Joe Bernstein: Male Insecurities, Losing Weight in Your 30’s And Developing Healthy Life Long Habits, and losing 150 pounds to change his life!

welcome to this episode of the project. And today I have and let's see if I don't put your this as usual, Joe Bernstein? And do we have something that's pretty unique in common? And I think one of those things that we're just talking about that I really want to dive into is your fitness journey and your weight loss journey. And one word that you really hit on that I actually love. And I'd love to make a T shirt out of is I am was a modality agnostic. I love that

Transcript

people, emotional intelligence, life, talk, men, day, understand, learn, emotions, exercise, world, taught, lose, important, relationship, lives, happening, hard, create, crossfit

00:00

You're now listening to the project to the project to the project,

00:05

where we stop at nothing to bring you the right backs on health, fitness and psychology, featuring some of the world's most experienced

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professionals. So you can learn,

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live and win with your hosts make

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dr. D. and

00:21

on my feed these days, everyone's on the whole positivity train. And it's like, dude, yeah, I get it. We all want to be positive. But there's enough you get resiliency out of negativity, you get these things, there has to be an equal balance in life. There's a Yang, and there's a Yang,

00:37

you know, our father's generation and our grandfather's generation, you went to school, you worked hard, you got a job with a company, you stay with that company for 20 3040 5060 years, you had a pension, there was loyalty, you know, like you knew the path of the world has changed. There's no longer a lot of longevity within corporations. With the explosion of the internet with the explosion of the opportunity for gig economy. I see a lot of guys these days, late 20s, early 30s, mid 30s going, I want to rewrite the way I do work.

01:08

I think a lot of men maybe worry about making changes because they are correlating it with losing their masculinity. If I ask them to be in touch with their feelings, there's a lot of resistance because they're assuming I am a woman, so they have to be vulnerable in front of me. But also they think this is kind of stripping them of their masculinity.

01:30

All this and more in today's episode. Hey, everybody, welcome to this episode of the project. And today I have and let's see if I don't put your this as usual, Joe Bernstein? And do we have something that's pretty unique in common? And I think one of those things that we're just talking about that I really want to dive into is your fitness journey and your weight loss journey. And one word that you really hit on that I actually love. And I'd love to make a T shirt out of is I am was a modality agnostic. I love that dude. I absolutely love that. So tell everybody a little bit about yourself. And then let's dive right into that word you use right there and why?

02:08

Sure, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thanks for having me on the show. I'm glad to be getting international here today. It's super cool. You know, we're all like locked down to a certain extent, different areas, depending on where you are. In the US. Most places are locked down unless you're Florida, but uh, it's like a free for all. But I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to share with your community and their listeners, my experience, why I do what I do, because I found myself being just a massive consumer in life. Yeah. And what that means to me is I basically believed all of the beliefs, the values, the ideas, from our dominant culture, from my family from like, the school systems, what they told me, I base my identity and my possibility for what life could be on external factors. You know, just like a lot of people are basing how they see themselves today on external feedback and always needing approval from others. I created my whole life around what the world told me I should be. Yep. So I'm a guy that has two amazingly loving parents, you know, like grew up in the suburbs of DC middle class, we went to Disney World, that kind of stuff like there was never any lack financially or materially or from a comfort perspective. Both my parents love them to death. But still, to this day, love means fear and scarcity and stress that it's like stress over money and time, all the time. And my mom is always stressed over physical well being like nothing safe, you know, where you go to see if you got to always run a doctor, like there's always a million things to be afraid of. So I combined that accidentally, of course, as a young dude, with beliefs that I got from being heavy, I was just heavy and overweight. I was like a chubby kid at three or four years old. People tease you adults treat me differently kids pick on you. And I just believe this is who I am. And I have some learning disabilities as the least the US school system would have called it back in the 80s. When we were growing up, I now is just being very differently abled or differently intelligent when it comes to how the mind works. But I had all these things that put me in a box like your scarcity mindset, here's believing you're not a good student. Here's believing your lesson because you're fat slow and you don't look good. And by the way, all that means you'll probably never have a great career because you're not good in school. And you'll probably never have a great love life because no no one will ever find you attractive, right? So I just like a lot of people I consumed what the world told me I was supposed to be. And I didn't try very hard and try very hard in school didn't try very hard. Women didn't try very hard until I found some work that I loved, like failed out of college found myself all the sudden finding work I really enjoyed. We flash forward at a certain point in my 20s like 240 pounds because I just saw my sorry, 340 pounds because I just saw myself as a guy who would always be overweight and continue to become more of We're obese. And I found myself in a retail career for a company I love but I thought like retail, nothing against retail. It takes an emotional badass to be a good retail leader. It really does that like professional 100 mental physical gender bought your feet 4050 hours a day, even if you're not like active per se, so much love to people in retail, but I thought that was the best I could ever do. And I married the second person I ever kissed. Like, just thinking like, anything I get is the best I could do and nothing I get. It's worth risking, it's never worth going after anything more. So I'll find myself like in this life. That was okay. You know, I'm making Okay, money working retail. I'm running multimillion dollar stores I excelled at that. I'm married, which I never thought I would have would happen we have a comfortable life we're traveling we can afford stuff because we're you know, two incomes, no kids. But luckily for me lifestyle apartment, like I literally got to about 31 years old, had a health crisis with a kidney stone, I realized I didn't want to go after my district manager's job. So here I am 10 years into a career only 31 years old and realizing Alright, I'm at the glass ceiling for this career. And right around the same period of time, within a couple months of realizing all this and having the health crisis with the kidney stone surgery when I'm 31 and all this stuff. My at the time life walks in the door. It's like look on one foot out the door, this relationship sucks. I'm about out, you know. So I just had all of the limitations. All the ways that I played in scarcity lived in stress, limited my opportunity for myself, just come up right now face on one time. And frankly, what happened was, when we finally ended things that marriage ended, she split up with me. I had already been losing some weight. I had learned to get off standard American diet. I was cooking for myself, I was shopping at farmer's markets. And here I am a guy who's like, used to being over 300 pounds since I'm a teenager. And I'm like 270 pounds. And I already see well wait a second. I wasn't dieting, I wasn't doing a bunch of hardcore exercise. I could lose this much weight. Maybe there's an opportunity for me to transform my body. Right. So what ended up happening was I just got inspired to learn about body love relationship. And I transformed everything dude, just real quick. I

07:15

just gotta cut you off for a second. So in your teens, you were around 300 something pounds two. Oh, yeah. And you were that way. Like, I'm assuming most of your life well into your early 30s. Yeah. And that's a huge step. Man. I gotta commend you on that brother. I mean, that's like, because a lot of people will kinda, you know, they'll either go towards the bypass route, you know what I mean? Like, I know a lot of guys that hit that were like that they went a bypass route. And some guys just gave up and said, Hey, this is just me. This is how I'm always gonna be so mad. Dude, I tip my cap to you, man. That's friggin awesome, man. That's absolutely amazing. Thank you. Congratulations.

