Have you ever felt that despite juggling fatherhood and a successful career, your own health took a backseat? Our guest, Brian, was in the same boat until he uncovered the transformative power of adaptive habit chains for sustainable health and fitness. This episode peels back the layers on how small, consistent lifestyle tweaks, rather than extreme overhaul attempts, can revolutionize your well-being. Join us as Brian walks us through his 'fast method,' a testament to the profound impact of truly understanding our brain's psychology when it comes to forming and sticking to beneficial habits.
Life often throws us curveballs, and sometimes those curveballs are in the form of tempting unhealthy snacks or disruptive news cycles that can derail our fitness goals. This is why we dissect the triangle of self-influence – environment, reflection, and imagination – to navigate the complexities of our surroundings and how they shape our habits. I'll share personal strategies I use to maintain a sovereignty over my choices, emphasizing the critical nature of daily actions and belief systems that support long-term wellness. We'll reveal how simple shifts in your pantry setup or resisting unhealthy foods can empower you to take control of your health journey.
As we wrap up this incredibly raw conversation with Brian, we hone in on the nuances of masculinity and the societal pressures that can sometimes keep us stagnant. We tackle the importance of setting goals and how acknowledging our efforts over results can bring about a paradigm shift in self-worth and personal development. Sharing intimate anecdotes, we underscore the art of embracing self-ownership, not just for the sake of our health and fitness, but also in nurturing our relationships, especially in marriage. This episode is a treasure trove of insights and practical advice that will bolster not just dads but anyone looking to enhance both their physical and relational vitality.
Have you ever felt that despite juggling fatherhood and a successful career, your own health took a backseat? Our guest, Brian, was in the same boat until he uncovered the transformative power of adaptive habit chains for sustainable health and fitness. This episode peels back the layers on how small, consistent lifestyle tweaks, rather than extreme overhaul attempts, can revolutionize your well-being. Join us as Brian walks us through his 'fast method,' a testament to the profound impact of truly understanding our brain's psychology when it comes to forming and sticking to beneficial habits.
Life often throws us curveballs, and sometimes those curveballs are in the form of tempting unhealthy snacks or disruptive news cycles that can derail our fitness goals. This is why we dissect the triangle of self-influence – environment, reflection, and imagination – to navigate the complexities of our surroundings and how they shape our habits. I'll share personal strategies I use to maintain a sovereignty over my choices, emphasizing the critical nature of daily actions and belief systems that support long-term wellness. We'll reveal how simple shifts in your pantry setup or resisting unhealthy foods can empower you to take control of your health journey.
As we wrap up this incredibly raw conversation with Brian, we hone in on the nuances of masculinity and the societal pressures that can sometimes keep us stagnant. We tackle the importance of setting goals and how acknowledging our efforts over results can bring about a paradigm shift in self-worth and personal development. Sharing intimate anecdotes, we underscore the art of embracing self-ownership, not just for the sake of our health and fitness, but also in nurturing our relationships, especially in marriage. This episode is a treasure trove of insights and practical advice that will bolster not just dads but anyone looking to enhance both their physical and relational vitality.
So, and welcome to Health and Fitness Free Defined. I'm your host, anthony. Amen, and welcome to another episode where we're going to blow your mind. If you guys haven't already, please get over on Rumble. If you're listening on YouTube, we'll be leaving YouTube by the end of the year. I know it's only March, but please, please, please, get over to Rumble. Follow us there. We are already blowing up. We want to bring you more content that YouTube's not letting us do. If you're listening on audio, we'll be sticking there, so you have nothing to worry about Spotify, apple Podcast. Please go ahead and take a listen. This episode is going right back to the dads. Moms, you can listen to this too. Maybe it'll be fun you can get off to your husband to listen to. But I really enjoyed this topic. I think we have a great guest to really dive deep into it. So, with that further ado, welcome to the show, brian. Brian, it's a pleasure to have you today.
Speaker 2:Dude, I'm fired up to be here. Anthony, Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, really, really excited to talk to you about this. Really want to get into a lot of fun topics, so I want you guys to just hang around. Let us get through who Brian is, and you'll be definitely impressed. So, without further ado, brian, take it away. What is it about how you got into the fitness realm and started helping out dads?
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. So you know how, as we get older, we become dads, our responsibilities start to pile up and we kind of feel like we're losing time. I was in that same boat back in 2018. My career was taking off, everything on paper, was checking all the boxes right Beautiful wife, great family, house, all those other good things and I found myself waking up disappointed most days, and even though I had all the financial success of the world, I was running the number one sales team in a nine figure direct sales organization and I was checking all the boxes that I was told I needed to hit.
