Why the Relaxed Man Always Wins (with Bas Rutten)

The most feared striker in MMA history spent this conversation talking about calm.

Before his first fight in Japan, Bas Rutten wrote one letter on each fist with a marker: R, for rustig, Dutch for relaxed. He'd found out that morning his opponent was 33 pounds heavier, the round was thirty minutes long, and there were no rules he recognised. Mid-fight he was calm enough to overhear two spectators in the front row discussing a house move, and that was when he noticed the two voices in him. The aggressive one, and the one that kept him still.

He retired without losing any of his last 22 fights and credits the whole run to that discovery.

We talk about why the relaxed fighter beats the aggressive one nine times out of ten, the skin disease and asthma that made him the outcast of his school and which he now calls a blessing, the difference between anger and aggression, the single line that ended his drinking, and where Stoicism and the Catholic faith he returned to line up almost exactly.

He also walks through the practices he runs daily: the pre-fight question "what's the worst thing that can happen?", the friend test for anger, and an evening examination of conscience he has kept for twelve years that Seneca describes almost word for word.

Follow Bas Rutten:
YouTube: youtube.com/user/OfficialBasRutten
Instagram: @basruttenmma
Website: basrutten.com
The O2Trainer, the breathing device he invented: o2trainer.com
His MMA Workout audio, the striking tape I mention my friend Joel wearing out: o2trainer.com/products/bas-rutten-s-mixed-martial-arts-workout-dvd

Companion article and full show notes: stoichandbook.co/bas-rutten-staying-calm

Free 7-Day Stoic Challenge: stoicchallenge.co

The Stoic Vault: stoicvault.com

Transcript

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SPEAKER_05 0:18

My guest today is not a philosopher by trade. In the nineteen nineties, when MMA was barely legal and had barely any rules, a Dutch fighter called Bas Ruten became one of the most feared men in the sport. He fought in Japan in an organization that predates the UFC and became its champion three times, and then he started fighting in America and became the heavyweight UFC world champion. He retired without losing any of his last 22 fights and has the highest record for striking accuracy in MMA history. He's in the Hall of Fame, and you may have seen him in the movie The Smashing Machine, which is a film about his friend Marker, where he plays himself. So why is Bass on a Stoicism and Philosophy podcast? Well, when you listen to Bass talk, fighting is actually the least interesting part about him. This is a man who started life chronically ill, bullied as a child, and then built himself into the most dangerous man in any room, and then spent the second half of his life learning the harder skill of not being ruled by any of it. Not by anger, by fear, by alcohol, painkillers or ego. He told me that stoicism is a lot like the principles that he lives by, and today we'll find out what that means. Welcome, Bass. Um let's get straight into it. You are remembered as one of the most violent finishers of your era, and yet whenever I listen to you on podcasts or hear you talk, you sound very interested in calmness and restraint and being a good man. When did fighting stop being about proving yourself and stop becoming more about self-mastery?

SPEAKER_02 1:58

Um That's actually a good question, yeah. Be and because I know the answer. It um in Thai boxing, uh when I was kickboxing in Holland, I was just a loose cannon. Like I have for my nine wins were eight in the first round, I won in the second round. Completely lost control. I wasn't like the person I would be in the gym. Because I was just too nervous. I wanted to get it over with, and thankfully I was very powerful, so I knocked a lot of people out. But if I would have fought a really good guy who know knew how to control the distance, that would have been bad for me because that would run out of gas for sure. You know, there was no way you can continue that kind of pressure that I was giving to people. Then the change for me came in Japan. Uh the first it was it's funny because there were no weigh-ins, and I did I I I I was thinking, well, did we talk about weight? And and and then I was thinking, well, the Japanese are very, you know, uh honest, so uh I guess it's gonna be okay. And and then when we went to the fight, the this tall guy walks up to me, and I thought it was promoter, and I uh asked him, I said, Oh, you're the promoter. He says, No, I'm fighting you today. I said, You're I'm fighting you. He said, What's your weight? And he was like 33 pounds heavier than I was. And he goes okay, and and then the promoter walked up. So I'm to the promoter, I go, hey, is he not too heavy? And he goes, No, no, no, everybody fights everybody, there's no weight classes. I go, Oh, great. So I acted like I was all okay with it, but of course inside I was like, what the heck? And then when he walked away, I remember I said, Hey, by the way, how many rounds are we finding? And he goes, one. I go, great, how many minutes? He goes, 30. And that was that was the moment for me. I go, okay, now I'm facing a 33-pound heavy old guy. I never fought guys more than five pounds in Thai boxing or kickboxing in a 30-minute match with no breaks.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Which I didn't know the rules of. You know, so I I had no ground experience, it was like all new. But somehow that got me very calm because I immediately realized, ooh, I can't start really hard because the Japanese fighters are known to be very tough. And if I can't put in a minute, a minute and a half, I got 28 and a half minutes more to go. I'm gonna run out of gas. So I put these big R's on my hands with a marker step rustic.

SPEAKER_02 4:11

You can pronounce that in Holland, but coincidentally it starts uh it's relaxed. It starts also with an R. So it's the same thing. And that was it. That was that was the moment when I stepped into the ring. And I think also the audience in Japan, they're completely quiet. Like, don't say a word. If I just speak like I'm speaking right now, the person in the 20th row can hear you. That's how quiet it is. What should say? And I think all combined completely put me in the zone. I always talk about that first fight. I could not, I was thinking, what is going on? Like literally. He kicks me, I remember, open the kick with a right kick, and I block to the body, and I block it with my shin. And I go, that's the first time I do that. You know, like in my mind, it's like, and it's so common. I hear people speak on the front row. Two Australian people were talking uh uh about moving from Melbourne to to Sydney or the other way around. And I I thought to them, talked to them uh afterwards, I said, Hey, are you gonna make the move? And they're gonna go, what the heck? Were you listening? I said, I have no idea what happened. And that was I was completely in control. Everything. And that's when I realized there were two voices in me. There was the bad voice, the the aggressive one who wants to go now, no, no, no, no. And that was the other voice that really kept me calm. And what happened was I immediately gave him a high kick, and then I make another turn, but the high kick and a cross is almost the same movement for for your opponent. So the high kick distracted him, then I acted like I load up again and I made it into a cross. And since he was taller, palm strike on his jaw, he went down and he got an eight cap. Now, normally in that situation, I would have run to my corner because I was, you know, the the faster you're in your corner, that's when they start counting, right? So if I go very slow, you give him more time to recoup. So, but some that's so the angry voice is telling me to go fast, and the other one says, no, no, no, slow down, slow down, slow down. And I go, I literally thinking, what is going on? And I'm I uh I so I took a beat, I looked at him because he was awake, I just stared at him for a moment, and then I walked very slow to my corner, like, take all the time you need. I was somehow, without knowing, it was controlled by by the by this the relaxed guy. Pressure on him, like, hey, take all the time you need. You know, if I run to the corner, he thinks, oh, he's afraid, he wants to get it over with. So all that you see me in the corner standing, and people go, Oh my god, look at him, he's so cool. I go, like, you have no idea what went through my head at that moment. It was like somebody else took it over, and that was it. And then I knocked him out, and and and it's scary, very scary because he was two days out, you know. But he later became a good friend of mine. Um, actually fought in Holland, lived with my mom and dad for for like six weeks preparing for a fight, so that was kind of cool. And we brought stuff. That's cool. So he he was okay, but that was the moment for me that everything changed and suddenly became it was not aggression anymore. Everything was relaxed, and now I knew I had to be completely calm. You know, I let myself one time go. Um well two times. One time was the second fight where I already pride, already kicked my butt because two days before I go on the plane, I'd been drinking. Freaking idiot, not turning this what the other guy was the number four, this is like the number ten, this is like a you know, like idiot. And uh and then I got sick on top of that, and I never look at the opponent's eyes because I know that if they stare me and they try to intimidate me, I go over the top. I get angry. And I didn't want to get angry at all because anger you can't control yourself anymore. You start loading up, right? If I if I'm sitting in front of you and you go, pop, this is what I do when I normal fight. If I'm angry, I'm gonna go, no, I'm telegraphing. So you don't want to have that. But I remember him, he was staring at me, but I was just looking at his belly. And I saw his belly go from the nerves, and I looked at mine, I go, ah, it's gonna be good, you know, and then the whole audience started going, ooh, because apparently he was giving me the death stare. And I remember he he I think they debate for the moment. So I got in his face and I go, and he's like freaking out. And the referee is patting me down, and he says, No street fight, Mr. Ruthern Street. I say, No, I'm okay, I'm okay. But while I walked away, I say, okay, uh, I gotta stay calm. Now I was very sick, couldn't carry my luggage anymore. He got me in an arm bar. Um, I wanted to tap, but then thankfully my ego saved me at that time because the audience started chanting for him, and I go, like, I gotta get out. So I got out of the arm bar, and then 30 seconds later I knock him out with the need to deliver. And that was the moment for me that everything whooped it it had needed to happen, those two fights. Now I was completely under control, and now I knew that it doesn't matter, it was the number 500 in the world. I'm gonna have to go maximum. Actually, you have to train harder for a guy because you cannot lose against the guy who's like the top 500, you know, because you want to be the top guy. So that's when everything changed with me. I never ran out of gas. I never went always, I went insanely hard with everything. And that was that was the move, that was the change. Suddenly I was in that game and I start understanding all these little things, how to distract and and having fun, literally having fun while I'm fighting. It's the most like I have ADHD, fighting and training against high elite level guys, sparring, for instance, not training, sparring, is the most peace in my head. Because then I got only one focus. I'm I cannot allow all that noise coming in that I have now with looking at my plate that I just ate. There's a lot of stuff that goes through my mind all the time. I need to control, need to control. What was it? And that changed my career. And boof, I was off to a good start. It was insane.

SPEAKER_05 10:08

I I I I don't train MMA, but I do train jujitsu and I I think of it as like forced mindfulness, like when you're sparring, and I know the stakes are a lot higher with your training, but you can't think about your bills and the emails that you have coming your way. You're just fully in the present moment, which is I can see why that would be very peaceful for someone with ADHD. Um how would you d uh sh sh help someone tap into that mindset and that state where the kind of aggression fades away and you it seemed like you tapped into a different part of yourself that was more Yeah, I'm I'm I'm just talking talking to my students.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

