go and do the deep work go and figure
out what your limiting
factors are fix them you're not broken
you're just not completely healed yet
[Music]
hey what's happening let's talk about
how to be a real man
ladies if you're listening to this and
you're like oh man he's talking about
being a man
pay attention trust me because you're
going to want to listen to this
otherwise you're going to end up with a
dumb ass man
and if you end up with a dumbass man
then that's going to lead to a dumbass
relationship and dumbass relationships
usually end up into
dumbass divorces so here we go how to be
a real man but seriously guys um i came
up with this
idea of how to be a real man because
this young man sent me a dm
on the old ig and he was like hey man um
i want to be a real alpha man like you
and
as much as i love the compliment i
i listen i don't know i don't know what
an alpha man is but and i don't know if
i'm an alpha man and i appreciate the
compliment i think
but more than that i think i'm just
comfortable in my own skin
and if that's what an alpha man is then
color me an alpha man but
i can tell you that i was not this
person
that i am today now at 46 something
happens right as you get into your 40s i
can tell all of you this
uh men that as as you get into your 40s
there's a level of
evolution that takes place where you
kind of begin to
kind of just you become you're you're
fresh for anything
you don't you don't give drama you don't
care to get involved in drama and gossip
and you don't really
look for other people's validation
and approval like that started for me in
my mid 30s but as i really started to
get into the tail end of my 30s and into
my 40s i was like you know what i'm
fresh out of
for everything and this is who i am like
it or not
feel free not to hang out with me and
there's a sense of confidence
that you gain when you are comfortable
in your own skin
and i think what people talk about in
terms of
alpha or i want to be a real man like
you is hey i just want to be
comfortable in my own skin because it
looks like you're happy and it looks
like you have peace of mind and it
looks like you're doing well in life and
check check and check
i'm doing all of those and i'm grateful
for all of those things because i also
know life comes to us in phases and
seasons so
listen um last year 2020
was certainly not a season of winning in
terms of business
i absolutely was winning in life i was
still happy i still had peace of mind
and i have an amazing family and great
friends and
a great company but there was this
moment
in time especially around uh well
april may june of 2020 where i was like
shoot
there might be a chance that we kiss fit
body boot camp goodbye
our international franchise may not be
an international franchise
and it's weird when you get to a place
like that because i was like well shoot
that was
if that's the worst case scenario that
happens like you know what i can accept
that
and fit body boot camp is not my
identity
my cars and my homes are not my identity
my
private gym is not my identity the
lifestyle that i
live is not my identity my supplement
company software company
the project my book none of that is my
identity my identity is
the person that i am and the reputation
that i have and the
way that i show up to you that's my
identity so i could lose it all
today and i don't feel any different and
i wouldn't feel any different so long as
i have
my loved ones around me i can rebuild
now
go back to 30 years old and if
i was 30 to 35 years old and this whole
cove thing happened then
and i was ceo of fit body boot camp
it would be a very different feeling i
would i would immediately lose happiness
i would immediately start feeling
depressed
and anxious and make no mistake about it
it's not like i was like yeah i'm
high-fiving myself through 2020. that
wasn't the case
i still had moments of fear and
uncertainty and doubt but i had
this constant feeling of peace and
happiness knowing that
nothing that i lose in this process is a
byproduct of what i did
i'm going to try my hardest to keep it
all and to serve my franchisees and to
continue to
grow the brand but depending on what
happens with the world
if we lose it all i'm okay and that was
a really cool place to be in 2020. like
i said if this happened
you know in 2010 right just 10 years ago
i was at a very different place where my
money
and my business was a direct connection
to my identity
uh but with that said let's talk about
being a real man so
i kind of if i'm looking down here if
you're watching this on the youtubes
uh you're gonna see me looking down
every now and again if you're watching
or listening to this
on you know on the podcast platforms and
you're good to go but
i wrote this post and and i want to
kind of unpack it if you will i said
how to be a real man to be a real man
you can't show
any emotion or vulnerability make sure
to avoid
all deep and meaningful conversations
stuff all your feelings deep down inside
and keep your head down and just grind
through life
to be a real man walk on eggshells
around everyone and avoid confrontation
be passive aggressive until you get so
pissed off that you explode and yell at
your wife
don't ask for help ever because that's a
sign of weakness
to be a real man never do the deep work
that's going to heal you
instead avoid and ignore and distract
yourself
so that you never have to work on the
things that are limiting your success
and your happiness
i said never address your vices or your
addictions
and always pretend that everything is
okay and just continue to suffer in
silence
and quietly die within
now i said uh as you read this
you you see how stupid this is right
like this is not
how to be a real man yet most men
are this way most men are this way in
fact there's a quote that i want to read
to you this quote
let me find it here
