From Collapse to Clarity: Rebuilding Success, Identity & Mindset with David Rossi

He built a multimillion-dollar life… and watched it unravel.

In this powerful conversation, bestselling author, entrepreneur, and transformational teacher David Rossi shares the raw reality behind success, loss, and what it truly takes to rebuild from the inside out.

We explore the defining moments that forced everything into question — the death of a close friend, a serious back injury, a collapsing marriage, financial breakdown, and the confronting realisation that effort alone cannot override life when it begins to shift.

From there, the conversation moves into something deeper: mindset, meaning, and emotional resilience.

David explains how much of our suffering is created not by events themselves, but by the meaning we attach to them — and how “loss” and “gain” can become interpretations rather than identities we unconsciously live inside.

We also unpack the psychology of attention and perception through the brain’s reticular activating system, revealing how the stories we tell ourselves quietly shape what we continue to see, feel, and reinforce.

Later, we go deeper into authenticity, vulnerability, and modern masculinity, inspired by his book Alphas Die Early. We discuss the hidden cost of performance-driven success, the masks men wear to stay “strong,” and why true strength often looks like honesty rather than control.

Meditation also enters the conversation — not as a trend, but as a stabilising discipline for nervous system regulation, clarity, and stepping out of survival mode.

If you’ve been navigating pressure, identity shifts, or a season where life no longer feels familiar, this episode offers perspective, depth, and a grounded reminder: you are not meant to rebuild your life by force alone.

Transformation begins internally — long before it becomes visible externally.

If this conversation resonates, please subscribe, share it with someone who may need it, and leave a review to support the podcast.

Transcript

A Life Made Then Rebuilt

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Very excited about today's episode because I'm speaking to somebody who's made it all, lost it all, and has pivoted and has come back even stronger. This is a very inspiring episode. Enjoy. Hello and welcome to the James Grantham Podcast Super Soul Model Series. Today I'm joined by David Rossi. He is a bestselling author, entrepreneur, and transformational teacher. David's journey is nothing short of remarkable. He's a Silicon Valley native and he's built a multimillion dollar business, lost it all, and rebuilt his life from the ground up. Along the way, he's worked with billionaires, professional athletes, and leaders from all walks of life. But his greatest passion is becoming helping people live with greater authenticity, purpose, and freedom. David's the author of the international best-selling book, The Imperative Habit, and his latest book, Alphas Die Early, challenges the traditional ideas of success, masculinity, inviting men and the women who love them to move beyond performance and pressure towards a more authentic way of living. I'm super excited to be joined by this week's guest, David Rossi. Welcome, David.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Thank you. You know, when I hear that intro, I'm looking around, I'm like, who are you talking about?

SPEAKER_01 1:11

And you know, thank you for that.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

What a great introduction. Yeah, I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

You're so welcome. And it's a real joy to have you on the show. You know, I've I've done my homework and really enjoyed reading your latest book, Alpha's Die Early. Um, and you've also written a great book, The Imperative Way, which is a bestseller, which came out in 2019. Um but before we start getting to all that, I think we need to understand.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

I see the gears turning.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Yeah, let's kind of back up a little bit. I mean, you know, I think all of us can learn a lot from you, David, or at least from your story, and how that can also reflect in our own lives. And I think one of the greatest things that I believe uh after doing this show for a number of years and really enjoying it and meeting such wonderful people, and you're another wonderful person I get to speak to is our stories are relatable. Stories are, you know, one of the ancient ways that we can begin to relate to other people and of course ourselves in our own journey. So tell us a bit about how David came to be the version of himself that doing the work. You know, what led you up to doing this type of work?

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Well,

The Collapse That Changed Everything

SPEAKER_00 2:26

I think, you know, before I get to that, and I think your your build-up to that question is really fantastic. And I think I think I I think the reason why people love to hear these stories is because different vernacular, different stages of that journey help us put together the pieces for ourselves. So I think people just love these stories because they they grab pieces from it from different stages. And I think you mentioned ancient stories, and I talk a lot about the hero's journey with um Joseph Campbell. Yeah. I think we all go through these journeys and different different stages of our life, and we all are on this journey, whether we know it or not. For me, what led up to it was wow, it's like there's so many horrible things. Well, not looking back at the moment, they were horrible, looking back, they were signs. And so they they they aren't good or bad, they're just a sign that you're doing something wrong. So there was a series of things. The the first was my really good friend passing away. And I and I say good friend lightly, he was like a soulmate at one time in my life. He was probably the only person that ever really I thought knew me more than my parents. And so he he passed away in an accident, and I really couldn't, I really couldn't grasp what that meant. I kept saying for for five years, what does this mean? What am I supposed to learn from this? I can't let him die without something happening. And that answer eluded me for a long time. And then, you know, if you could start adding on more and more fiascos, you know, I hurt re-injured my back. I had a slip disk in my back from football in the early 90s that now re-emerged in 2015. Uh, doctors were telling me I have to have surgery. I scheduled surgery to February 29th, 2016. My marriage had been failing for some time. Also, a business partner. We started a business together. This business life partner of mine was strategic in dividing me from friends, dividing me from my parents and my family. And I began to look around and see that nothing was really going the way I thought it should go. And how does somebody with a lot of talent and a lot of grit and a lot of discipline and hard work and great upbringing, great education try so hard to go one place and I went the exact opposite direction. Um, and so when I had to have this back surgery is really when the door opened to new ideas of living life. And that was probably the start. I started researching how to recover from a surgery, which I eventually canceled the surgery. Um, and I've never had surgery since.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

It's funny that when you're lying on your back, you're like, I've got to find another way. Because yeah, this is like rock bottom. So the only way has got to be up from here. I don't know if that sort of resonates.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Oh well, it's it would it turned into that. Yes, it started. I need to have the surgery get back on my feet. My business is failing, my marriage is failing. I need to get back to work. Like that's how you do it. You just work. And and when I started, you know, crawling to the closet to be able to stand up to get dressed because of my slip disk, and I was you know, almost like in a in a way paralyzed, partially paralyzed, um, is when I started realizing that I really should take a harder look. I don't think hard work's gonna beat this. This is not a hard work situation. And that's when I started reading and opening my mind to new perspectives. And then when I started doing that is when it shifted to what you just said. That's when I really opened my mind to a new way of living that I had basically been living my life wrong the whole time.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