07:52

Thank you. I you know, I gloss over it a little bit at times, because the weight loss isn't the most important thing. To me, the most important thing is how we transform the way we see ourselves and what lives we create. Right? Yeah, so thank you for that, thanks for slowing me down. It was there was literally a point where I started to learn how to eat better. And because I was no longer eating just like fast food and crap from the grocery from the gas station, right? And mall, you know, mall, food, court food, chick fil A's and all that delicious stuff. cinnabons, I just started to lose weight naturally. So it's almost like, I didn't believe I could ever lose weight. And then I realized, wait a second, it's actually not that hard to slowly make one lifestyle change at a time. So yeah, I dropped over 150 pounds in the course of about a year and a half. And I know that's really huge. And a lot of people just their jaw drops when they hear about that. But for me, what was really changing was how I interacted with my whole body, how I interacted with my nervous system and how I handled stress, what I believed was possible for me romantically sexually, you know, dating wise, and socially to, you know, always kind of been the introverted quote, unquote, which was mostly just because I was socially awkward, and it took a lot of energy to try and like fit everyone's mold of who they thought I should be. So let's talk a little bit about I know you want to talk about the weight loss. But anyway, I wanted to share like, that's why I do what I do. I was a consumer of what the world taught me. And I decided all of a sudden, you know, what, in the face of tragedy loss, real real real life failure, quote, unquote, hey, if I don't take a swing for the fences, now, I might die having lived a life where I never really tried. And so you know, I say that because people can be in any boat. People can have a multimillion dollar business and a beautiful family and they can have all kinds of things literally, they could be in a boat and still realize they really weren't going after what they wanted in life to me. So that's what I'm all about. My work is about helping people go after the life that lights in the bucket. So to me fitness and health and relationship with food and body even eating psychology, that lights me the fuck up. So I know you want to talk about that. Let's talk about that a little bit.

09:59

Oh, yeah, man. I Like I want to jump into, you know, I mean your story is absolutely amazing and people overcomplicate the hell out of weight loss sometimes Yeah. And you know, they try all these crazy fad diets and the fat foods and the fucking shakers and I don't know what I saw meal replacements in a fucking can I'm like, What the hell is this we've resorted to having meals and it can like what happened to good old carrots potatoes, you know? Like, why have they damn potatoes, potatoes are so goddamn Good for you. And so our sweet potatoes and broccoli and cauliflower. And there's so many vegetables out there that if you really want to drop a few pounds, and I tell everybody, everyone that ever talks to me, they're like, yeah, I really want to lose my stomach. I want to lose this. So first thing I tell them is do just stop eating everything out of the bag. Anything that has a container, just stop eating it. No, I guarantee you, you'll lose like 15 kilos or 10 kilos, you know, about 20 pounds will come off. Yep. So easy if you just do the simplest thing. And that's what you did. And I love that you did that. And then you started to see the change. And you're like, Hey, I'm onto something here. So did you start I mean, a lot of people will start having the water in terms of exercising, or they'll do like vigorous exercise for two hours. And it tapers off right away within two weeks. They can't even handle it anymore. Right? So how did you start your fitness and health journey, your fitness journey more or less of that side of the health spectrum?

11:24

Yeah. So the fitness side of it came on really slow. Actually, the fitness side of it was was almost like secondary. So you know, what happened for me was I had really changed how I was eating, because my ex wife, she was a big into the environment and saving the whales and saving the trees and all that stuff. Like and this was back, you know, 2005 when we met, she was way ahead of the curve. And essentially, I really enjoyed what she brought to my life when it came to learning how to eat local how to eat sustainable. And that was tremendous. For me, I dropped a bunch of weight, the exercise component for the first year or so was literally just walking my dog. Now that being said, I decided like anything I do, I'm the kind of guy who does it pretty hard. Yeah, so I decided that hey, like we adopted a dog. And we adopted the kind of dog that I think needs to be exercised a lot like a breed that a lot of people consider aggressive. We had a pitbull, and she was the sweetest thing in the world. But I was like, I'm gonna train and I'm going to exercise, I'm going to feed this dog, well, if we're gonna have a dog, we're gonna do well. So when we did walks, all of a sudden went from a guy who was not really doing anything physical except standing on a retail sales floor for 40 or 50 hours a week to deciding that I was going to have a vigorous like a very fast paced, high energy walk 30 minutes a day, or actually twice a day. That was huge. I mean, that literally got me from Gosh, when we got the dog was probably 315 320 stilled, wow, down into like the two, like I said, 260s to 70s or so when my ex and I split up

13:02

nice, man. I love it, because we preach it on the show all the time, especially Dr. dinko. When she says you have to take small steps in order to initiate change in life so that you don't crash and burn. And dr. D, you could dive into that a little bit about the small steps and I love throwing her right in the boat when the segment you got to get the psychology in that part.

13:24

Well, it's true. It's because I feel like whenever you tell people to do something major, they become so overwhelmed. You know, like with my clients, one of the things I say to them, you have to want to be besides psychotherapy, you really got to walk 30 minute, you know, every day and you don't have to, you know, belong to a gym and you don't have to spend all this money, you could do it anywhere, you can park your car far away in a mall and just walk. And I feel like when you give them simple things like this, it makes more sense to them then to be able to put this rigorous No, you got to start with an hour, you know of this exercise, you got to join a gym, you got to be able to go and you know, participate. And I mean, even for me when I was planning to lose weight I hated when I had to go and someone says no, you got to go to the gym, you got to exercise you got to do CrossFit, like Maddie is trying to get me to do

14:16

I say try, try if you have a good coach, or a good instructor, I have a 63 year old man in my class now. And I thought he was gonna ditch out after the first class but I scaled everything down to him so easy where his burpee was knee on knee onto the ground, hand on hand up and to all fours and just doing it in that you know, just managing it and he goes, wow, you don't have me jumping off a boxes and whatever. I'm like, Where are you doing that? He goes the aerobic class. I'm like, dude, you're 60 man, you shouldn't be doing that shit. Like, like, you want to save your knees at this point, not destroy them. And yeah, I think it's really important that I threw that out there. So no one gets me wrong about CrossFit or Any exercise modality for that instance, everything should be taken step by step.

15:05

And to be honest, I think people need to understand that whatever you do, as long as you're moving at first, that's very, very important. Someone that hasn't exercised for a long time and hated to exercise, you know? And then you suddenly say to them, no, you got to do it, you got to do it three, four times a week, and you got to do it this time. I feel like, you know, I get overwhelmed. Can you imagine people that are struggling with depression and anxiety in regards to the people I work with? So I think walking your dog was wondering, dr.

15:32

D, this is my segment here. This is my I'm going back to Joe this one. Let's go back to the last shutdown the psychology, right, because we're

15:48

coming back to intelligence.