david toudreau is the
author of this quote he says the mass of
men
the mass of men lead lives of quiet
desperation
and that is so true most men
lead lives of quiet desperation they're
suffering in silence
and they're walking on eggshells and
they're passive aggressive
and they're just letting things build
and build and build before they explode
in an uncontrollable rage only to feel
regret for that later whether it was at
their kids or their spouse or their
or their friends maybe their employees
or even your business partner right
but what if just what if real men
had a very different way of being what
if real men were people that were
vulnerable what if you could be
vulnerable
what if you can have open conversation
what if you can do the deep dive
and do the self work and really heal
the areas of your life that you were
traumatically damaged in
right maybe you had physical or
emotional abuse
from parents or school teachers someone
beat you
maybe someone emotionally wrecked you
maybe you were physically
sexually molested or raped
and maybe you were just called names
whatever it was you've probably had some
traumatic
impact that you haven't dealt with and
that you suppress
and that as men we put in a silo and we
just forget about
and we think that if i just keep my head
down and grind through
i'll be okay the only problem is you're
not okay because you haven't processed
through that
and that tends to want to come up and
show its ugly head
at the most inconvenient of times
such as in your relationship on vacation
with your spouse
your family your kids right or as your
business is thriving
all of a sudden you find yourself having
these anxiety attacks
or going into a deep depression you
can't figure out why
or maybe as people are giving you
compliments you're getting great
opportunities you find yourself
self-sabotaging yourself and you're like
why
did this just happen as you look back
you realize i
did this to myself why well you probably
subconsciously realize that you don't
deserve love and that you're
not lovable and you are broken and you
are unworthy of success
but really are you no you are just hurt
you have a negative belief system about
yourself that you've never taken the
time to fix because
well something happened to you some
traumatic event happened to you as a kid
and um well it's left scars on you
hasn't it
let me tell you about someone a guy
that's gone through the project and i'm
not going to mention any names or any
class numbers but
man this guy just a beast of a dude
jacked ripped great shape but
immediately when i met him at hour
number one of the 75 hours of the
project like he couldn't make eye
contact like he was just looking at my
feet looking over my shoulders
is talking to me and yesterday yesterday
and
as you could imagine i began to wonder
like what the hell is up with this dude
now what many people don't see about the
project when we put out all these cool
videos about the project it just looks
like it's a big 75-hour physical
evolution right that you know there's
going to the beach and you're being
tortured by the navy seal ray
and the beach and then you're you're
crawling in the mud pit
uh by the marine who's just like yelling
at you and squawking in you and having
you start all over again and
ice baths and you're you're pulling
trucks and you're hiking for miles at a
time with logs and stuff
there's more to the project than that
what we don't show in those videos
because i like to keep those private are
the
four six eight hour chunks at a time
where we do a deep dive on the emotional
work if you really want to know what the
project is about it is about helping
heal men so that they can become more
vulnerable they can become
servants of humanity you can have a deep
conversation with people around you
without your
butthole puckering up because it's okay
it's cool to talk about
what happened to you and quite honestly
no one really cares about what happened
to you other than
you right and so i share this with you
because
in the process of helping men heal
through journaling and
going through this one of the evolutions
that we have is a
sit down right as i facilitate this
thing
where it's called the hunt and destroy
where we hunt and destroy the toxic
negative con conversations and
belief systems that these men have
carried
for themselves right for so many years
and listen i'm i'm
i'm a byproduct of that the reason we
started the project is because
it took me these a massive anxiety
attacks if you read my book man up you
know that it took these
massive anxiety attacks to [ __ ] me to
get me to go to a doctor
only to get put on xanax and of course i
used
and i truly thought stress was the
problem right my business was growing
quickly i had a lot of irons in the fire
and i was just so stressed out docked
and i for the first time ever i'm having
these massive
panic attacks and anxiety attacks and i
don't know how to handle them and
they're crippling
help give me drugs and of course they
gave me xanax well
i guess what happens when you when you
take xanax
you kind of get numb you lose your
creativity you don't have much fire and
thunder and desire to really work
and so i lost all that i lost my drive
and so i was like hey
after two weeks i told the dock i'm like
i can't i can't do this i i can't
take these drugs that are numbing my
creativity
so the good news is i'm not having
anxiety attacks the bad news is
i feel like a wreck i just feel like i'm
not contributing to society i'm not
doing my work i don't know how things
are
excuse me how things are going to
continue to grow in my business and how
i'm going to continue to make an
impact in people's lives if i don't work
at the capacity that i enjoy working at
and so as i tell the tell the doctor
that i don't want to
take these drugs anymore he says well
it's simple you're going to have to work