I wish I had a coach in the early days when I was so angry that he said, Bos, you got time enough. You got three rounds of three minutes, you know, in kickboxing. Take your time, don't interact. Feel him out, let him like my students. If I see they're nervous, I will tell them, I say, okay, I don't want you to fight for a month, a minute, one minute. I'll shout when the minute is passed. I want you just to avoid him constantly, just by movement. And then we work on that, of course, before the fight. You know, because if you have great movement, always moving to the side, so there's no patterns and all that stuff, it's very hard for somebody to hit you because you have a big space, you know, so it's constantly moving. I said, and once you get him, that now you start seeing his movements. And then you just start aiming and aiming, and they go, like, aiming is normal. That's not. If you see 80% of the fighters, they just hit the head, they just hit the body, not me. I'm really focusing on the jaw, on the solar plexus, on the, you know, but that that aiming and that focus puts you right away better into the game as well. You're more focused. And with my students, every single time it works, it simply works, but if you just let them go, they want to do the same thing that I did when I was young, you know, and just get it over with. And that's when you make mistakes, you're rolling the dice. Why would you roll the dice if you got a 30-minute fight coming up? Dude, my friends, it's so funny. They always, when you look at my record, they say, dude, you had a lot of first round finishes. Like, oh yeah, 30-minute fights. You know, it's not like in the three-minute rounds. So of course it's in the first round because it's a long ass round. So, yes, that's what I'm talking to them. And now I'm all I'm also I go very deep. Like if a guy can perform in front of an audience, I know right away. You know, so when his family members are there at this, and I tell them, I said, do not start telling everybody that you're going to fight. Do not start saying on video before the fight, I'm gonna rip him off, this guy's a nobody, because now you're fighting a nobody. That's first of all, stupid. But second of all, now you better live up to it. And that video that you just said that you were gonna do to him, they're gonna play that at the moment you walk up to the ring. And that's gonna put a lot of pressure. In fact, you know what we're gonna do? You're not allowed, if they're very nervous, you are not allowed to talk about fighting at all, zero, to other people. Not saying that you're going to fight and we're gonna fight out of state. We'll find a fight somewhere out of state. You don't tell anybody if you win, you come home, you say, hey, I just want to fight. If you lose, you don't even have to tell anybody. That takes a lot of pressure out. And then again, another one I have, and this is also very interesting, I we we all want to perform for other people. That's our problem. If you just fight for yourself, you're gonna be just fine. If you don't care about all the noise about people say, because they all know it better than you, and yet they never fought a day in their life, they never trained. You know, so what I'm telling them, if they're nervous before, like a week before, I see them agitated. I go, what about this? What if your opponent walks into the gym right now? And and you guys are gonna fight. We put you in the room, that room, it has no windows. We're closing the door, you lock the door on the inside. You fight. And when you lose or win, doesn't matter, but you're not allowed to say if you won or lose. Would you care if you would lose? And they all say, No, I wouldn't care. I go, that means that you're fighting for the people. Don't fight for the people. Fight for yourself. If you literally can let everything go and put all that uh I wanna be cool, wanna be cool, you know, and my family members are there. If you can set that, really push it to the side, that's it. Then you fight like you fight in the gym. And if you fight in the gym, well, you're a good fighter. You're probably going to win this fight. And if you lose, well, that's a life lesson. That means, oh, you're gonna have to work harder on that. Like happened with me in my submissions. Right? I lost by submission, then I lost one time more time by submission, and last time by submission. And that's when the whole change came. And that's when I said, okay, I gotta know this game. So I found one guy because I had nobody to train with in Holland. There was no judo, and you know, once every two weeks I was in in Amsterdam, but sometimes I came in and other people didn't want to train. It was a nightmare. But then I found that one guy, and then suddenly I got the obsession. That's when I realized what submissions really was. There it's endless. And the combinations and the setups, and and you never master it. There's no way because there's too much it's it's too cool. And once that grabbed me, I fell in love with it. And once I fell in love with it, well, I started doing it a lot, like three times a day. I forgot about my striking. I said I did only type hats for stamina. I wouldn't even spar anymore because they were not gonna stand with me, because it was not gonna be pulled out. They wanted to take me to the ground. And that was it. Never lost a fight after that. I won I lost my last fight by submission, I won my last eight the next eight fights I won them by submission. Eight by seven finishes and one submission control. And people were gonna like, what is going on? I well, I just worked on my weaknesses very, very hard. And thankfully I fell in love with it, so I wanted to do it. And I think that's that's it with everything. If you love something, then you're gonna succeed because it's the only thing you wanted to do. I love training, I loved everything about fighting at the time. And that just helped me a lot, I guess.

SPEAKER_05 15:50

A quick question. Um, you so when you told a story about when you were in Japan and you wrote ah on your fists, uh, you said that after that you didn't gas again, you didn't gas out. There's a this debate the goes on between, you know, fitness is about efficiency and relaxation versus fitness is about you know having a high VO2 max or just being physically very fit. Where do you how do you understand the the difference? Like how much does efficiency and relaxation help with gassing or not gassing in fights versus do you just need to be ultra fit? Because I know you focus a lot on fitness as well.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

Every muscle you contract the whole time, you're burning energy like m like like a maniac, right, d during the fight. If you breathe wrong, you're burning wrong energy. If you lift your shoulders every time when you breathe, you're carrying your body every time up. You have to beat the pharmatically. All these things. So uh how do I say this? Um the the relaxed person will will beat an aggressive person nine out of ten times. Always. He might get caught one time, but for the rest, he always um uh uh is in control. Like the first time you rolled, how tired did you get in a minute? Like a minute, right? You're you're out of breath. You go like, what the heck is this? Because you don't know where you at the moment, where are the moments that you can take a break? Because they're constantly attacking you. You know, once you start getting into it, they start feeling that if somebody is aggressive, I can simply move to the side, boop, take space. Sometimes you just walk away. And then you see me shaking, I do just do this, I hop, and I feel all my muscles go blob, blop. That's my my way of telling me, okay, I'm relaxed, and then I go back into the fight. You know, take that time. And that it's not looking scary when you walk away. That looks actually like you're completely in control. Okay, not right now. You know, you're shaky or off. Okay, let's go again. Now they go to go, what just happened? I just attacked them full. So once you can control those moments and you know that you can simply avoid them by moving outside and taking an extra breath, that all happens once you are completely relaxed in your mind. And that's when your stamina really comes. Because normally I always tell my students, say, stamina, stamina, stamina. For your first fight, it's only endurance and stamina. You know, because if you have that, you're gonna win all your first fights. Because nobody realizes once the pressure hits and uh and and and all these endorphins and everything starts working, that's gonna tighten you up that that stamina that you have, that endurance is gonna be cut in half. They come back the first round, they go, I said, Oh, I thought you told me you were in shape. You know, yeah, but this is so crazy. I said, That's what I told you. Get in freaking shape. It's the only way to win. You know, and if you do that being in shape, combining with knowing at the moment when you can take a break or take a beat and take an extra breath, well, that's it. Then yeah, you almost never run out of gas anymore.

SPEAKER_05 18:40

Yeah, love that. Yeah, I'm I'm starting to get similar kind of epiphanies, even though I'm like many years deep in in jujitsu, how important the those two things are. Um, I want to go back in time a little bit. Uh when I was researching your childhood, uh it sounded like a completely different person, you know, like the person that you became champion, uh just like devastating fighter, super charismatic, like everyone loves listening to you and you you you help a lot of people. But when you were a child, you were very ill, bullied, all right, and isolated from from my research. And is it true that you would sort of uh like run away from people that were being mean to you and climb trees and things like that?

SPEAKER_02 19:25

Yeah, just horrible skin disease. So I was the leper in school. You know, everybody called me the leper. So and and they were always picking on me, oh, don't come too close, you know, he's gonna give it to you, is it's it's contagious, and so everybody was messing with me, and the way for me to deal with it was Spider-Man, that he was my guy, and Wolverine, but Spider-Man because he also got bullied, right? And I just started going into the trees. We had a forest in front of our home, and uh and I realized that I could, once I climbed the tree, I could start swinging the tree and I go to the next tree. And then through the whole forest, I would have maybe seven times that I had to climb down because it would be too far, the next tree. But for the rest, it was a big forest. So I could, like if bullies came now, I just climbed the tree. And then I let him climb the tree, and when we were halfway down, I started swinging, whoop, I go to the next tree. And then one time a big a big bully, he uh he tried it also, and he he fell. And he almost died because his head fell next to a big rock. I remember that. He was out, and I remember his parents were freaking out because the kids ran home to get their parents. But I thought, ooh, and I from but from that moment on, of course, nobody ever followed me in the trees anymore because I just climbed a tree. But I had this always this obsession with buildings and every high building, every church, every I always climbed it. I wanted to somehow I always think I'm afraid of heights, and because that's why I want to overcome it. It was really weird. But it attracted me a lot to to the danger and do stupid stuff. If I think back now, you know, like it's like with you, you know. I I'm here in my man cave and they just came to bring my belts and my trophies and everything that I have. And and every time I walk in, I go, man, I'm thinking exactly what you just said. It's so weird how life can go. Yesterday I talked to a guy, going from that kid that was so scared, to suddenly everybody knows you, and you got freaking paintings that they make of you when the belts are hanging here, and you go, like, how's this even happening? You know, it's it's all it's it's weird, but it's it it's all mind. And I'm telling you, I think I got that from my childhood as an as as an asthmatic patient. I I had severe asthma. So every five weeks I will be a week in bed, not able to eat for days because I couldn't breathe. Like that bad, 24-7. But you gotta go to the restroom, well, it's one floor down. Good luck. You know, going down the stairs, that's already hard. You take three steps, sit down, resting, three steps, take down. Now you gotta go back up. That's much harder. You see, so for me that was a that I but I had to do it. You had to have the discipline in order to do it, you know, and I think all these things actually helped me. All that bullying actually helped me. We had a an a reunion, and there was a show in Holland called The Reunion, and that's the the reunion. Uh it was very white high-watch show. They had three point three 3.2 million people watched that show. And people got 3.2 million, yeah, but we got fifty at the time 15 million people in Holland. That's one in five. So it was a and and the bullies didn't show up because the older class, everybody was uh invited, but the bullies didn't come. And they go, well, I guess they're afraid. I go, I wanted to thank them. I really wanted to say thank you. You gave me an unbelievable life. Look at me, man. I'm I'm enjoying my life so much, but this Because of them. So it what I thought was a curse, I always saw that as a blessing. Now I see that as a blessing. And I never was down. My eczema was on my hands and it was in my neck and and on my knees. But I knew there were people out there who had that completely the entire body. Well, compared to that, it's not so bad. My asthma attack, just a week. This guy's 365. They have to move to Switzerland or some high altitude place where the air is very clean because otherwise they can't live. Well, mine is not as bad as they have. You see, I always thought like that. I never thought, oh my God, I'm so sad. No, I always thought about the people who had it worse than me. And that always kept me up. And I was always the class clown because nobody liked me. So I stopped making fun of the teachers, so people started laughing. You know, that's how I got into it. That's where my humor comes from. You know, so everything happened for a reason, you know. Omnia cause afjund, right? That's what they say in Latin. Everything happens for a reason. And that's why I'm truly believe, you because we were talking about Stoicism and Catholicism, you get these very things, the same lines. That that's it. Everything happens for a reason. I was given those diseases for a reason to see what I was going to do with it. Well, you can do something bad with it, you can be crying and you can sit down, or you say, hey, let's try to overcome this thing and see what I can do. And thankfully, I took the second one.

SPEAKER_05 24:01

It's a it's a great story for parents as well, because as a I I have kids, we we would tend to think that you know if our children are being bullied or they have illnesses or they're isolated, like everything's ruined. But your your story says like no, like maybe this is the thing that can actually help them grow and they can maybe you know become you'd never think that like oh my child that's getting bullied and ill will be UFC champion. Like it just doesn't make sense.

SPEAKER_02 24:29

But yeah, my mother does. And I'm I'm and now my mom is so proud, like because I always thought my parents were kind of against it, but they passed away and we went to the house. I found a box with all the newspaper clippings, everything from me. You know, and and and my par my family were telling me that she was so proud of you. Everywhere she would come, people because if she would say root and say, Oh, do you know Bosswood? Yes, my son, that's your son, and then everybody, you know, so and my dad also. But in the beginning, you know, fighting, you're not gonna make money of fighting, you know. So for me to make that choice, and of course I was a very hard kid, I was ADD, I was ADHD all over the place. I needed to get attention, burglaries. I did a lot of burglars as a 15, 16-year-old. Like I we got caught for 142 of them. Two times, one time I didn't the other one, you know. But I mean, I was doing things that they, of course, did not me want me to do. My brother was the perfect guy, you know, he's one of the best lawyers in Europe right now, has two lawyers' offices, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Uh, everything he does is cum laud, everything he does. Like he he did conservatorium in three different majors, not one, three. All the top class, every single time, everything he did. And a freak athlete as well. He just chose a different path to go. You know, so he was, of course, the the guy that helped. You could be proud of him. Me, I was only getting in trouble. Police at the door again, this been in a fight again, because there was a lot of hate in me after I knocked the first bully out. You know, once I learned fighting, oh, now every kid that got bullied, guess who took care of that problem? You know, I started going after everybody. I had a short list, like four guys that I still had. And I remember one guy was like, Lily, I'm I'm so sorry, boss. I don't even remember what I said, I go, but I do. And then poof, I will knock him out. You know, there was that anger in me. And and thankfully I found fighting, and then it became the controlled anger, like Bruce Lee would say, right? Fighting is all about controlled anger. Yeah. Let it go at the moment you need to go, boop, relaxation again. And thankfully that clicked for me.