15:56

So we're going there, because this is so important. This was a huge part of my journey that I like to know actually deconstruct, for people. And it's a huge part of what actually, I have people hire me all the time. They're like, well, I talked to a nutritionist, and I talked to a therapist, and I have a personal trainer. And like, it only ever works as long as I'm working with them. Or unfortunately, with the case of some nutritionist, a lot of it is what attrition experts out there that are operating on really old information. They're not they're not incorporating the psychology of how we eat and how we engage, that didn't get a lot of results. So I get this all the time. And that's literally the thing we do, I started new clients to this, that there's two things that are actually going to destroy your transformation. And this goes for anything career professional, you know, like personal love life, physical body speed and shame. Like outright, again, sorry, Maddie, we're going their speed and makes you try and do too much to try and do too much too fast, you will not get long term, sustainable change, and therefore you will lose whatever result you create. I'd rather help someone lose 50 pounds over two years, because they've integrated slow lifestyle changes that they can keep. And they can use their own mind and their own intuition. Rather than, you know, some guys 12 step system that works for some people and doesn't work for others. So I'm always trying to slow people down to know that real change happens slowly over time. And then the other thing is the shame, right? So if I let's say I'm like, Hey, I'm coming from Shane, because I have an exercise in two years, and I put on 15 pounds. And you know, I'm okay. But at the end of the day, I don't want to look like this or feel like this. My pants are getting tight. So I decide what do I do? I sign up for a 5am bootcamp. six days a week. Oh, yeah.

17:43

Everybody, everyone does it. You're 100% on the money. Personally, I didn't do that. I had a, you know, a weightlifting background. I had a baseball background, I had a soccer background. So when I was 34, and I went into my weight loss journey, I was like, Alright, I'm gonna go to the gym. I was doing my own bro split, I wasn't seeing real results. And then it was the first time I bought into a cookie cutter program. And it worked for me, because it was an athlete's program. It was shit that I love to do anyways. And now it was just put together in a plan and did that for 90 days. And I just went off and started doing my own thing. And I think you hit the nail right in the head, man.

18:19

And I you know, and I want to say that a lot of nutritionist I think, and also health experts, I'm sorry, but they in a way they make you feel shameful, you know, yes, if you're the person that haven't really implemented any exercising, or I mean, with Maddie, and maybe you Joe, you're always an active person. I wasn't, you know, I didn't grow up in a family where they encouraged you to do exercising. I came from a Middle Eastern background where a girl's job is to learn how to help her mom at home and go to, you know, go to school. So I was never I didn't I don't know how to swim. I don't know how to, you know, ride a bike, we didn't do any of this stuff. And then suddenly, when you get a little older and you feel like I want to change and someone is saying to you No, you can't believe you've never moved, you've never exercised. Like when people make these kind of comments. You just feel like you don't want to deal with it. Because if you fail, and you're gonna feel more bad, I don't want to feel more bad. I might as well just be fat and stay.

19:17

You know, that's why you got to ease into things. Because when you set yourself up to do so much that you can't keep it you know, you can't won't continue it, you'll be what happens and you're even more in shame, right? Or you're continuing to show up just because you don't want your show up hurt and CrossFit class because you don't want the rest of the people to think something's wrong or something's up or you're quitting, so that you hurt yourself, right? So we got to get rid of speed. We got to get rid shame when it comes to anything from CrossFit to saving a relationship to starting a business certain company. And it's not that you need to necessarily avoid certain things. It's just a matter of knowing where we're coming from my my moving towards what I love will excite me will feel good and am I Setting up multiple layers of benefit, right? So like, example being you know, let's say I'm working with someone who does want to change the way they connect with food and their body, as we make changes in my take two, three months for them to see any sort of real shift in the way they look, or in the number on the scale. Sometimes we're changing bodies. I mean, you guys know this, but we're sort of changing body composition, oh, yeah. Or, or in a relationship, sometimes we're changing our behaviors. But our partner is skeptical, deep down, they're not sure yet, if this is real, so they don't really change, they don't really come with you yet. It might take months of these changes to see results in a relationship with someone's weight or someone's body. So we have to orient towards the other reasons, the other benefits that we're making a change. So for me, what happened eventually was I started going through that divorce that I talked about. And I for the first time saw myself as someone who could be physically attractive, because I'd already lost weight, I thought, maybe I can lose more weight. Maybe I'm a someone who doesn't have to be resigned to the idea of being three to 400 pounds his whole life. And then what I decided to do was to learn more about our bodies and the nervous system. And once I started learning about that, well, then it made sense for me, why am I going to go do high intensity interval training on a frickin treadmill? Right? Like, why am I going to do all this hard bodyweight workouts because I eventually got really into, you know, hit cardio and real basic physical lifting. And that really helped me shred a lot of weight was doing that kind of intense workout. But for me, I had to access the fact that it was actually about training my nervous system, it was actually about learning to go and do hard things. It was the mindset work and the psychology of it. And the identity shift of like, No, I'm a guy who can go do hard stuff at five in the morning, when I see something I want, I'm going to go after it, I'm going to cut away excuses, that became more important to me than the actual weight loss. In fact, I was down to 220, which is a good 120 pounds of weight loss, before I even started to think, wait a second, am I actually going to get past 200 pounds ever in my life. And that was a first that was literally when I said when I said a weight loss goals already 120 pounds down, because I saw, oh my gosh, I'm so much calmer. I'm so much more positive. I'm so much more confident. And all these neat things I wanted to learn about dating and relationship and social life. I could throw in a podcast, I can go to the gym, I could go on a run, I could integrate mantra work and affirmations and gratitude practice and in between my reps and lifting and stuff. So I could do all this transformational stuff around my mind and my relationships and the way I saw myself as part of the fitness routine. So I made that as part of the system rather than the opposite, where like, I'm gonna lose weight, and I'm gonna get confident and I'm gonna find love. No, no, we're gonna do the opposite, and maybe lose weight. So I just shared a lot there. Let me slow down and let it bounce off. Y'all

22:55

know, and I think it makes sense. The other thing I think what you're trying to say is that you found out what works for you best way should you start better. I think a lot of times people think that exercise is very different from, you know, meeting your partner or being with your partner, or like eating like they're not, they're not separate variables, they can all work together. If you know, and it doesn't matter, you can start with losing weight, and then meet the person that you really want. And feel like it's a good partner, or you could be in a relationship and have that relationship motivate you also to make changes in your other aspect of your life. So I think we need to start, I think a lot of times we compartmentalize things all in one thing, as of they're like, separate, but they're not nothing. That's what you're saying. And also doing what works for you. You know, for me, I would never sign up for any class that starts to five in the morning. I know I'm not a morning person. So when I used to, like, you know, tease myself, Oh, no, I'm going to go to aerobics class when I was in college at six o'clock. Well, they did. I made it several couple of times, and then I stopped because that's not me. I know when my time is to work out. I know when I like to schedule my classes to teach. I know when I'm going to see my patient, you have to really get to know who you are, what works for you and stop being unrealistic. I think people a lot of times when they're starting to lose weight, or want to have this like healthy lifestyle. They're not very realistic with themselves.

