Welcome to the Present Fathers podcast.
This is the show that focuses on climbing the mountain of fatherhood
together.
We believe that dads matter.
That's why this show is for you.
So gear up, dads. Get ready.
It's time to start climbing.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Present Fathers podcast.
Our guest today is Alex Wassom.
We are very excited to speak with him
and learn from his experience and just welcome into the show.
So, Alex, welcome.
How are you?
Thanks, guys.
I'm great.
I'm humbled. I'm honored and grateful.
I really appreciate you guys.
It's good to be surrounded by a great man like yourself.
So thank you. Thank you. Well, I appreciate that, man.
We're really excited to speak with you and learn from your story
and kind of share your wisdom with men
all out there who are probably struggling with things like we all believe we are.
And, you know, I just appreciate upfront, just want to say how much I appreciate
your candor and willingness to be open about your life
and the struggles that you've experienced.
And so with that, let's
let me give a little bit of a quick bio for you and fill in anything
that I missed. But
you are the author.
You're an author, speaker and coach, your husband and father of three girls, right?
You girls and you help others to overcome self-doubt, anxiety and depression.
And you teach others to become stronger than your pain.
You are not alone.
So anything that the high notes.
I think that's the high note, man. Yeah. Nailed it.
All right.
Outstanding.
Well, with that, let's
go into your background and kind of level set for our audience.
Um, you know, the things that you've been through
and what led you to have a passion for helping others today?
So is it fair to start in your kind of teenage years
with some of those struggles, or do you need to go further back?
No, I think that's I think that's really where the struggles began.
I think I will start further back just to illustrate that.
I had a great upbringing.
I had and still have fantastic parents, wonderful siblings.
I come from a family of four boys.
My dad had his first marriage, so I have two older brothers
that are 11 and 13 years older than I am.
They were Marines and instilled a lot of that mentality in me,
which I greatly appreciate.
I tried to follow in their footsteps, but I've got I'm the asthmatic in the family.
They wouldn't take me, you know, But at least that's it.
Exactly. Man. You know, they smoke.
Yeah.
So I come from a great background.
I've got a great younger brother as well.
That is a wonderful example to me of what it is to be a man.
And I the reason that I say that is because a lot of people
that experienced trauma in their lives had a much rougher upbringing than I did.
And my upbringing really, I thought was going
to put me on a trajectory that I would say I'm more in line with now.
And I think what what led to my demise
in my teen years and I'll get to that in a second, really was was on me.
And that's what I teach.
That's what I preach and that's what I recognize.
Now, having gone through it and looking backwards, hindsight is 20, 20,
but I wanted to start with that because, man,
I'm grateful for the upbringing that I had and I didn't have a lot of struggles.
I was given as many opportunities as anybody could,
and yet I still experienced a suicidal depression.
Right.
So it doesn't really matter where you come from, how good life is.
It could always happen.
We have to recognize that it's on us to prevent that right.
So I'll start there.
And if we if we jump to
my my grandmother, she moved out from Texas
when I was roughly ten years old.
My dad did that.
He is an amazing father, an amazing man, and a wonderful example
to me of what it means to take care of the family.
He moved his his parents out from Texas so that he could take care of them.
And I learned a lot about the importance of family through his example.
When he married my mom, he told her straight up,
this is a package deal, right?
You get me, you get my my family.
And that comes with my two boys, That comes with my parents.
As crazy as they may be, you get them if you want me.
And so, again, a great example to me of what it meant to be a good father
and and man in general.
So we spent a lot of time with my my grandparents.
They lived in the town next to us.
I grew up in Northern California in Pleasanton.
They they lived in Dublin 10 minutes away.
We spent every weekend with them and my grandmother and my grandfather.
But for some reason I attached to my grandmother a lot.
She was wonderful to me.
I loved her so much.
Still do.
And she
first, for some reason she just ingrained on me,
you know, and
she was a really special person to me.
And so between ten and 16,
I developed a really special relationship with her.
And I remember we were playing at the house
in the backyard, playing volleyball
or something out in the backyard as family and friends.
And she came over. We were having dinner
and I saw a Band-Aid on her shoulder.
I asked her what it was, and she said it was nothing in my naivete.
I believed her and just went back to playing.
Little did I know that it was a death sentence for her.
It was stage four melanoma and her
being 7172 at the time.
She said, This is I'm just going to let it run its course.
And four months later, she passed away.
It was it was really quick and I was in a very close
physical proximity to her, you know, her being 10 minutes away.
We saw her all the time. We were there for her.
My parents supported her through her,
you know, her passing.
And what I didn't recognize at
the time was I was very emotionally, mentally and spiritually
close to her as well.
That proximity, I think, is really what mattered.
Unbeknownst to me at the time.
And my, um, my parents
wanted to make sure that she had a very comfortable passing.
And so they, they brought her into our home
and she passed in their bedroom
for like the last week or so while she was on hospice.
And I, while I grew up Catholic.
You know, my, my dad doesn't believe in anything spiritually.
My mom is is very spiritual in the sense of energy
and all those things which I respect.
That's their beliefs. I have no problem with it.
But for me, it wasn't what I needed.
As I saw her passing,
I started asking these questions of like, Oh my goodness, of somebody as wonderful
as my grandmother that I love and adore could pass this painfully.
What is left for me?
What is what is life going to be like for me
if somebody as wonderful as her is going to be tortured this way?
And I and it's not like I necessarily believed in
God at that time, but I got angry at God, man, I was so mad.
How could you take my grandmother from me?
How could you let this happen to somebody so wonderful?
If you're real, you would not allow this.
And it started
a very negative thought process for me,
and it made me angry in my soul.
And so I began to ask these questions if we're if we're just going to die,
what is the point?
And I was I was grasping for some semblance of control as she passed away.
And the only thing that I could fathom, because I was asking these questions
of, you know, where do we come from? Why are we here?
Where do we go after we die?
And the answers I was getting from the people around me was Alex,
We're just warm food, right?
Like, this is just life now. Like you live, you die.
That's just what happens.
And look, I'm a man of faith now, and I recognize I don't have a knowledge
that could be true.
I don't know. I don't believe that.
But I recognize that some people do, and that's okay.
And that's their thing.
But for me, it was not the answer that I needed at 16, trying
to figure out what was the purpose of life.
And as I couldn't find those answers,
what I grasped for in In control was
if the point is just to die, I can control the timeline of that.
And so it led to a very suicidal depression
flirting with that line of death, trying to control.
Okay, you know what? I'm going to attempt the reaper.
I'm going to put this on, you know, in front of him.
And eventually that led to putting played to flesh and getting to that.
But fortunately, I was walked in on by my girlfriend, who's not my wife.
That stopped me before I got anywhere close to finalizing the act.
But she came in and helped me clean up my arm and everything.
When it got to that point of me getting ready to make the final decision.
And when,
you know, when she walked in and I saw the look of horror on her face,
it was
that was kind of the rock bottom
for me of realizing like, something has to change, right?
I saw myself almost as an out of body experience from her perspective.
And I finally recognized that while I held no value for myself
and this none of this made sense to me, she saw value in me, right?
She saw that I was worth something.
And it was when I grasped that, it was like, Oh, dude, I got to figure this out.
I'm I am way off.
I have no idea what I'm doing.
And that was kind of the turning point for me of I need to fix myself, right?
Because how old were you when that happened?
So my grandmother passed when I was 16.
I was going through that suicidal depression for a few years.
My wife and I, high school sweethearts,
we started dating our senior year in high school, so I was 18.
So yeah, it was probably two years later after this had started.
I was about 18. Okay. Yeah.
Pretty young.
The Yeah. Considering them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, and that's something that I would,
I would just tell young men and women right.
Being a girl that I want to include them but you know, give these things time,
right.
Like you, you can't have it all figured out at that age.
I'm 33 now and I'm nowhere near having it all figured out, let alone at 18,
you know? Right.
Keeping time when you had
the trauma of losing your grandmother,
did you feel alone, like you were suffering alone?
Like there was almost a sense of nihilism from from what you explained?
Absolutely.
And I think that that was part of it. Um,
everybody else was fine.
You know, I, I looked around and I couldn't wrap my head around it.
And I looked at my dad who just lost his mom
and, you know, him being a stronger man than I am, moved on just fine.
And he was okay with that. And he just recognized it was part of life.
My younger brother moved on just fine.
He was hurting, but he was okay.
My older brother, same thing.
Everybody seemed to be okay with it.
And as I looked around, I just thought, how can everybody be okay with this?
And so as I as I told people like, hey,
I'm struggling with this, and they would say, you know why?
It's just part of life. It's okay.
So was like dismissive.
They were very dismissive. Really? Yeah. Yeah.
And even if they weren't, which I don't think that they were,
I took it that way because I was in so much pain
that I, you know, Brandon, to your your question, I did feel alone,
which then led me to further isolate myself and turn from people.
Nobody understands me, so I'm not even going to bring it up.
Right.
It's an existential crisis and I have to face it alone.
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Spiral.
Nobody's going to understand me that I'm not going to bring it up anymore.
I can just deal with it myself.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think that same
loop right there that you just described that happens to so many people,
regardless of how old you are.
Yeah.
So, I mean, regardless of their situation.
Yeah, I mean that's, that's the scary thing about it is
like you said, you isolate, no one's going to understand me.
And you just keep telling yourself this story. That's completely not true.
And I'm really I'm really thankful that you had that kind of
almost out-of-body experience where you saw it from,
you know, at the time, your girlfriend, your wife's point of view
of clearly she valued you and it kind of snapped you from that.
But, you know, not everyone is that fortunate to have that experience.
So I guess from there then you said that was your rock bottom.
What was the turning point like?
What what did getting better look like for you?
Yeah,
it's always hard
when you realize how far down you've fallen, right?
And I'm I'm a big believer in everything is on you as the individual right.
The extreme ownership. It's your responsibility.
It's within your control, and therefore it is your responsibility.
And so first it, it, it took me realizing, like to know
you are a mess like you are.
Yet you're a burden right now.
Like you are hurting not just yourself but people around you.
Like forget about yourself for a second and just recognize the pain
that you're causing your family.
The pain that you just instills in your girlfriend.
Like recognize you got a problem.
And by the way, suicide not going to solve it, going to make it worse.
And it took that kind of recognition
for me to say, okay, pivot point.
Right.
The the the mentality that you have that causes
the problem is not the same mentality that you need to solve the problem.
So change the mentality.
And that ultimately led to me
trying to look around and say, okay, what does this mean?
What does being a good person look like?
Who are some people that I admire
that I could turn to and say, I want to be like that person?
How does that person did?
How did they become that person?
What makes them good? What kind of characteristics do they embody?
What virtues do they have?
What are what is their moral compass look like?
And, you know, that wasn't my parents at the time,
although it probably should have been.
But being 18, I was rebellious and, you know, I.
I pushed against them, right.
