Journey to Well
We are not created to do this healing journey or life alone. In fact, it was Bessle Van Der Kolk who expertly shared “healing happens in the presence of an empathic witness”. That is the heart of this podcast & my business : to witness. You can expect a plethora of conversations on nervous system regulation, breathwork, human design & astrology, cycle alignment, energy & spirituality work and so much more. We are all on a journey back home to ourselves, rediscovering our innate power within & I am thrilled to take this journey to well with you. be well xx
Journey to Well
Mental Fitness: The New Performance Enhancer | Aaron Machbitz
What if we approached our mental health with the same intentionality as our physical fitness? Aaron Machbitz, Emotional Projector & host of the "Something for Everybody" podcast, joins us for a profound conversation about transforming our approach to emotional wellbeing and relationships.
Aaron shares his powerful journey through grief after losing his sister to suicide, which catalyzed his passion for mental health advocacy. He draws an important distinction between mental health and mental fitness—reframing emotional wellbeing as something we actively cultivate rather than merely maintain. "Let's make mental health sexy again," Aaron suggests, advocating for daily "emotional pushups" that build resilience before we face life's inevitable challenges.
The conversation delves into practical habit-building strategies that anyone can implement. Aaron recommends making habits "too small to fail" by starting with minimal commitments that gradually expand over time. His "start, stop, continue" method offers a balanced approach to personal growth: identify one behavior to eliminate, one to begin, and one to celebrate continuing. This framework acknowledges both our areas for improvement and our current successes.
Perhaps most compelling is Aaron's candid sharing about his relationship journey. After years of casual dating, he made a radical decision to become celibate until finding someone he wanted to marry. This intentional period of self-development created space for genuine connection when he met his now-wife.
Whether you're working on personal growth, building resilience, or strengthening relationships, this episode offers valuable insights for your journey. As Aaron powerfully reminds us: "The world needs all your faults and mistakes and everything you have to offer, because there'll never be another you."
Connect with Aaron on IG @ aaronmachbitz and check out his podcast, Something for Everybody
Let's connect on social media! You can find me @ _journeytowell
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be well, my friend
xx Hannah
Hello, Welcome back to the podcast Journey to Well, I am so excited. I was on Aaron's podcast a while back and then I was like you have to come on my podcast so we can keep talking. So today I am joined by Aaron Amashbitz. I don't still don't know if I said that right, but we're going with it. He is also a podcaster something for everybody podcast. He is a emotional projector in human design and that is all the introduction I'm going to give you, Aaron. If you could introduce yourself, who is Aaron?
Speaker 2:Well, who am I? If I think about that question, first thing that pops into my mind is like, what are my core values? Because I've been talking about that a lot on my podcast and so, because I'm also about to be a dad for the first time, I've also been thinking a lot about that and what sort of how I want to stand up with my words and actions and how I want to line those up. So who am I to be? Someone who's consistent, someone who lives with a lot of zest, someone who's very resilient and who's honest and loving. So that's who I try to be. I don't know if I show up that way every single day, but I think I'm doing a pretty good job. So when someone asks me who I am, I try to answer those questions. It's kind of weird if someone asked me that, like in a passing, but you asked me, so that's my, that's my answer. And then, like on top of that, what do I do? That makes me who I am.
Speaker 2:Well, that's a lot of sort of different things. In the last week I've been telling people what I do is I just put out little fires, because that's what's been happening in my business recently. I feel like a small business owner just puts out little fires every day, um, because I don't have a huge team. I've got a couple people that work for me, but mostly I do everything myself, um, but in reality, I talk for a living.
Speaker 2:A lot of talking, whether as a on a podcast, talking wrestling, talking sports, talking, mental health, talking, personal development, um, talking in front of businesses or schools, uh, coaching, um, all that sort of stuff, and then, uh, so that's pretty much what I do. That's why I built this studio that you see in my backyard, so I can continue talking while my son takes over my room and my house and my life, which will be a beautiful, beautiful thing. So then I'll have even more shit to talk about, which will be my son and fatherhood, because since I got with my wife, we've been together like four years now, married last year. I've been talking a lot about relationships, because that was just like very on the top of my mind. So now I'm sure I'll talk about relationships, fatherhood, maintaining intimacy that's been on the top of my mind a lot as well with her, with me and my wife. We had a conversation about that the other day, um, but yeah, so my opening answer to your question Love that.
Speaker 1:Honestly, it's one of my favorite questions to ask, because I love hearing how people how, how do you answer that question? And that's such a wide open question, and it's also just exciting to hear people share how they would introduce themselves, because, you know, I can tell you all my accolades and everything that I do for a living, but that's not really who I am. So it's fun when I hand over the reins and let people share who they are and it's, you know, some people just answer with what they do and some people answer the whole, the whole shebang. So, yeah, so today we are going to be talking about relationships, would love to talk about intimacy. I think that's a huge touch point that draws a lot of interest in my audience and I would love to talk a little bit about the mental health, mental fitness aspect. You said that you love talking about mental health, slash mental fitness, and my first thought was what is the difference between the two, how do you distinguish them and why do you have both of those in there?
Speaker 2:distinguish them and why do you have both of those in there? Yeah, so I mean I can I give a little backstory about why the those words are important to me? So for my whole life I've been an athlete. So being an athlete since I was like four years old, baseball was my first love. After baseball, I found professional wrestling, like wwe um, and so after my baseball career ended, I became a professional wrestler. I will not tell you what my wrestling name was, because I don't want you to see pictures of me in my underwear on the internet.
Speaker 2:Uh, so I won't ask I want you to take me seriously, as a serious person, okay, not as someone who runs around and got spray tans and had blonde hair and, you know, showed off their fucking butt, cheeks or whatever, but anyways. So then I became a professional wrestler after my baseball career and that was my full-time job. That's what I wanted to do for the rest of my life until something really really, really, really sort of catastrophic and pivotal happened in my life. Really really sort of catastrophic and pivotal happened in my life In 2018, we're coming up on the seven year anniversary of it but I lost my big sister, rachel, september 3rd 2018. She died by suicide and you know, any, anytime you'd lose someone to anything. Your whole life sort of switches. But I think it's a little bit more when it comes out of nowhere, especially something like a suicide or it's sudden, or you feel like you didn't get to say goodbye, and so my life drastically changed in that moment. It took me you know, like anyone, a few weeks, few years, few months to figure out how I was going to allow that to transform my life. The first couple of weeks, I was just trying to stay afloat like anyone else, sort of grieving in that, in that space. But I say that because that's when, just to give a brief backstory to.
