're a millionaire and, you know, famous people like.

Which is an awesome story, which is very interesting.

But you know, what, what was the groundwork to get there and what were the origins of, you know, because people call me, and I call myself the founder of Sun Life Organics, but really, Sun Life Organics was placed in my lap by divine feminine energy. And I mean that, I mean that literally. I, I mean, I, I, I could not. You probably saw me struggling to park my car just now. I forgot we had a podcast today. I have like three different meetings I'm supposed to be at right now. Like, I am not a put together smart guy. And that's not feigned humility, it's self awareness. And it's okay. There's nothing wrong with that because you can still be massively successful. You can be rich, you can be anything you want, and you don have to be smart. There's this great, great misconception that you have to be smart to be successful or you have to be well educated to be successful. And nothing could be further from the truth in my case. So with, with SunLife Organics, yes, I wanted a smoothie shop of my own because I was going to one sometimes up to three times a day, which was like nine miles from my house, so you can do the math. I was driving Back and forth and wasting all the gas. And plus, I really couldn't afford to be going to a smoothie shop three times a day. I was spending most of my money on smoothies and ju juices and ginger shots and E3 live shots and all that stuff.

We'll get into why that became so potent for you as well, because there's a huge backstory to peel out there.

So I was obsessed. You know, they say you always return to the religion of your youth. So, like, I grew up around the restaurant business and like we were talking about before we started, those characters that hung out in the different places, those larger than life characters that seemed like they had stepped off a movie screen. I watched them in the theater of the restaurants. Like, restaurants were our movies. They were our theater. And the people that owned these restaurants were these larger than life image, like people that were just big personalities and unapolog. Unapologetically themselves. And they didn't have to answer to anybody. They didn't have bosses. And I just always loved that I ended up getting burned out in the restaurant, you know, food service, because I was dishwasher and a busboy and a waiter, which if you do long enough, you can get pretty jaded.

Yeah.

So I swore once I left Ohio, I would never, ever work in a restaurant again. And then, you know, I sober up. I'm doing whatever I can to put bread on the table, and I'm going to this smoothie shop all the time. I fell in love with it. I became obsessed with it. I started to fantasize about opening my own. My idea for a smoothie shop was called Maharaji Organics. Great king, let me pound my chest. Great, great king of organics. And my symbol was the crown. And I was obsessed with it. And nobody had the guts to tell me it was a terrible name. People were just placating me and going along with me. Plus, they didn't think I was actually going to do it because I didn't have the money. I didn't have the education. I didn't have the means. I didn't have anything.

Friends. Friends can sometimes not necessarily be the best business mentors.

Very true.

Yeah. Because they're just like, yeah, do it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds great.

You're great. But it's hard to get really loving, powerful, potent feedback.

It's true.

From friends.

Especially when you're for all practical purposes, a loser. I mean, remember I was in my mid-30s when I started to fantasize about this idea. And I was making $12 an hour at the last job I had before I got fired. So it wasn't like my friends were like, oh, he's really going to do this. But that. So my idea was I wanted to have a little smoothie shop. I dreamed about serving 100 customers a day. It was going to be called Maharaji Organics and it was going to have the crown as the symbol. And I finally had a couple different people that said that they were willing to invest in me because they saw me working four jobs at the same time. I had saved up a bunch of money. For me, it was a bunch of money. You know, I had like $55,000 saved up, which to me was a fortune. And I finally convinced some landlord, even with my horrible credit and my, you know, horrible background, convicted felon, high school dropout, no experience, of owning a business, really a real business, a food service business. I convinced this landlord to let me lease space. And the only reason he agreed is because it was the. The sky was falling. It was 2010. And for those of you that remember what was going in the economy at.

That time, yeah, it was over the housing bubble. Explosion.

Yeah, everything. The stock market collapsed, went down 70% or 50% or whatever it was. So there were six vacanc in the ground floor of this horrible, like, dilapidated center called Point Doom shopping center. And it was like an ashtray. There was like this notorious den of iniquity called the Doom room, which is where you would go and buy drugs. And there was a Chinese restaurant that had just shut down, a bike shop that had just shut down. Everything was going out of business. That's the only reason why he said yes. But there was one caveat. I told him the name of the business. And the guy who I love today, his name is Zan. He is hardcore orthodox Jew, like hardcore, you know, very traditional. And when I told him the name of the business, Maharaji Organics, he flipped out and said, I won't do it. I'm like, you said you were going to do it. You gave me a lease. And he's like, I will not have that business in my center. Like, you're one of those freaks. You're one of those hippies. You follow that guy up on the hill. He was making a reference to Prem Rawat, who his followers lovingly call him Maharaj or Maharaj the King. Right? He thought I was a follower of Prem Ramwat. And no matter what I said, he wouldn't believe me otherwise. And he said, I will not lease you the space unless you Change the name. I went home. I was really upset. I'm like, is. Can he legally do that? He can. And I was in my backyard. I was almost four years sober. I. I got my cigarettes out. I had all my books. Like, you have all those awesome books. I had many of those same books with me at that time. That was one of the things I believe everything's energy, and I believe that books have energy and power to them, even if you don't read them, which I'm amazing at buying books. I'm not good at reading.

Yes. Well, in the beginning, there was the word.

There we go. So you get it. So I had all my books, and I'm smoking my cigarette because I still smoked at the time. I smoked for, like, 20 years. And I'm sitting in my backyard. The sunlight is coming through the trees. It was. It was quite beautiful. Even though I was really upset and I was alone, and I just felt like the world isn't fair. I finally get somebody who's gonna loan me some money, and I finally get this guy who's gonna let me rent out this space. And then he says no because of my amazing name. And I'm sitting there smoking my cigarette, and I'm looking at my books, and I had, like, Joel Osteen's you, Best Life Now. And there was David Wolf, Sun Food Diet. And I'm just, like, looking at both of them and just kind of, like, envious, you know, like, God, your Best Life Now. Like, of course people are gonna buy that book. That's an amazing title. And then, like, sun Food Diet. I'm like, that's, like, the best name I've ever heard. And I'm like, sun Food Diet. Your Best Life Now. I'm, like, taking a drag from a cigarette as the sunlight's coming through the trees, and I'm like, sun Life. Sun Life. Sun Life. Sun Life Organics. Sunlife Organics. And I jumped up, and I ran up to the house. I was screaming to my girlfriend at the time, and I'm like, the name is going to be Sun Life Organics. So the name came to me. Yeah, it literally fell from the ether. It was placed in my lap. And then I was getting my Vedic chart done at that time by this incredible, incredible guy that lives in Sedona. And he told me in my Vedic chart, which I had never had done before, that my deity was Lakshmi. And he wanted me to look up Lakshmi. So when I looked up Lakshmi, Lakshmi is the goddess of abundance and prosperity. Her symbol is the pink lotus. So Again, you know, I didn't pick the Pink Lotus. The Pink Lotus picked me. I didn't pick the name Sunleaf Organics. I chose the name Maharaji Organics, which is a terrible name. And the two of them came together. And it's the same thing with the recipes, it's the same thing with the customers. Like, you got to understand something. We were taking an old video store and we had $208,000, which seems like a lot of money, but we spend easily 5, $600,000 now building out sun lifes. So we didn't have the money, we didn't have the experience. We didn't have. We were opening up in a horrible shopping center. I mean, it was a shopping center that nobody went to.

What part of LA was this?

The very first sunlight, very, very end of Malibu called Point Doom, which in the 90s was sort of like the ghetto. And then it began to become popular because Rick Rubin moved out there first and then the Chili Peppers, and then eventually people started to follow. And the reason they all moved out there is because there's this incredible private beach and there's this incredible surf break. But it just wasn't conducive to business. You know, you don't open up a juice bar in a town that only has 18,000 people in it when there's already two juice bars. It was a pipe dream. It was doomed to fail. And we had no idea what the we were doing. And when we opened up 11 and a half months later, that's how long it took to build it. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong, including the city coming in and literally telling me, you're never going to open. You don't have enough fixtures, you're not allowed to open. Oh, yeah, health department, you're never going to be able to open here. This isn't a food Service Place. After 11 and a half months, I just kept running through walls and running through walls and running through walls. And then we're like three days away from. Finally we get our. And we're gonna open and we got the whatever that is that you put on the papers, you know, the brown cardboard or whatever. And. And then it dawns on me. I have not only spent every penny to my name, but I have borrowed money from this, like, I don't know, a type of guy you wouldn't want to borrow money from. The type of guy I would never borrow money from today. The type of guy that if I didn't pay back, he would have broken my legs. He was a Bookmaker and some other things. But I love the guy. The guy believed in me because he saw me working four jobs, and I had helped him out with something, so he thought he would help me out with something. But not only did I spend every single penny that I had, I ran out of money and already went back to him for another $50,000 loan. And then we ran out of money again. We had no table, we had no shelves. We had no idea what we were doing. And I'm just like. It dawned on me a few days before we open. I'm like, we're fucked.

But one of the things that I loved that you talked about in your story, which really is this lens of the metaphor of the lotus coming through the mud, is your goal was to get 100. And there was this dentist that knocked on your door. He was law. He was looking for Subway Dr. Bob. And he tries to find your business. He tries to find a Subway, and he finds you, and you give him a smoothie.

Yeah.

And he's, like, been a customer since day one.

Every day.

And that very day, you serve 250 people.

Oh, yeah.

Which is, you know, 2.5 times your goal.

Yeah.

So there has been. And this is what I feel from you. And it's so funny. Like, when I first met you is about eight months ago.

Yeah.

And it was from our mutual friend Luke, who's. Who's been on the show. And I love Luke, and everybody that Luke introduces me to, it always becomes this, like, beautiful thing. And I don't know why. It just does. And I was like, there's something about Khalil. I don't exactly know what it is. I didn't know at the time that you owned Sun Life. I really didn't know anything about you. It wasn't until later that I found all that out. But you seem to me a man that had humility that was birthed through thresholds. And I felt that from you. I didn't know anything about you. And I think about the way that you've been supported, which we're gonna unpack on the show today. There's so many different layers that God. And I don't think God's a bearded dude in the sky. I think God is an omnipresent force that loves and guides all things. And the way that you have been supported in your life at the bottom of the barrels, not just opening sun life. When you're 50k in debt and not knowing what to do, the things that have happened for you unfold like A movie. The story that you wrote and I forgot to die. It unfolds like a movie. Do you ever look back on your life and just say, wow, God was there the whole time? Literally the entire time, even when it seemed like God wasn't.

Yeah, I mean, I do. I tend to be not. Not, like, in a cool spiritual way, very caught up in the present moment, but very. You know, I still am guilty of being in survival mode, and I'm still so focused on, like, oh, man, I could have done this deal, or I should have done that deal, or I could have done this, or I should have done. I forget that. The massive, monumental amounts of. Of faith and grace that has been granted to me by our creator. You know, I. I don't know how. I don't know why, but when I'm reminded, like, I am in this moment. Yes. I mean, it wasn't just that. I mean, there was a.

There was so many things.

There was. Yeah. So, I mean, even, like, the stupid. I think I talk about it in the first book where, like, I get cornered. I. I think about this. This still haunts me where the guys are trying to sell me the macadamia nuts. And I get cornered, sort of like in a doorway. And when I realize they sold me macadamia nuts instead of crack, and I look up at them and I, like, go to flip out on them. I see them coming towards me.

Yes.

And they're not gonna talk to me. They're gonna me up and they're gonna kill me. And just being like that, like, naive, like Pollyannic at times. Kid from Ohio. I just reached under my shirt like Michael Corleone did in Godfather Part 2, bluffing that he had a gun under there, which, you know, chased the guys away. I reach under my shirt and they fucking scattered like flies. I mean, it was bananas. I'm like, that actually worked. Like, these were guys that were gonna fuck me up or kill me and take everything and leave me for dead, but I just reached under my shirt. I mean, there's so many times like that in my life, if I think back, that. That. Yeah. That God is there. And God is all loving, all powerful, and wants the best for all of us.

A lot of my definition of God have changed so much over my life because my mom was manic bipolar. My dad left home when I was super young, so I would say Khalil. For the first 20 years of my life, I was pissed off at God. I was like, God, you're not fixing my mom. You're not fixing My life, what's wrong with the world? I was angry at God. God was not my friend. So I pushed God out for a long time. And it wasn't until I had my journeys, which we're going to talk about yours, that, that I really like, had to get bloody knees at certain points in my life to ask for God's help. And I wonder, and this is a place we can jump off from. I wonder, from your experience and from your friends and just from you looking at life and your life experience, do you find that there is always the need for deep, dark, painful contrast in order for people to grow? In other words, to the degree that you suffer, to the degree that you go through pain, to the degree that you experience the darkness of this world, does that always have to be the vacuum that grows God's love in your life and also the love you have for yourself?