24:21

Right. Right. And that's why, you know, modality agnostic. Yeah, we were talking about earlier, Maddie, it's like, but

24:27

I love the fact that you talked about HIIT training. And then you talked about training your central nervous system. And I think a lot of people don't understand that. And it's such an overlooked thing. And I think when you get into your mid 30s, you start to understand your body more, and you start to understand these things a lot more versus in your 20s or early 30s, for instance. And yeah, you know, I've had people that were overweight, and you know, they've come to me and they're like, Yeah, but what about this and what about that and what about hit, so I say okay, you really want hit that's fine. But we can only do that for a specific period of time, usually like three to four weeks, two times a week Max, because this is going to tax your central nervous system, and it is going to absorb all your energy out for the week. And it's going to leave you with like an exercise hangover. And when I said an exercise hangover, that's when like, couple clients were like, oh, okay, alright, now I kind of understand that. And then they're like, Alright, you know, they would look at a workout I would give them and it would be like 20, wind sprints for 15 minutes, you know, Sprint, 50 meters, walk 50 meters. And I knew that was all they could handle. And they were like, What is this, it's only a 15 minute workout. I said, Yeah, this is, you know, middle of the week workout, that's all you need, then you're going into strength training the next day, you know, we want to build muscle, and we're going to hit some of that brown fat, you know, that visceral fat that a lot of people talk about, but we can't throw out everything at once at your body, it's just going to go into system overload. And I tried to explain the CNS, but most people, it goes over their head. And I love how you said I had to train my central nervous system, because it is so overlooked in the weight loss journey. And HIIT training is Oh my God, I want to shoot myself in someone else's head. Because you can do that only so much until your body adapts. And I'm sure at some point, you might have seen that and had to switch gears into more of a strength program. Oh, yeah, you talk about that a little bit. I mean, because people always go down that route, then they'll do hit for a month. And then they're like, oh, why is the weight not coming off? And it's exactly like CrossFit, they'll lose a bunch of weight that it will stop. And it's like, well, dude, your body's adapted to it, you need to switch what you're doing?

26:35

Well, you know, that's something that's really important too, is what I need to do is I needed to adapt exercise to my life. So I'm not a parent yet working on it. And I don't have a huge amount of responsibilities. But many people do. What I did have at the time that I was starting my kind of fitness life was I ran retail stores. And so what that meant was one day, I might be going in at one o'clock and coming home at 10pm. And then the next day, I might be going at 8:30am and coming home at five and then I had at that time I was really working on developing my social and dating life too. So I wanted to make sure I had the right timing to go and go to meetups and go to happy hours and do all these things to practice all the great stuff. I was learning and all these wonderful books for men about how to transform our lives and understand our emotions and be more attractive with the ladies. And so you know, I I had to adapt to my life. So for me, it was important to not just do like HIIT workouts I had to have had to have what's available to me. So if I had a morning shift, I wasn't going to the gym. I was working on a home I was doing like a mile and a half run. I was doing some bodyweight workout, some strength workouts. I found a couple dumbbells at the like the goodwill which is like thrift store out here. Yeah, you know, I found like a 1515 pounders, 25 pounders, I hadn't enough to do what I needed to do at home. And then I started to really practice a lot of other things I would do. I was hiking a lot during that time, like hiking on the weekends or hiking on a day off was really important to me. Nowadays. What's really important is again, I don't like to be stuck in one thing. You know, at one point A few years ago, I was doing the orange theory, but I was also doing a lot of yoga. And then I was going on longer jogs right in the past week. I've hiked I've mountain bike, I've grappled bike, I rode bikes, I've done yoga, I've done a home bodyweight workout, you know, a couple home bodyweight workouts, it's important to mix things up. Also, because a lot of us get stuck in this idea where we have to do one thing we have to master it. And then what ends up happening is you compare yourself to others who have been doing it longer, or you lose interest, because there's not variety, and begin helping people find variety. And all these various things, train the nervous system differently. 100%. So we talk about training the mind and the nervous system. Often you want to take whatever people are into, and you want to switch the energy a little bit, right. So I just started this new client today I mentioned. I don't know if I mentioned this, but one of my clients, they're really heavy guys. They've been successful in career because they've relied on the power of their mind. But what that has meant is when life is challenging when relationships get hard when they're struggling with their health, when they want to make a career shift. They try to think their way out of everything, right? They just they're all we call it overthinking or anxious, like analyzing intellects, intellectualizing everything. My work to help them drop the armor and get lit up is helping them aligned head heart and guts. It's I call it so we got to slow people down, get them into the body, even for athletes, people who've been working out their whole life. Sometimes we're not that embodied when it comes to our intuition and our emotions. We're going to slow people down we're going to mix things up. This guy he's he's like real estate agents all over the city. He does really well he's thinking a Middle East answering a million texts at a time. So actually He said to him, I want you to stop some of your workouts this week and at least three times, I want you to go on a really slow walk, you know, around the block. And by the way, don't take your phone because your phone's going to distract you. So I want this guy to train his nervous system to move more slowly in space, and physical space. So then when he's in the middle of a hard conversation with his wife, with, you know, he actually works with his family, their real estate team, that's family, where there's, you know, in the conversation with his family and conversation with a client, he has that body memory of like, Oh, I can actually slow down, I can actually get present, I don't need to rush through this, I don't need to blast through this. So that that is really important training the nervous system and training the mindset to be able to understand different speeds, different energies at different times. And we can do that in all kinds of ways. And physical fitness is a great, it's a great tool for that it's a great tool for helping us understand our emotions, our bodies, our nervous systems, how we respond to pressure, you know, when we, when we're likely to quit, when we make commitments to ourselves or not. So I'm often help you helping people use embodiment or exercise to really understand themselves and to shift their energy at a whole different level.

31:15

You know, while you were talking, I was thinking that, you know, this client who is used to like making money and who is used to be in, you know, using his mind to, you know, to provide for his family, I think for men, a lot of times I mean, I even tell my students that I feel bad for men, because for men, they've always been brought up that that your purpose in life is to be a provider. How much money I mean, in this country, people ask you, how much money do you make? Where do you work? Yeah, what is your job? The

31:44

first question to ask when you're gonna get married by the family is how much money do you make? What's your degree? And it's like, are you want me to walk in with my CV and my bank stub.

31:54

And that's important for them. But I think that's here, it kind of like makes men identify only with their capability of producing financially. So I think that when you work with, you know, I mean, I don't know what, what your experience has been. But it's like, when you're trying to help a man understand that there are beyond just providing that you also have emotions, that you also can express them that you need to this download or unload this masculinity or this, you know, when you are working with, you know, to improve your lifestyle, I think it's so hard for men to do for women, it's easier for us to like, you know, get in touch with our emotions, to have more diarrhea, to talk to our girlfriends and express to say that I'm depressed. But for men, I think that is just like another life when you tell them slow down. It's not just about, you know, being a provider, that they are another aspect of you.

32:49

Yes. So I love that you said that. And I think this is universal. But it sounds like it's pretty intense there and Guede, that it is universal, we have been taught to create our identity around how smart we are, how well we perform what our titles are of money we make. And that is actually something that, you know, in many ways men have run the world, we've had a lot of the power, if you will, and a lot of the financial power and political power. So in many ways men and masculinity have done this to ourselves, we put ourselves in a small box. And the interesting thing is the world is asking everyone to change over the last four or five, six decades, the feminine, and women and people of the world, even non binary people now in the world are going, Hey, we're not going to be trapped in these boxes that we've been put in anymore. We want out we want more. Now, men have been asked to change but we are not the ones who are coming from desire to change. We're the ones who have been kind of like told we have to change. But the truth is, there's so much more depth to our human experience. When we can embrace more of the emotional reality of our lives. We can prioritize relationships, when we realize that we actually don't need to be working 24 seven, to have a fulfilling life and to be valuable in the world. So we're actually being invited right now a lot of people are like, oh, everyone's got you know, everyone's beating up men right now. Like everyone is hating on men right now. It's not okay to be a man.