SPEAKER_05 26:34

Uh so this this topic, right? So the there's this the story of you sneaking into Enter the Dragon when you were twelve, and then you broke a bully's nose with one punch, right? And it was a lot of people just think of that story. But uh what you're describing here is that maybe you could talk more about you made a list, right? And you kind of I think a lot of people who have been abused or oppressed, they kind of go into that role themselves, you know, maybe not permanently, but just to kind of like as a as a reaction to it, right? Like if you've suffered a lot, you tend to make other people suffer. So could you talk a little bit about that switch from being bullied to maybe being the bully short term?

SPEAKER_02 27:17

Yeah, I I I never understood those people. Because I I I didn't like it. So why would I do that on somebody else? Like I'm the guy. I literally had to learn to say no to people. I was the guy who just I want to help everybody. And especially if you're in trouble, got it. Emails, hundreds of emails from parents that I answered. It was like after the fourth email, I just made a big file so I could copy and paste because I got contacted. Oh, my my boy has also eczema and small. It's a combination that's comes a lot and he's also being bullied. What do I do? What do I and everything that I used to eat and and that my whole house, there were no curtains in our home. There were like plastic curtains and the floors, there was no carpets. Everything needed to be. If I spent 20 minutes with a dog, I would be the next day a week in bed. Complete asthma attack, severe. You know, any animal with fur. You see, so I never understood kids how they did that. I just wanted to help other kids who got bullied and take care of their problems for them. You know, and then of course I wanted to teach them how to fight so they could do it themselves as well. You know, so yeah. I thankfully my my parents are very very uh my childhood has been insane. Like my parents, I've never seen them ever fight. You know, there's pushing, like my other friends are fighting that never, like the not even words. The the vo the if they raise their voice, okay, now I want you to stop. That was maybe my dad would say, that was it. You know, but never any problems in the house. So I think that always kept me also very calm, knowing that it's there's no need for it. But if there is need for it, and and and talking about bullies, there was one moment um in the in the play on the playground in my in my school, and my house was literally 200 yards away from the school, maybe 300 yards, very close. And we had trees in the playground. And I think I saw a Tarzan movie or thinking I was maybe Spider-Man, I don't know what I was, and these bullies kept on going coming, and I get angry and I see a branch, and I'm thinking, okay, I'm gonna grab that branch, swing to him, and double front kick on the chest. So I jumped the branch, I swing, and the branch broke. And I'm falling on the ground, I'm laying on the ground, and everybody's pointing at me and laughing. And I ran home. Yeah, run home, leper, run home. It's the last thing I heard. And I go to the kitchen, grab the biggest kitchen knife, and I ran back. And that's thankfully, because till this day I have no idea what I would have done, but I was I was lost. I lost it. And my mother saw me running on the street from the with the knife, so she started to chase me, and she was able to catch, catch me before I got back onto the play yard. So when you hear that from the other kids, you know, it shootings or whatever they do or the horrible things, yes, of course, I couldn't know that's not good, it's the worst thing, but I can understand it. I can completely understand it because it's the years and years, and everybody's doing it. And now, especially with social media, you get a victim and everybody starts attacking you. You you you put somebody, yeah, you you separate them from everybody, and now that person is lost, and everybody wants a voice, right? Everybody wants to be hurt, and that starts building, you know, and then sometimes horrible things are going to happen. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 30:36

Yeah, I as I've got older I've realized the line between victim and perpetrator is not as clear-cut as as people want you to believe, you know. Because if you had done anything with that knife, people would have thought, you know, this is the bad guy. But it's not so simple, right? Like, you know, you to psychological suffering is is like a very serious thing. You just can't see it on someone. It's not like a wound on the outside.

SPEAKER_02 30:58

But it's and it's also like when I was a bouncer, they grabbed me because I was a good fighter, but not only that, the main reason was I would settle it. If there's ten situations, normally they would fight ten times. With me, you fight maybe one time. Because I take him to the side and I just explain, okay, let's go. What happened? Oh, he looked at my over he looked at my wife. Did he say something to her? No. Did he touch her? No. I go, you should be happy. That means your wife is hot. And that's why he looked at her. If he now, if he'd overstaffed, I can understand your and then they're standing there, they go, like, yeah, dad, he's right. I go, right? Okay, what do you drink? What do you drink? Okay, I order a beer, whatever they ordered, and I say, yep, let's be friends now. You see, that was my thing. I always diffuse the situation. In my street fights, they go, Oh my God, the crazy guy in the street fights that I had, you know, but you don't know. This I'm constantly diffusing. I'm constantly telling them I don't want to. And every time they keep going, a little bit angry you get more. And you try to stop it. And then they think you're afraid. And that's when I realize they go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you you think I'm afraid? I go, yeah, I'm afraid for what I'm gonna do to you. You and then most of the time they that's when they hook off. But then there's always these people who think you're faking it. And then when I beat those people up, well, that's after seven times saying no, no, no, no. Anger, anger, anger, anger, anger, poof. And then I go all the way. And now I'm certainly I'm the aggressor. And I go, if they would have seen the whole story, they would have said, dude, he tried to defuse the situation like six, seven times. You see, but so I never had that violence towards other people, even if they got me in the face. If the guy's really drunk, slap me in the face, I don't even gonna knock him out. If it's a punch, like a hard punch, then yeah, you're gonna get knocked out as well. But otherwise I go, if the guy's drunk. You know, I mean, we all make mistakes when we're drunk or under drugs or whatever it is, why would I want to hit him? Why would I let him wake up the next day with his face bashed in, probably doesn't even know what he did, you know, because he was drunk. So let it go. Thankfully, I always had that, that I never immediately start going in there.

SPEAKER_05 33:01

I I I think um one of the things I've been contemplating as a man, like we're not really taught, like obviously there's like things you can do to learn how to fight better, but we're not really taught the like in-between stages very well. Like, what do you do if someone insults you? What do you do if someone kind of gets in your face? Right? There's like there's a lot of levels to this, and it's you know, and just punching someone and knocking them out isn't always the answer. Um Do you like what do you have like a model for this? Say you're walking down the street and someone just shouts something rude at you. Are you is your first thing to ignore, or do you like use your voice? What's the model that you use for a few?

SPEAKER_02 33:38

Okay, so if I see him doing that to everybody, you know, then probably I think it's a crazy guy. If I know it's an aggressive guy and I see him already pushing people, I will I will simply laugh. Because if you laugh at a person who's aggressive, they get more aggressive. And the reason I used to do that, because I don't do that anymore, because it's kind of an asshole thing for me to do if I think about it, because if you laugh, if somebody flips you off and I go, ha ha ha ha, they get so angry because now their anger doesn't have the effect that they thought it was going to have. So now I start laughing. That means most of the time they take a swing. But if I saw already that he was a really bad guy before, then I do that on purpose, of course. I la I just laugh at them. I'm not saying anything back. So nobody gets, oh, he just laughed, you know, but I know that's gonna trigger them and attack me, and now I have a reason to knock him out. Thankfully I figured out that's also not good to do after a while. So I just simply stopped doing it. Yeah, last time in a car we had something that was and it was really sad. My wife even said it. This guy gets I don't know what's going on. I I and I always drive cruise control, so it's not I I I take the same distance. I have my car, they all do it automatically now, you don't have to do anything. And this guy's coming to the left and right, and then suddenly he stops next to me, his windows are tainted, and and and he doesn't open his window, so I'm looking to wait till open the window. Now, what he what he was doing, at the moment he opens his window, he was sitting in the car like this, like sideways in the car. He was this big guy with a beard, and he was looking at me like you want a piece of that. Now, what I what happened to me is like, why doesn't he open the window? Why is he not opening the door? And then when the window opened, I I saw in a second why he didn't do that. He had to position himself in such a way to look the coolest, you know?

SPEAKER_01 35:31

So then I look at him and he sits there and I go, ha ha ha ha ha ha. And and he freaking speeds off. And my wife goes, Oh, that was kind of sad. I go, yeah, right? That was kind of sad. But you see, again, I laughed at him because I thought, man, who does that?

SPEAKER_02 35:48

Sits sideways in the car, you know, position himself and then opens the window. So I saw, I I thought it was funny. I didn't laugh to get him angry, yeah, but I just saw that what the preparation he did before he lowered the window. And yeah, he was off right away. Maybe he recognized me, I don't know. But it was um yeah, it it was a funny moment, but then afterwards you think, yeah, it's kind of sad for the guy.

SPEAKER_05 36:13

Yeah, yeah. It's uh you know the Stoics um I we'll be getting into some like stoic and um Catholic ideas later because I know you're interested in the the overlap there. But the Stoics uh believe that anger is a separate kind of bad emotion because like the minute you start losing it, you can't get back in control. Like if you get heavily triggered, you're you're you're gone. It's gonna snowball.

SPEAKER_02 36:39

Ignorance of anger, virtue. Again, stoics uses your virtues as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 36:46

Yeah. Um we've talked about this a little bit when we first started talking, but um one of the things I I believe that you think a lot about is when you have two athletes, they both train really well in the dojo, but then when it comes time to competing or fighting in a cage, one of them might fall apart and the other one doesn't. So what would you say is the difference between these two people, like if you took two clones? What would break someone between the gym versus walking out into uh into the cage?

SPEAKER_02 37:19

I think uh what I believe personally is like a lot of fighters, they don't really want to fight, but they think it's cool. Uh because then they can say I'm a cage fighter. I go, you're not a cage fighter, you're a mixed martial artist. Don't say that word cage, it's just a stupid thing to say. Say you're a mixed martial artist. I heard a pro say that one time, this lady, I said, What do you do? I'm a cage fighter. I go, oh my God, he just lost some points with me. I go, why would you say that? You know, just say mixed martial arts. You know, oh I'm in the UC, I'll do the other thing. No, no, no, no, stay away from it. So so guys like that, most of the time, they're not gonna make it. They're too nervous. They put too much pressure on themselves. They probably are the guys who come in and they go, Yeah, every every friend of mine tells me because I'm a good street fighter, that I can uh, you know, I can become a good fighter. Most of the time, those guys come in, they do one sparring session with an uh with a 17-year-old, but I know that's a good 17-year-old, and then they realize, oh, they're not that good. The ones who come back after that training, which is 10% maybe, they they have a chance. Yeah. Because they, okay, I want to know that. That was with me. Once they I got I got slaughtered with my submissions the first time I was training in Amsterdam. I had to stop my car on the way back because I was so crushed, like uh physically, not mentally. And I came home, I told my wife, I said, it was just when the cell phones came out. I said, hey, I'm sleeping in the car for a couple hours, and then I come back home because it was from Amsterdam, it's a two and a half hour drive from me where I used to live. And then I came home, she goes, she started laughing. She says, Oh, that's it? I said, Oh no. Within six months I'm gonna tap everybody. Watch. And I did. Within six months, I started tapping everybody, you know, and nobody could touch me anymore. You see, so it's just uh it it's it's the mindset that you have. Now, if you have the mindset of running away from it, you're never gonna make it. That's first of all. And a guy like that might still have it a little bit because he wants to perform for his friends and his family members. And that's again what we talked about in the beginning. You put too much pressure on yourself, your skill is not gonna come out if you're emotional. That's why, okay, see, constancy, right? That's another virtue that you have. Being steadfast, emotionless, no matter what circumstance, you're complete under control. You know, that's that's what they need. But people automatically assume fighting with anger, and it's absolutely not. The the the I always bet on the relaxed guy. Always. Because he just triggers everything. If you're standing constantly like this, you're c you're constantly a fat, you're energy. But if you're alive, you wake, poof, and there's a shot, you know. Come, uh controlled aggression. Here we go again. So, and then you have the parasympathetic and the separatistic uh nervous system, right? And most of us were very sympathetic, so high energy, and and you need to how to control that. And once you can control that, you know, do it in bursts, yeah, that's that's when you're gonna go up. That's when you start being like you are in the gym. And that's it. That's the trick. That's the whole trick of fighting. It's like uh speaking. I do a lot of speaking right now, and if memorizing 45-minute talks, you know, you think that first two, three times was not easy? It's not. You're standing there, you're nervous attack, right? I crack a joke, I always start with something a joke, people start laughing, breaking the ice a little bit. But you know, you do this 10, 15 times. Now it's normal again. It's like fighting. Yeah. Once you get used to all the commotion around it, you know, it becomes normal, you know, and then you say, okay, I feel it. So yeah, that that's the difference. I think if you fight for others and you really don't want to fight, you're fighting because it's a cool profession, I think you're not gonna go far. There's a few exceptions always, of course, uh to every rule. But uh but the guy who just loves fighting, it's a very hard guy to beat.