Well, I want to challenge you. What if you weren't living your life wrong? What if it was an evolution of David Rossi? You know? Uh no, you're right. No, definitely. You're not going to be able to do that. If we make things wrong, then what was the whole point? You know, look, look at who you are now. Look at, you know, the millions of people that you're able to help. That wouldn't have happened unless you'd been on your path. I think that that's what Joseph Campbell was always talking about, that hero's journey, which you you you wisely quoted. I, you know, when I've looked at it in my own experience, I was like, everything that I've done, all those things that seem as though they've been setbacks, all those challenges, that car crash that you know nearly ended my life early, and then alcohol challenges again nearly ending my life early. What was the point? Well, the point is is awareness. The point is is growing in consciousness. And and look at the people you're able to impact now because of the comeback. I think that that's what you're still I think that that's what it's all about. I mean, everyone's got some really challenging thing going on underneath the surface, whether they're vocal about it or not. I think you've just been courageous enough to be brave.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Well, yes and no, I think everything you're saying is 100% truthful, and I agree with. Um, what happened to me was a series of of these events that at the moment were wrong. And and and I want to share with you, I think there's some some help for listeners on on connecting the dots. I had to go through all those events to get where I was to finally say this. I I listened to Wayne Dyer talk about the death of Ivan Illich and Ivan sitting on his deathbed, and Ivan wanted to be a musician his whole life, but being pushed into being a judge. And he looked up on his deathbed to his to his kids and his family and said, What if I lived my whole life wrong? And what that meant is, and how that relates to what you're saying in my life, is that all of these painful experiences were telling me to get on the right track. And I needed them. And had I listened to any of them, it might have not been so painful. I kept climbing up the mountain, and the higher I got, the bigger the fall. And I talk about this in my in my first book a bit, that I kept fighting and pushing on the wrong train, on the wrong mountain. And I kept climbing and climbing. And the higher I got, ultimately I had fall at some point. I don't mean fall in a bad way or a negative way, but fall in terms of coming to a realization that the only value in suffering is to learn you don't need to suffer. And you'll suffer as long as you need to to learn that. And you're right, none of it was wasted. All of it was was really, really profound and helpful and helped a lot of people. And I'm I'm grateful for all of it. I could have used a little bit less pain, a little bit nicer, a couple fewer lawsuits, a couple nicer.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

You know, I I uh I feel you, and I feel everybody in the audience who's going through their own thing as well, right? Because the pain is to say, hey, we need to wake up from this suffering that I'm experiencing. And the suffering is sometimes a real call to awakening. I don't think it's the only path to awakening. I know it was mine. I know it was mine the only path, right? You know, when you make a series of choices and you end up, you know, in the hospital or in a ruined relationship or something or financial difficulty, you're just thinking, well, what are the choices I've made up until this point? I think it's important to be humbled, and I think that your story shows a great deal of humility, especially with your latest book. You have really had to have a good look at it. But before we get to Alpha's Die Early, I think I just wanted to understand a little bit more about your processing after your best friend passed away.

Grief Reframed From Loss To Gain

SPEAKER_01 9:51

You know, what was David's journey about dealing with that? Because, you know, sometimes life happens. People we love die, whether it's at a young age or medium, middle age, or you know, even if it's a parent. You know, I had a one of my best friends die at 25, another one died six years ago, then my father died, then you know, we we have all these challenges, right? But it it moves us to recognize hey, life's fragile, it's precious. And then who am I in all of this adversity?

SPEAKER_00 10:25

I'd probably say I kept, I've still learned a lot from that loss. Um, and I'll kind of tie this into what you just said. You do I do not think you need to go through all the pain that you and I went through. Granted, yours was more in, you know, you didn't choose a lot of these. Well, that's a bigger woo-woo question, but uh let's just let's just keep it keep it that way. Um, you know, you can choose to change before things get painful. And when when Dave died, I uh uh spent five years in pain. And until I again started changing when I hurt my back, and I I became spiritually minded and opened the door to learning. I learned that you only really have pain when you have a loss or you believe you have a loss, emotional loss. And so I emotionally thought I lost something. So I was very, very sad. Like I would hear a song from high school. This is my best friend from third grade. It wasn't like this, like when I moved to a new school, this was the guy that saved me from from social suicide, was you know, it's like I'm the third grade, and this is the guy that you know pulled me out of the new kid syndrome. And best friends ever since, saw him the day he died. Um, you know, um, I thought it was a loss, and that was not going to bring him back. And and this may be difficult for people to hear. If you have a loss in your life, you can absolutely do this. And I learned this, I definitively put a nail in that coffin when I listened to uh Ernest Hemingway quote um Islands in the Stream when you said, Um, your son died, and someone said, Aren't you sad your son died? And he said, Well, I have to get over it at some point, so I've chosen today to get over it. And that dawned on me that my choice wasn't to choose to get over it, my choice was to decide whether his loss of life was a loss or whether it was a gain. And and then I realized it was a gain. It's only a gain if I do something. And and I vowed to change my life to say he died for me. And that was a gain. If that didn't happen, I wouldn't be who I am. Well, that wasn't gonna bring him back. Crying over the loss wasn't gonna bring him back. So let's decide what belief I can choose, like Ernest Hemingway's book, to make my life go forward better. And if I really am sad, if I really do value his life so much, then act that way. Do something to honor his life. And so I honored his life by accepting that it changed me in a profoundly positive way. And literally overnight, I stopped crying over 1980s songs on the radio. The second I changed from loss to gain. I mean, I was an emotional mess. I hear the cure, and I was like, oh my god, my friend.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

It's so funny. Like when you are feeling a certain way and you feel like you've been struck by loss, it's not the actual loss, it's the idea that you have about what you think you've lost. That's what creates the trigger, which creates the emotion, which creates the emptiness or the sadness. It's not the actual thing, it's the way you think about it. And I remember Dr. John DiMartini, he said, he goes, You can never have any gain without a loss, and you can never have any loss without gain. But what I like that you've said is that you've made meaning out of something not being physically present in your experience. And I think that doing something positive about that allows you to take your energy back and bring it back to David again instead of it being, you know, into something you can't tangibly hold anymore. You've you've taken back your energetic cords that were out, yeah, and you've just brought them home. And I think that that's a really uh I think that I think that's really courageous.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

Well, I think a lesson here is that if you have loss in your life, number one, the first thing that people say is, I miss, I miss my mom. Yeah, okay, well, miss is one thing, but loss and gain are two different things. And and so I think you have to separate miss from loss and missing from gain. I miss Dave every day. But you know, if I said that to you, you know, eight years ago, I would start crying. I mean, it was that that much of a loss. And when I chose to recontextualize the event, and I think guilt prevent prevents people from doing that as well. They feel like if they feel like they've gotten over it, then they haven't honored their death enough. Like, oh, I I should still be sad, they're so important, I should stay sad a long time because the length I'm sad shows how important they are, you know. And the second, you know, and these emotions are automatic in your brain. And the second my brain accepted the answer, this is a gain, I was never sad again.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