As every 18 year old does, let alone the one who had run away
from home for a couple of months, you know, before he tried to kill himself.
Like I didn't look to my parents.
And one of the the big people that I look to, of course, was my girlfriend,
who was very strong in her faith.
And so that was kind of the first thing that I turned to, was I started studying
the faith that she was a part of, you know, Christ, I was familiar with him.
So I, I leaned into that.
I looked into Buddhism, I looked into different philosophies
and started studying those things to see, hey, what does this all mean?
Right?
Like, let's read the scriptures,
let's let's study stoicism, let's look at Samurai Bushido code.
Let's look at what it means to be a good man across the board
and just start soaking things in.
I had to stop looking inward at all the pain I was experiencing,
and I had to turn it outward and say, What is everybody else doing?
Because obviously I'm doing it wrong.
And it was months of study.
I mean, I like you, Brandon.
You said that you're at you're a constant learner.
I am, too.
I wake up every morning and I continue to study
because I recognize that if I stop moving forward,
I will resort back to my default.
And I do not like my default setting and so that that process of exploration,
philosophical and spiritual exploration is really what led me to recognize that,
Hey, Alex, even if you don't feel like you have any value personally,
there's a larger power out there that thinks you do
right, that that holds you in very high regard.
And the people that had the belief
in that higher power
also recognize your potential.
So if if you don't feel like you're worthy enough to live up to your own standards,
recognize where they see you and aim for their perspective.
And while I don't think that that is necessarily
the end all be all approach to self-help, self-actualization, self-mastery,
we cannot borrow other people's perspectives of us in the long term.
It is a great short term
tool to get yourself out of a rut.
How do other people see me?
What value do I bring to other people?
What potential do they see in me?
How can I grasp that perspective?
And then how can I create a plan to live up to it?
And that's really what it came down to.
I hated myself, but other people loved me
and I needed to understand why,
what they saw in me and how I could start working towards that.
And that's really what helped me turn a corner.
Hmm. That's so deep.
I love that.
I feel like death has such a finality, especially when it's a loved one
and you don't understand the gravity of that until you see it firsthand.
And I feel like we're all canvases with plastic protective covering.
And when we experience that finality face to face,
it's like that plastic stripped off.
And now we can paint, right?
And so in my own life, I dealt with that with my grandmother as well.
And it was like such an existential crisis for me as well.
And I did a lot of soul searching for the next four or five years.
And it was tough, man.
And I realized that if I didn't fix that trauma
when I had kids, that was going to be their battle
and I wasn't going to allow that to happen.
And so I can relate to that so much.
And there's so much gravity that.
But I love that you are externalizing towards
what other people and how other people treated you, because
I look at it now with kids,
how do I treat my children?
I should treat myself to that same standard, Right?
That's good.
You know, a lot of people don't do that
and they're harsh and they're self-critical.
And there's these negative thought loops that just continuously happen.
And it's like, treat yourself,
love yourself the way you love your children,
because if you don't, that pours out on them. Right.
All that negativity is going to spill out
so that that actually Segways really good talking about kids.
So fast forward now, Alex, you've got a lot of work, obviously
being a father Now, you said your oldest is five.
Is that correct? Correct. That for about five years now.
So you're like what, 27?
28. When did that happen?
So how has becoming a father changed your mindset
or changed your understanding of trauma and the importance of,
you know, doing the work to to heal and to move past it?
Yeah, I mean, Brandon said it
perfectly, so quick answer.
Ditto. Brandon.
We could move on from there.
But, you know, diving deeper,
I recognized that my pain needed to be
used purposefully.
And if I didn't,
I would take that out on my kids
unknowingly and
being a father,
I teach my kids life is hard.
Like the there is inevitable pain that is going to come.
You cannot avoid it Suffering.
On the other hand,
is a decision because suffering is the resistance against reality.
It's fighting that this shouldn't be happening to me. To me?
Why me? Why is this happening?
That is where suffering comes from.
And that is what I experienced when my grandmother passed away.
And as
I, I had kids and I started to recognize,
oh man, I need to what would I teach them
if I saw them going through this situation and I pulled pulled myself out
and become what I call a subjective spectator, Right.
Put myself in that third party perspective and say, Alex, how would you want
a third party teach your children to get through this?
It's like, Man,
I would have approached it totally different had I had that perspective.
And now I get the opportunity to do that again to help them recognize
life is not sunshine and rainbows.
As much as my kids love rainbows, it is not filled with that.
Like life.
Life is hard and it is purposefully
that way so that we can learn these lessons
and we need we need to change that perspective
and reframe to say rather than Why me?
Try me right, I can handle this and this.
That's where the stronger than your pain comes from.
Right?
And you know, it's funny that the way that that came to be
was my five year old was running the run around the house.
She banged her knee and, you know, we were kind of like,
okay, let's do your breathing exercises, Let's slow things down.
And it just kind of came out, Sweetie, you're stronger than your pain.
It's okay.
And I was like, Whoa, I'm holding on to that.
And because it is so much more than just that physical act,
it's the spiritual, mental, emotional, stronger than your pain.
And I wish I had recognized that back then.
So now, a very long winded answer.
You'll find a long winded kind of guy.
I had the plug it.
Yeah, exactly.
No, 92nd real. I'm safe right here.
You can see George and I and get passionate about something cool, man.
Yeah, we'll just that it'll probably happen later.
Good. I look forward to it.
Right. Mean.
No, no, no, You're good.
Haven't kids really allowed me to say, Alex, redo, Right.
Like you, your kids are going to experience a lot of the similar things.
If you look at common humanity, we're not that different.
Yes, our experiences may be different, but the underlying pain
and trauma that we all experience is the same.
So even as 3 to 4 or five years old, teach them how to handle it,
help them with that reframe, give them that perspective, give
and allow them to say, Yes, this hurts
and recognize your feelings, but don't let them dictate.
Right. You're the one in charge, right?
Feel them. I love the saying
and I'll I'll get feel your shoes.
Acknowledge your shoes, but don't lose your shoes.
Right.
Like I lost mine for years and I lost myself in it.
And like you, when my kids bang their toes, now it's like, Hey,
feel it, acknowledge it, recognize it's hurt.
But don't go screaming and throwing punches
and getting even more angry simply because you're in a little bit of pain.
Don't make it worse like I did, right?
So now I have the opportunity
to shift that.
And it's all because of kids.
It really is fatherhood.
Yeah, the hardest but most beautiful thing in my life.
It's pretty amazing being a dad.
I think.
So growing up, you don't really pay attention.
But, you know, as you get older and especially when you become a parent,
you realize how important mentors and just life lessons are.
And then like, just like now, even like the smallest thing, like Bluey
I'm watching it the other day and, and band.
It's like talking to the blue eyes, like it's a good thing.
It's tough and it keeps banging at home.
It's a good thing. It's tough.
And blue is like it's a good thing.
I'm tough, you know?
And like, that's like what you said earlier
when you have your own, like matters of the things that you believe in
and you want to practice with the children eventually, like it just becomes natural
for not only for you, but for them.
And it was it was funny.
We were having this conversation, my wife
and I, the other night, we were watching Ted Lasso.
I'm a huge fan of that show.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, God, So good.
Jason Sudeikis Perfect. Yep.
But he said and that a good mentor helps you move on.
A great mentor knows you well, and I think that can be perceived
for a lot of different things,
like pain and anger and frustrations and trauma and things like that.
And so that's just something I wanted to share was just like mentorship
and, you know, just the little things that you come across in your life.
We get to be that that person that teaches our children
that and instill that in a man.
It is the cool thing.
You you don't really realize it until you're there and you're actually doing it.
You're like, wow, all right, I get to hold the reins now.
You know, I get to change things.
Like Brandon said, I need to I want to break this generational thing
wrong or break, you know, these problems I had growing up to.
Well, I think
I think that's
why it makes it so important to teach them the greatest source of hope.
Right?
Like, I teach my children about Christ and about God,
and it's like that's where they're going to get their hope.
And when things get tough and they look back and they realize
that was God preparing me for this moment and that was God, prepare me for this.
But that was also God letting me know, Hey, I got you.
And this is where I had you and this is so you can use that for someone else.
Yeah.
You know, And so sometimes we suffer
so that we can be the light and the help and the lamp for others.
And I suffered immensely in my teenage years through a lot of loss and a lot of
a lot of friends who commit suicide.
But it really helped me prepare my children and my wife
for depression and for for
tough, tough times in life. Right.
And so and it makes it so much more beautiful.
It's strange, like,
I don't know, you get to think so much more deeply
and you're so much more involved in everything
because you know that you're all alone in this life.
So I think that's beautiful.
And I think that that is
absolutely one of the things that I try and teach my kids now.
And honestly, that that saved me was that there is purpose in your pain.
And I am a huge believer proponent of
we are spiritual beings experiencing a physical lifestyle.
Right.
And one of the things that I resort back to was, you know,
when when my grandmother passed away and I was so angry at God, right.
Or whatever that power was, because back then I didn't necessarily believe in God.
Right?
So universe, life itself, whatever, I was angry,
not recognizing that I needed this trial
to create me into the man that I am and now being, you know, a man of faith.
And in Jesus and all that.
I look at what he went through for us
and part of the perspective that I maintain
and I don't mean to make this a sermon on the Mount, so redirect me if you want,
but if I'm to relate to him at all,
shouldn't I have to experience just a little bit of trauma
and a little bit of pain myself?
Otherwise, how would I have any appreciation
for what he went through?
And as I keep that in mind,
you know, the the quote by Epictetus, which has kind of been my quote for 2023,
if it's endurable, if it's endurable, endure it, stop complaining comes to mind.
It's like, man, he went through so much for me.
I can handle this. Like this is fine.
Yeah, right. Just to be able to relate to him.
And then I take that perspective to us men, right?
If I didn't have any pain,
if life was all sunshine, rainbows, unicorns.
And you came to me and said, Alex,
I'm having a tough time, I'd be like, I don't know how to help you, dude.
Act like my life is fantastic.
And I don't think that that is the purpose, right?
I don't think that that is how we bond.
I mean, especially us as men.
We bond through trials.
We don't sit around the table and talk and and emote,
you know, as sometimes we need to we need to emote sometimes.
And that's okay.
But we we bond through, Hey, man, I'm going through a tough time.
And you're like, Dude, me too.
Nice.
Like, let's embrace the suck together
and we grow from it because we're solution driven animals.
That's what we seek.
After we had made a guess, we had a guess
earlier make a really great distinction.
You know, men don't do face to face.
We do this shoulder to shoulder, shoulder to shoulder.
We need something to work towards together.
And that's that.
That's how we bond.
And that's and but to your point, too, if you've never experienced anything,
you've never had any hardship, how can you have empathy?
Because empathy is feeling the same thing that they're feeling.
It's putting it's getting down in the pit
with that person and not saying, Oh, just get out of it, or Here's a ladder.