SPEAKER_05 40:59

Totally, yeah. I I I I think I you can see that a little bit where people like only do fighting so they can post on their social media that they fight so they can get a bit of like validation from certain people rather than a true love of the sport. Um so a lot of my audience are practitioners in stoicism and they love philosophy, and there's different practices like premeditation of adversity, examining an appr an impression before you ascend to it. Uh I saw that you had a ritual in the locker room before a fight where you would ask what is the worst thing that can happen to me? And one of the answers you would land on was there's a referee. Right? So like you were able to take the catastrophizing and bring it back to reality. That's very similar to what Epictetus and the Stoics taught. Would you be able to walk me through how you figured this process out?

SPEAKER_02 41:53

Yeah, I always do that. What's the worst thing that can happen? I get knocked out. Is it really bad? There's a referee, he's not gonna hit me ten extra times. Like I for instance, when when uh Ken Shermach, uh he was fighting on the first show when I fought in Japan. It was two months before the UFC started, September 93. And he was talking about the UFC. He was gonna compete in the UFC. There's no referee, can't do anything, you know, and and you can do anything you want. Man, you should do that, he said to me. I go, nah, I'm not gonna do that. Why not? I said, no referee. I said, what if you get knocked out and the guy hits you six, seven more times in the face? That's you're asking for brain brain damage. That's not a smart thing to do. If there's a referee, sign me up. I would love to try that. You know, and thankfully that was happened after Tank Abbott, uh, because I heard this from Big John McCarthy, who was the UFC matchmaker, uh, the referee at the time, he said Tank Abbott was getting uh mauled by somebody, maybe Don Fry, I believe, and he was was really getting hurt, but he was not he could was not allowed to step in. The corner had to throw in the towel. And he looked at the corner like throwing the towel, and they turned his back against him. And then he said later after the fight, because Tank got hurt, he said, Why did you guys didn't you guys throw in the towel? Well, because Tank told us that if he would do that, he will beat the crap out of us. And that's when Joe McCarthy thankfully put his foot down and he said to the the owner, he said, Listen, if I can't step in, I'm out. Somebody's gonna die. This is not this is not a good thing. And they said, Okay, you can step in. And that was the moment I said, Okay, now I would love to do it. You see, but I'm not crazy, I'm enjoying my life. I don't these guys say, I want to die in the ring or in the cage. They go, not me, dude. Um, if there's a problem, I'll tap. You know, I'm not gonna freaking die in the cage. I got a family, I'm enjoying life, no. So, but they think I guess it's cool to say, who wants that? You know, and those guys probably never gonna make it. Because they're they're doing it for the wrong reasons. They're not doing it because they love it. I think the love for something is everything.

SPEAKER_05 43:59

Yeah, I so one of the things that you bring up there is when I see athletes, combat athletes, whether it's boxing or MMA, um, I think that the higher you go, intelligence, like just raw IQ power, processing speed becomes more important. So the champions are actually very clever people, and there's this tension that exists between like the the knowledge of risk versus reward, right? Because you you you you're you're aware that you could get hurt, but because you're you could get hurt, you're there because you're clever enough to be able to beat your opponent. And there's like a strange tension there.

SPEAKER_02 44:34

It is i it listen, there there was a moment with me, this is very funny, there wasn't more world title fight against Gavin. Gentlemen. Um, this was literally like like it was a setup almost. So a day before the fight, somebody tells me about the nose bone into the brain, but they could jam it into the brain. And I said, dude, that's a myth. That's not true. And then another person said, Yeah, no, that's not true. But if your nose is already broken, then it maybe might happen. Whatever. That was the story. Then the next day I'm fighting, and Kevin is doing a freaking unbelievable job of me. He beats the crap out of me the first three minutes. I mean, my nose is flat on my face, I lost the contact, the other one is full with blood. I mean, I I don't look good after that fight. So they the referee stops it to see uh if I can continue. And they the referee goes, like, Boss, your nose is broke, you want to continue? And I look at Big Joe McCartney and I go, Do you believe that crap about the nose bone and the brain? This is literally during the fight. And he goes, nah, I go, okay, screw it, I'll fight. You know, so but I was I was did check. If he would have said, yeah, that could happen, I think I would have stopped. Well, I'm pretty sure I would have stopped. Again, because I don't want to die. I'm not gonna risk my life for a sport, you see. But I did ask him at that moment, hey, do you believe it? Is that a true thing? And he says, nah, I go. Okay. Then uh let's do it. Let's keep going. And thankfully I did, but then I won the title. So it was a good thing.

SPEAKER_05 46:01

It's a great story, yeah. Because you see some some fighters they almost try to like brag about how they're willing to die in there. But yeah, it's just yeah, why why exactly? It doesn't make sense. Uh so Seneca, um the stoic Seneca had this idea that anger is like a temporary madness and it's not useful even in something like war or combat. You've talked about uh when you get angry, you tend to load up or telegraph your strikes. What would you say is the difference between aggression and anger? Like do you see them as different things or the same.

SPEAKER_02 46:37

Well, a lot of people would see the same. I say um anger, I think anger consumes you in your mind. I think you it's you hold that longer. Aggression is like a momentarily thing, you know? There's an aggression. So but if you have anger like you see in the streets and the people with the signs, and you know, you see this America, it's going crazy. Like the people getting more and more angry, not realizing that they're feeding dopamine the whole time, right? Because from anger you get dopamine. And then in order, like any other device, to get that same dopamine feeling you had yesterday, well, you're gonna have to be more angry now, because otherwise you're not gonna get that feeling. So it's getting out of control. And I think um with aggression, aggression is a moment that you need it. Like this, like also in Catholicism, they say that you should never be the the moment maybe you're justified to be angry is only when your family, a loved one, or yourself gets attacked with fear of your life. That is a moment that you're allowed to be angry and get let go. For the rest, there's nothing that you should because then you need it. You need the anger in order to to get the job done, because otherwise maybe your family, something's gonna happen to your family. So uh yeah, I think that is the difference. I think that uh just the madness what he's talking about. Yes, it stays in there. They carry it home, it doesn't go away, they keep feeding it the whole time. And always talk about this. The the two voices I had, right? The good voice and the bad voice. Well, which one grows the fastest? The one you feed the most, right? So if you feed that bad voice the whole time and the anger, it'll keep growing. It keeps growing. You gotta stop, you gotta step it back. And my way of things, of saying is always to people like, why don't you remove yourself from the situation? As soon as something really bad happens, mind, you remove yourself, you put your best friend in that situation. He is in the best friend, in that same exact situation. What would you tell him to do at this moment? I guarantee you're not gonna say, you know, you gotta go crazy because you can't think straight. You're gonna say, whatever happens, let's stay calm, you know, because otherwise you can't think. That's what you're gonna say. And most of the time, when I that's how I do it, I step away from it, and I just see myself looking at the situation as if my loved one or a friend of mine has it, and what advice would I give him then? And then the advice is completely different of what I was going to do, what I wanted to do. And then I realized I'm wrong. You know, everything is pride nowadays. Pride, pride, pride, pride, pride. You know, you can't save somebody. If you say hello to somebody, he doesn't say hi back, boom. Oh, we are well, good day to you. I go, dude, you don't know what's going on with that guy. He might just have a phone call that his wife is in the hospital, maybe somebody died. Agoraphobia. I mean, there's so many things that you don't know, but you, because they say don't say hi back to you. If you say hi, thank you, uh or or you open the door for somebody and you do it for a thank you, you're doing it for the wrong reasons. You're doing it for you. You know? You do that because it's the right thing to do. That's why you want to open the door for somebody. I don't wait for thank yous. If I let somebody in traffic, I don't even look at them. I don't need to say, oh yeah, hello. No, that's not what I did. It I know what it feels like. Standing there, nobody lets you in. That's why I let you in, you know? So yeah, doing things for a thank you, you're the one who sprung, not the other person, trust me.

SPEAKER_05 49:48

Yeah, it sounds like you've kind of uh organically uh generated your own stoic practices that are very much aligned with the ancient practices because Epictetus also says if something bad happens to you, imagine it happening to a friend, and then what would you say to the friend? See, I swear to God, I did not know that. Literally, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 50:07

Yeah. Yeah, because like if you if your car breaks down, it's the end of the world. But if your friend's car breaks down, you just go, oh, that's kind of sucks. You know? And it's just not it's not as much of a big deal. It's not great, but it's not as much of a big deal if it happens to you. Um But yeah, that makes sense because the ancient Stoics they just lived life, they lived interesting, difficult lives, and that's how they developed a lot of their practices similar to you. Um can we talk a little bit about confidence? I think this ties in here. I think when uh people start learning how to fight, they want to test their skills. If someone triggers them, it's like an opportunity to be like, can I actually handle this situation or not? But you've said that it's easier, it became easier to walk away from those situations because you didn't need to test your skills anymore. You just kind of knew what what who you were. Is that the sign of of true strength is being able to not prove something? How do you how do you see that?

SPEAKER_02 51:02

Yeah, that's the well uh the the Spider-Man saying, right? With great power comes great responsibility, right? And I I I think that's that's everything. You know, I know you're a a a regular person, you he's not gonna beat me. It's not gonna happen. He can maybe knock me out, although I've never been knocked out, you know. So I've been I've been I I I busted my head against the toilet seat when I was drunk and I fell backwards and hit a toilet, a ceramic toilet. I should have been dead. Toilet explosion.

SPEAKER_04 51:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:31

It's like 150 pieces. The whole floor started floating. There was a whole other story in a hotel. It was hilarious, but that's another story. But I mean, how is that even possible? Luck again. Right? I somehow I hit a weak spot. You know, so yeah, w w walk away from it. It doesn't uh it doesn't do anything. You know uh and you know the feeling afterwards. Most of the time I feel bad. I had it in a fight. In the fight I I I I felt horrible, but then again I didn't know, you know. Um I I I saw a a a preview of our show a day before the fight on the big screen in Japan on like a wall, like a like a like a building. This is in '94. This is like gigantic, the whole wall is a built uh screen. And uh we hear hybrid wrestling pancrus. And you the first thing you see is me knocking out my first opponent. Oh, it's the preview. The preview for the show tomorrow. Oh, so we're all fighters standing there. And I got this guy behind me, he's the 10th degree Kyokushin, the highest one after the guy who founded it, Mazoyawa, uh John Blooming. And I see this move, which I never did and I never knew. It's a it's a leg lock, an inverted heel hook. And I see the guy sitting in half guard, he falls back and he wins the fight. So I said, I'll tell him, I go, that's a cool move, I should remember that. Next day I'm in a fight, and I'm in that position. I go, I'll try it, right? So I grab it, but since I never trained before, uh it before, I had no clue what I was really doing. I didn't know that I was going to, by falling back, putting an enormous amount of pressure on his leg. Well, in this case, normally the knee will pop, but his knee was stronger than his shimbo, so the shim bone broke in half. And that guy was, and I felt very bad for the uh for a very long time about that. Especially we went to the hospital, somebody got an infection in it, he was like six months there. It was I I when I visited him there, I I yeah, I was crying. I felt so bad for the guy. You know, so that it it really hurt me, you know. You it sometimes it goes too hard. And thankfully it was a professional fight. He signed up for it, there's another pro. But I never want to have that experience on the street with somebody. You can kill somebody. If somebody doesn't know how to take a shot, it's completely relaxed, and you're it's a full punch at Lancer, you can do some damage. So I would go for the body a lot, you know, but or a low kick. If nobody knows what a kick to the legs, what that does, it's one kick. That's it, fight's over. You know, they can't walk anymore because they don't know how to deal with it yet. You know, the muscle is relaxed, it penetrates straight through, that's a heavy leg coming, shin bone, but thinking God knows how many miles an hour and the weight of the leg, you're not gonna win that, you know, you're gonna go down. And that's actually the funnier thing because that is simply can't walk anymore. And then you can walk up and you go, you wanna you wanna keep going? They go, No, no, no. So it's it's kind of a cooler thing to do as well, but then you don't hurt them. You know, I will feel horrible if you by accident put somebody in in really bad in the hospital.