It's still interesting. That's so just literally that little flip. This is actually a gain, you know. When I look at things, albeit different to David Rossi, I think. We are seeing things slightly differently, but I think there's a lot to be learned from this conversation, David, from you. Is I kind of think, you know, Wayne Dyer said something, he goes, in my world, nothing ever goes wrong. And I was like, Oh, I like that. Let me

Acceptance And Rewriting The Story

SPEAKER_01 15:34

take a bit of that. And then there's another one. I I always love this that things are always working out, no matter how it seems. And even, and that's because I can't see the bigger picture. So even though I might not be able to see it right now, and how I would be able to connect the dots looking back as I move forward through time, it's still working out.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

And let me add a little clarity to that phrase you said, um, the bigger picture. What that means is that I mean, another way to say that, uh, to agree with that is we judge things so quickly at the moment they happen. And in in the imperative habit, one of the seven habits was accept things for what they are. And I'll never forget when I started this practice. And and these books, my books are a collection of a lot of other philosophers. I didn't create this, I didn't invent this, I synthesize, I patch things together. It's a patch quilt of ideas. And so the the accept everything for what it is is a collection of, you know, Patangili, maybe Buddha, maybe David Hawkins. It's like a mash of all these people that say the same thing that consistently over the centuries and over the philosopher's whole truth. And I'll never forget being really late for a meeting when my life was going down the hill and I'm being sued and and um my house is being foreclosed on, and my ex-wife is stealing money. And I'm like late and I open my car door and I put garbage in my car, a little thing, and a bottle falls out and breaks right in front of the floor. I go, I accept this for what it is. I guess this is gonna save me from a car accident. So clean it up. Don't get upset. It happened. Don't cut yourself, be thankful. And it's recontextualizing at the moment, it seems really bad, and I'm gonna be late. And late seems like death right now in my time of my life. But the practice of accepting things is not to know what this means immediately. And that's what we're so reactive to. When you change the belief structure and you practice changing the belief structure to say, I need to change this thinking. Besides, I'm late to oh, this thing saved me from getting killed. And frankly, I'm happy that I'm not dead, then just late. And that becomes a recontextualization. I would say you can't talk butterfly to a caterpillar.

unknown 17:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Uh, and there's a stage of transition from caterpillar to butterfly. And, you know, you have to people accept things for where they are. I can't explain calculus if you haven't done pre-calc or algebra or trigonometry. And so sometimes you talk calculus, and it doesn't sound like calculus. It just sounds like talk, it's just words. But to understand the experiential aspect of what we're talking about, I really encourage people to try to look deeper at loss and try to look deeper at creatively changing the belief structure. And it doesn't just change because you you want it to change. It changes when you, I say in my first book, believe it until you believe it. You believe it consciously until your subconscious mind believes it. And when I was ready to change Dave's passing from a loss to a gain, my brain says, yes, we're ordered to do that now. It may not have done it a year earlier.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

I may have had to keep cajoling myself and telling myself Well, you know, you are uh you know, your brain is filtering and giving you evidence on your experience, right? You know, your reticular active system's job is to filter out and give you more evidence of what you're paying attention to. So if you're thinking about a loss, don't worry. The brain's job, I'll give you more, I'll give you more, I'll send you songs that will trigger you to make you feel like more lots. I mean, that's its job. But I what I really appreciate than what you've been saying, what I really like what you've been saying is challenge that belief is is it actually a loss right now?

SPEAKER_00 19:03

Well, well, the brain is stacked against you. It isn't it is without a doubt doing the opposite of what you and I are talking about. Yeah, because the brain is acting like an animal. And to to the brain, you know, to what blood is to the heart and what air is to the lungs, thinking with the RAS is to the brain. And the brain all it wants to do is save your life right now. Right now. And then it says, Oh, we feel guilty right now. Oh, we feel guilty about feeling guilty, so let's go eat. Oh, I feel guilty about eating. And it, well, let's do this now. And it constantly just tries to save your life. You have to interrupt that signal, you have to interrupt the belief structure, which most of it is already implanted as an animal. And so you have to break the cycle and you know, mindfulness training, consciousness training, whatever you want to call it. Victor Frankel proved this in Auschwitz better than anybody, small moment in time between stimulus and response. You know, and that's where awareness comes in. You have to say, wait a minute, my brain is about to tell me this is bad, and I need to not not believe it right now. Let me just recontextualize this. The bottle already broke. Calling it good or bad is not gonna help. It already broke. I'm already late. I have a choice to let my brain automatically yell at me and tell me I'm late and give me stress and have me drive faster. Or I can disrupt that process and practice disrupting that process and saying, I can change this. I'm already late, it already broke. Thank God I'm still alive. Oh, I'm gonna look at the clouds and trees, the whole drive, and be so grateful that I'm I'm being saved from something that I don't know what it is. And that belief gave me happiness.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

Thank you for sharing that. I mean, happiness is what we all seek, but we're sometimes we feel like we don't have access to it. I think what I love about your story, David, is that you created, you know, multi-million dollar businesses, you know, had a family. You had the external success, yet it all fell apart, in your words. You know, it it crumbled.

Dropping The Feathers For Authenticity

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Was that because you were seeking external happiness or where were you at? What was that? What was the reason for that in David's world and and how you were seeing the world and how you're different now to it to who you were then?

SPEAKER_00 21:17

Well, I live like every other animal on this planet, um, just like a tree that whose leaves reach for light and whose roots reach for water. I was reaching for survival the way I was taught survival is. I was an autopilot. I didn't think I was, no one does. But when you when you cross, and I'm sure you've had this experience, when you cross over and your identity dissolves, it doesn't mean it doesn't grow back. But when you have an experience beyond identity, masculinity is identity, survival is identity. How I fit into my local social network in Silicon Valley at the time is identity and ego. And so I was out there striving to be and survive what society told me survival is. Like a tree. It's very clear, you know, to a homo sapien and to a young male, it's very confusing what it means to survive in today's world. And so I was striving for that. And now what's different is that survival now is based on authenticity, honesty, transparency, something much, much higher than the external world or the external report card that people calculate. What people think about me traditionally is viewed as positive. As an animal, it is. Hey, everyone thinks I'm the 800-pound girl. Everyone loves my peacock feathers. Hey, I get girls. I'm successful with these peacock feathers. And everyone's looking at the feathers and not the bird. And as an animal, the feathers are good enough. But somebody who's moved beyond that, I just want to be the bird. I want to forget the feathers. I want to clip the feathers. I don't want to look at anybody else's feathers. I want to live as with the closest level of objective reality I can without tricking myself or fooling myself in business and in life, in relationships, in raising kids, in my health, everything. That's my higher order now. That's my decision-making process. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

What was the pathway to that? What habits did you begin to put into place for David to start seeing the world through that lens instead of the lens of check out my feathers?