It's it's sitting in there with them for a little bit
and then helping them realize, Hey, I've got a ladder we can leave, you know?
Yeah, sympathy is just yelling down at the person.
Oh, that's terrible.
And then walking away from the pit, you know.
So it's a it's an interesting distinction between the two.
I think most people in our culture today think that sympathy is empathy.
And there's a big difference.
You need to be able to find that common ground
with a similar experience that you've had to that exact pain
that that person's feeling and theirs may be a lot worse, but you can respect
what it is that they're feeling and try and put yourself in that position.
And depending
on the severity of the situation, you know,
be the right level of, you know,
because sometimes they just need you to sit there with them and say nothing.
Right.
And loss of a loved one that's kind of that situation.
Arm around them, just sit there.
Maybe it's a smaller thing.
There's a little bit of coaching involved or whatever. Right.
But if you've never experienced anything, you can't match the situation.
Yeah, I love the way that that Bernie Brown
differentiates sympathy versus empathy, because I think empathy is a superpower.
And, you know, in my purpose that I have written on my board and I resort back to,
I make sure that I include that empathy because, man, we need it.
And Brené Brown differentiates.
Sympathy is kind of like, Oh, that's really hard.
But it could have been worse. You know, I don't know why you're complaining.
It's dismissive.
It is. It's absolutely dismissive.
Whereas empathy is is very involved.
Right. And it's it's it's filled with love.
And I think that that is the superpower that we need to use more.
It's just like, man, I may not have the answer for you,
but I can share in your pain and let you know you're not alone.
And I promise you I'll help you figure this out as long as it takes.
Yeah, I butchered the example, but I got it from Brené Brown.
Unlike one perfect example. Oh, yeah, I was.
Oh, I think it's great, cause you're right.
Looking down in the hole, it's like, build a ladder, stupid.
Get it. Get yourself out. You'll be fine, you know?
And I'll say this here is I'm someone who's like, Really?
Never, ever struggled with depression a couple months ago, and I get it now.
Like, it's not it's not a choice.
I just woke up.
I was completely blindsided.
And now I can't even, like, find words to say to my wife.
Like, she's like, What's wrong?
You know, because she was like, freaking out a little bit, too.
Like, Well, this is not like him. Um,
I get I get it now.
Like, so I've so much more empathy now for people who are just, like,
struggling for real because
you don't really have control over it in the moment.
And, and so that whole thing of like, well, here's the ladder, just crawl
right out.
They would just look at the ladder anyway and be like,
I just can't right now, you know?
I mean, it's I gained a level of understanding for it and empathy for it
just totally shocked me out of nowhere.
So like, I think
a lot of people's natural reaction is to be like, Oh, we'll just get over it
because they think they're kind of faking or something.
I'm sure that people abuse it
to get pills or whatever else, but that's probably the minority
and not the not the majority of people who are actually struggling.
Brandon, go ahead.
I can tell you that the more empathetic somebody is
that is an immediate telltale to me that that person has experienced
more trauma and more suffering in their life than most.
Like, the more empathy they express, the more I know
they've been through trauma.
And that's almost an immediate sign for me
when I'm talking to anybody, whether they're
somebody I've known for ages or somebody that's that's new.
And I'm a highly, highly empathetic person
because I was a very strong people, people pleaser when I was young.
And, you know, being ADHD and get yelled at and, you know,
you learn to read people's
behaviors and emotions and then you adhere and keep yourself safe
within those people's lack of emotion or lack of control of emotion.
And so, yeah, empathy is a huge one for me.
But my question for you, Alex, is what are some common signs
or behaviors that you see that indicate a person might be grappling with,
like depression, self-doubt, those kind of things?
Yeah, I think one of the big ones
is is forced isolation.
Right?
And having the perspective of I just don't want to share.
You won't understand me, right?
You won't get it. It's okay to try me.
You know, I think I've been there before.
I think that that's a
behavioral pattern that we can recognize, is they start pulling away.
They don't.
They stop showing up, they stop communicating.
I think a big one that I recognize in myself
as well as those that I'm close with is a shift in energy.
And I'm not necessarily talking like spiritual energy,
which I do believe happens, but I'm talking like it's hard to get out of bed.
My George, you mention, like, I just woke up and I was like, Oh man, I'm lethargic.
I have brain fog.
I don't motivation is not enough to to keep you moving.
And so recognizing if you're somebody that loves
going to the gym and your behavior shifts, like, I just I don't know, man.
I just don't want to it's like, oh, that's a red flag.
Like, if you if you stop liking the things
that you typically like doing, let's let's dig into that a little bit and let's
recognize that maybe not as a red flag, but a yellow at least, and say what?
Where do you think this is coming from? Why do you think you're experiencing that?
I think that those are some of the early telltale signs that we can begin
to recognize before they turn red
and I know you guys
have some questions, and I wanted to share one thing
in regards to depression, especially on the red flag piece.
You when when you're going through that depression, I like to imagine it this way.
You're sitting in a really dark room by yourself, door closed,
and a lot of people think if you just throw the door
open, you grab the person, you pull them out into the light,
and all of a sudden they're going to feel better.
But you don't realize that when you've been sitting in that dark room
for a long time, that light actually hurts.
It's blinding you.
You don't want to see it anymore because it's just
too much, too fast.
And so when you're sitting in that dark room, the way that people need to handle
that is slowly crack the door open, don't bring a flashlight, bring a
at that little bit of light, acclimate you
to what the light is outside and slowly guide that person to the door.
Let them open that door and let the rest of that light in.
Because if you throw that door open and the light's going to blind them again,
they're going to resort back into that darkness.
Right?
So when we're going through these things and George, to your point,
your wife's like, oh my gosh, what do we do?
Like, he's never been this way.
Let me throw the door open and let's go out, do all the things that he loves to
do. She was of there, but I think she was like she knew something was wrong.
For real? Yeah.
Because I know that my wife will do that.
She's like, Oh, let's go do What do you need? What?
Let's go do other things you love.
I'm like, Oh, she wasn't trying to fit.
She gave me my space that I needed and stuff.
But she's awesome.
She's we've done a lot of work on this kind of thing, but that's awesome.
I think she was pretty concerned because.
Yeah, and rightfully so. She was.
She was like, I've never seen you like this, you know?
So she did kind of come back hours later and was like, I mean,
do you need some help?
I was like, I don't. Yeah, Yeah.
Anyway, yeah, sorry.
I just tried to give her credit.
She she handled the situation fairly well.
That's all right with I am going well. Yeah.
By the way, I've always kind of served for of us
who have struggled with depression our whole lives.
I'm definitely one of them.
I've always kind of felt of it, but felt it as kind of like the time
it comes and goes and to your point with the light and the darkness,
it can also be one of those things where, you know, it can either drown you
or it can leave you high and dry, you know, and it doesn't matter where.
You're at
you're still feeling the way you feel and not a lot in the environment
and not a lot outside of anything can really change that other than just you
taking yourself out of that situation or out of that environment
on your own time and on, like you said, your own free will and at your own pace.
And like you said, sometimes people like to just try to throw you that
that boogie or that lifeline and pull you right out of that water.
But that's just not how it works.
And and honestly, it's a touch what Brandon was saying, the empathy thing.
Yeah.
Excuse me to those who aren't empathetic about it when they try to
just tell you like, oh, just be a man or just suck it up or do this
makes it ten times worse.
If anything that actually creates that creates anger
and it creates resentment towards those people.
And and that's something else we bury.
If you're if you're a person
who's depressed, you bury your feelings more than likely.
So you'll bury rage or bury anger. And
I the only thing that I found personally for me
that has really pulled me out of that is music.
I love to get lost in music, especially like.
And if somebody who's been through something, Oh God, his story.
I listen to his music and
the story about his mother and the mansion and him being stuck in his own mind.
It's like I thought I had some problems and nothing.
That's life, you know?
And then we've had some fathers come on here
with some some pretty crazy stories and and harsh
realities, and you start to find gratitude.
I've said this before on the podcast, but I feel like gratitude
is the number one way out of depression when you realize that
you only have the one life and all the people and things around
you are absolutely incredibly amazing and you really, truly embrace that.
That's when you're like, Okay,
I may be depressed, but I have an awesome wife, I have an amazing son,
I have a nice house, I have a nice car, you know,
whatever makes you happy, whatever fulfills you in life.
I have a great job and I've I think it comes down to what Gary Vee had said.
He said gratitude is the attitude, man.
And that's that's it.
Gratitude really is about the only thing that music
that can kind of help you to get out of that place.
So I just wanted to share that.
Yeah, in podcast, like gratitude, that's it.
Like, All right, guys, it was great. That's it.
True.
Yeah. Goodnight. Thanks.
I wanted to ask,
so I want to make a couple points as well.
Alex, And kind of maybe we'll do one a time.
I'd like you to respond and then come back.
And it's a rapid fire here.
But so number one, you're talking about red flags and things like that.
So for those who may be listening and may not be aware of this,
if someone is struggling
with suicide ideations or contemplating actually going through with it,
you cannot put the idea in their head.
So you asking, hey, are you thinking about killing yourself
is not going to make them go do it.
In fact,
that's actually going to probably
stop them from doing it because they go, Oh my gosh, they get it, you know?
So I've actually done quite a bit of training.
I was I actually did a suicide like intervention
training class through the military when I was active duty.
It was that's all really eye opening, really, really good course that I did.
But I've actually had to use that for real.
Thankfully, that I was able to kind of intervene, um,
ask the hard questions like if you, you know, so
Alex is kind of talking about some things, you know, if someone is not doing
the things that they typically enjoy or they're acting a little off,
you need to ask those hard questions, as scary as that may be,
because if you don't, they may go through with their plan
or they may progress their plan.
And that's how it works.
And it seems kind of counterintuitive
because like, oh, well, you know, I'm planning that seed.
It doesn't work that way.
They've probably already planted the seed themself anyway.
And by you directly intervening, directly
calling out what's really going on in a loving, caring way
will at least start the conversation for them to be open
to not doing it, because otherwise that door stays shut.
So have you experienced that or have you learned that in all of your work?
Alex or anything you want to add that I maybe didn't ask
because I think that's a pretty big distinction
that a lot of people don't realize.
I think, you know, in my research
and studies around suicide, that's exactly it.
Right.
You had asked a
question in preparation for this podcast.
You know, what is the thoughts, words, actions, all the way to destiny.
And I want to dive into that.
It's what I call the mastery cycle.
Long story short thoughts can lead to your destiny
if you are not taking charge of those thoughts,
If you are not verbalizing those thoughts with positive
words to gain control of them, to then lead to positive action.
So starts will dictate your destiny.
And that is where I find myself.
My thoughts were so negative
they led to the negative outcome because I felt nobody understood me.
And when I did share those things, I felt as if
I was being pushed back into a corner because nobody could relate to me.
Everybody thought I was crazy, so I stopped sharing those thoughts.