Speaker 2:That's the reason why mental health became so important in my life and so, to sort of at the very beginning, I dove into mental health after my sister died to avoid my own feelings, because if I went out and I tried to help a bunch of people, then I could avoid some feelings that I didn't didn't want to. I knew she was gone. That wasn't like an issue. My sister and I had a really great relationship. I also knew she was really struggling and there was always like this back cloud in the back of my mind that something was going to happen Because she had some scares. She was in some mental hospitals. Police were called a couple of times. I was not living near her, I was chasing my dreams. That's some guilt potentially that I have to work with. So it wasn't anything like that.
Speaker 2:There was one specific emotion that I hadn't dealt with that we'll get to in a second and so I just dove into this mental health space trying to learn anything. I possibly could talk to people, have conversations. I basically became because I had a decent following with wrestling and there's a lot of mental health issues in the professional wrestling space, like drugs, alcohol, all that type of stuff, like any sort of entertainment space. And so I basically became like this 24 7 hotline for professional wrestlers and like that's like not a way to live life. Because there was this moment where I was like in my bed, like 3 am and I'm like if I go to sleep and I turn my phone off, right now I could be, someone, could call me and that could be the last call they ever make. And I have someone I don't even know and I I just can't. Let's look, not a way to live life. And so I had to sort of step back for a second, reorganize my own thoughts.
Speaker 2:And then I joined a support group, a suicide loss survivor support group, and this is where I finally started to sort of confront my own feelings and emotions, and the and the emotion that I was avoiding was this emotion of relief. And so I heard this person talking in this support group and they were just like they were like six or seven years in their journey. They also lost their sibling as well, so very close lead to what I was going through. And they were talking about like how they had to come to terms with feeling relief that their sibling passed away. And I was like, fuck you, the fuck are you talking about?
Speaker 2:Why on earth would I be relieved that the person I love most in the world or one of the people I love most in the world is dead?
Speaker 2:Why would I feel relief about that? And it's because if you, like I told you, like I understood that my sister was deeply struggling and there was always this black cloud saying this could be the day, and so if you don't actually face the fact that there is a sense of like I don't have to worry every single day anymore, there is a sense of relief with that. And that's very hard to confront because I'm not, like, relieved she's dead. That's a horrible thing to think about, but I am relieved that she's no longer constantly in suffering and in pain and we can talk about some suicide myths and things of that nature in a second that I'm very passionate about. But through all that I then became even more aware about mental health and all these sorts of things and then, through that journey of learning about suicide and suicide prevention and mental health and mental health conditions and sort of all the brackets and trees that come off of that. I then figured out like okay, now.
Speaker 2:I'm in the sports world. What's like a more proactive way to think about mental health? Because, like, at least when I think about it or when I talk to people about it, you hear the words mental health and for me, like, what comes up is like black cloud person in the corner, dark, depressed, not talk to him. That person's a psycho, crazy person. We don't want to get near. That's just not, and this is not how I think about mental health. There are certain mental health conditions that are very, very, very scary. I mean, my sister had severe depression no-transcript this. She talks about emotional fitness and mental fitness and she's a genius. You might want to check out her work. I also did an episode with her as well. But she talks about this like how, how do we do an emotional pushup instead of, okay, we go to the gym to work out? I love working out. I've been working out since I was 13, trying to be jacked or whatever, like John Cena, so I could put a fucking armband over my bicep. I still haven't gotten there yet, but it is what it is, and so the same idea then relates to mental health. So if we think about mental health as the umbrella term, okay, this is mental health is how I think, feel and act in the everyday and branches that are like mental health conditions very serious but also a mental fitness. Like what am I doing every day to be proactive about my mental health? You know, every every May we have this, this month of mental health awareness month, and I think it should be rebranded. Mental health needs a sexy rebrand because branding is everything right. People are not going to buy into anything unless they feel like inclined to do it. That's why all ads have like sex appeal to them. Okay, let's make mental health sexy again, which is like mental health action. What can I fucking do every day? Like that is proactive, that I can get ahead of this stuff that's going to help me have this emotional pushup. So when the death setback, I'm going for my first job out of college and I get rejected, like I have some actual tools and practices that help me recover from that. It's still going to be hard. You still have to grieve the loss of that thing or that you didn't get the job or that it was challenging, but at least you have a proactive set of tools that you've built around your mental health toolkit that allow you Okay. So I journal here. That works for me. Actually. I go for a walk here. That works for me. Actually I do. This works for me, this works for me.
Speaker 2:Someone said that like a cold shower was good for them. That's not really my vibe. I'm staying on this vibe, Like how do you know that works for you if you've never like basically thrown shit against the wall? And so I feel mental health is like the umbrella term that we have. We think about now like mental performance, as like a performance enhancer. We think we think about sleep now as like performance enhancer. Okay, how do I think about taking care of my mental health as a performance enhancer? That is what. That's what I'm trying to get to, and then relating it to fitness as like okay, what's something I can do every day to take care of my health? And so that's what I think about mental health and mental fitness, and also a little backstory on why it's important to me.
Speaker 1:What can I do every day for my mental health? That's a performance enhancer, love that, love that question, love that mindset of how am I taking care of myself. So let me ask you, and I would love in terms I love talking about relationships and I know that you have been talking a lot about relationships, so maybe more so tailored towards relationships but what can I do every day, or things that I do every day, or what has been working for you to protect your mental health, to build that mental capacity and your emotional capacity, to then show up for your people? And that can be your wife. It can also be your friends, your community, your parents, your family, your clients.
Speaker 2:I think it starts with asking yourself a bunch of questions. I think three questions are super important and they're very easy, and in the sports world, we call them start, stop and continue. So if you want to think about how you want to start taking care of yourself, for yourself, so you can be there for other people or be there for yourself, whatever the case may be, because the fastest way to improve your life is to stop doing the things that make you feel like shit, so you got to figure that out, okay. So that's where you get this start, stop, continue method. So the first thing is okay, what should I stop doing? Everyone knows they have this inkling like in their life. We have really strong intuition. Sometimes we don't trust ourselves, but we know deep down we're our, we're our best coach. That's why you have to have to ask yourself the right questions Okay, what should I?
Speaker 2:What should I stop doing? What's not really helping me? Okay, I'm having three or four beers every night. Maybe I could have one. I'm getting too late asleep. I'm on my phone right before I go to bed. I'm on my phone right when I wake up. Okay, I'm not nurturing my relationships. I'm not taking time to take care of myself. I'm not moving my body, I'm eating too much sugar, whatever it is.