Speaker 2:I would look in the mirror and I would do one of those things where like and a lot of guys do this like you stand sideways a little bit. You're kind of like this is kind of growing here, and over the course of my long tenure with that same company, I ended up putting out about 45 pounds and I was tired all the time. I was cranky all the time. I'd come home and I'd be like I don't really want to do anything, just kind of sitting on the couch. And so I started to take a look at my health and fitness and really like, how do I build the foundational habits to become someone that is healthy, and I tried it all. So I did a big Joe Rogan guy. So, of course, I tried Keto and Carnivore. And then Game Changers came out in 2019 and I was like maybe I got to be vegan, that's what I needed to do. That didn't work out because your boy likes steaks. And then I tried a whole 30, I even did Weight Watchers for like a hot second and I would kind of up and down and lose the same 10 to like 20 pounds over and over and over again and I just kind of wind up feeling disappointed.
Speaker 2:Well, in during 2020, I had a lot of time in myself for a multitude of reasons, and so I started to dive deeper into like what actually is it that causes us to get into the best shape of our life and to implement the right strategies and habits? And what I figured out was that every strategy works, every single one, whether it's carnivore or whether it's cutting carbs or, you know, only eating meat and fruit or going plant based completely. Like it wasn't necessarily the strategy that was the issue, it was the way that I was implementing them, and so I started to kind of reframe the way I looked at health and fitness and I started to look at it more of like an adaptive process and I learned about a concept called adaptive habit chains and stringing together Like we all go through our day. 99% of it is all habit based things that we're already doing. And what I would always try to do is I would get really, really excited about all these new diets or all these new strategies or a new workout program or like, oh, I have to do metabolic conditioning or I have to confuse my muscles and all of these tools that I would learn and I would like try to 180 my life completely.
Speaker 2:I remember I read a book called the miracle morning and it was all about like a two and a half hour morning routine and I was like all right, that's it, that's the secret. I got to do a two hour morning routine and I would try to implement so many things all at once and I would do it really really well for like a week or maybe two weeks and then I would immediately fall back into old habits, and that was because I wasn't understanding the psychology of the way the human brain worked. So when I got into health and fitness and I truly figured it out and I started helping other guys do it. It actually wasn't about health and fitness, it was actually about the human brain and that was the interesting thing. And when I understood what adaptive habit chains were and how to make small tweaks compounding over large time frames, I realized very quickly that I could actually speed up my results, because everyone's trying to lose 20 pounds in 30 days. Well, when I changed my mindset from not how do I lose 20 or 40 pounds but how do I just lose a pound this week, not only were the habits more adaptive and I could string together more wins, working in harmony with the psychology of my brain, but I actually got results faster because, rather than me losing 10 pounds in a month and then putting 10 pounds back on the next month, over the course of the next two months I lost 10 pounds and I kept it off.
Speaker 2:And then, after six months of just working through adaptive habit chains through a method I now call the fast method, six months later I was down 40 pounds and it felt like a breeze and it was quick, it was easy, it wasn't like this massive strain. I didn't have to make all these dramatic changes in my life. I just implanted certain cues and certain triggers at different times into things that I was already doing, where six months later, I was down 45 pounds, my sales that actually in my office was were up, my relationship with my wife improved, I felt like I had more energy for the family, and so a bunch of other guys that I was working with were like we've been trying to lose weight. What are you doing? You know, like it's funny, like you change your life and everyone's like what'd you do? Thinking that it's going to be some magic pill or special diet. And I was like, yeah, I just.
Speaker 2:I started walking a little bit more here and I started doing this while I was watching TV, and I started doing this while I was reading. And then all my sales calls I would do this and it was just these small things that I just would attach to concepts and actions I was already taking. That would compound over time and it began to not only change my life but change my lifestyle. So I put together a six month roadmap and, you know, then a guy started asking me. I started walking them through it.
Speaker 2:I beta tested, like about a dozen guys back in 2020 and we just figured it out. Now we've refined it, we're on. We're on three point out at this point. Now guys are getting results even faster. I could. I can say that we're getting guys more results in the first 90 days than we did three or four years ago. In six months because we've only gotten better at the psychology behind things, better at teaching things, better at holding guys accountable in our community is quadrupled in size. So there's even more support for for men, you know, within our community.
Speaker 1:So it's been a lot of fun and I'm just excited to you know.
Speaker 2:Share it with as many dads as humanly possible.