That isolation
then allowed me to further my plan.
And so, George, to your point, we need to ask those hard questions.
We absolutely do,
because we need to stop and interfere that negative thought process.
And we need them to verbalize it, because oftentimes what makes sense
in our heads as we verbalize it out loud does not make any sense.
And we're like, Oh man, I can't believe that.
I actually thought like I say it out loud and I hear myself say it.
It doesn't sound as good as I thought it did.
And so being able to again, going back to the empathy, Hey, man, what's going on?
Are you having these thoughts? Because I've been there before.
You're not alone. If you are, let's talk about it.
Let's let's interject ourselves in between and try and grab some control
of those thoughts and recognize it's probably not going to play out
like you think it will.
And so interfering with that, that thought
process allows you to grab more of the control
and recognize that
this this is not the way that I thought that this was going to go.
So you're spot on.
That is the exact same thing
that I have seen in my research, in my studies is you got to get ahead of it.
Don't don't be afraid to have the conversation.
Right. Yeah.
And Allen Allen, what's talks about that so eloquently, he talked about a person
he thinks all the time they have nothing to think about except for thoughts.
And so he loses touch with reality.
And he lives in a world of illusions.
And like everything else that's useful in moderation,
it's a good servant, but it's a bad master.
And so we have to not be people
who are slaves to our own thought processes and our over analyzation.
And I was a victim of overt analyzation, and sometimes I still am, but
it's great.
And I want to specify this point with suicide ideation.
So there's a difference between ideation and intent.
If somebody is expressing intent, you are absolutely going
to have to intercede and that means imminent.
Yeah, Yeah, we're going to do as planned.
It's in their head. They're going to do it.
What if they have the Asian ideations?
More of the yellow flag to the red flag rise, like you were saying earlier.
And so ideation means that that person is struggling.
They need help. They need the empathy.
They need the support,
whatever that kind of inner intervening that that you can give them.
But yeah, intent is as a whole nother animal.
That's that's you really got to intercede for that person.
So that's where you like you call them on the phone.
If they don't answer, you call like a health
and welfare check on their house like you have.
Yeah.
You go over, you got to go overboard in that moment because.
Yeah, that's like it.
So I have a real world example.
I'm going to keep it anonymous to protect the innocent.
But, you know, got a message. They love you.
Goodbye or something is super abrupt like that.
And I was like, Whoa, okay.
Dial dialed, dialed like 20 times till they picked up the phone.
Finally they picked up the phone.
It's like, I don't know what you're thinking
or what you're going to do, but don't do it.
Don't hang up the phone.
You have to be like that abrupt about it if it's to the point of intent. So
we could possibly do a whole episode on just that topic.
I don't want to get too bogged down on that because I know Alex,
you have a whole bunch of other things I want to get to
that you have expertise on.
But the other quick little point I wanted to make about empathy is I think
it's arguably the most important thing you need to learn as a father.
I naturally am not good at empathy that was not a strong suit for George
going into marriage and then becoming a dad.
The man working on empathy
and growing that muscle, the empathy muscle
has been probably the most valuable tool
in terms of just having genuine connection
with both my wife and my daughter. And,
you know,
I just can't stress that enough for all the dads out there that
just because you have the authority over your family
and you're the head of the household and stuff doesn't mean you're a tyrant.
And empathy is kind of that bridge between
I'm in charge and I'm like leading us and everything.
But I'm also,
you know, hey, my five year old child,
you skinned your knee like I can remember what it was like.
You know, I mean, it's it's pulling yourself out of that position
as head and leader or whatever and and being there in the moment.
So just if that's a weak point for you listening,
take that to heart.
Hopefully this helps you realize how important it is.
But it's a it's a it's a tool that you will use
the rest of your life anyway with everyone that you interact with.
And it's probably the least I would say the most underrated skill,
especially for men.
You know, we hone in on other things.
I think for men,
mastering empathy or at least getting pretty good at it,
is like a superpower because it's just naturally
what people don't expect from men if you're able to do it.
It really is a very versatile thing that you can apply to a lot of situations.
So yeah, well that in there with the fatherhood thing
I was going to say for, for anybody who's going through it
and, and they have, they're close to intent.
I mean, you feel the panic of that
just infinite darkness and depth and you just feel like there's no way out.
There's two things you need to remember.
You need to remember to take the words that you're saying about yourself
and turn it like the opposite, like you were saying.
Alex But you need to remember the word temporary.
There was a study done
on suicidal patients that I read one time, and it stated that anybody
who thinks the word temporary in a black part of their brain
and you see a white word that's just temporary, it automatically triggers
your brain to like kind of do a hard reset and stop and think this is temporary.
It automatically makes you think this is temporary.
And if you just remember that
this too, shall pass, you know, and if you're if you're religious,
you just need to remember, like everything is temporary ten years down the road,
your life one month down the road, your life can be completely different.
And there always is a way out.
So I just want to offer that hope for those who feel like there's not a way out.
And it could be a situation with a a divorce, you know,
it could be a situation with a baby's mama. Try to take your children.
I mean, there's
is so many endless circumstances that can literally put you in that depth.
But you got to remember, there's always a way out of it and it's only temporary.
So that's just something I wanted to offer.
There are, Alex, closing thoughts on this topic, and I want to move on
to kind of your program and all the different elements.
You know, I think it's a good segue way
because my next question would be, okay, we've recognized all the problems.
Now how do you raise them? Exactly. Okay, Perfect, though.
So if you're ready for that.
So I know on your website you talk about the power of fitness,
the power of nutrition and the power of mindfulness.
So let's start with mindfulness, I think is probably the best segway here.
And I think that leads also to your how thoughts lead to destiny.
So yeah, how do you how do you define mindfulness, I guess to level set?
Yeah.
You know, you had asked me that in your email
and I was like, Oh, that's a good
that's a really good question because, you know, you could look at the definition
of a dictionary, but everybody kind of has their own perspective, right?
And if I were to try and put one word around mindfulness, it would be present.
And then again, we if I try
and reverse engineer, okay, what allows you to then be present?
I think that you know, there's a lot of things that go into it.
But one of the things that
going off of the pillars of, you know, the fitness and nutrition
and everything else that goes into that,
one of the quotes that I had heard that really stuck with me
was that if you want to be present, you have to be proud of your presence.
So if you want to be in the moment, if you want to be in tune
with the people that you're with, if you want to be attentive
to your children, if you want to be mindful of your wife,
you have to be proud of who you are
or else you're going to be thinking about all the things that you're not good at.
You're going to be thinking that everybody you're going to be projecting
everybody else's image of you, their insecure insecurities.
This person is thinking this of me.
There's another great quote of I'm not who I think I am.
I'm not who you think I am.
I am who I think you think I am.
There is nothing about that that is present, right?
That is so lost in your mind and it pulls you away from being present.
And I think if we are to be truly mindful,
we have to be present, which takes a lot of work
to be proud of your presence, to say I am a good man
and therefore I'm okay with who I am in this situation.
I trust myself enough to handle this.
I know what I'm going to need to offer a solution versus
when I'm just going to need to be empathetic.
Right?
So being mindful, you have to be so situationally aware,
so personally aware, so self aware.
You have to be grounded in the present.
I it's kind of a long winded answer, but present really good men like that.
Obviously we're a little biased of the word present.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, I figured, yeah, I was like, This is great, man.
And that's it, man. I agree.
It's about
for me, mindfulness is
maybe it's some disciplines, maybe it's things you do on a daily basis
that draw you out of everything that isn't real and honing in on
what really I can control what really matters, right?
Of course there's things that matter,
but do they really, you know, I mean, they're temporary things
and kind of honing in on,
you know, your life's mission and purpose.
And, you know, if you're a dad,
that should be including your raising your kids and things like that. So
and then one quick point to to Rob from James Clear.
You know, you talked about motivation earlier.
It's not enough for a line. Well, you don't rise to your motivation.
You fall to your systems.
So I would assume
that you have some systems in place that you personally have used
and probably recommend to the people you work with about mindfulness.
So what what is a little sneak peek of that?
Yeah, So that that kind of is the Segway.
Like, okay, that's what it is Now how do you achieve that?
Right?
So I'm a, I'm a big fan of breaking words down to that
route, looking at the etymology of where things come from.
And again, if we go back to the if you want to be present,
you have to be proud of your presence.
One word
that would then encapsulate that is confident.
How do you gain self-confidence, right?
Because how do you overcome self-doubt?
The the opposite of that is going to be self-confident.
If you break down confidence, it's extreme trust or reliability in something.
So as you look at self-confident,
you have that extreme trust and reliability in yourself to be able to face
what is in front of you, which again allows you to be present.
You're not thinking about
how you're going to handle something that doesn't matter right now.
You're dealing with what's in front of you.
So, okay, now we have to ask how do we gain that self-confidence?
And that's going to come down to doing the things that you say you're going to do.
So let's, you know,
just keeping this on what it is to be a good father, a good husband, a good man,
and we can get into fitness and nutrition and all those things, too.
But we have to have
things that we do on a daily basis
that help us work towards the outcome of being a good dad.
And you as the dad have to define that yourself.
But we can paint with a broad brush, right?
We are going to be empathetic.
We're going to be patient,
we're going to be loving, we're going to be service oriented.
We have to have that definition that we can then reverse engineer
and work backwards from.
So I am a huge proponent of having a tracker,
make sure that you know your daily activities
that are going to get you to that goal, to build confidence in yourself.
Because as somebody who deals with depression
and for those of you who are listening to deal with depression,
again, motivation is not going to be enough.
So if you don't track your progress into something,
how are you going to trust that you're doing what you say you're going to do?
Right, Especially when you're in a rut.
So I use a tracker every day and I'll,
you know, my things that I do just in the morning
to make sure that I square myself off on being a good husband,
being a good father, the foundation of being a good man.
To me is I study
my philosophy and scriptures every morning.
I journal every morning.
I meditate every morning and part of of what that looks like,
my journaling is I, I do what's called virtue journaling.
I lay out how I identify my energy, my work, my love.
I define the virtues that I want to embody within those things.
And then I define my action for that day
and keeping it oriented on husband and father.
When I get down to love my
my ID that I use for that is eternal companion,
I then go through and I write out all the virtues that I want to embody
as that man.
I want love, I want empathy, I want patience, I want purpose,
I want persistence, I want dedication. I want to be kind.
I want to be faithful, want to be filled with hope.
And then I go through and I define what are the actions
I'm going to do for my wife and each one of my kids
and I track it and I can see it on my daily.
Did I do it? Did I do it?
Did I do it because that then even if I'm emotionally in a rough spot,
I can look at my tracker and say, Alex, you may not feel like you're doing
a good job, but statistically you're doing all the things that you know
you need to do to get you to the outcome of being good man that you had to find.
Because the outcome needs to be an organic byproduct of the process.
And so I can define those things.