Speaker 2:There's a list of all the shit that we do that all of us could stop doing. Now, don't stop doing all of them. Pick one, one thing you wanna stop doing, and you know that you've been thinking about it. Someone brought it up to you. Maybe you like spin in the back of your mind Okay, I'm doing that thing, I'm stopping that thing. Then you don't just wanna remove a bad habit, you want to replace it with something good, okay. So that comes into question. What should I start doing? So I'm going to stop this thing and I'm going to start this thing. Okay, what should I start doing? Easy, think about your four fundamentals eating, moving, sleeping, thinking. Pick one from one of them. I want to start moving, well. I want to start eating well. I want to start sleeping well. I want to start thinking well. Again, we can't do everything all at once. Pick one thing Okay, I want to try and get seven and a half hours of sleep every night. I usually get four. That's not very good. Okay, let's ramp it up. So now we have a start and we have a stop, and then, um, most of us are very hypercritical about our lives. As an athlete, I'm always pinpointing the things that I do really bad because I want to get better. So that's a normal thing, but we don't really accentuate the positives.
Speaker 2:I tell this story all the time about if you don't reward behavior you like, it's never going to get repeated. So, for example, if my wife and I are going out for a date and she gets like, really dressed up, she takes time to get ready, she continues to eat well and go to the gym and take care of herself amidst everything that she has going on and I never once appreciate that when she gets dressed up, I don't say oh, you look beautiful, thank you for getting dressed, thank you for taking care of your health, thank you for making it a priority, Thank you for holding yourself accountable, and nothing. And it happens. Maybe once she lets it go, she gets dressed up again, don't say anything. She gets dressed up a third time, don't say anything. Now, 10 years later, I'm wondering why she's fat, she's fat, out of shape and never fucking takes care of herself. Well, it's because I never rewarded the behavior that I thought was important. I never once said I appreciate you for doing that Same thing for me, and so we have to do it for ourselves. So what's the one thing you want to continue doing that you're just fucking crushing. You're getting a good night of sleep, you're having a good, solid breakfast. You're going to the gym every day. You're getting 8,000 steps every day. You're having a one hour phone conversation with your best friend every week. That's on the calendar like reward that behavior, right, if you don't, if you don't reward it, it's never going to get repeated. So you ask yourself start, stop, continue. So now you have sort of a basis. And then underneath all of that, once you do those things and you have sort of a a rhythm in your life going, you can ask yourself the question that sort of sums all that up is like what's my number one self-care strategy? And then when people think self-care, they're like okay, well, I'm going to get my nails done in six weeks, then I'm going to go on a vacation that I planned 12 years from now. It's like that's not fucking how it works.
Speaker 2:A self-care is something that you put in your calendar every single day. That's a non-negotiable for me. If I get eight hours of sleep, that's my number one self-care strategy. I got. I played a men's league baseball game last night. I got home at one. I still woke up in my regular time at five, got four hours of sleep. Don't feel my best today, but we just champions, adjust, you figure it out right. But my my like six times a week I'm trying to get eight hours of sleep. Now when my son arrives I'm gonna have to sort of readjust that sort of pattern. Because you got to get eight hours of sleep in a 24 hour day, that's going to be my goal. But my point being is like, whatever it is for you, you got to know what makes you feel your best. You got to put that in your calendar. If you know that you talk to Hannah for 30 minutes once a week and you're just, life feels better. That's a non-negotiable, that's a non no-transcript down eating well, moving well, sleeping well and thinking well, and those are all just habits.
Speaker 2:And when you're thinking about habit formation, the best thing you can think about is making your habits too small to fail, too small to fail. So, for example, if I want to start a I don't know we'll do we'll use working out because I like working out. Okay, say, you want to start working out, which you absolutely fucking should. You should be lifting weights three days a week. You should be moving your body. You should get an eight to 10,000 steps, like all of these sorts of things. But you say you've never done anything in your whole life and you make the decision that you want to start working out.
Speaker 2:Awesome, to make this habit too small to fail, you say I'm going to do one pushup one day per week. That's a habit that's too small to fail. Now you might think when I say that, like oh, that's really lame. One pushup one day a week, that's my exercise routine. But because you have a long-term vision for your life, like where can I be in six months? Where can I be in two years? Not where can I be next week, say you go to the gym three days a week, 60 minutes.
Speaker 2:For that, you do it for one week and you're off the next week and you're off the next week. That's not a habit. You're not building anything. But you do one pushup on a Monday, boom, knocked it out, you crushed it for the week, check mark. What's week number two? Two pushups, boom, boom. And then, of course, while you're down on the floor, you don't think you're going to get any bonus reps. Of course you are. You're already down on the floor. So you've only told yourself you're going to do one rep, but it's too small to fail. So now you have actually something that you can check off. You say that's like me, each other. So you can build your habit that way.
Speaker 2:Or like James Clear talks about in Atomic Habits, you can just stack them as an anchor. So if you can think about it like an algorithm, so you can do like if this, then that. So if I brush my teeth, then I take a deep breath. If I walk through a door, then I do a pushup. If I get into my car, then I say a blessing, I don't know, whatever you're trying to do, right, but it's like if this, then what. You already brush your teeth every morning. Attach the habit, anchor it to that, and so those are a couple of ways you can start to think about your habits. But you have to have something that you're actually trying to meet. And so those questions you ask yourself, you journal about it. That's a forcing function, gets it out of your brain into a sheet of paper. Now we can see it and now calendar and actually start to make it work for ourselves. Yeah, there we go. I just went on a big ramble, but yeah.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love how quickly you speak and you're just boom, boom, boom. I think one of the things that I'm always very cognizant of is when we hear these ideas and when we hear, I mean, everything is very clear and okay, let me just add one thing to my. Let me take one thing away, Let me add one thing, Let me celebrate myself. What? Where is the support that in the in between, when we're building the habit? Because taking something away might seem easy when we're talking about it, but what we're not really talking about is the addiction part.
Speaker 1:So stop scrolling on your phone, stop drinking the alcohol, stop smoking a cigarette, stop overeating or having the sugar I mean all of these things that we know are not good for us. We also should know, hopefully, that we're addicted to it. If you can't stop drinking, then maybe you know you have a problem. If you can't stop eating the sugar, there's a problem, and not all of it is on you, right? Because these things are created. Instagram and social media is created to be addicting. So how do we move from taking it away, adding the thing, celebrating the good things that we're doing, and there's 21 days to build a habit at least? How do we get through those 21 days without failing which I'll put in quotes yeah, that's an interesting question.
