A Tale of Transformation Self-Respect in the Face of Time

When life threw punch after punch, Neil from Australia punched back with the might of fitness and resilience. His raw account of rising above divorce, bankruptcy, and body image issues will leave you inspired to tackle your own battles with renewed vigor. Join our heartfelt dialogue as Neil unveils the transformative power of facing life's adversities head-on, offering practical tools and mindset strategies that promise to revolutionize your path to personal growth. His is a story that resonates with authenticity and hard work, a true embodiment of what it means to emerge as a 'unified man'.

Strap in for a candid conversation about the subtle art of daily improvement, where the seemingly insignificant choices we make can either construct or crumble our foundations. I share my musings on the compound effect of our routines, a principle that has quietly fueled the ascent of this very podcast from its modest inception. This episode is a call to arms for self-respect and self-investment, to embrace a lifestyle that fosters peak vitality and shuns the all-too-common trajectory toward decline. It's a compelling case for the incremental steps that, when taken consistently, carve out a trajectory toward monumental life shifts.

As we wrap up, we delve into the philosophy of aging with grace, challenging the preconceived notions that associate growing older with inevitable decay. I draw an analogy between our bodies and a thriving nation, underscoring the critical importance of nurturing our internal 'governance' to reflect a robust and vivacious spirit. We conclude with a nod to our natural, childlike essence and how shedding societal burdens can unlock the door to success and happiness. As Neil generously shares his insights and his book, we extend our deepest thanks to you, our listeners, for joining us on this soul-enriching fitness odyssey.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

Hello and welcome to Help with Fitness Re-Defined. I'm your host, anthony Amen. Join me today to dive into the role of the help of fitness who is on an overcome diversity big cat for a fiction and see how the fitness and a whole new life. Today, ladies and gentlemen, we're going down under. No, but really we have some from Australia, so I'm super excited. It's always a country I personally wanted to visit and, like we talked about pre-show, do not go on the water. Everything wants to kill you. Not fun, but definitely a great country to go visit. So that's where they do this. Welcome to the show, neil. Neil, it's a pleasure having you on today.

Speaker 2: 0:46

Man. Pleasure to be here, but I love it. This is my happy place, so amen to that.

Speaker 1: 0:53

Neil, before we get into the episode, just tell everyone how you got started and what kind of message are you hoping to share today?

Speaker 2: 1:01

Yeah, well, my story is your story, it's everybody's story. Anybody that wants to do anything in life has ambition. Anybody wants to do anything has assertion, and that was me. I went out there and I swung hard from an early age. The problem is, when you're young, you have energy but you don't have maturity and you think you know everything. So inevitably it just led to a big downfall. And from that downfall that's where I really started to learn who I was and really get to know myself, and then just built my way up from there, man, and just through struggle, came strength. That's me and that's you and that's everybody.

Speaker 1: 1:40

What kind of struggle did you go through?

Speaker 2: 1:43

Again the same as everyone Divorce, bankruptcy and a body you definitely weren't proud of. Financial turmoil, the realisation of the. It's a narcissistic culture. I was heavily narcissistic. I still am in a sense. I'm just aware of when I'm doing it. So I can actually stop and become more authentic, instead of trying to put on a mask of how you think you should be or how you think you're being perceived, and just be real. And that's me. I'm not some huge, massive worldly successor or anything. I'm just a man that's sorted his shit out. And that's me. I'm never going to say I'm more than what I am. I've just developed myself from within and now I'm just offering other people the realistic tools to develop themselves, to build themselves.

Speaker 1: 2:33

Yeah, and kind of like you said, everyone's been through a whole bunch of shit, some of us, some things were some financials, some physicals, some extraterrestrial world, world, but you never know, aliens would have come and abducted you and taken your way and now you have to figure your shit out. No, but really so. How did you kind of dig yourself out of that hole and what did you learn? Walk us through that process.

Speaker 2: 2:57

Man, just hard, hard hard work. No, nothing fun about it, nothing glamorous, just hard work for years and years and years. Because I was in such a massive financial pit. My father was a construction guy and I never wanted to do that but it was something I could jump into immediately to start making decent money as an employee, to start paying off all the money I owed the bank. But the side effect of it was I developed resilience, I developed perseverance and strength, like raw physical strength.