That's so funny that you're asking me this because me and is it Ebbs Britain, Eben Britain, you know, the football player turned like Yogi, okay, him and I just had this conversation because he's trying to wrap his head around it. I can only speak for myself and I can only say that in my life, pain truly is the touchstone of all spiritual growth. It, it, it, it's just I, I cannot find the humility or the intelligence or the inspiration to have great breakthroughs. I just can't. I'm not wired like that. I don't have strong willpower. I'm not smart. I don't have like certain people just like, like my girlfriend just fucking. She's like, she gets up, she does her workout, she goes to work, she comes home, she cooks, she cleans, she's happy. Nothing bothers her. She comes over, she starts rubbing my shoulder like, what the is going on? I'm like, you don't have to do all that. And she's like, do what? I'm like, I struggle to get out of bed. Sometimes I'm in a fetal position rocking back and forth, like, pondering the futility of our existence or the vastness of our existence, both which are very over overwhelming if you really contemplate them. And for me, yeah, I gotta fall down flat on my face. I've got to embarrass myself. I've got to situations up in order to grow and in order to succeed and in order to have humility. Humility is not something that comes naturally to me. And I was a real, like I would say the first three decades of my life. But when you become homeless and you lose everything. And you. You concede to your innermost self that you made a complete mess of your life, then you can't really have a whole lot of arrogance. And it still creeps in, you know, the. The arrogance, the hubris, it still creeps in. But bottoming out for me is absolutely paramount in order to have any type of breakthroughs.

I wish I could say that it's different, but literally, after almost 500 of these incredible conversations, I haven't found one story yet. And I'm open to that changing. I haven't found one story yet that didn't grow from the mud. Really?

Yeah.

That didn't have that vacuum as Alan Watts talks about. You know, nature abhors a vacuum, but vacuums from pain can bring life of love and pleasure as long as somebody's willing to go on the journey. Otherwise, they just disconnect from self. And then that's what we touched on the beginning of this podcast. That's what addiction is. Disconnection from self and disconnection from. From you. So I wonder, because a lot of the concepts we're going to explore through your story, especially the father wound, this is a big one that we've had many people talk about, and I myself am still recovering from a father wound. Many men are, I think. I wonder if as we go through the waves of life, as you have gone through the waves of life, there is a certain point where everyone decides. There's an inner faculty of decision making where you just decide, all right, I'm not in control anymore. Some other energy is in control. How would you describe that energy?

Well, the energy is God. I mean, the energy is God or they or them or. You know, I don't know. I don't have a definition. I. I think the great cosmic joke is we may die and God may actually be a man with a beard. I have no. I have no idea.

Chilling in the sky waiting for you.

I don't.

Come here, Pilio.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I. I tend to lean more towards God as a woman just because I'm. I'm obsessed with. With feminine energy and divine feminine energy. And it happens to be. The brand that was gifted to me came from divine feminine energy. So, yeah, it's. It's a. It's a loving energy that you have to consciously tap into and seek, and when you seek it, it seeks you. And I think most people stay in their shit and don't go anywhere and then get into whatever the opposite of an attitude of gratitude is. They Just stay stuck. And I have people every day that DM me that, like, you know, I want the. I want to be successful. I want to be in great shape. I want to do this, I want to do that. You and I and probably half your listeners both know, like, okay, well, well, let's break this down. It's really not that difficult. You don't need to hire a coach, and you don't need to read any more books or buy any more books, in my case. You need to get up before the sun. You need to meditate every day, twice a day, for at least 20 minutes each time. You need to hydrate yourself and take proper supplementation like magnesium and vitamin D and zinc and all those things. You need to eat organic foods if you can afford them, and if you can't, keep working hard until you can put a lot of fruits and vegetables into your system. Be kind to everybody you meet because they're fighting a fierce battle just like you are. Work hard. Don't spend money you don't have. Save your money, invest your money. Get to the point where your money is making money for you. They never taught us that in grade school or high school, right?

No.

Get to the point where your money is making money for you. As we sit here right now, somebody's ordering that book. $7 is going into my account from Amazon. As we sit here right now in three different states, in three different parts of this country, someone is buying a smoothie right now, and I'll probably make a couple of pennies or a nickel or my company will anyway. I've actually never taken a K1 distribution from Sun Life, but that's a whole other story. But right now I'm going to guess bitcoin is probably heading back up towards 44,000 or 45,000. So my money is making me money.

This intelligence that you're talking about, though, this financial intelligence, I used to think I've talked about this a couple times. Maybe you've heard this, maybe you haven't. I used to think that wellness was a quadrant. Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. Wellness is a Pentagon. Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, financial. Yeah, but because we signed up to be here, Khalil, we wanted to be here at this time, otherwise we wouldn't be here. And so mastery of this time for self and for our families is mastery of finances as well. And I think because of the money wound that so many of us have, that specifically, I think stems from either a mother or father wound and their money wound.

Or both.

Or both, yeah. In my case, the Layers of growth and the layers of both love and pain, dark and light. They propel us to have either intelligence and wisdom or to become victimized and to really let life happen to us. And this is the place where, as I talked about in the intro to this podcast, a lot of the concepts we're going to explore are not for children. Right? So. So with love and with kindness, have your kids listen to another episode. This is not the one for the kids to listen to, because. Because the. What I'm really talking about here is the beginning of your journey. And the beginning of your journey, I felt from reading this book was when you were in the car finally leaving Ohio. You're in the car, and there have been multiple times where you were telling your friends, I'm going to leave. And they were like, no, you're not. And obviously, you guys read the book. It is one of the most. And I've read a lot of books is one of the most powerful stories.

Thank you.

And it's read by you. I recommend getting the audible version that I've ever experienced.

Thank you.

And when it came to me, I was like, I don't know if I was ready for it yet, because what I got from your book might be something different. And it really, for me, your story started with the father wound. Your story started with your father saying something to you that was really potent, and I want you to say it. But you were finally leaving, and you're in the car, and you were about to go to California. I think you had, like, 400 bucks or something. 800. 800 bucks.

Yeah.

And you were like, I don't know what exactly I'm going to do, but I can't do this anymore. I won't be here anymore. What did your dad say to you in that moment where literally he could have never seen you again?

He said, good luck and walked away. And that was all the proof that I needed to know that he didn't love me and he didn't want me and he didn't care. And it was so dismissive and it hurt so much. And I cried through three states as I drove. I drove and I drove and I drove, and I just kept crying and crying and crying. It's very, very challenging to really, truly come to terms with a parent that doesn't love you. In my case, it was both parents did not love me, and that doesn't make them bad people. And I love them dearly. And my father, who's still living, I wish all the best for him. And I've done everything I can to help him. It's never going to work. And at a certain point, I had to draw a boundary and just say, stop asking me for money and don't ever do that again. And his response was, I will never call you again. I'm like, wow, What I was looking for is, okay, son, sorry, I'll stop asking you for money. Not I will never call you again. So, again, proof that our relationship was based on handouts from me, you know, and, And. And same thing with my. With, with my mom. Like, I got to learn in a journey that I. My suspicions were correct that my mom really didn't love me. And. And that. And that hurt. It really, really hurt. What I also was able to find out is that she was suffering from Stockholm syndrome. She wasn't able to love me. It just wasn't. She didn't have the bandwidth, so to go through that type of pain. And, you know, it wasn't just, like, I didn't make varsity football. It was, you know, I am a loser and a piece of. And I don't fit in anywhere. And so I'm gonna have to find a way to survive. And drugs and alcohol. Thank God for drugs and alcohol because they were able to at least temporarily put some sort of a tourniquet on that overwhelming and all encompassing fear and sadness and anxiety and, I mean, you know, from the book, but the debilitating panic attacks that eventually became agoraphobic, the depression, the crushing depression, all of that stuff. Had I not gone through it, I wouldn't be where I am today, and I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today.

This is such the paradox that I was asking you about earlier. I'm like, if you didn't have the story you've had, would it have propelled you to create and serve in the capacity you do now? It's such a paradox, so mysterious. Right. Because I think about this father wound. And then you went on to read the Alchemist. I think that might have even been when you were in Ohio. When did you first read the Alchemist?

No, Alchemist was when I was working for Slash's mechanic.

Okay.

And I read it in McDonald's.

Got it. So. So. And I love the Alchemist is one of my favorite books. And. And I was wondering at that time when you had finally moved out from Ohio to California, you got introduced to many people. Elizabeth Taylor, you started working for Slash. Axl rose, Lou Gossett Jr. It feels like God was bringing these people into your orbit.

Yeah.

But at the Time. Did you even understand what the hell was going on? Because it's a pretty crazy story that you would meet all of these superstars, some of the biggest names, literally, in the world. Axl Rose at that time was like creme de la creme. You know, it's like, who was bigger than Axl Rose at that time? But you were meeting these people. Why do you think that happened for you? Looking back? Like, what was that?

I don't. I really don't know, Josh. It was so strange. And it wasn't just meeting them. I mean, it was sort of working. Hanging out. I mean, as well. Yeah. I mean, not even. Even. Even though I was just, like, the car wash boy. It was like his housekeeper, you know, whatever she was. Governess, loved me, and her boy loved me. And so they would invite me in all the time, and I would just be sitting there, and Axel would walk into the room. And one day, this guy Shannon walked into the room who I really hit it off with, who ended up being Shannon Hoon, who ended up being the singer for Blind Melon. And he. And I ended up having this amazing relationship. And Axel and I did not have an amazing relationship, but. But Slash and I did. He really took a liking to me. I. In fact, so much so that I really honestly thought that he thought I was somebody else.

You feel at that time that you were the boy from the Alchemist in some way? Because it's really almost like an alchemist story.

I couldn't figure out what the fuck was going on and what I was supposed to do and what all of it meant. And my biggest fear was that somebody was going to figure out that I didn't belong there. And I had other experiences like that where I would be so high that I would just walk through security at whatever. This happened at a. This is a very strange reference, but this happened. My friend was obsessed with Shane McGowan and the Pope. Most people are not going to know who that is. Shane McGowan was an Irish folk singer and a very famous junkie crackhead, you know, whatever. Turned his own son on to crack. But anyway, we were at a concert. My friend just was, like, so excited that they were gonna play and whatever, And I'm like, what's the big deal? If you like him that much, we can just go backstage and meet them. And he's just like, what? Like, what the do? You can't go back there. And I'm like, I can do anything. And I literally walked up to security as if I was supposed to be back there. And I remember looking at them like, don't even think about asking me what I'm doing. And they moved out of my way. And I. And I went back and I went up the stairs and eventually found the room where the band was. And there's Shane McGowan and there's the rest of the band, and they're all doing what I thought was coke, and it wasn't. It was China White. And I'm doing drugs with them. And then they. And then all of a sudden, the security guy kicks everyone out of the room except Shane, whoever his friend was, and me. And I, at that moment, sobered up to the point where I was like, what the is going on? And why didn't they ask me to leave? And what. You know, what does this mean? I couldn't really put my finger on what it meant. And to this day, I still don't know what the fuck it meant. And I can tell almost an identical story about Jane's Addiction. And being backstage with Perry and the rest of the band. I didn't walk through security that time. I actually did have a laminate. But when they went to kick everyone out because Perry and whoever was going to start doing what they were doing for whatever reason, I was allowed to stay. And I wasn't. And I wasn't kicked out. And again, I was. My heart was thumping like, oh, God, I hope they don't realize that I'm nobody, you know? And so, no, none of it made any sense to me. I didn't think that I was the boy and the alchemist. I was confused, I was depressed, I was lost. And I couldn't really find a path and a direction to go in.

And it makes complete sense because many people that have gone through trauma, and trauma doesn't always have to be capital T, right? Trauma doesn't always have to be sexual or physical or verbal. Sometimes trauma can be neglect or it can be a parent that doesn't support your dreams. Like, there's lots of trauma in the world, but your trauma was really specific. And I, you know, open this with care with you and with respect, because I don't know what it's like to have been through what you have been through. I don't, and many people don't. But the way that you were able to navigate that world of the sexual abuse that happened, the physical abuse, the emotional abuse from your father, and just the tumultuousness, the sheer intensity of it all, looking back, I mean, that's obviously what drove much of the addiction. That's what drove much of the drug use and everything else. Right. So at what point did it start to turn? Because the book outlines a lot of the struggles with your addiction. And, you guys, I'll just share with you. It's the most intense story I've ever heard. I think what would be really beneficial, though, rather than going into the details of the addiction and the recovery centers and all this stuff, would be the turning point. You know, what was it about your psyche, your heart, when you finally got to the turning point? I think it was at the last recovery center, and you were on your knees and you were praying, and it was something like, God, please take this.

Hell away from me.

God, please take the hell. And also just many different things about learned helplessness that you wrote about. What was it at that point for you where it was finally enough? Where it was actually finally enough and you knew that there was no going back to the life?