Speaker 2:I would say, like, if it's become like a, I think there's a difference between a compulsion and an addiction. So I think if it's reached this stage of like addiction in terms of like, it's really detrimental to your health and it's actively ruining your life say an addiction to alcohol, drugs I'm not sure this sort of protocol is going to work. I think you need some actual professional help, you need a recovery plan, you need some AA, you need some whatever sort of domain that lives in. I think this stuff works. For, yeah, I think you're going to be addicted to social media, but I think this can still work in terms of.
Speaker 2:I really do think it's this idea of making it too small to fail, like, I think 21 days this could really happen. So let's use social media. For example, let's say I scroll eight hours on my phone every day. That's a lot, okay. If we want to make this habit too small to fail, that over time, we want to use our phone less. The habit that's too small to fail is I'm going to look at my phone seven hours and 59 minutes today. That's possible. That's a one minute reduction and something you can do consistently for 21 days. But we get so much in our head about okay. Well, what if other people see that and they look at me like I'm like, I'm lame, like Dr Jordan Peterson talks about this all the time. He's like if your fucking room is a mess, it's a fucking mess, absolutely. You got to step over socks and a vacuum cleaner and a fucking dead body to just to fucking get out of your room. Like you telling yourself to clean your room is a joke. You're not going to do it. But what if? What if you put one sock? One sock in the proper drawer one time this week and that's all you did? That's what we're. That's what I'm trying to get to in terms of this habit, formation of like. Yes, I know I understand that you're like compulsively doing this or this. Or if you have an eating disorder or an addiction, that's sort of beyond my scope and you need to see a professional because eating disorders are extremely, extremely complicated and extremely dangerous. From what I know, you know researching the mental health field most dangerous. You know mental illness out there. So go see an actual professional who's going to help you with that.
Speaker 2:But now, if you just want to make your life better, you have this sort of ambient feeling that things could be better, that you're not living up to your full potential. These are the little pieces that you could potentially do, because I think there's a big difference between being depressed and your life just being shitty. Those are not the same thing, right? Like if I have no job, no friends, no girlfriend, uh, I don't go outside, I have no money, you of course you're going to be fucking sad, like that's a sad life, but that doesn't mean you have depression. That's a totally different thing. That just means you need to look at your life and think okay, what are the little things I can do to make myself better?
Speaker 2:So in two years, I can be someone who is attractive to the opposite sex, or I can be someone who's purposeful and fulfilled in my life. These are the ways you start. You start with them so small that it's impossible for you to fuck it up and it might. If don't tell anyone else, it's not for anyone else. They might laugh at you, dude what. You put one sock in a drawer this week. You fucking kid who gives a fuck, fuck them. It's about your life. It's about your life and what you're trying to do.
Speaker 2:But we have this sort of short-term vision of our life. We're like we overestimate what we can do in a year and we underestimate what we can do in five years, because we just can't see that far ahead, because our life is just not where we want it right now. But where can what if you're 22 years old? Okay, where can you be at 27? I'm 33 right now.
Speaker 2:Where can? Where am I going to be at 40? I don't know. Hopefully I have another podcast studio that has fucking better AC, because I'm sweating right now, because I'm getting fired up about talking about this right. But my point being is like that's the idea here is that we have a longer term vision for our future. We're understanding that we're making this choice right now and that maybe nothing will change in three weeks, but something definitely will change in six months, in a year, in two years, in three years. And then you know, if you speak relationships, then you might be ready for something great to come into your life, because if you don't have this stuff figured out, it's going to be really hard to accept, receive that love or be prepared for something that might actually change your life.
Speaker 1:What a segue, aaron. You knew where I was going. I sent Aaron this video earlier today and it was so profound and I'll try to link it in the show notes below so you can actually hear this man speaking. But he is talking about like how every man right Everyone, and he's a man speaking about men but so do women. But every man wants a good woman until he gets one, is what he says.
Speaker 1:And it's all about how we want what we want and then we get what we want and then it crumbles, or we crumble because that we haven't spent time doing the work to prepare ourselves for that. And so I would love to hear a little bit about your personal story just because I haven't listened to those podcasts of how you ended up meeting your wife and, in your experience, what did you do that really helped you prepare for your wife? And then, what are the things that you didn't see coming that you're like, oh fuck, like didn't, didn't expect this to happen or didn't expect to have to grow in this way to be able to show up and really co-create this relationship that you have today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I love talking about this, so let me go way back. There's a long journey here. So in high school I didn't talk to girls. I wanted to, but I didn't. And so I got to college as a baseball player and I decided I was going to be the person I wasn't in high school. I was going to be sort of like a big man on campus, try to bring out my ego loud, especially when I started drinking, and I got positive feedback from drinking and positive. Got positive feedback from drinking and positive feedback from girls about drinking and being this kind of person and also being good at baseball and being on the team and all this sort of stuff. Um, so, for lack of a better term, when I got to college.
Speaker 2:those four years there I tried to make up for lost time, uh, in terms of trying to have sex with as many human, human females as possible, and then that sort of continued. Because I got into professional wrestling and sort of the same thing happened. I would be in wrestling, fans would think I was, or fans, whatever wrestlers, people, anyone would think I was cool. I thought it was cool. There's a lot of drinking involved and drugs involved in professional wrestling and all that type of stuff. And so I did that for a long time and in my brain I was not going to get married and I was not going to have kids. That was not in the plan. Because I also knew that my sister was very relationship oriented and she wanted to have kids. She was going to have the big family and that would be good for my parents. Maybe she would have a boy girl couple. Everything would be good. I would just be like a sweet uncle that was like had a cool job and could take him to wrestling shows and it'd be fucking awesome.
Speaker 2:But, as I mentioned then, you know, my sister passed away and so that changed everything. Now it took me a few more years to figure out like that. I needed to be a better man. I need to figure out how I wanted to be in this world until I had these two back to back encounters with two different females. At the end of having sex with both of them in my bed, they both looked at me and said the same thing. They said, aaron, you look like you just had a horrible time and you're not even here. Both of them said the same version of the same thing and I was like to both of them. I was like, yeah, you're right. Right, I don't, I wasn't here. That wasn't very fun, has nothing to do with you, I guess. I like, I don't know. And so when you hear that from someone that actually two people that I did care about, but also also seeing them at the same time, so maybe that you know, didn't care about them that much, but you know, whatever, anyways, um, and so I had that sort of happen back to back times with the two couple people that I, I uh, that really cared about and, um, I just felt sick to my stomach, really sort of gross.