SPEAKER_05 54:24

Yeah, we don't we don't think in the moment that we're all connected as well. Like the the very angry person who's getting in your face could also be a parent, you know, or a family member that others rely on.

SPEAKER_02 54:35

That could be, God knows what happened to him the last week, you know, and a few drinks makes him crazy. I don't know. But it's possible. Yeah so that's what I always say on the street. The guy cuts you off. That's the same example. You know, he cuts you off, but people get angry by the way. I go in my talks I say about this. What if a guy goes oh no? I start by saying, Imagine you see a guy and he's passing you, high speed, and he cuts like six cars in front of you, he cuts a guy and he keeps going. Do you get angry? No, but you think, what an idiot. That's it, right? That's that's pretty much your emotion. Yeah. But if he does it to you, now how dare he do that to me? That's pride. Step away from that. And most of the time, like I said, again, we don't know what's going on. He might be racing to the hospital. You know, that we don't know. So let it go. There's nothing you can do. Why would you get angry about it? You know, so yeah, just think about that. Again, you see, those situations I'm thinking about constantly. I found this out with a friend of mine. That's literally how I found out. He was driving and I was sitting shotgun, and the guy cuts us off and he gets angry, and I go, dude. It's just an idiot, I guess. And then it gets cried in the car. Oh, I go, oh no. He goes, what? I go, dude, it's pride. He goes, what is pride? And he's also a devout Catholic.

SPEAKER_00 55:51

I go. If I'm driving and they do that to me, I get angry. But now I'm sitting next to you, you're driving, and I'm not angry.

SPEAKER_02 56:00

So I see it as a personal attack. That's it's the dumbest thing there is. You see, it's the same situation, only I'm not driving. And that's helped me a lot as well. Situations like that. I right away see the the spark from it that I can use in my own life because it's a work in progress. We all want to be in control. It's not that easy, right? You're gonna have to work really, really hard. Every single day, every moment it's on my mind. If there's a crazy guy, I and I even think I go, what and I go, don't you think that? Constantly catching myself. I want it so that I don't even have that tenth of a second. I just want it to be like that, like this real stoics, like Aurelius or so, Seneca that you're talking about, who completely do not get bothered by it. Fudoshin, that's what they say in Japan. That's the same thing as constancy. You know, it doesn't matter what situation, what it is, you're completely under control. You know, that's what I want. But it's a lot of work. But it's working. Because in the past, you know, I've been working for years on this, you know, but it's getting less. It's getting less every single time you simply neglect it. And you gotta do that because if you one time give yourself in again, it's completely back again. So it's not like it's like breaking a habit, right? You break a habit, yeah, it's easy once you have the rules. But as easy as it is to break a habit, is that's how easy it is to get that habit back again. So you have to be constantly on your toes and know, oh, I would really like to feel a dr- uh get a drink right now because I don't feel good. No, you said you're not gonna drink anymore. You know, and if I said that I'm not gonna drink anymore, I'm not gonna drink anymore. Yeah, but you took and if I drink one beer the next day I can't stand myself. But boss, it's it was temperance. You could do that. No, no, no, no. It wasn't because I told myself I was not gonna do it, but I still do it. That's what that's what the conversation I have with myself. I still did it and I couldn't say no to that one stupid drink. It uh it annoys me. But what it does is also helps me a lot because I don't want to feel like a loser anymore the next day. So now I can simply say no, I'm not going to drink because I said I didn't want a good drink. And one drink is it that's for me already a drink because I said I was not gonna do it. Not talking about getting drunk.

SPEAKER_05 58:13

You know, I I think you're a good example of your entire life you've done very difficult things from getting destroyed in jujitsu to saying I'm gonna tap everyone out in six months and then going and doing it, and yet you're also saying that you've been working on the emotional mastery side for years. And it's it's a it it's a different kind of hard, you know, to use that kind of restraint when your entire body is saying like shout at this person or judge this person. Um so I think there's something to take away from that, you know, if if anyone's listening to this.

SPEAKER_02 58:44

I think it's harder in fighting. To be completely under control, to have your temperance completely under control, all your virtues, prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude, to have the all and a sub virtuous because there's a lot of them. If you have that under control, man, that was my thing. My line said, What man do you want to be? This is a line when I use this as a talk, they always say, hey, repeat that because they want it. What kind of man you want to be? Well, I want to be a man who can overcome his weaknesses, vices, and imperfections. A man who's not a slave to his passions, emotions, and desires, but just a man who's completely in control of himself. That's what I want to be. And then I feel good. Because all these people, when you're feeding yourself, you know it's not good for yourself. It's overeating, it's alcohol, it's drugs, it's sex, it's anger, whatever it is, it doesn't matter. You know it's not good for you. And it starts eating at you. And every time you wake up, you go, I shouldn't do this anymore. Every time whenever I was drinking, I was doing drugs, I was I was completely loose cadden. And 150 times, 200 times that I would wake up and say, I'm not gonna drink today. At four o'clock, boom, starts again all night, pain partying, and the next day wake up. And every time that happens, your word to yourself doesn't hold value anymore. It's going away because you said too many times now that you were not gonna do it, but you broke that rule. Now it's easy to break the rule because it's normal. You've been doing it already for 150 times. The only way to stop it is to literally stop it. And then you're gonna find out that if you do that, yes, it will be hard the first week, not even, because you see after three days already the fruits. You're gonna go like, okay, yes, it's hard, but I can do this because I already feel more clear-headed. And then you realize the more you say no, the easier it gets. And the easier it becomes to say no, you know, because you're getting stronger. And and and that's what people have to figure out, but they don't want to take that step. We all want to feel good and we want to look good and we want to do everything, but we don't want to do anything for it. They want to take a pill to lose weight, and they don't want to go to the gym, they don't want to spend time on themselves. Your body is your it's a gift. Why would you tear it up? Would you tell the loved one? That was the last video I made. I said, would you tell a loved one to start doing drugs and you eat more? You know, stop working out. All these things, would you tell them? Of course not. Why? Because you love them. Okay, so why don't you love yourself? Right? And they don't. They don't love themselves because they just keep feeding it and complaining and pointing at other fingers who people who are successful, that's where they want to be, but they don't want to do the work that that person had to do to get there. No, they just want to be there. That's the problem now with social media. Everybody wants to be a YouTuber. I mean, if you ask in schools, I mean that's like an 80% answer. Because it's an easy way. That's what they think. It's not these real YouTubers, what they have to do for it. There's camera crew scripts. I mean, it's a lot of work, guys. It's traveling. Yeah, it's cool. Trust me, fighting is cool too, you know. But but uh going to a UFC event of a a regular event, like Professor Fighter Slick is gonna be here. My friend says, Are you gonna go? I say no. Because I'm gonna be shaking hands all day long. Because all these people, they know me, right? Because from the fighting. So I'm not gonna watch a fight. There's constantly people coming home making pictures, and that's cool, but not for two and a half hours. You say, so yeah, be careful what you wish for, I always say. I'm with my friends, famous actors. We can't go to a supermarket because people come. You see, I don't have that. I'm like recognized 10, 15 times a day and say, hey, Bach Boop, and then somehow they still think fighters, watch out. So, so thankfully that not a lot of people start making long conversations. But it's the perfect blend for me, you know, because I look at my bodies, like Conor McGregor. Well, good luck. You need to buy a brat? Well, good luck with that. Because if one person recognizes you, everybody's coming. And now you gotta get out of there. Yeah, but that's cool. Not if it happens every day, man. Trust me on that. It's uh again, be careful what you wish for.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:44

You know, there's uh you're you're reminding me there's a part in the Encaridian by Epictetus where he says that a lot of our adults are like children where we we want to play dress up, like one day we want to be a fighter, one day we want to be an actor. But what you need to do is look at what it actually involves. Like what is the he uses the an Olympian as an example, an Olympic wrestler, I believe. He's like, what do they eat? Uh, how do they train? What are their injuries? What's their social life like? What are their sacrifices? And only if you want that, then you can try to be one of those. But don't just think of someone on a podium with a medal and say, I'm gonna be that. And what you're describing is exactly that.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:19

Yeah. They want all the shortcuts. And that's the pills, the heartburn. You see there, people are so overweight, you know, and they and they'd have heartburn. I say, Well, that's your body telling you don't eat that crap. That's bad food for you. That's literally your body telling you. No, no, no, no, no. I I grab a uh uh anthracits, you know, like a whole bottle. If I drink that before, I can still eat that pizza with all the crap on it that I want. No, you're killing yourself. Don't eat that stuff. You know, why would you force it just because you like the taste of it? Everything needs to be good, the temperature needs to be perfect, the food cannot be overcooked or undercooked, whatever. Everything everything is wrong. We're complaining about everything. We you have AC? Yeah, well, we be happy. A lot of people in the world don't have that. Warm showers? That was in 1921 or something that came out? I mean, that's that's 100 years ago. Before that, everybody had cold showers, you know, and now it's like, oh, it's too cold, it's too hot, it's too. They can still control it, you know? It's amazing to me how weak people are becoming. This discipline is gone. They don't nothing discipline for themselves. They all want to feel better, but they don't realize that cutting all that stuff out, like with me, I thought always that I was in control. Because I did the drugs and the alcohol and anger and I did all that stuff. Because I want to be happy. No, that's pleasure. It's all pleasure. That's different. That's dopamine pleasure. Happiness is serotonin, it's a nice relaxed state. That's that's that's what you want a gun for, you know, because serotonin, dopamine, that that are all vices. You always need more in order to feel the same as you did the the last time. You know, and if you want to walk that path, well, then don't start complaining because your life is gonna go down the drain. You're not gonna have a life, you're not having goals. 17-year-old, the average 17-year-old right now has 91% of his free time he's on his phone. Think about that. What do you want to be? You can make a life out of that. So I I don't I don't know how this is going to get better. That's why I do a lot of talking, and it's at colleges, you know, these younger people, and I try to, you know, and hopefully with my background, that they have listen, you know, but it works because every time I do a talk, I got six new other ones booked, pretty much, you know, because people say, Dude, you didn't speak everywhere. You just say whatever you want to say. I go, yeah, because it's the truth. The truth will set you free, right? That's the only way to get stronger in life. Work for it. I mean, people don't know. Like, I just put a video out. What I do in the morning, you know, I already, before I talk to you, uh, okay, I talked like 45 minutes to God. It started with that. Then I walked the dogs. Oh no, first I do my inspiratory muscle training thing that I have here. I that's the first thing I do. I take all my waters and my whatever, the vitamins that I'm taking. I'm walking the dogs. I do, I I I talk to God, I w uh I worked out for 45 minutes, I go to mass, then I go to mass, I go to the store, the store grocery store, I bought a whole bunch of stuff. I come here, I cook for myself, my own food, not warming up in the microwave, you know, and then and then I'm uh I did a little bit more, and then I I'm jumping on this call. This is what I already did. And it was only that that's what I did before nine o'clock in the morning. You know, all that. That's people normally at life. So people go like, oh, you still look good, they go, yeah, yeah. Because I work out, I do it. Yeah, but you like working out. I hate working out. You don't know my body, it's killing me. But I do it, and you know why I do it? Because I know I'm gonna feel great after I'm done. Those 40, 16 hours a day that I have, they're freaking phenomenal if I do a 45-minute workout. And my workouts are not the 45 minutes, they're not long, but they're short and intense. But I feel so good. And what other people do, guys, they go like they don't think about the 14, 16 hours. They think about the 45 minutes what they had to do, the struggle in order to feel that good. So they that they don't want to do it. Well, if you stop every vice there is, you're gonna be happy. I'm telling you, you're gonna be happy. You're not attached, nothing is controlling you because you're just a slave to alcohol. You're a slave to any vice, you're simply a slave. It tells you what to do, and you're doing it. Oh no, I'm gonna do it. Then we see that on social media as well. You jump hoops, you do everything, you're like a dog, is what I said. What does it say? Was it Seneca who said, oh no, no, oh no no, wasn't uh uh a Chinese philosopher, right? Uh forget his name. He said, uh, care what other people think, and you will be their prisoner. And I go, no, you will be their dog. And they go, dog? I go, yeah, you'll be their dog. You're you want to do everything for the people, it may make everybody happy. Even when a dog gets beat up by his owner and each owner comes home, he's doing everything for the owner. That's what you are. You're trying to please everybody else to get your numbers up on stupid social media, who cares? You know, so it's so for you as a stoic, you have the same feelings I know you do, because you see the going down. Oh yeah. And the only way to get up is live like that to cut everything out.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:26