Speaker 1:A lot of points you mentioned in there that are definitely just things we've talked about over the last four years and, by the way, four years, holy shit. Thank you for all of those that have been listening for the last four years. Kinsley just said that out loud. The first thing is small habit chains. We've talked a lot and I think a lot of men can understand it more this way. You know what compound interest is and the financial sense is that taking 1% gain every month over the course of 30 years is going to be an unfathomably high number. And you're only working on building 1% or saving 1%. That sounds so little in the short term or the long term it has to be a huge big thing. Same thing added to what you said there with habit changes small, incoherent habit changes that you think does nothing like walking an extra 500 steps a day. That will add up in a week. That's 3500 extra steps and a year. I'm not doing that math, but point being, it's a lot, thank you. Thank you for that, but my point being those small little habit changes go a long, long, long, long way and all these bad diets just don't work. You just have to find something you could stick to.
Speaker 1:At the end of the day, what can I do? Over the time I'm laughing in my head over some things you said. First off, last night I had two double cheeseburgers so I didn't get a pound of meat last night. Things like that. You can work up to people who said that's horrible for you, it's not. Go look at my blood work. The second point is people don't want to take the small little necessary things. I was just getting my teeth cleaned and the dental hygienist was talking about it. He goes to the gym and people spend 10 minutes fighting for that first line of spots to the gym but won't park like 20 feet away in the open spots to then walk into the gym, to then walk on the treadmill Little things that we just don't think about.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, well, it comes down to like our reticular activating system and our entire belief system.
Speaker 2:Everything that we've been taught about fitness is six minute abs, 10 minute workouts and all of those things are great, but we're taught that it should be microwave ready real quick gratification. The thing is, the human body doesn't change that quickly, and so what it takes is actually a radical change in belief systems and the story that we tell ourselves in what I call like deep subconscious reprogramming, which sounds extremely complicated, but I've boiled it down to what I call the triangle of self influence. It's very simple. It's really only three things what's our environment, how are we reflecting on our environment and how are we imagining our future? That's really it. As long as we control our imagination, we pay attention to our environment and we reflect on past decisions, we can radically change our life, and so by implementing just a simple process, done in very specific steps in a chronological order, within six months, you can radically change the way that you even look at the world and look at fitness and how you look at yourself.
Speaker 1:Most importantly, I want to use that as a branch because I love some of the things you mentioned in there, and the biggest one is your environment, both internally and externally. The biggest point we break down and we've talked about this I don't want to be a bit of a horse, but what to eat, how to eat, how to take care of yourselves, what to control what kind of foods in your refrigerator, how you go grocery shopping, blah, blah, blah. I want to talk more about the external environment, something we don't really talk about much. Where you live, what you hear about on the news, what's going on at work, all those outside factors that's affecting how you think. And if you're going to sit here and tell me that nothing you hear affects how you think, you're just lying to yourself, because everybody gets affected by everything outside in there. It's just human nature.
Speaker 1:So, what are some things that you've noticed externally that have really made an impact on dads?
Speaker 2:So, first and foremost, is moving things around in the kitchen. That's the easiest thing to do. So what I do in my house and what I teach my clients, very simply put, is the pantry, you have your shell, and then you have to make a decision that everything else that's not on that shell is not yours. It's not yours to have, it's not even if you bought it, even if you front of the grocery bill, it's not yours. It could be your kids, it could be your wife. Now, obviously, as you change, your family will change and they'll naturally pick up different habits anyway, and we can go into how men should be the example for their families and live every single principle and discipline themselves, but without getting too heady into that. Very simple changes. You just have a dignified shelf. So within my house I have one shelf. I am only allowed to eat the things that are on that shelf. If it is not on that shelf, it's not mine to eat, and so that's compounding. So we have the environmental change. We've actually physically moved things. And then, secondly, we've changed the story Because every guy we kind of had this territorial thing like, oh, it's all, I bought it, I should be able to eat it Like I bought the Oreos. I should be able to eat it, sure, but if you want to actually make the radical change, then you have to change the story. Another one is and this is a little corny but it works. It's so corny but it works Whenever I feel compelled to want to eat something that I know is not going to be conducive towards whether it's my macros or my goals.