Speaker 2:Um, and in that moment I made I made a choice. Um, that was about four years ago. I made the choice that I was going to, uh, be celibate, be celibate until I met the person that I wanted to marry. I made a decision that I was going to stop just sort of fucking around. Um, cause I had been learning all this stuff mental health related, personal development, I was talking on my podcast a lot, or at the beginning of stages of my podcast.
Speaker 2:So I I had like good ideas of like how I wanted to show up in the world. I was showing up in the world really good with other people, just not with the females in my life. I mean, I felt like I was being honest with them, but I really like wasn't at the same time, and so it was like this sort of tug of war. So I made the decision I was going to stop watching porn, stop talking to girls, I was going to go celibate and I wasn't going to masturbate. I was just like well, a clean slate about like really sort of releasing all of this energy, giving my time to just be a person. Focus, really sort of releasing all of this energy, giving my time to just be a person, focus on my life, focus on getting things together like studying other great men, asking my dad about certain things, cause my parents are still married, god bless. They're the best parents in the world Fucking, super cool, even after losing a child, like unbelievable type stuff. Um, and so we're really, really, really, really close. They're very excited to be grandparents, like the whole thing is incredible, it's a miracle, um.
Speaker 2:And so just spent like a lot of time the first six months just trying to figure that out, trying to reconcile if I wanted kids, uh, or if I just wanted kids because I knew it would make my parents happy, cause this is like early stages, only two years after I lost my sister. So my parents are, are really in the trenches right here, like the really just in guilt and shame and all this. So I was like if I have a grandchild, they'll be fine, like they'll be good. And then I didn't know if I wanted it for myself or for them, and so I had to figure that out. And then, about eight months into the journey, I'd said, okay, I feel pretty good in this space, like I feel good about being alone. I feel good about I stopped drinking as well, because I was drinking way too much.
Speaker 2:I just like clean slate about my life. I headed in the right direction. I had a vision for my future, about how I wanted to make money, how I wanted to take care of my family, like how I wanted to provide, what sort of man I wanted to be, how I was going to feel useful, what being a man actually means and all that stuff. And then about eight months I was like, okay, I'm going to get on some dating apps and I'm going to be very intentional about how I speak to each woman. I'm not going to have sex with them until I feel very like the relationship is going to be the person I'm going to marry. I'm not going to wait till marriage, but I'm not going to have sex with someone until I know this is the person I'm going to spend my life with. Because all the friends that I had said, like you just know, bro, like you know, and I didn't know until I did know. And then I was like, oh, I get it now it makes sense.
Speaker 2:And so I met my wife on Hinge and the beautiful part about it was it worked out very perfectly that she was moving to Dallas where I live, but she wasn't moving for about, I want to say maybe it was like four to six weeks. So the first four to six weeks of our relationship was strictly over the phone. So there's no physicality, there was no seeing her, touching her, anything. It was just like how can I get to know this person as deeply as possible? We played a bunch of games, we had a bunch of phone calls. Uh, we did date nights over the phone. We played we're not really strangers.
Speaker 2:Like I got to know this person, said person, my wife and she got to know me on the most deepest level possible and then the moment I saw her in person, I was like, oh yeah, it's done, this is done, deal, it's finished. Like this is it? I know? Um, and then she actually was the first person that said I love you, because I'd never said I love you to a girl before, and so I was really scared about it. And she like rolled over in bed one night. She's like I can't fucking hold it. We were like, uh, she was like at a wedding. I was at a wedding and I like knew I wanted to say it when I hung up the phone and so did she, but we didn't either say it. And then when we got back together, she's like if I, if I, can hold it anymore. I was like sorry, I was being a fucking pussy about it. I've never said it before, I don't know what I mean.
Speaker 2:but I definitely love you. I love you for sure. Um, so I did all of that stuff to basically prepare myself to meet the woman of my dreams, so that I could actually meet her and receive her love and she could be in her feminine and I could be in my masculine and we could join together and and create a beautiful family. And I also, at the time I met her, I told her very honestly about kids. I didn't know if I want it, but then, you know, six year, a year, down the line, I was like I do. I mean, I can't not have children with you. It's like it would be the you'd be the great mom. Everyone keeps telling me I'll be a great dad. I have no fucking idea if I will or not. It's gonna be hard, but I'm gonna try my best. Um, and so here we are.
Speaker 2:We've been married since September 22nd 2024. We're about to have a kid sometime in September and, uh, it's the greatest thing that's ever happened to me and, um, a couple things that we do to maintain our relationship, since I'm like very sort of business-y minded, analytical type, sort of obsessive about things, not sort of obsessive, I'm extremely obsessive about things, which is like a good and a bad thing, right, I'm obsessive about my wife and my business and probably be obsessive over my kid. But I also get obsessive over a thing that sometimes I have to wake up in the middle of the night. If I think about it it's like well, anyways. And so we we do like weekly, monthly business meetings for our relationship about certain things that are really important to talk about finances, intimacy, everything good. Did I say something that bothered you? What's something that you haven't said that you need to say? What are our goals for the week, for the month, for the year, all those sorts of things. So we do that a lot. We talk a lot about.
Speaker 2:Recently we've been talking a lot about our intimacy and how we can maintain that with having a kid. The first couple months it'll be hard, obviously, and sort of not allowed because she's got to recover and repair and all that type of stuff. But how are we going to make sure? That's important? And my wife and I view intimacy not just about sex but like physical contact and like making sure we touch each other when we pass each other in the house or like giving each other a kiss when we leave the room and all these sorts of things that build this like real emotional connection over time and just let each other know that we appreciate you, I love you.
Speaker 2:I see you I'm busy right now, but like, but we're also gonna, you know, think about putting having sex on the calendar. It's like non-negotiable. That's a self-care activity, baby you you know what I'm talking about. So it's like got to put it on the calendar. So, uh, and some people think that sort of ruins the spark. But I've talked to a lot of like sex therapists and like that's not true. Um, we're just putting a time here to block off, like we have an hour to do whatever we want. It doesn't mean we have to do like sex, it just means we're going to like be with each other. We're going to just give each other massage, whatever the case may be Right, it's like part of our vibe.