with a therapist
if you want help with your stress and
anxiety and panic attacks well
listen you tell a guy that he has to
work with the therapist come on man like
really
i'm not broken i'm not messed up as it
turns out
i was exactly that i was broken i was
messed up and i'm going to get back to
that guy in just a moment that i told
you about i know i kept an open loop for
you so hang in there guys
uh so long story short i sucked it up
and i found a therapist his name is
kevin and i worked with kevin for
just over 12 months every week every
monday for 12 months
first we started off working on my
stress my anxiety the things that led to
a panic attack but very quickly as kevin
gained my confidence and my trust i
began to open up
about what had really happened to me as
a kid and i've shared this before
between the ages of four and six
i was molested by two older boys back in
the old country before we escaped soviet
union and came to the united states
and so you can imagine having been
molested consistently by two older boys
left
a lot of emotional and mental scars on
me right
it had been some that i'd never talked
about up to the age of 37 when that
anxiety attack happened to me i'd never
talked about it
i never mentioned it to anyone it was a
secret that i carried
and truth be told deep down inside i
felt shame i felt rage i felt confusion
i felt like i was broken unlovable and
undeserving
and unworthy of success and happiness
like i was just like this broken thing
right and so imagine being this broken
thing or feeling like a broken thing and
trying to get into a relationship with a
woman trying to be a father of two
amazing kids trying to
trying to lead an organization that's
going to make an impact right like fit
body boot camp and all the other
companies that i have
you could see how there would be so much
friction between the guy that feels
broken unworthy and lovable
and the path that i want to travel in
life
and so working with kevin as he won my
trust and i opened up to him and i told
him about what happened to me as a kid
we worked through
that and i was able to heal over those
12 months
and so as i heal through that process
and i
openly talk about it from stage so many
people especially men would walk up to
me and say
after i you know spoke they they go hey
it's like you were talking to me man
i can't believe you talked about what
happened to you as a kid that is so
brave of you that is so big of you
uh thank you for talking about that
because um something like that's
happened to me
and i know i have all these emotional
and mental scars and they show up in
different areas of my life and the way
of sabotage and the way of anger and
suffering and silence
undeserving unfulfilled etc i'm like man
you know you could work through this you
can go work with the therapist and work
through this problem you do know that
right i don't want to work with a
therapist i don't think i need a
therapist
there's any books that you recommend
reading look books are not going to get
you there
right you need a therapist to talk to
you ask you the right questions to help
you
dig deep down into your soul unpack all
that
and realize that you are lovable that
you are worth it
that you do not need to carry shame and
confusion and
that rage you can just put away because
it's useless to anything
so that said let's go back to our guy
that i was telling you about
jacked great shape couldn't make eye
contact
as we got to this section of the project
about though 40 some odd hours in
where we went to the journaling of the
hunt and destroy
piece he revealed that
when he was a kid he and his dad would
go and show
horses right and they would show horses
and so they had this big pickup truck
and they had a trailer where they would
pull five or six horses in this trailer
and he would sit next to dad in the
passenger seat of the truck and they
would drive to
the arena where they would show their
horses and hopefully their horses
won and if the horses did not win to
dad's expectations
then dad would get very angry dad would
get very pissed dad would yell at this
young man and dad would say you're not
going to sit in the front seat with me
in the truck instead you're going to sit
in the trailer
with the horses and so this young man
found himself
in the back of a trailer with horses
sitting amongst a whole bunch of hay and
piss
[ __ ] you can imagine how demeaning that
was to this young boy you can imagine
how
crippling it was to his self-esteem and
his confidence to his
self-worth right and as he grew up
he just felt like he could never do
anything right he was just never good
enough and he constantly created this
narrative of punishing himself
just like dad would punish him and it
showed up in his marriage it showed up
in his health it showed up in his
business
and what was sad is he didn't feel that
he was there
at the project to deal with that he
thought he had some other issues
but thankfully the project is really
good at breaking men down and
getting him to become vulnerable and
suspending disbelief
because the navy seal the marine the
swat guy the mma guy
we're really good at breaking you down
mentally and emotionally through
physical evolutions that get you to want
to open up
and let down the wall and it's during
that time that i get to shine
as one of the project instructors and
work on that hunt and destroy
and so as we did we figured out really
the dad
had a problem with alcohol the dad was
just repeating a cycle that his dad
did and he felt that punishment would
create more winners
than positive reinforcement and so
you could imagine the work that this man
had to do
to heal himself but by revealing
that unearthing it taking it out of the
shadows and putting it in the light
he was able to realize that you know
what i am plenty worth
love i am worth success i'm worth