Speaker 2:If I'm in a maintenance mode, I'm a lot more flexible, but right now I'm prepping for my show in June, so I have a lot more restrictions in my diet on a day-to-day basis, and so each one of my clients has their own macro strategy that's custom designed for them. So as long as we're paying attention, we can pretty much fit anything in. But let's say I want to eat something. Let's say my wife baked cinnamon buns. She loves these, like Trader Joe's cinnamon buns, and I know that I can have it. I'm in a cut, or I've already maxed out my macros for the day. It's eight o'clock at night and she just baked them and the whole house smells. It's amazing. I'm not going to tell her she's not allowed to have it because I'm not allowed to control her One of the things that I do in terms of changing the environment is if I feel compelled to eat something, I'll ask myself a simple question Does that cinnamon bun have power over me?
Speaker 2:That's it Like. Am I going to really let this inanimate, fluffy piece of bread dictate my actions? Because if you don't ask that question and you just go oh I, you know, like how many times you've heard somebody when you whip out the donuts or whatever it is, or chocolate logo I just can't help myself. Also, what you're saying is a chocolate bar has power over you. It controls your sovereignty and your agency. That's what you're actually saying. And so, while it is kind of corny, because, like, when you think about it logically, like of course no, it doesn't, but using logic, you can then control the emotions that dictate your actions. That's it Right. So it's just a simple story change Right.
Speaker 2:Same thing with going to the gym first thing in the morning. So many of my guys are like heavy career driven, demanding career guys. They don't have time to go in the middle of the day and going at night battling the high school kids for the bench press is like no fun for anybody, right? We don't want to see kids in pajama, pants and crocs with a broccoli hair. We want to just get in and get out 30 to 40 minutes tops, that's all you really need.
Speaker 2:So but waking up early in the morning to be able to get that done and still be able to take care of the kids and all that other good stuff can be challenging. Well, that's just the story that we're telling ourselves, because if we retrain our brain to believe that by getting up early and I get my cup to be 100, meaning I take care of my workout I do my little mini morning routine to prime my brain, I quell the mind through proper reflection, which takes all three to five minutes Right. My morning routine is maybe 10 minutes tops Right, because I need something that I can do anywhere at any time. Then go into the gym and taking care of myself, then I get to show up and be the best dad possible.
Speaker 2:So by not getting up, I'm literally telling my kids that they're not worth it, they're not deserving of my best. By getting up, I tell my family that they're deserving of my best. See, that's a story that's more compelling. And when it's 4, 30 in the morning and my alarm wake, you know wakes me up and I'm like, oh my god, it's leg day, I do not want to do heavy squats. Then I have to remind myself that, look, my family's worth it. My wife is worth it. Everything about my family deserves my absolute best, and if I don't get up right now, I'm telling my family that they don't deserve my best.
Speaker 1:There's yet again a lot in there and I just want to make some comparisons. Why I don't think that's corny. I mean, yeah, if the services does. But look at if you replaced cinnamon bun with a beer and then let's go through that same thing and you start seeing similarities in how we compare alcoholics. When they start saying that beer has control of me, I have to drink it.
Speaker 1:Now you start getting into questioning well, maybe you're addicted to alcohol and all these fun things you don't want to dive into, but that's the same thing.
Speaker 1:But with sweets, with people on the surface they just don't take it as an addictive, unhealthy thing, that truly don't understand what it is doing to their insides. Yeah, alcohol has a more immediate effect on you. You're going to see yourself drunk and sloppy and make poor decisions like that's immediate, but that's cinnamon is going to have negative effects. It's just going to be over the long term. So we just assume that because it's a micro negative effect over the long term, it's fine. Nothing bad's going to happen to me. But if I do that every day and I have a cinnamon every single day over the course of a year, we talked about compounding interest in the compound, the weight. You got a compound to blood sugar A1C levels and it's going to have negative connotations similar to that of booze, if that makes sense, of course yeah, I mean, most people are addicted to food and they just don't even realize because it society encourages it.
Speaker 2:You know not to get into, we're not going to even touch the topic, but we all know what was incentivized by donuts a couple years back. Right, because they knew that that was going to trigger. Like, oh, I can relate that to a donut. Donut is socially acceptable, so so is x, y, z. We all know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, you can even go back further to Coca-Cola. Sure, I'm going to study and mention all the stop all the times where they they did a study on sugar to show that sugar was un, unhealthy and they're like oh, it's fats, it's not sugars. Look, we did a study, coca-cola sponsored it, and sugars are perfectly okay for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, interesting how it plays out, right. Yeah, now we said oh no shit.