I can then track and be like, Hey, you know what, Alex?
You're doing it every day.
So don't necessarily given your feelings because a lot of the times
our feelings are liars, right?
If you are going through and you are recording and you're doing
all the things that you know you need to do to be a good man,
give yourself some grace, give yourself some credit,
have have a little bit of empathy towards yourself
and then trust the process, the trust, the process.
And so over time,
we began to gain the confidence in ourselves of these
are the things I know I told myself I need to do.
I'm doing them on a daily basis.
I can see that
I do those things in the morning and then I reflect on them at night.
Hey, did I live up to the empathy, the kindness, the patience that I do
the love languages
for each one of my kids that I that I play with him was I kind those things.
So as we track those things, it's like using a GPS towards our outcome, right?
We can, we can see where that's going.
Otherwise you're wandering.
Yeah.
And it's really hard to keep yourself on path when you're wandering.
It is straight, narrow. It's hard to stay on.
Right? Yeah.
So I'm sorry, that was a very long winded answer, but that I think
is one of the things that I teach and the tools that I use
to help people become confident in themselves
to be present in the moment through gaining confidence
in their abilities,
to not have to deal with anything that's not right here.
But if you're tracking to, you can look back
and recognize all the all the wins over time, right?
If you're not ever recording it, it's really easy to remember the negatives
We do a really bad job of reminding the positives, right?
So if you're if you're marking those down on a consistent basis,
you're reminding yourself of all the good that's occurred too.
And again, that plays into changing your mindset moving forward.
You also use backwards planning.
Have you heard of that term
for kind of more long range type of objectives and goals for yourself?
Yes. So again, state and then you work back
from everything that has to occur to get to that point. Yes.
And that's have you read the book.
The one thing I have not oh, man.
It's like my number one book that I would recommend for goal setting
habits is atomic habits.
And the one thing is, is the same thing, right?
Like, hey, this is the man I want to be in ten years.
Describe what that looks like.
What is it going to take to become that in five years, all the way down
to what do I have to do on a daily basis to achieve that?
And that's really the importance of tracking, right?
Because a really long goal like that, really hard to maintain, right.
It that's so far in the future and so many things can get in the way but
you break that down and reverse engineer to a daily action 100%.
You'll get it just a matter of time.
All right.
I'll I'll add the one thing to the list and for all the
all the listeners out there to know you have homework.
Yeah, exactly.
So can you go go a little bit more in-depth
into the whole progression of thoughts, to words, to actions, habits?
Or have we kind of already know?
I, I would love that.
Yeah.
So, so that actually comes to us from
Lao Tzu, who's an ancient Chinese philosopher back in 500 B.C.
So he he was the one that said, you know, watch your words.
They become or watch your thoughts. They become your words, watch your words.
They become your actions.
What your actions that become your habits, what your habits.
They become a character, what your character.
It becomes your destiny.
So as I as I teach the inner or the mastery cycle is what I call it,
because as you said,
the image on my website, right, you are at the center of this thing.
And as you draw this circle around you, that is everything that you encompass.
You are your thoughts, you are your words, you are your actions.
Ultimately, you're the one in charge of your destiny.
You hold in your hands.
It's on your shoulders, it's within your control.
Therefore it's your responsibility that's on you.
Nobody can tell you how to think.
Yeah, there we go. Right.
So your current thoughts
are what dictate who you currently are at the center of this.
You want to change who you are at the center of this.
It starts with your thoughts.
Right? So, George, your question.
Hey, you know, the reverse engineering planning,
Who do you want to be in ten years?
Who do you want to be in three years?
Put that person in the center of this mastery cycle
and ask yourself, how would that person think?
What would the words would that person use be?
How would that person act?
And I'm actually creating an online course in a group coaching program to help,
especially men, as four men control those three things because
we don't control
our habits on a daily basis.
If you think about it, our habits are what happens on autopilot,
right?
As we control our thoughts, our words, our actions, that
then dictates our habits, which dictates our future.
So on a daily basis,
we have to be very conscious of the decisions that we are making,
starting with our thoughts all the way through those words and actions
to then dictate what the habits are that then dictate our future.
So I'm a big proponent of and Brendan, I love the way that you said it, right.
Our our thoughts are good servants, but they're terrible masters.
We have to be the ones in control of those because that that feeds our words.
And we haven't talked too much about this yet.
But Brandon, I think it was you that touched on the power of self-talk.
How would you talk to your kids and how would you talk to a loved one?
How would you talk to a friend?
For those of you that don't have kids,
how would you talk to anybody that you truly care for?
Contrast that with how you talk to yourself,
because I'll be the first to admit my default setting.
I, I don't like how I speak to myself.
I have to be very conscious of the words that I use with myself.
Alex, you're a piece of garbage. You're worthless, you're a burden.
Nobody wants you around the that self-talk that I experienced
during my trauma comes back up consistently.
And if I'm not aware of that man, I go into a deep hole.
And so I have to be able to to pull myself out
and become again what I call a subjective spectator and say, Alex, hold on.
If you spoke to your wife this way, what would happen?
Yes, she's definitely not going to stick around, right?
I would I would put my kids in therapy
if I spoke to them the way that I speak to myself sometimes.
And so that needs to be something that we're consciously aware of because,
you know, the saying of sticks and stones
may break my bones, but words may never hurt me.
That is true when those words come from other people.
But the words that we use with ourselves are the death by paper cuts.
And those are the ones that lead ultimately
to the suicide attempts that dictate those actions.
Right.
So we have to be very conscious of our self-talk
because that then dictates the actions that we will follow up with.
Right.
Which then those on a daily basis
dictate the habits which ultimately dictate our destiny.
So if we want to change the man that we are at the center
of this mastery cycle to become the man that we know we're capable of becoming,
it all starts up here.
It's that mindset feeds the self-taught, dictates the actions.
So that's really what the mastery cycle is to me.
And I don't think that there is a finish line to it.
It is if you want to change who you are, you have the capability to do that.
Put that new desired person that desired being at the center of this
and ask yourself what will it take through my thoughts, words
and actions to become that man
and then start acting as if you are
a man?
I love that.
If you actually harped on something that I talk to
my wife about, she's so hard on herself about it.
Just like physical appearance and things like that.
And I always tell her I'm like, You know, your self-talk sucks.
If you had a friend who talked to you the way that you talk to yourself,
you guys want to be friends? Yeah. He punched in the face.
It's like you want to be friends with your self, right?
Yeah. You got to be better.
And I would.
You said that man that really hit home just.
I think we're all a little guilty.
Sometimes we all beat ourselves.
We all, you know, kind of overdo it a little at the, at the time and place
for ourselves, but yeah.
Anyways yeah there's, there's been so much research too
on how positive self-talk like the greatest athletes,
the greatest you know all these people they they tell themselves like
personally I'm fortunate in this regard.
My grandfather told me I was very competitive and take one.
No And, you know, I was pretty young and nervous
and he was like, I want you to wake up every day
and tell yourself like 100 times that you're going to win that tournament
or you're going to win at the Junior Olympics kind of stuff.
And he like, made me just like a mantra.
And I did. I won a lot.
And I think that was a huge part of it is because like in my head,
I didn't get my own way.
I just went out there and competed and I was at my full potential.
There's been so much research and I don't have all the stats to quote
or whatever, but
high performing athletes and musicians and all that kind of stuff,
those who exercise positive self-talk operate at the highest level
and it's not a coincidence they're all doing it.
And it's not just because they're the most physically fit
or the most musically talented. Like there's they're all good, right?
Like if you're in the NFL, everyone's in the NFL, you know,
they're all the point 1% of human beings physically gifted enough
to play football at that level, right?
So to be that much better
every little tweak, every 1% here and there.
But self-talk is probably 10% or more of it, right?
When you're stacking up all these little things you can do.
So just on the flip side of that, the positive angle of it,
by making that a
system that you do on a daily basis, yes, you are setting yourself up for success
before you even head out the door for work or whatever it is.
When there's there's really interesting research on how to do it, too, right?
I mean, we when we talk to ourselves, it shouldn't be in the first person.
That's actually what the research shows. Going back to your Olympic studies.
And these professional athletes are very successful people.
What they find is that the athletes that pull themselves out
and speak to themselves in a third person manner
and they've done this with students and, you know,
overcoming anger and pulling themselves out of the situation
is really interesting.
Those who speak to themselves in the first person have a really hard time
separating themselves from the emotion that the situation causes.
Right.
And therefore kind of get engrossed in it.
Whereas if you if I were to talk to myself, Alex, you can do this.
Alex You can overcome this.
Alex You have the tools to go and do this.
It's as if
a champion is speaking to you, right?
As if a third party cheerleader is helping root you on from subjective
spectator perspective, which actually then leads to greater outcomes.
So, you know, one of the other things that I teach in regards to the mastery cycle
is envision the best version of you at the center of that
three years, five years, ten years from now.
How would that man speak to you right now?
What would he tell you?
How would he address you?
And that is how we should speak to ourselves, to amp ourselves up.
Alex, you can do this.
You've got this man.
Believe in yourself because I believe in you.
If you want to become the man you know you're capable of becoming,
you have to believe in yourself like the best version of you does.
And, you know, for those of of us who or for those
who may not be religious or anything, I often think of my dad this way.
You know, we as Christian men, we think of heaven, right?
So what would what would that heavenly figure say to me?
How would he speak to me?
But even for those that aren't religious,
what what would the best version of you look like on your deathbed?
What what does
what would he have accomplished in this life?
What is it going to take to become that man?
How would he speak to you know, what would he tell you to do?
There's like the religion, the spirituality doesn't necessarily
have to keep you from having this future conversation with yourself.
It needs to be had all the time and it needs to be had in such a way
that when you are on your deathbed,
whether you're going to heaven or whether you think you're wearing food,
you have no regrets here
because you are proud of the life that you lived.
So how is that man going to speak to you
and motivate you to stay disciplined enough to keep acting towards
becoming that person? That is how our self-talk should be.
Justin To your point, not always the case
mind sucks sometimes and I have to catch myself all the time.
Alex Fix it, right?
But even that needs to be uplifting.
It can't be like Alex, you worthless piece of garbage.
Your self-talk is just terrible, you know, Even that has to be fixed.
Well, it's, it's, it's funny.
Michael Jordan, I think, said it, but he said there's a massive difference
between positive thinking and wishful thinking.
And, you know,
that's something that a lot of people don't differentiate a lot of the time.
And you really need to stop and think like positive thinking is the key to,
you know, growth and all the other things.
Whereas wishful thinking is something that doesn't happen.
And I if I remember correctly, the quote he said after
that was some people want it to happen,
some wish it would happen, others make it happen.
So when you're thinking positively, you have to think you're going
to make it happen.
You have to like self verbalize it.
So yeah, I think that's
that's a topic that we can go on and on about this, on and on.
Yeah.
But Michael Jordan I mean he will that some of the craziest things to happen.