I mean. I mean, I would like. I would like to say, you know, there's the burning bush moment and, you know, and blah, blah, blah. And I would like to really say I was so strong and I had the fortitude to stay sober, and that's why I'm successful today. The truth is, I had fucking training wheels on. And the training wheels were, where was I going to go? Like, most people in rehab have the option of, like, leaving and going to their girlfriends and getting high, and then eventually the parents put them in another rehab, or the husband or the wife puts you in another rehab. Where was I going to go? That was the last house on the block. Pasadena Recovery center was a shithole. And I was there because a charity named Musicians Assistance Program. Bob Forrest. Thank you, Bob. Lied to them and told them I was a published musician, which I wasn't. I had done some good music, but it wasn't published because I couldn't get my shit together. But they paid for me to go there. There wasn't another option. So it wasn't that I stayed clean and sober because I'm strong or because I have great willpower or because I somehow cracked into this great spirituality. It was completely the opposite. I was so broken and so shattered and so physically up. My teeth were falling out of my head. The taste in my mouth, the taste in the back of my throat was a rot like you cannot imagine. It was like putrid rotten meat. And it was constantly in the back of my throat. I found out a year, maybe a year later now it was longer than that. It was like 15 months later. I found out why? Because this amazing dentist named Dr. Bob took pity on me and said, dude, you can't. I was like fucking crazy gluing my front tooth together and, and like couldn't eat a sandwich because like my teeth would break and I had just holes in my mouth. I had a systemic infection. I had a full on systemic infection from the rot in my mouth that was dripping into the back of my throat that was taking over my body. I had a yeast infection in my blood, in my stool and my urine. I was overwrought with yeast, I'm sure. Parasites and everything else. It was such a hopeless state of despair that it was only then that I could fall to my knees, not get on my knees, but fall to my knees sobbing and, and I put my hands together because that's what they taught us in grade school. Even though I hated them and I hated the priests and the nuns and whatever. I remember this, I turn it into this and just was like, you know, please, I don't got nothing else. No one's going to come visit, no one's going to help when I get out of here. Where the fuck am I going to go? I don't even have a place to go. So it was like, you know, God, please take this hell away from me. This, this hell, by the way I created, I brought in God, please take this hell away from me. There was, because it was such a sincere, desperate prayer. There was an immediate answer, there was an immediate lifting of my spirit, there was a levity there. The cravings did not go away, the bush didn't catch on fire. And God didn't say, just read these two tablets. And it wasn't like that at all. It was that the 500 pounds of anxiety and fear that were resting upon me became more like 300. But that 200, that delta was great enough that I'm like, oh wait, there is a God. They're really like, for sure there's no around, like there's actually a God. And because I was so dumb and because I didn't have a religion, because I fought against my mother's religion and fought against my father's religion and I hated the, that they taught me in school. The punitive nature of Catholicism, which I have respect for now, but I hated it as a kid because I had no religion, I was able to sincerely like, if a, if a three year old boy walked in here right now and reached out to either one of us and said, please, I need help, you and I would jump the up and we would do anything for that boy, I was that boy. With God, I was that boy. I was so shattered and broken and desperate that I didn't have the right turban or necklace or beads or dot or cross or whatever the it was. God, please. And so I just continued every day, all day, like, God, please, God, please can you be with me? Can you please be with me? Can you please hold my hand? Can you please show me the world the way that you would want me to see it? Can you please be with me right now? Like, it was fervent prayer, and it just built and it built and it built and it built, and the relationship just became so strong that the one thing the gift of desperation gave me, it wasn't about belief. It was knowing. I knew that there was God, and I knew that God wanted me to be ultimately happy, and God wanted me to have a good life. And that was taught to me by many, many, many, many, many people over the next few years. You know, I don't know if I talked about Charles Quint in the book. The black dude that I went to the meetings with that kept saying, khalil, God wants you to be rich. God wants you to be happy. He fucking said it so many times. One day I finally said, well, really, Charles? Well, if God wants me to be rich and God wants me to be happy, then why the fuck are you here at this AA meeting with me? And he looked at me and he choked up, and his eyes glassed over, and he said, God wanted me to be rich and be happy, but I had better plans. I'm like, oh, this was a kid that had ruined. He was destined for the NFL. Destined. He was the star of All Stars. And he drank himself out of every opportunity and wound up broke and, like, living in a halfway house. And so it was moments like that that solidified my relationship with God.

The power of what you're sharing and what I get from you now, even more powerfully than when I listened to the book, was it's the sincerity of a prayer with the true promise, where there's a knowing, not a belief, but just a knowing that you are open to the wisdom of higher intelligence. You are not in a spiritual way. Like, not in some way where you're gonna post a meme and be like, love is all there is, which it is.

Yeah.

The truth hides in plain sight.

Yeah.

So there was something that happened for you there that doesn't happen for everyone.

And.

And I wonder why it happened for you there. Like, what was so special about that time for you? Where you just said, all right, I'm praying to you from sincerity as a child because I really think. I really know this to be true. I know this to be true. It's not a belief. I know that you're real. I know that it's there. Your love, it's palpable. I can feel it. Many addicts get to that place, but it doesn't work out for them. Why do you think it worked out for you?

Too much stuff. There's too much stuff. There's. Mom's still paying the rent, and, you know. Or dad shouldn't have left with that bitch, and now he loves her and he left us behind, and there's too much stuff. When there's all that stuff, then it stops you from seeing. There's the fog. Like, you can't see it. I mean, there's a saying, you can't see the forest because, you know, the trees right in front of your face or whatever. So when you have the codependent parents that think it's their fault that you're an addict and they're hovering over you and they, you know, oh, but please don't relapse. Like, how could you ever possibly find humility to break through and find sobriety or clean time or whatever the fuck you want to call it? With me, there was. With me, there was none of that. My mom was living below the level of poverty, and she had drained her bank accounts and she had borrowed thousands of dollars on her credit cards to Western Union me money which I then shot into my arm. My father, who I definitely wasn't speaking to at the time, proud Muslim man, he literally told my mom, if I find that piece of. Son of a. Son of yours, I will kill him with my own hands to stop him from poisoning my bloodline. So. Wasn't going to call dad to help me with an apartment once I got out of rehab. I wasn't going to call mom to, you know, help me, like, whatever. Like, there was nothing. When there's nothing. I mean, it's kind of like. Think about Siddhartha. Would Siddhartha sat underneath that tree and. And found his own version of enlightenment if he was still living in the palace. What. What. What palace are these different people, you know, living in? But metaphorically, I'm sure, you know, speaking, like, when you have things to fall back on when you're. When you're. Yeah, when. Yeah, when you have things to fall back on and your ego is still intact, it's almost impossible for a, you know, like me to Find humility. But when everything is stripped away and there's nothing and there's no one to turn to, I had to humble myself before God and get on my knees and build a relationship. Like, not say the prayers that my grandma chanted on her prayer mat, or not say the prayers that they taught, you know, our Father who art in heaven. Like, oh, if I masturbate, I better say 10 Hail Marys or whatever. None of that. None of those old paradigms. But to build a relationship, if I showed up at your door every day and was like, josh, sorry to bug you. Can I wash your car? You know, oh, okay. You know, hey, Josh, can I mow your lawn? Can I pick up some leaves out there for you? It might take a long time, but after a period of time, if you trusted me, which I believe God trusts us and loves us and is the most benevolent, loving father, mother, whatever you want to call it, after a period of time, you would be like, hey, Khalil, let's go to Starbucks. Let me get you a Frappuccino, by the way. Let me get you some shoes and let me get you some clothes. And, you know, because I was constantly trying to do God's work, because I was constantly trying to be a better person and become the man that God intended me to become, I feel like I was met with grace. I wasn't praying like, God, please, I want to date this model, you know, or, God, please, I want to, you know, be rich and famous, which were my old dreams. This was just like, God, please, I don't want to have aids. Please, I don't want to get my test. But I. I was convinced I had AIDS for very good reasons. The splotches all over my face and the scabs.

And you had shared needles, as you talk about in the book, with homeless people?

Yeah, with aids, for sure. One guy in particular. Full blown aids. Then I had shared needles with them back and forth. So it was like, please don't let me have aids. Please don't let me have hepatitis C. Please just let me live. Let me heal up. Let me get better. Let me. Let me try to do your will. Let me try to be a decent human being. And then it was like the little silly things that I don't think are silly, but, like, if you see a piece of trash, pick it up and throw it away, whether it's yours or not, return your shopping cart back, no matter what the weather's like, and don't give me that. Well, like, they pay people to do that. You're taking away someone's job. When you shut the up, put your shopping cart back when you're done with it, even if it's raining and even if no one's looking. And when you go to put it back, don't look around and see if everyone saw how spiritual you are. Right. Just, like, smile at people, be nice to people, compliment people. You know, like, just try to bring levity to people's lives.

It's the sincerity of the request. The sincerity of the request from true humility. Not forced humility, but true embodied humility that allows love to connect and allows God's love to flow through. And that is a massive metaphor for every single person. Because addiction is a spectrum, right? Yeah. You can be addicted to your phone. You can be addicted to porn. I mean, 25 years of my life was run by porn. I was a severe porn addict. I couldn't get away from the computer. And it wasn't until I got my ass handed to me where I developed OCD from ayahuasca ceremony that took me way beyond the edge, where I had, like, voices speaking to me, and it was wild. I had to get cleared from my mentor, Paul check. You know, thank you, Paul, for helping me.

Wow.

And it wasn't until I got to that point. And this isn't a comparison of stories. This is just me sharing my story next to yours. Like, I. Because my story and your story, it is a universal human experience to be on the spectrum of addiction.

Yes.

It doesn't always show up as needles and blood and sharing and things like that. Sometimes it can show up as working 100 hours a week or never talking to your kids because you're on your phone. I mean, addiction has many faces, and some of them are, like, more sinister than others. But. But what I got from you and what I really want everyone to take home right now is if you're feeling disconnection from yourself, if you're feeling, like, all these distractions in your life that are pulling you to be more and more and more disconnected and more addicted, can we take a breath and turn towards being truly humble? Because you talk about this in the book. You describe something called learned helplessness. So share with us. Learned helplessness. What is that? And then how do we turn learned helplessness into learned humility? That's the bridge we need to walk.

Yeah. So learned helplessness is when you're. When you're literally taught that you're helpless, Helpless and your parents can be guilty of that. Your. Your girlfriend or your boyfriend can be guilty of that. Sometimes it's a combination of both because we seek out that same type of person in a relationship.

Yeah.

In my particular case, you know, the school system had failed me and told me I was a loser and that I was an idiot and I was dumb, and society in general, like, you know, the. Like in and out of jail. Like, I just learned over a period of time that I was. That I was helpless. And then to make it worse, then you have so called. We used to call it welfare, I think. I can't remember what they call it in California.

It was welfare. I was on Welfare in the 80s.

Okay.

Yeah.

They came up with a new name that didn't sound so offensive and triggering, but whatever it was, when all of a sudden they're paying me not to work and they're giving me food stamps and they're giving me bus tokens and they're giving me a hotel, I literally learned that I was a piece of shit and a detriment to society. And that was my lot in life. And that was it.

There's even a special line I remember standing in school where the kids that got the free lunch from the government would stand in this line and I would stand in that line. And then in the other line, that was the kids that would just buy the food because they got money from their parents. So there was this subtle programming that happens to many children that are, you know, financially unfortunate, of course. So keep going, though. I mean, I definitely remember that. I haven't thought about that in a long time.

Yeah. You get taught that you are something, but the truth is, it's not true. It's just a story. It could be a story that people told to you, and then you start telling that story to yourself, and then you get to this place where you truly believe that that's it. That's not it. It's at any moment. And unfortunately, which. What you and I have discovered, at any moment, you can be in so much pain that you can literally change in an instant. And you can. You can turn and you can pivot and you can go in another direction. And I don't know, I haven't missed. I haven't mastered the humility thing. And if you ever suffer through my Instagram, you know, you'll be like, this fucking guy thinks he's a spiritual guy now and he has humility. I do not think I'm a spiritual guy. I do not think I have humility. I'm very blessed. I'm very lucky. I've worked my ass off the Harder I work, the luckier I get. But I'm talking about the humility in terms of my personal relationship with God. I'm not talking about, you know, my humility in society because I don't have a whole lot of it. I'm working on it. I'm a work in progress. But I learned when the pain became too great and I couldn't go on anymore, there was a paradigm shift that took place where all of a sudden I took personal responsibility. It was, it was an admission that, like, oh, wow, my life is a mess. And it's not because somebody touched my naughty spot. It's not because my mom didn't love me. It's not because my dad didn't love me. Even though all of that was true, that shit happened decades ago. Like, if you're 12, whine and complain and blame your parents. If you're 16, whine and complain and blame your parents. Blame the government, blame Obama, blame Trump. But if in my case, I was 33 years old, if you're 33 years old, is it really your mom's fault and really your dad's fault? You know, oh, well, if they only would have loved me.

Really?

Well, how, how do I know? I have a lot of friends whose parents love the. Out of them. They're broke and they're losers. Right. At certain point, you take, what's it called, sovereignty over yourself. You, you, you take responsibility for everything going on in your life, good and bad, and you realize that you are the author. You're the author of this book of life and you're writing it now. The great news is there is a God, and you can petition that God as much as you want, and you can ask God, whether it's before every meal or it's in the morning. And if you do, like the walking gratitude list, when you get up in the morning and you thank God for the clean water that you get to bathe in and the food on the table and the roof over your head. If you go into your day with that attitude of gratitude, you're going to attract amazing things into your life. Yeah. And, you know, my particular. I think my particular story resonates so well with people because all the people that I really like looked up to and I bought their books and I wanted to be like them. I always found out sooner or later, like, oh, but his stepdad was super rich and helped him with this. Or like, oh, yes, he went to Stanford.

That's a trust fund baby they got, you know, they had the education.