Speaker 1:We have a huge epidemic. We're just watching something really interesting yesterday. I don't know if I'm fully on board with the terminology of it, but type three diabetes, which is the phenomenon of your brain having an insulin issue through sugars which is going to cause or correlate to having Alzheimer's in dementia. I can say that lack of sleep does cause Alzheimer's in dementia, that's known. That's when your brain has the ability to wash out the enzyme and the toxins of what causes it. I'm flunky on the exact term, but sleep, we know, was related and I mean you can specifically say those that do have higher sugars in their blood tend to sleep less, tend to have sleep apnea, therefore, or more exposed to the correlation of having Alzheimer's and dementia. But it's all related and that's something nobody wants right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't even know that they came out with a type three. I'm sure in the next 10 years we'll have all we have to type five.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's an unofficial. I just looked it up. I didn't know it either. You know it's an unofficial thing that's starting to get pushed through and it's just interesting to see that they're doing studies on how much sugar and insulin response plays a role in the entire body as a whole. So it's just things to keep eye and open to. And then I'm just going to flat out jump into this topic because I really think it's important. We're talking about it a little pre-show, but it's something that really gets to me and it's men specifically, and specifically dads.
Speaker 1:I've noticed where society as a whole is pushing out masculinity and testosterone, and we've talked about how a lot how your environment can affect you and having a negative environment that tells you not to have, not to be masculine because you're so used to of a culture where I'm totally guilty of it. They stopped using red pens because it hurt people's feelings, like things like yeah, crazy, new York is a crazy state, but little things like that where it's like, okay, now I'm a victim of everything and I'm just a man. I'm not supposed to be victimized. Back when go back 30 years, guys just fought and got over and moved on, they were gonna say, oh, poor me, my old childhood, and then society is shunning it as a whole.
Speaker 1:So the men are falling into this trap where what is a guy? So now they're just saying, oh, maybe I, maybe. There's no such thing as masculinity, which, yet again, is killing and I'm only bringing this up because it's related to health. That's lowering your T levels, which is going to cause you're not being able to sleep, not being able to build muscle, and you're gonna have higher levels of visceral fat, which is gonna kill you like I don't know how does to sugarcoat it. But I wanted to get some feedback from you about what you thought about the topic and any insights.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I can agree wholeheartedly that the world has kind of, you know, turned against men. Look at the rise of Jordan Peterson, right, why is he so popular? It's because men are literally screaming, whether it's silently or not, using, you know, their platform. They're looking for ways to be okay, to be them, and there's not a lot of quote, unquote safe spaces to be a guy, right, like I mean. Now, the most popular and viral TikToks are the ones where you know the girls wearing the skimpy clothing and the guy walks by and goes like a quick glance because I don't know, you have eyeballs, and you look at other people and they're like look at this fucking crew. And it's like guys are like okay, so now I can't even exist. Look, I mean we could go into like the whole Dune Society.
Speaker 2:But it's very simply put, right, and it is a threat to control, because it's truly masking. The man can't be controlled, that's all. It is right. And what is the government other than trying to control its constituents? So I'm not going to sit here and say the government is inherently evil, although I don't agree with probably 99% of the things that come out of the state Senate's mouth, and I live in New Jersey, so very liberal state as well, and you know it just comes down to like that, at the end of the day, the way that you control society is by removing agency and removing sovereignty, and the fastest way to do that is to demasculase.
Speaker 2:Right, because a truly masculine man is someone that makes their own decisions, and then someone who makes their own decisions is a dangerous man. Right, because they're unpredictable and that's okay. You should be able to make your own decisions. Right, you should be able to protect and provide. You should be able to do everything that is required of being a man and while it's probably not considered kosher to say that there are requirements to being a man, I think there is. If you can't stand up for yourself, if you can't stand up for your family, if you can't protect your family, and whether you're the breadwinner of your family or not, I don't really care about a financial aspect you should still be providing in some way, shape or form.
Speaker 2:right, if you can't do all of those things, or you're doing them at 50% of your capacity, because you know you're shoveling chips into your body on a weekend basis because you're watching the football game and your energy levels are so crappy that you don't even get over the food hangover until Tuesday or Wednesday, right, then you're just not doing it to the best of your capacity. As men, we're wired for progress, we're wired to move forward and we're wired to become better. Like, when you're not doing those things, you inherently become more depressed, you inherently become more anxious and you inherently just kind of hate everything. Right. But when you're actively working towards a better, idealized version of yourself, all that goes away. I've never met a depressed man with goals I have. You can say that you have goals like I want this. That's not a goal If it's measurable, if you're actually taking actions. You have clearly defined steps on how to get there. Depression all of a sudden magically goes away. Now, while I do believe that there's a brain chemistry aspect of that, just as a caveat, okay I do also believe that the majority of people claiming anxiety and depression just are functioning in a society and on a day-to-day basis without any sort of active agency towards a goal. That's it. They're not actively trying to get that.