happiness i am worth fulfillment and the
real work began for him
but this isn't about the project this is
about what a real man
is and so when we talk about a real man
is
it's unfortunate because well as i read
there for you a real man
these days is lost is confused
is passive aggressive a real man is a
nice
guy right and all that means is that
you're just passive you're quiet you're
unsure
lack confidence you ought to be a savage
but a servant
you ought to be a protector and a
provider that's what a real man is
and i don't know if you need to walk
around as an alpha beat in your chest
all the time
because i certainly love opening doors
for people i love saying please and
thank you
i love treating people to things and i
love being generous with my time and
with my money
but if i have to bring the thunder and
[ __ ] her up i certainly will
i love being comfortable in my own skin
and i love saying no i'm not going to go
to that wedding and i'm not going to go
to that funeral
i never spent time with that that that
bride and groom anyway
and so i'm not about to go waste my time
to that wedding and that person that
died
god speed but again we didn't spend much
time and i'm not going to go there
see it's when you start falling into
these obligations of life because you
are insecure that you don't have your
own core values that you don't have
true character and a true north star to
live by
that you begin to do what everyone else
does and you begin to have
resentment towards your spouse towards
your business partner towards life in
general and i'm here to tell you that
what real men do
and if you want to know how to be a real
man it is to be vulnerable it's okay to
cry it's okay to
talk about the deep because nothing
cracks me up more than
men who uh haven't seen each other for a
long time maybe they're friends and like
hey man how's it going how's the weather
in kansas city
first i can open up my iphone
and tell you the weather in any city
across the world like in that moment do
i really
care what the weather is in kansas city
do i really care how your sports team
doing this
second i could pull up again your the
stats on your sports team in your city
and say exactly how good they're doing
right the thing is men who have these
emotional scars
who haven't dealt with it that are
operating in the state
of passive aggressive that are suffering
in silence that are
kind of living in a state of mediocrity
and ignoring and avoiding
all those other the deep work
keep all conversations on the surface
superficial
they talk about the weather they talk
about sports team they talk about the
politics
those aren't the conversations that i
like to have not now
not that i've healed the conversations i
want to have are the deep conversations
the conversations that i want to have
are the impactful conversations the
conversations that i want to have might
lead one or both of us to crying and
that's okay
the conversations that i want to have
are the ones that are going to create a
ripple of impact
and for that to happen you have to start
feeling strong and confident in your
skin for that to happen you got to start
healing
and i know it's a it's a far shot for me
to tell you that you might need to work
with the therapist but it felt just
as far of a shot when my doctor
told me that i would need to talk to a
therapist about my stress and my anxiety
which led to me uncovering all that deep
that i had never addressed and that deep
what had me programmed in a negative
state and so i'm here to tell you guys
that if you want to be a real man if you
want to be the type of man that is a
gentleman that is chivalrous that is
kind that is compassionate that is
empathetic
that is also a savage and a protector
and seen as a leader
seem to someone confident do the real
work
do the healing do the deep work and
understand
that one out of every four people
have had some form of sexual abuse one
out of every three
people have had some form of physical or
mental abuse
and no matter if it's sexual abuse or
physical or mental abuse
the part of your brain that lights up
under a cat scan
is that fight or flight part the part
that says
fear threat and if you're always living
under that
that fight or flight moment of fear and
threat
you're not going to have a sense of
peace you're not going to have a sense
of
deep happiness and comfort and you're
not going to have the sense of
fulfillment and meaning
and what i would want for you is what
i've gained through doing the deep work
which is more comfortable in my skin
than i've ever been
and that i have peace of mind that i
have happiness and i have a sense of
significance and purpose on this planet
and it's magnified by 10x because i've
done the healing and i've done the work
and i encourage you to do the work and i
don't know if therapy is the solution
for you or maybe you've got to come and
experience the project
or maybe you've got to go talk to a
counselor
but i can tell you that if you continue
to repeat the patterns that you've been
repeating
you're going to continue to get the
results and the outcome that you've
gotten
and i don't know how long it's going to
be before the spouse leaves i don't know
how long it's going to be before your
kids begin to
ignore you and avoid you and i don't
know how long it's going to be before
your business collapse all around you
but i don't want you to experience that
so i hope you'll take this
words of wisdom for me in that go and do
the deep work
go and figure out what your limiting
factors are
fix them you're not broken you're just
not completely healed yet
but you will be so guys and gals do me a
favor share this
on the old social medias feel free to
tag me and i would love it
if you would leave a five star review on
itunes and all the other platforms out
there and as always don't forget
to tell your mama peace
[Music]
you