100%. Yeah, everything you're saying is making making complete sense. I didn't realize the extent to which you you've gone down the rabbit hole with this stuff. Um you so uh when I was doing my research, I saw that I don't know how your relationship with alcohol before, but I did see that you stopped or you managed your relationship very quickly when you read the word slave. Could you talk about what that word meant for you and how that kind of snapped you out of the way?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:53

Yeah, that was that was when I jumped back into the fate, it was in 2014, and uh what whatever overcomes a man to that, he is enslaved. Well, enslaved is you're a slave to it. And I go, no, but I I can choose when I drink. No, actually you can't. The alcohol just has to be in the house. Doesn't say anything to you. You just want to drink it. And you can't say you can't even stop it. Something in you can't even stop it. Dude, you're a weak person, that's what I thought. How weak are you that you cannot simply say no to that bottle of alcohol? You know, and you know if one bottle, two bottles, if I feel a spark, oh now it's gonna be 30, 35 beers. Oh, you drink that, or drink 15 bottles of uh uh uh wine. I mean, it was insane. And I never had a hangover, so why would I stop? You know, it's it that was this insane. It's so bad for you, you know, and you start. It does affect you mentally, because once I stopped everything, my mind came back so much stronger. I'm memorization, everything, it became better and better and better, and I start feeling good again. I go, okay, now I can work out. If I would have been in that state, still drinking, I would have never worked out. Now I don't want to work out, but I know I focused on the good feeling. I focus, always focus on the feeling that you're gonna have from it, not what you have to do. You know, we can all do it. Like, for instance, if you're gonna get married and you're overweight and your spouse is overweight, they go, oh, let's go like a two-month thing, so we look good for the pictures. And then I guarantee you, every single person who does that, three weeks in, they go, like, dude, I don't understand why I never did this before. I'm feeling so good. That's what they tell everybody. And as soon as the wedding is done, they stop. It's too hard. Wait, didn't you say two months ago, right? They forget about it, and then they start gaining weight again. You should be ashamed. It's like these people with the internet. You that they put pictures on them, they got apps, and I got told my buddy, I said, take that freaking picture off of Facebook, dude. That's not you anymore. You got 20 more pounds now on you. You don't have apps. That's your profile picture, seriously? Take it off. Or what about this? Start working out again, get those apps again, and then do redo a picture. But don't put a fake you out there. Oh, that's a nice guy. Yeah, then you see him. That's a good person. Why would you do that? You see, so yeah, man, it drives me insane. So, and and all these things that I'm saying, I did it on myself. That's how I talk to myself, right? You know, no, I would never do that because that's not who I am. You know, I would like the people, me to the, oh, did you why didn't you never change? They go, well, it's because I feel good the way I am. I don't, why would I need to change? Uh, physically and everything. I don't want to be bigger, I don't want to be unhealthy, you know. I I love my family. I want to try to stay with my family as long as I can so I see that I already have a grandkid, hopefully grand-grandkids. My other daughter's pregnant now, so I'm gonna have another one coming on the way. Spend my lifetime as long as I can. And anything that I do bad, any bad vice out there that can take years of my life, I like to stop with that, which includes anger, and which includes all these things as well. People don't realize what anger can really do physically to your body, you know, cancers and all that stuff. It's because we, you know, you're just constantly dragging yourself down. You are what you think, right? And nobody realizes that. Those those things that they show with water, did you ever see that? They have water in this room and water in the other room. To this water, they say, Oh man, I love you. Every day, I love you. I do this, but if they freeze that water, then they go, they freeze that water. They go to the other room and say, I hate you. I do they they talk to water. Water. They freeze that water and then you look at the crystals. Google that. You'll be insane. Like beautiful crystals for the the loved one, and the other ones are just chucks and clumps and all that stuff. That is water. Well, we're what 90% water? So feed yourself with positivity the whole time because your mind starts believing if you say, Oh my god, I'm such a dumbass, if you say that the whole time, you're becoming a dumbass because you're telling your mind that you are. But you know, I'm actually I'm telling myself, I'm don't talk to yourself as if it is already happening. It's the universe, man. I'm telling you. Thank you for me being healthy. Thank you for my great mind that I have, that I can retain information. Thank you. All these things I want, but you have to talk it like it's already happening. And then you see it literally going up. You're giving yourself love. Man, I'm feeling good. You know? Even when you feel bad, start saying that, you know, and then suddenly you get out of it. But if it doesn't work for somebody within 30 seconds, ah, doesn't work. No, what about 10 minutes, 15 minutes? Only focus on that. You s you're gonna change. I'm telling you, you're going to change. You're gonna feel good.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:39

The way you were describing the putting the the leaner picture up on social media on Facebook, the way you describe them talking to that person, to me that is real compassion. You know, it's sort it's sort of like I care enough about you that I'm gonna be honest with you instead of I'm gonna like uh be indirect and not try and offend you. I think a g a good way to think about it is what would you say to your own child? Like if your own child was acting up, you wouldn't just be like, oh yeah, carry on. You'd be like, no, let's sort this out because I love you. You know, let's let's let's get this sorted out. So there's something um I noticed in the way you were framing that that I thought was actually truly kind of because you're willing to say things to my friends just love you.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:17

And I could have said because this is literally what happened to me, but I didn't say him that I say it different to him. He's overweight. This Canadian guy lives now in Italy, and he hits his life because he's overweight, overweight, over. This is about six, seven months ago. And I go, he goes, yeah, and I get those. I say, dude, you're just a selfish ass. And he goes, What? I say, you're a selfish person, that's what you are. And he it gets quiet. He goes, What do you mean? I go, you put yourself in front of your family, uh be uh before your family. You don't think that what I just told you, I said, I said, you don't think that your family wants you around for a very long time? You don't think they're gonna hate it when you die? You're taking years of your life because you are more important than your own family is. And he got quiet. And then he says, Okay, you know, uh, okay, we'll we'll we'll talk later. Boom, hangs up the phone. Ten minutes later, bing, I got a WhatsApp. He goes, dude, it's the best thing you ever could tell me. Best thing you ever told me. I said, Yeah, because I love you. And so, and now I tell you why I told you, because that's what I told myself. I was looking in the mirror at the druggy, at the drinker, at everything, and I said, You're a selfish guy, man. You put yourself above your family. Your family should be number one. That's what I told myself, and that's when everything quit also. So now I told him, but if I would have told him in that order, it would have had the impact that it had when I did it the way I did it, because now it was a shocker to him. Yeah, you know? But I did it again, like you said, out of love. I want you to have the best. And I know this is gonna really upset you, but it's gonna help you because you're gonna start thinking about it within 15 minutes. Lost 70 65 pounds now, I think.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:53

So it won't Wow, yes, that's amazing. I think uh so Epictetus' teacher, Musonius Rufus, said that he wanted his lectures to kind of end in silence. So it was interesting that you said things went quiet. He didn't want applause, he wanted that kind of wow, I I don't know what to say. I don't actually feel very good after this, but that that's what it's like.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:13

And they can say anything because they know it's the truth. If they go back, I say, tell me I'm wrong.

unknown 1:16:20

Right?

SPEAKER_02 1:16:20

They can't say that. No, no, no, you're wrong. They can't. They can't, it's the truth. You know, that's that's the best thing. You know, you're just telling the truth. But nowadays you can't tell the truth anybody to people. You know, if somebody's wearing shoes, I'll talk about that as well. Yo, what do you think of my new shoes? The women don't like them. And they get angry. I go, well then don't ask me about your shoes. I don't like those shoes. Is that really so bad? Think about why are you getting angry now? I mean, everybody do you like the Beatles? No, I love the Beatles. And you oh now you don't get angry. You see? What color do you like? You see, you can do this with everything. But is the stakes they somehow become higher if it's pride involved? I don't know what it is. It's weird how people's minds are going.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:03

Yeah, identification with something. They start thinking the idea is them as opposed to something external.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:09

It's great, therefore it has to be great. And if somebody says it's not, oh pride. Again.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:16

Pride keeps coming up. Um so you mentioned uh the overlap between stoicism and Catholicism in in our correspondence. So in 2013, in your late forties, you returned to Catholic faith, um, which you you you you had as a child, and you practiced practice it, I still believe today, with a lot of um discipline and temperance and daily um not missing any days, um, just like with your training, um, you know, bringing that same discipline. And when I was researching this, apparently you lost some followers.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:53

Oh lot um because you 175,000 like in in two days on Facebook.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:58

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:59

Because you want to be a good guy.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:01

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:02

So I was happy because they're the bad people anyway. I didn't need them, you know, and now it starts coming back, so that was good. But yeah, it took a long time. I lost jobs, I lost everything. Like when they talk about the devil and all that stuff. I lost everything. I had a show on TV for nine years, that was gone. And a commentating job for seven years, that was gone. I mean, within within six weeks of all, then I came back to the everything starts going. Business deals went wrong, everything was wrong. I was like, what is going on? And then actually a friend of mine said that I need to pay start praying a daily rosary. That's how it started. And I started doing that. And I remember the first time I prayed, uh I was had my eyes closed. I heard this weird sound, I think sound. And it was a hummingbird right in front of me here. And I'm looking open my eyes, I go, hey dude, what's up? And he's like, you know, he's just in front of me. I go man, this is so cool. You're so beautiful, and I'm just talking and go, shit goes off. Next day I'm sitting there again, and we're rosy, hummingbird is back, you know, and that was it. It was literally within a week. Poof, I got a job, poof, I got this, poof, I got this. And everything starts suddenly started coming back, you know, and then slowly but surely the internet, the the followers start growing again, everybody starts coming back. And then a lot of people start tack contacting me about it. You know, oh, I lost the faith, and by the time I saw your uh video and I got back into the faith, and I'm not feeling so good right now, and it kept boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And now and now I'm talking for the faith. I do a speaking engagement. So, you know, and I love it because we're changing people. People don't want they don't want to tell people who never experienced things in their life, who always been good. It's not really hard to learn from because you never made a mistake. But if you listen to a guy like me who did everything wrong, and I could dig myself out of it, you know, then maybe people are gonna go, hey, wait a minute, I'm in that situation. I do this, I did this, I did that, I did that, I did a lot wrong. You know, so and and that inspires some people. And if it does, if it's one person, if I can save one person with it, I'm already happy, you know, but it's working. A lot of people are saying that you need to speak here, you need to speak there. So I'm really enjoying those talks. Just like I was enjoying teaching classes, I love to bring over the the fundamentals of fighting, you know, to really get inside their heads. And uh and because and especially when I see uh somebody loves it. You know, like I was the person, you ask you something, and then when you when you tell me how to do it, that's the way I do it immediately. And if I don't do it immediately, tomorrow will be the job because I will make sure this is going to be fixed in a second. So if you come in with me and you're asking me about things, I had this fighter coming in, he just knocked out a big Russian guy, was a complete lucky shot, and he thought he was the man and everything, and he says, Hey, I want to come and train in my gym, and he's training there, and he goes, Okay, I want you to look and give me pointers on what I have to fix. Well, those are a lot fixed, right? So he comes out train, what is it? He says, I got like nine things that that you're really gonna have to improve on. It's a lot, okay. What are those? I said, I'll give you one. I say, and once you fix that one, we're gonna go to the two. Because if I'm gonna give you nine, there's no way you can fix this. Three weeks later he comes back to me. Hey, so what's the second thing? You never taught me the second thing. I say you still didn't fix the first thing. You see, then you lost my respect already. I don't even want to train you anymore. Because that's you're not a fighter. And and and he's and he said while he was sparring with sin guards that his uh skin the skin on his shin was hurting.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:39