So I mean I just thought he was a good example of that.
So. Yep, absolutely.
I'm curious, Alex, if you've heard of the book called The Alter Ego Effect.
I've heard of it.
I haven't read it, though.
It's I think it's a lot of what you're talking about,
like envision yourself in the middle and that that is the guy talking to you.
You probably love that book.
I would take that one up.
But the concept is you can basically,
you know, typically see it
with like sporting events, but you can apply to any aspect of your life.
So for an area where you feel incompetent or scared or whatever, right,
maybe you have a trauma that's holding you back from reaching your potential
in a certain area.
You can create an alter ego and you become that alter ego in those scenarios,
it's essentially positive self-talk, but you bet that
that version of you or your alter ego isn't held back by your limitations.
And it's all mental and it works.
And like again, this is something I was really blessed with.
I didn't realize I had done this throughout
my whole life, really because of something my dad did for me.
And I want to share this here just because it's a good like father story.
And so I was in Tiger Windows, super competitive,
and to make me better, my master would have me spar
this kid who was older and bigger than me, and he would just wipe the floor with me
like I was like crying and get hurt all the time.
And I was like real big into Star Wars.
I was like eight.
And my dad
sat me down and made me watch The End of Return of the Jedi,
where, you know, Luke is kind of in the shadows and Darth is talking smack
and he's like, Maybe your sister, you know, is
like, your thoughts betray you, too.
And he's like, never comes out.
And my dad was like, You are Luke Skywalker.
And every time you get in there,
you're going to attack, be on offense just like he was there and be Darth Vader.
And it sounds really cheesy, but like I did, like I never lost to that kid again.
And he was still £23 heavier than me a year older, faster, bigger,
all that kind of stuff.
And I just it was all at me.
I was so it was fear.
I was gripped by fear that I was not sparring in a way I was capable of.
And then from that moment,
like every time I walked on to a mat to spar, I was Luke Skywalker.
That's That's super cheesy or whatever, but so you can, like, play with it too.
Like I could be George Skywalker or whatever. But
a lot of what
you're talking about is that same concept where
we lie to ourselves.
So it's like it's people like, Oh, it's mind control.
Well, everything is mind control. So mind
control yourself with positive things as opposed to negative things, right?
And don't hold yourself down. Lift yourself up.
And it's we're our own worst enemy so often, you know?
It's crazy.
Yeah,
it reminds me of the.
And if Brandon, do you want to say something to cause I'm again, long winded.
Oh, no.
I'm going to say that this all just shows and, you know, I know that's something
that you cover largely in your your process because,
you know, self-doubt can resurface in all kinds of stages.
Life. Right.
And so I guess my question to you would be, what strategies do you recommend
for maintaining
self-confidence and eliminating self-doubt over the long term?
Yeah, I think it's a great question.
Have you guys heard the the term in the tool name to tame?
You know,
I've been so named to Tame is given to us by Dan SIEGEL.
I believe he's out of Harvard.
And it was actually a tool that my mom gave to me as a kid.
And named Tame essentially allows us to
tame through naming our negativity.
So, Ryan, to your point, how do I overcome self-doubt?
Well, one, I want to recognize I am not those those thoughts,
because that's really where it starts, right?
So as we as we name the negativity within,
we can now look at it as a third party perspective.
And have you guys heard the story the two wolves tell to wolves?
Mm hmm.
Okay.
So, you know,
two wolves fighting for for our souls within for those who haven't heard it,
you know, one is the evil wolf
who has greed and anger and frustration and all the negative emotions that we have
that the good wolf within is love, hope, faith, charity,
all the good things that we have and the person that we want to be
and the one that wins is the one that we feed.
Right. And I love that. And
the way that we can
take charge of that to overcome the self-doubt is one name
that evil wolf within I call Mind Buster, because he's constantly busting my chops.
My mom gave him that name when I was a kid.
So whenever those those doubts come up,
it's, hey, I recognize where this is coming from right?
I don't want to bottle up the emotions as we talked about.
I want to recognize where they're coming from,
perhaps recognize maybe what what has triggered them.
Hey, buster, this is coming from you.
Talk to me a second. What? What's happening?
And then I'll shut the conversation off.
Buster, I'm not having this conversation with you more anymore.
I am not my negativity.
I'm not letting you take charge. I'm pushing you out.
Okay, Alex now what?
And this goes back to George.
To your point, like, give that positive version of you, that alter ego, a name
I call mine Alexander Wolf.
After my my grandmother Wolf.
Like that is the best version of me.
So. Okay.
Alex Alexander Wolf comes in.
He's like, what are you going to do now?
Because I believe in you.
You are not your negativity.
So now let's make a plan.
And that's where that self-talk comes in.
That then leads to the positive action.
So naming name to Tame as a negative,
and then that positive as the name to aim, which is
I think, something really, really important
because if we don't have a target to aim towards,
how do we know which actions to take?
So when it comes to this, the overcoming self-doubt in the long run know
who that man looks like or who that person looks like to use an aim towards him.
And then as we talked about, track those progress those steps
and that progress towards becoming him and see your progress on a daily basis to.
Do that.
And then you know, it goes hand in hand
is doubt is a natural thing for us that we experience, right?
We we are negatively predisposed just through evolution.
Right.
The negativity is so potent, it's kept us alive for thousands,
hundreds of thousands of years.
They actually have a ratio called the 3 to 1 ratio.
It takes three positive experiences to overcome one negative.
That's just the potency of of negativity.
So now we recognize that you say, okay, that's who we are as humans
where we're predisposed to be negative, as high as like 20.
Like if you say I'm sure it can life something you've got to do
like 20 positives to balance the scales on that.
I'm sure it can be depending on where it's coming from.
And you are genetically right the happiness equation
to have you guys read that book and heard of that one so that one says
that 50% of our happiness is dictated by genetics.
And I could say, you know, just based on what I've experienced,
I'm not the happiest do naturally 10% is based on external factors.
40% is internal tools that that we have internal perspective.
So we have we really have 40% of the control there right.
So as we recognize that,
you know, just again, across common humanity, we're were more predisposed
to the negative, recognize that's just who you are, don't feel bad about it.
We all hadn't have negative thoughts.
That's okay.
That's natural.
So now, rather than giving in to that, Alex, start doubting yourself, man.
I'm so negative. I can't believe I would do that.
Just change.
Start what I.
What I like to call is doubt your doubts.
Those doubts come up.
Where's that doubt coming from?
Why would I think that
this is telling me?
I'm doubting my capabilities. I'm going to doubt that.
Say no.
I don't doubt my my capabilities anymore.
I'm doubting the doubt there.
I can do this and then allow that name to a character
to come in and say, okay, here's how you overcome it.
So it's it's a lot
of tools that are intertwined, intertwined into one.
And again, I no longer way an answer there, Brandon, but
starve out the evil wolf feed the good wolf, drive towards
that best self, track it on a daily basis and doubt your doubts.
If I could summarize it. Beautiful.
And I think the word you spoke of being present being your primary word for me
is outside that it's intent, just like we were discussing with suicidal ideation.
It's it's intent. You have to have intention
or intentionality in every single aspect of your life.
And if you are purposefully intent,
like you would be in a negative way, but in in a positive way, then then you're
you're going to hate anything that you go after, especially if you're
following it with discipline, your intent with discipline.
Like that's the hardest thing I've I've had to struggle with and.
So when I push with intent than I
usually it overrides my my doubts.
And then I see, you know, you get those small wins
and the small wins get the medium sized wins and you just keep snowballing.
Right? And so that's that's usually what helps me to.
But man, that's a beautiful answer. I love that.
I had argued there are no small wins at all. Wins
that because maybe
that won that one little win you get is the only one you get that day.
So don't downplay it.
That's that's an idea.
But yeah.
Hey man,
good segue way about starving out the bad wolf in the good one.
So let's go into nutrition a little bit.
We've done we've talked to several people about power fitness.
I think our audience is pretty well aware of how we feel on that one.
But nutrition, I haven't really gone into with that one guess maybe, But
I love it.
I'm going to read a quote from you
and then I just want you to kind of expand on how nutrition is so important,
especially for when it comes to mental health.
Just looking good.
So you say our food should be our medicine and our medicine should be our food.
I think
it's actually a quote of someone else that you had on your Aristotle, I believe.
There you go.
So can you expand for us and for our audience
why a good nutrition plan
is not just about looking good naked
and it is probably more important
for mental health. Yes.
So personal story and why I'm so passionate about this.
Always been one of those sick kids like I saw the witch doctor
and what on these special diets when I was a kid and you know,
I was poked and prodded and all that.
And when I was 21, was diagnosed with Crohn's.
And I approached that just, you know, strictly through food.
Fortunately, it's very minor comparative to what other people have.
I still have everything intact, haven't had anything removed,
but I still go into flare ups if I don't take care of myself.
So I am.
I'm very
dedicated and disciplined when it comes to my nutrition.
And what I want to caveat is everybody is different.
What we're learning now with nutrition is there is no one way to eat right.
Counting your macros may work, kiddo may work,
Vegetarianism may work vegan as it may work for you.
The the carnivore diet may work for you.
Right? Everybody has their own thing.
That's what I want to caveat with.
But why it's so important for mental health.
Your gut is your is your second brain during our our production
as we're growing as a fetus, our brain and our stomach share the same tissues.
90% of our serotonin, which is the happy
hormone, is actually produced in the gut.
So if we don't have proper gut health,
our anxiety,
depression, self-doubt, all those things that I'm dedicated to,
to help people overcome takes a massive hit.
So the the hunger hormones, ghrelin,
we have all these things that lead to triggers hunger.
If you'd if you know the 12 step program halt h a l t Hungry, angry, lonely, tired
Hunger is a massive trigger for people fighting demons in here.
It leads to, you know what our abusive behaviors will be.
And that's because our hunger, hormone hormone is attached
greatly up here as well. Yep.
It comes to our energy as well.
If we're tired, we're going to have massive crashes,
which then lead to further mental abuse of behaviors.
Right?
If we're constantly having insulin spikes, if we're constantly
having massive crashes,
if we're not sustaining our caloric intake enough to give us enough energy
to be able to fight these things in here, I forget who said it. Maybe it was Freud
who said,
When we're tired, we lose to the demons that we had previously overcome.
All of these things are really, really important.
And so our nutrition plays directly into that.
And we're we're finding through new studies that are coming out every year
the importance of that and what plays into right high protein intake,
watching carbohydrates, good fats and how that feeds the brain
and how the hormones are balanced between the brain and the gut.
The gut biome and is something that we're really starting
to to wrap our arms around in the importance of it.
So many important hormones live in our gut
that play into our self-doubt, anxiety and depression.
So your nutrition, whatever that may be, needs to be on point.
And I would caveat to whatever it is, watch your sugar intake,
watch the spikes, watch the crashes, watch your dairy
intake as well, because we're seeing a lot of the hormones
that are coming in that dairy intake, Right.