Yeah, they had this. They got that. My. My particular story is, no, I bottomed out. I bottomed out and I had nothing. And what most people would consider a very late. You know, I didn't start sun life till I was 41 years old. So I have people that are 25. Like, I don't know what I want to do with my life. I'm just freaked out. Like, you're 25. If you knew what you wanted to do with your life at 25, I'd be scared for you. Right.

So why is that?

Because it's. The destination is the journey. I mean, there's. Sorry, I said it backwards. The journey is the destination. You're supposed to struggle.

I think you said it perfectly, actually.

Thank you.

It's the snake eating its tail.

Yeah.

Literally, journey, destination, eat each other.

Yeah.

If you're really in them for real.

You'Re supposed to be confused. You're supposed to be disenchanted. You're supposed to go through hardship. Like you. When I think back on some of the relationships that ended, and I was so devastated I was going to die if she wouldn't get back together with me. When I interact with some of those people today, and vice versa, I was no bowl of cherries either. But, like, I couldn't imagine spending my life with one of those people who I pined away over and cried over. And, you know, there was one girl in particular who. I don't think I talked about it in the book, but in the early 90s, this girl that I knew in Ohio came out and I helped her get into this modeling agency, Wilhelmina Modeling Agency. And we were fighting a lot. It was a lot of drama, as there often is with, you know, young couples, and a lot of jealousy on my part, not on her part. And I just was so smitten with her. I just. I literally. I wanted to marry her. And for me to say that at any point in my life, that's saying a lot. I literally wanted to marry her. I was so madly in love with her, and like always, I was a nightmare. And I ultimately ended up pushing her away, and she ended up booking a video for this. This group. Oh, my God. Come on. The biggest fucking band in the world at that time. Bigger than Guns N Roses, Oasis.

Oh, yeah.

She booked an Oasis video. And so Sally can wait but don't look back in anger. Do you remember that?

Yes, of course.

She's in that video. She's the main girl in the wedding dress. And she ended up hooking up with the drummer of the band. And she ultimately ended up marrying the drummer of the band.

That's a hard competition, dude. The drummer of Oasis at the height of their fame. Yeah.

And I can tell you, many a nights I drank at her and many a nights I drugged at her. And the crazy fucking thing is, we're friends today, and she would not want to be with me in any way, shape or form. And I wouldn't want to be with her in any way, shape or form. But when I think about the agony, the years that I spent pining away over her, we're just not for one another.

Do you feel like. And from your lens of seeing addiction for what it really is, do you feel like that addicts of any kind seek subconscious evidence that they need to keep addicted to whatever their malady is, because otherwise it wouldn't be able to be fed. In other words, you can't feed the hungry ghost if there's no fodder to feed it. If I'm not angry at my woman, if I'm not angry at God, if I'm not angry at life, if I'm not angry at my parents and all these different things. That's the first part of the question. The second part is taking loving ownership to process it. Yeah, the first part of the question. I'm curious how you feel about that for all addicts of any kind.

Yeah. I mean, there's a great. My friend Shen Schultz, who grew up in a. In a monastery, in a Zen Buddhist Mon. Monastery, he said to me, the greatest lesson that was ever taught to me, the greatest gift and lesson and advice that was ever given to me was, just drop the rock, man. Just drop it. You don't have to keep carrying it. Just drop it. And his thing was a multitude, and I have to be. Because I said his name, I have to be mindful of that. But, like, he had his issues. Okay. Okay. And one day, he realized he did not need to carry those issues anymore. He could simply set those issues down and he could walk away from them. You did the same thing with your stuff. I did the same thing with my stuff. It didn't seem possible. It sort of borrows from the myth of Sisyphus, right, where he's pushing the boulder up, you know, the hill, forever, for eternity. Like, that's most people. They're in this struggle there. If you ever looked at people's faces when you're driving, look at people's faces, they. Not so much in Austin, although I still see it a lot in la. It's almost everybody. There's an anguish. There's like this Sean Penn anguish on people's faces when they're driving. And it's just like what the. Is going on with their life that they're in so much anguish. They're carrying that rock because they don't know that at any time they can set that rock down and they can walk away. They don't. They don't know that I. I have friends who have been in relationships for years and years and years and years and years. Years that they cannot stand. And I've heard from their significant other that they can't stand it either. And you just wonder to yourself, well, then what the are you doing? But the thought of being out of the relationship is so much scarier than staying. Same thing with addiction. I had abscesses. I had scabies. I had ringworm. The bottom of my feet were filthy black. I smelled my. My teeth were rotting. Everything. And if you tried to get me to stop, I would have fought you. Because the thought of not having that was so terrifying. Not knowing. Fast forward 18 and a half years out in. Where are we? Lakeway.

Yeah. Yeah, Lakeway. Steiner Ranch.

Yeah, out. Out in Steiner Ranch, hanging out with a super cool dude, meeting his beautiful wife, and doing this podcast who hopefully somebody will listen to and find some little thing that they can hold on to, some little spark that they can take with them, and they could apply it to their own lives, and they can fan it and turn it into a flame and then eventually turn it into a forest fire, because that's what's taking place in my life, my little sad, broken existence. And then I got that little spark from God, that little lifting when I said that prayer. And then I kept finding evidence over and over again that God was there and that God loved me and that the world was good. And I didn't hear the. The metaphor of just setting down the rock like Shen did, but what I was told was, I'll go back to the original version of it, because I have my own version now. But the original version was. It's like the. The Hopi Indians, the great Hopi Indian tribe. And there's a little up and coming young adolescent boy, and he's learning from grandfather and grandfather, and I'm obviously paraphrasing and probably ruining the story, but the little boy is very confused about life, and the grandfather's trying to teach him, and he's, you know, But I don't understand. And the grandfather's like, listen, inside of you, there is a good wolf, and there's a bad wolf. And the bad wolf wants to destroy you. The bad wolf wants you miserable. The bad wolf wants you stuck in this mundane, miserable existence. And then there's the good wolf. And the good wolf wants you to be happy. And the good wolf wants you to help other people. And the good wolf wants you to be successful and open a smoothie bar. And the little boy says, but I don't understand, grandfather, but what do I do? And he goes, well, your life is going to be dependent on whichever wolf wins. And the kid's like, well, what wolf is going to win? And the grandfather says, whichever one you feed. Feed the good wolf. Keep feeding the good wolf. The way I switched it around was we carry heaven and hell inside of us, right? Whatever we go looking for proof, we're going to find. If I leave here right now, and I'm like, the world is fucked up and, and people are up and people are. And people will you over. If I go out in the world with that attitude, I will find proof immediately. I will find proof around every corner. But it works the other way as well. If I leave here going, man, Josh is such an amazing dude. And I met his beautiful sister in law and his hot wife sitting in the front lawn like a yogi, just like soaking up the sun and like, what beautiful people. Like, people are good and, and, and God is good and the world is good. If I leave here with that attitude, I'm gonna find proof of that around every corner.

It's so potent because Tony Robbins, Bruce Lipton, Joe Dispenza, Mel Robbins, I mean, literally any Dr. Kyra babinette who we've had on the show, very famous neuroscientist, every single person with the highest academic, you know, jv, they all say the same thing. And that is whatever. You constantly feed, like the parable of the wolf, whatever you put your attention towards, it grows. Yeah, right. Energy flows wherever attention goes. We know this on an intellectual level, Khalil.

Yeah.

So I can. I can sit here and be like, oh, yeah, my mind knows what you're saying.

Yeah.

But feeling what you're saying in the heart, which I do.

Yeah.

I really do.

Yeah. Yeah.

Feeling that in the heart is much different than intellectualizing this stuff. And I really. I'm curious how you feel about this, this lens. If people right now are with us and they're. They notice, they're aware that they're searching for the evidence that, like, mom and dad are up, the world's not a safe place. You know, the government's Trying to control our lives. Well, which they are.

They are.

But, but how do they shift? How do you, how do you shift the script? How do you go from gathering subconscious evidence that the world is a unsafe place and you're not loved and everybody's out to get you, blah, blah, blah. How do you actually pick up the needle and put it on a different record? Like, what's the fundamental starting place for that? Whether you're an addict or not, you.

Have to believe it first and foremost. And I'm telling you, I promise you, it's true. And then you have to make the decision. It starts with making the decision like, I am now going to live a good life. I'm going to now live in abundance. I'm going to live in prosperity. Poverty mentality. Scarcity mentality was so driven into me. But in 2004, 2004, 5, when Cindy Landon got, she got me a computer first, but she got me the DVD the Secret. And I started to watch the Secret. And like any good addict, I watched it. You know, I wore the disc out. And then I got Think and Grow Rich and then I got the Psycho Cybernetics and then I got the. The. The As a man thinketh. And then, I mean on and on and on. And I actually read those. I mean, I read them out, I wore them out, I underlined them, them. I. When I started to do that, that just my life just literally began to change.

You chose to gather evidence literally every day.

I did. And I was also, remember, I had the training wheels on because I was working 3, 4 jobs at a time. So there I wasn't going off to Coachella and I wasn't going, you know, running around with this girl and get my heart broken. My life was really simple. I worked and I read and I prayed and I meditated and I saved every penny and I just kept doing that. And, and just like violence begets violence, work begets work. Money, the energy of money begets money. Like, once you start having some stocks and some bonds and some cryptos, as fractional shares as they might be, it begins to grow, whether the market is up or whether the market is down, you know, obviously diversify. But I began to watch the amount of financial stability I had grow. I began to watch shitty friends fall away and new friends walk in. I began to watch a physical transformation with my body where I literally got younger for about a 10 year period of time, I literally became younger every few months that went by. It freaked people out. It freaked me out. I couldn't understand Although I could because I was fasting and doing liver gallbladder flushes and I was doing sauna daily and I was dry brushing my lymph nodes. I was taking. What's that that makes. I was doing niacin flush like every two or three months. I would do another series of sauna with niacin and dry brush. I was taking ice cold showers long before, you know, any of that was going on. Not, not because I didn't come up with that. I had, you know, people teach me about it. Actually, actually I had like a. The kid who taught me about that was what's the funny religion in la? The, like the fake one. Scientology.

Oh, interesting.

The kid who taught me about niacin was actually a Scientologist. And that's a practice that they do where they go and they do high dose niacin. They build them, they build up their tolerance to it and they get to the point where they're taking like 800 to 1200 milligrams, which is kill you if you don't take six or seven weeks to build up to that point. I was drinking, I was taking cloves of garlic and orange juice and blending it together with olive oil and sea salt and cayenne pepper and downing it on an empty fasted stomach and shitting out gallstones. And I just watched this. Miraculous. And it was fucking miraculous. And if you look at the picture of me on the book at 30, I was 31 actually there. It got much worse than that. And then you look at me today, I'm 52. I would almost go out on a limb and say I look younger now than I did then. So it's, it's fucking miraculous. So I began to gather evidence and then momentum began to take over. Just like now when people are like, dude, you have, I don't know, it's 12 or 13. You have like 12 locations around the country and you have 400 employees. Like, how do you do it? Like, I have no idea how I do it. I hired a bunch of amazing women who run the company and it just has its own momentum. And now I'm just like a huge fan of it. I go in there every day. I go in there seven days a week, every single day, no matter what.

Khalil, it's such a. It makes me smile thinking about how your story has unfolded and how it continues to unfold. Like it really, it's incredibly touching. Thank you. It really is because we all love the quote, underdog. But think of how many millions of men and women that have been underdogs that don't make it, you know, they leave the earth. Their story isn't the lotus from the mud.

But it could be.

It could be. And I think, and I'm curious how you think, what wisdom can you share with us about. About Emmett Fox? Because this was 365 meditations. It was a meditation every day. Yeah, there was a pivotal moment in the book where you were having a very hard time with addiction. And his book was right there next to you. And it was like the chances of that happening were absolutely insane. I mean, that had to have been a moment of God's love.

Love.

But from a practical, like, nuts and bolts perspective, the Emmet Fox meditations, which was one a day, the reading of the Tony Robbins and all the other books. What did you start to see grow as far as fruit inside of you? And what exact tools did you use to change?

Well, first of all, the Emmet Fox thing was there. There is no coincidence there. I mean, that was literally God smacking me on the head. I was a couple years sober, and all of that humility had evaporated because now I'm dating a cute girl. I had some money saved up. This dude was letting me live at his house in Malibu in exchange for washing his cars and walking his dogs and stuff like that. Like, I had kind of got my little hustle going. I was still kind of technically homeless, but I was. I made homelessness look. Look sexy, you know, I had a car, had a cell phone, had some nice clothes. And one of my sponsors in a 12 step program was investing in. In futures and options, in contracts for silver and gold. And I didn't understand any of it, but I would go and I would hang out with him and I watch him with his. All his computer screens. Then he'd be like, you see this? So the price of gold just went up, you know, a dollar. So I just made $10,000. And I'm like, I don't understand how. And he's like, well, that's when you're buying futures and options. I still don't know how to explain it. But, yeah, he's explaining it to me, and I'm watching it on all these screens. And I. I was so absolutely fascinated with it. And I had just bought my first little gold Krugerrand, you know, $430 an ounce, gold at that time. And I started to feel like, okay, cool, I get it. Money's a game, and you got to play the game, right? Which is true. But there's no shortcuts, and there's no free lunches. So I watched him turn $40,000 into $800,000 in about a three and a half month period. It blew my mind. It literally looked like a child could do it. And there's been many studies where they even have like, chimpanzees, like throwing darts at a board and to pick stocks, and those stocks end up outdoing the S&P 500. So there is some truth to it. A child can do it. He told me himself that I think 92% of people that invest in futures and options lose money. I'm better, I'm different. I'm smart now. I got a couple of years sober, and I begged him to take my money and to invest it in futures and get me some contracts. And he fought me, and he fought me, and he fought me, and I whittled him down. I wore him down. I finally got him to take my money. I had saved up $14,000, which to me today would be like, realistically today that would be like $400,000. That's what that $14,000 meant to me.