Speaker 2:And then still, going on date nights, like Dr Jordan Peterson talks about, like dating his wife, still, that's like a big thing for us, like I want to date you forever, my girlfriend forever, and so all those things have been really, really, really beneficial in terms of us maintaining our relationship. I mean, we're only in our first year of marriage. We've been together for four years now. Things have gone pretty fucking good. So I would say we're doing all right. So we'll see how that goes with a kid with that in the mix. But we're really blessed, we're really fortunate. We have a house to live in, we have a job, we have a good amount of resources, we have help, so it'll be all right, I think.
Speaker 1:How is the experience of okay, this is who I want to call in and okay, this is who I actually called in. Oh my God, it's fucking happening. How is that experience? Because, well, yeah, I'll just ask you.
Speaker 2:Can you say that again?
Speaker 1:How is the experience from you? Like you choosing, I want something different. So I'm going to be celibate, I'm going to stop doing these things. I'm going to start, you know, get taking mental health seriously and taking myself seriously with the relationships that I'm calling in female wise Um. So making that choice and making having that mindset of I'm not going to sleep with anyone until I find the person that I want to marry. I had like that experience and then going from just having this idea and this conception to it actually coming to fruition and meeting your wife. What's your wife's name?
Speaker 2:Rihanna.
Speaker 1:Rihanna, meeting Rihanna, and I mean, obviously it was like the beginning of it, but was there this like dumbfoundation? Like I was like dumbfounded or like I am like freezing, like during the headlights, or like, oh my gosh, no, like I feel very confident. This is what I spent the past six to eight months building myself up to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely the second part. Yeah, like I don't know, maybe I'm like a weird person, but I just decided, like a drop on a dime, like I'm going to do this, and when I say I'm going to do something, I just do it Like there's just no, that's it. Like I don't know. I don't know if everyone's like that, but I learned that through sports and the best performers in the world do what they say they're going to do, and so that's what I try to be. Um, and so when I said I was going to do this thing about going celibate and not doing this and not masturbating and not watching porn and not sort of doing all these sorts of things, uh, the my expectation was that I was going to meet the person of my dreams. Um, maybe that was a little too forward or like like sort of delusional thinking. Um, but that's exactly was the whole point of it all, because I had met great women. Like meeting women was like not not so that hard, I don't know. Yeah, uh, we're everywhere they're, they're all you just gotta speak to them. That's like all there is to it. Sometimes they'll tell you to fuck off, and sometimes they tell you they won't tell you and he's got to keep swinging. Um, but we could talk. We could talk about that with young men, but anyways, um, and so I just like that was the idea like I don't know how long it's going to take. I didn't know if it was going to take six weeks, eight years, two years, six months, eight months to find the person that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. But I knew there'd be a different sort of feeling in my body because I wasn't like consumed with all this other bullshit in my life. If I was still still doing all of these other things, I wouldn't have had the space or the recognition to know that this unbelievable woman would have walked into my life.
Speaker 2:I tell that my wife all the time is like, if I would have met you a couple of years earlier, yeah, I definitely would have had sex with you, but that would have been about it. You know what I mean. Like that's not what I wanted and so it happens in. I think it's good. I mean we can use Taylor Swift for it as an example. She just got engaged, right, what a dream. I mean. I do hope that she, her getting engaged changes the cultural conversation around marriage and encourages more people to get engaged and find their partner, and like kiss a bunch of frogs and whatever the case may be, but like she's now ready for it. And same with Travis Kelsey or I mean, I don't know them personally, but I assume that's the sort of vibe they're on. Or maybe he just wants her billion dollars, who knows Like who knows?
Speaker 1:He has his own money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's only got 90 million. That's like fucking wiping her ass with that every day. She's unbelievable.
Speaker 2:Anyways so off track, super off track, but yeah, so, like that was the sort of mindset I had, like this is the expectation, like I'm going to keep doing this until my wife walks into my life, cause I'm ready for marriage, I think I can be the man that I set out to be. I think I can be the man that my parents raised me to be, and I think I can be the man that, um, uh, that I've seen in other men that I idolize and look up to, and so, yeah, so, when I, when I met my wife, it was like wow, this is this, is like this is what it feels like, well, this is cool. And you know, I still still couldn't have the. It still didn't have the, the gumption to say I love you first. But we figured it out, we got there.
Speaker 1:We all get there, no.
Speaker 1:Well that's so interesting and what a cool testament to mindset and belief, and belief in yourself and confidence. And is that something that I mean you said you've always kind of been the way of like. When I make a decision which I'm very similar to, like it doesn't. I don't think that I take, I don't think that I make split decisions I'm. It takes me a while to make, especially a big decision like to leave a relationship or to leave a job. It's I don't make split decisions, but when I make the decisions like, yes, I'm done and there's not much wavering and going back and forth, is that something that you have built and worked on building, or is that something that you just were born with, that you feel that you've always had?
Speaker 2:I think I think all of this just came from sports. Like I don't know how I was when I was like eight or nine, you know, but I've always just played sports and mostly just played baseball. And baseball is is a game of like you get out a lot. Like if you're really really good at baseball, especially in like high school college, you're going to get a hit four out of 10 times. So I mean the other six or seven times you're out. So what do I? How do I handle that? That's just like learning through life. Like most of the time you're going to get rejected until you don't, and then you don't, and then you don't, and then it becomes the greatest thing that's ever happened to you. Same with if you're an entrepreneur. It's like maybe you start a couple of businesses, or this one sucks and that one fails and this one's some fucking moneymaker right, whatever the case may be, or with dating, or the case Like. So I just learned that through sports and I remember this like really impactful moment which, like I remember, because this past summer I coached 17 year olds and we started with 21 baseball players on our team and we ended at the end of the season for the last tournament we had 10, which means 11 baseball players quit throughout the summer who claim to want to play college baseball. And you claim to love the game. Fuck out of here. You don't love the game. It's embarrassing anyways.
Speaker 2:And so I'm thinking about, like, when did I that? Like giving up on something was just not an option. Now I want to make this distinction Like quitting something and giving up are not the same as like leaving something that's like unhealthy to you, right and so like or not loving the thing anymore. If any of those 11 baseball players came up to you and said, coach, I just like this is too much for me, it's too much, travel too much, it's too hard. I'm not into baseball this much and I don't really want to play anymore, I'd be like dude, totally fine, you're 17. Go do like figure something else out that you love, or explore things, or go hang out with your friends or do whatever, like that's a fine, that's a cool thing, like you should if you know that and you can admit that, awesome.