Speaker 2: 3:30

Because of the hard work I had to turn up every day, whether I liked it or not, whether I was sore, whether I was hungover, whether it didn't matter, I had to be there. So that was sort of my introduction to the fitness side of things is a byproduct of my job was I got a strong, good-looking physical body the old-fashioned way and the best thing that come out of it was the character development, like I said, perseverance, but also the honor, the self-respect and the accountability, because I was working with real men from the old world. They don't use the internet, they don't use social media, they don't know anything about all this identity garbage, none of that crap. They were just real, solid, down-to-earth, strong, positive men because they weren't stuck up in the ether, they had their feet grounded on the ground and they had their floors. I mean, they all drank, they all smoked, but they were great people and still are great people, solid, straight up and down. So role models, they were good role models.

Speaker 1: 4:37

So you got your kind of your feedback from learning through construction to kind of get up, go to work, whether you like it or not, kind of like go to the gym. You got to go work out. You got to put the work in Four o'clock, five o'clock in the morning. You're waking up, you're going and you don't want to be there.

Speaker 2: 4:55

But you're really the lap bar. That was a sleeping, that was a sleeping man and so, yeah, it was the initiation. You know, we all need initiation in life, we all need role models, we all need a teacher, a mentor, a master to learn from. And you know, while they had their down floors, like I said, but they're also, when it come to just just pure character, solid, absolute solid.

Speaker 1: 5:19

So, walk me through what your Process is, because you're a lot of stuff saying like a unified man.

Speaker 2: 5:25

So walk me through what that is well, unified man is someone who's completely aligned. You've. We all say we want things, but then we do something else and that's because we've got weaknesses, we've got distractions, we've got pleasure seeking instant gratification. When you eliminate all the drugs, the drinking, the bad food, the Netflix binging, the addiction to drama, the phone scrolling, the, the procrat, whatever it is, whatever your vice is, what do you eliminate that?

Speaker 2: 5:56

There's nothing to mask the internal Pain that we all have. We all have an internal compass and it always points true north, and the needle on that compass is fear. Whatever you're most afraid of doing, that's exactly the thing that you need to do. Everything you want, the strength you want, is on the other side of that struggle. So being a unified man is getting rid of all the things that mask and Deaden you, so that you're just left with yourself and from there you can actually really figure out what it is, the direction you need to be going and you just automatically all of your strengths and all your positive qualities Just come about. You have forwards constant propulsion, because there's nothing dragging you backwards.

Speaker 1: 6:42

How did you come about that.

Speaker 2: 6:44

No, it just came to me in my brilliance, in my brilliance. It just came to me, man, like the concept came to me a few years ago when I was still drinking, when I was still smoking and I always had a self-development mindset and Always had a growth mindset. I was just still caught up in the culture and the addiction of drinking because I didn't, I didn't understand it's part of our culture. I didn't understand that it was just instant gratification, pleasure seeking. You know, I thought you know that that was a way of having fun. That was balance. Like Getting drunk is not balance. Balance is like deep stretching, deep breathing, yoga, sauna, spiritual connection, relaxation, quality time that's balance. Anything that's a detriment to your health or your physical presence is not balance. And that's where it came to me man and the book.

Speaker 2: 7:35

I only intended, I didn't even mean to write it. It was an accident. I only just meant to write a concise system of five pages, ten pages of just how I live my life and how it worked for me, so I could give it to my cronies you know the people that I knew, my mates and then, once I started writing, it just reinvigorated real live and all the the communication and writing skills that I developed all the way back in high school. So it was immensely pleasurable and it was an accident, and but that's. That's the nature. When you, when you come and tune and in line With whatever your heart is telling you to do, whatever your compass is pointing towards, you don't have to do anything. It ends up just doing itself.

Speaker 1: 8:14

So you mentioned five things. What are those five things?

Speaker 2: 8:18

What do you mean? Which five things like that?