Yeah.

Because it was freedom. I could go do whatever the I wanted to do. I could move to any city. I could move to any country. I could go on vacation. So I gave him that money and he invested that money. And I'm not going to tell the whole story, but ultimately, you guys are probably knowing where I'm going to go with this story ultimately. He was calling me one morning and my phone had gone dead. I was up all night watching the gold markets in Europe and. And like, oh, my God, I'm rich.

Which this whole financial thing can be another attention addiction where you're constantly watching the charts go up and down.

Yeah, it was. And. And I did really, really well for a couple months. And then things got really volatile and my phone had gone dead, and I fell asleep on Robbie's house. That's the house I was staying at. I fell asleep on Robbie's beanbag. And I'll never forget waking up and just sort of like coming to. And it was 10:30 in the morning. And I'm like, I never sleep till 10:30. I was always up early in the morning in those days and still today and looking at my, you know, turning my phone on, and there's like, you have 16 missed messages.

He's calling you over and over again to tell you you need to sell.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I wouldn't answer. And I had always told him because he very boldly would Say like, I'm going down with the ship, I don't give a. I'm going to hang on till the very end. And I said, me too. So I told him that I wouldn't sell in that particular situation. I would have sold because it was every fucking penny to my name. And I got completely wiped out. I lost every penny. And to add insult to injury, a couple weeks later he had asked me to house it for him. He had this really fancy house in Malibu. It's just fucking beautiful house. And he asked me to go over there and house sit. A year earlier I had bought him the same book that EMT Fox around, you know, around the year with EMT Fox or whatever. And I was so miserable. I mean, I lost every penny to my name after two years of saving money and there was no plan B. So I was so angry at God and I, and I was saying out loud like, God, how could you do this to me? God, how could you do this to me? God, how could you do this to me? As if God put a gun to my head and told me to invest in futures and options. And I'm at his house, I couldn't sleep. I'm up in the morning, I'm just walking around, I'm like, I'm never gonna have this. Like everyone has a house. I'm never gonna be able to afford a house and I'm never gonna have this. I'm never gonna have it in that self pity, you know, sinking back into that victim mentality. And I started crying and I'm just like, like, you know, punching myself and sitting at his coffee table, drinking coffee, sitting on a sofa, sitting at his coffee table and I saw, see the book and I'm just like, you know, stupid book and my life and how could God do this to me? And whatever. And it was like something inside of me was just like, pick up the book. The book brought you so much solace before. The book brought you so much. Just pick up the book. I didn't want to pick up the book. I didn't want to pick up the book. And I finally just submitted and I open up the book to whatever day it was, it was, was like February, something, whatever it was, somebody I'm sure could look it up and I it. So each day is numbered. So for each day you go to that page and you read whatever it is, then I open it up and I look at it and literally the first line is, do not put your faith in silver and gold. Put your faith in me. And I just like the book dropped, I dropped back to my knees. I cried so hard and I was just like, God, I am so sorry. I'm so sorry. I cried and I cried and I cried. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. God did not tell me to invest in futures. God had nothing to fucking do with it. God provided open doors for me and gave me jobs, but God had nothing to do with that. I fucked my life up yet again. And there I was blaming God for like a good two week period. Blaming God that I had lost all my fucking money. So look, the journey is the destination, right?

Oh, yeah.

You don't just snap your fingers and you figure it all out. There's going to be peaks and valleys. The good news is over time, it's less about peaks and valleys and it's more about that. It's more about, you know, it just. You just kind of cruise along and you stay in the middle.

I got so much from that. I remember reading that in the book or hearing that when you were reading it to everyone in the book. And I thought about what has naturally kind of transpired with crypto, with people leveraging and going super long. And I took a hit as well.

Yeah.

And for me it was different, though. I had that same reaction where I was like, why did I do that? Yeah, I lost like $20,000. What's going on?

Yeah.

And then I realized, God, the timing of when that happened was pretty much when I read that chapter in your book.

Yeah.

And it was this beautiful mirror where I was like, ah, I got greedy. I wanted more. I want to have land for my family. I want all these things instead of the maturity that financial wisdom yields. Because financial wisdom is different. Financial wisdom is about this middle way that sometimes for so many of us, and I fell into it, then in that moment is fleeting. And that is, you know, if I can take what resonates and leave the rest, if I can take a patience route, if I can go the middle way. You know, Lao Tzu talks about this, and my audience has heard me talk about this a thousand times. But I'm gonna say it again because it's really important. The middle way is about taking all the wisdom that you've learned that's been embodied and actually not allowing the mind or the ego to pull you off that path. The middle way doesn't have too much to do with ego at all. And if I ask myself three questions. I just did a men's retreat this weekend and it was so potent. And we came up with these Three questions.

Okay.

And I can. And we can apply these three questions to any moment. And it is when I'm triggered, when something happens that's painful. Can I ask myself, okay, what is my ego experiencing? What is my mind experience? What story is my ego, my mind telling me about this?

Right?

What is my heart feeling? What emotion am I experiencing? Because that has wisdom, too. And then, most importantly, what does my soul see about this moment? What is my soul that's watching the whole thing, sharing with me about why I need to go through this lesson. And for me, I was feeling sad that I lost the money and now it's going to take longer to get the land. And then my ego was like, damn it, you shouldn't have trusted your friend. You shouldn't have trusted this person. You shouldn't have trusted, blah, blah, you know, it's their fault. Oh, my God. But my soul knew that I was supposed to go through this because if I want wisdom, then I have to be able to go through moments where there's pain, where there's discomfort, where there's struggle. And it goes back to, like, the very first thing we talked about in this podcast. Why is it that in this evolution of life, as we get wiser, there has to be so much of a vacuum? There has to be so much contrast in pain and suffering and these hard lessons. But then this one, I was really proud of myself and the timing of your book and, and what you talked about with the gold futures. Loss was huge because I realized, ah, this doesn't have to be a story I tell myself, right? I can allow myself to feel it, ask myself these three questions, process it and let it go, and get back to being of service, you know, and get back to loving my life, loving my family, loving my people, like being a true leader. And that, that I'm curious how you feel is really the embodiment of leadership and of loving oneself to be able to flow through things and flow through pain instead of letting it get stuck. What does that kind of compassionate inquiry look like for you? How do you go through a process of compassionate inquiry for self when crazy shit happens?

My relationship with God, I mean, that's the main thing. I'm always going to go back to that because I always know that I'm going to be okay. And it's not that I don't go through the silver and gold moments anymore. I mean, I was sitting on my sofa. You would probably know better than me. I think it was seven weeks ago. It could have been 10 weeks ago. But I was sitting on my sofa. I said to my girlfriend, I told you to. I told you you should have invested in crypto. And look what happened. I got my girlfriend to invest 2020. When did it crash? It crashed in 2018.

Yeah, I don't remember exactly.

Whenever it crashed, I got her to invest.

Okay.

And I got her to, you know, put in 20 grand or something like that. Begrudgingly, she didn't want to do it. And I started to buy more at that time as well. And we're sitting on the sofa and I'm like, can you fucking believe that your 20 grand is now 180 something thousand dollars? And she's just like, oh, my God. And then I said to my. I said out loud, like, we should sell all of yours and half of mine. It wasn't land, but it was a building. I'm like, we should find like an old building in East Austin or something and just buy it and like, you know, sit on it, you know, just have an appreciating asset. Because eventually that area is going to gentrify. Or second thought would have been go out to driftwood or something and buy some land. But yeah, mine was more building. And I called four, five people, I would bet, you know, three of them. And every one of them said, don't sell. And I'm like, but it just seems like we're at an all time high. It's almost 70,000. Like, what's. What would it hurt if I sold half and it goes to 100? Who fucking cares?

Yeah.

Everybody said, don't sell. And as, you know, major massive fucking correction. Probably one of the worst ones ever.

Yeah. There was over a trillion dollars liquidated, right. Of people who were leveraged. A trillion dollars.

So my girlfriend doesn't care. My girlfriend's just like, work, save your money. Invest. Comes back. You know, she was so cavalier about it that it. It drove me insane. And we don't fight, we don't argue. Not because I'm a highly evolved being, but she is. She literally will not take the bait. If I try to fight with her, she just. She won't engage. So I keep trying to get her to, like, have sympathy for me, have empathy for me, and finally I start throwing numbers around. Well, I'm down a fucking million dollars. And she's just like, it'll come back. Don't say that. That just makes me even more mad. Like, how do you know it's gonna come back? She's like, it'll come back. I'm like, you don't Know that. She goes, okay, it won't. What's gonna change now? I'm fucking hot. So I go to the gym and I'm working out, and I'm with my buddy Bill, and he says, how's cryptos doing? I'm like, I'm fucking down a million dollars. And he goes, you're down a million dollars? And I go, yeah. He goes, you're down a million dollars or you're down a million dollars in profit? That one question. I'm like, down a million dollars in profit? He goes, right. So can you really complain? I'm like, I guess not. And it's perspective and it's wisdom. He's much, much, much smarter than me and much, much more successful than me. So in situations like that, sometimes it'll be my girlfriend, it'll be a good friend that I'm working out with. Sometimes it'll be a book that I'm reading. Sometimes it'll just be little weird little downloads that I'll get. Like, I'll just have these moments of like, everything's okay no matter what. Let's say crypto went to zero tomorrow, right? God forbid. I would hate that. I'd probably cry. But would anything really, really change about your life, yours personally? Like, would you die? Would you. Would your wife leave you? Would you lose your house? Would you. The.

The only thing that would happen is I would feel a tug in my heart. Yeah. About the actualization of my dreams.

Yeah.

That would be it. That would be the worst case scenario. Temporarily, the tug on the heart.

Yeah. Temporarily, yeah. Who's to say that next month you don't get invited to be the host of the Tonight Show? I know the Tonight show doesn't exist, but you know what I mean? Like, something. Something amazing might be. Be waiting for you right outside of your comfort zone that you have no idea about. And, you know, nothing would really change. I'd be depressed for a while if that money never came back. But at the end of the day, not because I'm smart or because I know anything, I had a guy named Bob who in 2015 was like, how much are you going to spend at the tables? I'm like, a certain amount. He's like, why don't you invest it in bitcoin? I'm like, because I don't fucking know anything about that shit. And he's like, I do. And he's like, why don't you just once give me the money? You're gonna go play at the blackjack tables and let me put it On a treasure for you. And he did. I got really blessed. I got really lucky. And then when it corrected, I bought a little bit more. And so if it all disappeared tomorrow, it'd be okay. If Sun Life disappeared tomorrow, I'd be okay. I can go get a job at the Olive Garden and wait tables, or I can go sell cars, or I can go do whatever. I know that I've been at zero before.

Yeah.

And I can come back.

It's so potent because you talked about this in the book and I've heard it a lot and it's. I think it's over 90%. I know you said in the book that 90% of the thoughts that we experience about events, which by the way, from an observer's lens, events are neutral. Events aren't personal to you or me, but damn, they feel like it.

They sure do.

And so if that's true, and psychology and research are showing us that no matter who you learn this information from, it's essentially true that 90 plus percent of the thoughts that we think about, the events that occur for us that are neutral are negative. 90% of our thoughts are negative. Then it's almost like a scale of rock and feathers, which I've heard in metaphor. Like one bad thing becomes a rock and we need to gather like a thousand feathers to handle the weight of the rock. How have you dealt with that? I guess you could say survival mechanism in our brain. It's an ancient system. I know why it's there. It's to keep us safe when the tiger was attacking us.

Right.

So I understand why that proclivity towards negativity and the 90% of thoughts we think are negative. I get why it's there from a survival standpoint, but we're not in the fucking jungle anymore. We're not being attacked. Although it feels like it, we're really attacking ourselves. How do you deal with that? How do you make sense of that from a biological perspective and a spiritual perspective?

My diet has a lot to do with it. And my exercising and getting out and moving has a lot to do with it. Getting in the sun as often as I can, never wearing sunblock, always getting sun in my eyes, being conscious of my breath. I. I am not in the breath work stuff. I love the fact that you just kind of kick started me back into it and I feel like I'm going to take it and run with it, but I am conscious of my breath and. And most addicts are shallow breathers.

Yeah, most.

So that was taught to me early on in My recovery is. Is we're shallow breathers. I'm conscious because of Dr. Bo about banana ing, like, you know, leaning forward and doing that with my phone. When you make. Laird. Laird Hamilton actually taught me this. When you do this, you're releasing cortisol.