Speaker 2:Because when I was at my lowest and I was feeling the worst about myself was when I was constantly passive and just letting everything run over me. I felt like I was immobilized by the fear of actually going after a goal. I felt like I wasn't taking care of myself. I felt like I wasn't able to provide for my wife. I felt like I wasn't able to do all of those things. When I finally got the hell over it and I realized that, oh, it literally just stems down from the fact that I don't feel like I'm getting better in any area because I'm running away from the work, then I just started putting more effort into the work and, magically, six months later, I was like oh yeah, I remember being depressed. That was crazy. It was almost a complete afterthought.
Speaker 1:That's where I wanted to take this. I'm glad you went that route. How is it affecting us as individuals, to a sense of our environment? I want to point out some things you mentioned in there, which is you want to talk about relatable.
Speaker 1:When I was, I'm most depressed. It was when I thought society owed me everything. When I was told I was never allowed to stand up for myself through the school system and I got bullied every single day. And then the one time I stood up for myself and stood up to the bully that used to beat me up on the bus for 200 days I got detention. So that taught me stop standing up for yourself.
Speaker 1:And then that spiraled me into a huge manic depression and it took me getting over it to set a goal, a goal of I need to be happy. That's what moved me forward, Fast forward into the gym world. I have a goal. I'm moving forward. I'm trying to provide for my fiance at the time of my life. And then COVID shut me down. I got depressed because how am I supposed to provide for my family? That destroyed me. And then when I said stop being a little bitch, Anthony, and get your shit together and figure it out. I reset myself literally the next day and said let's figure this out, Set a goal, Move on, have a look back.
Speaker 1:But point being that was that was it. It was the setting the goals and knowing that every day I'm progressing more and more and more and more and more where I want to be and I'm able to go to my wife and say hey, look, listen, I can help us here here. Here here, I'm not solely relying on you. I want you to be relying on me, because that's that's my job and that's what makes me happy, and it's hard to describe that unless you are truly in it. But men's job is to make their wives happy and be that protection and be that foundation of I have us on your rock Kind of idea. So that that's. I'm really glad you brought that up, because it is so, so true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and notice how it wasn't necessarily the achievement that got you out of it, it was the. It was the effort. See, I relate this back to like. We all had this when we were in school, unless you were like the worst student ever, but even if you were, you're going to understand what I mean by this. We internalize our self-worth and our self-value based on the effort that we put forth, not the result.
Speaker 2:Right, I was prouder that I got a B in physics two than I was when I got an A in calculus, because math was really easy and required very little effort on my end. I just got it. I would sit in the class, we would take a quiz and I'd be like this makes perfect sense. Physics, on the other hand, was extremely difficult for me for some reason, and then understand it, and so I had to go to the extra hours, I had to study extra hard and when the tests would come up, because we'd only get one per quarter. At the high school that I went to, it took a lot of, like, actual effort, but when I got that B, I was prouder of that B than I was of the A. Right, I, like couldn't wait to tell my mom that I got to be in physics two, which was a college level course, my senior year.
Speaker 2:And so when so many times we hold ourselves back from even putting forth the effort because we have this negative future projection that it's not going to be worth it, because we tried in the past and it failed, and so that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, well, if I, if I try, I'm going to fail anyway, so let me not try anyways. And so now I'm going to be depressed. Now I can say well, because I'm depressed, because I'm anxious, I don't try, because that's an easier story. We're told that, hey, that's not even your fault, right, that's your brain chemistry. Well, of course, your brain chemistry is off. Why wouldn't it be? Because you're making up, you're literally rewiring your brain to see something that's completely inanimate and intangible I wouldn't say imaginary, because feelings are real, but you're blaming something that is out of your control. And so, by doing so, you remain the victim and you remain saying, hey, I'm just, it's not my fault anymore, so there's nothing I can do about it.
Speaker 2:So I don't have to put in the effort force. Whatever is the solution. Do you see what I'm getting in here? Am I kind of just like is this making sense?
Speaker 1:No, you were literally mentioning something I talk about in my business scripts all the time, but it can be used for the general public. We start and clarify and this isn't cynical in any way but everything is your fault and that's exactly what you're doing. You're blaming yourself for everything. It doesn't matter how much it feels like it's from the outside. You had some reaction that caused a reaction. And if you blame yourself, it's not to blame yourself and be oh I suck, I suck, I suck, but victimizing yourself. Now you can say, hey, it's my fault. So how do I approach this situation differently to not fix it? Now things become fixable.