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Well, I think it there's a few things. Um, Dr. David Hawkins and his series of books probably helped a lot.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

Anyone in particular? Any one of those? Um, you know the trio, you know, the power of now, I mean, um, power versus force, the eye of the eye, and then the eye, those three together. I I read those and it's like music. Um, transitioning through the levels of of consciousness is another good one. Letting go is a good stepping stone to get there. It's that one, letting go. Yeah. You know, I realized that, and I had to, I had to have the courage to accept. And I think my fall helped this. Coming from legitimately losing everything, my house, most of my money, and other houses. I had four houses. One, the bank took over and lawsuits and pain off debt, my business debt. Other three houses went into a truss, I didn't have access to. I had no money, I had to get a job for the first time in 20-something years. And um, I think, you know, having occurred that I bounced back from that, said if something came along my life now, and even now, if it does, I say, wait a minute, my higher level of survivability is not based on quick judgment and money, but prudence and humility and objective reality and patience and trusting the data. And I can distinctively tell you, I would analyze a deal or a project for construction much differently then than now. It's money, it's a great project. This is a huge project. We can okay, there are some bad parts, but we can overcome those bad parts. Those are just risks. We'll manage the risk, we'll manage downside risk. Now I'm like, oh, well, there's some bad signs. Let's just stay away. Let's let's let's go move over here. And then as part of that, as part of that, you know, Leo Tolstoy, you know, what if I live my whole life wrong? And what that turned into my my philosophy was if I'm if I spend one second on the wrong train going the wrong direction, I'm getting farther away from being on the right train, going the right direction. So the second I sense I'm on the wrong train, get off, let's get off, next stop, or off, let's get off, let's get back on the right train. Because it just takes you farther and farther away. And to have the courage to lose projects and to lose deals under the courage and bravery of I'm there more, there's more coming. Do it for the right reason. That has a lot more power.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

I I really like that. That's really powerful. You know, I have a uh uh surfing analogy. Don't worry, there's another wave. That's it. Yes. If you live in the city, you know, I lived in London for a long time. It's like, don't worry, there's another bus coming. There's another one coming, there's another one coming. Just because you missed that one, don't worry, there will be another one coming. But it's that thing about momentum, David. That's the challenge. You know, we feel like if I don't have it, I'm I'm not gonna get it again. When's the next time that bus or that wave will come in? I think uh, you know, listening very carefully to what you said, I think it's more about being able to just live from that space within, and then life will take care of it, boy.

SPEAKER_00 26:23

So have you been nervous missing the bus thinking when it's not gonna come? I mean, I mean, I mean, not just literally, but figuratively.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

You know, like I feel like I'm taken care of by life. Sometimes

Faith, Feedback And Staying The Course

SPEAKER_01 26:39

I get a bit, sometimes I'm not gonna lie, sometimes I feel like really, I'm testing my faith again. But ultimately, you know, I have this quote and it says, You take care of, I'm just gonna use this word, you know, you change the word as you wish. I said, if you take care of God's business, God will take care of yours. And you could change that to the energy, you could change that to life, you could change that to Buddha. Yeah, it doesn't matter, you change that name, but when you take care of life, life will take care of you. And I've been following that philosophy for a few years now, and I have been I have been startled by that truth and living from that space. And yeah, it's scary to have faith in something that you cannot see, that you cannot touch, that you want tangibility. But if you actually live from this truth, watch it support you. Yeah, the only way that I believe it's actually you're able to be in harmony with it is that your output is one of love, is one of service, is one of empowering the community, empowering, you know, other people, empowering nature, you know, doing something for the world of which you're a part of with your gifts and talents. But it has to be from your gifts and talents.

SPEAKER_00 28:03

Yeah, and you've gotten past this point. And this is, I think, the inflection point where you you experience what you experienced. I don't know if this is the right path. This isn't quite working out for me. I'm late, there's bottles breaking under my foot. Um, and what happens is that the animal in us says, I need to go jump in and not let faith guide me. I need to jump in and change it. I need to drive faster. I need to make something happen. And I'm on the wrong path because I'm not seeing all of the things that I think I should have fast enough. And you jump trains and you jump off the right train onto the wrong train. And I think what what I've tried to help people understand is that is where spirituality really comes into play. And I use running or exercise as a way because when you're running and you're tired, your body says you're tired, you should stop. And then you say, No, no, no, no, I'm gonna go farther and faster. I'm gonna keep running. And so your body has all this feedback, you know. So when you don't have the money and you don't have the things or you don't have the love that you want, and you don't have these things that you're hoping for as fast as you want them, that's feedback. And your brain's saying, This is too much, we need to change gears. And your spiritual side jumps in and says, I know you're tired, your legs are tired, and your face is flush, and your heart is braid as fast and you're gasping for air. But if you keep going, this is where you win. You have to go through that discomfortable stage. And if you and if you if you go down that path and you're wrong, and I think it's back to the start of this conversation, that's just something you learned. Okay, what did I get wrong to stay in the wrong train? I thought it wasn't the right time. I did what Dave and James told me to do. I stayed really diligent and I went through some pain and I had faith and it still blew up my face. There's still value in that. You're still asking yourself, what what lessons, what little voices did I hear that I ignored to go this way, then that way? And then you apply those the next time. Most people quit before it gets hard. And that's the difference. That's that's the inflection

Starting Before You Feel Ready

SPEAKER_00 29:57

point.

SPEAKER_01 29:57

You know, when I first started this podcast, I I've told this story before, but I think it's quite, you know, I think it's good to share. I I had this idea for this podcast almost 10 or 11 years before I began. And yet I put it off and put it off and put it off and put it off until one summer, and it was the summer of 2019, that I was swimming with my friend's kid in the swimming pool because he's a young and up and coming professional swimmer to be. He was only 13 at the time. They said, James, will you go in and you know, you're really good at being able to direct, you know, the mind of our kid. And they're family friends. I said, Yeah, come on, you know, they're standing by the edge of the pool, they're doing the tumble turns and going up and down. You know, I happen to be pretty handy in the water. And on one of my tumble turns, I banged my forehead here, and I banged it like right where you know the third eye would be. Yeah, yeah. And everyone's like, oh god, are you okay? You know, I was like, I was like, yeah, and it was almost like a jolt of absolute knowing, right, now's your time to start, begin this show regardless. Yeah. And I was like, I don't know how to do it, I don't know where I'm gonna begin. I I don't have all of the resources that I need, I would need a studio, etc. etc. I was like, I don't even know what subject I would talk about. But I don't think you know, life did it didn't really care. It was like, James, you have enough information, you have enough stories to share, you know, to last an entire lifetime. So please just begin. I was like, oh my. I was like, seriously, this is what the voice inside of me was saying without so many words, but it was a feeling that just I just couldn't put down, David. So I just had to begin. And literally within a week, I met somebody at a casting, and he said, Hey, we'd love to have you on our show. And I said, Well, actually, funnily enough, I'm gonna begin a podcast. He goes, Great, you come on ours, and you share your tips on well-being and meditation, and then I'll come on yours, you know, and we'll start the bowl rolling. Although that wasn't my first episode with him, it was oh my golly, I've actually begun, and now life's bringing me people.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

Yeah, so let me ask you, do you think there were other situations like that that you missed? Like the bang on your head swimming. Do you think there are other Yeah, like hey, yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

And when you were talking about the signs of being on the train and perhaps being on the wrong train for long enough, you're going, Oh, there's another station. Should have got off that one. Yeah, there were relationships that were challenging where you could have just gone, Wow, I could have done something there, but I didn't do anything, you know, and financially like, oh, I could have done something there, that would have helped, you know. Yeah, I could have put myself first here instead of you know letting somebody out.