34:13

Yeah, because you guys have privilege beat up on you.

34:19

So I would actually challenge everyone just like I challenge my clients to go from, you know, part of going from consumer to creator is looking at obstacles, challenges, looking at being called out looking at criticism, looking at feedback, looking at problems, and being able to say, Okay, I'm not going to deny the pain I might be angry might be sad, because it's happening. But how am I going to use this as a catalyst for the most the deepest transformation, the deepest change, so like men right now, we're getting the finger pointed at us, because it's time it's time to actually learn to enjoy our lives more and in doing so, we will become much better providers much better protectors because we'll be proud Not just financially, but we're providing relationally and emotionally and from a bigger picture of well being perspective, and will be will be provided plenty opportunity to actually frickin slow down to actually relax to actually receive all the love that children and women are trying to give us, you know, these days, so that we were not good at taking in, we're not good at receive 100%. So there's just a huge opportunity right now for men to grow and change. But as you said, you know, dr. D, it's like, we have not been taught that there's value here. So within the course of a generation, the whole world is kind of being flipped on us. And it's for our benefit. It's just hard for us to see it sometimes.

35:40

So when you're talking about unpacking masculinity, is that what you're referring to?

35:45

Yeah, well, I think it's really important for men to understand a few things, how they've been taught, when it comes to how they show up with their own emotions, what have we been taught about emotions, and, and because at the end of the day, they're one of our greatest allies, or one of our greatest tools, one of our greatest assets for getting what we want in this life, whether it's creating income, or creating connection, or actual emotions, and learning the message behind the emotion, really valuable. But additionally, we have to look at what we've been taught as far as the framing of who we're supposed to be as a man, right? Because the world is affording us a lot more opportunities these days to be more liberated. We don't necessarily have to fit in the box anymore. But what that means there's a void unless you've examined, how do I want to show up as a man? What are some of the old beliefs that I was taught in the previous generation that I did? And I want that I like that I'm not going to throw away the baby with the bathwater. You know, what is it that I have the opportunity to develop in myself? How do I get to show up? Right? It's like, I think this is really relevant with there's a huge shift in how we show up from our from actual career perspective. These days, Matt and I were talking about this before we got on, you know, our father's generation and our grandfather's generation, you went to school, you worked hard, you got a job with a company, you stay with that company for 20 3040 5060 years, you had a pension, there was loyalty, you know, like you knew the path. And things were in some ways easier, or the world has changed. There's no longer a lot of longevity within corporations, they don't look at people as real resource anymore, they treat us like, you know, commodity a lot of time. And so what's happening as well, with the explosion of the internet, with the explosion of the opportunity for gig economy, there's some negative impact, some great impacts. But I see a lot of guys these days, late 20s, early 30s, mid 30s going, I want to rewrite the way I do work, maybe I don't need to make a lot of money for these next few years of my life, while I go figure out the work that I want to do that's going to help the world the work that I want to do that's more aligned with my values, the work that I want to do, that I'm really passionate about. And there's some energy, a lot of energy right now saying go make go create for yourself. 100% No, create your own income. Right? So what's happening is we've been given a lot of opportunity, and it's time to look at how do I want to be in this world is stability, and safety and comfort financially, the most important thing to me these days, where do I get to choose that freedom and a liveliness and adventure and excitement and healing and well being and you know, cultural consciousness, whatever it may be, are those the things I prioritize? I remember the day where I realized, I'd rather be sleeping on someone's couch, going after my dream of helping other men transform their lives in the way I do, if that's what it takes. Then being in the comfy condo and buying the new car and doing the nice vacations, I knew it was like, hey, in my mid 30s, people are gonna say, Hey, he's either a failure and a screw up because he now has basically no income. And he started over in his mid 30s. He didn't get it right in the beginning, or I could be where I am now. I'm 39. I'm five and a half years into doing the thing. I love working for myself, because I was willing to take the risk and say, You know what, I don't need to have all the markers of success anymore, that make me look like a man. Same thing is true in relationships, we get to decide how do we want to show up in our relationships these days, right? We get to look at this all across the board and choose. So it's less about dismantling toxic patriarchy and toxic masculinity. That's for the work of collective liberation. That's for our work to help women and children and non binary folks to be more safe. But for ourselves, it's about creating what we want. It's about deciding how we want to live for however many generations, however many decades we have left and going that route no matter what the previous generation told us were supposed to do.

39:38

I love it. And as a dad, like honestly, like when I had my son that's when I had a an enlightenment into my life. And I you know, I tell dr. D and I've talked about it on the show before I read a book called The Four Agreements by Don Ruiz. Yeah, have you read that book? That book is amazing. And it changed my life and one of the things was not to tell a lie, you know, to tell the truth, you know, to tell absolute truth. That was a big thing for me. Because I, you know, grown up as a teenager like, I used to lie like a rock, you know, little white lies, nothing too bad. But more importantly, when I read that book I had my son, I got in touch with my emotions got in touch with my feelings. And I talked about it on the show a couple episodes ago with dr. D, that I had a huge amount of guilt during the CrossFit open. I was doing my warm ups to one of the open workouts. I just started bawling. I just started sobbing like a baby do an inch worms. And you know, I told one of my friends and one of my buddies didn't get it at all. He was just like, over his head, like, Oh, you were crying. Like you're telling me there's why. And then one of my other buddies is like, yeah, I could take that you're, you know, you're in touch with your emotions. That's cool. You know, that's something that's really cool. You don't get that a lot. And it's something that I think every guy needs to learn at our age, especially because you grew up in the same error as me. wherever you like. Shut up. Stop crying. Yeah. What are you doing crying? You just got hurt a little bit? Yeah, it's like, dude, I have a broken arm. What are you doing telling me to stop crying? Like, My arm hurts. I'm gonna cry. someone dies. I'm gonna cry. Yeah, I remember when my brother passed away. I had one of my uncle's say, Don't cry, you shouldn't shed a tear. And I'm like, Are you fucking kidding me? My brother died and you don't want me to cry? Are you insane? Like, this is an emotion that I have to get out. And I love that you're talking about this and that you're trying to push forward in your practice, too. And, you know, I mean, what are some of the things that you see wrong with our generation right now? And because there's two sides of the spectrum, there's mean you Yeah, which we kind of fit into that pool right now of where enlightened were understanding our emotions? Sure. Then there's that other side that dr. D hates when it pops out for me, where it's the you know, I still use it with my son, if he's crying over something that I think is just, you know, him just having an emotional day. And whenever I'm like, dude, cut it out. You didn't even hurt yourself. Let's talk about what's really going on. Right? And you know, and he told me today, he's like, yeah, Daddy, the dog, just Rufus gets a little more attention than me. And I was like, so that's why we're having all these outbursts, because we're training the dog. So I get it, you know, I totally get it. And once we had that discussion, his meltdowns have been a lot less. And he's been more understanding. And I think that's where we understand things now. But the other group of guys still don't get it. So what are some of the things that you still see wrong with our generation and the generation that's growing up right now?