Speaker 1:If I blame Brian for everything going wrong in my life. All of a sudden I'm just pushing it off and I can't fix it. It's Brian's fault and then it's going to keep happening over and over and over again. But I have to blame Anthony. It's Anthony's fault. Brian doesn't show up on time for this podcast. What she did, but the point being, he sucks horrible guests. The show was horrendous. It was just a bad blah, blah, blah. No, that's my fault. It's my fault. I should have done better, gasprap. I should have handled the interview differently. I should have picked a different topic, I should have composed myself differently. What could I have done to make it better, regardless of what Brian or Brian Hyperbolic did not do? So that is gold, what you just said.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that, yeah, and it comes down to a lot of the internal work that I've done and that I accomplished with a lot of my clients. It's always the internal story. I'll give you an example. A couple weeks back, me and my wife got into it Like any married couple does. You can't have a marriage without some arguments, right? So a couple weeks back, me and my wife got into it a little bit and I found myself getting defensive and I found myself putting it back on her. The reason that she's feeling this way is 100% her fault and I did nothing wrong and I walked out of the room and the tension in the house was through the roof. The kid was already in bed, so they didn't feel anything.
Speaker 2:Because my wife is really good about not arguing in front of the kid and I like five minutes goes by and I compose myself and I'm like as much as I don't necessarily understand as much as I don't necessarily see her side 100%, there has to be something that triggered it.
Speaker 2:Now, while it may be blown out of proportion, while I may not agree with it, that doesn't necessarily mean that she's completely like. It's 100% her fault and I'm completely convicted because then my marriage can't improve. And so, after composing myself, I came back and I said so, re-explain to me what really ticked you off. She was throwing it in my face that over the course of the weekend I did a couple of things that really ticked her off. Now, when I was doing them and when I looked back, I was like I thought we had a great weekend. I don't know what you're talking about. I was perfect, I'm the best.
Speaker 2:And so I got really defensive and so we sat down, we had a conversation. She shared her side and I even said to her I was like I may not understand 100% why you're even upset by this, because in my mind that actually isn't anything to get upset about. But that doesn't completely invalidate so moving forward. I'll make sure and I'll be more communicative or whatever. I don't even remember exactly what it was, because you never remember a fight after it happens.
Speaker 2:Right, I'm going to know why she was upset, but I just took some sort of self-ownership and I've done that in every argument over the past three years and it's done wonders for my marriage. And it's not like she's asking me to change who I am inherently as a human being, because then we should probably get a divorce. But if I'm not taking any responsibility in the argument, then we can't move forward. And then I also believe that that's a lot of the reasons why the divorce has happened, whether that's on the female side or the male side or whatever it may be. I just think it's a lack of responsibility taking Because we're taught that, hey, everything is everyone else's fault.
Speaker 1:You just said it right there. And ever since I started implementing that about two years ago into my marriage game changing I mean, like you said, even if I don't completely agree with what she's saying or what she's talking about and in my mind everything went perfect. You know, the one thing I can control that we fail to admit is, guys, how we react. And how many times do you hear something it triggers and you're like bah, and then I say, oh shit, stop being an asshole, anthony, take a deep breath and control how you react to that situation. So I just take a deep breath and I said this isn't going to solve anything. So then let's have a conversation about it and I can control certain things to make you happy, and that should be my goals to make you happy. So ultimately, it doesn't matter what it is. It was my fault and I could fix ABCDE and we can work on it together. And if she does the same thing, then we have a huge path forward in our marriage.
Speaker 1:Things like fighting is we don't really even fight like anymore. It just totally changed everything and our relationship. Fighting to not being married like game changing and I combine that with. I think this is something a lot of guys and marriages can relate to. And what I do is when I used to fight with her as a girlfriend. In the back of your mind it's always like, oh, we're fighting, this is the end of the relationship, or oh, this is someone I really want to be with.
Speaker 1:After we got married I looked back and I said this girl told me in front of people that she wants to spend the rest of her life with me. Fuck, she loves me. I know you did that. You're willing to associate yourself with me for the rest of your life. You have to love me and you have to want this to work.