SPEAKER_00 33:05

And I, you know, it was just it takes discipline not to go back, but I think you know, I asked that question because I the same thing for me, there were plenty of signs. And when you do and does work out, I think, okay, you subconsciously kind of learned your lesson all those times. And I think if you kind of pay attention a little more carefully and have the courage to just say, okay, I'll do it now, you know, and you don't because maybe you're not ready. And you know, I think for all the listeners, look, this is hard, and and there's nothing wrong with anybody, there's nothing better about my path or your path or anyone's path. It's just that, and my life is a lot like yours. It is so easy, it is so remarkably easy. And I don't mean that bad things or tough things or things that the world views as uncomfortable don't happen to me. They do. But the difference is it's back to like, Dave, it's a loss or it's a gain. Oh, my flight's canceled. Oh, let's say here in Seattle and go fly. You know, it's like you can pivot quickly, and it's not a, you know, Alan Watts said this great, great quote. And I think this is really, really important. Taking a negative experience and whitewashing it in is in and of itself a negative experience. But if you take a negative experience and you accept it for what it is, it's a positive experience. And so I'm not saying that I'm whitewashing stuff and I'm gonna pretend I'm happy and I'm unicorns and rainbows. And I think that's what a lot of people think spiritual work or meditation or or some of these things are. No, this is this can be very uncomfortable. And even the moments of discomfort, it's kind of like hiking a mountain. I love to walk for the sake of walking, so I'll walk. And sometimes it's gonna be a little bit hard, but I love to walk so it's not that hard.

SPEAKER_01 34:45

So it's just comfort. That you say that I think, you know, I'm thinking of the audience here, and it's a story that my grandma told me

Turning Life’s Manure Into Roses

SPEAKER_01 34:55

when I was a kid. She we lived in a little country village just out just outside of London with a little river that would run through the town, the village, and in the back of her car there was a bucket and spade. Like, we don't live anywhere near the beach. Why do you have a bucket and spade? You know, like I'm eight years old, you know. Yeah, I was like, of course I want to build sand castles. And we had a sand pit at the house, at her house, not at her house, at her house, because we lived in the same little village. And um, and she goes, I'm gonna show you what they're for. And we drove down this little country lane, and she stopped the car in the middle of the road. There was no other cars because it was a really quiet place, and she got out of the bucket in spayed, and I thought, Here we go, you know, and she picked up horse droppings, horse manure and put it in the back of her car, and off we went. We went back to the house, she had this beautiful, large, green, verdant garden, and she had these phenomenal roses, and she would put that manure on the roses, and from that, it took me a little while, but it just made me understand that some of the crap of life created some of the most beautiful things, which were these roses that gave off the scent. So I just thought everything that is tough or difficult or hard can turn into something really beautiful. Maybe not this season, but maybe next or the one after. And that kind of like when I hear that we have difficult, challenging, you know, negative experiences, what if they are like that manure waiting to fertilize into something beautiful for us to step into one day in a season to come?

SPEAKER_00 36:51

But but I'll bet you she loved gardening rather than uh resting on the laurels of roses.

SPEAKER_01 36:58

Yeah, she loved me. She had an amazing garden, she grew vegetables, you know, and she and albeit with you know my young Tommy, you know, I wanted to, she was an amazing chef. She was a chef, and she had studied in Paris the this cordon bleu chef, and she said, Listen, if you come and help me in the garden, I'll cook anything you want. I was like, Yeah, all right. So, you know, that was my introduction into learning about you know the garden and nature and vegetables and beautiful flowers. And it wasn't something I was really interested in, to be honest, David, but it was something I became interested in because I was thinking with my tummy rather than I was thinking about these roses or whatever. But having said that, if that hadn't have all happened, it wouldn't have led for my love of nature now. And I spend a lot of time walking or hiking and being on the beach or you know, being in the mountains. And I really believe this quote that Dan Millman said, and I had him on the show a little while ago. He said, only those who are willing to make the climb will get to see the view.

SPEAKER_00 38:02

Yeah, and I think you what you've done is you've turned a um a physical or a 3D or a worldly experience into something that's connected to emotion and belief structure. So I I mean, I think your grandmother would not have done that if she just didn't love to garden. And I would say if you love to walk, you'll walk longer and farther than if you're walking to a destination. She didn't do that just to grow roses, she did that because she loved gardening. And that was one way to be a better gardener. And that's where the love of the walk creates so much creativity and so much effort that isn't really hard. It's just you just love to do it. And any discomfort is just part of the walk. That's just okay. And I think when you realize that you have to convert these lessons into something emotional, like to say, I'm tired, I should stop running. No, I'm going to keep running is a spiritual act. You're you're you're bypassing or overriding the body and the feedback. Well, what you just did is you're not taking that physical thing and you're saying, let's do that over fear, over anger, over jealousy, over self-esteem. Let's take the same process of overriding feedback, but not feedback physically, like your stomach or hunger or food, but let's turn it into emotions and jealousy and anger and and self-esteem or whatever it is, and convert that and have that spiritual behavior, that power of choice that exists in all of us to implement. And that's what you've done. You've taken a spade and a bucket. And poop.

SPEAKER_01 39:36

And manure and said, And then we turn it into something tangible, like you know what? That is the manure of life. That's the bit that actually cultivates always the contrast. It's a metaphor, yeah, and it's a great metaphor.

Alphas, Masks And Modern Masculinity

SPEAKER_01 39:52

So tell us a little bit more about your new book, then Alphas Die Young. We've touched on it very briefly, but it's a very bold book with some challenging things in there. Uh and it's gonna, and for a lot of men and the women who love men, uh, who love it it's a real uh you know, it's it's a real uh death. It's a punch in the gut, isn't it? It's a punch in the gut to some of the masks of masculinity. And uh you go through what an alpha is, and then you go through a couple of others. Tell us a little bit about the reasoning for this book so we can understand a little bit about David's uh what's going on inside of that.