Speaker 2:But if you're just like quitting cause it's too hard, or like you don't get enough playing time, Like that's not a, that's not a vibe, especially when you're 17. What are you teaching yourself about later on in life? Like you get your first job and someone gets a promotion over you, you're just going to be, like you're just going to get up and leave. No, you're going to try and do different things to work harder, to maneuver, to navigate, to build great relationships, to so you can be that person that gets the promotion next time. And so I was talking to my my dad and my mom and I remember this moment when I was nine and we lived in California and I played on this little league team. That was like the best. We were the best team in the state for nine-year-olds. It's like that's a weird thing to say.
Speaker 1:Weird say um weird flex, but I like it but I did.
Speaker 2:I never played at all, never got on the field at all, until the very last inning of the game where they had to play you. So I only got that because I wasn't just. I wasn't good at baseball when I was nine, but I just loved the game. And I remember like a couple weeks into the season, when I wasn't playing at all, I went home to my parents and I was like hey, I just I want to quit the team. And my both of my parents looked at me like I was like they're like, do you want to do you want to what? You want to quit the team? I'm nine and they're like. They're like not a chance. They're like you will finish the season. We paid for it, you committed to it. You will finish the season and when the season's over we can reevaluate. Where you want to play on another team, that maybe you get more playing time, but you are not quitting the team. That's just not how it works and I didn't realize that at nine.
Speaker 2:But, like I never quit anything ever. You know what I mean. It's like I have well, this is like a sort of a bad analogy, but you know, I chew tobacco because of baseball and I tell people all the time that, like, I'm not a quitter, so I'm not giving it up. It's like like that's a whole. That's called an addiction, which I have. I have an addiction, so don't do that. But my point being is like, so that, like, I came to this realization when I saw 11 baseball players quit over the summer and, uh, that's pretty much where I learned all my values of life, like I had. You know, you have issues in college about playing time and this guy not liking you and and this person getting played. How do you deal with that? Just, I didn't like, like textualize it or like write it down or understand that I was learning it.
Speaker 2:But when I got into the real world and had to navigate certain things, like I said at the top, like putting out little fires for my business almost every second, when this gets hacked and that gets hacked and this thing doesn't go upload the way he wants, it's like, okay, how do I blah, blah? Okay, how do I? How do I? How do I do this? How do I handle this? Okay, well, I learned to handle adversity, setbacks and challenges via sports. I've sort of mastered them by trying to teach them to other people and having thousands of hours of guests on my podcast who know more than me about it. Okay, so I can like figure this out. I've changed the texture of my mind to sort of handle these challenges.
Speaker 2:I view obstacles now that things that are just going to make me stronger, and co-care, because I got that thing going on now and so just learned learned through experience basically started when I was eight or nine, all the way up till very now, and I'm sure I'm going to learn even more when my son is a mirror to me. My wife hasn't slept and I haven't slept. And how do I actually act? Am I the man that I think that I am? When we're in the trenches, when we're like the chips are down and everyone needs me and everyone's looking at me like my wife's tired, my son is cranky, he gots, he needs to do this or this or this.
Speaker 2:Okay, I got it, I'll figure it out. This is the person that I claim that I am. So now I got to stand by my action or my words and line them with my actions, and so this is everything that's been happening is preparing me just to be the best husband and father that I can possibly be, and that's cool, cause now I got to put that shit into practice. I got to do it. I got to do it in real time. This is the most important game that I've ever played in my life, and hopefully I show up when it matters most, and so that's basically how I've learned it all just trial and error, practice and sports.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's such a cool mindset to have of it's figureoutable, and one of the things that I always share is all of the hardest seasons of my life and how I have shown up for myself and how I and showing up for yourself oftentimes is reaching out. By the way, it's not I can figure everything out. It's I trust myself enough to find the people that can help me with whatever you're dealing with, whether that's, like you know, a mental health thing, whether whatever it is, whether it's just you know, like going through a breakup, like you don't have to do it alone, and that this strength doesn't come from being alone, it comes from reaching out. But everything that has happened in my life that's been very difficult, all the dark seasons in my life, it builds that mentality of but I know that I'll be able to figure it out. So, whatever comes in the future, I might not know how I'm going to figure it out, how I'm going to show up, I might not know how I'm going to act, but I know that I will be able to figure it out.
Speaker 1:And that's that resilience that you said. One of your core values is resilience, and truly resilience is built and it's built by going through the hard season and having that Sometimes I think it's proving it's like the hard season and having that Sometimes I think it's proving it's like the hard season and then you prove to yourself that, oh, I can do it, but not quitting the baseball thing. I mean like, sometimes we build our own resilience. Sometimes, when we're little, our parents build our resilience or life situations. If it's something that we can't actually quit, we're going to build resilience that way. And having that reminder of oh that's why I went through that.
Speaker 1:And and having that mindset of yeah, I can, I can, I can now go through whatever it is, whatever, because it's just going to hit the fan. I mean whether it's parenting relationships, it's not going to be easy. It's not going to be smooth sailing, so interesting, interesting yeah, I mean, I think, to comment on that quickly.
Speaker 2:Um well, I don't know if I do anything quickly when it comes to talking, but anyways, I'll try my best. Uh, yeah, it just makes me think about confidence, because I think about the definition of confidence is having intense trust in oneself, and the only way you have that trust in yourself is through credible evidence, and that's exactly what you just talked about. Like I have the credible evidence that says I can overcome this thing and even if I step into a new environment like I've never done this thing ever in my life, you still actually do have credible evidence that you've done something you've never done before in another domain and so you still can walk in confidently with that intense trust in yourself that you can, as you say, sort of figure it out. So I think that's important.
Speaker 2:If you don't see yourself as a confident person, maybe you just have to look deeper at what the word actually means and say, wow, actually I do have the credible evidence. That's how confidence is built, which means I can step into this conversation, job interview, presentation, school with some trust in myself that I can figure it out, and I think that's quite a powerful reframe if you're thinking about confidence. It's not just like being, you know, thinking you're the best, that's like doesn't matter, that's like doesn't mean anything for anyone, but there's like a real concrete way to think about it. And this is how I tried to teach my athletes how to think about confidence, especially if the day before they had a really bad day 0 for 4, 4 strikeouts, whatever the case may be you can still act confidently the next day with your body language, with your self-talk, with how you breathe, and then the trust starts to come back. And then you're just on a roll and you just let it rip. So just figured I'd mention that.