A fighter, a professional fighter. I go, yeah, I'm out, dude.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:44

I can't I mean complaining because your skin hurts? That is like the dumbest thing you can ever tell me because I'm out, I check out right away. I don't want to do that. That's the same thing with coming late. You show up late, be trained by me, and you show up late, you got one more chance. Is there's a real reason for it? If I'm on time, you can be on time. I'm actually here 15 minutes before. I will always be on time. Always. My entire life have been doing that. If I say 10 o'clock, I'll be there before 10 o'clock. Always. Or something bad happens, but that's a good excuse, an accident, or whatever it happens, that's a different thing. But just coming late, that's so disrespectful to me. You got one more chat. And then if they go a second time and there's no explanation, you're out. I'm not training you anymore. Doesn't matter who you are, I'm not gonna do it. You know, I just have standards that I don't want to break. That's the same when I got back to the faith with the profanity. I used a lot of profanity. I thought everybody was doing it here because I come from Holland. Why do we see the movies? And then I just think suddenly, I go, why am I doing this? What do you what do you gain by it? A friend of mine said, Well, why wouldn't you do it anymore? I said, Why would you? And he looks at me, flip it back.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:56

Does it make you stronger? It doesn't do anything. If it makes me stronger, mentally stronger, smarter, yeah, of course, I'm gonna do it. Doesn't do anything. It actually makes me look dumber to me. People who do it every line, I I'm not caring about a person who drops an F bomb one time. Absolutely not. But in every sentence, this F and guy was F and telling me, and I go, Oh, full of fuel the whole time? Come on, do it. You're compensating for something, an insecurity. Something is going on with you. You don't need to do that. You know, and then I start thinking about my students. Do I really want to do that in front of my students, the youth? Do I want to teach your boss is using profanity? No. Why don't I want so now my student it's so funny because sometimes they're talking and he goes, yeah, and this effing guy goes oh, sorry, boss. I go, not to worry about it. You know, everybody's apologizing now because they know that I um yeah, I don't like it. It makes it it's not necessary. That's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:49

Yeah, but it's it's uh it's all part of the having standards and like having values and living according to those. A lot of people's profanity is just unconscious. And you your process is I'm gonna make it conscious, like do like and think about it. Do I want to do it? Why would I do it? Why wouldn't I do it? And now you've just decided through reason where you stand with it. I I I love that. Um you mentioned that you see a lot of overlap between Stoicism and Catholic principles. Where do they line up most for you? And do you think that they kind of pull against each other at all, or do you just think there's a lot of people?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:21

This book I didn't put it here because it lays open. Actually, with a picture of my mom that I just found, I'm gonna hang up. Look at this.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:29

So that's cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:32

The Daily Stoic for Marcus Aurelius. And then I my my daughter gave this to me, and I start reading this and I go. It's a Catholic. That's that's the Catholic principles. Yeah you know, it's exactly the same. The virtues, the temperance, all the you know, the carnal virtue. Only you guys are with nature, according to nature and reason you talk about. But well, we believe there's a creator for that nature, of course, and that's but but for the rest, having yourself under control. I'm talking about the Catholic faith. Like with the Protestant faith, it's Catholic faith you have uh I'm talk living as a Catholic, that's what I'm talking about. Not going to church once a week, you know, and thinking you're a Catholic, and then just flipping people off and on the at the when you get out of church already, hey, we'll get to you they just start screaming at people. No, that's not a real. I mean a practicing one, you know? And for us to control all those virtues, the prudence and the justice, tempers, and fortitude, the all and our sub virtues that I talked about in the beginning, it's a very hard thing to do. And for me, that's a challenge. I want to be that guy. I want to be, see if I can get myself completely under control. And that's with the Catholics. So with the Protestants, they it's well, you can pretty much do anything when you want to do. Uh as long as you say, sorry, God, I love you, I believe in you, you're gonna go to heaven. I go, well, I don't think it works like that. I think uh there needs to be rules, that's why we got the Ten Commandments. That's another thing, right? The people go like, oh, if uh Jesus only wants um uh love, why is there so much hate in the world? I go, because if there's no hate, you wouldn't know what love was. If there's no opposites, you don't know what a thing is. If there's no anger, there's no there's no peace. If there's no sadness, there's no happiness. It's gonna be gone. We're gonna be just people walking around with no feelings whatsoever, pushing things around, whatever we're doing, we're just robots. No, no, no. He wants to give us free will. So the reason why there's so much anger and violence in the world is you. And it's me, and it's everybody else. That's why there's a violence. Because if we would live to the letter, by the Ten Commandments that they gave us, and I mean to the letter, there wouldn't there wouldn't be violence, there wouldn't be nothing. Everything would be perfect. And that's stoicism as well, because that's controlling those virtues. You know, and that's why I saw right away and go, my God, he was persecuting Christians, not knowing that they have the same beliefs. They only believe that it came from God, because well, something cannot come out of nothing, right? That's the very easy one for me, I always say. So that's and that's what really attracts me to stoicism because I I love to read about that because I I want to be that man that completely is in control of himself.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:14

Yeah, yeah, there absolutely is so much overlap, and um, I think I think uh there there were a lot of very influential Christians more in the last few hundred years that were heavily influenced by the Stoics as well. And the Stoics had this idea of the universe as being uh having its own intelligence, um you know, like the logos, which it ties in as well. My son actually goes, my seven-year-old son goes to a Catholic school, and uh it's really cool. Like we came home one day and he was like five or six, and he was like, I know what the word temptation means, you know, and it's just like the the values and the things that he's learning, I just thought was like really interesting, and I was kind of wondering like what what is he learning about symbolism and language that it is going to be useful for him later on in life that um like a non-religious school wouldn't be able to teach him. So there's a lot of really good values there. Um so in stoicism, there's this idea of amor fati or loving your fate, you know, which it sounds like you've completely mastered that, you know, because it you've flipped everything over from bullying to injuries, as I'm glad it happened. You know, like I'm I wouldn't have it any other way. Um when you were at your lowest, were you able to tap into this acceptance of fate? Uh were you a naturally trusting person, or is it something you learned over years?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:35

I learned over years. I always thought I was in control. It was me who was trained. It was me who was doing everything. Me, me, me, me, me, me. That's a fighter, right? You're not part of a team. Yeah, well, you are officially because there's people helping you. But I listen, I never had coaches. I trained every I trained some missions myself. I found that out myself. But if I get obsessed with something, oh, you have no idea. Ask my wife. She goes, oh, here we go. You know? So she thought with Catholicism, for instance, that oh, this is going to be six weeks, she started laughing because that's my ADHD as well. If it doesn't interest me, interest me, then it's gone pretty fast. But then she started stuff, I suddenly became a different guy. And I started being way more involved and way more things. And then suddenly I asked her to marry me for the third time, because we got married twice already. And um and she immediately I I I I don't remember what she said, but because but the next day I couldn't get a hold of her, and then finally she called me back uh because I left a message, and I go, Who were you? She goes, I was I was a mess. I go, You you're what? I was at mass. She said, Yeah, because I I did I was baptized, but I never did my confirmation, so I signed up for RCIA classes here. So what took a lot of explanation for me with her, it was just seeing me change that immediately wanted her to jump back into the faith with me and to do this. And then when we started doing retreats, you know, again, I attack things like insane. Like I if I lose for something, I will never lose like that again. That's my mindset. That's so now actually this loss, see, made me a stronger fighter. That's how I think. The loss is always for a reason. You're not good enough. He was simply better. Not because he cut more weight or he was doing whatever or he's using steroids. No, it's not about any of that stuff. It's about just being better, you know, and that's how I trained myself. And then we started. So then I remember we had an um a retreat, and four months later we came to the retreat, and they do everything in Latin there. And uh, and I start doing everything in Latin with them, and everybody was looking at me and go like, what the heck? I go, oh yeah, you know, if you're doing it, I need to notice. So I start, you know, I started making the shift to complete, and now it's like I said, the morning, you know, I'm every morning for the last, I would say, 12 years when I was really solid, never missed one. You know, never missed the rosary, never missed my readings, never missed my examination of conscience that I do every evening, going over the day, what did you do wrong? What did you do right? How can if you did it right, can you make it better the next time? You know, what did what didn't you do, but you should have done? Like all these things, I'll go over my day, how I can fix that, and hopefully most of the time the next day in the morning, some other ones pop up from the day that I f, you know, and I work that into my prayers and then my readings and all that stuff, and it just makes me feel really good. I've since I started doing that, my life has been really good. So why would I stop doing it? You know, and unless yes, there's moments that you don't want to do it, you know. But then again, discipline, it makes you do it. Same as my working out. This is just working out this muscle. But my work I need to have this fit, and that's what the Stoics also believe. How can you control uh um be the person in control if you can't control yourself? Right? I mean, how can you lead if if you don't lead yourself? You see, and that's what really attracted me also in Stoicism, and and and that's when I saw, oh, it's it's the same. It's we have the same principles. Think about it. Definitely.

SPEAKER_05 1:32:09

You're uh and you are your unfair advantage is that you are a practitioner through and through. And I'm assuming that comes from just years of uh martial arts and training. A lot of people they might read Stoicism or read some texts um in the Catholic faith and sort of go, oh that's cool, that's nice, and then put it down. But you're a practitioner, you practice. What is the value for people listening of actually doing the work and practicing as opposed to just reading about it?

SPEAKER_02 1:32:38

It's it's the the problem with BF now, right? We want instant gratification, you know? So I had my my my cousin is down, there's a lot wrong with him. Start doing a rosary. Did it for a week, doesn't work, stops with it. You know? No, it's the continuation. You need to keep going, keep doing it, keep doing it. Yes, it's uh and once you keep doing it, it becomes normal, it becomes a habit. And once it's a habit, now it's normal to you to do it every single day. I don't have the time for it. I was laying in bed till eight o'clock, nine o'clock in the morning. Not now, I wake up at five. And because otherwise I don't have the time to do everything before I go to mass. You know, so already working out. And the working out, yeah, see it, there's still a little bit of weakness in me. Because if I tell myself, oh, I will work out later in the day, there might be something coming, maybe somebody has to do an interview or whatever it is that's gonna steer me away from it, and then after the interview I don't want to do it anymore. Now, to avoid that, I simply do it every day. It's like I invented that long training device to expand your chest so you can put more air in your lungs, is the first thing I do. And they say, How do you do it? Oh, I've been doing it for eight years every single day. You miss one? Yes, those I missed once, uh maybe two percent. But that's it. That's but I tried to fly to Dubai and I didn't, you know, and I get really tired. Okay, today I'm not gonna do it. But the next morning, first thing I do, I pop it in and I start doing it again. Do I want to do it with a jet lag and all that stuff? No. But I do it because I know if I don't do it, then the next time not doing it is already easier to not do. Because you can, you know, keep the habit. And so I can tell people, you know, which you say, okay, tomorrow, how many times uh did somebody say, Okay, Monday I'm gonna start training again? And and they didn't do it. That's 99% of the time. All the time.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:24