SPEAKER_00 40:41

Well, well, when I when I again started exploring these books, I was so mad no one told me this. Like, why did anyone tell me that like something's pushing me to like marry this woman because she got a PhD from Princeton? Like, marry this woman, she's high currency, high currency. I can have high currency. And then I realized that that was what motivated me. I was really mad that no one told me how the voices in my head, the pushes, the urges, the drives that I thought were me, that I thought were positive, that I thought were conscious, wise, prudent choices weren't. They weren't really my choices. They're my choices based on my programming and my drive to be successful to mislead myself. So I wanted to help young men. I I wanted I want to help people understand that there are these invisible forces that are pushing you to do things. And masculinity for men is one of them. For me personally, I wanted to be a real man. And what that meant, and I explore this in the book, is different from culture to culture, from city to city, from circle to circle, from a woman's menstrual cycle or not. I mean, women's menstrual cycles, they find different men attractive at different times of their cycle. So it's such a it's such a slippery slope to say I want to be a real man because the definition keeps changing. And so I wanted to help men understand that.

SPEAKER_01 42:03

And I think you've done a great job in this book. And I, you know, I implore anybody who's interested about understanding masculinity and what type of masculinity you are, um, and then how what your take on the world is. I mean, you talk about the different masks. What I really like is your ability to be so clear on the different types of masks, yeah, and to go, hey, is this you? Is this the world you're operating in? Because this is what you'll get if you are operating under this focus or this lens of life. I think that everything's like a filter. Is this who you are? Because that's the filter you're going to be your. And I particularly like it when you, in some of your troubles, you know, like Israel, okay, this is what you do under these circumstances. And I think that that's quite a simple thing and refreshing to see. Is this your version of the world? And I've noticed in my own experience of masculinity that initially you're in the head, but then I recognized I need to be in the heart, and then I need to use both of them, both the heart and the mind, to be able to be what I consider the best man in my experience, not only for myself, but for the women around me as well. And that means sometimes making choices that are very uncomfortable, but I do them for the greater good.

SPEAKER_00 43:30

Well, I don't think there's anything more masculine, and I don't think there's anything stronger than to cut the feathers off of your peacocking and say, This is who I am. There's nothing more masculine than to be vulnerable, and there's nothing stronger to do that. In fact, I think it's an act of cowardice to pretend you're something when you're not for gain, to mislead something or somebody. Now it works. And I think I think the way I look at the world now is that there's two different divisions. There's the animal side of us, and then there's the spiritual side of us, and they they blend and they they they interact constantly.

Vulnerability As Real Strength

SPEAKER_00 44:06

And you have to be able to discern the difference between behaviors and ideas and thoughts and drivers that are biologically motivated, like the tree looking for light and you looking for food. It's a biological response. You looking for love, biological response. You wanting to make money, biological response. But you can also make the spiritual, which is I don't need to chase those things. I need to do those things by being honest and authentic and vulnerable and real. Because in that regard, it's sustainable, it's authentic, it's real. And you're gonna have such a different profound, such a more profound experience with it being authentic than than putting a shield or a mask or a persona in front of you. And so I think I would just want to help people understand that because I think the world would be a better place if people stop pretending to be something that they're not.

SPEAKER_01 44:57

I mean, you can't, it's difficult to pretend to be something that you're not, but it's for very long. Yeah, because you I mean, I I was in male modeling for a long period of time, and they'll be like, Will you be this type of guy for this campaign or this advert? And you know, it's tiring to be like, no, that's not me. You know, so for me, they wanted me to be edgy for a period of time. I was like, listen, I'm not edgy, you know, perception, it's perception, and I said to themselves you can get me in that campaign, you can get me in that magazine. Well, I'll tell you what, I'm not that edgy. I said, look, you know, I'm kind of like just more of a classic vibe. I'm gonna keep it simple. You know, this is a more sort of preppy vibe, that's what's gonna work for me. So although you want to be pigeonholed or be labeled, that's not gonna serve you. And it's the same with yourself. When you recognize that you're an unlimited being, when you recognize that you have access to energy everywhere around you, and then sometimes all it requires is for you to get really still and present, the whole world will open up to you.

SPEAKER_00 46:06

Yeah, and and to say something vulnerable, you're risking gain. You're you're not, you're you're almost ensuring loss. I mean, like 3D world loss, like perceptive loss, immediate loss. And it's a you know, the one marshmallow, two marshmallow Stanford study, you know, delaying gratification. For me to be vulnerable, I'm going to delay gratification and give away something to say I'm gonna have confidence, faith, trust, and bravery to be authentic, vulnerable, and real, with the faith that what I'm doing will will pay off in the long run and delay gratification of getting something now. Animals want things now, they want it now. We are an animal, you know. And I and I I found this Nietzsche um book um thus spoke Zarathustra, where Nietzsche talks about crossing this crevasse from the beast to God, and we all have that path we're crossing on a tightrope. And the beast is our animal side. We have animal behaviors. The the neurotransmitters that say, pretend you're performative or have bravado, or you're an alpha, pretend and you will win. This will work. That is the beast side, it's the animal side that the peacock does and the ram does, and the gorilla does, and everyone does to get whatever. And and that's part of us. But crossing that tightrope on the other side and and Nietzsche called a God, the God side. And that's becoming spiritual, and that's moving across this crevasse and saying, wait a minute, that's not authentic. I'm I'm pretending to be this thing, and I'm not really that thing. And so if someone buys that thing and it's not me, how long is that gonna last? I'm gonna delay gratification and make sure I'm in alignment with someone that sees me for who I am, picks the bird, not the feathers, and that's what I'm gonna do and delay gratification. That's risky.

SPEAKER_01 47:51

It's risky because you're putting everything, you're putting your validation in, you know, you're delaying your validation, you know. Yeah. Ultimately, what you're doing is giving yourself the validation. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the reversal of the psyche, that's the reverse, the reversal of your fortunes, you know, when it actually starts to come into a more spiritual success, you know, I call it the soul of success, is when these internal characteristics start to play a bigger part of your day-to-day life experience.

SPEAKER_00 48:27

And what you realize though is that if I pretended, which I did a lot in the past, if I pretended I'm gonna, I'm gonna impress and get several parts of the population to agree with me and accept what I'm selling. And then what I realized by being vulnerable or authentic or real is that most of that group fell off because they were looking for something inauthentic and fake anyway. So they weren't deep enough. So I was happy that they fell off. But then there's a larger section of the population that really were attracted to it. I don't mean like in a sexual way, but in like, wow, that's really courageous that you were vulnerable. Like, wow, that's really cool. So, so the the net net was a net gain, but it's counter to what we see as an animal. The animal's like, this is instant gratification. I'm gonna go for it. I got 50 people buying this, so I'm going for it. Now when I'm done, I'm gonna cut off 48 of those people and find an extra hundred that found that vulnerability, strength, and positive and worth it being interested in.