Speaker 1: 8:20

I do, or yeah like every day?

Speaker 2: 8:23

oh Easy. Number one get up early. Number two hydrate. Number three eat meat, fruit and vegetables and that's it. Number four work out. Number five go to work. Whatever that work is, whether that is writing a book, whether that is building a business, whether that is just if you're really passionate about your career or you're an artist, whatever it is, it's just covering the basics. I mean, there's nothing really profound about it. The problem is, because they're basic, they're subtle and boring, so nobody does it. Because they are subtle and boring, they look for some grand, big Vision. I need to be doing some great activity, man. You look at anyone successful. You spend a day with them. They're just doing the same shit that everyone else is doing, you know. So you cover those basics. Life just takes care of itself. Man, it really does. It's not that hard. The hard part is like not doing it.

Speaker 1: 9:19

Yeah, and I kind of liked one thing you mentioned which was going after your fear, because there's a lot more to that than just saying it. For example, when you're afraid of doing something, how often do you stress about that thing and work that thing up in your mind? Oh man, you're not obsessing over, you're missing out on life. You're constantly thinking about it and just building up, building up, building up, building up. And then how many times in your life have you approached that thing and then afterwards it's gone like it never existed?

Speaker 2: 9:56

Every single day, mate, I'm starting life again like just went through another separation, move town and in a new place, big city that I don't know that many people and I have to step out of my comfort zone Every day. It's a continual process. I have to. I wake up nervous, I wake up afraid within my chest and my solar plexus, because that's like the energetic center for self assertion and self confidence. I know I have to get out there and chest out, shoulders back. That's why we feel nervous in here, because it's an energetic center and it's an everyday process.

Speaker 2: 10:34

I like it too, on a cold day, if someone just sprays you a little bit with a hose. Those little droplets are torture. But if you just went and jumped in a cold lake, easy you get through it, no worries, and quick. If someone goes with fear, you just have to gradually desensitize yourself over it through continual action and just over a period of time, over a timeline. It'll just eventually get less and less and less. As we all know, courage isn't the absence of fear, it's just doing the thing despite the fear. So there's no hack, there's no roundabout to it, you just sometimes you just got to jump in there and you just got to see what happens.

Speaker 1: 11:17

Yeah, really couldn't agree more. I want to just give a quick shout out to our sponsor. A square consulting, keith and I came together and we decided you know, let's blend together fitness and finances. People always talk about hey, I need to get fit, hey, I need to get healthy, I need to get my nutrition lighter. And some people are like hey, I need to fix my finances, I need to figure out what 401k is, I need to figure out where to invest, and then you know if you had a place to pull those together, because they go hand in hand. They were financially well off you are. The easier is to get in shape, the more in shape you are, the easier is to get more financially well off. Those things are mutual benefiting relationships. So we're not only going to help you, we're going to teach you, because ultimately that is the goal to have something you do on your own. We really accept limited clients, guys. We take two at a time. But if you are interested, go check us out. F squared consulting fit bodies, fatwildscom again, that is fit bodies, fatwildscom. We're giving 10% off to all podcast listeners, so go ahead, check it out. And yet again, we only teach two clients at a time that we can give the best effort to them.

Speaker 1: 12:22

Nia, I wanted to hop back into your book a little bit and you mentioned something. How it was easy. You said that it's the same thing that everyone else is doing the rich guys and the poor guys. The difference is the prioritization between it and everyone else is overcomplicating everything in between. There's a really cool book, it's called the One Thing and it specializes in saying that if you just did one thing every single day, or did one percent better every single day in a year, you would be 365% better. So you'd be almost four times better than you were today.

Speaker 2: 13:07

Right. I couldn't agree more. That's my life. It's simple I work out and I sell and I talk to people. That's to communicate. I work out, I communicate. That's my life. It's like this podcast. Man, you should have seen my first podcast. What an embarrassment, what an embarrassment that was. It's the same thing. Every little step, every little day.