42:34

Yeah, that's a really interesting question. My mind wants to immediately talk about everything. That's right. You know, here's what I see. I see a lot of people that don't know how to integrate and create real change in their lives, from all of the new information and new ways of being we have access to. So like, the way the way I talk about this is, I see that there's this new segment of like, the personal growth junkie, they'll read all the books, you know, the Bernie brown and Simon Sinek, and Malcolm Gladwell. And, and then maybe some of the, you know, more kind of interspace stuff that if it's forgotten, no more Mr. Nice Guy, Robert Glover, way of the superior man, David. They're reading and they're listening to the health and fitness podcast and looking at the entrepreneurial podcast, and they're stuck consuming. Yeah, they're not actually doing the work to create the changes in their life. They, they're still operating like the student, as I say, which is, well, if I learn enough, then I'll change right? Well, not necessarily, just because we have all this information available to us. And it's like, the end thing to do now is to learn a lot more about emotions and learn more about spirituality and learn more about health and, you know, get pedicures and do detoxes. And it's like, we have to actually do the hard work of creating change in the way that we show up in our behaviors and our relationships and the way we see the world and make big choices that allow us to align with our values. So that there's a bit of a split, I see people who are really interested in learning about new ways of being, but they're not they don't know how to take the action to create change. To me, that's an over intellectualization of humanity, of being a whole human, if you will. So that's one thing. The other thing that really shows up for me that I think is really hard right now is the huge, like black and white way that we go about things. So oh my gosh, I went I went to the spiritual retreat, or like I went to an Alaska ceremony, whatever and now all of a sudden, I want to jump off the deep end and make my whole life about meditation and about ecstatic dance and, and you know, I'm going to go and live in the intention of living Kumbaya.

44:48

Man, you're preaching to the choir though, like

44:52

so we hear it so much on this show. I love it. So

44:56

So which by the way, I do believe it has value I've had I've done Several of these ceremonies, it's great. But at the end of the day, the one thing I see really happening is people are jumping into all this new age way of being. And they're not checking in with doing it in a way that really makes meaning to them. They're like playing the park. Well, now I'm like the hippy, spiritual, personal growth guy. And so all of a sudden, they completely like change their life, and they lose their edge.

45:22

100% or that, or the

45:24

guys who are like, Nah, I'm just staying committed to whatever my grandpa taught me. I'm going to kick the dog. I'm gonna drink Budweiser, you know, I'm talking about my emotions, and all this. So what I see this, I see people going way too far, either holding on to the old ways of being from previous generations. And acting like, Look, if I was taught this, there's nothing wrong with me. And there's nothing wrong, toxic masculinity doesn't exist. Everyone else is just complaining. And there's the people who are going way far they're not examining their own beliefs are just, they're supposed to do that to be a good, nice, safe, conscious woke dude. Right? So my challenge is, find what's right for you. There's no need to lose your edge to lose what's good about your masculinity, to lose what's good about the hardcore shit that grandpa taught you, you can be powerfully strong, and bold, and risk taking and courageous. And you can be open hearted, you can be emotional, you can be relational, it's really about a both and not necessarily one or the other. So transcendent include. Well, Ken Wilber talks about that we have to transcend the old and include the new, instead of just holding on to the old or just getting rid of the old and just being on the new stuff.

46:44

I think you're talking about these black and white, I think as human being we are so extreme, right? We are either black or white, we either want to, if we want to make a change, we make it so much that we don't sustain it. Or if we want to stay to the old values. And you know, and the way we were, then we hold on to that because we're scared that change might be something that we might not be ready for. It's very true. And I think we need to teach people more on how to be in the middle, like the gray area that you don't. And I think you really made a great point. You know, I think a lot of men may be worried about making changes, because they are correlating it with losing their masculinity. If you ask them to be in touch, even in psychotherapy, like if I ask them to be in touch with their feelings, there's a lot of resistance because they're assuming a I'm a woman, so they have to be vulnerable in front of me. But also they think this is kind of stripping them of their masculinity. And I like the idea. You're saying you educate them that this does not mean we're stripping you from your masculinity, and they can keep the things they like about their masculinity, but also add other components that are connected to their emotions.

47:55

Absolutely.

47:56

I think it's awesome that you talk about how people are dogmatic these days. And it's like, yeah, you're a vegan. Oh, my god, you're going to hell, you're not a vegan like me. It's like, Man, you know, or, or if I get one more goddamn person preach about positivity. I'm gonna hunt them down, and I'm gonna punch him in the face. Because on my feed these days, everyone's on the whole positivity train. And it's like, dude, yeah, I get it. We all want to be positive. But there's, there's enough you get resiliency out of negativity, you get these things, there has to be an equal balance in life. There's a Yang, and there's a Yang. And if you're just preaching one, you know, one note to the world, and you only want to be known for that, then, you know, you have no business going somewhere else later on. Especially like two people who come to me that like am vegan. You know, this has worked so well for me. That's it. Six months later. Oh, yeah, dude, I just hate Burger King. And I'm like, Dude, seriously, I thought you're a vegan man. He's like, oh, man, I couldn't do that shit anymore. I was like, but you were preaching to me to try being a vegan for a month? Because it was so wonderful for your body. So then what happened? Dude, you know, and I get it. Everyone has their views and their beliefs. That's awesome. But like you said, being so dogmatic and black and white. It's turning society and social media into a brain drain almost Yeah, of not having two perspectives. And I think on our show, we always try and do that. I have a vegan coming on the show. And I gave her a forewarning saying I am a carnivore. I argue with vegans all the time. But I'm open to listening to the argument, right? And so many people aren't open to do that. And I mean, I love that you touched on it, because that's such an important point nowadays.

49:37

It's so powerful like there are some people like for me, I needed to spend a couple years being nauseatingly optimistic, because nothing was possible in my life. I always find the million reasons why I couldn't do something. I can always find all the reasons why things would go wrong. So it was really healing and beneficial for me. But then eventually, I got into a bunch of men's work that was doing what we call Shadow Work. Just looking at the darkest parts of ourselves, the parts that we hide with press and deny. So the opposite of positivity work, we have to balance both. And it's different strokes for different folks, right? So that's what's really important is people to understand, there's not one thing that's going to transform you that's going to heal you that's going to strengthen you. It's about taking on the mindset of creating transformation, strength, well being aligning head, heart and guts for the rest of your life. And even the stuff that I do like the inner work I do right now, I'm doing some very specific, like journaling and meditation work to work on some certain aspects of myself, that won't be what I'm doing a year from now. I'm eating a certain way, that won't be the way I'm eating a year from now. We have to keep growing, adapting, learning, evolving, and that's another reason why I'm agnostic in many ways slice Yeah, and make sense. You know, someone's they'll be like, Oh, you know, Dr. Joe dispenza, that his work is for everyone. No, it's really frickin not, you know, Byron, Katie, her works for everyone. No, really friggin isn't, we actually need to find what's right for us and not just follow whatever the people on your Facebook feed are telling you to do, or what your friends are doing. Or the one thing that you find, you got to find your own path and experiment and continue to be able to adapt and evolve. That's how things keep growing. You know,

51:16

dude, that's why I love CrossFit though. Because CrossFit, I'm never doing the same thing over and over again, right. I've learned in the past year, I've learned how to rope climb legless, and with legs. I fell off of a rope last year 20 times. And now I can do it without breaking a sweat. I've learned how to you know, do ring muscle ups, handstand walk 40 feet, and I'm 37 years old, you know, 38 in two weeks, and it's like, you know, if you pigeonhole yourself in one modality, whether no matter what it is, in life, if you pigeonhole yourself in one place in life, you're always going to be stuck there. But in my opinion, people that live long lives have purpose. And when you're learning, you always have purpose. And I love it, that we're talking about this stuff. Because at our ripe young age, you know, if I knew this shit, I knew now in my 20s, oh, my God with my life be completely different. And I'm sure dr. D actually used to be my psychologist, so she probably wouldn't have seen me if I knew what I know. Now when I was 20 years old.