SPEAKER_01 49:26

You know, there's a you know that going back to the book Power versus Force by David Hawkins, he has that sort of line of consciousness, like when you start oscillating at love or above, you know, life starts to get a lot easier. And love is at 500. So when your vibration is at a 500 and above up to enlightenment, which is a thousand, you start to be operating at the higher realms of life. It's a bit like in a video game, you seem to be flying through the game at a higher level because you have figured out that your consciousness and your artillery for energy, let's just call it, is just flowing a lot more quickly and a lot more smoothly. It's a bit like a fast Wi-Fi signal. That's what I like to call it.

SPEAKER_00 50:09

Yeah, definitely. I call it like you're turning apps off on your phone.

SPEAKER_01 50:14

I I love the Wi-Fi, you know, your broadband. Don't worry, you're absolutely whizzing with your broadband. But you know, as soon as it gets slower, you're like everything just seems more arduous and difficult, and your relationships are hard and business isn't flowing and money might not be flowing. But as soon as you get, you know, your Wi-Fi or your personal signal flowing from love or above, then you know, life, you you seem to, you know, like be a hot knife through butter through life. Not to say that there aren't challenges, but how you manage them is far more easily, far more graceful. And one of the things

Meditation, Healing And Switching Off Survival

SPEAKER_01 50:50

that I don't think was on that, that I really love what you'd said is authenticity. Because he doesn't really talk about that being one of the levels on the caution, the consciousness level. And I think it's right up there, you know, being being who you are is a very high frequency because you're not denying that part of yourself, whether you're yin or yang, you know, like I have good days and I have tough days. Yeah, if you're a yoga, I don't deny that aspect of myself. I recognize that there is both light and shadow, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:24

And I try to, you know, the engineer in me studied similarities between cultures and philosophers. And what I've what I've come to research is that in the book Sapiens, we were animals for two million years of evolution, and then all of a sudden we got cognition. So the animal side of us, which all it wants to do is survive, said this being now has cognition, we can use it to survive and created the ego. And the second as humans we got cognition, we became the most powerful animal on this planet, and every other hominid went extinct because we could pretend. We could, as he put in his book, um um uh predict outcomes. We can imagine outcomes. And so, hey, if I need to take a boat to Australia, I might hit rain. So let me not put this. I can imagine possibilities for success, but I could also say if I pretend this way, I might get this in reward as well. So we built an ego, and so we have this singularity in us. We become what our animal side of us has created as an identity, and we believe it. And everything that that entity tells us we are, oh, you're a man, you you want to be a man, you should respond this way. Oh, I should respond like a man, I should respond like a man. I gotta be like a man. Oh, you're a father, you gotta respond like a father. Oh, you're this, you got to respond this way. And we we adopt these personas at some point, something happens where there's a crack in that singularity, and we begin to look at ourselves with a duality. We begin to observe these emotions and say, wait a minute, I know you're tired as a body, but as a spirit, I want to keep going. I know you're jealous or you're mad or you feel low self-esteem because of this. And you know, I had a huge temp, right? When I was 18, jumped through a glass window in a fit of rage. That was one of the many, you know, emotions I had as a kid that I understood was something pushing me. So now you have this duality and you begin to converse, and this duality gets wider and wider, and you get farther and farther away from the body and the spirit. And then on the other side, you come back together as a singularity, as a spirit, and you realize that the body is part of you, it's the vehicle that you're in, but it isn't all of it. And so everything we're talking about is to make progress and making this is the Hawkins trajectory. Increase your consciousness. You get farther and farther away from the animal, from the identity, from the persona. And authenticity is living a life that's void of pretending or projecting or affectation or anything. That's authenticity to truly be you, and that can be a very confusing thing in its own realm, to be honest with you.

SPEAKER_01 53:58

I think everyone's doing the best they can. I think we all are doing the best we can with what we know how in every given moment. And yeah, we'd always like to be a better version of ourselves, but sometimes, you know, the moment doesn't call you to just step in and be the best version of yourself. It can be very messy, right? I think that anyone who says spirituality is easy has got it wrong. I think it's I think it's true warriors. I think if you have I think if you've got any courage in you, and I think being human requires great, you know, courageousness.

SPEAKER_00 54:34

Yeah, and and spiritual teachers like me and people who've had experiences like you and authors uh throughout time, a better version of you is not you making up a better version, it's you letting go of the things that distract you from you being yourself. And then look at it a bit like the sun. Let's say your best version is the sun, and it's bright, and you're bright, and you're shiny, and you you connect to others and you spread love and enjoyment and happiness, and you're you're you're that bright sun that everyone loves. Okay, throw a shit ton of clouds in front of it. That's where we are. And and to be a better version of you isn't to pretend to be the sun and draw in a picture of the sun in front of the clouds, it's to slowly grab a cloud and pack it up and get rid of it. And I want to be a better version of myself, like Hawkins talks about. Be humble, have reverence for life, be open-minded, be open-hearted, be loving, be giving. So you keep taking these clouds and pushing them aside. A better version of you is just getting rid of the things that stop you from being the you that's already there.

SPEAKER_01 55:37

And I think that we we can we can do that on a day-to-day basis when we find a lot more silence. That's not easy. That was my journey to go go into silence, right? It's like go into silence. You're like, really? That's your answer. It's like, yeah. I've been meditating daily for like over 22 years. And going into silence reveals lots of truth, it takes away these filters so that in your analogy, the sun just shines behind the clouds, and eventually those clouds part without you having to do it. You see the clarity of what's actually real rather than all the filters.

SPEAKER_00 56:23

Well, meditation is a practice to drop the five senses. It's a practice to say, I'm not going to be an animal right now. I'm going to practice what it feels like not to be an animal. Animals use their senses to hunt for territory, for breeding, for survival, paying rent, looking good in genes, uh, being fit so someone picks you, getting the best job, brushing up the brightest resume. These are all creations of the five senses. And when you meditate, it's it's 20 minutes of just saying, I'm gonna stop pretending to be an animal and connect with something deeper and bigger that's already there, turning these things off. I'm gonna turn these things off. What else is there? And that's meditation is hard. I used to almost get nauseous when I first started meditating because the animal in me wanted to survive and say, get back at it, get back out there and grow leaves for sunlight and get those roots deeper and survive. And I'd say, no, no, no, I trust meditation is gonna work. I don't care if I'm nauseous. I'm going to stop and take a break from these senses and try to discover what else is back there when they're turned off. And it's not meant to float and you know be woo-woo. It's meant to be real practice.