You know? I I say, put an hour, you say, okay, on Monday at 9 o'clock, whatever happens, you're going to do it. Oh, but now I don't feel so good. But still use that hour to maybe do something very light. Maybe do stretching. Whatever it is, keep that one hour that you said you were going to do something and do anything that is good for your body. It doesn't need to be intense. That's the thing we think. Oh, the weights and everything. I get 40-minute workouts. But my workouts are pretty gnarly. It didn't start like that. You know, there's no rest with me. Everything is supersets. It goes back forward, back for, back, for, back for. Next four exercises. Next four exercises, two exercises. Constantly. No rest. Zero. Do ten like I do five breaths. One, two, and five. Boom. Next exercise. That's what I'm at now. You see, I want to see if I can really cut all breaths out. You see, that's my goal. To make it a 35-minute workout. Or 34 or whatever it is, because it's seconds. But you see, there's always needs to be goal. You can always improve on something. And then when there's a day that, oh, this is really hurting, I'll do something else. But I keep that hour so I don't break that habit and then stretch for an hour. Whatever I do, I'm doing it. You know, and that's the trick. And it's hard. It is really hard because there's many times I don't want to do it. But if I do it, now I know that I'm not only physically stronger, also mentally stronger. Because now I'm doing something I really don't want to do. And that is a really good thing for today. Every time, every day you should do something that you don't want to do. I tell people. Oh, I really don't want to do it, do it now. It's like problems, problems arise. Oh, uh procrastinate, right? Oh, we'll do it next week. No. Because now it's over your head the whole time. The whole time. Fix it now so it's not a problem anymore. You can let it go, and the problem is gone. Because you're gonna deal the same with it in three weeks from now or a year from now than you do now. It's like drinking, it will always go wrong. It will always go wrong. There is no upside. So, whatever you want to do, why don't you do it now? Because you you're gonna have to do it eventually. So, why not getting all these years that you're wasting now? Why don't I do it now? So these years are gonna be fruitful years for me. You see, that's what I don't get. That's the weakness that we have right now. And and discipline is the only way to get out of there, get out of there, to simply do what you tell. The the biggest line I use is don't lie to yourself. If you don't lie to yourself, you're good in everything. Whoa, it's that easy? No, because you lie to yourself all day. I don't lie to myself. So, okay, and then I start. How many times did you say you were gonna train again? Didn't do it. Boom. That's lie. Today I'm not oh, today I'm not gonna drink. Oh, you did it again? That's a lie. Every time uh not gonna take sugar or less sugar, whatever it is. That's another thing. People go like, oh, I I want to cut out sugar. Okay, tomorrow I'm gonna get each sugar anymore. No, you see how I work is different. Let's say I would take 10 grams of sugar today. Like if I'm just giving an example. Tomorrow I'm gonna take nine grams. I'm gonna do that for a whole week or ten days, and I'm gonna go to eight grams. And then suddenly, in ten weeks, that habit that you had, bad habit that you had, is gone. And you don't even notice it because you very slowly but surely you went down in the sugar. But cutting it out right away, that's not a good thing to do. Now it's difficult. You cannot do this with alcohol and drugs, of course. You you can't think to alcohol today, I'm gonna only drink five beers. It's not gonna work. You know, you're gonna have to cut that out. There's certain vices that there's immediately got to stop because they trigger that feeling again, and then you want more of it. And if you had a bad day or a good day, because we grab every every excuse we have. Oh, today was a great day. I deserve a drink. Oh, today it takes man, okay. I need to drink. You see, there's we always find reason in our warmth minds to still do that stupid vice. No! And then you find out that once you completely cut it out, it's so much easier. You have so much more free, you have so much more time waking up at five. Like I said, all the things I do before nine o'clock, that they do people in a day almost. Well, no, a lot of people. Not everybody. There's people like you as well, and who actually want to work on themselves. You see, it's it's simple and it's all the truth, but to break it, it's a hard thing to do.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:50

Yeah, uh I'm I'm mindful of your time as well. So um we've been going an hour and forty minutes. Um the the impact that you've had is is truly incredible. Just to give you one example, I've got a friend, Joel, right, and uh he's one of my best friends here, and I'm in Wales in UK. And he was bullied growing up and he had asthma, and he has listened to your striking, you know, your tape where you kind of give the combinations thousands of times, you know, and uh he's now a purple belt in jujitsu, and you know, you've completely changed his life. And you would never have heard about Joel, but there's there's thousands of people just like this everywhere that have been impacted by your story. So it's cool, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:36

I'm I'm I'm very happy now. I'm in a good place because I got myself so much more under control. And and I'm not like everything we're talking about, it's not like I got everything to the T, trust me. You know, we'll we'll fall. And we'll go on and from the 4th of July, I drink a bunch of beers. You see? And then I go like ah and boop, back back on the wagon, you know, because uh but it was the 4th of July, it was the neighbors, it was for seven hours there. It's like all excuses, I know, but you see, sometimes you lose it, you know, but then it's all about right away jump back on again, nope, and saying the no thing. So uh yeah, it's all a struggle. Don't don't look at me and think, oh my god, this guy got him under control. I'm working on that. I hope I attain it. You know, that's a hard thing to do. It's like going to heaven, like being a saint. Good luck with that. You know? That's what I also realized when I got back to the faith. Say, oh, I'm gonna be a saint. Yeah, it's not gonna because that's like the Stoics, they have everything completely under control.

SPEAKER_05 1:40:34

Seneca said that he isn't he's he's in the hospital bed with us all healing and sharing what works for him, you know. And I think I trust people that are on the path than people that have said they've completed life. I'm a little bit suspicious of people that claim to have achieved like this permanent enlightened state. Not that it's not impossible, but um I love the fact that you're a practitioner. Where are you most active right now? Like where if people want to keep learning from you, where's the best place?

SPEAKER_02 1:41:00

I I I mean recently, well, recently I would say like six weeks ago or something, I really started with posting videos out there, all what we're talking about right now. And these are all problems that I attack that I the way I attacked it myself. So I tell them, I say, listen, this is what worked for me. And I was an insane guy. But if it works for me, the chances are really good, that uh really high that it's gonna work for you as well. So I was in Holland last week visiting my family, and the amount of times I got stopped on the planes and everywhere, you know, the whole time, and I'm telling you, it was 80, 85%. Everybody was like, dude, I love those videos you're doing right now. I mean, it helped me so much because it's the problems that we just talked about, you know, and I just throw it out there and I made it in little clips so they don't get the it's not like you there's too many trees, you can't see the forest anymore. You know, it's like the one of those you give them doses every time. And it's just like one or two minute clips, no longer. And then from that moment on, you know, then then it can actually help you. But if you overflow with it, it's not going to work. Because we will try to fix every problem we have. Pick the biggest one. Like for me, I I can count on one hand how many times I did drugs without being drunk. So I knew for me alcohol was the biggest one. If I tackle alcohol, that will automatically cancel the drugs. Boom. Okay, good. That worked. Okay, let's work on another thing. And pick one. Pick one vice that you have, pick the biggest one, I would say, work on that one. Because once you attack the really big vice, you know you're capable to and and and you you succeed with it, you know you're capable of doing that. And since that was the biggest one, the rest is gonna be a walk in the park. Never think it's gonna be a walk in the park because that's but that's what the devil wants. When that's when they get inside your head and you start getting weak again. You are never under control. That's what I think. Never, whatever happens.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:56

The times that I fought in um that I thought handle under control, that was the moment that you lose. You know, that's uh that's that's that's when you have a problem. No, always attack it as hard as you can, and even if you don't want to, you're gonna have to do it. If it's a problem that you can't postpone and it will be there constantly, you're gonna have to fix it. Fix it today. If not today, tomorrow. Get rid of that problem so it's not a problem anymore. You can live on your life. Otherwise, it'll keep hanging over your head, and it's gonna drive you nuts. You know, that's like drinking, like I said. You know, you know you're gonna have to stop. You can't live like that because your life's gonna go down, so why not now? That's the thing. Yeah, but I want one more time. Tomorrow, this is my neighbor's now. There's tomorrow they smoke after his birthday, which is gonna be in Vegas next week. When I come back, this is the last three months I've been saying it. That's when I stopped smoking uh uh nicotine, uh the fake mass. I go, why don't you do it now? I mean, you're gonna do it anyway. What about getting three months extra health in you? You know? Oh go these these nicotine things, you know. At least nicotine is actually nowadays we found out it's really good for you. You know, now again, don't overdo it. This is the thing that I said this morning. In the morning I pop one in, I do with my prayers, and then normally when I walk the dog, today was the moment that I told my yes yesterday to me, no, before I go to church, I'm not gonna do it anymore. I just one, and then you know, find everything temperance, because otherwise it becomes easy to pop these things in. And then you start with like a four milligram, oh no, you start with eight, but you pop just more in. I go like, well, why don't I go to a six? And then you realize, hey, six'n't not making any difference. Okay, let's go to a four. You know, and every time you take a little bit less, you know, cut it right away out, yeah, then you're gonna probably feel it. But if you go little by little everything down, that's just how I worked out as well. You know, I did 15 rounds on the back of one minute, but my way, the hardest way you can get. Right? Every punch is that do freaking go through the back and every kick is as hard as you can. One minute gets you really tired, 15 rounds of that. Once I can complete 15 rounds, the next week is gonna wait one minute of five seconds and 55 seconds rest. Next week, when I can do this again, one minute, 10 seconds, 50 seconds rest. Every time I increase my time by five seconds, and I take five seconds away from my resting time. And then just before the fight, I can do 15 rounds of one and a half minutes with 30 seconds break. Dude, you're gonna be in such a crazy shape. No, if I would have done that the first week in training or two weeks, I overtrained. There's no way the body can adjust to that. But if you gradually increase that time with seconds over 10 weeks, it becomes long, you know, and that suddenly you're there. You know, don't make it a race, make it a journey, I always say, you know, relax, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:51

So and that's the same advice. That's insane. But again, like I guess alcohol and those vices, you you have to stop. You cannot gradually go down that will always go wrong.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:59

I don't know one person who did it like that. It's impossible.

SPEAKER_05 1:46:05

I I promise there's gonna be people listening that feel personally uh seen and they've got this thing, this vice that they feel like they're being called out on by you. And I hope so. You know, I hope that I hope that you're taking away. I think you everyone has this first thing to tackle, right? That first thing to overcome. And I think you're stirring it up for people listening.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:26

Um yeah, I think Yeah, no, no, I have a friend like this. Uh and he called me and he was he was almost because he's a very good Christian, also. And he uh and there was this overweight guy on a, you know, in a wheelchair that is driving because he can't even walk anymore. And he asked him, Hey sir, could you please get me those? And they were like candies, like Snickers or something, because he couldn't reach him. And my buddy goes, like, You sure he won't do that? Because he's that big. And he goes, What, why, why, what, what? I said, Well, look at yourself, he said. And then the guy got angry. So he he grabbed the Snickers and he says, Okay, well, then take it. And he just walked away. And he calls me, he says, Dude, I feel so bad. Why did I do that? I go, dude, you did it out. I know you, you did it out of love. I said, but think about this. This guy's gonna go home. And your words are gonna stick with him.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:11

Who knows?

SPEAKER_02 1:47:13

Your words change this guy now because now he's gonna go, okay, if I'm honest, he is right. Right? If he starts thinking like that, maybe he's gonna flip his life around. And I know him. He not doesn't do it for he just says, You you don't want to do it, you're gonna die, dude. I mean, that's the reason.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:33

You see, so yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:47:38

Yeah, um yes, there's so many takeaways from me as well. Like, I I really like hearing your perspective, and I I'm taking away a lot from this. Um I'll provide a link uh to the resources that you've mentioned, and there'll be like detailed show notes as well uh with the different topics that you've covered. Um yeah, I thank you so much for all of the work that you're doing and the honesty and the standards that you're keeping for people and leading with love, even though um I think like it's a kind of a like a a love that comes from strength um rather than sort of like a overly compassionate way. And I think the world needs that right now. So Bass, I really appreciate your time and um yeah. Thanks thanks for the conversation.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:22

It was appreciated, it was fun.