52:20

Teacher, not your psychology teacher. But I think it's true. I think even with you, Matthew, like, you know, to, what was it? 2008? I think you graduated I met you 2006. Right. Yeah. But I think the idea is, is that even for you at that time was very difficult for you to really kind of process your feelings or being able to talk about, you know, the death of your brother, for example. Yeah, that was it was so much anger that Maddie had, that he had a really hard time being vulnerable. Yeah, because that was not the right or even like, for men, I think being vulnerable means that you're weak means that you're not going to be in control. Again,

53:00

I went to dr. D. And I'm sure she doesn't remember this. Because in traffic, this guy cut me off. I threw him on the hood of his car, and I was ready to pummel him. And I stopped myself. And I was like, holy shit, I have a problem, you know, and bail out of jail. I know, right? And I went and talked to Dr. d. I was like, Hey, I have a problem. I have a serious anger issue, that I'm either gonna hurt myself or hurt someone else. And that's when I started to learn about emotions and emotional intelligence. And you know, just being smart with my thought process and actually talking to someone and going against the, what was the taboo at the time to talk to a psychologist, because you know, you're a man, you should not talk to a shrink under any circumstances by you know, I mean, right now, if you're not talking to someone about your emotions, and you're a guy, you're gonna have a lot of bottled up anger,

53:48

which then you know, create this, and especially this part of the world, right? I mean, we have improved a lot since I've moved here 16 years ago, but I do feel like it's, it's so hard to penetrate into the male world here. Because, again, I think there's a fear that if I talk about my emotions, I'm going to be vulnerable, weak, therefore I can be provider I can be masculine. You know, it goes into this like a circle. And it's very, very hard to make sure that men understand talking about your emotion doesn't have anything to do with your masculinity, actually, it improves your masculinity, but correlating and connecting to that. But before we finish, I want to talk about emotional intelligence. Why do you think it's bs? Yeah.

54:33

So I said earlier, you know, if I do anything, I go pretty hard. And what I've learned is that emotional intelligence, and I got to be careful with my language, because this can sound very shaming, but like emotional intelligence actually isn't enough. We've been taught to try and understand things with our mind and understand things intellectually. Look, I mean, you know, some of the original work on emotional intelligence is really powerful. But if you read Daniel Goleman Books, they are extremely heavy and clinical. And they're not hard to follow per se. But at the end of the day, you could read every book in the world and emotional intelligence and do everything that the HR department at your company wants you to do to be a good manager and go through all the emotional intelligence modules and trainings they have. So true. So true. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you actually have what I call emotional fluency. You can feel and understand and process your emotions. And you know, the message behind the feeling. And you can communicate it. And you actually have built capacity to be present to hold space for others, to listen to what's going on with them. When you see their reaction, their outburst, their withdraw, to not think like, what's wrong with this person, but to understand, oh, that's their way of telling me that there's some need within our relationship that's not necessarily being met, or that they haven't been able to connect to or speak to etc. So when I think of emotional intelligence, I think of it as it's taught by Harvard Business Review, by corporate, at least in America, by corporate America, by HR departments, both, it's really a lot of stuff as to how to look like an available manager, how to look like someone who can be compassionate, as opposed to actually developing that within ourselves. And so what happens is people learn emotional intelligence at work, and it does not translate at home, they do not know how to actually integrate it into their being, they make it a performance for work. And so they go home, and then they still don't know how to be really present to their, their kids. And they don't know how to ask that to get their son to say, Okay, well, the dog is getting more attention than me. And then to realize you've developed what I'd call that more of an emotional fluency than emotional intelligence in the way we talk about it in like the corporate world. So that's just my, my tricky, fun way of poking

56:56

I like, I actually like that that's going down in the history of the project right now is like a perfect quote, because I love that I come from an HR background. And in all the companies I've worked at, Oh, you got to do this emotional intelligence course. And they're like, Oh, no, I know what you're talking about. I've done emotional intelligence before. And I'm like, Dude, that doesn't mean you actually have emotional intelligence, that just means you have a certificate, if you don't understand how to interact with people, and you don't understand to read body language, their facial expressions, and all that stuff. You know, you don't understand shit. Like, that's just like, that's me, learning something from a textbook on how to put a paper airplane together, and then going and implementing it versus actually understanding how it works. And the the integral parts of it. And that's what I learned as a baseball coach for 15 years was how to deal with teenagers were the most difficult people that I've ever dealt with. And over 15 years mastering that art was huge, because there is not a kid that I coach, maybe one or two that hate me now, or don't talk to me, every kid that I've coached still is in touch with me till this day. And you know, it's amazing that I have I formed relationships with them. And it was because I understood them as people, not just players, and it makes a big difference. And that's something in my opinion, you can't teach, you know, it's part learning part and eight, so to speak. I don't know, dr. D, what do you think about that?

58:21

I think that goes back to our, you know, what we were talking about earlier, I think when people learn something emotional intelligence, right? As soon as the companies find that, Oh, no, you know, most top management, you know, or most people that have been picked out for top management position, they have emotional intelligence, I don't know what we hold on to it. Like, as if like, it's a course they don't understand the same thing. People go black and white, they either don't have the emotional intelligence, or they learn about emotional intelligence, and they think this is what it is. But I'm truly talking about people that really have the, you know, emotional intelligence, there are fluid that do know, to connect with their feelings, and they know how to be empathic to other people. That's the one I'm talking about that that is really, really important to have. But I mean, this HR thing, and you know, just because they need, they have money for development and training, they get someone to teach you emotional intelligence. And like you said, This is not something you just learn, you learn it and then you have to apply it and then you have to put it in your life. So no, I'm with you. I agree with you. I think if it's taught that way, and people think, you know, I just need to understand what emotional intelligence you know, I was nice to my colleague today that makes college and you can't learn from a textbook like you can't just learn it as principles that doesn't make sense needs to be implemented in the work space with everyone this is not something I just took a course and I hang my certificate on the wall by the way here they hang certificates everywhere on the wall, right? Okay. So you see that there's a certificate says emotional intelligence, but you can actually know that this person has in practice what he learned, right

59:59

well I get a lot of clients who they would get good reviews, they have gotten good reviews, let's say they're emotionally intelligent, and they have good communication skills, good relationships. And at the end of the day, what's happened is they've learned how to be a nice guy, they've learned how to people pleaser, they've learned how to, you know, look like they're listening, they've learned how to somewhat act interested or act compassionate. But then, meanwhile, they're doing like weird backstabby stuff with somebody because this person's making the project harder for them or whatever. So it's not really an emotional intelligence we can get by, or more importantly, they say that Oh, yeah, people seven ocean intelligent leader, but my wife keeps telling me I need to share my emotions more, or I have no idea how to handle it when my kid has a meltdown. And they're crying. Well, I'm sorry. Again, that's like, to me, it's all about how do you make it part of your being as opposed to just what you do at work?