SPEAKER_01 57:29

Oh, I uh that's definitely one healthy way of looking at it.

SPEAKER_00 57:33

It's definitely one of there's many ways to look at medicination.

SPEAKER_01 57:36

There are many ways to look at it. I just see it as a break from resistance, right? You know, yeah. I see it as a break from resistance. You can go on holiday 15, 20 minutes, go for it. It's not always easy because sometimes the mind is external. The monkey mind is going for it. But eventually, once I just say, hey, I'm gonna stay here for a while, a bit like the mountain. I'm just gonna stay here like the mountain within me. And then eventually, it's like if the weather turns, well, that's my thoughts. But eventually I shall just be here. Yeah, good for you. Yeah, it's just uh, you know, it's it's a discipline that's worked, you know, but there are many other disciplines that you could have, but it's one that takes you back to yourself and eventually strip away any inauthenticity.

SPEAKER_00 58:19

Yeah, no, I I I meditation, I do talk about it in the book a little bit. I do I add it as a play. Um, there's so many famous people that have when I say famous, I mean successful people who have earned fame or notoriety and attention for being successful at something. A lot of them credit meditation to their success. I would credit meditation for me healing my back and canceling my surgery. Two surgeons said you can't heal this. And I do credit meditation to probably 80% of my ability to get past that. My brain healing. It's not a lot, oh you know, 50. No, I I can I I 100% if you look at the lie detector, and right, wrong, or indifferent, right? I of course we know when you do this work, there's lots you don't know. There's more you don't know than you do know. But I will tell you right now, I would say that my brain had the ability to heal itself, and I allowed my brain to heal my back and my slip disk to cancel surgery. And I don't credit it to anything other than that.

SPEAKER_01 59:17

That's it. And and that's a beautiful thing to say. And in my own experience, whilst I I haven't had that, I have noticed my own well-being has maintained a very high frequency, or I've been very well for 20 years.

SPEAKER_00 59:33

So I'm like, okay, it's just the other way, trust me. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:36

I was like, okay, you know, if you were to scan my brain or scan my body or whatever, I'm like, I'm I'm all I know what I know is wellness. That's what I know. And I think it's because I'm able to, when I feel resistant, just go, hey, these are the little things that release that resistance, so then the body is allowed to be its natural, healthy state. I think that that's exactly what's happened in my own experience. And I love other people to be able to be their own guinea pig in their own.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:08

Well, let me ask you, because you've gotten here in your life, don't you just want to give it to everybody else? Always.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:14

I mean, once you once you've once you've experienced things that work, all you want to do is share. You know, some of the wealthiest people I've ever come across is like they want to share with you their little habits, they want to share with you their tools. Why? Because you can't take it with you.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:33

You're not competitive anymore, you're not competing against anybody. I'm not competing against anyone anymore. I can give all my secrets out.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:39

Yeah, I'm, you know, and and in your books, you know, you you reveal everything, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:45

Well, it sounds like that be really that peacefully connected with you. Yes, there's a lot of vulnerable and humble moments in there that you know. I hope my story and my experiences can everyone's gonna have their own experience and everyone's gonna learn something themselves. But I hope that I can say, look, this is how I learned it, this is what happened to me. Maybe something similar or some offshoot happens to you. So you can kind of use this to help create, you know, something for yourself, an idea or a belief you can get a hold of, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:10

And I think that's a beautiful way to sort of wrap up this conversation. It's like take with uh take with this what you will, and if it resonates, then you can do something with it. But I love your books that you've done, David. Oh, I'm so glad. Really enjoyable, you know. The Alpha's dialys a bit of a punch, right? But you know, you might enjoy that, you know, particularly the guys. And if you were if you are a woman listening to this, this might be something you might want to pass on to your your partner because we can get stuck in the illusion of social hypnosis, and if we can step out of that, we become better people. And I think that that that book allows you to become very aware, and I think that that's a great piece of wisdom that you've shared in that book. And yeah, may it do its own work in its own way. It's like a little soldier going out into the world, let it let it have its own life, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:03

That's what it's there to do. I think it all the tips are the same for women as you are for men. The the stories are are men related, but the tips, all the plays, everything is exactly the same for women. For a man, it's bravado and performance and you know, um, a little bit of um, you know, uh presentation for women, you know, their natural tendencies are to connect and like the racial haircut I use, you know, women all got their racial haircut because it made them be more selective and more attractive. And so it's the same exact principles for men and women. I just targeted men because they're the ones that are messing the world up the most. They're the ones killing people, they're the ones doing school shootings, they're the ones pressing the button to launch missiles. And so I really wanted to help that area to basically make the world a better place in my own way.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:47

And that's really beautiful because when we become more enlightened versions of ourselves and pull away all those filters, we take the patriarchic society and allow to be able to pass the bat on to the matriarchal society where there's a lot more harmony. Yeah, it it takes a lot of courage for us as men to undo or unlearn some of the tools or habits or hypnosis that we've had, um, and to become your own warrior of light, your own warrior of love. You know, I love this. Yeah, well said I love this uh, you know, Zen saying is I always keep a long, sharp sword, it firmly tucked in its sheath, always ready, always sharpened. Those are my disciplines, those are my habits. But I never really need to draw it out because my energy is strong, my heart is open, and my ability to communicate is always good enough, so that I don't need to draw it out. But that doesn't mean I don't carry a sword. That's the warrior of light. And I think as men, if we can be able to go and be those warriors because we've got these disciplines, because we've got these understandings, that means we can stand better in this world, in a new world and in a new earth. And I think that that's uh an earth that I've stepped into. I've already stepped in, so you know that that's my gift, you know. This podcast and all the wonderful guests, such as your good self, uh, is a real pleasure to speak to. I'd

Final Message And How To Grow

SPEAKER_01 1:04:28

just like to ask a question, uh, which I like to ask all my guests, which is what one thing would you really like to share with the audience?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:38

Oh wow. I get that question on podcasts often, and it I think it might change at times based in the conversation. I think in this conversation, I think I'd want people to know that there's nothing wrong with anybody. There's nothing wrong with you. But that doesn't mean that there aren't better and higher places to go. And I think that's that drive can start out being for gain, and I think what you do will change. But I think everyone should keep striving and reaching for the stars. I think if you don't, you're doing a disservice to yourself and you're not living the life you're meant to live. If you don't keep striving for the stars, not because you're broken, because you're not, but because there's stars there and they're worth reaching for.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:18

That's beautiful. This week's super soul model is David Rossi. Thanks, David. Thanks so much, James. Thank you for listening. And if this episode resonated with you, make sure you follow the podcast and leave a review. It really helps us continue these conversations.