Yeah.

So when you do this, you're releasing serotonin and dopamine. So I. I am conscious about that. And I. I definitely. I definitely. I hired a trainer to hold me accountable because I know I'm not going to do it on my own. So every Monday and Friday, I'm paying an obscene amount of money to be held accountable. And it's worth every penny and then some. I see a healer. I don't know if you know Kimmy and Timmy.

I don't.

Okay, so I see Kimmy every Wednesday, which is probably very excessive due to my addictive, you know, personality. But I see this healer here in Austin named Kimmy who. It's. It's laughable that it's only $150. I mean, she should be charging minimum $1500 for what she does. She is a true healer. I don't know what the fuck it's called. I don't know what she's doing. But every Single Wednesday at 3pm I go to her. I do a little bit of the spray from John Lawrence. The.

What is it?

Mitozen?

Yeah, this is the Mitozen, the meditation mist I do, which you can find at the store, you guys. And I'm saying that organically because, wow. Carrie and I do that almost every night together. Oh, it is incredible.

For sex. Next fucking level.

For sex.

Also.

For just connection. Yeah, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Like, just to be in presence with another person. It's literally a leverage for the vagus nerve that pulls you into parasympathetic rest and digest. So I absolutely love it. I mean, it's so powerful. You gotta be careful, though, because some people. Justin Donald was sitting in the chair here and we did it, and it took him about 45 minutes to stop spinning. So, you know, be careful. I'm not an advocate of everyone, just doing everything I say. Like, experiment with it. Yeah, give it a shot. It's wellnessforce.com store, it's called Mitozen. So, yeah, definitely check that out.

I love it. I absolutely love it. I also. Every Monday, every Wednesday, every Friday, I do feel free. And the reason it's only Monday, Wednesday and Friday is because, just like many things, it can be addictive. It does have pure kratom and pure kava in it. It's not an extract. I've tried Kratom extract and had a whole horrible experience with it. It felt very druggy and very weird. I also had the same experience with kava. Actually had a panic attack on kava. Wow. I did a full dropper full of kava extract because I. I was having difficulty sleeping one night and I. The room, like, tilted sideways. So when Luke first came to me and said, you got to try this feel free stuff, I'm like, I'm. I'm good. I don't want to try anything. And I was at Cal's house, and we went to go work out, and Cal's like, you want a little pre workout? Little just, like, shake it up, drink half a bottle. And whatever Cal says, I'm gonna do just because the way he looks and the way he carries himself, he's an amazing dude. Drank. It had the best workout of my life. Literally. I go back to him like, what the was that? He's like, kratom and kava. I'm like, wait, what? I'm like, is that the. That Luke was trying to get me to drink? And he goes, yeah. I was so fascinated with how good it made me feel that I begged Cal to give me JW's phone number because I wanted to know the backstory, what the fuck is going on? And then to hear that JW created it as an alcohol alternative because he used to be an alcoholic or whatever he was. I don't know. He had issues with it.

He was. He was an alcoholic.

Yeah. Yeah. So if somebody was newly sober, I would never suggest this. Just like, if somebody's newly sober, I would never suggest anything that, you know, may take you out.

Right.

Like, how many times do you have people who are newly sober that are like, I want to try plant medicine, like, pump the brakes.

This is actually a really, really important thing to discuss. And by the way, if anyone, you know, if you're curious about this, feel free, go to wellnessforce.com forward/401. We did a beautiful interview with JW. I mean, he.

Oh, you did?

Yes. He really. He really, I think, embodies the wounded healer who brings back the wealth to share with the people for real. He actually does it. And a lot of people say that they do it, but they have kind of ulterior motives from him. What I feel is he just wants to help people that are suffering. He does, because he himself went through suffering as an alcoholic. So that's big. And my question for you is this, as a former addict yourself, and as someone who you say has a proclivity to addictive things, which me too, right? I mean, porn was my drug. Anybody, anybody can pick any flavor, right? It's really just a separation from self and others. How do you navigate the road with entheogens, with the ayahuascas, the psilocybins, things like that? Is that something where? Is that something that you entertain? Or do you have a healthy relationship with psychedelic spaces? Or is it simply just a loving no inside of you? What does that world look like for you?

So it was always a hard no. Always a hard no. I mean, when people first approached me 10 years ago, I was like, what the are you talking about?

How many years have you actually been sober now?

18 and a half.

18 and a half?

Yeah. Like a little kid. 18 and a half. 18 years. I've been sober 18 years. June, June will be 19. 10 years ago I was insulted 10 years ago when people would approach me and they were good people, they were kind people who had really tapped into something that I wasn't aware of. Are you insulted because I'm sober? I'm sober guy, you know, like, how dare you tempt me with drugs. I really, like, did not like it and developed a little bit of spiritual pride around being sober guy. Like, I have a best selling book about sobriety. Like, how dare you invite me to your, you know, whatever darkness. Like, I didn't, you know, I didn't know. I didn't understand. Yeah. And, and then even, even going back, I would say like five years ago, I was mocking people that were doing it. Part of me was mocking people because I hadn't read or heard anything from Michael Poland. Is that how you pronounce it?

Michael Poland.

Pollund. Gabor. What's his name?

Gabor, mate.

Gabor, mate. People like Luke's story. You know, Luke's 26, 27 years sober and he's had many, many experiences with plant medicines. I hadn't been exposed to that yet, so I just arrogantly dismissed it. And then I had some really, really incredible people coming to me, talking about these massive breakthroughs that they were having. And then I had a guy that I had worked with that was one of my clients who was just as obstinate and fucking frozen and stuck. And he was, in my opinion, never going to change. He had fuck you money because of nepotism, generational wealth, I guess. Nepotism. Wouldn't get a job. Well, he had that too, but he was never going to change.

And the context is when you Healed self. And when you reconnected with God and went on your journey of recognition, recovery, then you started to have a, a different approach to helping some pretty high level VIPs. You did that for quite a while heal. Yeah, right. So that, that's where your recovery center and you're out of the box. You take them paddle boarding, you take them on yachts and different things. So this is when you started the, the conversations around entheogens as well?

No, I just had this guy who was never going to change and he called me up and it sounded like I was talking to a completely different human being. His hardened bodybuilder, Rich. You know, this is what I think and this is my political view and this is how women are. This. It was gone. It was like I was talking to a different soul. And that happened twice. That happened once with this guy named Doug, who strangely enough was also another power lifter. There was something about seeing these two massive, masculine, powerful, pissed off, angry men become these beautiful, loving human beings. And both of them had done plant medicine journeys and explained them to me. And right after my 17th sober birthday, I was talking to Luke a lot at that time and Ben Greenfield and a few other people and was getting into the how to change your mind and you know, listening to the podcast with the Gabe.

Gabor.

Gabor. And. And I started seeing things over and over again. Like I'd go on a hike and there'd be three hawks. I'd go on a hike and there'd be, you know, three rabbits. I kept seeing snakes, which you'd see snakes a couple times a year. On this particular hike, I just kept seeing snakes. Sometimes I'd see up to three snakes in one hike. I kept seeing like ravens would land near me and just start calling out like cackling at me. I'm like, is this bird laughing at me or is this bird yelling at me? Like, what? And I started looking up animal symbolisms and there was somebody that I wanted to help. I had just turned 17 years sober. I contacted a friend of ours and I said, I need to get this particular person the best of the best of the best in the plant medicine world. And they connected me. And the guy called me and started talking to me about me doing it. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, I need you to help this person. And he really didn't listen. He just was like, you should come here, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, not having it. I connected him with the person. The person calls me up and says, you know, hey, we're all going to get together at my house. Very fancy situation. We'd love to have you. So I go there thinking, wow, I am. I am so special that they want me there for this ceremony. Like, what a. What a spiritual man. I must be viewed as, you know, my ego really got the best of me. And I'll never forget, I drive over there and I'm just, like, beaming. And they even said, like, you know, bring an overnight bag. And I'm like, oh, yes, of course. The spiritual man must be present the entire time. You know, I'm going with this, right? So I fucking, I. I go there and the shaman dude's there, and they're all talking and my friend is there, and then all of a sudden he starts addressing me, the shaman. And so I'm going to give you, you know, some medicine. And then we're going to wait 30 minutes and whatever. And all of a sudden it was just like, my heart starts pounding, and I knew I could get up and leave, but I was like, wow, I'm supposed to do this. And my worst case scenario is I go back to drugs and have to figure that out. I knew I wouldn't do that. I had the wherewithal of knowing I haven't craved drugs or fantasized about drugs for fucking forever, for a decade at least. So I guess, you know, I don't really go to 12 step meetings anymore. I guess my worst case scenario is I find out that I shouldn't have done it. But something was really, like, knocking on my. On my heart.

What was the something?

Just to knowing that I needed some answers. And I said, great, when do we begin? And an hour later, they passed everything out. I did that. And then about 30 minutes later, I took the other medicine and I said out loud because it was recorded, just please help my friend. I'm paraphrasing. And the shaman said, this isn't about your friend. This is about you. Please use your breath as your fuel. And I just melted into that. You know, the. The ego died. And I was able to go in and I was able to look at my life, and I was able to compartmentalize things, and I was able to talk to my soul. I cried harder than I've ever cried in my life before. I got to talk to my mom soul after she had passed and ask her, like, mom, why didn't you love me? I needed you to love me. And she was just like, honey, I'm sorry. I couldn't. Your father had me, like, I couldn't get out. I couldn't. I wanted to love you. I couldn't get out. And then I went to go talk to my dad and I didn't. I wasn't granted access. It was just nothing was there. It wasn't like you're not allowed to talk to your dad. There was nothing there. It was like, you don't need to talk to your dad. And then I was able to approach my. The people that fucked with me when I was a kid. And, man, it was so powerful. I cried for them. I didn't develop empathy, but I developed sympathy. So I got to look at all my ouchies and all the different things that had happened, and I got to realize that I wasn't the creator of Sun Life, that I was the recipient of Sun Life, that it was handed to me by divine feminine energy. And I got to look at my behaviors around running the business and where I was wrong and how the business was not my business. And then I needed to step out of the business and allow the women who ran the business to truly run the business and leave them alone. You know, I can pop in for a zoom call every now and then, but no more going in, no more going to meetings, no more going behind the counter, no more interacting, no more hiring, no more firing, no more nothing. Just let it do its thing. Be a fan of it, be a customer of it. And I came out of that journey and I remember thinking to myself, I was crying for my old self, the drug addict, the sad, broken boy whose mom and dad didn't love him. And I remember thinking to myself, fuck, man, the last thing on earth I want to do right now is go get high. That wasn't getting high. That was a shattering of paradigms and prisons and confines and, and, and just thought patterns and, and generations of trauma that I was able to witness. And then I worked with Kimmy to integrate a lot of that stuff. And I worked with another guy named Peter, who's also an incredible healer who should be charging ten grand a session. And having said all of that, as profound as it was, I would never advise anyone in recovery, especially new in recovery. And by new, I mean within the first 10 years. I would never advise them to do any type of plant medicine journey to do anything like that. And I'll tell you why. Because I don't know what's good for somebody else. I don't know what's going to happen to some kid who's in rehab and then he decides to go do ketamine assisted therapy or he decides to go to Peru and do ayahuasca. And you know your story of whatever happened to you, we can define it however you want to define it. It is not an uncommon story. I know quite a few people who have gone to do stuff like that and completely lost their shit. And I know one guy who never came back. Yeah, he's a fucking mess.

I feel very fortunate to have gone that far beyond the edge and have actually been able to return.

Yeah.

And in a way it's that that sense memory, that pain, that almost thumbprint the imprint of what had transpired for me is actually the gift. So I'm really grateful to God. I'm so grateful it happened the way it did because it could have gone so poorly. And I've shared this with a lot of people and I've always gotten this reflection of wow, Even though it was so traumatic and you literally almost lost your shit, you lost everything.

Yeah.

What a gift. What an incredible gift that it happened the way it did. But here's the thing. I don't wish that gift on anyone. On anyone. Because when you go that far beyond the edge, there is no guarantee.

Yeah.

There is no guarantee you're making it back.

There's no guarantee you're making it back. And I don't know what people's psychological makeup is. And also I have to speak for myself. And by the way, I've never discussed this on a podcast before, ever. And I, I, I thought I never would, but it felt appropriate in this context and in this setting and knowing you and feeling your energy, I feel like I know your audience's energy.

Yeah.

You know, but on other people's podcast, I, I could see how what I'm saying right now could be taken out of contest and context and weaponized against me.

Yeah.

Here's what I have to say. First of all, I'm quite old. Okay. I'm 52 years old. I was 50 when I did that journey.

50 is the new 30 man. Especially with all the tools we have now.

I agree. But, but what I know now and what I've been through and the wisdom that I carry with me as a 50 year old man is one thing. Then I've become quite successful. I have a lot of different sources of income. My book is an incredible source of income for me. Cryptocurrencies have been amazing. I got ridiculously lucky day trading for many years and then I just stopped gambling. Not myself, but piggybacking on other people's. I was hanging out with a group of very Very high profile. Very, very. Guys that were betting a million dollars a hand in private poker games in the south of France and.