So not saying don't have it, but be careful with it.
Watch the gluten because that is, you know, highly processed.
Now watch the seed oils.
Those things are having, you know, some some pretty detrimental effects
on our gut biome as well.
So like those and then of course alcohol, right.
That's a depressant in and of itself.
So if you're
dealing with any of those things don't I don't drink, it's just feeds demons.
Right. Mike Not going to do it.
So anyway, long story short, our, our gut is our body, second brain.
And so if we're thinking like, Oh, I only have to do things
that take care of my head, that is absolutely not the case.
We have to take care of our guts.
If we're going to simultaneously take care of our heads.
I'm going to I'm going to steal that phrase, man.
Our gut is our second brain.
So good at it. It's massive.
And what's crazy is there's research of like fecal matter transplants,
and it's coming from somebody that's very healthy, very happy,
and it's going into a pseudo suicidal person.
And the person is just a completely different person.
And it's because that gut biome is completely changed.
And, you know, I did an extensive study on antibiotics.
Antibiotics absolutely puts you in a state of depression.
So men, when you're taking antibiotics, you need to take a probiotic.
And I'm not talking about one
that you have to refrigerate because if you have to refrigerate it,
the second they hit your stomach, it's gone.
About 1% of that makes it to your gut.
You need to get one.
That is a spore biotic based probiotic
because the spores actually
make it through the stomach acid and through your body's higher temperature.
It gets into your gut and then that microbiome becomes healthy again,
because basically an antibiotic is is a nuclear bomb to your gut biome.
And you're literally destroying it.
And so the food I call the farm, the pharmacy,
it when you're not eating processed, you're not eating high sugar
or soils or oils or any of that stuff, and you're eating just clean.
Like 70% of your plate should be fruits and vegetables and natural
things that come from the ground that are organic as possible.
Man, I'm telling you,
you're just living in a whole another world.
Your health is just it's crazy.
It is, man.
There's there's a great book called Brain Energy by Chris Palmer,
who was the head of Stanford.
I forget where he's out of, but he's a psychiatrist there and long story short.
And this one, when I first heard about it and then read the book, blew me away.
He's not saying like a certain percentage of mental health
issues are caused by God.
He what he is saying is that every mental health issue,
from depression to bipolar to multiple personality to schizophrenia
can be reversed within our gut.
That is how powerful our gut.
And I see that face too. I had the same thing was like, Wait, what?
It That is how powerful our gut biome
is and how intimately it is tied into our brains.
Our gut biome
is massive so our nutrition really when it comes to the self-doubt
or anxiety, depression and everything else,
is extremely important for our mental health.
And then of course I'm a big believer, you know, you are what you consume
and I'm not just talking food but media, everything.
And I'm also a believer
that if you are to live the highest level of being,
which is a spiritual existence, if you want to tap into a higher power
again, call it God called life,
call it the universe, call it energy, whatever you want.
How are you supposed to tap into that if you're constantly in brain fog?
How are you supposed to tap into that and communicate with that?
If if you cannot control what you're putting your body,
how are you supposed to control what you are putting into your mind,
into your spirit, our our self-discipline when it comes to our nutrition?
And this is actually I don't call it diets I call it nutritional discipline.
You pick your nutritional discipline
so that you can have discipline everywhere else.
Because the first thing and one of the easiest things we can track
is our food, it's our fitness and it's our food.
And so if we're not tracking what we're putting into our bodies,
how then are we going to grasp
what we can put into our minds and what we can put into our spirit?
So tracking your nutrition as a discipline is really a Segway
and an entry tool to tracking everything else
and being aware of what you're putting into your body as a whole.
And I think that that mentality itself is really important
because we need to be more aware of what we're consuming as a whole.
You know, it's kind of funny.
I've got a question for you and I want to figure out who can answer this question.
Do you know what other biome is directly related to the gut?
Give you a hint where your food comes in,
your oral health and oral health.
So my wife's a pediatric intensive.
I say that before we start, Alex
So I learned something from her in her dental school
that not only can your oral health affect your gut biome,
your gut biome can affect your oral health.
They're like seriously directly linked and they can lead to like gum disease
if you have for, you know, gut biome and and you don't have
a good nutritious diet or if you eat a lot of sugar.
So that's why it's you were talking about nutrition.
I don't think people realize
how much nutrition actually affects different parts of the body.
And it's so interesting that, you know, each one of those
can feed different parts of the body and the brain and everything else.
So it's just something neat that I actually knew for once.
So have to share.
Yeah. Thanks, man. I learn something new every day.
I didn't know that.
And I need to, you know, take better care of my health anyway, so
more motivation for me.
Yeah, that's great.
And it's crazy just for all you parents out there, a little free advice.
Make sure brushing your kids teeth after milk.
Don't give them anything in the middle of the night unless it's water.
Because what you don't realize
you're doing is is causing more decay and causing a lot of issues.
And that's why my wife dismissed this, because people give their kids
something to placate them while they're, you know, upset or hungry
in the middle of the night.
They'll give them juice or
God, I've even heard of coke, which is crazy to give a kid. But,
you know, milk is bad for that as well.
And you also have something in your mouth called caries.
You know, it's why you're not supposed to kiss your own children on the mouth.
You share what you've had for a lifetime to your children.
And, well, no one here is Tom Brady.
So we're not to worry about that.
I had no idea about any of that.
Oh, my God. I know.
But yeah, like, people don't realize it's called caries.
And it it it goes it.
As soon as anything, you kiss your kid on the lips.
Guess what?
They just got the same bacteria that you've had for a lifetime
that can give them oral decay, gum disease, all these other issues.
They were never susceptible to, they now have the chance to get.
So that's just a little effort.
I for you people don't do it because it's creepy.
Yeah, well, that's true, but that's reason enough.
I get it.
Like if your kid's like, a few months old and they're like, you know,
but yeah, yeah, like just having little food for little food for thought.
Oral health is just as important and can 100% help that as well.
So, yeah.
I'm sorry, Brandon, do you have something else?
Yeah, I was just going to say there's a you mentioned a book.
There's another book. Dr.
Mark Hyman Forever Young goes through a lot of this stuff
so eloquently and it it's such
a fascinating book because, again, it touches on the gut biome.
It touches on fungus growth inside the body and how you can get rid of
that like Candida or candidiasis and that that kind of stuff.
And so there's a lot of factors that we don't consider
that truly affect us in our mental health.
So yeah, it, again, it's all so intimately intertwined.
I saw this really interesting study the other day.
They gave children oatmeal, steel, cut oats
and then an omelet for breakfast, and they wanted to compare
how the hunger hormones were released in the brain,
how insulin led them to be hungry and what they ate the rest of the day.
And then, you know, so they gave them these things.
They locked them in a room and studied their behavior.
And the kids that had oatmeal for breakfast, carbs.
Right. Insulin spike, very simple.
Oatmeal ended up eating 81% more
than those kids that had eggs and for the AMA.
And then they ended up eating something
like 50% more than those that had the steel cut oats,
which is a much slower, more complex carbohydrate.
So I know that a lot of us, again, going back to that,
if you want to be present, you need to be proud of your presence.
Part of that is how you look.
You need to be confident in how you look.
And again, George, to your point, it's not just about looking sexy, naked
and all those things.
That's a byproduct
or that is the outcome that that will be achieved as you take care of yourself.
But if you want to be present in a roomful of people
and not worry, what is everybody else thinking of me that is part of it.
Like, let's be honest,
you want to look good in your own skin, you want to feel confident you.
That is how we overcome the self doubt of all people are judging me.
I'm just going to stay home and I'm not going to voice my opinion
because I think people are thinking about me.
And so recognizing how what we eat and when we eat it
then plays into the further behavioral patterns of eating,
leading to either weight loss or weight gain,
energy maintenance, all of those things is really important
because, look, I'm I'm a proud anti dad board club member, right?
Like, that's just a personal thing for me.
Yeah, there it is. Right.
And again, I'm not saying you have to have a six pack.
Everybody has a different body type. I'm well aware of that.
But if you want to be present, be proud of your presence
and part of that mental, proud of presence is being confident in your skin.
And we can you know, we can laugh about that all at home.
But seriously, people are our self-confidence.
First thing is what you see in the mirror.
Yep, that plays a huge part in it.
It's I mean, it's it kind of baffles me.
We have to actually have this conversation that, like, the dad bought is not good.
Yeah, but yeah, I mean, pull
100 guys and say if you could flick a switch
and have better looking muscles overnight, would you do it?
I think 100 of 100 guys can say of course.
Yeah.
I mean it's just
so don't deceive yourself on that one if that's a blind spot for you,
if that's a plank in your eye that you're just like,
Oh, well, I don't really need to get fit because, you know,
that's not really important for being a better dad or whatever.
It's like, Well, one, you're just robbing yourself of mental health
like we talked about.
But also,
I mean, what kind of example are you setting that really the example
you want to set? Is that really the legacy you want to leave?
Now? It's not everything, right? Fitness isn't everything.
You go and just be the jock dude and that's all you are.
Then that's still one dimensional.
Just like being only the smart guy and not the fit guy is also one dimensional,
but a balance and like you said, yeah, the goal isn't to be
a competition bodybuilder but get in health shape.
Yeah, yeah.
Be physically healthy
is, in my opinion, should just be people's needs.
Well, and we didn't really talk about it too much and maybe we save it for,
for another episode or something.
But the University of Australia just the beginning of this year came out
and expressed how taking care of yourself
physically with fitness and exercise
is 1.5 times as effective as leading
medications and therapies to overcome depression or anxiety.
So again, this isn't just about looking good,
it is about mentally feeling good.
And I will harp on this all day if you want to be mentally, if you want to
mentally, emotionally and spiritually feel good,
you cannot neglect the physical
because that the physical is the gateway to be able to achieve those things.
You're not going to be able to be mentally, emotionally and spiritually fit
if you are not physically because the brain fog is going to get in the way.
You're not going to have the energy, you're not going to be able
to control your thoughts, your words, your actions that then dictate the destiny
that you want.
If your physical fitness is not being addressed on the daily
being addressed on a daily basis, again, you don't need a six pack.
That's not what this is about.
It's about proving yourself right, that you are worthy of taking care of yourself.
Yeah, that is the act of physical fitness is your taking the time out of the day
saying, Hey, I, I am worth taking care of.
I am worth saying I'm done with work.
I'm worth saying I need a break from family to say
I need to take care of myself.
That is what this is about, man.
So please give yourself that.
The ability to say you are worthy to be taking
care of if by nobody else than by you.
And of course, that always begs the question,
if you're not going to take care of yourself, why would anybody else?
Yeah, so think about that, guys.
It's not just about Sixpack, right?
Well, and so it's not just the mental too.
So if you're less conditioned, your body doesn't work as well,
you start to get nerve pain, all that kind of stuff.