1:00:54

That's right. And that's the point. How do you make it part of your being and not just at work. So when people hear emotional intelligence, and work, they really think this is like a skill you only use at work from nine to five, and then you close the door and you come home to become another human. This is part of this, like exercising, dieting, this is Piper's life

1:01:15

takes work to write it takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of work, you can't learn it, you can't learn emotional intelligence at work these days is like KPIs, you know, KPIs used to be like the big thing and kind of still are. And then it turned into, like being emotionally intelligent, and being a leader in these leadership courses. And, you know, I gotta be frank, if you haven't had leadership roles growing up through your life, in some capacity, it's very difficult to become a leader in your late 30s. And I learned my leadership roles from baseball, and sports, and, you know, playing in the outside with my friends and being the captain on my baseball teams. And you know what I mean, just leading groups, that's where I learned how to be a leader. And I learned it from my dad, also, you know, delegate, give different jobs to different people in your group so that they can do it. And that's what I did in baseball. And that's what I did in the marketing club when I was in university. And dr. D remembers, I mean, I had that club, it was Boston, man, like, we're on fire. And that stuff, that shit was you can't teach it. You can't teach it out of a textbook, you'll learn it, right? And I love that you're hitting on that because it's so important, especially in our culture, where dr. D knows this, someone will read a book or read a presentation, all of a sudden, they're an expert. It's like, what the hell, dude? Yeah, that doesn't work that way. Doesn't work that.

1:02:39

I don't know. I don't know about you. But life coaching is like it's like happening. Life Coaching? Honestly, I don't know how what guidelines. I mean, I'm sure in the US, we have a lot more guidelines. But here, anyone can take a course to become a life coaches. And they're pretending to be psychologist and they're doing clinical diagnostic stuff.

1:03:01

I'm with you.

1:03:02

It's my triggers.

1:03:05

Well, there are a lot of people, and that's literally something I tell people, it's like, you can call me whatever you want, mentor, coach, trainer, transformer advocate, you know, whatever. But at the end of the day, I tell them right away, my job is not to be your buddy or a nice guy or to please you, my job is to serve you. And it's not to be your pseudo therapist, like I like to tell people, but if you want to send me $1, that's it. I'm not sushi therapist, we're not doing therapy, I might ask you where you learned a certain behavior, and what beliefs feed into you continuing it when you say you want to change, but it's really not to go and try. And I love to tell people like, Look, therapy is amazing. You want to do it regularly, maybe not all the time. Coaching is amazing. When it's done. Well, you want to do it regularly, maybe not all the time. They're both really different invaluable tools. But a lot. Yeah, there are certainly a lot of people out there that I don't believe are coaching with a lot of responsibility or a lot of ethical ways of going about the way they do what they do. And like you no matter you keep saying it's not something that you can teach, but it is something you can learn. And I love that I'd love to even kind of wrap up on that. Because when I really believe it's just like, you can learn functional movements at a CrossFit gym. Or you can learn to run properly or like recently, I've been learning there's all these real intricate details and how to actually be at a mountain bike. It's not just about biking in the mountains on a trail. It's like all these little techniques that really matter where your weight where your weight is, you know, when you start pedaling when you come off stream crossings like all the details, we can learn a lot of what it takes to become more emotionally fluent, but it's not necessarily just mind learning like it is I might mention the slow walk and noticing and being aware of your urge to grab your phone but you left it at home and then anxiety sets in because you left it at home. Should I give people the intuition walk, like go somewhere and have no plan and give yourself 30 minutes, and just every crossroad or every turn, just feel with your body and pick a direction. You know, there's all kinds of things we can do. And most of it is it's learned through experience, and through the body, and through interconnected relationship with others, and really hard conversations that the average person avoids. But the person is going for, like excellence and greatness in their life and their relationships. And in their career, they have those hard conversations. To me, that's one of the best playgrounds, if you will, to train for emotional fluency and deep in how we connect with ourselves and others. Lots of training can be done, but it's not all book. It's not book learning. Yeah, it's experiential.

1:05:45

I love it. We should wrap up on that. I was like, Yeah, I think that's a perfect wrap up point right there. Man, thank you so much for coming on the show, I'd love to have you back on Joe Kinjo is really a good experience. And I love what you said, in terms of emotional intelligence. I just think that is like, you know, it nips a right in the bottom of all the shit that's going on these days, and how people can be dogmatic and things. And I love how you put that all together, and the small steps that you took in your journey that you were able to share with everybody. So hopefully that they could take these leaps and bounds themselves and make changes in their lives. Thank you so much, man.

1:06:21

Thank you, Joe.

1:06:23

You're very welcome. And thank you for having me. great conversation, you both have so much fire and juice and energy. People be be healthier and understand themselves. It's really a pleasure. It's really a pleasure.

1:06:34

And Joe, where can people find you and what new projects you have going on? And you know, I mean, how can people stay in tune with you, man?

1:06:41

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I do have you know, people are looking to get direct support, I do have a couple of spots for one on one coaching, you can just reach out to me Joe at drop the armor calm. So we can do the process of dropping in the armor or getting lit up creating what you want. I'm specifically interested in looking for people that are really working on developing themselves, they can go out and create their own business, their own practice to the thing in the world that are passionate about. And the project that I want people to jump into is go on Facebook and search, drop the armor dojo, do Jao like

1:07:19

Cobra Kai, Cobra, Kai, man, you want to that's out.

1:07:25

Go to drop the armor dojo join us. It's not just for men, even on the men's coach. It's all kinds of people who are committed to integrating head heart and guts and to learning how to live a life that lights them up, as I like to say, a lot of deep process for emotionally sharing and being vulnerable. But people are sharing a lot of their transformational tools, their fitness, their work, it's like whatever people are doing to create a great life. There's a lot of great activity and engagement. There are people sharing and creating community around it, as we've talked about it much but like one reasons CrossFit works is because there's community you know, when you community when we're doing stuff that's challenging and takes consistent practice. Sure,

1:08:04

that's true. And actually, we've had several guests on and they always say that that you need community community is very, very important to encourage you, instead of this isolative kind of, you know, people can make changes, but if you got other people making changes with you can really motivate you. Now you're in the States, john. Yeah.

1:08:21

Yeah. I'm in the US and in Washington, DC. Oh, you

1:08:25

are in Washington. Yeah. I went to Georgia now.

1:08:28

Oh, cool. Yeah, I was a couple days ago, taking my mom to the hospital for a procedure that she loves to go there because they're so good. Yeah, there's about washington dc right in the nerve center of a lot of craziness. It's gone on last year.

1:08:43

Well, I hope you stay safe there. Away from the Capitol.

1:08:48

I hear you.

1:08:52

Thanks for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, please head over to iTunes to subscribe rate and leave a review. You can also find us on Instagram at the project. Thank you and join us next time