And San Tropez, like some James Bond.

I was there. Yeah. If you scroll back on my Instagram about. About a year or two. Well, but, yeah, you'll. You'll see the yachts and the Santrope and the helicopters and the private jets. I was in that world, and I was betting on one guy in particular, but I bet on a few different guys a few different times, and I just. I hit it. I mean, I. I hit it out of the ballpark. My point of saying all this is not to brag to you or to brag to your audience. They're like, oh, look how lucky I am. I am lucky and I am blessed. My point of saying all of this is in context to the journey. If you're 50 years old and you have truly eliminated or conquered Maslov's hierarchy, if you. If you've gone from survival to whatever. To whatever to whatever, like, I don't ever have to work again. And I don't say that lightly. Now, I don't know if I could live in Zilker and continue going out to eat every night and never work again, but I could very easily.

Your bases are covered.

My bases are covered. I could move to Puerto Rico or move to Michigan.

Yeah.

And. And I'd be sustained for the rest of my life. When you truly have financial freedom, not just independence, but financial freedom, a lot of cognitive dissonance and a lot of fears fall by the wayside. I'm in a relationship that is like, the greatest thing that's ever happened to me. So I'm madly and passionately in love. I'm financially successful. I'm 50 years old. I have a lot of great things going on in my life. It's kind of hard to do a plant medicine journey and lose my. And. And go through maybe permanently being up or for years at a time being up. I guess my point is I went into it knowing I don't think about drugs or crave drugs for many, many, many years. Ten years, probably. I would say definitively so. If I'm not craving drugs and I have all of these great things going on in my life, but what if I was two years sober? What if I was five years sober?

Yeah.

What if I was living paycheck to paycheck?

Yes.

What if I had a girlfriend dump me a year ago and I still wasn't over that trauma and I was struggling with my sobriety? What if I was still going to 12 step meetings all the time. The guilt, the shame, that alone could fucking take you out. But if you couple that with financial insecurity, with unresolved trauma, with, you know, remember, I've been. I've been working on myself for almost two decades. So for me to take that leap of faith and listen to my heart and to go into that and do it, I can only say for me, at that time, it was appropriate. Now here in Austin, people are doing what they call plant medicine.

They just want to get high. Every weekend, they just want to get high. I'm so glad you're talking about this. This is so important. Important, like really to open yourself to the four and five and even six plus dimensions. You know, there's a. There's a humility and a wisdom that has to take place. And in order to earn a spot in that dimension where you can bring home wisdom to unpack the trauma and to be a better, loving, more fundamental human being, there has to be an on ramp. And I've talked about this a lot, and I'm so glad you're saying it, because there needs to be years, maybe even decades plus of work to prepare yourself to go into any kind of plant medicine ceremony. I don't care what your choice is.

Yeah.

Vipassana, float tanks, loving kindness, meditation breath.

Work, even the spray breath work spray. I wouldn't give this to. Are you friends with our buddy Chris that got the new teeth that used to work out with us?

I heard about that story.

I wouldn't let Chris do this. And I wouldn't let Chris do this. Yeah, I really wouldn't. And my buddy Tim, that's probably two years sober, I wouldn't let him do this. Because if you're still unpacking all of your baggage and you still have all this unresolved shit, and you're worried about how you're gonna make rent at the end of the month and you crack open one of those or do a little of that, then next time you're feeling anxious and worried, you might do a little bit more and do a little bit more and do a little bit more. Like, no, what I did, I was ready to do, and I'm grateful that I did it. But when I watch quite a few people from the community that we're blessed to live in go every weekend to do what they're calling plant medicine medicine. It's not medicine. You're drug addicts and you're going to get high. Like, here's my question to people who feel compelled to do 19 journeys a year. How many questions do you have? I mean, I. I sat with my soul in that journey and I spoke to my soul and I got answers to lifelong questions. And then I took that with Kimmy and Tim. With Kimmy, not Timmy. With Kimmy and with Peter and with a few other people. There's an amazing hypnotist as well. In la. I took what I needed to take and then I integrated it into my life and then I went back to doing the best job I can at becoming the man that God intended me to be. If that's my objective, it's probably going to go smooth. If that is the background of where I was at in my life and how old I was and what was going on in my life, it's probably going to be pretty smooth. But so many people who are like just flying by the seat of their pants are like, I'm going to go to Peru and do ayahuasca. I'm like, oh, fuck. Like, yeah, you are?

Yes.

And some people come back and go, dude, I talked with the angels and it was amazing. And I'm going back in another. Like, why? Yeah, why?

Yeah, the way that. Go ahead.

You, you did eight ayahuasca ceremonies over a three week period and you're going back next month. At that point you're just getting high. And sooner or later, speaking from personal experience, if you take things that are supposed to be medicines that have a spiritual component to them and you begin to abuse them to make yourself comfortable, you're going to pay.

Jordan Peterson said something that hit me in the soul once. It was a couple years ago, and he was talking about ayahuasca specifically. And he said, when you start going into this realm, look the hell out. Because you have to be careful of unearned wisdom.

Oh, wow.

You have to be careful of unearned wisdom. And I know I've mentioned this before, but it's really, really potent to mention right now in our conversation. And that is look out and be cautious and be loving and don't be in such a hurry to get Willy Wonka's golden ticket that's going to heal your life in one night.

Yeah, because it's not.

This is why Tim Ferriss about two years ago published a blog that said, I'm sorry for turning everybody on to all these plant medicines. And he went through all of them. Five meo, ayahuasca, psilocybin, San Pedro. And he was like, listen, when I said what I said, where? When you do Plant medicine. It's like 10 years of therapy in one night. He's like, that was my experience. Yeah, but that's not everyone's experience, so be careful. So this is beautiful. Be careful of unearned wisdom. Know that. That Khalil's experience was, Was brought to Khalil because that's Khalil's path. And I had my path, too. But I do not. I am not a proponent for 24, 7, 365. Everybody and everyone doing plant medicines. I think that there's a loving place for them. But I think in the same way, when I hold Nova, when I hold my son, that kind of like, loving awareness that has to be how people hold themselves when they go into a ceremony and too many people are abandoning themselves and leaving their child open to entities attaching, open to all kinds of crazy shit happening, for sure. And I speak from experience because that's what happened to me, because I wanted to heal. I wanted to get there faster. I wanted the shortcut. Like.

Yeah.

And I'm not just pouring this on Tim Ferriss. A lot of people have said things like this. Oh, it's 10 years of therapy in one night.

There's people in this community that could talk nonstop about plant medicine and then went on and on about other different. Let's just say, lifestyles, that everybody, if they were really spiritual, they would be living those lifestyles.

And then it turns out, sleep with everyone. Because that's what, you know, that's what spirituality is. Having multiple partners and no commitment.

And I'm like, yeah, any, any. Anybody that's done any type of excessive amount of MDMA or mdma, MDA or GHB or ketamine. Those thoughts all seem like a great idea when you're high as a kite and you have a. A massive amount of serotonin exploding in your midbrain. But when you come back down to planet Earth over a period of time, you realize that the union between a man and a woman is the sacred union. Or a man and a man and a woman and a woman. I don't want to exclude anybody.

Anybody, yeah. However you love.

Yeah. Two human beings coming together and loving one another and having each other's backs. If you have that, you won, you won the house, the car, all the other. You'll get it if you truly want it and if you're willing to work for it. But the man and the, the sorry, the two souls coming together and, and, and being in union with one another. And maybe even there's a offspring that is brought forth from that sacred union. I haven't gotten there yet, and I hope maybe someday I will. But just the love that I have for my. As we call them in Austin, partners. The love I have for my partner. I call her my girlfriend. And the quiet understanding and accepting of one another's imperfections. I have a lot. She doesn't have that many. But just us accepting and. And loving one another, that beats any private jet. That beats any trip to San Tropez. That beats any winning, you know, $300,000 in a night and then going and buying a watch retail and feeling like, oh, I've arrived. Like, I've been shown all those experiences. I got to hang out with some people that people dream about hanging out with and went on tour with them all over the world and went on their movie sets with them. I feel like I got showed that stuff to know and to truly understand that that stuff doesn't mean. It doesn't mean anything. I. I'm. I've spent time with many people who. People would do anything to be able to spend time with those people, only to find out that they're pretty quirky and weird and sad and alone, and they don't get to live the life that we have the privilege of living, the friendships that we get to develop, because everybody wants to hang out with their career. Everybody wants to date their career.

How do you ever know if someone really is interested and loves you? As a friend? And I'm like a micro. I'm a micro celebrity, so I've had people be my friend to get to some of my guests, and I'm just like, God, that really hurts my heart, you know? But then I think about Khalil in 2015, 2016. I did that.

Yeah, of course I did it. We all do it.

Because I was hungry to grow. I was scrappy. That's why Wellness Force is now Wellness Wisdom.

Yeah.

Because I was forcing it. I was gonna make it happen no matter what.

Yeah.

And so I can have compassion in those experiences, and I can be like, hi. Recognize that energy, for sure.

I definitely. I have compassion and I have empathy, but I don't miss it. You know, I was approached on a daily basis when I lived in Malibu. You know, I. Nothing special about me other than the fact that I fed people and I lived in a place where famous people lived. So sooner or later, those people are bored. They want to make friends. They want somebody to go to the UFC fight with. They like being around somebody that is as obsessed with themselves, if not more so. It was probably refreshing for some of them to be around somebody that wasn't like, what was it like to write that one song? Rather, it was like me talking about me. It was probably refreshing for them.

Yeah.

So I made friends with a lot of these people, and on a daily basis. On a daily basis, like, can you give my demo to Rick Rubin? Can you tell Owen I wrote this script? And I want to. I want him to read. I want him to star in the script that I wrote. Can you. Every day. I don't miss it at all. I don't blame them. I'm sure I behaved in the same way, if not much, much worse.

Yeah.

I just don't miss it. I love the fact that, like, I live in a place where nobody gives a fuck. No one cares what you drive in Austin, Texas. No one cares what watch you're wearing. In fact, nobody really wears a watch in Austin, Texas.

Yeah.

And if you.

And if you do, we wear necklaces.

Yeah. And no one cares. Right, Right, right. You know how many people have asked me, like, oh, that's so cool. Is that copper? And I'm just like, yeah, it's copper. Because in Austin, no one would ever think to spend that kind of money on a rose gold watch. It's fucking stupid. There is a phone on my. I mean, a watch on my phone.

Yeah.

I don't know. I don't think I've ever looked at that to tell me what time it was. Right. It's so refreshing to be in a place where nobody gives a shit. No one cares if you're wearing Supreme. No one cares if your shoes are Golden Goose. In fact, I would bet 90% of people that live in Austin don't even know what the golden goose tennis shoes are. Don't know what supreme is. Don't know what off white is. And if. Even if they do, they don't care. And they would never spend money on stuff like that. People here spend money on experiences. People here spend money on breaking bread together and. And, you know, hanging out. And it's just. I don't mean to beat up on la. LA gave me everything I wanted and then some.

Yeah.

And I'm grateful for my ability. I never could have built the brands that I built if. If I would have been somewhere else other than New York and la. So I'm really, really grateful for it. And it's the most beautiful state in the Union, and there are some of the most incredible people on the planet. And some of the famous people, by the way, were some of the Most incredible, interesting people on the planet, I bet. But the truth is, a lot of them were really sad and broken and lonely and can't even go outside.

Do you feel like it's because they, like all of us, can fall into this trap? Believe the lie that if I have this much money in my bank account, or if I have this much notoriety or if I get this film contract or whatever it is, if I get the, quote, dream, then at that point, I can be happy? There's that happy once I get there. And then they get there and it's like, oh, you're not happy? There's actually more. Is it. Is it that trap you see that cyclone with people?

It is, but it's more so that nobody can ever truly prepare you for fame because it's the one thing that you can't, like, learn about or experience until you have it. And when you have it, it rips the rug out from under your feet. You can never go to the grocery store again. You can never go to the coffee shop again. You can never go. I mean, some of them come into Sun Life, but they do it with big sunglasses on and hats on. You would never know who they are. And if they do innocently walk in there, even in a place like Malibu, even in a place like Sun Life, people will freak out and walk up and say, can I please have a selfie? Can I please. People start lining up to take pictures of, like, a, you know, whatever. I'm not breaking his anonymity because he's been in there a lot and people have taken pictures with him. But, like a Harry Styles, you know, like, that kid can't come in there and just get a smoothie and. And sit down out front and just, like, chill out and, like, make friends with people and talk about the weather. They can't. They're isolated, they're alone, they're locked up. It. Fame is a prison that no one could ever believe is a prison, but it's a prison. And then you wind up 40 years old or 50 years old, sitting on the edge of your bed on a Friday night, eating fake potato chips made out of mung beans because you can't gain an ounce of body fat because you need to look 20 years younger than you are. And you haven't been in a relationship with a woman who has liked you for being you for so many years that you can't even remember what real intimacy is like, because the truth is, you've become so weird and awkward from all these parasites trying to get at you. That you have shut down emotionally, and now you're that guy sitting alone on your bed at edge of your bed on a Friday night, eating fake fucking potato chips. And I've been there. I've seen it.