Speaker 1:So now when we have disagreements, I keep that in my mind and then that thought of oh, this is it Never happens Because look what she did. She got married to me. So I know that it's idiotic to drag things out and idiotic to have that thought in the back of your mind and things get solved so much quicker and things don't ever blow out like the relationship fights do. It's just a completely different mindset shift and if most men had that when they fought with their wives, they just remembered that she agreed to marry you Like agreed in front of people. Then it's a lot easier to understand like, wow, this person really loves me. I have to stop thinking of the extremes and take everything back now and fix how I'm reacting to the situation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and it comes down to the reason why we even go to extremes is because we don't have stress management right. Success in any area comes down to your ability to handle more stress. It goes back to why people are addicted to food and why they drink and all that other stuff. Right, because it's a lack of stress management. So a lot of what men need to work on, and what we work on here at Unbreakable Dats in our community, is stress management. How do I respond to situations? How am I conducting myself? Because, as emotions, if you think about it like a seesaw, as emotions rise, logic lowers, and then, as logic raises, emotions lower. And so when we understand the seesaw of how our brain works, the communication between the left and the right side, everything gets a whole lot easier. Because when you lash out emotionally, you react emotionally. Whether it's to food right, oh, I see cookies, now I'm gonna emotionally react and eat one, even though logically I know it's gonna throw me off for the day. Oh, I just can't help myself. That's an emotional reaction. That's your inability to handle the stress of the situation of saying no or going to your in-laws house where your mother-in-law cooks this massive meal. That's gonna completely derail a week's worth of progress, but you're just not able to handle the stress of communicating to her I'm just not gonna eat this right now, and being okay with that and being solid in that and I've had to do that for years. There's plenty of times where I'm in prep or I'm on a cut or I'm doing anything that I'm working actively towards my goals, and then people put all this food out in front of me. It goes back to the stress management, right. So everything about winning with your health and fitness comes down to you and how you handle you and the stories that you tell yourself and, ultimately, your belief system. And that's exactly what we cover at Unbreakable Dats.
Speaker 2:All the information, tools, tactics, strategies it's all crap you can get on chat, gbt. None of that's new. There's no such thing as new fundamentals of weight loss, like let's be honest, right, like there's no magic pill. So if you're considering even remotely to being a part of a program or being a part of a community, you have to pay attention to how they're managing or how they're sharing the inherent teachings of, like a belief system and how you're gonna learn how to manage you, cause even in your business group, right. Like you guys don't necessarily always talk about like. This is my ad strategy. It's great, you know you need some tools. That's awesome. But like the hammer does build the house, the carpenter does. It's the mind that swings the hammer that builds the house.
Speaker 1:And, yeah, most of the time, honestly, it's his action. How do I react? It's understanding how to react to certain things in a business, cause shit gets thrown at you like crazy. You're just one. Well, from one phone call to the next to hopping to different parts of the business, to employees, clients, to finances, and you're just trying to react soundly to all of them, which is why I think I've been so freaking good at stress management. Or, in a business you want to learn how to deal with stress managers, get five years into a business and you're just gonna be like I understand, cause every day someone's screaming something at you.
Speaker 1:And he's gonna learn just to be like, all right, we're gonna have to figure this out and move on. But definitely, definitely a point of topic and, brian, I just wanna, I really wanna, wrap this up and I'm gonna wrap this episode up. So I just specifically, if you could summarize this episode in one or two sentences, what would be your take on message?
Speaker 2:Work harder on yourself than you do on the actions for your goals.
Speaker 1:Love it. And then the second one how can people find you, get a hold of you and learn more about Unbreakable Dads?
Speaker 2:Sure, it's easy. I communicate directly. I'm the only guy who uses my Instagram, so just go to instagramcom or the Instagram app, type in at unbreakable dads. It's right here on the screen as well. You can check out all my content. You can reach out to me directly. I'm the guy in my DMs, so you can speak to me directly, and something I'll do I actually really enjoyed this conversation, and something I'll do for your audience that I don't necessarily always do is I have a whole course on how to implement the FAST method, which takes down to adaptive habit chains and changing the story and monitoring belief systems and everything like that, and taking care of the six inches in between your ears, which is the most important real estate in the world.
Speaker 2:So I have that. I typically you could buy it for $99 or $997, but if you DM me the word redefine so I know that you're a listener of this podcast I'll go ahead and give you the course for free. So that's just a gift I wanna give your audience. It's a gift I wanna give you and to the people that stuck out through the entire podcast. All you have to do is just DM me the word redefined and I'll be like here's the link. Go ahead free download. I'll bring it.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that, brian. Thank you, and thank you guys for listening to this week's episode of Pelt of Fitness Redefined. Don't forget, hit like, share this episode with any family or friends and if you are watching on YouTube, get over to Rumble. It is totally free. We hope to see all of you there and don't forget fitness is medicine. Until next time, seth, yeah.