Yes, chronic pain adds stress.
Like it's just a it's a negative cycle that keeps spiraling.
And so for me personally, too, like there are a couple of years where I like
kind of, you know, I wasn't like overweight or anything,
but I had not been training to sustain my body.
And so old injuries, you know stuff in the military,
all that kind of stuff are really nagging My back pain got really, really bad.
You know, sitting is bad for us.
Um, constant chronic pain was raising my attention, raising the stress.
I was irritable, short, like
it has negative effects that span way beyond how you look in the mirror.
And when I started getting back to,
you know, a daily
routine like you were talking about, to worry about my long term health
and longevity and rehabbing injuries and things like that, my pain is way lower.
Like I just feel better not not from like, oh, look how good I look.
I feel younger, I feel better.
Like I'm working.
My body moves better now.
So, like, it's
you're just doing yourself a favor by by getting in a routine like that.
So I know.
Justin, it's something on this day I want to kick it over to him.
Oh, I just was going to say something I've read about recently.
It's.
It's the most interesting thing I think I've ever read about.
It's so the assumption that you can go and find it.
I can remember the exact name of the article. I'll try to find it.
We could post it.
But long story short, the South Koreans and U.S.
found hormone they're calling the exercise or miracle hormone.
It directly affects metabolism.
It affects your muscle and bone growth and density.
It literally.
So essentially what it is, is this is supposed to combat everything in your body
fatigue.
It's supposed to be like the ultimate like antidepressant.
It's a natural antidepressant that's stronger than any drug on the market.
It's it's just unbelievable.
Some of the key health benefits that they found from this
and it's only done during like rigorous exercise.
And so this was just discovered like in the last few years.
And they just finally came out with the study on it.
It's it's pretty and it's pretty.
And I guess amazing is the word I was looking for.
Sorry,
There was another word I was looking for, but I can think of I do that a lot.
But long story short, I would say go and try to find this.
I want to say I think that the hope molecule is what Brandon was saying.
Okay, I'll say that I've heard about as normal.
Yeah, yeah like that article so we can but we need to share this.
But yeah, it's, yeah, I'm really curious to see like what, When you say
hard exercise, like to what level of stress do you have to peak at?
And that's going to be the final relative, right?
Because if you're a conditioned person, you know, doing 20 push ups
is going to be kind of hard If you are in great shape, push ups is not hard.
So it's like, I'm curious, is it a heart rate thing?
So yeah, So the tested subjects were 160 beats
per minute for at least 4 minutes.
Okay. So that's pretty good.
Sustained rate over minutes for at least 4 minutes.
But I mean, you get that you can get that from working out.
You can get that from running.
I mean, that's that's not a hard No.
I mean,
if you if you actually challenge yourself what you're supposed to do anyway.
Yeah.
Total weight on muscle groups that you're going to get that or close to that.
I'm sure you can get it with less.
But they were just saying that, you know,
the test groups and stuff, that that's the primary.
That's where where they found the most concentration of this hormone.
So it's pretty interesting that your body and its cells literally create
something that can combat everything negative in your life that can affect you.
So yeah, yeah, that's true.
Yeah.
So move on from that.
I guess
the last question we really have for you is this one we really ask our guests
and this one's kind of off topic, but what's a story or something
from your journey and fatherhood that you just really want to share with
other dads that just kind of hits home that you instantly think about
when you think about, you know, being a dad?
Oh, man, that's a great question.
Um hmm.
I don't know if it's necessarily a story
as much as it is a chapter of life that I'm in
because, you know, I've got a five year old and I can't believe that she's five.
I've got a three and a half year old.
I can't believe she's three and a half.
I've got a one year old.
I cannot believe that she's one.
And we're pregnant with the fourth
and it's our last one.
And I cannot believe how quickly time is going.
Time as a parent is a bit of a paradox because
I see myself as the same person that I was when I had my first baby, right?
I'm 27, 28 years old.
I don't I don't see myself as I'm 33.
And yet I look at my oldest and I think, oh my gosh, time has passed.
You are five urinate, you're in kindergarten, you are
you are growing so much
and time is flying by
and I think, you know,
as I look at this chapter in my life,
I recognize the importance of being present
because it will by
if we don't stop
and take the time to be here with our kids.
And so I don't know that I can
think of one story in particular as much as this phase of
I can't believe it's
slowly slipping past already
and it is going by
too quickly, in fact.
And I think that that's a double edged sword, right?
I love watching my kids grow, but I just to shake them,
I mean, I stop growing so fast because
I know as soon as they get their teen years having four girls,
I think we're going to have a fourth girl.
It's going to be crazy for me. Um,
but I just I recognize that
I can get lost in my purpose to to change the world
and decrease suicide rates and try and make everybody better
and build a community that is powerful and uplifting to really impact the world.
But I can't use as a justification to not be present with my own family.
I have to tell myself every day, Alex, do not build a community at
the expense of your own,
because this is going to be over soon.
It's going to it's going to fly by.
And as I view myself on my deathbed, it's
the largest regret that I will have is neglecting my family.
And so I you know, the the thing that I would point out the story
for the fathers is, man, be aware of the time that's passing
because it is it is moving way too quickly.
Watch Bluey
go sit on the couch and cuddle girls coach their soccer team,
go get ice cream with them. Stop. You know, turn all this stuff off.
I want to go and jump in bed with them after this.
Even if they're sleeping, just be there, you know, because
it just goes by too fast.
And I think that that is that's the one thing that comes to my mind
when I think of like, man, it's awesome to be a dad.
Is it?
They won't always need me.
That's going to be over sooner than that.
I recognize.
Sorry if that wasn't a direct answer, that was my I couldn't
answer that better myself and I'll have to say just emphasized
you being president is 100% at the time is absolutely a thief.
And I guess you you really said the best advice I was ever
given was given to me by my own father, which was stay present in the moment
because you're going to blink and your kids will be adults.
And I saw a crazy thing on Instagram the other day.
It was a real and it was very sad and it hurt my heart because it was this guy.
He was a child psychologist talking about how you I think the actual statistic was
by the time they're 12 years
old, you spent 90% of the time you will spend with them.
I saw by that day I was like, oh my.
Oh man, yeah, that hurts.
For years, I think 90% of their life has been spent with us,
or the time that they would spend with us in that time is by age 12.
Yeah.
Like, well, just to raise the mood a little bit,
Alex encouraged, you know, you stated Man of faith on that. Yes.
You know and so Brandon's oldest I think is nine and mine's eight.
So we're a little bit ahead of you in terms of kind of like, oh, man,
the time's flown by.
My wife and I actually were laying in bed
last night talking about this exact thing and kind of lamenting a little bit,
you know, Oh, she doesn't say words anymore.
You know, he does everything correctly.
And, you know, at that point where she's she's not a little girl anymore.
She's kind of a big girl and
pretty
independent, all that kind of stuff. And,
you know, I kind of just remind my wife, too, that
she's not really ours in the first place, Right?
She's God's. Yeah.
And we're kind of just stewarding her.
And the whole point is for her to become a woman and just to move out
and have her own family one day.
And so as painful as it is personally, it's also kind of the mission
and the reward of if we do it well,
they're going to go out and,
you know, it'll it'll hopefully be tenfold from
from our little slice of the thing.
So but yes, enjoy every minute while it's there,
especially the times when you're tired or
feel like you have something more important to do.
Just just capitalize on being a dad while you are.
And I've never regretted
telling something else. No.
To pick my my daughter, you know, and and like you that I think that's my
that would be my biggest regret, too, is if on my deathbed I felt that,
you know, I had built things
or communities at the expense of my family,
you know, And I think the world live in.
That's a lie that a lot of people have been
sold is go chase this or that and not family.
And it is a lie.
It it's an empty lie.
And you may not have riches,
earthly riches or whatever, but the
the rewards that you'll have for this is for all the dads
by showing up as dad now,
while they're young and while you have a say in the matter,
you will never regret that No matter whatever else happens in your life,
you will always be glad that.
So, Alex, I appreciate the very candid kind of response to that question.
Normally it's a little light hearted,
but I think it's important to drill in on how real it is.
So thank you for sharing that with us.
And also thank you for sharing your whole story and
not the whole story, but a lot of of what you've been through.
And it's been real because isolation for men is the enemy.
And I think what you're what you're doing is really healing that wound for
a lot of people.
I appreciate that, George.
I appreciate all you guys giving me the time
and let me be open. Right.
I think the that I try to express is really
in tandem with the empathy that I try and share, too.
Like, look, life is hard.
I'm going through a stage right now.
We're I'm you know, everything is great and I'm still having a hard time and like,
that's okay.
You know, that's just part of life.
I love what you guys are doing.
We need strong fathers, we need strong men, We need good examples.
We need guys to
to be the band of brothers that we all need.
You know, we can't do this alone.
Life is way too freaking hard to do this alone, man.
Like, knock that off.
Throw the pride away and just, like, be okay your hand.
But I need help, man.
Even if it's just a shoulder to lean on, I need help.
And you know that.
That's okay, guys.
Like, we're all that way.
So, again, I appreciate what you guys are doing because it allows
for us men to come together and recognize that.
Yeah, man.
Well, we're happy
to to have you on and kind of spread the message.
So before anyone goes, keep listening in.
Alex Where's the best place for people to find you?
Is your website, is it Instagram?
What's all the, all the places?
Yeah.
So first place is just Instagram.
Alex Wassim
On Instagram, I've got Alex Boston.com has a landing page
stronger than your Pencom is more aware the details are found
and I'm starting another company with Buddy called Wolf Life Consulting.
It's after my grandmother, Shirlee Wolf, and that's where I'm going
to be doing my online courses and group coaching
directed at men too, to go over all these things.
I'm going to teach the mastery cycle how to ascend the inner
mountains of mastery,
how to take care of yourself physically, mentally, spiritually, intuition,
all those things, and then how to forge the optimal you.
What is that future you look like?
How do you put that man in the center of the Mastery Cycle?
Act as if you're that person now control the thoughts, actions.
All of that is coming in the new year.
So keep an eye out for that. I'll share that with you guys.
But again, just trying to build a community
like you guys are doing here so that we can
we can be better men and recognize, you know, I'm a big believer.
Strength for you is a starting point.
Strength for two is the end goal.
And I appreciate you guys allowing me to to share this with you.
So thank you.
Well, we appreciate you coming on and and being real and,
you know, it's all I know how to do, man.
Yeah, well, that's that's what we should all do.
Live without, you know?
I love it, man. Thank you so much.
I love your heart for just being genuine
and and for helping others, and we need more of that.
So thanks for thanks for bringing on some positivity and, you know, helping others.
So with that said, please do us a favor.
Whatever podcasts you listen to, whether it's Google,
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hopefully five stars and subscribe
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So appreciate you all.
All right, dads, enough talk. Let's get climbing.
We'll see in the next one.
Thanks for tuning
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