Yeah.

Hurts my heart. I don't want that. I don't want anything to do that. I want to go hang out with the dirty hippies and jump in part in spring, and I want to do some hoppe with some cool people and go on a hike and I want to drink some smoothies. And I was being a little bit harsh when I said dirty hippies, but.

You know, I got you.

You know what I mean?

Yeah. I mean, look, the hippies had it right about a lot, lot of things. The whole adage of, like, hippies around the fire saying love is all there is. They were right.

They were.

And I watched Michael Pollan talk about this at a church here in Austin three years ago when he had his book tour, and he was like, platitudes. Platitudes are the things that people love to make fun of. You know? Love is all there is.

Yeah.

Biggest platitude out there.

Yeah.

Yet the truth hides in plain sight because the emperor has no clothes. It's legit like it is. I mean, you should. Dude, this has been one of my favorite podcasts I've ever done.

Thank you.

I've really enjoyed just the way you show up.

Thank you.

And. And your presence and your ability to just get to the heart of the matter. A lot of the things that you've said, if other people said them, I would be like, nah, that person's full of shit. But with your story and the way that you deliver them, it's like. It's this beautiful hope that I have for our media space, because in our media space, I have podcasts with people and they're one way on camera, and then when the camera goes off, they're different.

Yeah.

And I watch myself get sad about that. And I can do the same. Compassion, inquiry. I can say, okay, what is my soul showing me? What is my heart feeling and what is my ego saying? And I think really at the bottom of it all, what I love about you and your work and your message is that even the sun life, your story, does not have to be this lifelong sentence. Your story, the one that you're writing, the one that you tell yourself you can actually be honest and authentic and air out your laundry for people to see, because that's what lets go of the shame. Yeah. That's what discharges all the Shame, because shame is really the part that crushes people's dreams, that makes them not want to share. So it's parting guidance to people that are at any stage of addiction, let's say that they've 10 years an addict or an addict of any kind of. Can you give them some wisdom about dealing with their own shame, maybe the starting places of that and what they might do to learn about themselves, to unpack what shame truly is?

I think for anybody early in recovery, I would get to a 12 step meeting because it feels good to be surrounded by other people that are going through the same shit that you're going through. And although I have a lot of things that I could say about 12 step programs that I don't like, the one thing that I love is people need to understand that when you suffer alongside someone else, it's no longer suffering. So the first time I pushed a sled, which was that collective? Yeah, it was at Collective, there were three other strangers pushing three other sleds.

When you guys were training together. Yeah, yeah.

And first of all, I didn't have a choice. I was in a big group. There was 50 people working out and they were all fancy people, Instagram models and entrepreneurs and the kids that started Super Coffee, you know, these kids that just got like a 500 million dollar valuation for their company that they started a few years ago. There was a lot of fancy people there. I was one of the oldest, if not the oldest. I was one of the least fit people there. I was new, everyone else knew one another and I was really intimidated. And there was some weight on the sled and I remember when I first went to push it, I could barely shove it. And the guy next to me goes, go low. And I'm like, what? He goes up too high. You're pushing it down into the ground. It's turf. Go low. So I got down low and I start to push it. I'm like, oh. I was surprised it like how it started to move and I started to get a little speed and a little confidence and all of a sudden my legs start burning and my ass starts burning and I'm like starting to gasp. And I look over and the same person is like, you know, cracking up, like, holy, this is really hard. Then I look over at the other girl who's now passing me and I like yell out to her, like, hey, it's not a contest, right? She starts cracking up, laughing. She looks back at me, me, and she goes, yes, it is. And she keeps passing me. And all of a Sudden we're all laughing and we're all suffering through this relay race of pushing these sleds. And over the last year of going to Collective all the time and engaging in those types of exercise and doing these group workouts, going to Cal's house and doing them and doing them at collective and at on it a few times, I realized that suffering with other people who are suffering with you, then it's not suffering. So if you start to go to 12 step meetings or other meetings where addicts and alcoholics or people that are, you know, whatever your addiction is, if you can get together with other people that genuinely want to stop and amend their behaviors and live a different way, it takes so much of the pain and so much of the struggle out of it. It really, truly does. So I would say to anybody who's suffering with any type of addiction, get to some sort of. There's Buddhist meetings, there's anti AA or anti 12 step meetings. Like, there's all kinds of meetings. But get together with a community of people that genuinely want to change their lives. Know that you can change. And if you need any proof of it, please look at me and look at my example, right? The problem for me, the problems with the stories of the Tim Ferrisses or the Aubrey's or the Joes or all the people that, like, I really looked up to back when I was, like, broke and hustling and struggling, whatever, like, we all love Gary Vee, but at the end of the day, his family owned a liquor store, a wine store, right? They were doing, I think in the beginning they were doing $3 million a year in sales. $3 million a year in sales is not poverty. It is that if you're selling that much in retail, you're probably making quite a bit of money. The problem for me is I would always find, you know, like, oh, well, fucking.

So it's easy for them.

Yeah, it's easy for them. What about me? Okay, well, it wasn't easy for me. And I didn't go to Stanford and I didn't get granted advisory points in Uber, and I didn't, you know, if someone like me can do it, if someone like me with high school dropout, convicted felon, really struggles with very fundamental, rudimentary, like, simple things that most children can figure out. You know, computer stuff and all that. If someone like me can succeed and find happiness, then anyone can, like, sorry, that's the good news and that's the bad news. Because if that really is the truth, and it is the truth, then there's no excuses. So as I said many times before, and I said it to my, my friend's daughter the other day, I had this friend Gino that's just ripped this beautiful man. And I said, we all get what we want. And she's like, what do you mean? She's like 10. I'm like, we all get what we want. And she's like, I don't understand. I'm like, all right. See Daddy? Ripped, shredded, you know, super fit. Like, I can tell you all day that I want to look like daddy, that I want to have abs and I want to be fit like that. I can tell you that over and over again. And I do say that quite a bit, man. I'm going to get in the best shape and I'm going to have abs and I'm going to look like Primal Soldier and whatever. But the truth is, every night around 7 o', clock, I grab a bag of siete chips. I grab some black licorice. I have these Q colas, these Q sodas that are sweetened with agave rather than than high fructose corn syrup. Rationalize, Minimalize, Justify. Yeah, I've got my huge.

I like the Zevia stevia.

Yeah, I've got my huge chocolates. I've got my mochis in the bottom of the fridge.

You go out, you go all out.

I, I really do. And I'm okay with it. I've made peace with it. But if I say to you over and over again that I want abs and I want to be ripped and I want to look like Primal Soldier or I want to look like Gino, I want to look like Daddy, as I was telling the girl, it's not true. Just because you say it doesn't make it true. It's your actions that are going to define you and ultimately give you the results. There is absolutely nothing wrong with once 7pm hits and my intermittent fasting starts. There's nothing wrong with going and taking some hot water and some lemon and maybe a little bit of cayenne and sipping on that until I get my ass to bed. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's not even that difficult to do because I've done it over and over again. But what do I want? I want to be comfortable. Fucking love siete chips. I fucking love mochi. I love those Q colas and those Q ginger ales. I fucking love them. I love lesser evil popcorn. Right? I love just opening up a fucking bag and putting on some dumbass show on Netflix. And just burying a bag of that popcorn so I get what I want. And I can still delude myself into believing that I want to look like Primal Soldier. But if I want to look like Primal Soldier, then I have to eat and I have to train like Primal Soldier, which I'm unwilling to do. We all get what we want. So you're going to get what you want, Figure out what you want and go get it.

Yeah. So powerful. Khalil, I love this conversation, man.

Thank you, brother.

I really enjoyed so much of the wisdom that you, you brought in as parting guidance as we say goodbye. How do you see wellness? What does it really mean to live your life? Well, it's a question that I think about all the time, and it's really like the genesis for this podcast. So as Wellness Force becomes Wellness Wisdom, what is the wisdom that you have around wellness? How could you define that? If you were to define wellness with your story, with what you represent in the world, with sun life, organics, with. Gosh, we didn't even talk about your yoga practice. Maybe we'll do that on another podcast.

Yeah, of course.

How would you define wellness? What does wellness even mean?

Feeling awesome. Wellness is feeling awesome. And it's not going to be all the time. It's not going to be 24 hours a day. There's going to. The back's going to go out here and there. The knee is going to hurt sometimes, especially as you get older. But in general, if you're avoiding gluten and you're avoiding processed sugar and you're. You are doing your own version of intermittent fasting, even if it ends an hour and a half later than it should, if you're getting up and moving every day, if you're sweating every day, you're getting in a sauna, you're staying hydrated, you're staying well supplemented, you're going to feel good. The basis of that would be figuring out your circadian rhythm and sticking to it and not wavering from that. No matter, no matter what. I don't. I don't care. These guys, J JW's in town, actually the founder of Feel Free. They want to have dinner. I'm like, great, 400pm I don't care. And if you need to do it at 7pm that's wonderful. I will be there with you in spirit. But I'm not going to eat at 7pm Because I know what that means. That means we get there and then people start trickling in around 10 after 7, and then around 7:30, everyone's actually there. And then around 7:40, the waitress finally shows up. And then at 7:50, we end up putting in our order. What. What eating at seven means is eating at at nine. Yeah, I go to bed at nine. If I go out to dinner with people at 7pm, invariably I wake up the next day and I feel like a bucket of wellness for me is feeling awesome on a consistent basis so I can function at my highest level and be most effective and enjoy my life.

Khalil, thank you for coming on the show. I appreciate you, man. Yeah, I appreciate the wisdom you've shared. And tell people where they can get the book. Obviously you can go on Amazon. That's where I got it. Both books. But also tell people what's top of heart for you. There's a lot of places people go to learn about you or to get involved. But what's at the top for you today, right now? Where do you really want your community to go to learn more about you and to get involved with something that you really care about?

It's tough because Instagram is really the main thing and the only thing. Like, I have a Facebook account that's private that I. That I use to punish the people that I went to high school with so they could see how great I'm doing.

I can't get off Facebook quickly enough, Khalil. I'm like, oh. I just. It's pretty bad. Facebook dies. I'm sorry.

It's pretty bad. Instagram is the main tool. And the only reason I'm hesitant to say that is because you got to remember something. Yes, I'm sober, and yes, I'm happy, and yes, I'm successful, and yes, I'm in love and a monogamous, committed, faithful relationship. I got a lot of good stuff going on. But please remember, I'm a human human being just like anybody else. I am very needy. I'm very insecure. I desperately want attention. I'm a deeply flawed man. So you might see my post next Saturday and you might get a lot out of it, and it might be really, really cool. And then, unfortunately, three days later, I might post some dumbass, pretentious pic of me on a private jet going to somebody's private island because I'm desperate and I'm needy and I want people to like me. And I don't have the wherewithal to not fucking do that. Right. I've been told over and over again, don't do that. You're making yourself a target. You're. It's not good for people to see that. But then I've had other people say to me, but you know what, man? Seeing that shit fucking inspires me to get sober and to stay sober. And to know that a guy like you can, can do it, that means that I can do it too. And so I'm going to leave you with this. It's one of the funniest compliments I've ever gotten. If I can even get it, if I can even say it was a compliment. This guy that I helped get sober 12 years ago, he just celebrated his 12th birthday. Every year on his sober birthday, early in the morning, as I'm up early, you post about it. I've been sober two years, I've been sober four years. I'm so, so was it every year, I'm always one of the first comments. And what do I always comment underneath his long speech about how amazing he is and he's sober now. I always write in capitals, you couldn't have done it without me. Which is the number one. No, no, you never say that in 12 set programs. It's, I'm, I'm joking. And it's a personal joke between him and I. On his 10 year sober birthday, I did it again because that's just what I do. I love busting his balls. He called me and he goes, you know what, man? It's true. I'm like, thanks, buddy. And he goes, no, seriously, you need to know something right now. There is no way I ever would have stayed sober if it wasn't for you. And I'm like starting to choke up. I'm like, that is a powerful statement. I don't believe it. I know that it's him, it's God, it's the universe, whatever, but I accepted it and I was like, thanks, man. Why? And he goes, hm. I think honestly, what it comes down to is you showed me that you can still be really flawed, but you can also be sober and be happy at the same time. That's genius. Kind of felt like getting punched in the stomach, but he's like, no, seriously, like the fact that we went to Vegas, the fact that you talk like a truck driver, the fact that you flirt incessantly with someone's grandmother or someone's daughter. Like the fact that you just are who you are, unapologetically, and you got a lot of flaws, but you're still clean and sober for a really long time, that, that made me feel like, well, if he can do it, I can do it. It. That's what I'll leave you with. If I can do it, anybody can do it. There's nothing special about me. And yeah, if you want to follow along on Instagram, great. Sometimes it might inspire you, sometimes it might make your stomach turn.

But what is your Instagram handle?

Just Khalil. Rafati.

Khalil. Rafati.

Okay.

Awesome. Khalil. Everything's in the show Notes. I'm so full. I know. Everybody sitting here with us listening is full, too. And until we see you again, maybe another podcast. The first future to share more wisdom.

Of course.

All wishing you love and wellness. We'll talk to you guys soon. Sa.