Speaker 1:And that's what happens in relationships, because I know you and I talked about, I think, in our podcast the boys boys don't talk to girls anymore or you know, and I would assume that that's a huge piece is that we don't have the knowledge, we don't have the proof, the concrete evidence that you can have this conversation and it's okay if she says no, or it's okay if she doesn't even respond, or it's okay if it doesn't work out.
Speaker 1:I think that's a huge thing. One of my biggest things that I talk about in relationships is when we go through breakups, somebody always has to be a bad guy, somebody always has to be a good guy and there always has to be a bad guy and it always has to be this he was so toxic or he was, you know, we were codependent or he was codependent or whatever it is, and there always has to be this bad thing about them and that's why we broke up. What if it just didn't work out? They were a great person, they, we just didn't align, we didn't mesh, we didn't have the same core values, and there's so much freedom in that, but I think that we don't want to. Maybe that's an ego thing, I don't know. It's like they. They had to be a bad guy, they couldn't just, it couldn't just be, we didn't align yeah, I mean I totally agree.
Speaker 2:Like when I, when I got with my wife, I started thinking a lot about my ex relationships and, um, I started thinking about this one woman I dated in particular.
Speaker 2:Like, right when my sister passed away, she was right there and I, I like she didn't, she didn't ask to be thrusted in that situation, but she was the only person who was there with me when it happened.
Speaker 2:And, uh, I mean, I treated her poorly, I pushed her away, I said bad stuff to her, I was in a horrible spot it's no excuse for horrible behavior either.
Speaker 2:But like, I reached out to her a couple years later saying, like, when I thought about all this stuff, like thank you, like you literally saved my life and we're not together and I don't want to be with you, you know, obviously but like that's a still very powerful relationship that changed the fabric of who I am as a person and it's okay to actually admit that. Um, like it's very interestingly enough, I dated this girl in college and, uh, a few years before my sister passed away, maybe like four years before that, her brother also died by suicide and so now we're sort of connected in that space forever and she's got a family and a couple of kids and she's doing beautiful and all that type of stuff, and so so all these relationships have so much meaning in your life and they do alter you as a person in hopefully a powerful way, like maybe not have been a good quote unquote relationship, but it still alters you in a good way.
Speaker 2:And if you think and you like you're saying if you think about it outside of, just like this person was toxic, outside of like they abused you like of course, there's like certain very stock, like stark lines that like this was a bad relationship, but if it was just like yeah, we broke up again, they don't, you know, like it doesn't have to be anything. It could just been like we don't mesh at this time or this is not the right moment in our lives, or like I need to do this or whatever the case may be. And so I think about that a lot with my past relationships and how they changed me and they helped me and they saved me and they built me into trying to be the best man that I could be, and like there's no other way I could have like without experience. And so, yeah, it's like a really, really, really powerful stuff If you think about it with some open eyes and an open heart, rather than just like they suck, they were the worst, it's like that's not helpful.
Speaker 1:No, and every relationship I mean you chose to get into that relationship for a reason and every relationship has these invitations for things for you to learn and lessons to learn. And some of those lessons might've been harder if it was a more difficult relationship. Some of them might be easier, but really having that, I like the, the analogy of like the baseball. You know like you're gonna strike out and that's okay. And that doesn't mean that you failed, it doesn't mean that it's a bad thing, it doesn't mean something's wrong with you. So, anyway, relationships are wild, though they're wild man. Um, I'm going to start wrapping up. I have a last question Before then, was there anything else when you were kind of thinking of coming on the podcast that we didn't touch on? That you're like I really would love to share this with my audience.
Speaker 2:I don't think so. I think this has been a very fruitful, very enjoyable conversation.
Speaker 1:I mean, I've definitely hogged the airspace for the last like hour and 15 minutes, but I guess that's why I'm a guest like I spent spend so much time talking when I am a guest on someone's podcast and other besides when I do my own solo podcast episodes. But when I have guests, I love, I love just you riffing and going on your on your whole journey. So thank you for coming on. Where can people find you? Where can people stay connected? Where can people find your podcast? All of those good things yeah, so we're.
Speaker 2:We're up over 400 episodes on my podcast. I mean, on YouTube we release something every single day, so seven days a week on YouTube. Uh, on audio, we release something five days a week, um, so there's pretty much something there for everybody, uh, almost every day of the week. And, um, those conversations are a lot like these, Um, when I have guests that's why I had Hannah on my show I do solo episodes as well.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I talk about current events, political issues, things of that nature on solo episodes where I get a little frisky and controversial. I am Jewish so I've talked a lot about that stuff over the last couple years. But, yeah, something for everybody on every major podcast platform you can think of. And then, if you just want like a hub resource for everything that I got going on, you can just go to AaronMashBitscom. There's a newsletter on there that you can sign up for, so you'll get emails like four or five days a week about stuff that I got going on podcast episodes, easy ways to do stuff yeah, it's an easy place to catch everything, but I'm aggressively online, so you can sort of find me anywhere, I guess.
Speaker 1:And, yeah, aggressively online maybe chronically online, also Addicted to online.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:No, I love that. So last question If the world could only remember one feeling from your work what do you hope?
Speaker 2:that that feeling would be empowered, maybe. That came to my mind. First word that came to my mind was like, also like satisfied, not in like a, a food way, but like, uh, like, uh, like I feel satisfied with myself so I can go out and maybe be the best version of myself because of what I've heard or read. So maybe empowered I was gonna say motivated, but I don't love that. So those three words came to my mind immediately. I also hope that the words that I say, you know, yeah, make you feel loved about yourself.
Speaker 2:I have a nonprofit mental health nonprofit about my sister called you Are Loved, and all the three of those words are technically one word for my nonprofit. So I thought that was one word. I want you to feel loved, loved enough that you feel empowered enough then to then try to be the best version of yourself in greatest service to the world. I think that's very important. Um, yeah, it's like the world needs you here. Uh, it's very, very, very important.
Speaker 2:The world needs all your faults and mistakes and everything you have to offer, because there'll never be another you and uh, you might be the second best someone else, but you're going to be the best you, and so, no matter how many times you stumble or fall down, fuck it, the world needs you, just you, exactly how you are, because the world would be a totally different fucking place if you weren't here. And so I think, if we start to think about it like that I'm super into cliches and things that are cheesy. That's why I named my company you Are Loved, but that I don't think is cheesy. I think it is like the most realist thing possible that the world needs you, uh, in all the ways that you could think about. And so maybe you'll take that message and, uh, do something small today that helps yourself three years from now thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Aaron're the best. I appreciate having you on our podcast and I appreciate your time.
Speaker 2:Thank you, this is awesome.