Speaker 2: 13:30

It just compounds because there's one universal guiding force that just animates everything in this whole reality All the galaxies, all the planets, all the life forms, the ecosystem, every human being. And that's the compound effect Just the gradual application of actions over a timeline that either lead to an acceleration and an increase in growth or a deceleration and a degradation and a destruction. Everything's driven by that, and that's it. It is small little things every single day that do momentum, and that's how anybody can do it and that's how anybody could not do it. And that's why it takes the same amount of effort to be successful as it does to be unsuccessful, because they both end up. They both have a massive byproduct at the end.

Speaker 2: 14:21

It's like fitness. Why is it so fundamental? It's because look at everybody that doesn't look after their health. Everybody dies, but it's not the death you should be worried about, it's the dying. Look at the suffering that happens towards the end of people's lives, the last years, the decades. Nobody wants that, but people just get caught up in instant gratification and they just make those little tiny errors, rather, instead of little tiny positive choices. And it's harder, it's way harder to be unhappy. It's way harder to be unfit. It's way harder to be a slave to something external, especially just a product. When you look at it. People get so dogmatic about products, whether it's an alcohol brand or whether it's a clothing brand or a car brand. That's just a product that's actually nothing real Like. Snap out of it. Come on, be real to yourself, be true to yourself. Self love is self respect, self love is self investment. So anyway, what was the question? What was the question? What was the question? What was?

Speaker 1: 15:24

the question. What was the question? What was the?

Speaker 2: 15:28

question.

Speaker 1: 15:32

No, I kind of liked the continuation of it. It was just about getting 1%. It was just about getting 1% better every single day to make overall impact. And something I talked about we've always talked about getting 1% better to improve. Don't just all of a sudden become 300 packs. If you don't wake up one day and you're like shit, I need to lose 200 pounds right now. That's compounding Effects of decisions you make Every single day. And then you made another statement, as a previous guest on my show Made a really cool statement.

Speaker 1: 16:11

He doesn't want to live In a life where you have average out and it comes down. He wants to be boxed. I want to be born, be super healthy, live a little bit straight across and then just die Downward slope of getting worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. And I get the example all the time. People always say Did you hear about this super healthy person that died at this young age? Yeah, people died young ages, it just happens, but they died quick. It was. I'm alive, I'm healthy, I'm dead. It wasn't. I'm alive.

Speaker 1: 16:53

By the time I hit like 50 years old, my knees start hurting, my back starts hurting. Now I'm in pain. That's how I hit 65 years old now. I'm unlike medication. The medication is giving me side effects. Now I feel like shit. I thought I was 75 years old. I can't spend my retirement money. I'm stuck in bed all day, you know, I can barely move. I'd sit in front of the TV all day. And then 95 years old and my life is Absolutely miserable and I just want to die and I can't kill me now.

Speaker 2: 17:23

Seriously like, like, fuck that.

Speaker 2: 17:27

And it doesn't have to. It doesn't have to be that way. It really doesn't. It's just a. It's just a scam and a conditioning of of consumerism and of Inoculation of ideas of how you should be at a certain age. I mean, it's just all the marketing scam. That's all it is and Doesn't have to be that way. And that's why I wrote my book and made it simple and give out this message.

Speaker 2: 17:50

Same like yourself, is that it's pretty straight up and down really. It's just we overlook it and there's so many cheap dopamine hits. And because everyone's so torn within, that's why it's about being unified, because everything's torn, everyone's got torn, families torn, identities torn direction. That's why it's all about sort of unifying. You know, and that's why I call that building a nation from within is because it's being more accurate About what we actually are.

Speaker 2: 18:19

The human body isn't like a car you don't put good fuel in and it runs good. The human mind is not like a computer. It isn't like a piece of software with a piece of hardware. They're inaccurate, they don't, they don't give us any context for what it really is. A human body is like a national government. That's what we are. The macrocosm is reflected in the microcosm. Every military, every spearhead, every business, every tribe, every organization of hierarchy. Everything is a reflection of the systems of a singular human being.

Speaker 2: 18:55

Now, does that work? Starts with the consciousness, the actual seed of experience behind your brain, in the center of your skull. When you have enough self-awareness and observation, you can detach and observe your mind and not be stuck in your mind because that's not who you are. That's the ruler, that's the incumbent, that's the general, that's the leader. That needs to be clear and concise so we can know the direction it wants to travel. And from there you need to take control of your government, of your state, of your, your courtroom, which is your brain. There's a million voices in there. Everything's going here. All these distractions wants to do this, wants to do that. All of that needs to be brought into alignment and Conglomerated so it's all thinking in the same way leader, government.

Speaker 2: 19:43

The body is the nation itself. It's the general population, it's the healthcare system, it's the military people that train martial arts. They're a one man army. They can defend their borders and assert themselves. It's all the infrastructure, it's the water, it's the health, it's the rejuvenation and that's what I call the building a nation from within, so people can be powerful in every decision they make because they understand what they truly are and they can take full dominion, command and control and rulership of their internal territory. I like that analogy.

Speaker 2: 20:19

That's how it is. That's the truth. We're not cars, we're a nation. We're strong. We're powerful.

Speaker 1: 20:25

I've always heard your body is like a house. I've heard that a lot. No one's ever really explained it as a nation. So that was. I'm like sitting there thinking about it. I'm like your T cells are kind of like the military. They're fighting off bacteria. Your skin is your border right. You have a nice wall protecting your body. Your brain is the government. It's like trying to dictate everything. Your GI tract is the health insurance and all that stuff. You need to keep going Exactly it's all the infrastructure, it's everything. It's everything.

Speaker 2: 20:59

The building that's the facts all of the external systems, the civilization that we live in, every civilization. It's a derivative of a human body, of a human spirit, and when you understand that, you can take the power back and be self assured. Because here's the most important thing. Why is it important to think that way and put all this effort into your body? Is because you can't own anything on this planet. Why? Because the earth owns us. Nothing outside of your physical presence and your body. Nothing else can you own. This is all you have. So that's why you have to put the most effort into it, because it's the only thing that really matters. Everything else can come and go. This is it. This is all you are. The rest is just stuff. You know.

Speaker 1: 21:54

It's true, you can have a million things, but at the end of the day, what do you get buried with yourself and I?

Speaker 2: 22:00

That's it.

Speaker 1: 22:01

It's just you all there is man.

Speaker 2: 22:02

That's all there is in this whole reality. That's all there is. So look after that and everything else in life, we'll just take care of itself.

Speaker 1: 22:12

I love it, neil. Neil, I'm gonna ask you the final two questions I ask everybody. The first one is if you were to summarize this episode in one or two sentences, what would be your take home message to people?

Speaker 2: 22:27

I would say a child is born pure, a child is generous, a child is playful, a child is happy, a child is sharing, a child has good character. That's our natural state of being. That's what we naturally are. The civilization corrupts us, destroys us and teaches us to destroy ourselves. People that are successful and happy it's not that they're special or some super being or anything like that. They've just eliminated all of the things that hold them back so they can get back to how a human being is naturally supposed to be. And when you get there, you just automatically flourish.

Speaker 1: 23:10

I like that. And the second question how can people find your book and get a hold of you?

Speaker 2: 23:15

Easy man. Just go to wwwtheunifiedmancomau or just go on Instagram, theunifiedman, send me a message and I'll give you the book for free. It's all free. Just get in touch and it's all yours. There'll be an audio book coming that'll be free, and then there'll be an actual physical book published by like the end of the week, and that's free as well. You just gotta pay the shipping on it. So get in touch, read the book, or, if you just need someone to talk to you, because we all need help, I need help. I've got people I look up to that help me, and I've got people below me that look up to me, that I help. It's the path of initiation, it's the cycle, and it's our responsibility and it's our duty to keep that tradition and that process going, because that's how human beings, that's just how human beings work. So if you need anything, I'm here.

Speaker 1: 24:09

I appreciate it. Neil, thank you for coming on, thank you for giving your book away for free that's super nice of you and thank you, guys, for listening to this week's episode of Help with Fitness, free to find. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and join us next week as we dive deeper into this ever-changing field and remember fitness is medicine. Until next time 提前는 음지.